right foreign good morning everyone if we could please rise for the pledge good morning good morning this is a special meeting of the El Paso city council for Monday July 10 2023 it is 10 36 a.m mayor Lisa is present and presiding also present in the room our representative Kennedy mayor Pro Tem anello alternate mayor protein molinar representative Hernandez representative Salcido representative Rivera and representative Canales representative Pirro has asked to be excused this morning thank you again I do want to thank everyone for for being here with this um I think we've seen the process change a little bit at uh in the last couple weeks as we've all been briefed I know I've had four briefings and we almost got finished so um because we were able to ask a lot of questions and and kind of go through the book and kind of understand a little bit more I think of what's going on and I want to thank you Colonel and Nicole and Mr cortinas thank you all for uh for the briefings I know there was a lot of work put behind it and and I know there's still a lot of questions I've talked to some of the city Representatives there's still a lot of questions on the budget that need to be answered and uh I'm glad to see all the department heads here and and kind of talk about it as as we all know that we all represent the same people whether it's eight districts we all represent the citizens of El Paso and um with our First Responders Police Department everybody we all represent the same people and and our goal today is to come up with a budget that really takes into consideration everyone in our community um we talked about this that um our goal and I know it's my goal and is to see a no Revenue um budget this year no new Revenue budget this year and I know you all have worked on very hard and that's how you it starts out and that's how we propose it and um I look forward to uh seen that come to fruition to be honest with you so I want to thank you all again for the work that uh it takes more than a couple days to put something like this together and because this is going to be our operating budget for 24 so thank you again and with that I'll uh I'll pass it over to Colonel Weston mayor Lisa before we get started with a budget may we take items one and two on the agenda that's why I did that point no I'm kidding yes ma'am thank you item one is discussion in action on award of solicitation 2023-0258 collector and above Street resurfacing 2023 to International Eagle Enterprises Inc do we have any public comment on it yes ma'am we do have some people that signed up to speak on this item where are we um where are we taking public from it oh yes if we could take public comment first please yes sir we have the first person that signed up is Bruce Kohler good morning sir you'll have three minutes Mr mayor council my name is Bruce kaler I'm an attorney and I'm representing zetex Construction Incorporated with regard to this particular item this particular item for The Collector contract was noticed as a competitive sealed bid which you all may know is a best value analysis that is conducted it is not a low bid process that you can also utilize what the best value contract process deals with is trying to find the best contractor under the criteria that is set forth by the bid packet we believe that the process utilized by the city of El Paso was flawed we believe that a determination was made as far as the determination is who the bidder would be and it was worked backwards when this bid was analyzed and we would request that the city council ensure that this bid is rebid and in fact that the scoring that took place be re-scored and let me just briefly because I only have the three minutes in 2022 for the resurfacing contract 20 percent weight was given to bid price for this contract that we're talking about that was increased to 40 percent doubled the amount that was weighted for this particular item on the bid what has become what has happened is that for this item and then the next item what has happened this is becoming a load bid rather than a best value process and because of that we feel that local contractors such as my client such as Jordan Foster are not being properly analyzed for the the contract and here you have zetex which is an older more established company being rated lower uh on on a on items in comparison to a much newer and smaller entity who is being proposed for the award of the bid frankly there's no comparison between the experience between my client and the uh the suggested Award winner when you look at the production capability my client is far in excess of what we believe the other bidders can perform and so you know one of the issues is that my client has performed similar contracts for the city very successfully in the past it has always been rated extremely high with regard to experience and also experience on a local level and given the fact that my client has abilities and capabilities Beyond those which we believe the other contractors can be can perform we believe that this contract should be rebid and re-analyzed and it also point out here that the the pricing when you look at the comparison to the pricing you look at the the unsuccessful bidders and the price quoted for this okay it's a three-minute limit the next speaker is Joaquin Royal thank you sir good morning you have three minutes good morning good morning so first of all I'd like to start by saying I've got a letter for Council mayor and the city manager would it be okay if I distributed before my time starts or can you help me yeah I was interested don't use your time to pass it out so thank you so bear with me not a great public speaker I'll do my best I would like to elaborate on our company and our reasoning behind the protest there's a sense of unfairness and a lack of in in my opinion there's a lack of objectivity for the best value process there's a sense of appearance excuse me we sincerely believe the way that we were graded is inconsistent