Good morning everyone. We're having a little bit of technical difficulties here today. So we will get started shortly. Good morning. How are you? Well, good morning everyone. We are going to call this meeting to order. Miss Prime. Yes, sir. Good morning. This is a special meeting of the El Paso City Council for Monday, July 7th, 2025. It is 9:04 a.m. Mayor Johnson is present and presiding in council chambers along with Mayor Proen Chavez, Representative Aedo, Representative Maldonado, Representative Oer Treco, Representative Nino, Alternate Mayor Pro Fiero, Representative Lemon, and Representative Canales has requested to be excused today. Mayor, we have a quorum. All right. Thank you. Representative Treyo, would you lead us in the pledge of allegiance? Pledge 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. Well, good morning everyone and thank you for coming to the uh this work session meeting. It's going to be a great day and good to see all the city departments here and I hope that everyone had a great weekend. But before we begin, as we know, a lot of people in Texas are suffering uh with the floods. So, I'd like to ask everyone to please join us in a moment of silence for the people in in in Texas that are suffering through these horrific floods. Thank you. Okay, Miss Ryan. Thank you, mayor. We begin with item number one, and this is a presentation as discussion on the FY2025 2026 budget as presented by the city manager. And we begin with an overview from our city manager, Miss Dion Mack. Good morning. Representative uh Leman, good morning. I just have a question for you. I know that we received a link with a whole bunch of documents. Yes ma'am. Will we be following those in the order that they were presented in the in the email that we received or will we jump around a little bit? So, I Sasha, there's some that are backup only. I'm Sasha. Sasha Good morning. Sasha Donoski, director of OM office of management and budget. So first three documents, three presentations will be presented. Everything that is called backup uh is for for for for a backup. Uh so you can review that. Okay. So the first three presentations are not part of our backup information. Everything everything everything is in it. Okay. So then I would only ask possibly if when we move to a new document if you'd give us a few minutes um to be able to locate them. Thank you very much and thank you for all the documents. Thank you so much. And Miss Mack, would you like us to hold the questions to after the end of the presentation? Yes. So we'll be doing Robert and I will be sharing uh the budget overview and so then we would uh be delighted to take questions on the budget overview. Then we'll move to um our compensation presentation that is going to be provided by Miss Wiggins and her team. We'll take questions on that and then we'll move on to uh the staff presentations beginning with economic development. Okay perfect. It if you can bring it up for me. Good morning again Dion Max, city manager. Next slide. We will be covering our budget process and improvements as well as the budget focus and challenge. As I mentioned, I will be uh joined by Mr. Cortinez to talk about uh some of the expenditures, revenue, and also our debt service. Again, I making sure I'm putting my name on the record. This was my very first budget. Um, as you know, we've been in this process for quite some time. Many of you were brand new um to your seats when we started this budget process. I want to thank you all for the feedback that you provided, really helping us to be able to shape this process, for the time that you've given to us to really help us understand what questions were important, the focus that we needed to put in presentations. Sometimes I say, you know, we live in a bureaucratic bubble and how we translate that to community. That's where you really help us to be able to do that. So, thank you all for the time that you've put in, you know, through the various things that you've done over the last couple of months. Um, as you know, we started with a couple of presentations. We had our launch uh our uh chime in uh um survey done. We did community meetings. Uh we did individual council briefings. Um that was a result of input that we received from you. Uh we also are now into our budget presentations. I just want to highlight that today and tomorrow is really going to be about you hearing from us but us hearing from you. This is not the time that we're going to be moving into decision making. Uh we have staff who are here who going to capture any questions that you have about this process. If we're not able to answer those on the spot, we're going to take notes. We will follow up with you um to make sure you have that information. we'll drop it into the SharePoint and then when we come back on the 31st, if there's any other presentations or anything that we didn't cover that's important for you, we'll make sure that you have that there. We also have the ability um to do at least one more series of presentations or anything that you might need on the 21st and 22nd. I received a few questions from you all trying to understand the procurement process. It's such an important part of your work. So, we'll have a work session to talk about some of those things and questions that you've had about how we do that and what it means, particularly because this budget does include some increases for contracts and is such a huge part of our work. So, again, if there's anything that you like to know, we want to make sure that we can ensure that what I'm presenting today is a preliminary budget, but what you adopt in August is yours. And so I really want you to feel comfortable that you have clarity. There is no question too small because my perspective if you have the question somebody in the community has the question. And so making sure that we have the type of transparency around this process for our community is really one of the things that we have been focusing on under my administration. Again we went through um the various steps of this process. Uh it has been great just getting out into the community to hear from people about what's important to them. uh we had several new uh steps this year and this was really driven by community meetings that I've gone to and people talk about the complexities of the budget and that is so hard to understand and that people don't necessarily understand where the dollars are going. And so we're really working on trying to make sure that in everything we do, not only uh do you have the information you need to make critical decisions as our policy makers, but also that the community has the information to really understand where our resources are going. We're also piloting program-based budgeting based on that same premise. When I talk to people, they're like, "Your budget book is 463 pages." You know, and so when you're trying to figure out what we're doing for streets and what we're doing for other key areas, program-based budgeting gives you the opportunity to see within a department what the key performance indicator is and how dollars are being allocated. And so we are piloting that and you will hear from four departments uh today that will be starting that process for our city. Again, programbased budgeting really starts to talk about what services are provided and how we're funding those services. And so sometimes when you're having a conversation about how do I do X, it's easier for you to be able to see what the metric is, what the outcome is for that, as well as where our budget alignment is. Again, we have four departments who will be showing you the beginnings of that process this year. In terms of our budget focus, I know we've all talked about service delivery and ensuring that we can get even better at ensuring that we're being responsive to our community. I'm her I'm sure that all of you at your community meetings know that there is room for improvement in terms of ensuring that we're delivering on the basics in every neighborhood and community. I know that if you work with work with some very hardworking staff over the last couple of months, you know that it isn't necessarily a matter of dedication. It really is ensuring that we have the right level of resource within the organization in terms of people and supplies to actually get that job done. So, I am uh proud to be able to continue to focus on what we know is important for every neighborhood and community by continuing to invest in the people who touch our communities every day, and that's our workforce. We're also working on ensuring that we find new revenue for um the general fund. And so, we'll be talking a little bit about how we've been able to add that this year. I'll talk to you in a few minutes about our chime in survey. It's pretty consistent. you know, investing in our infrastructure continues to be very important for our community and for me making sure we can do that without always adding debt, you know, to our city is really important. So, as we talk about payo is cash in hand to pay for capital things, we really want to make sure that we're in um continuing to have those funds in place and we can grow them because over time it really reduces the debt we have for our city while delivering on the things we know are are important for us. improving our engagement as I talked about has really been important and our next steps beyond this budget series of two days. We'll be actually be going out into the community taking an abbreviated version of the presentation that I'm giving right now going out to every district plus doing one that's virtual to give people the opportunity if they were not able to make it today and tomorrow to really be able to see and understand what's going on. In addition to that, we're going to take all of these documents. As you saw for your backup, there will be on the OM website. Historically, they've been available through the city clerk's office. We know sometimes it's difficult for people to navigate there. So, we wanted to really be transparent and easy for people to find. And so, that's one additional steps that we're doing as process improvement this year. One of the questions that I've gotten, we did a media roundtable um just last week is really what has been the impact for prior years. You know that we took no new revenue for two years in a row and the question was you know why can't you do that you know this year and so just going into some of the things that were done um over the last two years to really be able to achieve that. We really want to make sure that you could see that. I know we've had those discussions and conversations. As I talked about, the payo fund or cash in hand is really important for us. We decreased that fund um for both vehicles and for our facility improvement by $3 million. This budget does not restore those funds. And so that cut becomes the new baseline for the funds in those areas. And unfortunately, we are not immune to the type of inflation that you see every place in our community. And so those dollars are not going as far as we would like. And so we're moving in the wrong direction in terms of ensuring that we have the same type of buy power in those areas. You all are aware that we utilize onetime revenue to balance the budget of 7.2 million. That was our second year of utilizing our fund balance. Um the other thing that I think is s important is we have been talking about the number of vacancies that we have, but a lot of those vacancies are frozen to be able to balance the budget. And so I have a presentation that will follow after Robert that really helps you to see what those numbers are and you can see them historically and you can also see what it means for us in terms of being able to fill positions. Um that impact was 6.5 million on the general fund. We also prrated our nonuniform pay raises and when we do that it means that a portion of those costs ends up having to be absorbed in the next fiscal year. So this fiscal year that we're presenting has to absorb the pr-rated cost for this year plus the full cost of next year. And so it is one other way that we kind of kick the can of expenses to the next fiscal year. When we look at the dollars that were not brought into the city um over those two-year periods, there's about 14.2 million that we forego um by not having those dollars come in by not adopting a higher tax rate. Those dollars are not a part of our budget. you know that we have a lot of costs and expenses. We understand that at the end of the day, council makes a decision in terms of how we adopt a budget, but this becomes the baseline for how we talk about what we're presenting this year. And so, you know, we've had some challenges in terms of revenue and other resources. And so, we wanted you to understand the base upon which we've built this budget. Um, we talk about budget challenges. I think all of you have been in these discussions. I know that as council you're very invested in public safety. Um also competitive wages. You see the impact of inflationary impacts on our contracts and also on materials. And it just means that the dollars that we have just don't go as far as they used to. And so we really want to make sure that we're being very strategic about how we invest in these areas but also be very real about what it means for our city. We hire a lot of people through those contracts and so they have the same costs and expenses that we sort of we see with a lot of what we're sort of buying be being related to personnel. Unfortunately, we also saw declining revenue of about $10.6 million um in the areas that are listed permits, franchise fees, engineer charges. Uh we also talked about the use of fund balance. This budget does continue to use fund balance but at a lower rate and also um fines and forfeitures. We continue to deal with the uncertainty of what's happening at the federal level and when our public health department presents to you later. They'll talk about the more than $3.5 million in cuts that they have um absorbed just since January. And that has been a combination of grants that were just suspended completely and then reductions to other key programs. We've seen reductions across the board in other areas. But I think what becomes the biggest challenge for us is the uncertainty of the when and how. You know, we were sort of anticipating maybe some of these programs not continuing, but not necessarily an immediate um cancellation of a program that's been in place for two to three years, which puts us in a very difficult place in terms of how you transition those programs and service without sufficient time to be able to plan. This is the first year that um we broke down our chimein results by district. We had the highest response rate ever. So, I thank all of you. I know you pushed really hard um on your socials to get people participating. And so, we had over 8,872 respondents. Um I was a bit surprised to see the balance this year between public safety um and infrastructure. Um but our met matrix pretty much stays the same. As you can imagine, during COVID, uh community health was a higher number than it shows right now. I also wanted to share what that looked like per district. and it's pretty consistent. I think we see um the priorities being public safety and infrastructure across the board. I'm sure these are the things that you're hearing when you're in the community as well. Also, just wanted to give you a further breakdown um of what that means. We did give people the opportunity to give us more detail this year in terms of u the areas that they were interested in. Police services was a full 70% seconded by 911 services. And so you'll hear the fire chief talk about what he's doing to ensure that they're hiring and ensuring that we have the right level of staffing and that we don't have um burnout in that area. And so we know that that has been key to us and he also has a key KPI that he tracks on a regular for that. Um fire services came in third and then we had other infrastructure street maintenance has been number one I think since we started the survey. Um and it's not surprising to see, you know, that continue to be a very important piece for our community. Of course, parks and recreation um was also really important for community and as you know, we'll soon be launching our public um our master plan for parks and recreation. It will be a wonderful opportunity to get more detail from our community on what's important to them and help you to be able to understand how we talk about priority moving forward over the next decade. The preliminary budget increase is 3.8%. It's 4.1% across our general fund and 3.5% across our non-general fund. But when we started this process, what we call our requested budget, our gap was 51 million. And so we did a lot of work between the requested budget with our departments and what you see as this preliminary budget. I am so proud of the teams really understanding where the focus needed to be, you know, coming to the table to say there are certain initiatives that we might be able to um, you know, move out to another fiscal year. At the end of the day, we present the budget, but I count on the departments to manage it and to ensure that we can provide the service. So, we identified $26.1 million in efficiencies and reductions. Mr. Cortinez will cover that and the remaining $24.8 8 million increase for next year. We're in three um major categories. As you can see, we are about people. Um 77% of that is compensation increases and also the public safety staffing. And again, we talked about the contractual services piece. $2.8 million in IT contracts and another 1.4 million for police and fire. We all talked about utility increases. Water is killing me. Um so, you know, we we need it though. you know, I want green grass. Yeah. So, um, as I mentioned, it's about people for us. When we look at our overall budget, it's really wages, benefits, and taxes. That is the majority of the general fund. I talked about the fact that we have a full year this year of uh the pay increases from last year, our phase two of our compensation adjustments, which we'll talk to you a little bit more about, and Miss Wiggins will also cover what's included for the collective bargaining for public safety. We always have to go back to the dollar because I think when we see these increases, we know that we are partners in helping our community be able to manage their wallets locally. And so we always want to make sure we go back and talk about our percentage and what it is that we're trying to manage and also remind people of all the services that you get for 29% of your tax dollar. We are recommending no increase to the property tax rate which means that we are maintaining at 761%. The re a reason why we were able to do that this year is because we are working really hard to manage the debt. And so as I talked about the no the new revenue that's coming in uh the things that we've done to make sure that the debt service piece of that gives us a little more bandwidth on the on& and M has really been important and allow us to be able to make this offering to the community. And so we have not issued debt in more than four years. The recently approved council action will save around $9 million. This is the lowest debt service property tax rate that we've had since 2012. And you all know in 2012 is when we started the quality of life bond. And so it's been a long time since we've been to that number. We have lot we still have the um the uh public safety bond still underway, but that's a really big deal. And you often hear people talk about we have the most debt, you know, in entire state or however they sort of calculate that. So I'm seeing movement in the right direction know that that is important to us and Mr. Cortinez will go into some of the debt service planning a little more in his section. So when we talk about that flat rate we do want to make sure we're highlighting that the average value home is increasing year-over-year. So that means that we're talking about on average around $9 per month impact with the proposed budget that we're putting forward. Of that $80 of that increase is really attributed to what we see as a key priority for the community and that's public safety. We're finally seeing ourmies turn the corner in terms of police. Uh we will be returning this year for the first time to 2020 levels in terms of our staffing. We were seeing reductions year after year. Although council has been very committed to that, our recruitment is really catching up with those numbers and we're very proud of the department and all the work they've done to be able to get there. We're also transferring 48 um firefighters from general fund from expiring grants. Part of that was planned. Um the team applied for a grant called safer which allowed us to have some offset of those costs and expenses with federal resources when we opened a new facility. Now those are coming to the general fund and so that was a part of um how we thought about planning for new facilities. One of the other things that we're recommending is an additional tax relief for 65 and disabled. Um that increase will be moving from 42500 to 45,000. uh that would be effective on tax bills that are going to be mailed in October. So people would immediately see this upon adoption of the budget. Um and that average total would be $380 of tax relief for 56,610 homes. That is around 41% of the homesteads in El Paso. You recently voted on this um to allow us to dissolve um terrorist 9. We still have an item still coming forth on the agenda to uh bring the ordinance forward that is going to bring $2 million of additional revenue to the general fund year after year. It's really a big deal for us. Um I am very proud of how we've set this up because it did what it needed to do. We have a gorgeous facility that's serving the community. Um there was an offset to the costs and expenses. we have a way to be able to take care of it and then dissolving it allows for us to bring those general funds back to the city to be able to help us to take care of all the things that are important to us. We've talked about our fund balance quite frequently and this budget does include as I mentioned $4 million in use of the fund balance. We are reducing it by 3.2 um from last year. Um, as some of you have asked, you know, when do we know exactly how much we're going to be utilizing and what that means? That won't be for us until like November when we close out this fiscal year. But our hope is that we are not having a need to be able have to use any of our fund balance next fiscal year. It's always going to be our goal. So, in terms of budget highlights, as I said, getting back to staffing levels for pre-COVID levels for PD is a huge deal for us. being able to show results um for the two new fire stations and showing people that we are providing on our promise that we made when we passed the 20 the n 2019 public safety bond. So, we'll be opening fire station 38 and also the special optation downtown. We're also maintaining the $10 million in payo for street resurfacing and we're adding $250 um,000 for lane striping. We know that that's a really important amenity as we talk about safety on our roads and our team has a plan to be able to do all the arterials over a period of time. As we saw 56% of the folks who had quality of life as one of their key priorities, parks is really important. So, we're adding $500,000 to our existing fund to be able to do even more replacement and some of those minor capital things that often come through your offices. And it it's I don't want to have to tell people that we can't find $50,000 for something we know is so important and is going to really enhance their quality of life. And so we'll continue to look for ways to be able to grow that fund. We're also consolidating and code enforcement into one department. It really is about efficiency um uh opportunities for us to get better at one of the key areas that we see across the board. they touch so many aspects of our work and the way that we live in our community and also our visual image. So for me, this really has been about efficiency, savings, um and really um trying to make sure that we are providing a balanced budget that maintains and improve our services. There's always going to be economic uncertainty in terms of what we look at across the board, but our job is to make sure we're taking care of our community. That we're utilizing the dollars that we have, the resources that are available to do the very best we can in every neighborhood in every community. As we know, people experience the city of El Paso on their block, on their street, on their drive-in to work. And so, we want to make sure that they equally can see, no matter where you live in our city, what we're providing to them. and that they see the benefit of city government in their lives every day. The other thing we're working on is making sure that we're uh trying to avoid any other deferred investments. We can't continue to only invest in our community when we issue a bond. We know that, you know, putting things on our credit card and that interest and debt rate isn't the way to be able to serve our community well because when we talk about having a balance of ensuring that we continue to be affordable in terms of our tax rate, that's really one of the key opportunities that we have as city leadership to ensure that the future of our city can see our city as being affordable and manageable. And with that, I hands it over to Mr. Cortinez. Thank you, Miss Mack. Good morning, Robert. Good morning, mayor and city council. Robert Cortinez. So, this section I'm going to cover a little bit about the expenditures, the revenue, and then a little bit about the debt service as Miss Mack mentioned. So, this is a slide that we use not only for the city council, but anytime we do community meetings, really to just sort of educate the public on where those tax dollars are going. And so as you're going to hear not only in this presentation but from the departments as well as really the significant investment in our public safety. So these departments accounted for almost 60% of the overall general budget followed by infrastructure and quality of life. Um again really aligned very closely to what we hear year of year through the chime in budget survey process that we go through. So, as we break down by category, the expenditures, um, and again, you're going to see this information for each of the city departments as they come up and present their individual departments, but as we look citywide for the general fund, you'll see the different expenditure categories. And really, the first two lines, the personal services and contractual services are where you're going to see the big increases and then the operating expenditures as well. Um, so in that personal services category, that's the wages, benefits, and taxes. Again, going back to that slide that you all just saw from Miss Mack, accounting for almost 72% of the overall general fund budget. And so, as we talk about where those increases are coming from, it's really the investment in those pay raises that we've done, our collective bargaining agreements, the investment in our public safety staffing, which you're going to hear from those departments again, and what we're doing as far as themies for next year on the contractual services primarily in our IT and our police and fire departments on those contract increases. And then finally with the operating expenditures, the big driver there is going to be in water. Um so overall as you see at the bottom line there are 24.8 million increase or approximately 4% compared to the prior year. Um so as Miss Mack mentioned and so you saw this slide already. I wanted to go through and really identify and show you all where those $26 million in adjustments came from. Um so you'll hear different tax entities. Um the city did it many many years ago of doing across the board reductions. And so just to be clear, that is not something that we did. We did not do a flat 5% across the board. We did not ask each department to to cut 3% out of each of their individual budgets, but instead we work to identify different adjustments that we can make working very closely with them in order again not to impact the services that they provide. Um so again, a total of 26 million in adjustments that we were able to identify. Um the top of the list here, you've heard about this. Again, we have this item on the agenda for tomorrow, the second hearing, and that is to uh dissolve ter number nine. You all have already approved the defeasence to essentially pay that debt off early. And so that does multiple things. One, it saves on the interest cost. Two, it frees up property tax revenue that was restricted previously into that zone. And so now those property tax dollars will come back into the general fund going forward. So again, something that we've worked really hard at over the last several years to identify uh opportunities for taking restricted revenue, paying those things off early in order to make them unrestricted and be able to again provide additional revenue for the general fund, utilizing our economic development restricted funding from El Paso Electric. And so we've shifted some of those cost uh for our incentive agreements into those funds, our self- insurance fund. So you'll hear from again our HR department. We are self-insured on our healthcare workers comp and unemployment. Uh, one of the things we've utilized is we actually hired a consultant a few years ago. They've helped us identify a rebate program for our prescription benefits which has really helped save a tremendous amount of money for next year. And so it's about 4 million we're estimating. And additionally, we are taking a little bit of a credit or reduction in our workers comp again really to align with what we're seeing as far as the actual expenditures in our workers comp. We did take a little bit of additional attrition. Uh again, not as much as we did in the prior year, but really as we have increased the wages, that $2 million really just keeping in line with uh the increase that we've seen and the average value of each of those positions. Uh one of the items that we did uh reduce or have impacted is our bridge department. And so the international bridges has a fund, our cashial fund that they collect. So it's a 50 cent additional fee if you pay in cash. Those funds are intended to serve as uh funding for capital projects or for grant match. And so with the budget for next year, we have instead of putting those funds into the bridge funds, we are transferring those funds back to the general fund. Um not going to impact anything in the queue as far as any of their projects in the queue, any of their grant match that they have currently lined up, but obviously this is something that uh we will probably continue to monitor and try to identify a way that we were able to restore that funding down the road. Our IT contracts, we did make a reduction from what was originally requested. Uh but again, we still do have an almost $2.8 an $8 million increase overall in our IT contracts. Um we did take all of the capital um separate and apart from the funding for vehicles and facilities that we have in our PGO um from city departments and we've essentially centralized that all into our streets and maintenance department. Our code enforcement now, as you heard, has um consolidated into one department. And so we do have a recommendation to increase the environmental fee to pick up those cost increases that we have for that new department. um utilizing investment interest where we can again to offset uh having to utilize property tax dollars to fund some of these items and then finally just identifying um different line items throughout each of the departments to be able to reduce another million dollar. So overall 26.1 million in reductions on the revenue side. So looking at property taxes and sales taxes. So overall, those two categories alone we talk a lot about because they're the big drivers of the revenue that we have available to fund the services. So those two categories alone account for about 72% of of our revenue. So as we look to developing the annual budget, it's all reliant upon the property valuations we're projecting, what we're seeing as far as sales tax growth. And so we have a couple of slides that'll highlight what we're projecting for FY 2026 in those two particular areas. But as we look to um all of the different areas and what we've seen as far as uh increases or decreases, we have a couple of categories that are really impacting the available revenue for FY2026. Um so on property taxes, you'll see an increase of 25 million. Again, that's really being driven by not issuing debt next year. And so it's providing more revenue for the general fund or for the operating and maintenance portion. Uh we'll talk about sales tax here in just a minute. what we're projecting are franchise fees, aligning those to what we're seeing as far as actual collections. And so we do have a decrease in franchise fees. Uh, one of the points I'll make about that is sales tax and franchise fees are very difficult to project out. And so franchise fees are paid quarterly by the utility. So Paso Electric, um, Texas Gas, um, and so they're paid quarterly. So the last payment that we received was for January, February, and March. And so the last payment we received was as of March. we won't receive the April, May, and June quarterly payment until the middle of August. And so we're working off of essentially four month old data to try to project out where we believe we're going to finish this fiscal year. And then on top of that, use that as a base to project out the next 12 months in the following fiscal year. So the franchise fee sales tax is about a two-month lag. And so on that one uh next well actually this Wednesday we will receive the April I'm sorry uh yeah the April sales tax collection and so there's a couple of month lag for uh the collection of our sales tax as well. So it makes a little bit of challenging as we're trying to project out what we think is going to happen for the remaining part of this fiscal year and then projecting out the following fiscal year as well. Um, some of the other categories I'll point out on the fines and forfeitures. And so earlier this calendar year, we had an amnesty where we essentially wave the additional fees in order to get people to come in and pay the amounts that they owe for their fines that they may have collected or received over the last couple of years. And so we only do those every 3 to four years. And so we are not doing one in FY2026. So we have a decrease in that revenue category. Licenses and permits. Again, Philip Etto and his team will talk a little bit about when they come up and present. Seen a little bit of slowdown in our residential uh permitting. Um again, interest rates um different issues with contractors being able to build out and so that's impacting the revenue coming from our plan inspections department. Our rents and other one of the areas we have a decrease is in our engineering charges. And so the city charges our staff cost to capital projects and then we reimburse the general fund for those cost. And so we've made a change as to how we're capturing those cost. We're going to go based on time sheets. Um and so that is also just dependent upon the projects that we have in the queue that are in the construction phase that we're charging our project managers to. So we have a decrease in that category as well. And then finally the last category the operating transfers in. Again, this is going back to what was mentioned earlier, the decrease of 3 million in the use of our fund balance, uh, being offset somewhat by again that bridge revenue that I mentioned, the increase of 2.5 for an overall decrease of 754,000 on the transfers. As we look to the property valuations, again, this is all estimates as of this point. So, we received our certified values from the appraisal district on July 25th, but you can see historically from 2017 to 2022, we were right around the 3 and a half% on average increase in our property valuations. You'll see the last three years, we've seen in 2023, 24, and 25 really strong growth in overall property values. We know that the market has been very, very strong in the housing market. Uh we've seen I don't want to say unprecedented, but it has been quite a while since the Fort Bliss expansion. We've seen property valuation growth as large as we've seen the last three years, but you'll see in FY26 the bar shaded in blue there. This is what we're projecting to see when we receive the certified appraisals on July 25th. Uh we received uh preliminary update number two last week. So again, uh looking at that, we think that it's going to be pretty much spot on with what we're projecting for next year, but it's encouraging that we're still seeing positive growth. And so you'll see some Texas cities, even last year, were already starting to see decreases in their overall property valuations, which is a little bit of a red flag that you start to see a slowdown in the market. We hear fears of recession. U those type of things are very concerning. Fortunately for us, we do see a stable market and we are still projecting to get an almost 6% increase in our our property valuations. And so as uh we mentioned earlier on that calendar, it's very important. So we get those certified values July 25th. We will have a special city council meeting on July 31st, which is a Thursday. I know it's a little bit different, but we need to have that because that sets in place all of the requirements we need to have as far as publications, uh getting the word out on the public hearing that we need to do and then the timeline for the actual adoption of the budget later in August. As we talk about property tax relief, um looking at this slide here, you'll see three different categories, the disabled veterans, the over 65 and disabled, and the homestead. And then you'll see the total of those three on the far right hand side there, those two columns. Uh comparing the prior year and what we are seeing so far in the preliminary values for FY 2026. Um so this is one that we point out quite a bit because this does have an impact on the cities as far as the property tax revenue available. And so you'll see overall it's about a 3.6 6 million increase in the tax relief, which means $3.6 million less in property tax revenue available to fund our city services. And so you'll see the big driver there is in the disabled veterans, about a $3 million increase, going from almost 18 million up to 21 million. And then the over 65 and disabled, something that we're talking about as far as the recommendation to increase that exemption right now projected at about 17.1 million. And so again, we talk about this because this is almost $43 million of property tax relief that the city is providing to these different groups. Whether it's our retired military who are disabled, our seniors are disabled, and then the homestead exemption that the city does provide as well. This is the slide just showing you historically going back to 2022, the number of exemptions that we have for the over 65 and disabled. So again, providing that tax relief currently at $42,500 with the proposal to go to 45,000. And you can see it's a a large majority of our homesteads that have one of those exemptions. So almost 57,000 homesteads that have either the over 65 or disabled exemption, which is about 41% of our total homesteads. So again, providing tax relief to those particular uh groups on top and in addition to what we have been doing in the last few years. And then I have on the the slide here, we'll do more publications on this as we bring that actual ordinance forward, how individuals who may not have that current exemption, they're eligible to apply, how they can go about applying because it's done through the appraisal district, not through the city. As we look to sales tax, um again, you'll see a similar story to the property valuations. You'll see going back to 2017 through 2020, strong growth around 4 and a half% increase every year. You'll see in 2021 and 2022, we saw unprecedented growth coming out of COVID as a lot of money was pumped into the economy through the federal government. Um, people were stuck inside their house for, you know, multiple years. We saw just unprecedented growth. Never seen sales tax growth that high. So, we took advantage of it because we knew all good things don't last forever. And so, we took advantage of that. And that was really one of the keys as to how we built up our reserves to where we are today. So, the city was very thoughtful and very strategic about taking that surplus in those years, banking that money to essentially set aside those dollars to again build up our reserves to get us to where we are today. And then again, looking ahead, we knew that it wasn't going to last forever. And so, we have seen it slow down back to pretty much the historical average. You'll see in 2024, we saw just a barely 1.2% increase this year. So far through the year, as I mentioned, um utilizing the data we have so far, again, we'll get another sales tax amount Wednesday, just under 3% and we are projecting just based on what we've seen so far. Um and this current year right now, we're projecting about a three and a half% increase next year again compared to the FY2025 estimate. So again, really staying in line with that historical average on our sales tax collection. This is one of my favorite slides because just like you all when Miss Mack and I go out and do community meetings, one of the things we hear a lot about is the city's debt. And so what are we doing about it? And this slide really speaks, this slide of the next slide really speaks to what it is that we're doing. So you see a decrease since 2020 of 8 cents on the property tax rate for the debt. And so as Miss Mack mentioned, that's the lowest since 2012. So with all of the debt that the city has issued for the quality of life, we've issued some debt for the public safety, we've issued some debt for the community progress, and yes, all of the CEOs that the city has issued over the last several years. Um, you'll see again 8 cent decrease in the overall property tax rate, again, the lowest since 2012. And as I mentioned, this is preliminary. So these tax rates are going to change once we get certified values. This Thursday, we actually price we will price the refunding that you all approved last week. And so we will be doing that actual refunding this Thursday. So we will know exactly what that savings is. So we're hoping that hope is not a strategy, but we believe that the market's in a place where we will uh hopefully be able to bring that debt rate down even more from what we have built in right now. But again, we will know that exact amount this Thursday when we do that refunding. One of my other favorite slides, and I showed you all this last week, but uh I'll keep showing it over and over and over. It's $300 million decrease in the overall debt service since 2022. So, in a very, very short amount of time to be able to decrease the city's debt by 19%. 