is inconsistent with the way they we have been graded in the past it is not correct there's unfair there's numerous factors which aren't Fair it is not in the best interest of the city it is not objective it is not an objective process even though zetex has grown and is more experienced and more capable than we have we have ever been we're being punished by the grading process which is very subjective and it is decreasing our points and our scores we are not asking for any special treatment we are asking for fairness consistency and transparency very recently zetex was Best Value on resurfacing 2022 but this project was rejected and rebid zetex was successful in the west as best value in the west side medians this project was canceled zetex in this particular project was canceled and it was it was a problem for us with the amount of time that we allocated and we managed to find discrepancies in the bid documents the plans in addition to all that I have mentioned above there's another important item that should be addressed the point allocation process as well until very recently all beds provided for for points were there were there was points allocated for health coverage we provide 100 health coverage for all of our employees there should be a value to that to the best of my knowledge no explanation was ever granted in regards to why this was removed the insurance was removed completely from the point system I asked at the council and said and the council and mayor consider postponing this award until you can review the information that I have provided and that you can look into it as part of the internal process which we are not being allowed to look at they are not letting us know who was in the Review Committee how the points were distributed who considered that distribution of points we don't need to know if you guys if we know that there is transparency and you are reviewing it we just asked for fairness next city council is 7 18 at a minimum you should be able to get some information on it thank you thank you thanks speakers Miss Lisa Turner good morning you have three minutes good morning mayor council what streets are you going to do with this in particular I'm very interested in Louisiana from the 4 700 block to the 5 000 block the street that was torn up when we had to flood and now you have uh it's just a collection of potholes and not a street anymore do we have any idea Richard Bristol streets of maintenance on January 30th of this year we identified at the council and a presentation all the streets that were going to be done in the first two and a half years of the bond rollout those streets are the exact same ones that we would apply to these two contracts that are at Council today I'll ask the question again 4700 block the Louisiana of Louisiana to the 5 000. I need to get back with you on that one because I do not have all of them memorized but I will get back with you and I'll have someone check hopefully during the meeting I can get your answer to you okay thank you thank you Mr Turner thank you Mr Bristol that that's everyone that signed up on item one mayor yeah if I can I'd like to ask a question from the representative from ztec yes sir please thank you there's something that really bothered me a lot and I actually would like an answer to that there was a statement made that zetec was in there the understanding that they were going to get the contract and it was in the media and based on that you turned down other jobs and by turning on those jobs it could bankrupt your company or put your company out of business who would you have given who gave you that understanding that you would have gotten a a bid that's a sealed bid and that this would have happened so through the urgency of this process which was expedited by the city on the award my attorney helped me draft up a letter and there were items that I read through fairly quickly nobody informed us that we were going to get the award however based on the experience that we have based on the past points that we have been allocated on similar projects we considered we were going to get it nobody mentioned it was ours so that was a misstatement and I apologize for that yeah because that bothered me a lot I get it completely and and after um after I went public apologize for the interruption after went public and I read a little bit more into it I understand how that can be an issue and it can be concerning but that was not the situation thank you for clarifying that no problem thank you yes sir Council representative Canales mayor can we hear from staff just a quick explanation of the process that they went through in the evaluation here and what the outcome was yeah that's um if we could um would it be Mr Hernandez or Miss Cody Claudia Garcia's on the line assistant director to purchasing and she's the individual that handled this solicitation thank you for that thank you good morning good morning Claudia Garcia purchasing a strategic searching department so as indicated a diesel station was evaluated under the competitive seal proposal uh procurement methodology in this methodology we include certain factors to be evaluated and how they are included as part of the association the weights were assigned according to the Statue as allowed and the number of points based on the importance for the user Department in this case streets we met with a committee selected using their experience and knowledge but this type of contracts the committee evaluated out their proposals received for desocitation individually they they evaluated the information submitted in writing and against the criteria included in the association after that all happened I reviewed this course just to make sure everything was okay and the ranking was issued to all the offers giving them an opportunity to protest a ranking will receive a protest for this uh solicitation we evaluate the basis of the protest and we denied the the protest as being reviewed based on the guidelines of the CSV process after that we prepared uh to negotiate with the highest ranked and uh conclude negotiations and property item for recommendation in front of City camps so that is the process we we follow for for this particular solicitation as we do all for all these dsps presented in front of silicates thank you go ahead thank you thank you Claudia um we heard in the comment uh Mr Kohler said uh that they felt the criteria was unfair and the the fee proposal was overvalued in the procurement were all of the bidders aware of the evaluation criteria before they submitted their their sealed bids yes the part of this dislocated to price or in alignment with the Statue of regulating the csb methodology so there was no surprise later on in the process by what the evaluation criteria was going to be after anything was submitted by any of the proposers that is correct everything was outlined in the association okay thank you thank you mayor thank you um anyone else go ahead man representative Hernandez I've said time and time again in the past as it relates to resurfacing contracts um you know I've been I'm a big believer in the low bid resurfacing project so that we can expand as much Services as we can Citywide given the limited processes and so that's just always been my concern with with that's just been my concern with with these um proposals is that they never come come toward to us as low bid but clearly in your evaluation factors you are giving more consideration for low bid proposals then why don't we just issue out low bid procurements Richard Bristol streets of Maintenance the cost Factor change in this one from the previous one and it was 40 I believe on this one but there are other factors that are being evaluated like other qualitative factors that are submitted with the proposal I I don't want to go into too many details I don't have it in front of me but we expanded the cost on this time that is true from the last time but we still felt the other criteria were very important now the cost is a very important factor it weighs 40 percent of the bid but it's not the only factor and there are other things like uh performance of the company um are they equipped there are they resource for this type of work there's different types of considerations that are part of the criteria that were looked at now again I don't have the criteria in front of me so I can't speak to it specifically I was not on the committee um so I'm I'm trying to make sure I'm giving you the answer that you need but I just need you to understand that there are other factors that we evaluate other than just cost because we don't want to get stuck in a situation with a contractor that perhaps we didn't have a good experience with last time and the projects may have prolonged and we were pretty much directed to find ways to to qualitatively qualitatively review these bids as in addition to quantitatively and this is the result now what what what we're referencing is there's a difference between resurfacing and there's a difference between reconstruction is this bid for resurfacing only this is resurfacing only okay because the resurfacing issue we rarely ever have issues with resurfacing and and granted we can talk about concrete work you know that comes with the resurfacing but the resurfacing contract should come in low bid and the Reconstruction should come in competitive seal or best value and that has been my biggest gripe because number one we can save dollars so that we can have more streets that we can hit that's my that's my biggest concern is how can I expand these dollars so I can get more dollars for actual streets than as opposed to you know other other work or or profit for the contractor so that's been my my biggest complaint about these resurfacing projects is that you all are you all are coming back with competitive bid and then you know I I saw some of the the issues here and I under and recognize why there's a concern because it keeps changing so I think that you know moving forward we need to have an understanding of what is going to be our standard we need to stick to that standard especially with our evaluation factors because I'm looking at just the ones that I've seen here and they vary and why why is it that they vary you know every proposal it shouldn't it shouldn't there should be a consistent standard for every procurement that we issue out for Street reconstruction and then Street resurfacing I'm not seeing that and so uh separate from my concern about the type of proposal that's been issued is there any is there any consideration is there any concern or desire from the Department to want to rebid this no we need to get to work we would like to reward this so we can get the work started and if we go back to rebid what would be the time the time frame this is Nicole Cody managing director of purchasing and budget the time frame would be anywhere from four to six months um well did you say nine to six months I'm sorry four to six months okay and do we currently have a Contractor on staff doing resurfacing now do we have an open contract right now doing resurfacing that I understand do we currently have an open contract for resurfacing the current resurfacing contract is with z-tex there's a balance of a little over 6 million on it there's still a lot of work to be done in that contract as well okay so in the event there's a time lapse there's a there's a yes we're Paving this week okay so we've been Paving throughout the year on the on that contract and I don't know um you know if there's a desire from Council but just my concern has been the type of the type of procurement that we issue out and um and to create a standard on how these contracts are issued out it changes all the time and I don't understand why if we know that we have 10 years of funding that's available for projects for this rollout for this Bond and so I really would hope that we put a standard together so that we can stick to that and not it not