19% decrease of $300 million since 2022. And that is really one of the keys as to what's given us the ability to be able to fund on the general fund side or the operating side those additional dollars to be able to again offset some of that impact on the tax rate but then at the same time not impacting our city services. The annual payo again something that you've you've already heard Miss Mack talk about and something that is very important to us because prior to 2017 the city had zero dollars in the annual budget for any of these items. And then we started with the street funding and then we gradually added the funding for our vehicles and for our fleet and then uh for uh facilities and some of our park amenities. So again, one of the the things here you'll see from 2023 to 2024 we had a large decrease $1 million. Again, we took one of those restricted funds, we paid off some debt early, freed up additional dollars to come to the general fund and we allocated those into this POG essentially cash, right? Right? We built in funding into the annual budget. Instead of having to finance these items, we built it into the annual budget. But then as you look to FY2025, you'll see that decrease of $3 million. And again, you heard Miss Max start with one of the slides about how the city achieved that no new revenue rate last year. And this unfortunately was one of the the items that was included in that was a reduction of $3 million of reduction between our facilities and for our fleet replacement. And so you will have the opportunity to hear from every one of the departments and I'm sure they'd be more than happy to talk about the impact it has on their operations of not having the vehicles that they need to provide the services for the community. Whether it's not just police and fire, but all of our city departments that rely upon those vehicles to provide those services. We have um inspectors, we have um people who go out and take care of the parks just across the board. And so that has an impact on them to be able to again provide their operating services. We have a huge need in our facilities. We've got just recently a recreation center that we know needs significant investment from a roof to just you a lot of the key components to be able to maintain that facility. And unfortunately right now we have $4.4 million to take care of over 200 city buildings that are aging very rapidly. And so again this pay funding is very very critical for us and not taking further addition or reductions in this particular item is critical for us. But again, as Miss Mack mentioned, we're not even restoring where we were prior to FY2024. Um, the only increase that we do have is for the park amenities as we mentioned. So, we are increasing some park fees and reallocating all those dollars into the uh parks department for amenity replacements. So, my last couple of slides here, so this is the FY26 all funds. And again, you're going to hear from every department that will show you their general fund and their non-general fund. Um, again, this slide really I think is important because when we talk about the overall $ 1.3 billion budget, the general fund or the general government line there, you'll see primarily funded by property tax and sales tax. That's the fund that we have the most flexibility with and how we allocate those dollars. The other categories you'll see are restricted for specific purposes, whether it's grants, uh, whether it's set by federal or state law and how those dollars can be used. It's almost 55% of the overall uh total offense budget is restricted for a specific purpose. And so again, a $50 million overall increase, but again, half of that coming from the general fund and half of that coming from the non-general fund. And then this slide again really just some of the key talking points as to when we talk about the budget and really focusing on when we're bringing recommendations before you all. It's not just focusing on what's ahead of us in the given year, but really focusing on what challenges are we going to face in the long term. We know our revenue growth is at this point in time not projected to keep pace with our expenditure growth. We know that the state legislative actions, somebody was just talking to me about it earlier this morning about the impact of the personal property tax exemption that the state approved this past cycle. That's going to be about a $ 1.7 million and probably close to $2 million impact on the city in FY 2027 from that impact. We know that we continue to see bills that continue to limit the city's authority to generate the revenue that we need. Um uncertainty surrounding federal grants. We've had had unfortunately some of our departments that have been impacted by grant reductions. We've been very fortunate though that our community development department did not see a decrease and so that was again very encouraging. However, we don't know what the future lies for us. Um, and then the last point about the deferred investments, again, a critical area as we look to the future of ensuring that we're funding our streets, our facilities, our vehicles, our parks at the adequate level that they need in our AT department. You'll see and I should have mentioned it on this slide because you saw this presentation from it earlier in this calendar year about the needs that we have on replacing outdated systems and hardware and replacing laptops and computers. And I was joking with Aelli last week. I said, "Hey, my my laptop battery only lasts for about an hour now." And she had to like she didn't hear me and just kept walking. But it's simple things like that that we currently don't have any annual dollars. Last year we did take um some of our year in surplus. We allocated that to some of our IT needs. We've utilized ARPA funding to help replace a lot of key things and I don't want to steal their highlights but how we've utilized some of the additional funding aside from the general fund to be able to do some of these things. But again, it does create a long-term challenge and how we're going to be able to keep up and replacing some of these items. And then in summary, again, Miss Mack mentioned a lot of these key points. again really developing a budget that is minimizing the impact on taxpayers as much as possible. We believe this budget does that by providing that additional tax relief for our over 65 and disabled while at the same time not impacting our city services primarily in those key areas, our public safety, our infrastructure and our quality of life. Again, reducing that fund balance is something that's very very important to us as well. It's not good practice to use onetime revenue to be able to balance the budget and so continue to decrease that over uh the next few years is going to be important. Um, and then again generating new revenue. I think that that's important as well. And how we're taking again those restricted funds, for example, the TUR nine that I just mentioned, taking those dollars that are restricted, paying those off early in order to generate some additional revenue. And then the debt, again, um, doing everything we can to be proactive and very thoughtful about paying debt off early. uh doing the refundings to be able to bring down our interest cost and lower our debt amount that's needed to be able to make those payments again has been very very critical as well not only in the past but in this uh FY2026 budget as well. And so with that, Mack and I would be happy to answer any questions you all may have. Sure. And we've lots to unpack, but great presentation and thank you guys for putting that together. So we'll start with uh Representative Rocha. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate it. So, good morning, Mr. Cortinez, Miss Mack. Thank you all for joining. It's actually it's it's just a repeat of what we spoke about last week and so thank you so much. I saw everything that you added in. Um, so I really appreciate that and and it's just for for public knowledge more than anything. Um, we we specifically asked, you know, or I specifically asked what the projection is on the impact for the 65 and over and the disabled and what that looks like with our aging community. And I just want to confirm that that the number that you said, Mr. Cortinez, for the projection that you've built in to the budget year-over-year going forward in includes how many homes? So, we see it fluctuates. And so we've seen a couple of years where we actually saw a decrease in the number of exemptions. We've seen the last couple of years an increase of about 2,000 homes that have gotten that over 65 or disabled exemption. So going forward, it's about a5 to $600,000 impact as we see the number of exemptions increase slightly. The one that I don't see, Miss Turner. The one that that we talk about is that disabled veteran exemption and not and again my father was retired military. I have a tremendous amount of respect for our military, particularly those that are disabled. It's a benefit that is provided to them. It was approved by the voters statewide back in 2009 and 10, I believe. But it does have a financial impact on the city. That's the only reason why I show it is because for example this coming budget year it's $3 million less property tax revenue that the city will collect because we're seeing more and more of our disabled veterans unfortunately going to a higher level of disability ranking. So it does have an impact on us going forward. But we do when we do our 5-year forecast account for those estimates of what we're projecting to see as far as the overall increase in not just the number of exemptions but it's really the value in each of those exemptions. And so, um, I've put some more information together and I'll be happy to share with all of the council. U, but that's, uh, really the I guess the to answer your question, we see around 750 to a,000 as far as the number of exemptions in a given year. And then as far as the dollar impact, it's about a500 to $600,000 impact. I think it's a wonderful initiative. I I really appreciate the the thoughtful approach that that Miss Mack, you and your team put forth to to bring this to the community. and I appreciate the extra time that you took with me last week to walk me through it and understand the bones of how you uh got to this this recommendation. So, with that, I understand also that the disabled vets do have there's there's an opportunity to request the money back from the state and I if you would just talk through that real quickly just for the public record, Mr. Cortis. Sure. So, the state does have a program. So every year we submit an application just for the 100% disabled. So there's different categories. So 0 to 29 and it goes so there's I think five different categories based on the percentage. So the state has a program. So we fill out the application for just the 100% disabled impact. And so earlier this calendar year we submitted our application. It was about a $9 million property tax revenue impact. So we submitted our application for that $9 million. We got back $1.6 6 million. So our allocation was 1.6. Unfortunately, the state only allocates $10 million statewide for that program. And so just depending upon the number of applications they get in a given year, the amounts per rated for each of the applicants who qualify. And so again, we got back 1.6 out of the 9 million that we actually submitted a reimbursement for. So again, something we've been working with Omar and his team on our legislative side to really push the state to add more dollars to that program. Again, to provide some reimbursement for those cities that are impacted by that particular exemption. Thank you. And then one last question, then I'm I'm done. So, um, you mentioned a $3.6 million reduction. Is that correct? Off of the between the disabled veterans. Yes, ma'am. and and would you be able to talk about any contingency plans or rep prioritizations at this at this point or is that too early to as far as the overall budget? Yeah, just to maintain the critical services if that impacts critical services or not. So with what's proposed, this does not impact city services. Thank you. Is there um obviously is there more things that we could do if we had additional dollars? Absolutely. Mhm. So, not just some of the reductions that we took or that I talked about on the bridge side or it or you know some of the other areas and we talked about this but each year each department submits as part of the process a list of supplemental requests. So, it's things above and beyond what's built into the actual budget and a lot of those things aren't once or Christmas wish type of items. These are things that they feel are important to be able to provide the quality level of services that we should be providing. So um while not impacting services um we're not at the level where we should be to be able to fund fully whether it's our funding for facilities, fleet, equipment, it's our staffing. Um we obviously don't want to put a hiring freeze in place and we've not done a hiring freeze, but with the amount of attrition that we continue to take year-over-year, it does have an impact somewhat. You're going to hear in the presentation from Miss Wiggins on the amount of positions that we do have funded going forward. Thank you so much, Mr. Cartine. Appreciate it. Represent Lemon. Thank you, Mayor. So, it just in in looking at um highlighting some of the slides that you've both presented here today. Uh just as a recap, uh that I can note it for myself and hope it's correct. Uh we anticipate no increase to the property rate at this time and I know everything is fluid as we continue. Incredibly, we've got the lowest debt service property tax rate since 2012. We're looking at a tax relief for some people from 42,500 to the $45,000. We have done incredibly well in avoiding further deferred investment. I think anytime that a an entity looks at bonds, certificates of obligation, it's it's a dreadful time and it really shows in my book instability in the organization. So I'm I'm very very very proud of that. Um those are the highlights that I'm taking from your presentation. But I had one question on a slide, Robert, when I was just skimming, not studying, not memorizing, but on page 36 on the city sales tax, I found this interesting. My first question, which you answered, was how did how did we increase in 2021 to 14.4% and you you indicated that was COVID. Now my question though is how did we dip so low in 2024 went to 1.2%. What happened there? Just a slowdown in the economy. So I mean it wasn't something that was a surprise to us. We we knew it was going to come. We just didn't know exactly when. And so again as I mentioned those two years that we saw that strong growth it was people were fixing their homes. So people were spending a lot of money at the big box stores to to fix up their homes. People were just excited to get out of think and start, you know, living life. And so the slowdown was again something that wasn't unexpected. I don't think that we expected it to dip that low. But fortunately for us, I mentioned it on the property valuations. If you were to look back historically over the last 25 years, we've never had a year where we saw a decrease in our property valuations. Even going back to the Great Recession, we've never seen a decrease year-to-year in our property valuations and we've never seen a decrease in our sales tax year-to-year comparison. So, even though we came very close, we still had a 1.2% increase. Even with fears of a recession, even with what may be going on in the economy, locally, nationally, we've never seen a decrease year to year in our sales tax. I think it just speaks to the resiliency of our community. It's a very stable community. Again, we're very reliant upon, we talk about the tax tax base, we're very reliant upon governmental entities, which is good and it has some challenges as well because those are all taxexempt entities as well. But it really does provide a lot of stability to our community overall. Thank you very much. You're welcome both of you. Thank you, Representative Chavez. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you to uh Dion and and Robert for this wonderful presentation. Um, I I really appreciate the the time and effort that you have you have put into this. And I have several questions, so just bear with me here while while I go through them. Um, Robert, how many years have you been balancing the budget at the city of El Paso? So, this is my 11th year as either the budget director or the CFO. So, going back to 2014. Okay. And from those 11 years in your experience, do you have the resources you need to provide the services our community is requesting this year? I I don't think that's a question for me. I think that's a question for all the department heads because they're the ones doing the day-to-day work. And so I I mean I would say does the city manager put forth the proposed budget that is going to provide the level of services that the community expects? I think police and fire at the top of that list and you're going to hear from them the amount of dollars we're investing in those two departments alone. $19.4 million increase in two departments. And so that's all of the additional staffing for both of them. That's we have new facilities opening next year. But to answer your question, it's the balancing act. It's how are we minimizing the impact as much as possible on the taxpayers, but at the same time not impacting city services. I don't want to give you a I don't want to not answer your question, but I mean I think that that's something that I mean, you'll have the opportunity to ask the department heads and and Robert, you took a good bite at the apple, but maybe Miss Mack can step up and thank you. I think one of the things that's important in this budget, as I have continued to say, is that we're really trying to get back to basics and do basics well. And so what you don't see in this budget is a lot of new initiatives. I think we all have identified and we're out in the community and we know that there's always going to be a need, but from my perspective, this isn't the budget where we're sort of looking at launching things that I cannot support without uh uh with that require additional resource. I know that staffing is where we invest most of our uh time, effort, and energy. Getting the right people in the right seat from my perspective will move a lot of the things forward that are important to community. And then as time allows or as funding allows, then we start to talk about when we need to make those capital investments. I'm very comfortable that with the changes that we've made in terms of staffing, I am much more stable than we were. It was very difficult. It was very difficult when you had conversations with like streets and maintenance and people are complaining about you know um work orders basic things about you know our transportation services and the team's like I don't have people to send or you know our number of uh uh work orders in the queue has quadrupled and we have no way to be able to address that. I think we're in a much better place in terms of the basics of those services. Um, but again, as Robert said, it's about that balance and making sure that we're making choices and decisions that don't set us back from the things that we want to do in the future. And I believe this budget does that. Thank you. That that speaks with a lot of confidence. So, thank you, Miss Mack. Um, let's talk a little bit about the staffing that you referred to. Um, and we talked about attrition and vacancies at the city. How many vacancies do we have right now? So, we have over a thousand vacancies, but we've we have a full presentation. We want to go through that with you. Okay. And I think it's important the way we're shifting the discussion because we have so many vacancies that are unfunded. Yes. We really want to start to show you what capacity we have left after we take in consideration the unfunded. So, we have a couple of slides in the next presentation. Okay. Then then I'll hold I'll hold uh my questions for that. Um, is there are we using the rainy day fund to balance the budget? Yes. For the next fiscal year? Yes, ma'am. So, there's $4 million um that is included to um balance the budget. A few years ago, um we did establish what's called a pay for futures fund and it anticipated the increase costs for police and fire. And so, it specifically allocated over a five-year period to help us to be able to offset some of those costs and expenses. I think for this year, you certainly can see we're opening new facilities. Uh we're seeing that uh tremendous investment in 120 cadetses. And so I think you see the alignment in those areas still ideally we would like to ensure because we're not necessarily going to be in a place where we're adding to our rainy day fund that we're not dipping into it moving forward. Right. But the $4 million is more or less exactly what we're giving um the increase in property tax release. More or less it's 3.6 six to four. So, but we have no control over the veterans piece. So, I don't know. I mean, yeah, that's as accurate. I mean, but for homesteads, we kind of we set that through ordinance and through the senior exemption. Those are set locally, but we have no control over the the veterans piece. So, I think we would have to carve that out and then say that the delta is where we have some control over. Okay. So, let me ask this. Have we ever used the rainy day fund to balance the budget in previous years? So, it has been budgeted for the last three years. This will be our third. Could you go over that real quick, Miss Mac? Uh, the last three years what that looked like. Sure. Was it 5 million the year before? We have a slide. I think it's slide eight. Okay. Or maybe not eight. How about Let me check. Oops, there it is. Okay. Yes. Well, yeah. Um, in the two prior fiscal years where um we adopted a no new revenue, uh, it was $5 million in 2024. uh 25 $7.2 million in our current fiscal year and we're reducing that to four million this fiscal year. Okay. So, this would be the least amount that we've used. Yes ma'am. Okay, that's I think that's great. Um Robert, in terms of your sales tax um projections, how how close have we been in projections in the past? So this year revenues we're going to bring the third quarter presentation to you all later this month. This year we're probably going to be spot on budget tax. Do you use any national data to to do projections here locally? So we use national we've got local information as well. We get um more detailed sales tax information as well through a program we utilize. Challenge with that is that information is outdated as well. And so I talked about the two-month lag in the actual collection from the state. the actual detailed sales tax information is another month lag. So that it's basically a quarter of the year that we're still behind of utilizing that data. But yeah, we use local and national data. But on page 36 when you when you project that it's going to increase this year even though it's been kind of low the last two years. You think that's pretty accurate? Yes, I do. Okay. I mean, and I think that would be great for our economy, right? We want to make sure that people are are confident in in their dollar and spending um money. So when you say how we've been on our projections so I will tell you in FY 2021 to 22 we did not project or we did not forecast that type of I don't think anybody did so those years again as I mentioned that really generate a large surplus for us in those given years. Okay, let's go back to page uh slide uh page 27. Um and in looking at the percentages of what we're spending per um per area, and the only reason why I'm asking this is because of the chimeman survey, it seems like even though people valued infrastructure a little bit heavier than quality of life, we are spending more on quality of life than we are on infrastructure. and and it's pretty much the same. It's not that big of a difference, but I'm wondering if the percentages have always been more or less the same in in previous years in terms of bucketing the the money in this way. Yeah, they're always pretty close. We don't see too much of a shift in the overall percentage splits. Public safety's always been around that 60% roughly percentage. I don't recall a huge shift in those percentages over the last decade or so. Okay, so this has pretty much been been the same. And same thing on the revenue side. Um property tax and sales tax are right around the 42 28 percentages. Again, we don't see huge shifts in those particular two categories as well. Okay, let me just go back real quick on one more slide and I might be already done because I know that we're going to be receiving presentations from each department and so I want to save some of my questions for them specifically and and I think on page nine when we were discussing uh the decrease in revenues um you said it was 10.6 million in decrease. Is that was that correct? I think it was Miss Mack that that yes was speaking on that and that was Could you just um go over that 10.6 Six again, Miss Mack, please. On the decrease in revenues that was for this last year, but the revenue slide when you were on page nine. Okay. No, I had the C took it out. So, we have the categories. The big one of that's going to be the decrease in the use of fund balance. And so, that reduction in the use of fund balance. Mhm. Think about it. That's essentially $3.2 $2 million less in revenue than we had in the prior year. So that's going to be one of the big drivers. I talked about the here we go. I talked about the franchise fees as well. So decrease of 4.1 million again being driven by uh the utility franchise fees. We collect vines of that's about a million dollar reduction from the amnesty. Uh we have about a $800,000 reduction on that licenses and permits. Yes. It's offset by an increase in some of our other accounts, but about a $800,000 decrease in our planning inspections department uh permanent revenue that we collect on rents and other that decrease of 3 million. Again, a big chunk of that is our engineering cost I talked about. And then at the bottom there, the operating transfers in that 754,000 decrease, but actually it's the 3.2 2 million decrease in use of fund balance and then being offset by the increase in the bridge revenue we're collecting. Okay. Thank you. And so it's all of those different categories. Unfortunately, and it's very very important. We talked about this during your all's briefings is on the revenue side. I know that it's painful when you see, you know, decreases in some of these categories, but it's very very important that we're realistic as possible on the revenue projections. We never want to be too optimistic and we don't want to be too pessimistic. We want to make sure that we're being realistic and really utilizing the data historically and currently in order to put forth the best estimate possible because we want to again ensure that the revenue we budget and forecast actually comes through and that we don't have issues in the given year where maybe the revenue is not performing and we end up having to make reductions in order to to balance throughout the year. So, it's very very important that we're, you know, very realistic and data driven on our revenue projections. Okay. Thank you, Robert. And one last question for Miss Mack. Um, Miss Mack, is there anything that you, as you were working through this budget for this next fiscal year that you felt that um, you had to cut that that you would have liked not to have cut? I think, you know, Robert covered it. I think for us it really was to bridge revenue and I certainly would have, if conditions were different, not gone with a 1% increase for staffing. I mean, we have been historically over the last two years been able to do like a 2%, you know, for the team, but we've made some investments in, you know, staffing that didn't allow for us to be able to rightsize the other and fix compression and also do more than 1%. For the team, okay, thank you for your honesty. That's all. Thank you, Mr. Thank you, Representative Ato. Thank you, Mayor. So, I have my questions everywhere, so I might be switching off between both of you. I was going to try to split them, but then I was like, my my notes are a mess. So, I'm sorry. I wanted to ask um on our 19% decrease on the debt, that's 300 million. So, 1.6 billion to 1.3 billion on this. I'm trying to understand what kind of bonding capacity we have at this point after this decrease that has happened over the past few years. I'm asking to understand kind of the health of our debt fund. So overall in our debt management policy the maximum debt rate that's in that policy is 40 cents. Okay. And so that was done an increase back going to 2019. And so at the time we were projecting just based on issuing all of the remaining quality of life the public safety that we thought we were going to get at the time up to 40 cents. You saw on the debt rate slide that I showed you that we're only going to be at 22 cents in FY 2026. So we're well below our our debt management policy. Um there's also a couple of other metrics that we use and I think we presented those to FAC as well and we can send those out again looking at the overall debt ratio and so we're well below on the debt side. So, we get that question quite a bit of, you know, what's the city's bonding capacity? Well, really right now really limited by those three measures. So, it's one state limit and then our debt management policy. We're well below again our debt management policy. Um, but really it's about how do we bring that debt rate down as much as possible because we still do have almost $500 million of bonds to issue remaining from the public safety 2019 in the community progress 2022 as well as the state infrastructure bank loans which we'll do for the NP match. So about 500 million that we will be issuing started in N FYI 27. And so really this is the opportunity for us to get that debt rate down as much as possible so that we don't have these huge spikes in our debt rate. we're able to keep it nice and smooth going forward as we're issuing these new bonds in FY27 and beyond. So, with what we are going to issue, the 500 million that you just said, how do you imagine that being for our our rate at that point? So, with the presentation, we can provide that to the full council. We did that to FOAC. We work very closely with Ivet Hernandez and her team over at capital improvement department to look at the cash flow and the needs they have for those capital projects. And so we forecast out the amount of money we think we're going to need in a given year. Uh we do a forecast or basically build in what we think interest rates are going to be. We forecast out the property valuations. Basically use all of those assumptions to determine what we think the future tax rate is going to be. Those things change because while we thought originally we were going to have to do a an issuance this year for our projects, we're not going to. We believe we have enough cash on hands from bonds we've already issued to get us through this fiscal year. And so we well again when FY27 will bring that forward. Um we're probably looking at over a 5-year time period, we'll probably see about a 2cent, I believe, is what we're estimating overall increase in the overall debt rate of actually issuing out that full remaining 500 million. Again, that won't be all in one year. It'll be obviously spread out over multiple years and again really dependent upon the amount that we'll have to issue in each of the given years going forward. Okay, that that makes sense. Can you remind me um I I ask this all the time because I always forget. What does one day equal in the fund balance? About 1.7 1.7 million. Okay. And if we were to make the the funds that we reduced, I think you were saying facility improvements and vehicle um heavy equipment. Did was that a consideration that was made to take the the 3 million, which would probably be about a day and a half or so from the fund balance to make that whole again? No, because it's a recurring expense and so if we take it out of the fund balance then we would always have to go back to the fund balance to fund it and then we would run out of money. So we really try to make sure and we're thinking about use of fund balance. I think you even across the board previous councils we've only really sort of used that fund for a one-time cost and expense. Um, like Robert mentioned, uh, at the end of last year, uh, you and council gave us, uh, the ability to be able to do about $1.5 million for it because we just didn't have recurring, but it's not a recurring expense. So, I think it's really important for us to think about that. And and so, I think that that's what the danger is of what happened in the last few budget cycles, right, where you reduce something, it pretty much becomes permanent until you can find something to to replace it with. and and I I I see your logic in not wanting to do a recurring expense from the fund balance, right? Yes. Okay. So, thank you for that. In terms of sales tax, what strategy do we have behind increasing this? It's it's purely on projection. So, right. So I So what I'm what I'm kind of seeing here is that we have an understanding on the projections that we're making and they've been pretty spot-on and we've seen decreases um not literally but you know we had the the little bell curve um during co and now it's kind of normalizing but do we have a strategy to say okay let's have have a way to increase the sales tax every year. Correct. I think that's the work and when you talk about economic development, the work that you're doing in those areas, that's where we're going to see, you know, those impacts. When you see some of those calculations, we're looking at personal property and sales tax, you know, as contributors back into our economy. And so, I think all the things that you all have voted on are pushing forward, you know, in those areas are really going to be the things that help us. And then you have, you know, the tertiary uh uh impact of that is like people spend money. we all invest back into our community. We have highquality jobs and people are making those investments back and so they have discretionary income. All of that, you know, lands into that number. And so I see it all kind of going together. I do too. And and that's kind of where I'm asking where I I feel that sometimes there's a lot of government bureaucracy that is not allowing us to move things forward to make it easier for people to do business with the city. And I've kind of talked to um Philillip about this, you know, and we saw the impact that we had from Neon Desert and that hasn't happened in 6 years, right? And I don't think it's coming back, but I think there's other people that would be willing to do something like that, but the bureaucracy of the city and even the bureaucracy of the downtown owners at times make it really difficult. So I I think if we had some sort of strategy to start bringing in more people from outside the city like destination El Paso is carrying all on all of that on their backs. But how can we get some sort of crossf functional team on this to say okay we want to make sure that we're increasing this we're being intentional about how we're how we're doing this and we're going to increase our our sales tax every year. Right? because I think that that that's where we can start making more money to invest in other things every year in the city. And I think you've already begun to take some of that action with the action to be able to buy additional property for the convention center. But I understand what you're saying in terms of how we talk about that piece because I think it's a combination of yes, how we talk about sales tax and I often talk about sales tax in the context of understanding we have a very fluid um border. And so when we think about people's comfort and the things that are happening politically, I think it has an impact on whether people are making choices and decisions about coming to El Paso to shop. And that's important for us. Um we will be moving into um a new strategic plan in March. I think it's a great opportunity as we're leading up to that to think about what some of those key priorities are going to be and make sure that we are uh taking a deep dive into what you think the success of that cross functional team might look like and so we can get the right people at the table to to start doing that work. Yeah, I I think that sounds great and I'm I'm happy to hear that. Overall, I see this as a we know why this is happening with sales tax and we are projecting and there's a science behind it and Robert does a really good job at explaining that but then now I'm like okay well we know the why so what are we doing about it now right and I think that's the the thing that I'm trying to get to and I think you know we we look at it just think personally how we are managing our own households when we see this type of inflation happen you know we're seeing people's incomes not keeping up with um expenses, then people aren't necessarily probably having as much dollars that they might utilize in a category that may end up with sales tax. So, we really think about it in terms of all those pieces. So, I think a lot of the work that you all will be doing in the next couple of months to think about affordable housing, to think about a lot of things about how people live in a community all come together to ensure that we're really talking about a dynamic approach to to economic mobility and people having dollars that are going to be invested back into our community. So, thank you for the question, sir. Okay. And then I had a question on the federal funding. I know that is a very fluid situation, but there are jobs that come with that, right? And I know that we're moving some some people that were on grants for from fire um or to fire, I'm sorry. And so, do we have any sort of contingency plan in case we lose funding within the next year or two to make sure that people are not losing their jobs? So, that's a conversation I've begun and I think primarily it's been um the public health department where I've been most concerned. The public health department is 83% grant funded and so you're really looking at either federal dollars or state pass through dollars. Um so we will be coming forward with you showing you some of what we see as some of those challenges. So as we go into next fiscal year we really understand what the core programs and services might be. what are we looking at in terms of having to shift some dollars to be able to subsidize some of those programs? Fortunately, the health department did have a bit of a fund balance through um uh some Medicaid waiver dollars and so they've been able to shift some people around in the interim to be able to continue to move forward, but it does give us a little bit of breathing room in terms of what um the next steps might look like. Um in terms of the other departments, we have a lot of infrastructure dollars um that are coming through. those have seemed to be more stable. Um, but it's really I think the health department as us being responsible for both the county and the city during that process and not having others who are offering some of those services is where I really want to focus our energy in terms of what we look at um this upcoming year. Okay. And do we know what percentage of the on andm is federal funding of I'm sorry how how much of the budget is is federal funding for uh for this committee here? No, just in general we can break it out for you. So it' be in that special revenue category. So maybe we can identify and break out the the grants for each department. Okay. And then you Robert, sorry um you had said that we are going to lose revenue from the 89th session and you're saying that's about $2 million. Is that it or there's more that you're projecting from this past session? So that's probably the biggest right now. And so that one is one of the items that actually go to the voters in November as well. So the exemption increase will go to the the ballot in November. And so that if passed by the voters will take effect in our fiscal year 2027. So we won't see the impact this year, but we know we will see it in FY27. Okay. And then one one last thing that it's just more of a comment. I I think that the way that this budget cycle has gone, it's been a lot smoother than last year. So I appreciate that and and thank you for taking all my feedback. I know I was highly critical last year of how things went and so this has been a much smoother process. the the one thing that I'm still missing and would really like to have a dig digestible snapshot through tables or something and maybe it's in two weeks when you come back is I I want to have an idea of what the contracts in the city are cuz that's probably over $und00 million that we have and I don't have like a real good illustration of what all those contracts are, right? And so if we could get that, I would really appreciate it because that would make me understand the budget in a very complete way and I left last year's budget still kind of uneasy about that. But if you could give us that, I would really appreciate it. Fantastic. We know that one of the questions last year was on it and so we did focus on that changing the schedule E to really talk about what those programs were and so we'll just expand it to the rest before next. I appreciate it. Thank you. Welcome, Representative Tjo. Thank you, Mayor. I have a couple of questions. Um, I believe it was in slide 20. Uh, Miss Mack, uh, you and I don't see it on there, but you mentioned a little bit about the bonds, bond funding. And so, my question is, uh, how many voter approved bonds are still active? It's not in this presentation obviously, but is it something that you're going to be presenting on later? How many are still active, what their status is, and their timeline completion? So, we're going to do an entire separate presentation for you um bringing all the capital together for the entire city. I think really early on, maybe you might have been three days old in your in your position. We did like a 90page um presentation for all the different bonds and cos. And so, we're going to bring in all the enterprise funds as well. So you can see airports on metro all those things and bring those together. Um we have when you tend to look at our bonds you know we have stuff back from you know 161 17 that we're still um finishing up um we're still finishing up you know quality of life. You know Robert just mentioned that we still have quite a bit to go for um public safety um also um and we've just pretty much started a lot of what we're planning to do for the progress bond but you'll have an opportunity to see all of it. Okay. Thank you. taking some notes here. And then the other question is uh regarding page 24. And so we have this pay pay go 10 million. I know I understand this is when did this get started? The 10 million payo for roads is it in 20 2017? 2017. Okay. Uh the additional 250 lane striping in the 500,000 uh park amenities, is that coming from the PGO or is where where is that coming from? No, that's that's coming from the general fund. So the 250 um is coming from the general fund. Um as you may recall, we had a contract um just this last cycle um and the team found it to be um very impactful in terms of lane miles across the city and so we added that into the budget. Um, in terms of parks amenities, I asked the parks department to begin a process of going to review a lot of their um, park fees. And so, they did the first um, trunch of that. We had not looked at those fees to uh, help us to be able to recover costs um, in certain areas. They were able to identify $500 um,,000. The entire amount of new revenue is going into the park immunity fund. Okay. And how many did they share approximately how many parks and streets would would benefit from that? Yes. I'll I'll leave it to Randy because I think it's 400 and I'm going to let him do that and parks can talk to you about the park amenity strategy when they're up. Okay. Is there are is this going to be something that we're going to be doing going forward setting money aside for that or is this extra? Okay. Yes. And so, um, when we talked about the lane striping, I mean, you know that historically our team has been doing a lot of that work. Our conversation, uh, with bringing this contract forward is that it actually frees some of our staff time to be able to do, um, school zones. And so, it really is a for us to be able to deal with a couple of key issues that we think are very important. Um, and so it's going to allow us over time to be able to do all the arterials on a cycle that we've never been able to reach before. Very good. Thank you. That's it. Represent Nino. Thank you, mayor, and thank you, Miss Mack and Robert and all of the staff for putting this great presentation. Miss Mack, you you made a comments uh that I thought was extremely important. People experienced their city government on their way to work, to school, at their parks, etc. And I was very grateful for that because I know when we started doing our work, the the very first budget workshop, we mentioned about what people don't know, they don't know. to use our offices to really engage and communicate with the community. Um I'm curious to know the chime in survey results. Is that going to be shared with us so that we could kind of get a broader idea? Yes. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So we're going to upload everything. I mean uh the survey closed I think on the 30th and so we were like just pulling information together for the presentation. So you'll have um all the information available and we'll ensure that when we come out to your specific district that we have a um some more information to be able to share. So, we should we should have that uploaded today for you. Great. I'm grateful for that just because it's going to help us even make further decisions. And, you know, I know that I've um met with a couple of the department heads and some of the needs are different, you know, by department, by streets, by whatnot. And another thing is our our council budget request that we submitted, at what point does that process get implemented? We will bring those back on the 31st. We we still were receiving um a few u um requests over the weekend and so we'll have that complete document for you on the 31st. I don't know when we'll have it uploaded though, probably a week before that. Okay, great. No, I have no further questions. Very grateful for the work. I'm looking forward for my verse budget as a council member and grateful for your work and leadership. Thank you. Thank you. All right, I have some questions and maybe just some comments. So starting on page number eight, walk me through where it says council direction to not increase taxes and what that so when I add up the numbers that comes to about $16.7 million. So not increasing taxes in 24 and 25 uh resulted in $16.7 million coming from where? savings account, credit card. It's yeah, it's the things we talked about. So, it was using onetime revenue either through the fund balance. It's it's these things here that you'll see on the slide. So, it was various adjustments either on one time adjustments or decreasing the funding available for positions. And these are just some of the examples. These are these are the big ones. But it took a lot to be able to get to that no new revenue rate the last two years. Um so I know one of the things that we've been talking a little bit about and it gets a little bit confused in the state with the way that we do the truth and taxation. We'll bring forth as I mentioned on July 31st we'll present to you all the certified values. We'll present to you all what the no new revenue the voter approval rate is. Um but essentially it took a lot of one-time adjustments to be able to get to the no new revenue rate in the last two years. Okay. And the 16.7 million again came from where? From these items. So it was utilizing fund balance. It was taking more savings on positions. It was prorating pay raises. Um decreasing our funding available for our facilities and our fleet of replacements. Um and so as I mentioned, these are the the four big ones, but obviously there was, you know, a lot more that went into being able to get to that revenue. I mean, we showed you all 26 million reductions or adjustments that we did for FY26 and we still have a $24 million increase overall. So, it was obviously a challenge. We were able to make it happen. Um, but one of the things I mean, we've talked about it and I don't think it's a secret that a lot of these things probably aren't sustainable. Doing one time using one time revenue to be able to balance the budget in a given year, it's not sustainable. It's not something that we should be looking forward to as we go through the next several years. um being able to fund our positions that we have. I mean, our departments rely upon obviously the resources through all the staffing that they have. So, I mean, that's an area that we'll need to look at going forward as well. There's only so much attrition we can take before we get to a position where we have no additional funding to be able to fund any vacancy. So, um a lot of those type of things we are going to have to sort of course correct over the next several years. Um but again, there's no challenge that with Miss Mack and all of our city departments that we can't make happen. So okay so no new revenue is certainly not sustainable but the reductions and adjustments that we've made in the last two years. No sir. Okay. On number slide 13. So, we started off with a 50 almost $50 million deficit and you guys were able to, this is not the right word, but you were able to eat back at that and got a reduction on slide 14 to where it was only 26 million, which is incredible. That's correct, by the way, to to be able to do that. So congratulations on on being able to to do that. Um, so page 18, Miss Mack, you want to walk us through what that means again with no increase in the property tax rate? Sure. So really what we've said publicly is that we're adopting a flat tax rate. And so what people will see um in their budgets um locally are really as a result of the valuation of their homes going up. And so from our perspective, you know, being able to not increase to really be able to hold to this number is really important. If you look historically over the last um five or six years, we were almost at 90 cents at one point. And so really, you know, having that trend line going the right direction or at least being able to hold that trend line we think was a heavy lift. Um and balancing uh the programs and priorities of the city while doing that is one of the reasons why we we brought forth this budget um to um for your consideration. Beautiful. Page 19, the lowest debt since 2012. Yeah, you guys have a lot to be proud of. That is fantastic. Um, slide 20, you mentioned police staffing or back to pre-COVID levels. Is that what you said? I believe you said something like that. Yes. And so, um, you'll see uh the chief, he'll show you uh back in uh 2020, we're going to hit the same number of uniform officers that we had in 2025. Uh it was a combination of increased retirements and slower uh than what we would have liked in terms of recruitment to our umies that really meant that we were going in the wrong direction. We were losing people and so this year we're seeing stabilization in those uhmies. We're seeing that number uh grow. We're seeing people uh come and apply. And so we're really feeling that we're in a good place in terms of the investments that have been made in our police department to help them to get to the numbers that they need. Okay. Slide 21. The exemptions for the seniors. In order for them to get these exemptions, they have to go to the central place appraisal district. Yes. And the number that we're showing here are people who are already receiving the exemptions. So these are people who are already registered. They've gone through the process. um we will be pushing out to let people know they can go to uh the uh central appraisal district to register for this but they only have to do it once. Okay, Robert, I believe on slide 36 you said that um you feel real comfortable about the 3.5% sales tax number. Yes, sir. So, we'll see again this Wednesday when we get that sales tax amount um what that looks like. But yeah, year to date to be at 3% I think is very encouraging. We were actually anticipating to be a little bit closer to 2 and a half% when we developed the budget last year. And so again, it's encouraging that we continue to see that growth right around that 3%. So I 3 and a half% I think is a very conservative realistic growth for FY 2026. Again, we didn't want to be too optimistic. We still know there's a little bit of uncertainty in the uh economic environment right now. a lot of things going on not only locally but nationally as well. Three and a half percent I think is a very realistic projection for next year. Okay, Robert, I want you to brag one more time on slide 37 and 38. Aren't these your favorite? Absolutely. These are my favorite slides because it really has taken and so I'll bring those slides represented to another presentation in the future to show historically the increase in the debt rate and then what you've seen over the last several years of bringing that debt rate down and then as we move into the future as well because one of the things that we've really worked to focus on is how we're structuring the debt and how we're structuring that savings. Obviously, yes, we want to u build in as much as we can to help us now, but then we also need to make sure again that we're looking ahead to offset as much as we can the issuances that we're going to have in the future. So, it's really, you know, developing these refinancing and structuring them so that one, we get the benefit of the savings now, but then also two, we structure a little bit of it so that we have some of the savings in the future as well to offset some of the impact that we're going to have into the future. So, uh 8 cent decrease in the overall debt service portion of the tax rate. It's not been done by accident. A lot of it has been very, you know, strategic in how we're looking at managing our overall debt burden on our community. And so I think it really speaks to this council's commitment and then what we you all approved last week with the refunding and defeasants again, paying debt off early is not insignificant. So again, it's it's the gift that keeps on giving because one, we save on interest cost. two, you're generating additional revenue going forward for the general fund that was previously restricted. And then three, we get to finish out the east side force complex and get the the additional shade that we need at that project. So again, it's just a win-win with what you all approved last week. And then again, the slide here, 19% decrease, $300 million in the last five years. Not insignificant. I mean, that's that's been again a lot of hard work. council's commitment to approving the refundings and the defeasants here recently to be able to accomplish that. I wanted you to to end on a high note. So, that's very good. Um, and then the last thing is, you know, going back to Representative Oavo's um comments about sales tax. So, the only few ways to increase sales tax is through economic development and and and a number of things. He mentioned um Neon Desert and we were fortunate enough last week we we attended a presentation at UTEP where it showed the the amount of economic impact that coalplay had on this community and the sales tax revenue. So I know um Jose is going to be doing a presentation from Destination El Paso. So maybe he can touch on the numbers that that one particular event had for this community. I know he doesn't have it with him now, but maybe he'll be texting his friends at UTP or he's got it got it ready to go or or Brooke or someone has it. So, um, didn't want to put you on the spot, but again, you know, those are ways we can have some really big home runs for the community that have a huge impact. So, restaurants were busy, our hotels were busy, and it generated a significant amount of sales tax revenue for the community. Look, going through a budget, this is this is no light feat what you guys have done. So, it's very very impressive. Uh to to get it down to, you know, from 51 million down to only, you know, 25$26 million uh difference is is very great work. So, we applaud you guys for all the great work that you did and we know that it took an entire team to to get this done. So, our hats are off to you. Before we we close there, Representative Fier. Thank you, Mayor. Um, first, when we go back to slide 19, that that is just some amazing um news. And the reason I I bring that up because the mayor mentioned the word brag, and it really is um a bragging opportunity for Miss Matthew, Mr. Gortinez and your team because so many times we see the fake news that we are just so much in debt and we're it's getting deeper and deeper and we're never going to get out of debt and but this just shows the reality, the truth and and I I hope you all continue to brag about this. I'm I'm assuming that this will be probably the biggest slide when when you do the presentations our at our community meetings. Yes sir. Thank you, Miss Mac. in any other way we we can put it in the back of the mayor's van or or whatever. But we if we if we can do that, that would be great because I think the public needs to know the truth. And the truth is that this this team and this this council is working very very hard to be good stewards of their dollars. And if um can just I can hardly wait till Mr. Garcia comes up so we can talk about streets, but that's a whole other story. Thank you, Miss Mack. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you again, Miss Mack. Great presentation. Uh, Robert, great presentation and thank you guys so much. We're about an hour behind, so we're going to try to pick up some of the time. So, Miss Mack, we're ready to continue. I think Mary's up next. Thank you. So, um, it's going to be item number two in your SharePoint. And Mary's up now. Good morning. Good morning, Mayor and Council. Mary Wiggins, Chief Human Resources Officer, and we are here to talk to you about our employees as they bring the presentation up. There we go. Miss Mack and uh the city city manager and um Mr. Cortinez have talked, you know, extensively to you about, you know, the the budget and the extensive impact. And as you saw in those presentations, the one of the largest impacts is our employees. It's going to be our salaries. is for the investment that we're investing in our employees. So, as we go forward, we're going to go and just kind of start showing you as soon as I can get it to move. And we're not moving. All right. We're going to use this one. Okay. So, the main thing that we want to focus on for our workforce is we want to focus on livable wages, training, and our capacity enhancement. We want to be able to recruit and retain our employees. Not just recruit, but also retain. So, we focus on regular adjustments to our wages that are going to be tied to our cost of living and additional certifications going forward. So, as I go through this presentations, these are some of the items we're going to focus on that are are importance to our employees, our workforce, our compensation and benefits, how our vacancies are impacting our service time. what what does that look like for our employees for their length of time with the city? Health care, how is that affecting our budget? And then lastly, we're going to bring forward our compensation strategy phase two that we talked to you about last year. So, what does our workforce look like? So, our numbers are for civilians, we have 4,464 employees. Our uniform police, we have 1,090. and for our fire uniform 937. So what's important to note as we go forward is the El Paso living wage. So we talked about, you know, what it costs to be able to live in El Paso. We talked about inflation. We talked about for our outside organizations economic fears. Well, our employees have those as well. they they're dealing with the inflation and they have those same fears of how they move forward. So, I want to make sure it's understandable that this is the El Paso living wage. This isn't a national, it's El Paso. And so, for an example, for a um a family of one adult who may have zero through three children, this is the amount that it would take for them to sustain a household. So, for one adult with no children, $1854 an hour would be necessary to sustain a household. Now, if you have two adults in the family, of course, those numbers go down. But we want to give you a benchmark as we go forward as to, you know, as we talk about budgets for our employees that you understand the impact and the importance that it has. And it also has it on our community as well. So, where do we start out? So, 2021, we our minimum wage was $10.36 an hour. Fast forward each year we've increased it. But fast forward to this year, fiscal year 2025, with the approval of budget and the city manager's, you know, strategic mission, we were able to raise our minimum wage to $15.75 an hour. That's a 52% increase from 2021. And so again, that's money as we talk about, you know, um the sales tax. This is money also that is going back into our economy to help fund our sales tax. So over time as we've increased the salaries, this is where we are as once we've raised the minimum wage. This is going to be our average salaries. So first we look at our general services. So the average salary for a general service worker is $42,281. For our professional managerial, it's 63,415. For our fire, it's 77,812. And for police, it's 85,53. So, we've worked hard to be able to raise these salaries to be able to be competitive amongst our um in the industry. So, what does that mean? What does that look like? You know, we we hear about, you know, hourly rates of pay, but what does that mean as far as what it looks like when they take home? It sounds great when we're giving them that amount, but what does it look like whenever they what do they have left when everything is done? So, we took an average salary for a general service worker. And so, and this is a real person. So their earnings you can see but then once you take out their taxes you know we don't have state but federal FICA um and Medicare we have their medical plan and so for this particular person a CDHP that's going to be for a family um insurance coverage of CDHP we have dental this person um is doing great and investing in 457 so they're they care about their their future um and all just the different ancillary benefits and then we have our pension. So, this employees take-home pay after all of their deductions is $71346. So, it's more realistic understanding, you know, than just hearing a a minimum wage salary. We we talk a lot about our civilian increases and uh minimum wage, but we we want to make sure that we also um we saw in the presentations how important public safety is. We heard that from our citizens and so we want to make sure that we focus on our uniform employees, our public safety as well. So the police department, they are covered under a collective bargaining agreement, a CBA as we call it. And so their particular CBA went into effect September 1st, 2023 and it ends in August 31st, 2027. Um during that negotiation, they were able to negotiate a 5.8% average step plan adjustment, a 4.5 average increase in between those steps. They negotiated a sick leave payout, and then um amounts for master level certification. It's important to note that all of these things are important. We talk about how our ummies had gotten to you know down to um in COVID we lost a lot and so the police department has been doing and the fire department have been being very creative and trying to be strategic and and um market you know what they do and trying to increase thosemies. They've increased the number of themmies but we're also starting to see you know more employees coming. So this is important that we focus and we make sure that that we're paying attention to these numbers as we move forward. Same with the fire. They're collect they're covered under a collective bargaining agreement. Their CBA is September 1st, 2022 to August 31st, 2026. So that one will be coming up here soon. Um they have a 3% step plan adjustment and then a five 5% increase in between steps. And I didn't I want to go back um for the police. So you see that in 2022 their um starting salary was 47,1026 it's 56790. We we are listening and so we're making sure that we are you know investing it. Same thing for the fire department in 2022 was 4493 and now in fiscal year 20 26 it's 50,640. So, it's important that we continue to invest in our public safety. Um, they take care of our citizens, they take care of us. And so, this is something that we always want to be on the forefront of um making sure that we're investing. So, it became difficult um during COVID, we we hear, you know, about uh you know, where did all the employees go and and so we we felt that same thing here. And it wasn't just in the city. It wasn't just in El Paso. it was a a national trend that, you know, employees went home and they didn't come back. And so, we've been struggling and we've been really focusing on trying to get employees to come back to the city of El Paso, back into the workforce. And so, that's what investing in our employees and our minimum wage. We we wanted to make sure that we were putting the city out there, you know, as an employer of choice. We wanted to make sure that we were getting quality employees. It's not just about hiring employees. It's about making sure we talked about all the different services that we provide. Um, and it is a heavy lift for our employees. And so what we um what we wanted to do is we need to make sure that we are bringing in employees that are going to make sure the services that we provide are sustainable and that we are bringing quality sustainable services. So the salaries, what we did was we did a comparison because we raised the minimum wage to$,575 in February. Um we went back one year so that we could be able to show you February through May of this year. Just a comparison of what we've been able to do in recruiting employees. So for example, in February of last year, you can see that it was at 50 and this year it's I mean this year 2025 in February it's 100. So we were able to double and so each month if you go February through May we've had a 49% increase in being able to recruit employees which shows the results um of what you know we were able to accomplish by by raising those salaries and we'll continue to do so and look at those going forward. We talked about vacancies. Um, so for vacancies, we've talked about this for a few years. And so in in doing the vacancies, we talked about we have over a thousand vacancies, but when we talked about that, you know, the workforce just wasn't returning for a period of time. We had to work smarter. We had to um figure out how to do things a bit differently. And and we also what we did was we would take different positions and we you know we changed duties and everything to make sure that we were providing the level of service that we needed to provide. In doing so um what happened is a lot of positions were added. We created new positions because we're always looking at how can we do it better. We added new positions and so what we're still doing now we're doing a cleanup. The departments are all looking at our budgets and we're having to do a cleanup and take off all of those positions that aren't funded. The new positions were funded, but now we're having to do a cleanup of the ones that are no longer funded. So, you'll see that gradually uh coming down going forward. So, this vacancy shows you the amount of positions that we have vacant that are funded. So, that's the the critical word funded and unfunded. Um but you again you'll see that these vacancies are continuing to go down because we're able to attract more talent based upon our wages. Same with turnover. So we we during COVID we saw large turnover um percentages and and you can see here uh we have them broken down by civilian and uniform. Of course the civilian had the highest turnover. Um the national average, this was based on uh uh 2020 was like at 20% was like you know the national average of of turnover. But as you can see we've gradually worked 24 we were bringing it down and and now we've gotten it to like average and now 2025 now that we've increased our wages. You can see that we have been able to the reduction of 43% of civilian we've decreased the turnover and 9% uniform. That's not a small undertaking if you you've had to do that before. That's huge. And so again, we're investing in our employees and we're seeing the results. We talk about service time. Um we'll be having a a banquet coming up soon for our uh our um employees who have reached uh levels of service. And you can see that in here less than five years. I mean that that's a lot. I mean a 50% this is for civilian 50% of our employees have been here less than five years. That's huge. But focus also on the ones that are five years to I mean we we have 45 year employees. At our next banquet coming up we'll be recognizing two employees who have hit 45 years. That's astronomical. And so we want to make sure that we recognize although we focus a lot on what we're doing for our employees entering the workforce. We want to make sure we also focus on those that have stayed with us and and they have uh gone through you know all the challenges and they continue uh their servants at heart and and they continue to want to do the best for their um for the citizens to provide the services that they provide. Same for uniform. I mean, uniform, not not as high numbers, less than five years. Theirs is at uh 20%. But you can see the length of service. They're committed. They're committed to our citizens and to protecting our community. And so, we want to make sure we also focus on the positive things, the things that we're doing, right? And so, these are things that that, you know, should be noted. Uh, you know, Mr. Cortinez talked about the self- insurance fund and the health care. So I mean that's been a a challenge going up. Um we we saw those numbers rise drastically during COVID as well. Other things were going down that was going up. Um and so we are anticipating as a projected $66.7 million um in medical and pharmacy fiscal year 2025. It's a lot. I mean that's that's a lot of our budget. And so our employee premium contributions of that 66.7 is 8.7. And so the city, you know, covers the rest of that amount um that goes into that fund to be able to provide those services for our employees. Uh for fiscal year 2025, the healthc care trend, a 7% increase for medical, which that that's actually very good. Um if you look at averages, and for pharmacy, it's 13%. Uh Mr. Dr. Cortinez also mentioned how we um were able to enroll in a co-op um for prescription rebates and so that has been able to save us quite a bit that we've been able to put back into our self- insurance fund that helps us fund these claims. Um it it's important to note that the premiums have been maintained each year since 2020. as those medical insurance um premiums and self- insurance have gone up, we've been able to hold the line for our employees and so we, you know, we have not increased any medical premiums and we do not anticipate to do so for fiscal year 2026 either. Th this is, you know, one of our our probably our largest, you know, for our benefits, but it's important to note that we have other benefits that we invest for our employees as well. you know, we have a pension, we have our EAP program, we have many different ones. So, we make sure that not only are we investing in our salaries for employees, but we're also investing in the benefits that are important to sustain them um each day and their families. So, a as we move forward um we're we're going to talk about the civilian compensation strategy. And so we talked about it with you um at the beginning of the year and then we talked about it last year that we were it wasn't just going to be a one-time thing. It was going to be a three-phased approach. And so we were going to have to do it in increments in order to do it properly. And so we wanted to make sure our pay ranges were competitive with our outside relevant markets. We don't just make these numbers up. We we actually have a system in place where we have our comparator cities. And so we compare our salaries to our comparator cities and that's how we come up with our numbers. Um we always want to address internal equity and compression between the positions and then we evaluate compensation for alignment with organization and retention goals. So that's a lot of words. Um, and so what I'm going to do is last year, uh, we were able about a year and a half ago, um, we were able to add to hire my assistant director. And so she comes to us with a lot of, um, expertise, a lot of experience and classification and compensation. She's done this. Um, she is a whiz at it. I have to tell you that as we bring these budgets to you that, you know, there we don't just come in and we, you know, we do a figure and we say, "Here it is." There is lots of going back and forth. There's lots of reworking. What if this? Let's take this. There's a lot of going um and investing in what's important. And so I'm going to introduce you to Miss Monica Cretchmer who is going to explain to you um how we came forward for our phase two which is going to be brought to you and she's going to explain that to you. Good morning Monica. Good morning. Monica Cretchmer, Deputy Human Resources Officer. Good morning, Mayor Council. I want to step back and just kind of briefly touch upon um the phase one which was implemented in February of 2025. Uh it specifically targeted the general services pay plan. It was updated and as a result of that, the minimum salary increased to $15.75. Um uh this in As a result of the update, the general services employees were either brought up to the new minimum of the new grade or they received a 50 cent uh hourly increase for a total of 3,513 employees being impacted on the general services pay plan. Phase two of the uh class uh compensation strategy is in fiscal year 2026, specifically January. Um and we are proposing an increase starting pay to the professional and managerial pay plan from $20.85 to $23. This would impact a total of 461 employees. It would also address the limited pay differentiation between the new and tenured staff. And finally, it would ensure that all employees progress toward a competitive compensation level and um market aligned compensation. The projected cost of this, you will see up on the screen, it's slightly over 3.1 million. Um, and just keep in mind that this investment would reflect the city's commitment to fair and pay to fair pay and employee retention. And I'll turn it over to Mary for the closing slide. So we had talked about, you know, this is what we had projected for phase two and phase three, you know, when whenever we did phase one, we talked about that we realized that it was going to cause a little lopsidedness. And so now we're coming forward and we're fixing that. We're leveling it out for the employees who have tenure to make sure that we're being strategic um across the line. you know, we talk about the salaries and again we talk about the property taxes and if these are the employees that are going to buy the coalplay tickets, mayor, so we have to make sure, you know, that we that we have the the salaries to be able to to bring that back into to the um the community. So, as we talk about here, we want to make ensure that we're attracting and retaining the top talent. We want the talent that is going to take care of our citizens, that care about our citizens. We want to align staff capacity with the city's goals. We're not here just to, you know, to throw people at something. We are being strategic about everything that we do and making sure it's in alignment with our strategic objectives. For comp and benefits, we want to make sure we have competitive and equitable pay structures that are going to support recruitment and retention. Again, not just to recruit, we need to retain. We need to make sure that we're investing in those employees for benefits. promote well-being and financial security. We want to make sure we're not just taking care of their physical well-being, we're taking care of their mental health as well. So, those are always at the forefront as we move forward for our employees. And then engagement. We want to make sure we're cultivating a positive, inclusive culture, which is going to improve morale and performance. Again, that that rolls off to our citizens. So, we want to make sure our employees are happy and engaged. And then lastly, ongoing development and recognition. They drive the satisfaction and loyalty, and that's what we're looking for. We want to make sure we have employees who continue to reach those service time goals and and engage in with the community. So, on all of those, the the three pillars strengthen our ability to build a resilient, high-erforming organization that values employees. And I'll take any questions. Very good, Mary. Representative uh Chavez, thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Mary, for that wonderful presentation. Oh, everybody's asking questions. I'm the first. I have a few, Mary. And this is this is actually one of my biggest passions because as an entrepreneur, you know, um I had about 30 employees under me and for many years it was a oneman show. So, like I did HR and I was a chef and everything else in between. Um and I have a saying and may maybe some of you have heard it already but I always say all business problems are people problems. So if you take care of the people then the people will take care of correct in my case my customers or in this case our community. So I strongly believe in taking care of your people so that we can take care of of others. So but I do have some questions on your presentation. Um, what percentage of our um, employees are hourly? I'm not sure that's in this presentation. I will have to go I'll have to get back with you on that. I don't know that I have Do we have those numbers? I can get that for you. Okay. I I'd love to know. Um, it is the majority of our employees. If I had to pull a number out my hat, I would say 60 70%. And the majority of my employees when I when I had my business were also hourly. So it's just a number that I'd like to know um only because I have a c sensitivity to people that are living um on an hourly wage. Right. What happens when we increase an hourly wage uh in comparison to other people that might have already been earning that? Did they get an increase as well? So what happens is um and there could it could be done many different ways. So it could be done that you do it all at one time. And so what we call that is like compression. So whenever we did the minimum wage increase, we recognized what we did at that time was we brought everybody that wasn't making the minimum wage up to the minimum wage. And then um then there was a whole calculation if you didn't get the minimum wage, I think it was like 50 cents. So what happens sometimes that causes compression that causes there to be you know less in between you know the employees who have been here for a while. So when we did the uh phase one we knew that that was going to happen and so we said that we in phase two that that's where we would fix that. So now that's what we're proposing now um under the compression the tenure as Monica referred to it is that now we're taking and we're doing a calculation and we are calculating based upon years of service to make sure that you're being rewarded you know for the longer length of time. Okay. So we will we will take care of that. That is going to be in January of 2026 is when we'll be doing those increases. Okay. Now on slide seven when um general services the yearly wage is 42281 um does that include other types of compensation cuz it didn't really add up if if I calculate 1575 it was I believe a little less than that right well that's average so that that's only salaries that's not benefits so those those salaries that you saw there those are average salaries so it could be you know someone who's been here 20 years who is a GS and um an entry level but for the GS pay plan that's the average salary for all of them in that in that criteria but for the$1575 it does end up being a less than that I think from my calculations yes yes if if we only did the 1575 it would be less but that's an average of someone's sal all the salaries put together and divided okay um in terms of turnover and this is something that you know is is very important to me do you know how we compare to other government entities or other cities I don't know if we have specific numbers to be able I know that we are competitive with those others especially when we go out and we look at salaries and everything as well. Um we have seen some of those numbers. I don't have any to present now but we are we're either you know pretty much with them right now or below. Okay. They're all they're all running about the same. Yeah. I think that's something that's really important to to look at just because um turnover impacts our cost too. It's very costly to to be hiring and training and all that and yes and then you know if we do see a change in that you know what what can we do to mitigate that I think is that's why we talk about you know I I said well we don't just want to recruit them we want to make sure we retain them because there's a lot of money and investment that goes in to bring not just bringing someone on but then all the training um the the level of knowledge that they have the experience they have so yes I mean it's important that once we have them that we you know we do everything we can not only in salaries but you know in in other kind of benefits and and quality of life within their you know their jobs that we make sure that they stay as well. Okay. Yeah. So definitely I think it's something that we should be tracking. Yes. Um you said that we were comparing our wages to other cities. Can you maybe uh name a few of those cities? Sure. Um, our comparator cities are going to be, and one of my may have to help me, but it's Albuquerque, uh, Houston, San Antonio, um, is it Tucson, Austin, and Houston? Yeah. And are we adjusting those wages to reflect our budget or how are we comparing those salaries? So what we do is we try to take an average because of course we're not going to be able to afford um you know Austin you know um but we also you know we're we're not like some of the other cities I won't name but you know we don't want to be the bottom either. So we try to be an average we try to be competitive in our market but remember it also has to fit within our budget. So I mean we'd love to give them everything we can but we still have to maintain budget. So within our salaries, we try to make sure um and and those those uh cities were chosen quite a few years back um as being our competitor cities and and so it it's it's worked. It's been very strategic in us being competitive in that market, you know, to be able to recruit and retain. Okay. But we do adjust to reflect our budget. Correct. Oh, yes. I mean, it has to fit within the budget. Okay. Um let me uh switch to vacancies real quick because I know uh Miss Mack had mentioned we had about 1,00 and then on your slide you have some funded vacancies and unfunded vacancies. Correct. Um I want to make sure that um vacancies uh specifically to police and fire are not affected by this. So we do have whatever we need budgeted for those uh two departments. They have the budget. Yes. So what you see um for police and fire is we usually distinguish between their civilian positions versus their um uniform positions. So you'll still see that police um and fire do take attrition um across the board but that is primarily based on when they think the hiring will happen. Like for example, if you look at um themies, they know exactly when thosemies will graduate. And so you don't necessarily need a full year of um funding for all fivemies. You kind of prorrate that until the time that they will start. And so you will see that and they can speak to it when they they come up. Okay. And in terms of the unfunded ones, um, and I don't know if if uh, Miss Wiggins or Miss Mack would like to answer this, how do you select, uh, which vacancies to fund first or how do you prioritize those? We don't, we allow the department, so it really gives the department maximum flexibility. So you'll see the unfunded attrition be a dollar amount that totals $26 million. So each one of the departments have allocated a specific dollar amount. And so they're every single solitarian month they're looking at their um staffing and their projections. And so they're looking at whether they're getting close to that number and then they may choose to freeze strategic positions throughout um their hiring process to make sure they get to that number. When I first started an organization, we used to freeze positions and it was very hard. And so you would have, you know, a senior level uh branch manager, you know, who I needed, you know, in a in a position and that was just frozen all year. So it gives the department some flexibility in sort of terms of thinking about it but that number is really high and the reason why I did not present total number of vacancies Mary talked about it a little bit we are doing some clean up with some of the grants that are going away but when you take into consideration 513 of the vacancies that we talked about are not even funded. You know it really talks about our capacity being very different than people would have the impression of when we say it's a thousand positions. Yeah. Thank you Miss Mac. And also keep in mind whenever we see those positions that are vacant, you know, it it's fluid. So there could be positions where someone just left, we've opened a recruitment, there could be in the interview phase, we could be there's all different, you know, so just because there may be a number does not mean that those positions aren't going to be filled. It is constant. We have orientations every two weeks and I mean at least 50 plus, you know, every two weeks. So it's it's a constant fluid, you know. So those are always moving. That's a moving target. Okay. Thank you, Mary. Well, I I'd like to make just a final comment that um you know, I I really believe that people um are very motivated by money. We know that because people need to make a living and we want benefits and all of that. It's a package, right? But people are also very motivated by what your your last slide uh says, which is culture. And that's something that I think we, you know, as a team we have to constantly work on. I never worked for the city of El Paso before, but now I'm a recruiter for the city of El Paso because I think this is the place where people should work. But all of us basically are the face of the city of El Paso. And so building that culture and building um the momentum for people to want to come work for the city um is I think very important. So I encourage everyone to put on our best basis and uh make sure that we are a place where people want to not only apply but stay correct. So thank you Mary for your presentation. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Repres. Thank you mayor. Good morning Mary. Good morning. I I just had a a few questions on your slides toward the end. You're showing phase two but then you kind of referred to phase two and three as the same thing. So I just wanted to get some clarification on what phase two is and what phase three is. So phase two is going to be yes. So so in phase one we you know we increase the minimum pay of the GS pay scale. So now we are in phase two we are raising the incre the starting salary of the professional managerial the PM pay scale. So we're raising that up from 2085 to 23. So that's going to make it more in alignment with GS because we have to make sure that they're not overlapping. So we're we're bringing those up now as well. And then also in phase two, we are addressing uh the what's called the uh tenure or compression between the different positions. We want to make sure that we are rewarding those employees who have been here and that we aren't bringing them in at the same salary, you know, as our brand new employees. And so that's going to be addressed as well. And then also we are um adding a 1% increase uh proposing 1% increase to um all of our civilian employees in fiscal year 2026 as well. Um phase three will look at some of the executive positions. We will be looking at some of those increases. Okay, that makes more sense. Mhm. And then another thing that I kind of wanted to touch on was mayor and council. Do you know when the last time our staff was looked at in terms of a a salary study? Uh mayor and council, I mean for those employees, we we are very competitive in those salaries. Um those are above the market. um they're they're above whatever um we have out there in the market. Now, mayor and representatives yourself, those are based upon, you know the Say it again. Yeah, it's the language in the charter, but it's based on a calculation. So th those are looked at every year. Um but as far as your your employee salaries, th those are very competitive. So, um, so I was more wondering about our staff rather than us because I I know we have the family for calculation and all that, but and I and I know that the charter also affects it whether you have one legislative aid and it's kind of a very gray area that can be a little complex but I I just am not too sure that we are as competitive. Maybe we are on paper, but for example, like county commissioner staff are making way more than our staffers. And in my first year here, I lost two staffers because they found better opportunities, right? And I think these positions have a lot of burnout at the same time with with the amount of work that we each do in our offices. So I I feel, you know, like what Representative Chai was saying, a kind of plus one on all of that where we are having very complex issues and our staff is really going around and doing what they can, but then sometimes the salary is is really difficult to justify. And and I know that um a few years ago, this is before Mayor Johnson, the the chief of staff position in in the mayor's office was a lot less and it increased, which it should have increased, right? And and I'm glad that it increased because that is a very big responsibility, but I I just wonder how we could do more for our staff in that sense. I mean, we're more than happy to look at I mean, we normally use our comparator cities, but I mean, we're more than happy to go look at the county and see what it is they're paying and then, you know, just kind of level out with those positions, the duties and everything. So, we can look at that. Yeah. I I think just from anecdotally, I know that some of the county commissioner staff are at 65, others are at 80, some of our some of them are at 100 now. And and so I I think that I would really appreciate if we could do something like that for our staff to have an understanding of of where we can get more of that retention to um really keep the amazing staff that is staffing council and working day in day out with the rest of the city to make everything kind of function. More than happy to look at that. I appreciate it. Thank you. We did include for some adjustments for all of your staff in this budget. And so when we looked at uh the evaluation across the board in terms of um compression and others that is included in your budget this year I think it's at least like 14k or so. Okay. Representative Limon. Thank you mayor. Probably this this is probably one of the sections that I always cringe and cringe a lot. Let's start with page five. you indicate that this is the El Paso living wage and this is what um we would expect an adult with no children should be making $1854 um $18.54 an hour whereas the poverty poverty wage is 752 and the minimum wage is 725. Okay. A single employee, hourly employee working for this city is not earning a living wage. Correct. Okay. I think we need to let that sink in that hourly employees working for the city, no children, one person is not making a living wage. Our minimum wage right now is $15.75. as I looked through here, Mary, and and it just struck me uh when we got to the police and then we got to the fire. You're talking talking about the collective bargaining agreement and that certainly is a benefit of being a union member and that's exactly what what is driving this when you talked about um and I'll stay with police the average step plan adjustment of 5.8 and then the average increase between steps is f 4.5. Can you explain to me what each one of those means? And it's on page uh nine. Yeah. So they have so on there. So when a police officer on on each year of of meeting their anniversary, they will raise um to the next step. So from if let's say they're on step two and they're moving to step three because they've hit their anniversary date, the difference in increase in between those two steps is going to be 4.5% in between the different step levels. So each year it would be a 4.5% increase. Um and then the 5.8 average debt plan adjustment I believe is whenever they negotiated the salaries that was the average adjustment that took place. And so these are these are concrete. These are part of the collective bargaining agreement that the city went with. And I know we that's that's it. I'm not questioning the agreement, but you said something very interesting because when you talked about this, you said we're listening that this is what needs to come forth. And my question is, who's listening for the hourly employee in this city? Who is speaking up on behalf of those employees? Do we have anyone in the city that does that? Well, I I I would say that that most in the city are listening, which is why we went from I believe it was 1021, I may be making that up to the 1575. That was a large jump. I mean that the minimum wage for the federal government at 725 and as you know that that's not sustainable. And so, you know, as we went through COVID, um, and and even your the the prior council even recognized that that was, you know, that we needed to to place uh more attention on that. And so, we actually uh were projected to have that done. I want to say in a couple of years, I don't remember the year, maybe fiscal year 2026 or 7 is when we were supposed to reach where we were supposed to obtain. But, you know, the city manager last year recognized that that wasn't sustainable. And so, we did push it to where we made it happen, you know, um, within budget that we could make it happen as quickly, you know, as possible last year. And so, that's why we all pushed it forward because, again, we were paying attention to our employees. We were listening, you know, to to them as well. And that's why we were able to raise it 52% in a matter of four years, which is astronomical. Does that mean that we're done? Absolutely not. I mean, we're not. So, it's something that we have to look at every single year. Um, we talk about what we're bringing forth this year for the budget. It's gone back and forth. We've tweaked it to try and get as much as we possibly can within staying within budget because we want to make sure our employees are being taken care of and that goes into the whole retain. We want to retain our employees. It cost a lot more to retrain and and everything. So I I would tell you that that I believe our leadership is fighting hard. Um and I don't mean that word lightly. Um our leadership is fighting very hard to make sure that our general service workers and our you know professional managerial, but that that we're taking care of them and that we are um doing everything we can, you know, with the with what we have to be able to bring them up on a yearly basis as much as we can. Just to add to that, Representative Leone, um this was one of the key um items that came out of the strategic plan for prior city council in 2024. The language actually talks about regular adjustments to wages tied to cost of living. So when I came in and started looking at what our next step was going to be, it was very much looking at comparatives throughout our city. We were going to go to 15. Um the county is at 1550. you know, really looking at where we were losing people and trying to start to take big a step as we could within the budget that we have. But I certainly want to acknowledge that I've been pushed by the strategic plan and you know the wisdom that came out of council recognizing that we really need to make sure we're taking care of civilian staff. So Dion Mack is listening to the hourly employees is the bottom line on this and I appreciate that. Um, I can go back. I Dion, I think you were here. Robert, certainly when we went over $10 an hour and we thought that was such a great great victory. Well, let us not settle in on 1575, but keep looking forward to how can we make this a livable salary. And I'm going to reflect on page 12, which are the vacancies. And here again, we go back, you know, I'm looking at that and the vast majority, I don't know if Ry's here, but I maybe we'll bring it up later on. Um, the vast majority of the streets and maintenance employees are going to be hourly employees is my belief from what I've talked to him and so forth. Some of the employees are working on some of the harshest working conditions. when you talk about resurfacing potholes, all those kinds of things and 90 100 degree weather that I just can't help but feel that maybe there ought to be um a season differential that could come into effect so that we don't lose the people. you know, it gets to the point where it is just so hot and as an individual, we just can't sustain that kind of work that maybe some type and I don't know some type of a differential that could be afforded because that's a really large number of vacancies on the streets and maintenance. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor. One other thing I just want to point out, Miss Leone, you know, is Rep. Lemon is, you know, we put the living wage up there so that you you see it. So it wasn't something we wanted to hide. We want to recognize that we know that we still have work to do. So that that was kind of our our point in bringing it forward. Thank you. All right, Mary. Um can it can we bring up slide number six? This is what Representative Lemon was was speaking about and and going back to I believe represent Lemon you said it was at $10.36. So we can see the the progression of where you guys are heading. Uh slide 16. Your increases in healthc care are to be commended. I mean because we know that those are usually double digits and high double digits. So, a good job in in keeping in that suppressed. Thank you. I also like Representative Chavez would like to see the retention rates for the city when you when you get that together. I will. All right. But very good presentation. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Uh, economic development. Is that next? Good morning. Good morning. Karina Prescala, economic and international development. Um, I think we're going to kick off the department presentations. I luck of the draw get to go very first. Uh, so thank you to everyone who's still here. Um, we'll start with Robert Cortine's profile. So here is our department's budget profile. Um there's a little bit of a mission statement on there and then this is going to be consistent. So highlighting our major variances. You will hear this. It's a recurring story. Mary mentioned it, Robert mentioned it. Um general fund increases due to personnel. Uh so that increase in salaries. I will make a quick note here that our uh full-time employee count is actually staying stable. This report was run at a time when we were transitioning somebody between titles. So it was a double count but we are staying at 27.5 for this next fix for this next fiscal year. And then non-general fund those are all of the economic development restricted funds. Uh so it's going to be your impact and auxiliary those dedicated portions of the El Paso electric franchise revenue, the TED fund and those tax increment reinvestment zones. Um as council approves those obligations through 380s, through partnership agreements, etc. those payments expected go up. Uh so that is going to be the variance that you see there is based on uh obligations and we've gotten a real hold of projecting those out. Uh we're starting to kind of expect those to occur a little bit earlier so that we're not caught unawares by payments. Few highlights coming up. Most of these have been on council's radar. So that comprehensive economic development strategy. You all will be getting an update on that in a few council meetings. The rewrite of our policies. And then a note here, um, just going off the sales tax conversation a little bit earlier, international trade is one of our top priorities. Our international business division has seen a lot of interest since the adoption of the city's international policy. Uh, other jurisdictions have reached out to us asking for assistance with developing their own international agenda and border relations committee. Uh, most recently the city of Los Cusus, a few others. And so we are helping with that and we're very excited at the idea that we would have a coordinated uh like policy agenda for the region on those key performance indicators. Uh well you'll see year-over-year we always report out for the fiscal year the 38 chapter 380s that have been approved the jobs created retained and the capital investment. A quick note one that in 2024 big increase due to the $800 million worldwide LLC that is the meta data center agreement. So a little bit out of uh out of the norm there and that these are as uh the agreements are adopted. So we don't see actuals until the actual business development comes online. Um those are all tracked you know our to-date metrics of actual jobs in place like as of today are done through our compliance report uh which we release annually but we try and do it quarterly and that is up on our website so if anybody wants to see the actual number of jobs per agreement we also track that. We developed as part of the programbased budgeting pilot a number of new KPIs across all our different programs. I've pulled out two additional ones to highlight. So one that downtown uptown plan goal of 10,000 new housing units. So talking about incentivized housing units, it's going to be at 99 right now due to the popular agreement signed late last year. And then our small business visits. Um this is an ARPA funded program with our small business liaison. They are out in all of your districts doing work. They have done 860 direct business visits to date. So that is at a business. Um and 728 of those have resulted in contact with a decision maker for that small business. So an owner, proprietor or general manager. Here is the program-based budgeting pilot. We have five uh program categories. Three are on this slide. The other one is administration and then our kind of infrastructure readiness. The majority of our budget does go to economic growth. I think no surprise there. Uh redevelopment, that's going to be our tax increment zones, the infill, those transit oriented development programs. And then small business. I call this out because it's not a huge program budget right now, but I would account that to the fact that we have spent over $40 million in federal funding on small business initiatives. And so looking forward to not this fiscal year, but next fiscal year as ARPA starts to expire at the end of 2026, talking about the financial sustainability of those programming, that partnership, and the alternative ways we might fund some of that work. I will turn it over to Roberto Pinto with International Bridges. Oh, unless there's repres. Sorry, I was ready to go. Thank you, mayor. Um, appreciate this snapshot. I had a few questions. I was looking at the the budget for your department and I saw that there's an 86% decrease in community service projects. Do we know why that is? In my budget? Yeah. I'm like going to pull it up. [Music] Which line are you looking at? Sorry. At the first page in the binder. Oh okay. I'm going to we would have to look into that a little bit closer. I can give you an answer. My guess is just as we've been moving things around in the program based budgeting, as we've been moving things, it may just be the way that we're running the projects. Um, but community service projects, we don't have anything that like fits neatly into that category. So, I'd have to go back and look at what exactly this was funding in previous years. Okay. So, probably some reorganizing of what you've been doing. I think it's just the way the project funds are labeled. Um, this number for FY26, the 210526, that looks to me that matches almost exactly the annual payment we have for the PO declus five. Okay. Um, so it may just be that reduction there. Okay. Okay. And then operating leases also went down 50%. So we're doing less of that or that's going to be the lease. Um and that was an increase, right? It says a 50% decrease on operating leases. Mhm. From 491,000 to 244. I'm see I'm showing an increase of 6%. Yeah, our operating lease is generally that line item is going to be about the lease that we pay for the economic development offices at Mills. Um, so there's an increase just year-over-year on the terms of our lease, but then also um payment for the parking lease with the convention center. So that should be up, not down. Okay. I I see where you see the the increase and then I see a decrease on the so on the very first page of that tab. Mhm. It says minus 50% and then the next page says 6%. like unless Robert corrects me. Um the do you know Sasha Sasha Donoski director of of management and budget. I think you are looking at the gold team uh budgets. Okay. So that's the the whole goal versus just a department. Okay. Thank you. That makes sense. And then have decreases. And then just the last one, I saw that there's a 140% increase in materials and supplies on the same page that you were looking at. Yes. Um and so that's some minor variances. We've and those are between budget lines. So we've just kind of uh right sized a lot of that. Our travel expenses are professional development. So we've looked at a 5-year historical for the department and adjusted all of those, food and beverage, travel, etc. Um so materials and supplies are up a little bit just we're due for a laptop replacement is okay. Majority of that that makes sense. So that's credited from other lines. Overall, it kind of seems like you've been doing some readjusting all over and kind of making it your own. Yeah. But the bulk of So that general fund increase that variance, it's 173 about 160,000 of that is just personnel salaries um increases. So some minor variances within line items, but we tried to keep that pretty flat. Okay. Thank you. Of course, Representative Chavez. Thank you, Mayor. No, I just wanted to point out, Karina, that district 1 and district 2 put economic development as part of their priorities in the chimein survey. So, that was exciting to me. Hope it was exciting to you. I'm very grateful. We economic development is pretty consistently in the top three of uh chimein budget priorities. And so, we try very hard to be um efficient with the money that we have and deliver on that for the citizens. Thank you. Thanks for the work you do. Thank you. Thank you, Kina. All right, that's it. International Bridges. Okay. Good morning. Good morning, uh, mayor of city council. Roberto Tinero, uh, director of international bridges department. Let me go through the slide. Um, what we do, we operate and manage, uh, the southbound crossings at the city own bridges. that is the two downtown bridges Paso Norte Stanton and the Isleta Saragoa bridge. In addition to that, we also manage and operate uh all the parking meters uh within city limits. Uh in terms of big or biggest uh budget variances uh probably as uh any other department uh we do have or are going to see an impact in the uh salaries of our staff salaries and contracts but uh we are also forecasting u a small uh revenue increase due to uh proposed elimination of our empties program that's for commercial vehicles. Uh what we want to do there is that this uh program um uh provides a discount for commercial vehicles that are empty. So instead for next fiscal year we're proposing that they pay as any other commercial vehicle by axle. So uh that give us uh relatively or almost a flat budget for next fiscal year uh while uh increasing our staff uh so that we uh can uh provide better customer service and provide professional development for for them. In terms of the highlights uh we are in the process of upgrading our toll collection system. Again, uh what we're trying to do is uh bring it up to more modern times. Uh it's long overdue. Uh and obviously we're going to uh upgrade all the technology. Hopefully that will bring us uh with a more efficient uh operations. Uh we're also analyzing lanes lane management so we can again see if we can open late later, open earlier, closing late uh depending on our levels of staff. very important for us is a five-year capital improvement program. Uh we're going to be investing for the next uh five years uh more than 67.4 million dollars. Uh one key priority for us is obviously this lettera bridge. Uh we're going to be investing uh up to $5 million on a feasibility product development study so that hopefully we can expand that portal entry. Um and the last highlighted is obviously we're also working on parking strategies and technology technology upgrades for uh the parking meters. In terms of our um key performance indicators, we are in l in line uh with all of them. Uh we are uh targeting uh 3,500 hours of CBP overtime for next fiscal year. uh close to five uh million vehicles, vehicle crossings. This is southbound crossings through the Isleta and Stanton bridges. And um 776 billion dollars in trade through again the Isleta uh Saragoa port of entry. And that's all I have unless you have questions for me. Representative Ato. Thank you, mayor. I um as I'm kind of looking at what the initiatives are on here, I I feel like what is coming and the the things that are are being brought from international bridges are are very basic things and I really want to see a really big vision for our international bridges. I think that one one thing I'm I'm a very competitive person by nature and Laredo has really done outdone out outdone themselves to be a really big international trade hub right and I think a lot of what we're seeing across the border from California to Texas is there are many initiatives that are are being put in place using technology San Diego has done some some really good work there and that's the vision that I really want to see here and and see how we can get there. Uh there's many different funding mechanisms, right? And we we've talked about the NAD Bank before and I want to see us get there. And I feel like these are are on a scale from 1 to 10. We're like on step three on the highlights and initiatives, but we could really outdo ourselves and bring a really strong vision to the border and and be um better than Laredo. I think that's something that we should take into consideration and and we are uh we are doing different initiatives uh working on different steps uh you mentioned technology uh we're currently implementing the IT at Bridge of the Americas and Isleta u that project will probably be concluded within a year or so um that's again traffic traffic management live cameras to report uh live conditions um we are working. We we just received a smart grant for the design of it for the two downtown bridges. Again, this is just the design, but we are we are hopefully we're going to be able to apply for phase two that will bring us the construction money so that we have a complete IT system through the all the ports of entry. uh I mentioned the project de the physibility/break development study for isleta obviously that will be including a lot of technology automate automation uh as much as possible but we want to see it as a very holistic approach uh we are in conversations with our counterparts in in Mexico the chihuahua to see if we can have one tag uh for the two operations uh this is just to facilitate uh things for our customers. Uh we are exploring that we're not there just yet. And I also mentioned the upgrade of the of the toll collection system which we'll also bring additional technology that we don't currently have right now. And and so by automation, do you mean like a a tag that somebody would just have and it you don't have to stop and pay and Okay. prepaid systems. Uh we we would like to add license pre readers uh laser detector so that we can get a profile of the vehicle in advance that will be make it easier for auto collectors to just uh point and click to the screen uh and uh RFID readers tags just the the bridge system is very complex so we're trying to make it our current system better more robust uh with more redundancy so that we we don't have a at the they a better system. Yeah. And I and I think that's that's good. And how how do you feel um how long do you think that'll take to put in place for our to collection system? We're currently working with purchasing through the procurement process. Um hopefully within the next two years will be operational. Okay. And and I know that there's there's been a lot on what the Bridge of the Americas project is and all of that, but what I just really want to turn around and and tell our businesses that are just very important to the region on both sides of the border is well that that presents a headache and that presents an issue. But now we've implemented all this technology that you're going to be in and out of the bridge immediately, right? And it comes down to the traffic management. instead of waiting 2 hours, you're going to be waiting 30 minutes or give some sort of story that way. I want to turn around and be able to say that. And then at the same time, trade is facilitated and it's easier and it's a it's a better route. And then for the the people that are crossing and in their cars, those people are coming in and they're getting in and out and shopping and doing a lot of things for our region. So I I think that should be more of the vision and I'm hoping that we can get there and explain that story a little bit better. Yeah. And we are we are uh like I said there is a lot of coordination that takes place for the international bridges. At the end of the day we as a city we don't control the flow. We are just facilitators. Uh the the main uh controllers I will say it's the federal government on both sides. uh but we do have a very good coordination with them so that they can also invest and improve their their processes so that facilitate at the end of the day we facilitate the all not only trade border crossings overall. Thank you representative Lima. Thank thank you Mayor Robert. um through through the money that is made through the bridge. Are you able to allocate funding to the landing? You know, once you come off of the Saragosa bridge and you come into the landing area where you're, you know, moving into the main therap are you able to fund any kind of a project to improve that area? We have um made some savings through the years uh through the collection uh that we received through the bridges through the revenues. So we do have different projects es particularly at isleta uh we do have a big project through a not only uh bridges uh funds but also federal funding that we received through a race grant. Uh that's a total of almost $15 million project for pedestrian improvements at an intersection of Saragoa and the loop. And uh we're going to build uh next to it adjacent to our facilities. We're going to bring up a uh pickup and drop off areas, seating areas, public restrooms. Again, just to improve uh the overall pedestrian uh safety. We're going to install canopies, which is something that we don't have right now. So that's part of of the some of the projects that we're currently conducting. That project is under design. Uh it will probably take uh I will say 8 to 12 months to finalize the whole design, but it is in process. Thank you very much. That should definitely be one of your highlights, your big initiatives that you should have put on this page right here. Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, we're working on a lot of projects. It's hard to list all of them, but you're right. I agree. ones with with as many of the logistics and the different companies that are moving into that area and they're real focused on on architecture and trying to follow the southwest uh pattern. I think it's critical that we have a nice space where people cross over and you don't just have this barren desert area out there. So, I look forward to that. Thank you very much. But put it on here. Yes, we'll do. Representative Nino. Thank you, mayor, and thank you, Robert. Quick question. You mentioned that there's is it 5 million for a physibility study for Isla? Yes, we're ironing the details right now, but it seems like we're going to be able to spend up to $5 million. Okay. So, you're still working on we don't have like the scope of work or kind of like No, we're actually developing the scope of work as we speak. Okay, great. No, that's great to know just because in general, you know, kind of what Repa was mentioning in regards to BA, there's a lot of uncertainty. So I I would be definitely curious to navigate that conversation further just to prepare ourselves, you know, since we do have a couple of ports of entries that were set up for the future. Thank you. Of course. All right. Quick question. So you mentioned on slide seven the at Yleta trade the billions of dollars that go across 76 million is kind of the target. Yes. Would you know the BODA uh trade numbers by any chance? I think those are about 20 25 million per year. Okay. Total and that's just is that just coming it's both Norban and Salon in other words exports and imports. Okay. So you're saying about 100 million of import and exports goes back and forth. Not 140 million. 145. It's for the whole region including Santa Teresa and Toro. And that's import and export. Imports and export. Yes. Perfect. Okay. Any other questions? That's it. All right. Thank you. I will pass it on to Margarita Marine and OTC. Before we move on, I would entertain a motion to take lunch for 1 hour. Second. It was. All right. So, we're going to take a 1 hour lunch. We'll be back right at 1. And I would encourage everyone to show back up because we may jump around a little bit. So, Miss Mac, we we did provide lunch. So, if you want to grab it as you're going to take your break. Okay. So, council, there's a motion and a second to recess the meeting for 1 hour. All in favor? I. Anyone oppose? And the meeting is in recess at 11:56 a.m. and we'll reconvene at 1:00 p.m. Yes sir. Thank you very much. All right, Miss Bryan, I think we're ready to get going. Yes, Mayor Council, is there a motion to reconvene? There's a motion and a second to reconvene the special meeting. All in favor? Anyone opposed? And the special meeting is back in session at 1:00 p.m. And we continue with a departmental presentations with Miss Maren from the office of the controller. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, mayor and council. Margarita Marin, deputy CFO and controller presenting for office of the controller. So, just to give a little bit of context to our budget. Um a little bit of what we do is we provide financial information to the departments with a service department, a support department and we ensure that there are internal controls to protect public assets um comply with rules and regulations and also we provide effective management of cash and investments. As you can see, our overall variance is $272,000 and this is all in compensation increases. We do have three um FTEES, one particular in the general fund and this one is a position that we created in order to comply with the payment card industry standards. And so that's funded by the general fund. Um the other two positions are non-general fund um funded and they are um funded by the by the action proceeds. These two positions are inventory coders and this was um as a result coming from a recommendation from the external auditors in order to improve that the way that we do inventory of capital assets. Our highlights and initiative for the year to come. We're continue to work in automation specifically in the bank reconciliation process to make it more effective. Next year we're also going to be dealing with two new accounting standards. One of them is Gatsby 103 which is the financial reporting mo model is going to be restructured and so it's going to change the way that we report the annual comprehensive financial report. And then we have the Gazsby 104 and this one is uh pertaining to how we report capital assets. We will attempt to um finish the 10 consecutive year with no audit findings and produce the annual comprehensive financial report, popular annual financial reporting and the schedule of expenditures and federal awards. Um, we will also again look into our financial policy citywide to make sure that those controls are strong and that we're always complying with best practices citywide to protect uh public funds. And as far as grants, we will continue to monitor those departments and work along with those departments that have s recipient monitoring practices to ensure that those federal funds and state funds are safeguarded. Um uh to the right hand side you can see our key performance indicators and the first one that you see is the portfolio investment earnings. This year so far through May 31st we have earned uh almost $34 million on investment earnings and we're anticipating to close this year with $45.2 million. Our target for next year is 36.2. And as far as grant expenditures, we have uh year to date a hund00 million in grants received and the target for next year is going to be 125 million. Um I have to say that since 2016 our grants division have overseen $1.1 billion in grant awards with zero audit findings. So uh take any questions at this time. Yeah, congratulations. No audit findings. That's fantastic. Any questions? All right. Thank you so much. You're welcome. And I will introduce Maria Pacas from the tax office. Okay. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, mayor and council. This is Maria Pacas, tax assessor collector. Uh what do we do? So, the tax office provides tax collection and dispersement services to taxpayers and taxing entities. We collect over $1.5 billion on behalf of 44 taxing entities in the county of El Paso. So we are an enterprise fund and uh our budget is paid by all of the entities. The city pays 8% of our budget and our variance for fiscal year 26 is $238,000 and this is due to uh increase in salaries, postage and indirect cost. Uh, as far as positions, we did add one position. We added an accounting and apparel specialist. And I will um elaborate on the next slide. So, this new position will increase our supplement processing team uh to better serve the community. This team uh they process value and exemption corrections uh from the appraisal district and they send refunds or corrected tax bills. Uh the other initiative that we're working on is expanding our community outreach efforts um such as uh participating in park events, senior centers. Uh we also um partner with the consul and any fairs that we are invited to. Uh we are there to provide information to our taxpayers. Uh you know, making sure that they get their discounts that they're entitled to. We take our forms and then they submit it with the appraisal district. Another initiative that we're working on for next year is we're going to provide cashiering services at the appraisal district during the last weekend in January versus a mobile bank. In previous years, we would have a mobile bank outside the appraisal district and this year we have uh partnered with the appraisal district and we're going to have two members of our team inside the appraisal district taking payments. So hopefully it'll be more um efficient, you know, faster. Uh we're looking forward to that. The other um initiative that we're having uh at the appraisal district is that we are going to expand the availability of a payment dropbox. Um instead of having it the month of January, we're going to expand it for peak season, which is October through the end of January. And this is in response to the voice of our customers. you know, sometimes the appraisal district and the tax office get confused and they will show up at the appraisal district, you know, to to drop their payment off. Um, and then instead of having them, you know, to come downtown and see us, you know, we're going to have a payment dropbox there. Um, so we're looking also forward to that. As far as um our key performance indicators, um, this year, you will see that our yearto date is a little bit higher. Um it's 4 minutes and 8 seconds. Our average uh phone wait time. Um this year we've had several special projects. Um as you may have seen on the news, we've been uh working with one of our partners um a special project um to issue their refunds um and corrected statements. We brought that contract um to city council in December. And then we also had two of our taxing entities that had roll back elections. So all of that, you know, triggers calls and increases our our phone uh phone call volume. Um this concludes the presentation for team Cortinez. Any questions? Maria, I I do have a question. Yes sir. So looking at your FY25 average fund wait time of 4 minutes and 8 seconds, do you have a benchmark that is across the nation? What should that number be? Um we've reached out to other tax offices and you know we try to aim you know between one and a half two and a half minutes. Of course during peak season you know all of us get to see that um influx of calls and then the rest of the year it tends to slow down like in the summer you know it tends to be slower. Um but with our you know special projects um that's why it's a little bit higher but we try to stay within the 2 minutes. Um and it's an average you know somebody might be there a couple of seconds um other people you know might be you know 5 10 minutes during January because that's our busiest time. So but that is our average sir. So your internal benchmark is two minutes for your department. Okay. Two minutes. Okay. We'll get to see that next year right. Thank you, Maria. Thank you. Any other questions? Nope. Thank you. Thank you. Parks and Wreck. Next is Mr. Pablo Cavayto with Parks and Recreation. Good afternoon. Afternoon, city council members. Pablo Cavayto, parks and rec director. For the record, let me get started. I get to kick off uh the quality of life portfolio with the parks uh presentation. So what do we do in parks? We provide indoor and outdoor leisure services to the El Paso community to develop skills, socialize, experience nature, and live a healthier lifestyle. Uh park's budget consists of general and non-general funding with a preliminary for FY26 of over $59 million. Out of those uh 5.6 with a variance of last year, mainly due for increase of in salary adjustments, water utilities and park amenities highlights and initiatives. Starting with our parks amenity replacement program that increased its funding by $500,000 summing up a total of 1.5 million to be used across the eight districts across citywide. Uh our leave active initiative that usually has more than 10,000 active participants offering leisure classes, hikes, and health and wellness events throughout the city and free of charge. And our biggest initiative uh led by the CI uh department, our East Side Regional Park phase 2 about to start construction late 2025. That's right next to the east side nudatorum and the beast community center. When done, it's going to become the largest complex in parks inventory. our key performance uh indicator for recreation program participation. As you can see, we've been increasing year after year up to year date on 25, we're at 1.9 million uh participants and we have a target for FY26 of 2.2. our program based uh budgeting. We selected three of our main programs starting with the parks land management. Why this matters? It because it ensures that public spaces remain welcoming, safe and enjoyable for all residents while promoting outdoor recreation and community well-being. ensures accountability, enhances the efficiency of parks maintenance operations, and provides accurate data to track progress and identify areas for improvement. Also on the aquatics division, it expands access to aquatic programs, promotes water safety and fitness, and ensures more community members to develop essential swimming skills while maximizing our facility usage. And lastly, our senior division that encourage social connection, supports physical and mental well-being, promotes independence, and helps reduce the negative effects of isolation among seniors. Please keep in mind that the all programming for senior centers are free of charge. With that said, I'm open to any questions or comments. Represent Basto. Thank you, Mayor. Hi, Pablo. Yes, sir. on the 500,000 extra. So, it's going to go from 1 million to 1.5 million. Yes sir. Which I'm very supportive of that. Does that money Well, can that money be used for the senior centers, too, or is it specifically just parks, any outdoor area? It's specifically for parks amenities like playgrounds, tables, uh picnic tables, chading, uh receptacles, etc. Okay. And so in this $2 million budget for senior centers, are are we I I know there's been a lot of work that Roman and others have been working on for the past like 7 months now and it's been really great work. So I'm wondering will this budget of 2 million for the senior centers look a little different now with all the feedback that has been received from the seniors? Uh of course uh the two million have been allocated uh from many years sir uh this is all uh operating cost with salaries and and and staff but again all of our program uh it's willing to change for the better to improve and we're always on the look to better the offer at the senior centers. Okay. So this will give us the ability to still have that same budget but offer other types of programming, replace programming, anything like that. Of course, we can change anytime depending on the senior center. And then from my understanding, each senior center has kind of an operating budget for lack of a better term. So if they need new chairs like they do at Memorial, they could use that budget. Or how is that budget controlled? Is it up to the individual director? Yeah, the budget is centralized in parks. So that budget is for the 10 senior centers we have in the city. Okay. So do you think that's going to be enough to do the minor upgrades that are needed at some of these senior centers? Like for example, Memorial, they they've been asking for the building to be painted, for new chairs cuz they're just really bad. uh a water fountain that can they can fill their water bottles there cuz the water fountain there just continues to be p patched up but it's not really working for them. So I'm I'm trying to get an understanding of how that will will work under this budget. Some of those some of those items would actually be in the 4.4 that you see for facilities. So, if you're talking about, you know, a paint job for the exterior or water fountains and those type of things, we would try to program those into the dollars we have on that side. These dollars would just be specifically for program. Okay? And we can look at if there's things that we need within the specific if there's shares and things like that. Generally, we can find those dollars within the parks budget. You know, as you're seeing that he's expecting more participants that may mean that we have, you know, better revenue coming through. that revenue stays with parks that then allows for them to do some of those allocations. I think the process that we've gone through so far is going to give us a better idea of what all the senior centers might want and we'll have a better idea of what those list might be if we can't cover it in the budget. Okay. I appreciate that. And those three items in particular are on are on the list now. Okay. All right. Thank you, Representative Chavez. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Pablo. Thank you. Um I know that I've been meeting a lot with you since I took office and I appreciate all the time and attention that you've given to answering all my questions. Um from your presentation I see that there has been a significant increase I think about 36% for rec recreational program participation which I think is great. Um how has the budget um changed? I know that you you went through 25 to 26 but from 23 to 26 how has the budget changed for parks? It's not changed much. We've been flat for the last couple of years. So, we we do work very hard to be very efficient. So, even though we need to stretch out the budget every year, we continue to bring services 100% throughout uh all the rec center centers, senior centers, and aquatic facilities. Yeah. And and I think this speaks directly to quality of life only because for the most part uh what you provide is free of charge, you know, for for for most uh facilities that you um that you manage. And and I really think it's a it's an opportunity to build community, which I'm very uh big on. Um, I would like to see in this 10-year program that's coming up, uh, to make sure that we're not only, um, ranking the playgrounds, but also the parks to make sure that we're setting a certain standard at the city, uh, to make sure that we continue to provide these services for our community, to make sure that we're providing spaces for people to come together, and like I said, to build community. That's just something that I would like to see. But I've already expressed all of that to our city manager, Dion, in a in a separate email, and I'm looking forward to seeing that 10-year uh park plan. Uh let me see. I think I had one more question. Um well, no, I I think you answered it when when you asked uh when Representative asked you about the 500k in terms of um what it was going to be invested in. So, thank you. That answers all my questions. Thank Here's why it's very important that we starting the new parks master plan and to get all the feedback from the community and from you all. This will be a great plan. Yeah, I mean earlier this year we we had a presentation where we talked about some D-rated playgrounds and we we discussed that in my office and so that's just what I was referring to when I said setting a different standard making sure that you know we create these spaces that are not derated but above that because I truly believe our community deser deserves that and also requires a space to build community. So thank you. Totally agree ma'am. Thank you so much. Thank you representative Lemon. Thank you, Mayor Pablo. In in your conversation, in your budget, when you look specifically at senior centers, do you have any does the city have any kind of um a budget or any kind of funding to support the feeding program at the senior centers or is that all done by the county? We do support the nutrition program during uh the holidays like we provide during the Christmas uh holidays lunch for them and Thanksgiving. Uh other than that, the county runs the whole year uh for the senior centers through the county and and I'm I'm a little bit worried and I think you've already had some conversations right De? Yes, ma'am. So, I did um meet with the team um and one of the things that we've identified, thank goodness we didn't see a cut to CDBG. They have previously been um awarded those funds and so they would have the opportunity to apply for those funds again um in January which would help us to subsidize the gap that we've seen in those funding. We're also meeting with them once more. I think that we've been talking about some expansions of program just to make sure we're aligning across what the need is for the community. I believe the gap that they showed me was about 200,000. Um, but we also know that if we're going to be offering additional meals at other locations, we need to have a better sense of what those dollars are as well. That's great. And that's um that's coming through conversation with the cog with Annette um um and um other people, Marisa. So, that's good. I'm glad that you're you're you're tuned in to that because that's such an important for many of them. It's their only meal that they're going to have. So, yes ma'am. Thank you, Pablo. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Representative Trey. Thank you, Mayor. Hi, Pablo. Hello ma'am. Okay, couple of questions. Let me see if I can get myself organized here on uh page 14. Live active. You mentioned that's free for participants. Is that a a parks and recreation program or is that contracted or No, that's a an initiative that started uh a couple of years back at the city manager's office and then once transferred the whole program to to parks and recreation. So, it's our initiative. Okay. Very good. And then the uh the 500,000 you might have already asked answered this question, but is that already earmarked for this coming year? Do you know where you're going to have those projects? Well, uh, every fiscal year as we start, we do an assessment through our parks inventory. So, we look at each district and we look at all the life cycle of every single uh item on the inventory and then we come up with a plan. Okay. And so, you're looking at amenities and things like that. What is the those things are very costly. Very costly. Like on average, what's the cost for I don't know a playground? a playground goes around 185,000 to 200. Okay. So, you're you're limited with the 500,000 as to what do you have an idea of what kind of amenities you want to add to the parks? We will have to look into our inventory to see the oldest uh benches, reciprocals, picnic tables, playgrounds, and and the surface of the playground if it's still sand to convert those into uh wood fiber or into PIP. Okay. Got it. And then on page 15, the uh pool usage. So you have uh a little over 7 million for pools. Are any of those plans for reopening uh the pools that are that are closed? No, that's only for operational costs, ma'am. Operational. Okay. What are the plans for the pools that have been closed? The ones on district two district. So there's what? Uh well, Veterans was just closed, right? And then also Tobin uh Tobin Park. There's there's only two pools uh right now uh out of service. Uh Grand View and Nation Stoven, but there's that's a capital improvement uh pro pro. It's a big investment. And and what about veterans? So veterans was just closed for veterans. It's it's we're having an assessment right now to see what the condition is. Uh we're fixing a couple of issues. Uh but we're waiting for an answer. Okay. Let's see what else. Uh, I think that's it. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Representative Fiero. Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Gomero, um, Representative Asavto spoke of this um maintenance fund. I guess the 500,000 that that represent was talking about, since we don't have a senior facility in our district, can we just use that 500 to build one? I wish there. Was that a note? I don't think so. Thank you. I don't have one either. We'll bring our own chairs. Perfect. Thank you. Represent. Well, I'll add that I have five of them, which is 50% of the senior centers. Um, so I just had a few more questions just based on what everybody was kind of saying from what I've looked into on Nation Tobin and Grand View. That's about give or take about $25 million to reopen both of them. I I really want to get to a point where we could start having those real conversations on on getting that there for the people in the Northeast for Nations Tobin. It's like I I just don't like hearing that narrative over and over in the Northeast where they close it cuz it's the Northeast and nobody cares about us. In Central was, you know, this is the the only pool that we have right by us and we walk to it and now we don't have it, right? So, I I think it's it's a really big impact on quality of life. I think this is something that we look at in a bond at some point down the road or something to see if we could put that in there. But I I think it's just really important where I think past administration was more, you know, it's it's really costly to operate pools, so let's do spray parks instead. And it just doesn't really do the same thing, right? Yeah. you get wet at both of them, but you get different things out of each of those scenarios. So, I I really want to have that conversation in in the coming years to see how we can get there. The other thing that I wanted to ask was, and this might be a Robert question on your in the budget book under capital outlay, you have a 100% decrease. So that that amounts to about $576,000. Is that where the $500,000 for maintenance was taken from or what happened there? We can get you that detail. So essentially what we do is we transfer that out of the general fund, so out of our non-EP departmental and into a project fund for them so that they don't lose it at the end of the year if they don't spend it all. But no sir, that's not a reflection on the parkmen funding on that item. Well, we can get you the detail on what that capital change was. Yeah, I I would uh I would appreciate that. And and just overall, as we're kind of looking at what's happening with federal funding, I think a theme that I continue to hear throughout our conversation today is that we're good on federal funding for now, but then what happens in the next year or the next two years, right? And and I think we really need to start thinking about contingency plans overall. Mhm. One thing that really worries me is the senior center meals that I know that the county runs and we own the senior centers. But just to share anecdotally something that a lot of the seniors are coming up to me and saying specifically in South Central, they're like, "Well, we really want Melissa Gomez Park to to be done and we fought hard to get that money and we're we're really excited about what's coming to Melissa Gomez." Then it's heartbreaking to hear them say, "But now I'm worried about not getting a meal at the senior center." And if we need to stop Melissa Gomez and transfer that money over to to get meals for us, that would be more important to me because the the meals are really important, right? And so I really hate hearing that. And I have to explain obviously like Melissa Gomez is fine and it's different budgets and it's allocated this way. and I give them that explanation, but then they're like, "But what about my meals?" Exactly. And and so as we continue to go through these times, I I really want to see how we can start thinking about having a plan B or plan C in order for these meals to not go away. Exactly, sir. No, and this is why it's so important and and we actually have a meeting with uh the county next week uh to start discussing FY26. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Pablo. Thank you, sir. Next is Mr. Terry Keepshaw from Animal Services. Good afternoon, Terry. Good afternoon, Mayor Council. Terry Keepaw, Animal Services Director for the record there. Um, so what do we do? Um so at animal services we deliver exceptional service to support high quality life for pets ensuring their five freedoms and we do this for the pets in our care and for the pets in our community. And those five freedoms there are uh freedom from hunger, thirst, discomfort pain injury disease expression of normal behavior and fear from fear and distress. Our budget there you can see it's a roughly a $2.4 4 million increase and this is coming by way of increase in salaries, materials and our contracts. Uh our positions that we have right now, we have 188 that was approved last year and we're going to be staying flat this next year. We're not asking for any additional personnel for FY26. Our highlights and initiatives. Um, so our first initiative, our first highlight there is our Westside Adoption Center. Um, so we're anticipating that being completed this month and hopefully get that grand opening and everything for beginning of next month, uh, moving in. Um, we're looking forward to having that extra piece out there in the community, uh, a little bit more accessible to the community with highly adopted animals. uh our surgical efficiencies. Uh we continue to look ways to increase our surgery capabilities at the at the shelter. Um we have two full-time veterinarians. We have two uh partner veterinarians that we work with as well. And then we also work with the clinics in our community. And those things that we're doing, you can see uh in last year we were able to uh have over 11,922 uh surgeries completed with those two vets. we're already at 12,544. So, we're looking at ways making sure that we're those efficiencies are there because that is continues to be one of our gaps is trying to get enough surgeries done. Again, every animal that comes in has to be spayed, neutered before we can adopt them out. Our medical capabilities and innovation, uh we're looking at ways to save more lives in the shelter. Uh one of those things that we did this year was we looked at monoconal antibbody treatments for parvo uh here in our community. Parvo is one of those uh diseases that's prevalent throughout the community and this is a a fairly new treatment um and it's done just for those young puppies that come into our care and we've seen a lot of good success uh talking with the manufacturer of that. We're looking at moving that to treat cats. Um, with the cats, we're going to be treating them for the panlucapenia. So, that's a feline version of of parvo and we're already seeing some good success with that. We're reporting out again to that manufacturer of that. So, those are kind of things that we're doing to increase those odds of, you know, survival for animals in our care. Um, interlocal shelter agreement restructured. We restructured that this uh last year as well. And moving forward, we're looking at an increase projected of $1.7 million increase. Um, that's working with those partner agencies, the county and all the municipalities that we house animals for. Uh, for years we were going without getting that true compensation back to the shelter. So, that restructuring, we're looking at that again, roughly a $1.7 million increase in our revenue there. uh citywide lowcost spayneay neutering. That's one of those things that we constantly hear from constituents that they need here at in the city of El Paso. So, that's one of those initiatives. Uh we did a pilot program uh back in March where we uh partnered with uh outside veterinarians and our friends of El Paso animal services, our nonprofit arm at the at the animal services there, and we were able to uh provide spayneuter surgeries for over 400 pets. So, we're looking at expanding that through donations and work with the uh our vets at the shelter plus the volunteers to bring more of those to the community. Uh we're anticipating have another one of those here in October is will be our next one. Um then we're looking at Title 7. all of our uh ordinances pertaining to animals, we're looking at those from the top down and from simple things such as uh trying to narrow that gap. Uh you know, people try to circumvent the law. So, one of those simple things that we're looking at is uh some of the language. So, people you look on social media and people are rehoming their pets and there's a fee for rehoming. They're not they think that they're not selling, but we don't see it as that way. But we want to make sure that type of language is clear in our ordinances so that we can fill those gaps. And we're also looking at more stringent uh uh ordinances as well. We're so we're developing a vicious animal uh vicious dog uh ordinance which is going to be a step below that dangerous dog. So we want to make sure that our community is safe and continues to be so. And we're also in the middle of our uh shelter assessment. So, we're looking forward for those results to come back in so that we can see those improvements um and get those done for to have better outcomes for the animals in our shelter as well. So, with that, any questions? Representative Chavez. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Terry, for that presentation. Um, how many adoptions did you have this year or last year versus this year and projected for next year? I don't know the exact numbers, but I know we're well above the uh so last year we beat our record for the previous years, and this year we're on target to beat what we did last year. So, I don't know the exact numbers, but we are doing well above what we've been doing. Okay. And and that's great. So it's just a suggestion but from what we do you know in your first sentence your first paragraph where it says deliver exceptional services to support a high quality of life for our pets ensuring their five freedoms maybe just add and ensure that they eventually go to a loving home or get adopted because I think that's a big part of what you do too Terry so I agree thank you for that and if we can help you in any way to achieve that let us know we'll do thank you thank you representative Rocha thank you mayor thanks Terry I appreciate appreciate the update. And I just want to say that out of all the departments, I think El Paso Animal Services is probably one of the ones that not only um has a a an an amazing um employees that work for you, but you also have a vibrant amount of volunteers that help. And so I just uh just wanted to say that I appreciate everything that that you've included here. I know it doesn't include all the volunteer impact that that is provided here with the fostering piece of it, but I just want to make sure that I that I make that statement that I appreciate everything that your employees do and that the volunteers do and the rescues that work with you. Um, I've only taken part in just a couple of events that that El Paso Animal Services through other or or the other other organizations, I guess I should say, have um have held. And it's an it's an amazing group of people that go to make sure that we have these five freedoms for these um these animals. So, I just wanted to say thank you for that. No, we appreciate that. And all those volunteers, they appreciate it as well. And thank you for those kind words. represent Asavto. Thank you, Mayor. Hi. Howdy. I um was kind of looking through your staffing table and you're you're staying the same, right? Last year we gave you 15 new positions and this year you're kind of remaining remaining the same at 188, but then I've kind of noticed that you've gotten rid of some positions and you've added two others. So, have you just been really intentional about how you're looking at your staffing and moving people around for the needs that you have? So this past year we have been converting different positions for those needs that we need. Um some positions that we don't necessarily need anymore. Um and so we reclassify them. Um but more importantly last year is when we added 15 new employees. So we did add extras last year in anticipation of the new shelter opening up. So that's when we did that big push because we knew we were going to need them. Um, so we've been doing a big effort uh the past couple months to get our uh staffing mainly our animal care attendants. Uh we have roughly 66 positions and we're right now uh as of this morning we're only down three. So we've been making that big push to make sure that we have uh plenty of employees to make sure that that uh shelter is also uh very successful. Okay. And as far as the Westside Adoption Center, the second phase, where are we on that? Are we looking at grants? What what does that look like? So when you speak about the second phase, so yeah, we're completing first phase right now. That second phase, uh we're going to be looking at uh cost, what it would take to do that. So there's no grants or anything. We don't really know that true cost, but we're in talks with C right now to try to get those estimates to see what it would cost going forward. Okay. And then I was looking at your highlights and your initiatives. How how much of this is informed and I don't have it in front of me. I I have it somewhere in my office. But um the the plan that we got from ASAC a few months ago, that booklet that kind of gave us an overview of everything um it was very much like the strategic plan. So how is that being infused into what you're doing here? So many of those things that in ASC were implementing already. Um those are those things. So some of it is you know everything ties in together getting that uh live release and I forgot to mention that during my presentation uh our live release you can are continues to be 90% and right now we're trending at 84%. So everything ties into getting to that 90%. So um RTO's uh one of those things that uh they brought up. So those are always one of our initiatives. That's one of our top priorities obviously is getting pets back to their home. So, that's always been been there, but there's no necessarily a new initiative on that. Um, but all those things that they talk about, um, advertisement, those types of things, we're making sure that we have those in our budget so that we can continue those things and make sure that we're getting things like, you know, we want more billboards and type of, you know, in-your-face type advertisements as well. Okay. So, you still you still have that in your budget for advertising and Yes. And then you know at the meeting that I had a few weeks ago where you came which thank you for coming to my district um and hosting that meeting there there was some suggestions about you know saying like spay and neuter your animals and putting that into the water bill or something. Have we started any of those conversations? So so we are looking we're going to be looking at all that what that exact wording is. Um and that's going to be one of the biggest pushes is educating the public on spayneutering. So, we're going to look at best practices on how to get that message across to make it, you know, more impactful for the community to understand the importance of spayneutering your pets, uh, for their health, general health of the pets. Um, so getting that information directly from vetinarians and have that, you know, quotes in there to the public. So, we're not just speaking, you know, at, you know, out from my perspective, but from professional, uh, veterinarians. um and also reducing that overall population more importantly. So that's what we really want to be pushing this uh next go round on our our messaging is getting that out the importance of spayneutering. That's great. And just one last suggestion as we were kind of talking about ASEAC and you're telling me a lot of that has already been implemented or we're at 90% here or something. Well, it's all being worked on all those items and and I think just for especially for your department because there's so much that happens in your department and it's such a vital part of the city. Putting those stats out there and saying where we're at and and stuff like that, I think would help tell your story a little bit better. And if you can do that a little more on the website or just however you want to update in that sense, I think that that would be really helpful to the community. Okay. We do put out uh monthly stats on our website. Um so we do our annual or monthly ASAC meetings. Um and I do provide them a report uh pretty uh extensive report uh with all those stats for the month and um we can share that with your to all council members so that you can share that on your pages as well to that would also help get that message out. Yeah. anything that we can do to help at least in my office. I'd be happy to get that information and really disseminate it and help me talk about the department in a better way when I'm out in the community. Thank you. Thank you. And Terry, this is unrelated to your presentation, but um since we coming off the Fourth of July weekend, did you have a big influx of animals coming to the shelter? We did see an influx like we normally do, but it wasn't as bad as has been in the uh past year. Um, so we saw roughly an extra 20 to 30 dogs coming into the shelter. Um, but we're also seeing the our return to owner. So we're able to get many of those right back to home. So um, so like one day we brought in over about 50 dogs alone. That doesn't include the cats and roughly 21 to 22 of those were returned to home right away uh, because they did have their microchips and we were able to identify them, get them home right away. Very good. Thank you, Terry. Oh, thank you. So, with that, I'm going to introduce Norma Martinez with the libraries. You guys look like you rehearsed this or something. Mayor, good afternoon. Just one um additional, you'll see um in the um budget ordinance a change to the way we are creating a new classification for medical. We did that so that we could be more successful with recruitment of veterinarians because our salaries were not competitive. And so that would has really been successful for us, you know, ensuring that we're matching, you know, what the competition is for those areas. And so that that was one of the important things that we did to to make sure that we have the staff we need in that area. Very good. Thank you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, mayor. Good afternoon, council. Uh, what does the library do? The public library department provides resources for educational, recreational, and cultural development to the El Paso community. In our general fund, you see a variance of 1,69,848. And this is just due to the increase in salaries and the grant match fund that we'll be um applying for for next year. And under the non-general fund, it is showing an increase of $64,539. And that is due primarily to our passport office, which is doing really good. And we provide those services at four of our locations. And our FTEES, we have 174.25 FTEES and we are asking for 2.43. really weird number, but this is just to increase the hours of our fellows in central future and and the grandfunded position that we got for next year for the border heritage department. In our key performance indicators, we track um per program attendance. And as of May, we are at 81,915 attendees, way lower than what we've seen in previous years. And this is due to our signature programs that have had less attendance uh this year. But for the following year, we're going to shoot out for 120,000. So, uh, doing that, we will do do it by our highlights and initiatives. And next year, we are highlighting that we are open at all of our locations. And we will capitalize on using all of our branches to do more programming or add additional programming and continue offering our traditional classes that include the story time, citizenship, English conversation, computer classes, and of our signature programs which include the deos nños, the summer reading club program, team tober, and winter fest. We are now fine free. So we are also capitalizing that we are fine free. We are really grateful for that. Uh we have seen a return of about 40,000 items back to the library since April additionally. And then um of course this provides us with an opportunity to reach more people because we are now fine free. We are adding six more branches to execute the enhanced library cards totaling 10 branches. U plus the popup that we have. We have issued over 6,000 cards since the program started 14 months ago and we will continue to reach and sign any person that needs this service. Our newest program, our center future, this started with a grant from the Aspen. Uh they are located at the main library. We will continue to reach the opportunity youth and young adults between the ages of 16 to 26 years old who are not in school, who are not working, or who are not in any poor secondary education programs. There are about 15,000 opportunity youth that live in El Paso. That's 13.5 of the total youth population. We will continue to partner with breakthrough 915 workforce solutions borderlex neck force program to provide them with opportunities that they will help them out throughout the years. And last but not least, our career online high school program. We have graduated over 200 participants and the OYA students that are participating have taken advantage of of um going through the program to get their high school diploma. and we invite you all to be part of our next graduating class which is in April and we'll be sending information on that. But that concludes my information. If you guys have any questions I'm happy to answer. Sure. Representative Lemon. Thank you ma'am. Thank you. Not tell me a little bit more on the decrease in attendance. Uh page 19 in attendance. So we've had we capitalized on di no. So last year di no we had like like 18,000 people attend and this year we it was dropped to 7,000. So less than half people attended the deos nños this year. Let me stop right there. I was headed to the other nños myself and I couldn't find parking anywhere. I circled and circled and circled and by that time the parade had started, the parade had ended and I was like forget it. So I went to San Alisario to um Arbor Day event. I'm I'm concerned about that. There was also a lot of construction that was taking place that really must have cut into that particular thing. So okay, that's understandable. Go ahead. So th that and also our team toer program that's all that also uh brings a lot of uh youth into to our programs. Last year we had to cut it like one or two hours into the program because it started to rain and it's an outdoor program as well. So those two big programs bring us a lot of people and that's probably one of the reasons we're seeing such a a big cut in our numbers. And Teentober is held where? Last year it was held at Memorial Park. This year it will be at the Judge Marquez Library. Great place. Absolutely great place. Great idea. Sorry. Uh, good. Good. And then I also have an idea for the other loss nños. But anyway um great. Um, the summer reading program, how is that going? How is the participation? It's going very well. Uh, again, numbers are not as where we would want them to be. Um you know this year we went back to registering kids uh either online or on paper because that was one of the concerns that we have heard that people didn't want to register online but they wanted to do paper. So we went back to doing paper but we have not seen the the the numbers that we're looking for. So right now we're like at 3,000 kids that have registered for the program. Age group. What's the age group? It's it's a kinder through adults. Okay. Kinder through adults. Okay. Very good. Um, I will tell you, I'll admit that when Dion brought on this idea of career online program, graduation program, I'll stand up. I was against it. I was against it. Coming from an educational background and and really always always focused on public education. But I had the opportunity to attend the graduation this year and what a fabulous program it is. I had a chance to speak uh briefly, but I got to interview all of the well most of the students that were there. Lifechanging event in their lives. And the biggest thing when I would ask them why did you do this? Why why did you participate? The number one reason was for their children, for their family. They're adults and the children. And then the second thing was promotion. And so it's an incredible economic driver that we don't think about, but I think it's a really successful program. So Dion, my hat goes off to you um 8 10 years later. Um I took a stance, but I'm ready to say I found the light and so I look forward to the graduation again in the future. And Norma, I am I am so happy. I was one of the people that was devastated when the libraries closed during COVID and so many of the library staff that was laid off and I mean it was just a horrible time. Horrible time. Uh you've done a great job of bringing everybody back on and libraries are the heartthrob of a community of the education center. I see many of our students sitting around the Judge Marcus Library even if it's closed because they're working on their laptops or they're using Wi-Fi connections that they don't have in their homes. It is libraries are very very special and so thank you for all the work that you do. Appreciate all your Thank you. I appreciate that. You know our KPIs don't tell all of our numbers or everything that we do at the libraries. you know, this is a small portion of of the programming that we do, but there is so much more that people come into the library for. So, I'm grateful that that I have your support. Thank you so much, Representative Ato. Thank you, Mayor. Hi. Um, I just I'm really excited to hear about the enhanced library cards uh moving forward to all 10 locations that they could be at, which that's going to be our max, right? Well, no. Actually, we moved it to July. So, we we were proposing this pro project to go in in September, and that's why I have it here, but due to what I heard when I um present it to council, we moved it up. And so, we now moved it to July. July 24th, you should have received an invitation. Okay. Uh for the the enhanced library card program that we're going to have at the main library. Okay. And then, but that's going to be the max that we could have, right? 10 libraries because of passport issues at other correct. Okay. Yes sir. So, I'm I'm happy to hear that it's happening faster and it'll be all over. Um, one one thing that you were kind of saying about the ninños, the the steep drop in attendance, have you kind of digested that and kind of looked at what to do differently next year or something? We are working on seeing what else we do uh besides our parade that we had added and it was really fantastic and people really enjoyed it. We had had the parade years years back um and now you know we're going we're going to celebrate our 30th year so we are wanting to go really big. Um Miss representative Leone had given us some suggestions here. So, we are are looking into it to see about parking situation and if we can have it somewhere different than Washington Park. Okay. And and with all of the libraries being open, which you've kind of run laps around as you should um throughout this year, do you think that will help attendance on many different programming that you might have throughout the city? It it varies but I we're hoping that it will bring uh more people. Um you know programming fluctuates. It's nothing that we can you know if we have a story time one story time we'll have 30 people then the next time we'll have 10 and it's just so many variables that that happen when we we do the the programs. Okay. But we're hoping Yeah. And then I feel like the Mac is right next door and kind of combining stuff would probably be helpful too. Yeah, the two different things, but yes. Yeah, we're we're very excited about that. Okay. Well, thank you so much. Thank you, Representative Chavez. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Norma. Representative Fiero and Boyjo, do you guys have a library in your district? Yes, please. Oh, thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Reporching out for district six. Yes, we do. In fact, she's transferring the budget from one to six just for that one library. I'm just trying to share the love here. Thank you. So, um Norma has been very accommodating since I do not have a senior center. We are starting a pilot program shortly to create um some activities for seniors at the library. So, if it works, I will share the information with both of you so maybe you could replicate it in your districts. And I just want to thank you for for helping me with this and and Patricia in uh the Doris Vendor Library was was very nice. So it was great meeting with her. Thank you. Just an idea. Thank you. We got to make it work. Now, guess what's happening now? Representative Fiero. Oh, thank you, Mayor, for recognizing me. Um, thank you so much to you and your team. We have our community meetings at your library in district six and you have the best team around. My daughter does homework at the downtown library. She loves it. She wishes it stay open all night, but that's other story. But but thank you so much for everything you do for our communities. Thank you for h letting us um um have our meetings there. You all do a great job. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Mayor Putin. And Norma, can you take just a few more seconds and brag about your passport program and where people can go and all that good stuff? Absolutely. So, we have passports at four branches. Uh our three regional branches. Doors on the west side, um Richard Burches in the northeast, Esparansa, Aosta Moreno in the far east, and the Armiho branch right here in the downtown area. So, these uh four locations are open on Tuesdays through Saturdays. We're the only location open on Saturdays and you don't need any appointments. It's just a walk-in. Can you ask, represent Nino? Norma, I know last time I got briefed by you, um, you gave me the number of passport applications to process. Can you share that with us? We've issued 12,000 I have it written down somewhere here. Wow. 12,495. I think that is extremely impressive. It is. It is awesome. We This is our biggest year yet. Yeah. Now, so thank you so much for the work. Um I know that I had a uh Congresswoman had an event at the Espans Costa Library and we shared some of those stats and you provided some important information for the community. So grateful for you and all the work that you all do as well. You're one of El Paso's bestkept secrets. Thank you. Thank you. Let's not keep it a secret. No, let's put it out there. We will. That number is going to go from 12,000 to to 15 to 20. That's great. All right. Thank you, Norma. Thank you. And now I'll introduce Ben five. They did rehearse. They did rehearse. Good afternoon, Ben. Good afternoon, mayor and council. For the record, Ben Fe. Uh'll be presenting on museums and cultural affairs. What we do is that we are committed to the continued development of the city's arts industry, providing quality programs that represent the city's diverse cultures. And I think that's something I get really excited about is that quality programming piece uh for youth, for families, for scholars, for visitors, for El Pasoans of all ages. Um what you'll see in our budget variance this year uh is really due to uh a lot of the drivers you're hearing from every other department, which is due to salaries and benefit increases. Um but we also uh have a big uh our biggest variances besides those is due to Lanube. Um per agreement with the city uh the operators uh get a stop an operating stipen from the museums and cultural affairs department. We've been budgeting that at 1.9 million uh but we will be going up to the contractual cap this year at 2.5 million uh in acknowledgement of the fact that they are operating fully at this point. Um and then of course we also are increasing funds for public art repairs. Some of the highlights uh that we wanted to just point out. First of all uh the Mexican-American Cultural Center which opened in March uh that many of you have been supporting uh through attendance at various events set a record or broke a record that was in place for over 27 years for one-day attendance. Previously, that was held by the Museum of Art when they opened their downtown location in 1998. Uh the MAC uh broke that record this last March with over 10,000 people coming through the doors in one day. Um as I mentioned, the contractual stipen for Lad Nub is increasing to the max. Understanding that uh they are now operating at full capacity. uh it is a very expensive building to run uh and they want to make sure that the quality stays uh at a consistent rate for all visitors. And then lastly, one of the things that we're working on and I want to highlight uh for all quality of life facilities uh including parks and wreck and libraries is that we're working towards cultural city certification for all of our uh all of our facilities. And what that does is it's a training program for staff to be able to understand and better serve the needs of families with children with uh with uh sensitivities to to uh sensory elements. Um but it also allows us to be on a national map of facilities. Uh so as people are planning their vacations and their trips, if they have family members uh with those specific needs, they go to that map and they will see that there's in El Paso are going to be over 40 facilities uh that are ready to uh serve them and understand their needs, which we're very excited about. Um and then our key performance indicators. Uh every year we report out on the quality of life projects completed at or under budget. Uh and I should mention we're being very specific here to public art. This year we're at 100% so far. And then uh increase in attendance. This year we have had a huge increase. Uh you'll see we're at 624,000 uh over 624,000 visitors as of the end of May. But I want to point out that we understand that this is a surge year because we've opened up two new facilities with the MAC and with Lanube. And so you'll see that next year we're bringing the target down uh because we want to be conservative uh and practical. Uh we're still going to be aggressive uh and aspirational, but we really do feel that next year will probably be more of a normal baseline that we can start measuring from moving forward. And with that uh I promised I'd be quick. I'm open to any questions. Ben, do you play golf? I do not. Not anymore. You're sandbagging in 26. you're going down. I think that number is going to go up. So, I guess never play golf with Ben because he's going to sand back up. I think hopefully your numbers are going to go go up from there. But, uh we would hope so, sir. We just want to make sure that we uh hear under promise and overd deliver. I think it's very similar to what Mr. Cortinez was talking about with his projections. Uh is to be make sure that we're being conservative and reasonable. Okay. You know how to hit 100%. I see it. Any questions? Uh Representative Leon. Yes, Ben, what is the stipen for Lanube? What is the present stipen and what will it increase to or how does it work? This current fiscal year, the stipend is uh budgeted at 1.9 million. We will be taking that to 2.5 million, which is actually in the contract with the city. That is where it is capped at. Uh what they do is they submit on a monthly basis their expenses. uh we verify all of those expenses at about 300 different items that they're submitting on a monthly basis to reimburse them and that's part of the operating agreement with the city for the facility and that's u a 2.5 million stipen that will be continued in perpetuity or so actually per the agreement with Lanoba we can uh re-examine that number uh every couple of years which we anticipate we probably will be doing with them in the next few fiscal cycles Uh but this was actually an agreement that was put in place with the previous council uh when the decision was made to have an outside operator for the facility. So even though it is costing 2.5 million uh this is about a third of their operating costs. And so the city spared from 2/3 of the actual operating cost that Lanube uh takes those expenses on with fundraising and also with admissions uh revenue and other sources of revenue. Does the city make any money off of this? No ma'am. Okay. So, let me think. We're giving them 2.5 and then you said something about onethird oneird which equals to one/ird of their operational cost. Yes ma'am. So, we're giving and we get nothing in return. I would say we get a lot in return in the fact that we have an operator for a quality of life facility. Funding. We get no funding. We get no funding. me. Uh, unless you thought about the economic impact of having a world-class children's museum in the downtown core. Okay. What 2.5 and it's at least it'll be in place at least for two more years. Uh so the agreement actually the agreement is actually um for the next 30 years but as I mentioned in the agreement itself we uh can relook at that every couple of years and we anticipate that they'll want to do that as well. Okay. Okay. We build it. We give them the money. We got no funding in return. We do not get funding in return. But again we are not paying those other twoirds operating costs. Okay, thank you represent Nino. Thank you, mayor, and thank you, Ben, for all your hard work. Museum and Culture Affairs is something that I truly love that the organization takes part of. And I know that you also um you know, work handtohand with Mr. Jose Garcia with Destination El Paso. So, I'm curious to navigate just cuz I know that Texas is offering now a film incentive um that has that potentially could boost our economy. Um, do we have any plans set within our, you know, initiatives that we're working for the next fiscal year to help kind of jump on board with these incentives? We actually do, sir. So, you have pointed out that there is a really transformational change in Texas's film incentive program that will allow us to be able to compete more aggressively with New Mexico, which, as we all know, has traditionally been a challenge uh for El Paso film productions. Um, we've actually started some discussions with uh Drew in Jose's shop, uh, who runs the film commission, looking at different ways that we can capitalize on that. Uh, we're actually talking about providing some funding, uh, to be able to incentivize local filmmakers, film festivals. Uh, we're also looking at doing some orientations for local filmmakers, knowing that a lot of times they may not be keeping up with the legislature the way you all do or we do, to be able to get them a better understanding of what's now available. Um, but there is a lot in the works. Great. Thank you for that. And and I'll look forward to sitting down with you all and brainstorming a little bit. I met with a couple of filmmakers and artists last week, including uh renowned artist author Ben Hamin Ali Science, and he shared really about us focusing and helping empower the community um within the arts. So, thank you for all the work that you do as well. Thank you. And we'll we'll look forward to working with you on that, sir. Representative Tjo. Thank you, Mayor Ben. Um it's great to hear that you have uh 40 facilities that offer these uh services. My my son my grandson is autistic and it's great to know that these things are offered. How can um the community learn about these which facilities are the 40 facilities that offer this sensory? So we can provide a list to you ma'am. Uh we're this next fiscal year we'll be going through uh the facilities. There's two phases. What we did as department heads is prioritized uh the facilities which include our community centers, our libraries, our museums. Uh we prioritize them based on attendance numbers uh and also knowing anecdotally, you know, sometimes that we have this program at at this particular facility and we know we need to be better about serving those those people. Once we get to um a place of actually having everything certified, we'll make sure to uh tout that. We're going to trumpet that. We're excited about that. So, we'll work with all of your offices to get that information out there. Um, we have a crossf functional team that's been working on this. We also interface with a number of community organizations working with the specific population that we'll want to get the information out to as well. Very good. And this national map of facilities is that is it an actual we can we can provide you the link uh so you can see that. Uh, a good example is actually looking at Southwest University Park. The ballpark is actually certified and so you'll get a sense what a visitor would be able to do with all of our facilities, seeing a map, understanding where are the quiet zones, um you know, how we can better accommodate visitors. Very good. Thank you, Represent. Thank you, mayor. Um I just kind of wanted to share a little bit from what we were discussing. I think it was last week when you kind of gave me an overview of what you've been doing. I I think that not only are you a part of a big a big part of quality of life, you're also contributing in a very great way to economic development. And as this next fiscal year comes around, as we were kind of discussing, how can we quantify your story in a better way where you're saying, you know, we're bringing all these people to downtown because we had this event at one of our museums and then after they went to the event, they went to our restaurants in downtown and we brought people from out of town because we have such great assets, right? and and I think that that's going to be really key to to the future of the city and and I think that you're you're doing a tremendous job in in that sense. The the other thing is I think Lanua is one of the biggest investments the city should be doing, right? When when you think about government, there's a lot of things in government that don't necessarily work well and a lot that do. And I think this is a prime example of government at its best. we are going to go to $2.5 million. We're going to look at it in the future and we're going to determine if we need to go up on on that contract and and I think it's it's an investment for our community. We have a worldclass museum, something that I didn't have as a kid that I grew up in this community in the '9s and the 2000s and it was always we don't have anything to do in El Paso. Well, we could go to the movies and and that was about it. And now the kids have a place to go have fun and learn. So when I hear somebody say that we're getting nothing in return, we're getting a lot. The community is winning and the children have a place to go to to really really learn and it has been profiled as one of the best museums for children in the country. That's a huge huge deal. So it it just covers a lot of bases for me from education to quality of life to economic development. It it is an investment that we need to continue to protect and I don't think we should look at it in a derogatory way at all. Thank you sir. And I will say um you know our economic impact study is severely outdated. Um the organization that we work with typically only opens that study up twice a decade. So we're looking at when the next cycle would be. Um, but the last time we measured those numbers, the arts and culture, nonprofit arts and culture in El Paso helped generate a $104 million impact into the community. 24 million uh of that actually going to bars and restaurants. Um, that's a huge deal. And sales tax and sales tax. Congrats. Sales tax. He Miss Mac, he needs to be at the table for the next strategic plan as we're coming up with people. Represent Leon. Thank Thank you, Mayor. My comments in no way diminish the importance and the contributions of Lanu. Let that be perfectly clear. Yes, ma'am. It's unfortunate when people misunderstand or put words in what I have said. What I would like to ask Ben is that the next time around where there is a re-examination of the contract that we think about this factor. There are many families maybe families in the 90s and the 200s or whatever that even today cannot afford to attend Lanov. admission at Lanube is very high and perhaps if the city continues to supplement it that there ought to be a way to identify scholarships, award opportunities for students throughout the community. That's what I would hope that maybe you would be able to look at. Um, it isn't that it's not a quality. It's not any of that kind of stuff. It's simply that there are many, many children in this community that don't have the money to go to Lanu. And if that's something that we are pouring in 1.9 or 2.5 million, then let's open it up to the children in our community that don't have the financial ability to do it. That's what I that would be my ask and my ask to you um Dion, please. Yes, ma'am. Understood. And I think of course, you know, that's the whole point of all of these discussions is to be able to have the the the back and forth. I will say that Lanube does have a number of programs to be able to uh remove uh perceived or real barriers to be able to attend. Um what I will commit to do is I can put together uh a briefing for you to be able to have that information. Any other members of the council, we we did this with the previous council. Um, I'm happy to do that again, uh, because I think we can always be better about helping to tout the benefits that are available to all El Paso families to be able to participate. I would also commit, uh, that we can be doing a better job even at our free museums highlighting programs that sometimes have a fee uh, where we have scholarships that are sometimes not even taken advantage of. So, uh, understood and I will put that together for you, ma'am. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Represent. Thank you, mayor. And and I wanted to add from when Lenovo was going to open last August, we had conversations, like you said, the prior council with Stephanie Yo, the community foundation when she was serving as the inim CEO, right? And many of my questions were really posed toward how are we making this accessible to all kids, right? and she had already answered all my questions with everything that she put forth in terms of pricing. There is a benefit for people that are on SNAP. They don't shame anybody. If somebody needs to pay the lower rate, they they just say, you know what, um, go ahead for a few dollars. So, I I don't think that there are barriers there in in terms of what Lanova has done. The other thing that was really important for me for this museum being so close to Sagundo Vario and to Chihuahua is that they were going to go out into those communities and bring those kids there because this museum was in their backyard. And if we opened the museum that created barriers for children, we were doing the wrong thing. And so I think that there has been a very equitable approach toward bringing kids from all different backgrounds. They are working with the school districts as well to bring kids so they are enjoying this. They are also bringing kids in from New Mexico and other surrounding communities to make sure that they're able to enjoy the museum. So I I think they've done a really phenomenal job in terms of trying to reach all kids of all different backgrounds. And not only that, if you go to the museum, you have English and Spanish everywhere, right? in yes sir in on the walls on the exhibits and they don't prioritize English or Spanish right sometimes English is on top Spanish is on the bottom or it's vice versa and I think that has been a very powerful testament toward their approach to make this an accessible and fair museum they also have um accessibility for kids with different capacities and they are doing a lot of different events around that. So I think that is a testament to them being a worldclass museum and making sure that they are inclusive and they are there for all kids of different backgrounds. So this is a great investment and we could, you know, roll back the tape and kind of look at what was said and what was forgotten in this conversation, but I'm glad these are recorded so we could go back and see what was said. So thank you. Thank you, sir. and Ben. Um, again, thank you for all that you're doing. And as you know, I'm a member of the Texas Cultural Trust Board in Austin, and it's important that, uh, we look at public art and everything you're doing. Can you touch on the August Memorial Tina Ortega uh, award that we're up for? Yes, sir. Thank you for for bringing that up. Uh, was selected as one of the top 100 recently completed artworks in the world. Voting finishes this week. It's a people's choice award. They actually changed the rules. So now you have to sign up for a free account to be able to vote because MCAT stacked the votes the last time we were uh up for this award. Um but uh we can we can go ahead and get that information back out to your offices if you'd like. We really want to see if we can get this to the finish line. Yeah. That way we can share it on our on our socials and get that out there. But we know how important public art is to a community and to especially our youth. So thank you for all that you're doing. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Ben. B, you're supposed to introduce someone next. All right. Uh, with that, I think we will bring up uh, Mr. Coldplay. There we go. Good afternoon. Mayor and Council. Good afternoon. Oh my goodness, what an introduction. Um, do I go to to the next one? It's already here. Uh, Jose Garcia with Destination El Paso. Good afternoon again. Uh, who are we and what do we do? Um, Destination El Paso, uh, first and foremost is a third party contractor for, uh, the city of El Paso. Uh, our mother ship is Legends ASM Global. Uh, we're responsible, uh, for three different divisions. Uh, Destination El Paso is El Paso live. El Paso's Live is like what I like to call the facilities and events. So, the El Paso Convention Center, the Plaza Theater, McKelan Canyon Amphitheater, the Chavis Theater, Arts Festival Plaza. Um and then uh as well as we produce uh our own events. Um the the most one recent one we just had was the Sun City Craft Beerfest. Uh we partner with the city and uh produce the ice rink during Winterfest. Uh we partner with Sun Bowl. We do the Fan Fiesta, etc., etc. Um and we have some great ideas coming up for uh next year. Uh and then we have Visit El Paso. and visit El Paso is uh El Paso's tourism marketing arm uh responsible for and I'm going to start with uh Rep. Nino's uh film. We have the film commission with Drew Mayor Oaks. Uh we do leisure travel uh promotion. We do meetings and conventions and sports promotion. Um and then the third arm is El Paso Waterparks. Um, and so you can see there that uh through El Paso Water Parks and uh El Paso Live, we have a responsibility to uh to to bring in revenue for the city. Um, and it's been trending very well and we expect that to continue to trend uh well into the next fiscal year. Um, and then of course uh hot continuously strong here in El Paso. Hotel occupancies tax continuing strong in El Paso. uh we continue that to say that strong through uh next fiscal year. Um here uh again focusing on that 69% for hotel occupancy tax. Um El Paso leads the state in average uh hotel occupancy tax. We also lead the nation in hotel occupancy tax. Um again focusing on meetings and conventions. Uh activating uh the convention center. Uh we've had backto-back wins uh starting a few years ago with the uh Texas State Architects. Last year we had the Texas Dems. Big impact. Um and now we're going to have Wiretech uh coming up in a couple months. So continuing to work on that uh uh into the future. Um and then continuing to book entertainment bookings. Um that's really kind of the meat and potatoes of El Paso Live are how strong the Plaza Theater is, how strong the Chavez Theater is. the Plaza Theater ranked 23rd in the world for theaters under 2500 seats um by uh Billboard uh magazine. So um you can kind of see there uh what we're looking at in terms of our KPIs. Uh 18,000 for this year, we're looking at a 2% increase for next year. Um and then facility rental revenue for destination El Paso, a 2% increase, continuing to strong show those strong numbers on the revenue side. Um, and so now, uh, mayor, I'm I can give the I can give the, uh, well, before I go into Coldplay, uh, I also want to say, uh, um, last week we just got awarded, uh, for from Texas Travel, uh, the best visitor information center in the state of Texas. Um, but we all know that everything in Texas is bigger and better. So, you can extrapolate that out and say we're the best visitor information center in the whole nation. So, um, very proud of our our downtown visitor information center. uh you know, we've uh racked up, you know, several awards and accolades. A few months ago, we got the Gene Phillips um uh destination marketing organization award, which is for the entire state of Texas. Usually goes to one person, but it came to our organization. So, that's a a real credit to to Brooke Underwood and her team. So, um I can get into some of the numbers uh that we learned last week for um for Coldplay if you like. Let me see if they have any questions on this. I'm sorry. Didn't mean to jump the gun. We'll see. We got represent Lemon. I do. Thank you, Jose. Um, two things. Uh, first of all, have you considered doing something other than these festivals associated with alcoholic beverages? Uh, yes, we have. um they don't often pen out uh on a P&L because uh the the alcohol and the and the the the food and the beverage. Uh those margins allow us to to be able to to make a little bit of money on these uh on these events that we do. The reason I ask you is as you remember not too long ago we went to Ketero and Teisapan and we went to um Aeria and it was Artisanas and with the loss of the Mercadon Huarees and all of those kinds of things we really have lost that kind of a market and I'm wondering if that would be something to consider to having some type of artisania market here in El Paso that might be more that then tequila and lemon or margaritas and so cervesa. The answer to the question is yes. Uh we need a lot of runway on that uh for that. And so what we're going to do is we're going to start small. Uh and I don't want I guess I can go ahead and announce it. We're going to do an event next year called Protoo Proto El Paso. Um and it's going to be primarily food and drinks. So we're going to have a coffee area. We're going to have an ice cream area. We're going to have wine area. We're going to have craft beer. uh we're going to have uh student cooking competition, things of that sort. So, uh we have that that'll be coming up uh next year that we're going to have as one of our special events. And then down the road, uh one of the the thoughts that I have because of the event and the reason we went to uh Veno Queso is because I learned about it 3 years ago and I think El Paso would be perfect regional for for that sort of thing, including the articals, right? And I think that's what that's what would cap it together that we could do something like that. I just I think I think we're in an ideal location. Great. I I think that's certainly something that that I would like to to see and I know it can't be next. It won't be next fiscal year. I'm so sorry it's not going to be this year. I know those things do take more runway. Yeah. Sponsorships and all of those kinds of things. I can understand. Um going into uh water parks um there again I'm I'm concerned with the high rates that you know these were built by taxpayer dollars and yet accessibility is really really limited. Um uh originally Leonel Forti swimming pool was in district 7. Um, then it was changed. The boundaries of course were changed, but they built a something that really wasn't in the plans at the time, but it did happen afterwards. After I left, it became a um a water park. And the community really really misses their swimming pool. And I can tell you, Jose, that um a friend of ours there consistently would go to Lonel Forte three, four times a week. The kids would swim, family would swim. They'd put their sandwiches or their dinner and their soft drinks and would go to the go to the pool, spend three hours, four hours, and spend $18. They went to Chapato one time and spent $65. They haven't been able to go back again. And so I'm concerned there again about facilities that we have funded that we have paid for that are not accessible to the general public. Um, and I'm wondering the possibility that you may take this back and consider how can we afford um opportunities and again perhaps through the schools awards, you know, you have a a family night for two to go to one of the water parks, you know, in the different parts of the city. I I just think that that's really important. It might be something good that could come out. I know it might be a little bit lost in the profit margin, but it might be something good to give back to this community. Just as a thought and it's absolutely something that I can work with uh city staff on. Absolutely. Thank you very much. Thank you, Representative Chavez. Thank you, Mayor. Hi, Jose. Hi Rep. Okay, so uh congratulations on your award. My my one big ask for next fiscal year is to come back and say we won this, we won that, we did great on this, we did great on that. And I think you can do it. I think you and your team can do it. So I do have a question on page 23. So your hotels booked in fiscal year 24 were higher, but then the occupancy, I'm assuming the hot tax was lower. So these are future hotel rooms booked. So they're not uh they're not actually experienced in that fiscal year. So this is the future the they sometimes get booked two or three years out. Um but but the ones that say fiscal year 24 I'm just right here. Yeah. So it's future hotel rooms booked. So it's not uh it's not actual hotel rooms that are that are experienced in that year. So it's just future bookings. So we so for example we'll book um Acme Association of Iron Workers for 2027 that will be credited to this fiscal year because we we signed the contract in this year. Okay. So the 18,000 is for when is what we're going to those are future hotel rooms that we're going to book this fiscal year. Okay. And then so FY24 was so high, I put a note down there, really small that we um we had a couple large convention bookings and then uh because of timing uh two large volleyball events landed in that fiscal year. Yes. And so it kind of spiked our future our future booking. So uh we're comfortable with 2% increase on 18% on 18,000. Sorry. Okay. There's a a big um pickle ball uh court that opened in District 1 and another one that's about to open that's big enough for um you know tournaments and the like. Yeah. So, it'll be interesting to see if we attract more. We have young Omar who's uh who came to us from UTEP and he's uh uh he he eats pickles now at his desk cuz it's pickle ball pickle ball pickle ball. It's it's the Well, I'm hoping this will impact our hot tax, you know, for the there are some hotels that are being built in it's a hot industry in the in the sports. Um when you think about outdoor sports, you think about soccer, you think about baseball, you think about softball, but when you think about folks who are playing pickle ball, they have discretionary income. So, um they might put an additional date on the shoulders of the tournament. And I'm just wondering what we could do to attract, you know, more tourism or events like this one, including the the Dem convention like you just mentioned and the impact that that created. You know, all these different types of of events that will increase hot tax, sales tax, and all of that. And we do those through our familiar association trips, famil trips, um bringing in events, right, holders. Now that it's finished, we'll be able to go take them uh to the pickle ball courts, show them uh the uh East Side Sports Complex. Same thing. It's getting them here. Once we get them here, pretty much the city sells itself. Uh it's change, we have to change their thought process and what they think about El Paso. And by doing that, as we bring them to El Paso. Perfect. And if we can help you with that, let us know. Absolutely. We'll call on y'all, y'all. Thank you, Representative Ato. Thank you, Mayor. Well, Jose, this is your second time presenting before council. Yeah. Well, well, in this format for the budget, I did the other the other format. Okay. in the nice room upstairs, you remember? Yeah. Just wanted to say A+ cuz I know you worried about that the last time you were before council. Not not the budget. Thanks. But um you know I I am I'm a big fan of what you're you're doing at at Destination El Paso. I think your team is really awesome and I I really appreciate that. I Before you get to coplay, I did want to ask how um the conals conference went. It went very well. As per the usual, downtown El Paso shows really, really well. We get a lot of, you know, these are law enforcement individuals that are coming in from other municipalities around Texas that don't have an opportunity to see a clean, safe downtown of this magnitude. You know, it's people like, "Oh, El Paso has a small downtown." We don't have a small downtown. You know, we medium large downtown. It's the safest and the cleanest definitely in the state of Texas. but you know potentially in uh in in the United States if if everybody travels here. Um so excellent uh hotel Paso de Norte did a great job. Um you know those constables were in the Lucasi store you know on their breaks so it went very very well and they had and they had good numbers. No glad to hear that. I I enjoyed going to their kickoff. It it was really great. It was it was awesome that the council was able to make it as well. So, um, one one thing that I've been thinking about the MAC and how we can really capitalize on what they're doing there. There's, um, Lasartistas or Los Artistas, I'm sorry, the, um, art and fine crafts. They do it at Epic Railard. I'm wondering how maybe next year we could bring them over to the MAC and bring them downtown to bring that that part of El Paso to to life. If you want to look into that, I'm just giving you a suggestion. I'll get with my partner Ben over there and and we'll we'll we'll figure out a solution for that. Yeah, I think that would be really really great for us. Appreciate it. Thank you, Rep. Represent Fiero. Thank you, Mayor Jose. You know, I don't have to say anything about how great your your organization is. Every event we've been to there, the food's delicious, the the your team is amazing. So, can you move aside? This is for Ben. Ben, um, one thing I forgot Ben, one thing I forgot to mention to you was five. Yeah, I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you, Jose. Are are you going backwards? Yes, sir. Yeah, I'm going by height. I like Ben more. Um, Ben, um, Mr. Sorry, Mr. I forgot to mention we were talking about Lanube as this weekend is the national u mental uh health awareness celebration and Lanube is hosting 400 um families and children at at the at the uh museum and when we were talking about it I forgot to mention that and kudos to them kudos to you and kudos to Jose just for standing next to you but yes thank you then thank you sir represent are you done oh thank you mayor represent him trail. Thank you, mayor. Quick question. The are are you all working with the Borderland Mountain Bike Association? I'm confident that we do. Uh especially on their event that they have in the Franklin. Okay. Yes. Yes. Because they they recently had a competition. Uh they had over a hundred people from out of town that and that was Yes. That was in the spring and uh and we we were we supported them on that event. Very good. I can't remember the name of the It's like death mountain bike trail run 2025 or something like that. Yes, it's the it's the Borderland Mountain Bike Association. But how do other associations how do you collaborate with them? Are you looking for them or do they need to come to you? Well, uh, we we look for them, uh, especially locally, uh, and we'll, you know, whether it's the university, whether it's the hospitals, whether it's the city entities, everybody's an everybody's a member of an association of whatever, right? And we want to know what that association is. uh if it's a professional association, a sports association, what have you, and and let us know, we want to get to know about what that association does, where do they meet, what's the membership like um so that we can then say, do you have a point of contact? And then Brooke and her team, they go after it. And so, um if there's an association that you're a part of, we want to know about it and then we want to know what they do, what are their educational opportunities, what are the activities that they do to travel so that we could potentially host them here in El Paso. So, absolutely. Very good. Thank you. Thank you, mayor. Now, are you going to sing or are you going to present numbers or I didn't bring Brooks, so I didn't can't do the singing and acting, so normally I would. Okay. Coldplay, uh, and, uh, Mayor, you're right. I I knew half of the ones I had a text for the other half. So, uh, Coldplay broke all records. Okay. So, let's start with ticket sales. Gross ticket sales broke the records. Soldout show broke the records. two soldout shows broke the records record in merch sales for and this is at the Sun Bowl and again the credit for this goes to Horqu and his team at uh UT Dr. Wilson at UTEP. Um when we were there, something that that uh really had an impact to me and that's what when I've been saying since I moved to El Paso because you don't see a lot of universities doing this is they don't have to do this. UTEP does not have to do it. They do it because they want to do it and they know they can be successful at it. And so I think that's really important to uh to put out there because that sort of ambition and initiative is unique in higher education. Um, the most food and beverage, uh, over a million dollars in food and beverage they sold. The most water they sold, um, it was 105 degrees, I think, on both days. Um, they had visitors from 49 states. Now, uh, those of you that were there, I'm going to ask the other ones. What state wasn't the one representing? Alaska. Nope. Delaware. Nope. Nope. Rep. Lemon. Vermont. Vermont was the only state. So, uh, we're we're headed to Vermont to do some, uh, sales over in Vermont. Um, uh, um, and so, uh, it was the most sustainable event, which is very important. That's important, especially to, uh, big, uh, promoters like Live Nation. Um, and then for us, the way, you know, we're trying to support UTEP is, uh, set a record in, uh, occupancy. On Friday, 94.5%, Saturday, 94.5%. Um, but also an average daily rate, $150 on both nights. So, uh, just an incredible show. Uh, hats off to UTEP. Um, you know, they worked on it for months and, uh, they didn't have to do it. They threw their hat in the ring. We got selected. UTEP got selected and, uh, everybody from El Paso did well. I know a lot of you uh on the deis uh stepped up and made sure that all the different organizations that would you know have uh touch points with uh with our guests um that we were that El Paso showed well and and we sure as heck did represent Fos the mayor was mentioning that when you you said that they broke the records in ticket sales that it was around $12 million 16 million it keeps getting higher I thought it was 22 2 million. Yeah. Oh, see it gets higher and higher. Ben, 22 million. Ben, do you want to go for 28? Ben say I may have had Ben. We'll split the middle. 24 and a half. No, it uh No. And when they say it set when when when the Sun Bowl sets a record, that sets a record for the whole city. You know, no, we have no other facility that seats, you know, 50,000 people. So, those are those are numbers to be attained. Correct. That's it. Okay. Represent Roachcha. Thank you, Mayor. And and I just want to say first of all, Jose, everyone I've spoken to outside of the city of El Paso has said how wonderful Destination El Paso is to work with. And so that says a lot about you and your team and everything that that you all put out for um for this event. So kudos to you and your team for pulling it all together and coordinating everything on that on that end. But the other thing is that the city of El Paso came off really well in this in this situation. And and I know I'll probably speak I I saw Chief Killings earlier. He may not be here anymore, but there were only 300 incidents. Granted, it was very hot that that the first night and the second night, too. But there were only 300 incidents that fire had to intervene on with over 90,000 people. Do the math and that tells you how well prepared we were to be able to handle the crowd. Um, Chief Pacillas had told me that there weren't any issues as far as, you know, major issues with any type of um, events that the police would need to intervene on. and Sun Metro and Street Car. You guys knocked it out of the park. I think there were over 9,000 um people that rode Sun Metro or the street car the first night. I don't know what the second night is, but those are all reasons when these types of events are so important to the city of El Paso because we get one chance to make a first impression, just one. And so when we all come together and we collaborate and we work together and everything comes off like it did, it was an amazing experience, not only for those of us that live here and went to the concert, but for everybody that came and visited because it wasn't just the 49 states. I'd love to see what the what the international impact was as well because I met people from Canada. I know Ben mentioned that he met someone from South Africa if I'm not mistaken. And so there were people from all over the world that landed here in El Paso for that event. And so thank you, Jose, to you and your team for doing an outstanding job on making just being wonderful ambassadors like you all do to all the events that you that you try to get to El Paso. Kudos. Congratulations. Thank you, Rep. And the credit goes to the team. The team at Destination El Paso is uh 10 for 10. Representative Chavez. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Jose. Once again, u I wanted just to ask Robert Cortinez if maybe we could get a report once you receive all the sales tax in a few months from from this last event from Cold Play. So, uh hopefully next week we'll have a pretty comprehensive uh report on the economic impact. Uh and that'll give us a really good idea of where they were coming, what, you know, when they were here, where were they staying, where were they going? Uh, and then the overall economic impact. My number right now, without knowing or seeing anything, but basing it off uh, two shows they did a couple years ago, uh, ED and Mly Crew, I'm going to guess it's not going to be lower than $2.2 million. Okay. So, I think it's going to be higher than 2.2. People are saying it's going to be much higher, but 2.2 is my floor, just anecdotally. Thank you, Robert. And then, yeah. Yeah. So, on the sales tax, we won't see that again. I talked about that lag. We won't see that until August or September. Dr. But maybe you could give us a report back officially once you receive the Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Numbers. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Rob. Yep. And Jose, congratulations to you guys on everything that you're doing. I also want to echo what Representative Rocha said to our public safety officers on an incredible job that they did with that many. 94,000 people uh attended the event. Uh, I also want to say thank you to U Live Nation, Daryl at Live Nation, uh, Jorge, UTEP, and everyone that helped put this uh, significant event on for our community. It goes back to quality of life. You know, if we want to attract people to come here, you have to have events like this. So, we we're definitely on the radar. And I will tell you, I I bet you UTEP is working on something maybe not as big as Coldplay, but maybe close as big as the next best thing. Exactly. Exactly. But very good and thank you for the wonderful presentation. Any more questions for Okay, thank you. Okay, now Joe Monttoano from the zoo. Mr. Cole, please. That was the longest four minutes of my life. Hi Joe. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Joe Monosano, director of the El Paso Zoo Botanical Gardens. So, before I forget, Representative Trey Hill, we've been Ben was talking about Culture City. We've been signed up, we've been certified for a couple years now. So if you go on our website, hit their logo, it brings up Texas, all the places, and then goes to the country. So you can do it that way. It's really easy way until the city gets all signed up. So at the zoo, we celebrate the value of animals and natural resources, integrate opportunities for people to rediscover their connection to nature. Um, as you can see there, our budget relatively flat. I mean, we are having just the increase in salaries, not flat, excuse me, but that increase is because of the salaries. Uh, there's a decrease in the capital budget. There's also a decrease in the non-general fund as you could see 269. Normally what happens at the end of the year we balance the zoo budget from our um our fund balance. This is the first year we've never had to do or we didn't have to do that because we have all our membership revenue coming in from selling our own membership. So that represented that 26 that represents that 269. Actually it's more than that but that's so we didn't have to pull that from the budget this year. Excuse me. Uh public position wise it shows one up there but we have actually added four new exhibit texts. Those are our guys that do a lot of the work on the exhibits once they're built. Three came internally. We just moved positions around. We found some people that uh it was just internal movement and there's one new position we'll be requesting for next year. So, some of our highlights. Um so, we are completing our capital improvement improvement capital improvement projects obviously. Uh Galopagus tortoise opens up in a couple weeks. That'll be our nearest one. Uh the Komodo dragon leopard exhibit. are kind of tied together because the way they're located um beginning of next year they're saying South American pavilion the atrium skylights and we have a lots of little projects that we are still finishing up with the bond really we have two kinds of projects at the zoo we have bond projects and we have our regular maintenance projects that we're doing at the same time and getting those things done so one of our we track traditionally we track KPI is our special event attendance we try and drive that up 3 to 5% annually uh this is our big season for that right now so right now we're sitting at I think 41,000 with a target of 50. But July and August are our big months for that. That's when we do most our special events actually. Well, a lot of our special events. So, we do a special event a month. It could be something simple like snake awareness day to something, you know, bigger like Halloween, which we do a massive Halloween event as you all know. So, and the new KPI we've added is for the membership sales as you can see up there. Uh we believe we can increase that 10% a year for probably the next 3 to four years at least to get us up to where it should be. Uh membership renewals at zoos are just traditionally very low. So, we're really improving the membership package that they get, the membership events, membership only kind of things. They now have a newsletter. They had a BB building workshop on Saturday and those kind of things, which is very very heavily attended. So, we're happy with that. So, idea being we increase the benefits, we'll increase renewals and it's just much easier to sell at once or to get a renewal than it is a new membership. And so, u but we're memberships are doing really well. I think they're sitting right now at 2600, but again, most of them were bought in the next couple months. So, they renew hopefully in the next couple months as well. So we're pretty confident in those numbers and those projections for the next few years. And that's all I have questions. Questions for Joe? Representative Ato repres. Thank you, Mayor. Um Joe, my question was going to be in regards to memberships. Mhm. It are you where you projected we would be at this time. Well, we didn't know when we took over how many we really had. There was some confusion with the numbers when we took them over. So, yeah, we're doing we so far since we've had control of them and got the numbers, they've been increasing pretty steadily. Uh again, we're really looking at renewals for our biggest increase, which will come up. Let's not just the next couple months. We're selling them offsite. For example, we were sell last Christmas holiday. It did okay. I mean, it wasn't the best maybe, but we had to try. And so, yeah, because of our increased sales and things, I think I think we are where we should be. I think we're really going to take off in the next couple years, though. Well, your team is really working hard. Um, we got to visit a couple six, seven weeks ago, and your your team is just amazing and and they do all that extra effort to make sure that as the clients, as the visitors come in, that they're treated without respect and and it's just it was clean. It it was just a really great experience. and and between that and and I understand your your your membership numbers are are growing and growing. Congratulations on all the work you and your team are doing over there. Well, thank you, sir. We just launched our close encounters, too, another item. It's in your backup somewhere, but they're selling very well as well. It's an extra experience where you get to go in, you can get in with the actual penguins, you can get in with the pong horn and some of our obviously less dangerous animals. So, but that's selling real well as well. Represented. Thank you, Mayor. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, sir. I um was looking at your KPIs for the memberships and I I think you kind of said something to Rep. Fiero's question about the membership, but I kind of wanted to dive a little deeper on the 2023 actual you said that you didn't really have an idea of how many memberships were sold at that point when the society was there. Correct. Was there just not a sharing of information or what was the reason behind that? Correct. Did well we did an a actually window did an audit when they were at the end when they were when we were transitioning and we did not get good numbers so we didn't know when we actually took over the database we made a backup of the database before they left because they had wiped the database out before they left. So therefore from the backup we obtained there were duplicates we had to clean it basically. So uh they always told us we had about 4,000 but I don't think we ever did actually. It just it just a bad database had to be cleaned up basically. It wasn't mis you know being deceitful or anything. Uhhuh. Okay. So we actually did a complete um transfer to a new system. And so as we did that transfer to a new system, it really was an opportunity to clean up to see some transparency to take out the duplications. You know, as he said, I don't think it was anything about deceit. It was about just having clean data and figure out how we move that forward. So we did that in about May, June July correct, of that year. And so now we know that data is clean. There's no duplications. Um, and then we we're making sure that that is, you know, very transparent moving forward. But you can see what that transition looks like. Okay. So, once the data was clean, how many memberships were there? I think that's when you we went down to like 25. Yeah, it was just 2400, 2459, something on those lines. I could get it, but something like that. And out of those, how many renewed? Well, they renew different times. So, they if you whenever you buy it, you renew it. So, most our renewals are going to come in the next few months. Uh, normally zoos across the country have about 50% renewal rate, which is not good. It just people buy it, they don't use it enough, they don't feel they use it enough. That's why we're trying to really increase the value they get for it by more events and different things. So, when it's time to renew, they look and go, "Oh, I did use that a lot or that was worthy of my renewing the membership." So, I don't have a renewal rate. I could get it for you. Well, we're running right now, for example. But, uh, again, the big bulk's going to hit in the next two months. So, we'll see a huge bump then, hopefully. Yeah, I'd appreciate that. I I kind of want to have an idea of how many people are are renewing their memberships. Those are households, too. So, those are households, not actual people. Households. Yeah. Okay. So, it could be four, six, eight, two, you know, they're all different numbers. Okay. And then I was looking at your staffing table and I see that you are not going to have a membership coordinator anymore. What was the Please don't call her that. We still have She coordinates the membership office, but she has a different title now. What's the title? Oh, I couldn't tell you, Rob. I'll find out and let you know. Strategic initiative. I think see she she's a strategic initiative strategic initiative specialist. Okay, I see that. Yeah. So that's the new position. Okay. And then it's been it's been about 14 months since the council approved a new agreement with the community foundation and then I believe that went into effect in August of last year. So we're approaching the one-year mark. I've been getting a lot of questions from constituents and other community members on how much money the community foundation has raised. So, I just wanted to ask that. I'd have to get to the exact numbers, but we divided up into three different accounts. So, one's our general community foundation account. The other's medical equipment. I know we had a, for example, a $10,000 donation for medical equipment for the um our animal medical clinic. And then we have a third one, I believe it's conservation, it's called. So, I could get you the totals. I don't have them off the top of my head. I would appreciate that cuz I'm also kind of I I think if you could get that information and then a more comprehensive report of what they're doing cuz I I have no idea what they're doing. So I keep getting questions about it and I I really want to have answers. So um if you could give me the operations cuz right now what it looks like is it's a a very premium GoFundMe account and I don't know what they're doing. Well, we are just starting out. uh is I would certainly not describe it that way, but we are just starting out and so there are a lot of events planned as well for fundraising uh and different different philanthropy things if you want to call it that that we're doing and getting donors and things. But I will give you I'll do a little report on that for you. I appreciate it. Thank you. No problem. Representative Chavez. Thank you, Mayor. Hi, Joe. How are you? Good thanks. Um I had a wonderful tour at the zoo just last week and so I I appreciate you and your staff. I I'd like to point out that um although Miss Wigan said that um 50% of of the city staff has been here for less than 5 years, I met some of your staff which have been with you for 20 or more years. So that says a lot about the dedication that they have for um our city and our animals that that live there, which I found to be very engaging. So thank you. Um I have a question about lifetime memberships only because I do have a constituent of mine who expressed her frustration after having purchased one a few years back and then gone back to the zoo and and it was not honored. So, um what can we do about that or we are well we were supposed to honor it. Let me forget they must have made a mistake then. There's only a few in the system. We don't sell them. I mean it was something that society did before our time really. We didn't know they had those in there and so um we did go through and pull the list though but they should have honored it. So if you want to give me that person's name I will contact them and we still honor them. We don't sell them anymore. we can't get them anymore, but if they're obviously the few people that have them are certainly would honor them. We're supposed to. So, I apologize if we didn't. No, no worries. It was probably a misunderstanding, but of course, she feels frustrated and and then decided not to go back to the zoo because of it, but I will uh give you her information so you can reach out to her. Yes, they just don't see enough of them. It just was a mistake by one of my gay people. Yeah. I don't know when those were were given out either because I was a member of the zoo for many years and was never offered one. So, at some point in time, I guess they were. Yeah. I can't explain them either. So, Okay. Well, thank you. I will get you that information. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Joe. Thank you, Joe. Oh, wait. I forgot. Yeah, there you go. Well, they're gonna I He did this to me. Jose did this to me, too. Next, our newest person in our portfolio is the health department. Doc, you're up. Well, good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Uh, Vinnie Tasia, director of public health. Thank you for having me here this afternoon. I do have a couple of slides. Uh first one talks about what we do at the health department and if I was to summarize it summarize this into one word it would be prevention. So that's the take-home message that anything and everything that we do is related to preventing illnesses from occurring in the first place. Uh but you know understandably we deal with humans and humans are still going to get sick. Our goal is to make sure that even if that occurs they have a better control over their health and have better health outcomes. In a more elaborate way, we're dedicated to reducing health inequities by providing and promoting diverse, proactive services for our community through empathy, engagement, education, and disease prevention. Um, and looking at our budget summary slide here, uh, there are a few variances that I wanted to point out. On the general fund side, you'll see a negative variance of $469,000. Uh, that's simply related to uh, food inspections being moved over to code enforcement earlier this year. So, you're going to see that impact here. uh in the budget summary, the general fund moved along with those staff. And then on the non-general fund side, you're seeing a positive variance of $1.9 million. Uh even though we're in a grant cutting environment, uh and this is simply a a recording of the grants that are arriving this year. The the way the budget works is that the money is recognized in the years that they arrive and and sometimes these grants span multiple years. Uh but in in reality, we are actually losing funds. You all heard Miss Mack mention earlier that we've lost about $3.5 million in grant funds so far. So that's been a huge impact on our department and I'll talk about it in here in a couple minutes. Um on the position side on the general fund again you're seeing a variance of uh -20 uh again it's related to the food inspection team moving over. Uh and on the non-general fund side, even though what's recorded here is only negative variance of 0.02 FTE, in reality, due to all the grant cuts, uh the uh the positions lost were going to be about 25. Uh but we have been able to work with our uh 115 Medicaid waiver fund a little bit and some other grants that we had to minimize that impact where only eight FTE have lost their roles at this point. Uh rest everything has been saved. uh either they're moved into similar positions or the exact same positions on a different uh funding source. Um but you know we continue to hear bad news more budget cuts coming earlier um you know my team asked me a question about wick program which is one of our largest programs and when the the grant contract came out earlier this year we actually were going to get a little bit more money so things look good uh and I think it's a 5-year agreement uh with HHSC so it's a pass through from the federal government from USDA to the state and to us uh but with the recent budget bill that got passed they have talked about cutting SNAP funding, which WICK program is an offshoot of SNAP funding. So, there's a little bit of uh unclear information whether it's going to impact directly on WIC or not. And uh so, we'll stay tuned and we'll let you know as soon as we hear, but every day there are more uh news coming out that we're in a grant tightening cycle. So, at some point, we're going to have to discuss with y'all what the city's priorities are and and what programs make more sense to retain in our community because at some point we're going to be really pinched on figuring out what we can retain and what we can't. Um, a couple other things I wanted to point out uh that we did have a indirect cost reduction uh due to our grant funding levels. There's some grants obviously got reduced. You saw Mr. Cinos note that on a slide and you know some grants got decreased or had level funding and to keep up with the salaries increases and other cost increases we had to reduce the uh indirect costs that we could take on the grant. Uh on the next slide I'll I'll share a couple more uh highlights. Um so there are things that are going well in public health. Also uh y'all were able to attend the grand opening of our headquarter locations in the northeast. So we're appreciative of that. Uh but we're also looking forward to our Medical Centers of America building which is currently under construction. Um we hope to have this building completed by the end of this year and have our uh clinics move in there. Uh there are going to be two operations there, the TB clinic and the STD clinic that are going to provide services to all of El Paso. So it's going to be our flagship clinical location. Uh in general otherwise the health department has total of about 17 locations. Uh most of them are wick locations only and four of them are immunization clinics and this one is going to be the 17th clinic but it's going to be a sort of a replacement for our El Paso Drive location which is currently uh under lease with Texas Tech because they bought out the building I think a couple years ago. Um two other things I want to highlight. Uh we are currently underway uh the for the process of getting public health accreditation. Uh it's a little bit of a longer process. So, in the next fiscal year, we'll be doing our document submission, our initial review, and we'll wait for the accredititation board to schedule uh after they review the document any site visits that may need to have. So, it's probably going to span out a couple of fiscal years before we get to the point of accredititation. And then finally, want to highlight that we did, you know, receive with grant funds uh our medical mobile unit earlier this year, and you all saw that at the unveiling of our new building, but we did lose a big grant that was actually funding the staffing related to that and so forth. So, it's been a little bit of a slow goal. We've had the unit out a little bit, what I call a sputtering of the programming, but we are working diligently to build a programming around it. Uh it's that way we can get it out into the community a little bit more frequently and and do something that we can sustain for a while. Um we have KPIs here for the entire department. Uh we're hoping to see about 29,000 uh people uh through our clinics and through our operations uh in the next fiscal year. But I do want to leave with a caveat and that is with the current staffing levels and the current funding, if there are continued drastic cuts, we may not be able to meet that goal. Uh but I have things under underway that may bump that number up even starting this year. For example, every year we have a ready set vaccinate campaign in the summer for school kids to come back before school opens and get vaccinated. But this year my team's actually pushing out a big initiative in the summer here in July. We're going to be going out to school districts to the locations there so that parents have a more convenient place to bring their kiddos, get them vaccinated. I've I've done this in other places. have seen this be very successful. So hopefully uh you know even though it's going to be baby steps, you know, over the next couple of years, we're really hoping that that program really launches uh and our numbers are exceeded with that effort there. So I'll leave you with that and I'll be happy to answer any questions. Any questions? Thank you, Representative uh Rocha. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you so much. I know we uh when I met you last week um there's something in here that you're not really mentioning and that's your your accomplishment as to your standing here and what what the public health department does here that is not done anywhere else in the state of Texas. So, I'd like for you to say that um so that we all can can celebrate what you all accomplished with a little a couple of things I want to kind of highlight and I've mentioned this before at our city council meetings. Uh I came from Dallas Fort Worth area and and you all have heard that nationally people are vaccine hesitant and that's been the narrative uh postcoid that people don't want to take vaccines and I'm very pleased to tell you that is not the case in our El Paso community. My experience has been I I keep telling my public health folks I've died and gone to heaven. Uh because you know here in the community you're out there trying to give them one vaccine. They're like hey while I'm here can I get my other shots? And I'm like wow that's that's amazing. So the health department team actually does a great job and that's what gave me the confidence to actually launch this summer back to school campaign uh with our team because there is a demand and the community understands how important vaccines are. Um, and the second piece I wanted to highlight, we do have a a dental clinic, uh, the Rawlings Dental Clinic. I don't know if you all have visited. You're welcome to come schedule with us and we'll be happy to give you a tour. Uh, but we are one of the only two health departments in the state. One is Houston and then there's El Paso and we provide pediatric dental services. So, those are two programs that are doing really, really well despite all the challenges that we face. Uh, things are looking up in the public health world in that arena. Represent Ro, that's it. Thank you. All right. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Next is Mr. Philip Atoule from planning and inspections. Good afternoon, Mayor Council. Good afternoon, Philip Planning and Inspections. So, as you all know, we are a revenue generating department and our mission is to make sure that we encourage, support and bring new businesses to El Paso using um advanced technology and also uh better customer service delivery from our staff and also from the city as a whole. Um if you look at um our budget for this year for fiscal year 2026, our budget has remained fairly consistent over the years. um you see a variance of 437 um,000 there and that's really uh as a result of the new uh department um the um salary compensation that Miss Mark and Miss Wigan talked about this morning. And if you look at the general uh the positions also the general funds uh we have 127 staff and 15 of those uh 142 staff are going to be transferred which they've already been transferred to the new code um enforcement uh department as well. So we do have that variance and the 15 um position that goes along with that um uh the um the budget that we transferred which is 1.1 million that we transferred to the new department as well. So part of our highlight again which is aligned with our mission to provide better uh customer service and also to uh train our staff to be able to provide um you know u coordinated services and and uh and processes is the ongoing staff uh cross trainining. This is something that we really um are very happy to be doing with our staff and this is something that we take a lot of pride in to make sure that our customers are well served. Um also part of providing better customer service is also to look at your technology that you're using to provide these services and part of that is the ongoing coordination with IT to improve the software that we use to improve um our online presence as well. So that is ongoing and we do have a standing meeting with um um it to make sure that we are you know cutting edge uh approach to providing our services to our customers as well. Um one of the things that we do which is part of the KPI that I'm going to talk about is the uh combo inspectors. We want to make sure that this is done in a way that rather than just send five, six um inspectors to a job site, we can send one person that can do at least two or three uh inspections at a time. Uh we're still working on that and the only challenge we have there is because we have not had a better recruitment year in El Paso. But it's something that we've developed our own in our training to make sure that we can train our staff uh to provide you know this uh inspection um which is I'm going to talk about later and and again the technology will promote online permitting and also scheduling of inspections. For planning inspections, we have two KPIs and these two KPIs are best practices that we looked at over the years and one is conducting inspections within 24 hours when they are scheduled uh via IVR which is interactive voice response. So you schedule that through the IVR and within 24 hours um staff will go out and do uh the inspections. As you can see 2023 was uh 90 uh 97.5. So we are doing our best to make sure that we get it to 100% but again uh with the winds in our paso sometimes you know that's not uh something that we can attain 100% but we are doing a great job going from uh 97 to um 90 98%. So the second uh KPI is the one in the one-stop shop. uh one-stop shop is our hub where we channel all the customers to come in for permitting, licensing and we also serve our department as well. So you can see uh 2023 we went from 6.8 to uh 2025 which is uh 5.1. Our goal there is to continue to trend down so that we can provide better customer services to uh our um better customer service experience to to our customers and residents here in El Paso. And that's all I have. If you don't have any questions, I'll pass it on to Miss Gasier. Any questions for Philip, Philip, thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Claudia Garcia with purchasing and strategic sourcing department. So what do we do? Okay. So, we facilitate the procurement of goods and services in a competitive and compliant manner for city department so they can support their operations. Our approach is center and openness, fairness and transparency to reinforce competitiveness and to create productive and strong relationships with suppliers while upholding our commitment to accountability and good governance. For next fiscal year, we have uh two items that impact our budget. One of them being a decrease to the general fund because of an elimination of a position that purchasing was contributing to. And the next item it is an increase on the non-general fund due to the sponsorships we're getting for uh our annual uh expo for positions. Uh we have an increase of 0.5 uh due to an internship program we're participating to with HR. So that's the the increase for for us. We are super excited about some of the initiatives we're going to be uh working on next fiscal year being one of them uh the continued support to supply Alas El El Paso initiative as we want to uh see all our local businesses thrive in our regional economy linked to this uh initiative. We also want to revisit uh high al Paso first program. We know we can do things better and we want to enhance this program as laws and regulations allow. Also linked to this uh we want to increase our vendor outreach. So we want to continue showing businesses how to do business with the city so they can learn and in the future participate in the procurement process. We want to use our annual expo to do so as we want to expand it and uh being able to communicate all these good things to to vendors. We also understand that it is very important to collaborate internally with our user departments as support department. So we have identified uh an area where we can uh do better and that is a contract administration portion of of our department. So we're going to be kicking off an academy for our user department so they can get best practices and some guidelines uh when they are monitoring their their contracts. uh linked to this uh initiative also we want to implement two tools for our user departments. One of them being a citywide integrated contract system that will help them monitor more efficiently their contracts and an implementation of invoicing for EP marketplace. Uh so this will help them um be better at the process payment for their uh suppliers. We have three KPIs in our department. and two of them are linked to the use of uh cooperative contracts or programs and this is because these increase efficiencies when purchasing uh items that the city needs. Uh the first KPI it is uh we want to increase uh the placement of vendors in our platform AP marketplace to 55 uh vendors uh next uh fiscal year. Also we want to increase the spend through uh AP marketplace. As I mentioned this is helping us to increase efficiencies when uh purchasing uh for purchasing transactions. As you could see, uh, most of our initiatives are also linked to the spend in local businesses. So, we want to be able to keep that 50% that we have been targeting for many years. So, that's all I have. If you have any questions for me. Yeah. Representative Lemon. Yes. Thank you, Claudia. Um, looking at um, slide 32, enhanced higher elaso force program. I met with a person who was really uh concerned uh possibly that it wasn't working quite as well as he believed that it should be. Would would I be able to sit down with you and how would I do that to meet with you to get a little bit more information on the higher El Paso plan before you go into the the enhancement part of it? Yes. So as part of our uh plan for uh revisiting this program, we're going to be getting feedback from all of you as we have indicated in uh with some of you uh earlier this year. So yes, you're going to have an opportunity to provide uh any feedback recommendations and to see if we're going to be able to implement it based on laws and regulations of course. Okay. And you'll reach out to us. All right. Okay. That's that's okay. looking at the key performance indicators. How do you come up with your target? So you've got uh data that shows you you had um the increase of vendors in 2023 333 and then you increased it to 94 then it would came down and now it's coming down again for how do you how do you come up with that particular number? So what we're trying to do it is just to increase and keep the number of vendors that we have in the system as uh they are placed in the system based on the awards that they're receiving uh from uh cooperative programs. So this is a cycle. Sometimes we're going to have more contracts awarded some others because the replacement u cycle they're going to drop off of that contract and then we're going to they're going to have to do the procurement. So it is not a really exact measurement but we want just to increase the number of vendors so it can help us increase uh the number of dollars that we're spending through the core programs. But you went down you didn't increase you went from 71 your projection is 55. So you in addition to and again it's just u it is difficult for us to have a a measure because of the cycle of the contract on how they're being replaced. Um, as it happens with also the city, we are going to have a years where we're going to be awarding more janitorial contracts because of the cycle and some others where we're not going to be awarding as many as before. So, it is 100 vendors. The very last one, the percent of local spend. What does that mean? So that means that those contracts are going to be awarded to local vendors or contractors, local vendors and or contractors. Okay. All right. Thank you, Represent. Thank you, mayor, and thank you, Claudia, for for providing the information. Uh, we recently made just I I think it was last week and I don't see Pablo here anymore, but um I'm really happy to see that you're increasing the vendor piece. I I want to be able to to see the city of El Paso as one of the premier places that contractors want to come and do business with. So if these initiatives are putting being put in place to one get their payments on time or keep them uh to to turn in the necessary papers or whatever it is, that's exactly what we need because that increases competition more than anything. So I I'd love to see bids go out that have more than four bids come through. It it's disheartening. There's a reason for that. And so if these initiatives are being put in place to improve the the contractors that come and bid to get them to be compliant on what they have to turn in and to get them paid on time, then I think that opens up the floodgates for the smaller companies to become more competitive. And so I'm really looking forward to seeing these initiatives come through. Uh there was one company that I hope will be able to do business with the city of El Paso soon that I met with last week and hopefully it'll provide some additional sustainability and hopefully less water. I know that that's ears to Miss Max to Miss Max's ears, but um provide less or or the need for less water to be used within within either uh our parks and and recreation space. So, thank you so much, Claudia, for putting this together. and I look forward to meeting with you. Thank you. Repres. Thank you, mayor. I appreciate how you kind of laid this out and it got me thinking a little bit cuz I I want to plus one to what Representative Maldona Rocha said about increasing number of vendors. I think that's really important. And as I was looking at the previous presentation on planning and inspection, I got to thinking that I think increasing the number of vendors is part one. And at least for me, part two is getting a similar KPI that planning and inspection has, right? They have one on percent of inspections conducted within one calendar calendar day of request. I wonder how you could get a KPI that says, well, to bid out a contract, it next year we want to do it within 180 days or something like that, right? Rather than 210 days or 270 or whatever it is at this moment. So, I I really think that you're such a key department to so much that we want to do at the city. And sometimes, you know, things happen like in my district with Waywright Park that it was bid incorrectly and that was supposed to be last year, we did it again this year and now it's going to be at the end of the year because we have to add the 9 months, right? Or there's other construction projects where they're like, we don't want to bid this out again because it's going to take another nine months of just no work being done. And and so I I want to see how this department can become more efficient because our constituents are really asking for it. They don't really see it in this sense. I see it this way, right, where they're like, "Well, nothing's happening." I'm like, "Well, there's a lot of moving parts." And I think it starts with your department on increasing those efficiencies. So, I I really want to see something along those lines in the future. And I see that you have on your staffing table um five procurement specialists, six analysts. I don't know if they're the ones that are in charge of doing all the bids, but if we need to increase that, that that's a staffing table change that I would wholeheartedly support to get more hands on these things to move them faster, if that makes sense. Claudia, before you respond, I just had to reach back to ask you that what you were talking about. So apparently um in that particular situation, we um needed more of a quality review from the user department. And so she's working to ensure that before it goes to purchasing because the partner really is the user department to make sure that those documents are complete so that I think that she has a better opportunity to give those timelines um and deadlines, but it's going to be more than just Claudia's team. We'll make sure that any department who has information that needs to be compiled, it's complete so when you go out to bid, we're not losing time. No, thank you for for that. That's that's a good update and and I'm just all about efficiencies, processes, policies to make things much better through government because you know government government is a beast and there's a lot of bureaucracy. But if we could make it easier and people could see results faster, I think that's a big deal. Yes. And I can assure you we're working on that. It will take some time as uh uh we are um underst staffed so we're working on that in collaboration with our and user departments too because we're just taking care of the procurement piece of it. Uh but we rely a lot of uh our user departments to provide the documentation we need to start the the procurement. So but we we're working on that. Thank you represent Nino. Thank you mayor and thank you Claudia for this great presentation. Um on slide 32 where it states EP marketplace spent that's the amount that has been spent through marketplace. Yes. Uh so those amounts for 2023 2024 are the uh actual amounts uh for 2025 it is up to when we updated this presentation. Uh and then the 2026 it is the target that we have uh for next fiscal year. Great. One thing that um I know that I have mentioned to Miss Mack and Mr. Cortinez, I recently had my co-op briefing as well and we went over marketplace and a a quick example or something that I would really like for us to see into, you know, those who have access to marketplace and purchasing is navigating the best cost savings that could possibly be done whenever we purchase anything. A simple example is, you know, I purchased the life vest, something that this council approved. Um, and on marketplace were listed for about $29, $30, but then I know that in the contract it does say that we could contact the vendor as well, and there's a a request for a quote and see if we can negotiate, and I was able to get them for $26 each. So I think um you know when it comes to the amount that is being spent versus us being conscious of being good stewards of the taxpayer dollar, I would really appreciate if we could figure out ways of those who have access to that marketplace of really navigating those conversations of navigating of how we could uh be better, you know, at cost savings when it comes to purchasing anything on the marketplace. Yes. And that that is one of the advantages we have when we're using co-op contracts. uh we have to abide by the contract that they got awarded but most of the times we have the ability to negotiate pricing under that contract. So it is something that we are communicating to our user departments when they're looking for items through marketplace that they can always ask for a better price. U most of the times they're going to be including the price in the contract but a lot of times they can give you a better pricing. Okay. Thank you for that. Thank you represent Chavez. Thank you mayor and thank you Claudia. And I know that I'm really looking forward to that presentation that we're going to have on the procurement process. Let me ask you a little bit about the the co-op um purchasing. Council never approves any of those items, do we? Like we do other bids. So you do approve them through the budget resolution. uh we have interlocal agreements with those programs and those uh when there are new programs that we're presenting, we bring those to city council and that approves the use of all the contracts that they were uh awarded competitively. And how many co-ops do we award bids to? How many do we work with? Um I think we have about 13 programs. Um and is there a way for us to know that we're not repeatedly using the same co-ops? So it will depend on the needs of uh of this the department. So let's say region 19 just to give you an example they can have contracts for uh rock walls or um trades electrical trades. So if another co-op they do have a similar contract we try to use the the one that is going to cover the needs of the department. uh but we don't have a count on what services they're offering under we are just uh monitoring that they were comp competitively awarded. Okay. I I mean I'd like to hear a little bit more about that process to just to make sure that we're being transparent and equitable um and giving others an opportunity just just the same as we do in the procurement process. And uh that's just probably an area that I'd like to explore a little bit more with you and maybe in that uh meeting we're going to have on the 22nd. Um I think uh that's it. I mean I've just uh you know had lots of conversations with you so I appreciate the time that you've spent in my office and um I know that we're working towards something you know putting something together that will benefit our community best. But I think you mentioned something one time when you were in my office, which is that the procurement process in general hasn't been reviewed since since when? How long has it been? No, the the procurement process it is in compliance with laws and regulations right now. Uh the only thing that we can always revisit just to make sure we're in alignment uh with current uh laws and regulations and efficiencies that we have been encountering. Yeah, I I recall something different that you said, but maybe we'll revisit. I think it's it's been a while, but Okay. She may have meant that when we did the restated um purchasing policy. Maybe that was 2006. Oh, no. No. Like maybe three years. Okay. No no no. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I'm glad that we clarified that. Thank you so much, Claudia. Thank you for the presentation. Okay. Now, I'm going to introduce San Metro. Okay. I know a lot of the council members are getting tired, but we're not even halfway through. So, we're gonna have to If you need to take a break, just please get up and take a break. All right, Anthony. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Mayor, City Council. Anthony Daiser, the I'm losing everybody. The director of Sun Metro. So, uh the first slide here is we're talking about what we do. So, Sun Metro provides transit for the public for for El Paso. We're the third largest department in the city. We have 624 FTEEs and 180 contractors. That's about 10% of the city employee employees. We provide transportation for 7 million customers over 8.2 million miles service annually. We do that with about 238 revenue vehicles and 70 support vehicles through of course the uh fixed route pair transit and street car operations. And we do that 365 days a year. So we're operating every day. It's a 24-hour 24-hour service. Um 24 hours we're working not the service 24 hours, right? We have three operation centers, eight transfer centers, seven parking rides, and three parking garages. So we're not just doing transportation. We have buildings and facilities that we have to to maintain and and keep up in order to uh support the transit service. So, we're an enterprise fund. So, that means we have our own fund balance, right? So, we have to balance that every year. And so, we receive our revenue from three main sources, some other sources, but from three main sources generally. And that's the half penny sales tax, the grant, half penny sales tax, which gives us about 63% of our revenue. Grants at 17% and fairs at 5%. And so it's pretty big because the half penny sales tax, we know we're going to get it, but we don't know exactly how much that is. It can go up and down just like the just like the fund balance for the for the city. In grants, we get reoccurring grants, but we also get discretionary grants. So, we have to apply for those. The reoccurring grants, we don't know how much those are going to be because those fluctuate every year. The discretionary grants, we got to go after. So, we've got pretty good at that because we got $44 million over the last three years, right? So, that affects our budget pretty big. And then fairs, fairs after COVID, we went down from about 12 million riders a year to about 5 million riders a year. And now we're back up to about 7 million riders a year. Just this last year, we went up a million dollars. So, you know, if a fair is a $150 and we went up a million dollars, like that affects the budget a lot. So, these things fluctuate for for us in our budget. And so you can see if you look at our budget, we went from a uh last year we're at um excuse me, previous years we were at about 110. Now we're at 104 and the next year we're going to go all the way down to 100. So we're doing the same or more with less money, right? Same or more with less money. Not only that, we're not using the fund balance anymore. We're not using the fund balance to do the same thing. So before in previous years, we used all the way up to $9 million the fund balance. Last year we used $3 million of fund balance. Now we're using zero. And we're going to use zero next year and we're going to use zero next year. We're going to use zero the next year after that. But we got to be careful because that's not going to continue because we actually got to spend more than what we're taking in. So we got to do some other things. I'm going talk about that on the next slide. But what are some things that affected our our um our budget this year? Well, sales taxes we we just talked about a little bit. Our our investments increased. Why? Because we have more money that we can invest. So our investments went up this year which was good. We did some things with grant matches. So we didn't have to pay as much in grant match this year. But some other things that ex went the other direction is we did some things with it that cost us some money but it helped better the service. So that's actually a good thing even though it cost us some money. And we had salary increases to the point of $2.6 million. That's a good thing too because why? Because we're retaining our people now. Now we have the right amount of drivers. They're not going our tuition rate has gone down. So that's good, right? That's a good thing too. So Sun Metro is undergoing huge initiatives this year. Huge initiatives, transformations like never done before in in transit in in El Paso. You say, "How are we doing that with Fix Round?" We're doing that with Sun Metro Rising. We're totally went through the through the entire system and we're revamping that because we're we're optimizing that. We're going to get people to their destinations quicker. Now, I know I went and briefed each one of the representatives and the mayor, so I gave you that in detail, but we're going to come back and brief you that again before that kicks off at the beginning of the year. So, after this budget review is done, we're going to come back and give you guys individual briefs on that so you know how it affects your individual um areas. But it's going to be a 90 for 95% of riders. It's going to be an improvement in getting you to where you need to go quicker, right? We're going to stream streamline that. So, how many people is that going to affect monthly? Six or excuse me, 465,000 riders will get a better service out of out of that, right? And we're going to do that by buying new vehicles, too. Like, not just optimize the the system, but we're going to be buying new vehicles with some of the grants, which I'm going to talk about in a second. The other leg that we're going to improve is is street car. Like, we optimized street car back in 2023, right? And so now we're getting the highest ridership we ever had, even before CO, even before CO. And so this year our ridership has gone up over 100,000. And we project that it's going to keep going up 100,000 as we go in the future because we we stabilized the wrership and we we um um targeted two demographics, not not just the nighttime demographics or special events. We actually targeted the demographics of people who go to work and also the people who do do the night life. And so that that's worked. And so we're well on our way by increasing that ridership by over 170 uh percent over that amount of time. And so also we're going electric for half of the fleet in in paratransit. So we're going to be um CNG end fleet. So we're still going to be environmental friendly but we're going to go half electric like we already changed over the software system and now we got about 20 electric vehicles already on ground. So we're going to do that. But all this costs money. So how do we do that if we actually spend more than we take in? Well discretionary grants are the key. But it's not just discretionary grants because I already said we get 70% of our income from sales tax and we get the other 17% from grants whether those are reoccurring grants or discretionary grants, right? And we can't control the level of that. So we have to do other things. We have to take different initiatives like when me and uh Mr. Fiero, Representative Fo went down to Austin, right? We we had to convince the Texas Veterans Commission to give us a grant for a quart million dollars so that veterans here in Texas could ride for free. So now we got two more years of that. So things like that affect the budget. But we're also looking to see how we can advertise on the the benches and the and and the buses so we can make revenue on that in the future. So we got that in the works. We also do parking management on some of the parking garages that we own to the tune of a million dollars a year. So we're also trying to supplement supplement our our budget by by that. We're also looking into things like trying to partner with the county, maybe Fort Bliss, maybe with Greyhound to generate more revenue so we can stay above that line. And so we can continue to put money into the fund balance and not not take out of that every year, right? Because we don't know what's going to happen with that sales tax every year. We don't know how much the discretionary grants are going to be every every year because we have to go after that or the reoccurring grants. For instance, two years ago, we lost a million dollars on on the reoccurring grants because some of that's based on population and some other things. But then last year, we got $4 million more than we got the year before. I can't control it. I don't know what it's going to be, but I do know this. I need some money in the fund balance for a rainy day because I still have to buy buses. A bus is a million dollars. And I have after so long I I'm required to buy a bus. Plus, I want to buy a bus because it saves my maintenance fees and other things. So, we have to keep that money in the fund balance because we're using it. Now, when we get a grant, we have to use that grant. We got like a four-year period or 5year period to use that grant. So, just because we get it in one year doesn't mean we use it in that year. We might have to stretch it out over years. But if we get that grant, then we don't have to use like fairbox money. We can use that grant for other things on the years we don't buy the buses. We can use that for maintenance fees for um paying paying um our employees or or whatnot. So So that's how that budget moves back and forth and how we use the the different buckets and and change that so we don't have to use uh fund balance money or we can buy buses on certain years or hold off on using the grants until a different year. So, we have to use that in in different ways and be um um creative with how we we do that budget to make sure that we look into the future and make sure our our budget and our fund balance stay secure into the future. And so, you say, well, what is your goal? Our goal is to get people to and from where they need to go, right? in the most proficient manner so people can get to their doctor's appointments to work and and and whatnot. So, how do we look at that? Well, we look at with some of our KPIs like how do we measure that? Well, we want to get them there on time. So, the the industry standard is 80%. Now, we know that cannot be if we run 80% on time performance, we have a lot of people upset, right? Because they're not going to be getting to where So, we raise that bar to 90%. raises to 90% for on-time performance with the lift and with the fixed route and we do it with our maintenance. So we have good working vehicles and we have buses getting there on time at a high standard. And you say, "So that's where we stay and you can see the chart and so we we stay there pretty good." So you say, "Well, what else are you looking at?" Well, we get about 10 10,000 calls to the call center in a in a month. And about 50 of those are complaints, but they can be a complaint like the trash is over full, the sink broke in in the bathroom. They could be a a lot of things, but we get on an average 10 10 for fixed route where there was a problem with operations. The bus wasn't on time, the bus driver didn't see me or something like that. 10 in a month. Now there's 600. No, there's there's 583,000 passengers a month and we're getting about 10. So, we got 90% on time performance and 10 complaints in a month. Now, there used to be a lot of people coming down here and complaining to the city representatives. I would venture to say that you're not getting a lot of complaints for Sun Metro or else you'd be calling me all the time, right? But I'm not getting those. So I think we're doing good because of the performance indicators I got there and because we don't have those conversations. You and I don't have those conversations. So So the state of Sun Metro is good. The budget is good. The long-term budget is good. We're saving money. We're not dipping into the fund balance. That That's my brief to you. Wow. Wow. Wow, it was shorter than most, man. It was shorter than most. Well, we we'll let represent Fier start. Mayor, that's nothing. I sat with him for nine hours and um and I will tell you that sitting with with the director and his grants uh manager was really uh I enlightening uh experience for me because this gentleman really does have a passion for the wrership for making sure that the buses are clean and safe and and on time and I wanted to publicly thank you and that's why Miss Mack walked out I guess but I wanted to publicly thank you um for all you do for for Sun Metro and and for spending that many hours sitting next to me. So, thank you. Appreciate that, Representative Chavez. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Anthony. I really appreciate the presentation. I think uh our lines are crossed a little bit though because I did get some phone calls this weekend requesting requesting rides on the lift. So, something's up. I don't know. We've already carted it though, so it's good. You're good. Back to you on that. No, it's good. Um, I would like an opportunity for Robert to speak about how this impacts the next uh fiscal year budget for the city because of the wonderful work that Anony's doing. If if Oh, go ahead. Just just just to speak a little bit about his work and and how that impacts the city. Well, so he started with that. So, Sun Metro, similar to all of our enterprise funds, rely upon the revenue that you're generating to be self-supporting. So, I mean, generating the revenue from the sales tax, which is the primary source of revenue, followed by all the grant funding. Obviously, it puts them in a position where they're able to invest in the efficiencies he talked about, identifying new ways to generate new revenue, and not putting that burden on having to be subsidized by the general fund. And that's probably one of the biggest changes that we've seen in the last few years, positive cash, which is a a very very uh tremendous shift from where the city was with our mass transit department several years ago. uh the fund or the department was actually operating at a deficit for quite a while. We've reversed that trend in the last six or seven years. Um and I think Anthony did a really good job of really highlighting the efficiencies while not impacting the services, actually getting better at the services we're providing and actually getting the people where they need to go much quicker. So, um no different than what you're going to hear from environmental services. You heard from the tax office earlier. you're going to hear from the airport and really relying upon the revenues that that they are generating to provide the services that they provide. And so this department again no different. Uh again they rely upon the fees they collect and then the sales tax which is dedicated that half cent sales tax again to provide those services and again not having to be subsidized by property taxes, right? And they collect the fees but they also know how to use it wisely so that we get to this point. So that's that's um very admirable. And I know that all of us in this room are very competitive and there's a lot of departments in here, but I just want to highlight that when one of us wins, we really at the end of the day as a city, we all win. So, thanks to your efforts, Anthony, you know, you've put the city in a better place. And I know that Sun Metro did did go through um a tragedy earlier this this year. And so, we we stand with you and by you and we thank you for for just helping us through that. and and we recognize that some sometimes things are not easy, but um if we come together as a community, we can get through them. So, thank you so much. I appreciate it, Anthony. Very impressive. Um so, in 20 the budget in 27, we're already coming in. You're already coming in lower is what you told us. I'm I'm coming in lower and putting money into the fund balance and in 28. And in 28. Okay. Um that's very impressive and you know what can we say? I mean you adopted in 25 you know it was 111 million 26 you went to 103 the variance was $8 million. That that's significant very impressive. Um I'm looking forward to hearing about wrapping the buses because I think there's uh some revenue that can be generated there for the community if it all works out however Miss Mack does that. But I do want to correct you on one thing. You had 583,000 calls with only 10 complaints, right? Say it one more time. 583,000 calls, I think you said. I said 583,000 riders in a month. And 10 complaints and 10 Yep. 10 complaints and a half. You got your 11th one there. So Okay. Actually, that was the lift side. I was talking about the fixed route side. Okay. There you go. Minnow. So I'm good with that. I'm good with those numbers. Kathy, very, very good presentation and thank you. Keep up the great work. Thank you. You're supposed to introduce somebody. Next is uh Miss Carla Neman with the city attorney's office. No introduction. Good afternoon, Miss. Good afternoon, mayor and council. Carla Neman, for the record, I have the distinction of following Mr. Daiser um for today's presentation. So, what do we do as the city attorney's office? Clearly, it's to provide excellent legal services to our organization in a timely manner to deliver the council strategic plan. Um, our budget variances for this year are are slight. It is due to staffing u adjustments and then a few compensation adjustments that we had throughout the year. We also had some adjustment for the one grant that we received through through CDBG. So, you'll see that that's slight variance. And then our FTEES are remaining flat at 51.5. And then here are highlights and initiatives. And you hear about this throughout the year from my office. Of course, it's to increase our workforce development and provide excellent customer services. So we do that through continuing to retain um and attract uh municipal lawyers and support staff. So it's not just an office full of lawyers, but we also have plenty of parallegals. We have uh excellent folks that do u public records. and additional administrative staff. We continue to develop specialties as you hear constantly in the utility world, which is a constant conversation that the council is having with El Paso Electric and Texas Gas Service, also in our civil rights area because of the officer use of force in our police department. Um, of course, we continue to grow the depth of experience throughout the office through continual education and additional training that we provide for our lawyers. Um, and then including additional training that we do throughout the year to provide training for our different departments in mitigating risk. We do that usually after a major incident or as a result of a major lawsuit where we go in and figure out what went wrong and how to address that moving forward. And then most recently, we will continue to provide support in the next three months for the council and the individual count um departments that will be impacted from the legislative session. As you all know, there's plenty of votes that will be passed or have been passed that will go into effect either immediately. So, that work is already taking place and you'll see it here shortly or then we will have plenty of um ordinances that we may have to amend on on or before September 1st when all that legislation goes into effect. Are there any questions? Any questions for Miss Neman? Thank you. I'll hand it off to our city clerk, Laura Prine. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Laura Prine, city clerk. So, what does the city clerk's office do? Well, in addition to providing administrative support for council meetings, we also coordinate city elections. We maintain board appointments where the repository of city council action and El Paso Municipal Court of Appeals cases. We oversee different types of reporting. for example, for lobbyists, campaign finance reports, annual financial disclosures, and then we provide American Sign Language interpretation services at council meetings and at various city departments. So, our budget variances. So, since next year is not a an election year, we do have a decrease of $2.2 million in our budget. Along with that is a decrease in legal notices because we're not all we're not uh scheduling any publication of elections and then uh we have an increase across the board for the salaries the same as other city departments. For our highlights we're going to launch phase two of our lean six sigma project and this is to deploy training to board liaison. We're developing an ondemand training for board leaison so that they understand their role and responsibilities when respon when providing administrative support to the city's boards and commissions. For example, they'll need, you know, we need to make sure that they file their minutes timely. They need to communicate with the appointing office when their appointee has excessive absences or when they've resigned so they can make sure that those vacancies are filled. and in turn they need to communicate to the board members of information regarding training requirements and such. As part of our board standardization project, uh we're completing a handbook for board members, board leaison, and other support staff that also outlines each person's role and responsibilities. And this will apply to all city boards and commissions. And as changes to the board and commission compositions receive final council approval, we'll update our web page and database. For example, we'll be bringing ordinances and resolutions on future agenda so that we can codify the changes you recently approved. Also, plan next fiscal year is a refresh to our elections web page so we can provide a candidate landing page with clear steps on filing requirements for running for office and associated reporting requirements. And we're also exploring options so we can deploy a reporting mechanism for candidates to submit their notations for the council agendas on their campaign contributions as required. We want to make it easier for them to submit their their agenda items during the next election season. For our KPIs, as mentioned before, um the we're the repository of council action. So, we want to make sure that everything council approves, every contract agreement, uh, resolutions, ordinances, everything that's approved is executed and and archived within 30 days of approval. We also monitor the percentage of records uh, os requests from our office, from our internal customers so that we can make sure we're providing those documents within the hour. These are doc if the documents readily available we need to provide it to our to our departments within the hour so they can continue their work. We also monitor the number of board agendas posted. Uh we want to make sure that the everything is posted on time and as required and that's my presentation. Very good. Miss Ryan any questions? Uh represent Lemon just a comment. Laura, thank you very very much for the reminders. uh when financial reports are due and the sending of the documents, it is really really helpful to put those on our calendars and I look forward to seeing the elections web page refresh. Also, I think that we tend to jump from one site to the other to try to capture all of the different information that's required and having it all in one site is really going to be very very good and very efficient. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Any other questions for Miss Bryant? Miss Bryan, thank you so much. It's kind of strange seeing you here and not there, but but thank you so much. Quick shift. Yeah. Thank you for all that you do for us. Thank you, council, for your support. Next is Mr. Sasha and Danowski. He'll go over the city manager's budget. Good afternoon, uh, mayor and council, Sasha Donoski. I'm director of office uh of management and budget. So, I will be presenting uh city manager uh department today. So, what we do? So we provide professional recommendations and implement and we implement policies uh and directions of of the council. We ensure uh high quality of services. We foster economic and fiscal sustainability and enhance the city reputation as a high performing organization that operates in a manner consistent with our mission and values. I would like to mention that uh uh as part of the city manager department we have three offices uh included there. So we have office of uh the city manager, we have office of uh management and budget and then we have office of communitydriven innovation. Uh and as you as as you can see that uh from last year we're increasing the budget for $14,223 which is three and a half% increase from the previous year and uh mostly is uh due to salary increases and also the consolid consolidation of the office of strategic uh communications to the non-EP departmental uh department. Uh so in terms of the highlights and initiatives we will have a two main initiatives. Next year we started with uh with the first one this year we are going to implement the program based budgeting as as you saw from previous presentations. We already have four departments that are in that pilot program. So we are expecting a lot of uh efficiencies from from this program. And then the second one would be reinforced focus on organizational learning and leadership culture. So we are trying to implement and uh and supporting the the tools that are supporting in international city management uh association and we are going to focus on three big areas uh which is community engagement, strategic planning and service delivery in terms of uh uh key performance indicators. So you will see the green arrows. So we we we have two big uh indicators. uh we compare the actual revenues uh with the budgeted revenues and actual uh expenditures with the budgeted expenditure for the general fund and our goal to is to strive to 100% uh to be on uh with our projections. So there you will see the green arrows which is which is good and then the the uh red arrows are a little bit off from from the from the projections but uh this time uh we are we are for the revenues and you already saw from the previous pres presentations that that we are tracking a little bit lower on the revenues. So we are we are right now at 99.7% of the revenues but our goal is for the next years 100% of the revenues. We are the same uh level at uh at expenditures 99.7%. So with that uh I'm here to for any questions. Very good. Any questions for Sasha? Very good. Thank you. And I would like to uh invite Robert uh Roman Sanchez from uh from communitydriven innovation. Don't worry, sir. I got you. We're a new department. So that that's part of it. Uh good morning or good morning. God been here forever. Good afternoon. Uh Roman Sanchez, chief innovation officer with the communitydriven innovation office. Um our team was set up by the city manager to really rethink and redesign the way we engage our community to think of new ways that we would engage them to understand their needs and have conversations with them. um and know and and think of ways we can foster better foster community collaboration uh and also work with them in the way we redesign solutions for our community. Um as you can see from here our budget variance that we have is our increase in salaries. Uh the past two years our team um um had attrition and this year I'm happy to say we're fully staffed going into FY26. and you will see we have a long uh but exciting events that we're going to be working on and I'm happy to have that staff on board. Um taking a look at us before we look into 2026 and our initiatives that we're going to take in. I want to take a quick pause and look at 2025. What 2025 was about was really pausing and understanding how we could pilot and learn these new challenges that we got from the city manager and how we engage our community. And for us it was how do we identify those community needs? How do we have those conversations? How do we pilot thoughts and ideas and understand what what what uh resources we need to to do this? And for us, you were able to hear program based budgeting is one of the ones we were able to do this year u with the pilot you've seen the four departments. But another popular one was presented a couple of weeks ago with the Heartscrunch functional team where the city came together with our nonprofits to look at the needs of the unhoused population in our community and how could we design solutions to meet the needs and deliver service for them first. As we move to 2026 and we look ahead, we're taking these these lessons that we learned and we're looking to see how we can deploy them across the organization and bring them to scale understanding what works. are highlights and the way we're going to be doing this as we move into 2026 is one is looking at data and developing an organizational data strategy that identifies what those needs are and what are those priority services within our community and then understanding what resources are required to deliver upon those needs um and improving service delivery and defining what success looks like through metrics. Once we have those metrics is we would then be able to identify how can we then move forward and design solutions with our community and with our our folks that we you see here behind me. Um and by doing that we're going to bring together our content experts who are our departments and understand how to deliver those services but then also reaching out to the community to understand from a context perspective how do these services impact them on their daily basis? what does it mean to to them to have these services so that we ensure as we design solutions for that we're we're taking a look at that and underlying all that is our framework is human- centered design for local government we have been working with Stanford University over the last few years on seeing what that could look like this past year they approached me and they said they wanted to know how a city like ours how we could utilize the tools to design to use the system that they've trained folks from Google from Apple Computer and the way they design their services, the way to design the gadgets to say how can we use that framework to design social systems for our community. And so the city of El Paso, we've are my team, we've worked with them over the past year to design what they're calling human center design for local government. We've tested that product and that training with cities all over the world from the Middle East to the Americas to to all over the US. So now in 2026 we'll be bringing it to the US and since we're I mean I'm sorry to the city of El Paso. And so we're talking about budget that'll be at no cost to our organization. All the materials be provided at no cost and facilitation will be provided my by myself and my team who have been providing facilitation through add other areas. Um, so with that, we want to take a look at our key performance indicators and the way we wrap everything together and we want to be able to say that want to have at a 100% of all our departments to be able to have measures that are capturing what are those important things, what are those programs that our community is saying is most important to them. How are we understanding that we have the right resources in place to deliver on those needs? And importantly, are we delivering a customer experience to our customers to say this is the service levels that are doing to them? And in those areas where we do have opportunities to improve, how do we start then to launch projects so that we can focus on those needs, apply human center design and the other tools in our toolbox like lean six sigma to redesign what those things look like. Um, so I've said a lot, but if I could summarize it in one sentence, it would be, you know, together as a city, we seek to transform a community feedback into progress and metrics into list lasting impact. So with that, I open to any questions. Representative Chavez. Thank you, Mayor. Honestly, I feel like I've spoken a lot, but every time one of you come up to the podium, I'm so grateful for the information that you're sharing. So, thank you, Roman. Um, I I love what you said because I also highly believe in a customer servicecentric approach to the way we do things and I think that that builds trust with our community. So, the work that you're doing is is important. I'm looking at all the the presentations we've had and even some of that we're going to have tomorrow and there really is nothing here that says anything about PR. You know, how are we marketing the work that we do as a city to our community? Um, and maybe it's in bits and pieces in everyone's presentation, but this one in specifically, I think, speaks to to that and and I love it. So, I think we need to be doing more of this. Um, we need to be uh out in public. People need to have access to us. People need to have access to information. People need to have um just awareness of of how government is working for them. That's what I'm trying to do um as as an elected official, and I know that many of you are are doing it as well. I just think that we need to work um smarter so that we can get the message out there. So, thank you for this. Yes, ma'am. Absolutely. Thank you, Roman. Great presentation. Any other questions for Roman? Great. Thank you. And we look forward to seeing your metrics next year. Yes, sir. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Roman, you're supposed to introduce somebody. Next is Miss Liz de De Lao from the Internal Audit Department. Hi, Lizette. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Liz De Lao with the Internal Audit Department. So, our mission is to provide independent objective assurance and consulting services designed to add value and improve the city of El Paso's operations. Our FY26 preliminary budget is 1.3 million. We have a variance of about 129,000 and it's mainly due to the SA um staffing. We had salary increases, staff promotions, and one new hire, which we are currently in the process of recruiting for. We have a total of 10 FTEES, eight funded by the general fund and two the non-general fund. So for our highlights and initiatives for FY26, we are going to undergo our seventh triannual external quality assessment by the Association of Local Government Auditors. We are going to coordinate round 10 of our hotel occupancy tax audits and we are going to complete the cyber security audits which we initiated in FY25. So right now we have currently have one cyber security audit in progress and we plan on initiating two more for a total of three. And this of course is in addition to the completion of the audits we have scheduled in our annual audit plan. So that's it for me. Any questions? Represent Masto. Yes. Thank you, mayor. Hi, Liz. Hi. I kind of wanted to have a better understanding of how you came up with this with these KPIs. So, this is our first go around at the KPIs. So, this is all we can come up with, but of course um with your input and anything that Weaver might recommend, we'll we can implement for the future. Okay. Yeah, because this is the the first time I'm seeing these KPIs and and I think uh it would have it would have been good to have this go through FOAC u maybe not necessarily at at a meeting but have a process similar to the audit plan that we do every year. Yes. And have conversations individually with FOAC members in order to kind of derive what the KPIs should be for the department. But I I think I also agree with you that weaver will help in terms of implementation of all the many changes that are coming to the internal audit function. Yes, I agree. And so right now you have a total of 10 employees and you're hiring for one. So you have nine. We have nine. We're hiring one and then we just had a resignation. So we're going to have two. So you're going to have two. Okay. Um, all right. Thank you. Any other questions for Liz? Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Mayor Council Omar Martinez. Uh, speaking on behalf of my director, Ian Vogleweed, who couldn't join us today. We're going to talk to you about strategic and legislative affairs. We are a new department. Uh originally we were formed under the office of the city manager started in 2024 and this for fiscal year uh 2026. It'll be the first time we are our own independent separate uh department. Our team is of 15 people. Uh the majority of us are funded through the general fund but we're thankful to international bridges airport sun metro and environmental services for cost sharing the cost of some of our employees. This is important because strategic and legislative affairs serves the entire city. We are your first line in uh state and federal legislative issues. We also work handinhand with city departments to secure additional funding from state, federal, local philan local sources and philanthropy for priority projects. Every dollar we bring in is a reduction on the burden of of a general fund. Uh also this year we were uh consolidated with um veterans and military affairs. That's Mr. Paul Outbride and his team and also the climate team joined strategic legislative affairs this year. Again we don't have metrics or or any finance numbers for 2025 because we are a new city department. Even though we're new uh we've I think we've been able we're proud to say that we've accomplished a lot. Our team is is excellent. Uh the staff we've been able to hire. Thanks to the support of Dion, city manager, and Carrie Weston, uh, previous to to Miss Miss Mack, uh, we've been able to accomplish a lot. City Council this year approved a new state agenda for the 100, I'm sorry, the 89th legislative session, and you saw us execute that agenda uh, in the legislative session. Um you will have additional updates as we through city attorney's office or through uh strategic and legislative affairs so we can um summarize the aftermath of the agenda. You also approved a federal legislative agenda this year. And since starting in January of 2025 with the Trump administration, you've you've seen us really busy engaging with federal actions, executive orders, and as you as you heard throughout the presentation, uh clawback of federal funds. Um since we were created, strategical legislative affairs has worked with city departments to bring in an up to $152 million in since the since the launch of the citywide grants program. know that our job is to support city departments. We don't bring any grants and and manage them internally. Instead, we act as um I guess an efficiency. We sometimes write applications on behalf of departments, applications that they previously have not applied for, for example, or when city departments like Sun Metro who have a long history of being effective in grants, we just try to give them a competitive edge by working with our state and federal officials to to make sure that we bring the dollars home or in this in this year to keep the dollars. Um, for 2026, you will expect several documents from strategic legislative affairs. It includes uh the final fin finalization of the climate action plan in the fall of winter of this year. We will have a new uh El Paso city of El Paso and Fort Bliss community defense strategy that we will bring to council. Uh we will also have a veterans services plan and a city-wide grant strategy. In combination, we hope to answer a lot of the questions that council members have brought up to different departments. For example, what what is our response to federal clawbacks from funding? we will come to you with with a plan. In terms of our KPIs, um the discretionary grants that we brought in in 2024 were we reached about $100 million and in 2025 to date we are at $52 million. These are discretionary not are these are the ones we go out and compete for. City departments already receive a larger amount of formula grants like Sun Metro receives from the FTA or or our community development department uh CDBG funds from HUD. So this is in addition for fiscal year 26 we are targeting $75 million. This is despite the environment of of where there's going to be less federal grants available. Most of our efforts are going to be focused on the east port of entry. We want to bring the dollars home necessary to modernize that bridge to make it usable to respond to closures of bridge of the Americas the commercial traffic side. There's also a new KPI that we brought along utility cost savings. These are electric costs or water cost for city facilities. So we want to make sure that our team is focused and our climate team is focused on saving the city's expenditures with a goal of $1 million in savings by in 2026. What you see there e IGSAS there exists there are intergovernmental service agreements these are partnerships directly from the city of El Paso with Fort Bliss and there's money exchange essentially Fort Bliss provides funding to the city of El Paso to execute services these are all with El Paso water but we're working with a on a third IGA and maybe a fourth IA uh Mr. The Kaiser mentioned it earlier. Maybe Sun Metro can provide transit services for Fort Bliss with a fee. Again, additional re revenues for veterans supported. That metric is the direct services provided by city staff that a lot of that is funded by like by donations. So Paul Albbright and his team bring in and directly ser bring in funding to do a lot of their events. Maybe some of you have participated in in those events. And if we were to add the indirect participants, meaning the partnerships that our veterans and military affairs team works on this, the amount of service uh the amount of veterans serviced is in the tens of thousands, but we wanted to keep it to the direct impact of city staff. Uh and then what you see there in trees planted and volunteers is a 915 treekeepers program. The program has been growing. The 915 treekeepers program also has philanthropic donations. We have a special fund at the PDN Foundation similar to the zoo where we hope to get additional donations and philanthropic contributions from like Marathon or El Paso Electric to grow the ability to grow the number of trees we we plant in the city. That is what strategic and legislative affairs does. Uh we're proud of the work we do. Thank you for your support and I'm happy to answer any questions. Represent Fiero. Thank you, Mayor Omar. Just three comments and questions. U the first one's on grant dollars. The second one is on the leg the 89th legislative session and the third one's on trees. But um did you say $152 million that your department's brought in? Since the creation of the citywide grants program, we've supported departments to bring in that $152 million. That's amazing. Congratulations. Thank you, sir. The the second comment that is more I guess for Miss Mack. Um this team Ian and Omar had done such a great job during the 89th session. I mean, they kept us a breast of everything that was happening um in Austin, good, bad, ugly. They um and I know it's not over yet. I mean, there's going to be at least one more special session and so you can't take a vacation yet, but but it was it's just amazing the communication that that that office had with with the council. And so, I want to thank you for that. And then I forgot my treat question um but maybe um the mayor prom can think of it, but yes, thank you. represent Masaveto. Thank you, mayor. So, um I'm a big supporter of how this kind of came together departmentwise and and I think a lot of it made sense and I think this is also the first time since the last fiscal year that you tell us how much you've done so far this fiscal year. So, that's that's really good. Um 52 million. So, congrats on that. I am kind of wondering in terms of kind of debriefing what this legislative session was and what the special session is going to bring. How are you looking at the next session? Are you going to do a lot of the same things or are there best practices that you're kind of putting together for the next one? Representative, I'm glad you as you asked that question. First, we work very closely with the city attorney's office to make sure that we're better prepared for the 90th legislative session. So, we will do better, but also we learned a lot. We learned a lot from our peer cities, from Austin, from San Antonio. There's a lot more communication that goes on with our with our peers in other cities, and we we've also extended that that communication to other cities throughout the country. Essentially, every city does legislative affairs differently, but I think we're we're picking on the best. Remember that we're a new team. I think we did really well in the 80 session, but I you have my word, we'll do better in the idea section. And by better, I mean we'll bring in more dollars home from this from the state government. We will communicate better with members of council and our community. And we will make sure that you all are more active in the the process so that nothing catches you off guard than what you hear in the news. Yeah, I I'm I'm glad to hear all of that. and just some suggestions that I've kind of seen other cities, counties, how how can we have more of a presence in Austin, right? And um I don't know how many times you or Ian or anybody on the team went to Austin, but I know that there are other ones that have an apartment for example and the government entity is paying for that apartment and it's the government entity's apartment and they go live in Austin for the session and they are hearing what's on the ground every single day. I would be very supportive of a measure like that for us to have that presence because I have gotten some questions like, "Well, where was the city?" I'm like, "Well, we have we have a big team. They're doing their thing." And I think they've all kind of started to link up. Friendships have been made and then they're working on a lot of similar issues. So, I feel like that could strengthen our hold on what can bring be brought to the city. So, I don't know how if you've had any thoughts on that or or where you're thinking. Well, sure. That's great feedback. As we prepare for the 180th legislative session, we'll be sure to reach out to you to make sure that we explain to you our strategy and also we like to run an efficient ship. I'm not entirely sure that having a like an apartment in Austin is the best use of city funds, but we do have a healthy travel fund as you see in our budget. We do travel a lot. I get to say I have I'm happy to say that maybe 30 trips staff took to Austin during the session and then we took additional trips to meet with state agencies and federal agencies that are are located in Austin to just be able to to bring the money home or understand issues before they before the they impacted the city. And that that makes a lot of sense and I'm glad to hear 30 times. I didn't realize that the number was that high but even you know um some of them are not even living there. they're going 30 times and sometimes getting something more permanent like an apartment outweighs the cost of the expensive hotels especially around the capital and I'm also wondering what happens right now as one of the governor's priorities is to not allow for us to have a lobbyist so how does that impact us well you are correct that we have a budget line item for for a lobbyist we've had a focus advocacy for many years serving the city and If if if it comes to if that change comes to pass, I I do feel that we will have less ears, less of a presence in Austin folk because does an excellent job at keeping us informed. We meet with them regularly, calls, texts, weekly meetings and so it it's as if they're an extension of the team. So we do have a presence in Austin through focus advocacy and that's what lobbying services are for. We're unfortunate that we're very far from Austin. We're very far from DC. Traveling does take time. It is an effort. Nevertheless, I think our results show we are bringing in uh support for the city and and trying our best to avoid like preeemption laws, but know that as we prepare for the 119th session, we'll be sure to touch base with you to to explain our strategy and obviously very willing to listen to recommendations. Yeah. And and I think I mean I'm supportive of us having a lobbyist and I just worry that that's going to be preempted like you said. So kind of thinking about that happening in the next few weeks is is something that we need to prepare for. And one one other thing that I would really like to see is more of a regular communication with council at least. You know, we have our work sessions every two weeks. Um maybe every other work session we get an update on what's happening at the session. during the session. I know that the El Paso County gets very regular updates and they know exactly where the bills are going and how they have to communicate that with their constituents. So, I think that would be really helpful for us to have as well. Yes, sir. We can commit for additional communication from our part. Thank you, Omar. Good job. I mean, keeping us present at the state and at the federal level and bringing in working with the other departments to bring in that kind of money is is incredible. I know you guys have kept me busy this year, whether I'm reaching out to federal senators, local senators, congress people. I mean, you guys have really, really worked me, but it's been good and it's good to see the results. Good job. Thank you, mayor. Representative Lemon. No, thank you. Thank you, Mayor. We have 11 more departments and every single one of them is important and I believe that we can finish it today if we have a 10-minute recess. Please, may we please have a 10-minute recess? Motion. Had to make a motion. We had actually scheduled to break at this point and we had the rest of the departments that were listed after city council tomorrow. So, we have I was just thinking we've got everybody that's been sitting here like fire and police have been here all morning long, all day long. I'm sure some of them want to do it today and and it's up to you all. where everybody is prepared and that's why we bring everybody. I think if we took a 10-minute break, we could finish it. It's if we think 11 and we live them limit them to 2 minutes, it's like 22 minutes. But what are you going to limit the council to? Representative, you have a motion. I'd like to make a motion that we recess for 10 minutes and then regroup. Second. There's a motion and a second to recess a special city council meeting for 10 minutes. All in favor? I. Anyone opposed? No. I'll do roll call. Mayor Prom Chavez. Representative Ato. No. Roachcha Tjo. Hi. Nino. Hi. Hi. Lemon. Hi. And that motion passes. Thank you. The meeting gets in recess at 4:17 p.m. and we'll reconvene in 10 minutes. That's a minute. We need one more council member. Mayor One more for a quorum. Council, is there a motion to reconvene? Second. There's a motion and a second to reconvene the special meeting. All in favor? I. Anyone opposed? The meeting is back in session at 4:30 p.m. We continue with the departmental presentations. Next is Chief Killings from the Fire Department. Good afternoon, Chief. Good afternoon, Mayor. Good afternoon, Chief. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Chief Killings, El Paso Fire Department, Fire Chief. So, what we do, uh, the El Paso Fire Department is an allhazards emergency response organization that, uh, does also, uh, education, code enforcement, and inspections for the city of El Paso. We also run the Office of Emergency Management, the El Paso County Office of Emergency Management, and the 911 Communications uh, division. As you can see looking at our general fund, we do have a variance of $9.5 million uh 9.588. Uh and as Miss Mack was discussing and Miss Wiggins uh earlier today, uh those are primarily that increase is primarily due to salaries and benefits as a result of the 2022 CBA. Uh on the general fund side, we have a reduction of 537,000 due to some planned uh expirations of some grants that that had reached their life cycle uh and brought some of those uh we're looking at the safer grants and some of those that were affecting migrant operations and helping us support that. For our total positions, uh we we we're seeing an increase of 50.50 50 and that's a result of some of those positions coming back in from the safer uh back into the general fund. Those were the grant funded positions. We will be applying for the safer grant as well uh this this coming or we have already applied for it in anticipation of uh fire station 38 to help with the staffing uh for that station. Um and then on again as we're showing on the non-general FUD, it's those FTEEs that are going away as a as a result of the uh expiration of some of those grants and then the nine positions that we sent uh to support the uh code enforcement division. If we look at some of the highlights that we want to talk about, uh really excited about our recruitment and retention that that uh really the recruitment side of it for the El Paso Fire Department. Um if you look at um our staffing for our uniform personnel, uh we'll we'll be um right at at 998 uh coming into the next fiscal year. And that's an increase coming from again uh being able to support the the new fire stations that the new fire station on uh the far east side that is being built. Um and one of the things that we really want to highlight is the effort that's being made by our our human resources recruitment uh uh division within the fire department. Um, we have our call takermies with 25 call takers per class. We're going to be running thosemies every two months for the uh for for six uh sixmmies in the year. And with that, that's going to bring our total recruitment or our total staffing for the 911 communications division to full staffing by the end of the summer. And that's the first time we're going to get to that po that point since uh pre-COVID times. Um, we also have the new fire station coming in downtown which is going to be our special operations station which is going to help us be more efficient. We're going to combine some of the fire stations downtown and and make that the jumping off point for our special rescue teams. Um, we've all seen some of the great things that our special rescue teams have been able to do here in the locally in the mountains and then our water rescue team being deployed across the state of Texas and into New Mexico. We're also very proud of uh you know we talk about the increase in call volumes uh for fire and police all coming into the 911 center and for fire on the fire side you know we've been consistently over the past 2 or 3 years over 100,000 calls per year for service and that continues to increase and with that we're able to maintain our our response times uh with the national average and below the national average. So our target is 6 minutes and 30 seconds. Uh this past year we were able to do that at six minutes and 10 seconds. And again that's with those increased volume uh and all the construction that's going around along town around town. That's just a testament to the men and women that are out there dedicated on those fire fire response vehicles to be able to know their territory and get on the scene uh in time to give that exceptional service to the community. And again, if you look at just a breakdown of the fire incidents for this year, we're well above the 100,000 mark. again. And that's it for me. Any questions? Representative Asetto. Thank you, Mayor. Um, Chief, I just had one quick question on the 911 calls answered within 20 seconds. Oh, yes. Yes. for the FY 2025 was your target also 95%. Our target is always 90 95% and that's set by the International Association of Emergency Dispatchers. Um we're always striving to be at at that po at that point. Uh we have some uh key things that are going to get us there. Uh one of them being the the use of uh technology within the center. We're looking at how we can leverage the the use of technology within the center to help us with that call answer rate. Also getting our our staffing to 100% within the center is huge because now we can look at okay now we we're not just meeting minimum staffing. Now we can increase those numbers of call takers to help um answer the calls during those peak times. And so that's where we really want to get. First, we had to get to that point where we have the the the facility fully staffed. And then we come back and we ask for look if we want to increase these call rates and get get that level that higher level of service, we can come back and ask for, you know, increases in staffing in future years. Okay. I look forward to more. I'm hoping that's going to help increase it because and it's also good the 100% staffing. That's that's a big deal. So, a lot to come. Yes. Super proud of that. Represent Lemon. Thank you, Mayor Chief. Um, I just wanted to comment on the response uh benchmark. I happened to have had um a neighbor across the street yesterday who who had an emergency and called for for help and and so I was in the area there and I want to tell you that the professionalism exhibited by the team that went to my neighbor's home was just incredible. uh everything, the attire, the dress code, the the promptness, the way they handled the situation. Um it was just fabulous to see that and and for my neighbor to to have that kind of attention, I'm sure made her feel um much safer and in better hands. Um, I believe that this is um this would be the unit from McCrae, but I was just I was just so proud that I just kind of stood back like a proud mom of all these young people that were out there taking care. And if that's what's happening throughout the city, my compliments to you, to your leadership, and to the team. And thank you for all that you do for our community. Thank you. Thank you, Representative Lemon. And that's really a testament to our leaders that are out there on those crews. You know, our young lieutenants and our captains that are, you know, taking the mission to heart to provide that exceptional service and they're proud of who who our organization and who they represent. So, you know, that's a testament to them and and to to the leadership that's out there with those crews every single day. And um thank you for that feedback, Representative Chavez. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Chief, for your presentation. Thank you for your service. Thank you to your team. um your all all your response team in El Paso, but even the ones that just were um sent to Central Texas, we appreciate their bravery and their courage. How many people are part of the fire department? So, if we look at the total number of uh uniform, non-uniform, and our telecommunicators, it's 1177 uh staff members. If we're looking at just the fire um the uniform firefighters, we're at 988 uh and anticipated to to jump to 10 by 10 for next fiscal year. So we'll bring out for the first time ever, we'll have over a thousand uniform firefighters and that will mean you will be at capacity or or what is your ideal number? So uh again I think as a testament to the response times that we have and and the the our strategic plan and our the strategic management of how we use data to place our resources. I think you know we're going to have to continue to grow the department. Um, I think our goal would be to have, you know, maybe 15, 10 to 15 firefighters added per year over the next five to six years just to help support the growth of the city and and the the the demand from the the the city of El Paso. Do you have any problem attracting people to your department? No, ma'am. Right now, we are filling all of our academy classes. Uh, so when we we set to start an academy, we're meet we're meeting that and and getting them we have an academy of 65 set to start in September and I 100% certain that we'll be able to fill that 100 uh to to 65 to start. Okay. Well, we we thank you for your service once again. I hope you feel supported by us um and by the city in general and please let us know if we can help in any way. Thank you, Chief. Thank you. And absolutely, yes, the the support from mayor and council, city leadership, Miss Mack, Chief Diagustinino, it's always uh it's how we are able to to achieve uh success in our organization. And chief, before you leave, I know, you know, want to give you the opportunity. A lot of us have been watching TV and we know that you sent six members of your your team, the water rescue team that was up in New Mexico and now they're down in in Kurville, Texas. Can you talk a little bit about what your team is doing? So, our water rescue team is is one of our specialty operation teams that is uh deployable throughout the state of Texas. Uh they're they're they're part of Texas Task Force One, which is uh for the Far West Texas uh division of the the state of Texas. Uh they were put into action to help support Rio. Uh and then uh during that deployment on July 3rd, they were pulled from there to go support uh central Texas uh in anticipation for the storms that they had over there. And um our team responded, you know. Um so they they went from uh Ridoso out to uh Kerr and they were actually uh able to effectively rescue uh two people that were in trees. Uh and then they supported Coast Guard operations to get people off of rooftops. And right now they're they're working um continuously to do wide area searches looking for victims. So we're super proud of them. It's a it's a testament to the level of training that they receive. Uh if you saw some of the videos, the waters that these uh men are operating that boat in don't exist around here. Uh so they travel to central Texas quite often to be able to operate those boats at that level and uh be able to be effective uh in their in their response. So super proud of them. Well, thank you guys for everything you do. And I'll say this to you and I'll say to Chief Pas too that you guys are always running into danger or you know most are running out. So, thank you guys so much for what you do for this community and and for the state of Texas. So, we we appreciate you guys. Thank you, Mayor. Next up, the illustrious Pete Pacas. Please. The illustrious. Good afternoon, Chief. Good afternoon, Mayor Council Peter Pacillas. For the record, uh police department, what do we do? The mission of the El Paso Police Department is to preserve life, provide services with a ty dedication uh to enforce the law, and to work in partnership with the community, to enhance the quality of life for those living and working in El Paso. Uh the invarian as discussed by Miss Mack and uh everybody that you've heard from Mr. Cortinez is due to the uh CBA uh going up uh the salaries and incentives do with this contract that uh it's between the city of El Paso and um the the police officers with the through the association along with uh increases in grant and uh um the transfer of code into its own department that all affected all our variances. So, we went uh our variance amount went up 11.1 million um for uh total funds uh on there and our FTEEs uh went down by 62. And I want to assure uh the public and you all that was the transfer of our uh code personnel into the newly developed uh code department under Mr. Steve Alvarado. Some of the highlights uh that uh these uh officers did uh over last year is uh our HR and our recruiting section have been working hard and heavy to recruit recruit uh police officers and uh over this last fiscal year we've graduated 84 new police officers uh on there and I'll get into the last slide on what we're talking about pre-COVID numbers and that's uh three uh basic police officermies also Um, our primary mission is a preservation of life and it doesn't matter if somebody loses their life through uh a murder or on our roadways. And our DWI task force uh last year arrested over 15,000 people for DWIS and uh issued over 33,000 uh citations. Along with that, the department uh initiated a violent street task force in conjunction with other agencies both uh local, state, and federal u to help keep down the the crimes of violence going on across the the city. Uh one of the key cases there is they prevented a possible another active shooter at the Cincinnati district after a person left there and went to go get a rifle from their car. We were out there and were able to stop that immediately. Um we are uh some of the initiatives that we're doing is we are going to uh data to uh deploy our personnel and our resources and uh um we've uh hired an uh a new IT program manager to get our systems all uh uh under one roof. So we're using data to deploy our people along with another efficiency one of the and it's the little things that help the morale in the department. uh the the vehicles that the officers drive, that's their office for 10 hours, sometimes longer than than that. And we're able to turn the vehicles over now with uh preventive maintenance. It's just uh oil changes and lights and stuff like that. And uh our mechanic over there is able to turn those things around in uh no more than 90 minutes and get them back out in the field. And then we've also um uh initiated an officer wellness program. We just recently hired about four weeks ago a police psychologist that is now on staff with the uh with the police department and that resources will also resource will also be shared with the fire department. And last slide here. Um what we want to highlight right here is uh with our projections of 120 uh new officers uh next uh fiscal year that we will be there uh at our staffing levels precoid and uh um we're pretty excited about that. Uh we've uh um challenged the entire staff, not just our uh our recruiters, but all 1100 police officers to go out there and start recruiting. And the biggest turnaround when we ask our applicants where are they hearing about us to join the police department is friends and family within the police department. Uh with that I'll turn it over to any questions. Questions for the chief representative Roacha. Thank you mayor. Thank you chief for everything that you and your your um police officers provide us. I had an opportunity to tour the police academy and so I was able to visit two um classes that you all have right now and so just the work that you all are doing and it's it's very thoughtful as to the needs of of the city and I just wanted to tell you that I appreciate everything that you do um and all your officers that are out there at the academy where it starts and leading into the leadership that you have. but also wanted to just extend um my sincere thoughts and prayers to the officers that were injured this afternoon and I apologize. I hope that that they're okay and that they make a quick recovery. Thank you. No, we have we have great uh people out there every day regardless of where they're uh stationed u throughout the department. They're all working very hard to make sure that the the city remains safe and uh um we got some pretty good news. Uh the the officer is going to need some surgery, but uh has moved to a stable condition and from critical, so they're going to be fine. Very good. Representative Chavez. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Chief. I I just want to be fair, so I ask you the same question as I did, Chief Killings. What is your ideal number of officers that you would like? Well, uh, as it's no secret that our response times are still suffering and the volume of calls that are coming in and the self-initiated, uh, uh, numbers that the officers are, uh, doing out there, they're they're handling over 200,000 calls or self-initiated, uh, events, uh, out there. Um, the plan that we have to to uh increase our staffing is is a thoughtout plan for a couple reasons. one, it's a huge impact to the uh the city's budget to hire police officers and get them out there in the field. And as a slide that Miss Wiggins showed earlier uh on the uh police department with the number of people that can retire or leave after 20 years, uh one time the department brought in hundreds of people at a mass hiring and that's where we ended up where we're at right now where we were fighting a lot of people being able to walk out the door and retire at a certain time. So, if we were to bring a lot of people in at one time, we're just going to be back in the same hole, you know, 15, 20 years from now. Um, but, uh, but the city this size, uh, on there should probably be about 1,400 police officers. Okay. And the reason why I asked that is because, you know, public safety of course is is a priority for many of our constituents, as it should be. And honestly, you know, I do feel that we live in a very safe city, and I know your department does a great job of making sure that continues. Um, something that I hear a lot from my constituents is how they wish there was more patrolling, especially within the neighborhoods because of speeding and all of that. So, I don't know if you wanted to speak on that. You know, many times I tell them we just don't have the manpower to have someone parked on your street, you know, to catch people that are are speeding. So, if you could just speak to that a little bit. Yes, ma'am. So, what we institute, there's nothing out there in the in law enforcement. Law enforcement isn't like fire department where you have certain codes or benchmarks uh for staffing and things of that nature. So what we did is uh we we looked around. We didn't find anything. So along with one of our uh crime analysts, we developed a uh whole uh formula to determine how many officers we we we keep in uh in the patrol uh uh divisions out there. We instituted that with the new graduation in May uh on that. And at that point when we looked at all the data uh of where calls for service and crimes were happening and that's where a line share of the officers that graduated from that last academy they went to Northeast because that's where they were impact uh the impact was both to to the citizens but also the the wear and tear on the officers having to handle that volume of work. So we've instituted that. Uh we're working on our second phase of this plan uh on there to get our patrol staffing up to uh uh 47% by January of next year with themmies that are graduating. So what did we do there? Uh we stopped transfers coming out of patrol into support divisions out there and uh starting to run lean on on the support side. That's g a give and take. When I say the the the support side, those are detectives that follow up later on on the crimes. So that'll slow up uh investigations uh for citizens out there. What we've done with the traffic uh issues out there is uh we uh uh consolidated our motor units to do surges in two different uh areas of the city uh of the six regional commands. So we'll surge in two different areas and move to the next one. So we're constantly moving and trying to keep people on their toes. Okay. And and we appreciate that. You know, of course, there will be those that that, you know, will continue to speed, but hopefully, you know, we can catch them so they don't put people in harm's way. Yes ma'am. Um, I know it's an an issue citywide. So, thank you, Chief, once again, for keeping our community safe. I know I feel really safe in my community, so I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions for the chief? And thank you for sending us the Crime Statistics Weekly. Oh, you're welcome. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate it, Chief. Thank you for the great work. I mean, and uh your DWI numbers for last year, I mean, are are good. Hopefully, this year, you know, will I want the numbers to go down, you know, more people to be safe. So, um continue to do what you're doing and we're here to support you. Yes, sir. So, over the Fourth of July weekend, we had no fatalities, uh out there with the DWI initiatives. Uh over the first month of the uh enough of enough campaign uh we arrested over uh we had 139 arrests for DWIS. Um our commanders and lieutenants uh out there came up with a plan and uh u went through the the warrant list and arrested 179 people with DWI type uh uh warrants. So, in the first month of that, we arrested over 300 uh people for alcohol-related uh traffic offenses. Wow, that's fantastic. And and as you said, enough is enough and we're going to continue to crack down the DWI. So, thank you. Yes sir. Thank you, Chief. Introducing the next one or you guys want to continue? It's up to It's up to my council. I' I'd like to make a motion that we adjourn for the day. We We It's a shame we couldn't take everybody today because some of you have been here all day long, but we do need to take a break. There's about nine more departments left for tomorrow, which we will take. And we really appreciate all of the information we received. And those of you that have been here all day, even though you already give your pres presentation, we thank you for your for your for being here because this is such an important event and such an important thing that we do. So, I'd like to make a motion that we adjourn for the day. There's a motion and a second. All those in fa Miss Pry, I'll let you call for the vote. So, there's a motion and a second to adjurnn the special meeting. All those in favor? I. Anyone opposed? and the special city council meeting for Monday, July 6. Thank you guys for your patience at 4:54 p.m. Thank you, council.