change I'll make a motion to re-bid I'll second your motion how many bidders were there Claudia the mayor was asking how many bidders this one we received three proposals and guidelines were identical for all three yes sir we yeah we everybody was graded and guidelines and everything was the same regardless of what your name may be yes we don't look into the languages okay yes sir and then also sir I'd like to add if I may on the competitive sealed proposals it's based on city policy that went into effect on November 27 2017 and then revised and reviewed in 2018 that any any projects over a million dollars would be using this type of procurement method so this has been in the process yes sir totally follow the process that we've had yes sir thank you for that I got excuse me I got a mayor coach him followed by represent Pinellas thank you um I don't know who this question is for it and please uh if you don't mind uh speaking to the microphone everyone yes sir my question is uh so four to six months to rebid when would you expect the award to be let's say it's six months for the rebed so then you have to you have to list and all of that so it would be February of 2024. and well how do we see inflation numbers Rising what are we expecting from now to February and how could that impact the amount of streets done from now to February Richard go ahead that's kind of hard to tell um but that's a big factor Because by the time this is rebid I don't know what the unit costs are going to be they're based on the price of of boil be honest with you um so the market does drive this you take a chance when you rebid because you could also have other delays additional protests and such many of our street researching contracts are being protested we've noticed that over the last few years so it does take a little bit of time to get this done one more question go ahead and this is about the actual bidding process so if it's uh inappropriate to ask publicly let me know but when you're scoring for experience and reputation what are you looking at in regards to that second address back so we are requesting a similar projects in scope of work and we're including what we are going to be considering similar in scope work so the contractor will provide those contracts that meet the criteria to be evaluated the committee evaluates the details provided by the contractor in writing and then purchasing contacts the owner of that contract just to make sure the contract was like was completed everything was good to go technically just to offer a score on how the contractor performed under that contract yeah I mean because I'm looking at the residential restraint resurfacing and it seems like experience and reputation should should kind of hold a lot of weight if you're if you're looking at the actual scoring of previous work and I am seeing a really kind of low score on the person being awarded and so I I'm not talking about anyone in this bid process but I have seen a lot of times that we've given work to people who have been scored poorly in that category and they've continued to do poor work and so that is I think a concern and I think moving forward or even with this how are we actually giving that more weight even if someone is being scored poorly for previous work why are we giving them million dollar contracts to continue to do poor poor work and again I'm not specifically talking about any of these four companies but I have seen it happen in other contracts you respond if there is a response so so we as part of the procurement process the overall in the the contract Administration is we do work with the Departments if they're identifying any issues as the as contract administrators we do make sure that we work with them for cure letters we're working with the vendors to ensure that any deficiencies are addressed and then there's a vendor performance report that's required each year to ensure that we are tracking the vendor's performance and so we need to work with those departments representative and for the contracts that you're referring to thank you I mean I would say I do have some concern about what has been stated here today and looking at the scoring but I do have a lot of concern about rebidding this and waiting six months and so I wonder if the council would be comfortable uh postponing this until the next council meeting so we can have more briefings on it and more conversations about it if that's a possibility is that a motion yeah so I would make a motion to postpone um till the is it the 17th the July 17th council meeting 18. so motion to postpone until July 18th pardon me right so now we have a motion to postpone so that stops the conversation you can um I know I actually have a question about postponement once we have motion to postpone it stops conversation if they want to lift the second then we can have a conversation at this time right I have questions about the postponement go ahead go ahead sir uh do we have any uh is there any concern about bid expiration if we are postponing into the future Claudia the bids expire on what date so their proposal are expiring uh August 8th August 8th in this postponement date was July 18th okay so there's some flexibility there thank you Mary thank you sir with that Mr Price yeah so there was a motion made by mayor Pro tem Manilow seconded by representative Rivera and this is to postpone item one until the July 18 2023 city council meeting on that motion representative Kennedy no no anello aye Hernandez yes molinar Salcido hi Rebecca hi Canales no and the motion passes five to two with Representatives Kennedy Canales voting Representatives anello Hernandez Molina Salcido Rivera voting I the motion does carry next that brings us to item number two and this is discussion in action on the award of solicitation 2023-0267 residential street resurfacing to Allied Paving Company of El Paso in DBA Allied Paving Company we do have public comment on this item we have a Mr Bruce color good morning you have three minutes thank you Mr mayor council Bruce kaler again on behalf of zetex and if you would turn to page 24 in your backup if you would and this contains the scoring on this particular project and I would particularly make note on Factor B the proposed award award e Allied Paving on offer experience and reputation came in at 3.76 my client zetex came in at 12.63 a massive difference and bear in mind that zetex is the current contractor the city of El Paso has intimately worked with z-tex and that's why I think the experience that has been provided and the rating of that experience is particularly useful for this bid and so again we believe that and I'm not going to repeat what we've already talked about but we believe that the when you look at the factors that should be considered if you really utilize the best value process rather than the low bid process that and you look at how narrow if you look at the total points Allied Paving came in at 80.37 and zetex even with the changed criteria came in at 80.04 and bear in mind that for example item F which I don't think was scored properly because that's very similar to factor B but that used to be 20 now it's five percent there used to be as my client indicated a five percent uh or five points that would be awarded for health care and I think that's significant in this community to make sure that employees in fact do have health care so we would request that this either be rebid or that this item be tabled until such time that it can be reevaluated thank you the next speaker is Joaquin Royal good morning you have three minutes thank you so again it's the same situation as the previous discussion I request that at a minimum you consider postponing this so you can review the information adequately internally one of the main problems is the subjectivity to which the points can be allocated who chooses who picks who's making the decision on the Review Committee what's read into it we don't know but you can and I'd like for at least somebody to have another set of eyes on it and make sure that numbers aren't being skewed because it really feels that way them same note thank you thank you and I can tell you that if you're assuming that someone did something that was illegal I wouldn't think that that would be proper but because that's everybody I think the goal post has not moved for anybody and the guidelines were set for everybody the same way and you know we want to look at it again know if some buts but not because someone did something wrong exactly I I'm okay with that and to elaborate on the same but the way it came out I apologize I should elaborate on it thank you for bringing that up to my attention a lot of times when you're up here and you're just talking what you're thinking it doesn't come out the way you want it to same thing on the urgency thank you so so one of the things that that I do want to elaborate on is a lot of times what happens is people are placed and they have one mindset it may not be the correct for this type of process there's a lot of people that don't have the experience on this type of process this type of bid so that's why I would like for somebody to be able to review the decisions that are being made I'm not pointing fingers that is not my intention thank you sir the next speaker is Lisa Turner she miss Turner was saying okay okay the next speaker is Michael McLean good morning you have three minutes good morning sir good morning Mr mayor council members my name is Mike McLean I'm an attorney with the law firm of Gordon Davis Johnson and Shane and I represent Allied Paving the highest ranked bidder on this street resurfacing project Mr chicon is out in the hallway because it's a standing room only crowd um but he went through this competitive sealed proposal and was the highest ranked bidder his price was five million dollars less than zetex the waiting for that price was higher this year because in a couple of years ago the legislature changed the value that must be given to the price there used to not be a floor on the weight that you could give to a price of a bidder now that floor is 36.9 percent don't ask me where that came from but that explains the increase to the 40 percent that Mr Kaylor was complaining about from the previous low of 20 percent I suspect the problem was that the cities were giving contracts that were costing the taxpayer dollars much more than they should have because they were given too much weight to non-objective factors ztecs protested the rankings when these came out with the city those rankings were reviewed by the city under the process the contract the solicitation terms said you could protest those rankings those were protested reviewed and the rankings did not change the solicitation said that decision would be final nonetheless zetex filed suits on both of these agenda items earlier last week a hearing was held last Thursday morning in one case they then later that day non-suited both of those lawsuits and now we're here before you again what we have is a bitter who lost Allied Paving there was a comment about its experience and reputation rating it would argue tooth and nail that that was way too low but that's the experience rating it was given and it was also given points for other items all of those factors were in consideration with when the solicitation was given all the contractors knew what those were Allied Paving adhered to those submitted their bed and they're the highest ranked bidding so I would request you Mr Mayor and council member to respectfully approve this agenda item and let the resurfing go resurfacing go forward without risking the proud the the possibility of aggregate material prices increasing and wind up missing out on the savings that you would realize already with this because if the asphalt price goes up in the future those bids will go up as well thank you very much for your time thank you mayor that concludes public comment on this item City attorney just informed me that there's some things that she would like to discuss with Council based on the litigation that happened last week that and would like a motion to research into executive session and inform the council so I moved promotion in a second there's a motion in a second to return to Executive session all in favor anyone opposed and the city council be sure if we left I think and Council we can move to the executive session room downstairs we should okay so the city council and city of El Paso May return to Executive session pursuant to section 3.5 a of the El Paso City Charter and the Texas government code chapter 551 sub chapter D to discuss item two discussion in action on the award of solicitation 2023-0267 residential street resurfacing to Allied Painting Company of El Paso Inc DBA Allied payment company under 551.071 consultation with attorney it is 11 13 am beautiful Sears here in charge the meeting is back in session at 11 59 A.M we're on item two we're an item two is there any motion some motion and a second to approve there's a motion made by mayor Pro temanello seconded by representative Kennedy to approve the award of solicitation 2023-0267 on item two of the agenda on that motion representative Kennedy anello Hernandez yes molinar Salcido I Rivera aye Canales aye and that motion passes unanimously there's a motion in a second that would consider item one all in favor aye anyone opposed we're back on item number one discussion and action on the award of solicitation 2023-0258 collector and above Street resurfacing 2023 to International Eagle Enterprises mayor just a quick question of order can the second for a reconsider come from a someone who was not on the prevailing side it only has to be the motion it just has to be made by someone on the prevailing side I want to make sure we get everything in order do we have any motion second promotion in a second there's a motion and a second to approve the award on item number one solicitation 2023-0258 collector and above Street resurfacing on that motion representative Kennedy anello Hernandez yes yes and that motion also passes unanimously that brings us to item number three on the agenda and this is for discussion in action FY 2023 2024 budget as presented by the interim city manager and discussion in action may include but not limited to operating capital and debt budgets and all possible funding sources and we begin with an overview from our interim city manager Mr Carrie Weston Colonel Western good morning sir good morning mayor good morning mayor and Council I know it's a little warm in here and so rather than asking you all to hold your breath during the the budget meetings today we we do have the the air conditioning has been turned up it's going to take a little while for the temperature to regulate a little bit but uh but bear with us while we go through the presentation today um just I have some good news for you though Colonel Western council chambers they got the nice and cool for us right now it is go ahead I think it's a function of the people and Technology I'm sorry public comment on any particular item on the agenda or is it uh overall view of of the budget we have the majority of the comments that came in are for a particular goal of the budget it's related to polls and then we have another member of the public that signed up for each of the goals okay so we'll go per goal thank you thank you Merrick just just quickly from a logistics standpoint I mean I think it's really important to note that one of the things we did with the with the budget first of all I want to thank the mayor of you and the entire Council for investing all the Preparatory time and getting ready for the session that we have here today A lot of time has been spent um by the city council in terms of uh the direction on this budget we'll get to that in a little bit from a logistics standpoint we as a staff have blocked the entire week so there should be no feeling of of a rush by any of the city council you know our goal is to go through this until you're satisfied that all your questions have been answered that it's been presented and then when that happens then that'll conclude the budget meetings this week um you see the the attachment the agenda that's in front of you this is the this is the order of the presentations so as was just mentioned we'll kick this off with the uh with the overview that'll be given by myself Robert cortinas and and uh Nicole Cody and then we'll go into each of the gold team presentations you have all the department heads that are either here physically in the room we have we have a number of them they're in different I guess cooler holding areas within the city look at looking at this uh looking at the screens and they're probably just happy to be where where they are but but the point of that is when we go through these presentations and we start drilling down into specific issues uh any of the questions that you may have we've got the expertise within the entire staff here to answer your questions and then lastly before we get into the presentation we'll be keeping track of all the uh the questions if there's any Duets we'll be taking those and so if we have any carryover questions we'll be bringing them back if one council member asks a question the information will be provided to the entire Council and so with that are there any questions in terms of the uh the logistics okay I go yeah so I.T bring up the presentation why don't you start on on uh slide number four so what I wanted to do um with this budget presentation is rather than put any mystery to it I wanted to start by giving you the recommendation right up front I mean with the leadership of the mayor and this entire Council you have made this the direction very very clear to us it's you wanted us to to ease the burden on the taxpayers and make any of the budget adjustments that we needed to to look at lowering the tax rate this year I mean we looked at the impacts and the impacts on taxpayers we are in a high inflationary environment so costs across the board have have been escalating and that's not just this year it's been happening now for the last few years so it's had a big impact on on El Paso taxpayers and so that with the uncertainty in the economy and certainly with your direction and really understanding those concerns our recommendation for this budget year is to have a a no new Revenue tax rate we think we can get there you'll see in the context of this presentation there's a lot of things that we believe we can do to get to that no new Revenue rate sales taxes have been um extremely robust over the last year now there's some potential headwinds ahead and we'll talk about that when we get into the the presentation but we've had good sales tax growth we looked at our current year savings and one of the other things we looked at was was not needing to issue debt this next year we believe we have enough available cash to be able to handle uh with the capacity of the bond projects going for is to use available cash without having to issue debt and so that that's favorable to us and so there's other strategies that we'll talk about but doing all this while also maintaining what you asked us to do in the direction you gave us is to make sure that we we maintain our investment in public safety streets in the workforce next slide please I'll go back to slide five okay so this is the approach that we've taken again your priorities to minimize the impact and invest aggressively in public safety we're doing that in a through a number of different ways by increasing the number of police academies from from two to three and our plan will help both in the retention and recruitment of police officers through competitive compensation particularly with new Cadets we believe that's going to really help us considerably there's a slide with more detail on that that you'll see later in the presentation and then we'll continue to move forward with the the opening of new facilities from the 2019 Public Safety Bond next slide please we'll continue investing in Street infrastructure through the voter approved Community progress bond with a focus on resurfacing and reconstruction on the most traveled arterials resurfacing of residential streets and then Traffic Safety initiatives next slide and then we'll open the three of the signature quality of life Bond projects this budget year with the Children's Museum the Mexican-American Cultural Center and then the the penguin exhibit at the zoo and finally this budget invests in our Workforce by raising the entry wage from 12 dollars and eleven cents to thirteen dollars and eleven cents so that'll be a 50 Cent increase in September and a 50 Cent increase in March and we've also in this in this budget we're increasing funding for the tuition assistance program that's been very successful and widely used by employees here in El Paso and so we will increase the budget for that and for the fifth consecutive year there will be no increase to health care costs uh being passed on to our employees next slide so here's the general fund that's broken down by strategic goal with Public Safety encompassing almost 59 percent next slide and then here's the general fund by category with personal services at about 70 73 percent and then this slide shows our general fund Revenue by category so no surprise here that the two biggest Revenue drivers for us is property taxes and sales taxes making up about 70 percent of our Revenue next slide so I'm not going to go into to detail on this this is the preliminary general fund budget by Department along with the variance from last year but you're going to see all this in the presentation we're going to drill down a little bit into all this and then certainly if you have any questions uh we'll we'll be able to go through those as we have the rest of the overview on the gold team presentations next slide and then this slide shows the all funds budget which includes our Enterprise funded departments thank you so this slide shows the year over year property tax comparison going back to 2018 a little bit later in the presentation either Robert or Nicole is going to show you a much larger span of uh comparisons that go back a lot further but what you can see with our recommended budget that reflects say a four and a half cent decrease from last year next slide and then over the next several slides I'm going to show you the results of the communities chime in survey responses we had over 6200 survey responses from the community this year and the two Community top priorities are quality of life followed very closely by Public Safety next slide and then for those that chose quality of life Focus was overwhelmingly on Parks and Recreation next slide and then for those in the community that selected Public Safety the number one Focus area was Police Services next slide and for those that chose Economic Development the focus is on retaining our existing industry base attracting new business and no surprise the creation of new job opportunities for El pasoans next please and with that I'll unless you have any questions over the the introduction slides I'll turn it over to Robert cortinas to go over Revenue I have one question I think it kind of needs an explanation when we're talking about the hourly we go from 12 11 to 13 11. that's not the only thing we're doing and I think it's important to explain that because we talked about that when we were doing the the explanation so I'd like for you to explain that because it's I think you said anybody that makes under 105 000. sure yeah he's actually just made that comment to Nicole that we need to clarify that language a little bit more but that one dollar increase in the minimum wage everybody in the city the non-uniform employees will receive a dollar increase to their overall pay so it's 50 cents in September 50 cents at the end of February and so that dollar will apply to everybody that's non-uniform not Collective bargain we do have a minimum in there because once individuals reach a certain amount we have a minimum of two and a half percent increase so you can either or you'll get the dollar increase per year or per hour or at least at two and a half percent and so on average we've talked about this our general service employees our largest base of our Workforce and so they'll on average equal about a six percent increase with that dollar an hour the professional managerial equates on average about a four percent increase to their pay and then the executive levels will equate to about a two and a half percent increase and so again really providing a higher uh increase for our lower paid employees entry level employees thank you for that explanation so as we move along in the presentation I'm going to cover the revenues slides and then miss Cody will cover the expenditure slides so on this showing the breakdown of the overall general fund Revenue really the top two drivers again as Colonel Weston pointed out as we look at property tax and sales tax we have a couple of sites to show you what we're projecting as far as overall property value growth but over on the general fund property tax revenue I'm estimated right now to bring an additional five million dollars again we keep talking about the July 25th date and again that's the reminder that that's when we will receive the certified values from the appraisal district and it is at that time that we'll go through and do the calculations on the actual no new Revenue rate the voter approval rate and we'll do that at that time bring that back on August the 1st but as well we presented and what we're presented today at the estimated no new Revenue this is the amount of property tax revenue that's expected to be generated in FY 24. if you look at the second line sales tax and we have a few slides on sales tax because that's really the Big Driver as we move into this next fiscal year really looking at right size in the budget next year based on what we've seen as far as overall sales tax collections really not only in the current year but as we look back last couple of years we've really seen unprecedented to grow their overall sales tax revenue and so you'll see in the budget for next year an increase of 22.4 million when you do a budget to budget comparison or about 20 percent sure the other ones here franchise fees again that revenue is generated off of the utilities for the use of the city rights of ways and so that's based on their overall gross sales and so as they're increasing their rates there is an increase in the overall Revenue collection we do have an increase as Miss Cody will present on the expenditure side as well because the city again is a large user of no electricity but water and gas as well the final item on the site and again you have the bullet points at the bottom that reference the increases of the variances but if you look at the operating transfers in on that Bottom Road there again showing the last three or the last two fiscal years and then the efy 24 preliminary you'll see a six million dollar increase 5 million of that is what the council approved a couple of months ago and that is the use of the current year savings again the pay for futures fund that we're allocating recommending to use five million of that overall 15 million in the budget for next year and then additionally there's about a 1.2 million dollar increase as a result of the modification to the terms 10 which was just recent on the council agenda that you all approved to modify those boundaries and instead of having that Revenue be tied up within the tours having that money now come back into the general fund so this budget does reflect that 1.2 million dollar of additional Revenue to the general fund so as we look to overall taxable assessed values you see the historic going all the way back to 2004 and then scanning all the way into what we're projecting for FY 2024 the green on the far right hand side there we're projecting that nine percent increase in the property values again we'll get the certified values on July 25th so two weeks from tomorrow and at that point again we'll take that information and prepare the presentation for the August 1st city council meeting the one point on this as I indicated during our briefings when you look back historically you see the 2004 to the 2009 time frame we saw a large valuation growth as Fort Bliss was expanding and then really beginning in 2011 all the way through 2020 really flat growth overall on property values and so as we developed a budget not only for this coming year but again as we're looking ahead into Futures as well we want to ensure that we're projecting now to make sure that the account is fully aware of it not only again the current year but as we're looking to the long term as well um really plays the key role in the decision and the recommendations that we bring forward and so we have a couple of slides here that I'm I'll be covering and then at the very end Miss kodio cover really wanted to talk about the budget almost as a two-year budget and so what we're looking at as far as this upcoming year but then also looking a year ahead as well one of the things I talked about was sales tax and that sales tax growth really right size and based on the budget however as I'll show here in just a second we are seeing a little bit of a Slowdown in the overall sales tax collection this slide here showing the overall property tax exemption city and state so we have our Homestead in the blue section of the bars there the disabled and then the over 65 and the Redding green respectively and the finally in the purple section is the disabled veteran and the disabled veteran spouse exemption that's provided for our disabled veterans in our community and you can see this amount overall year over year continue to grow and so this is again property tax savings for these different groups you'll see the overall growth there pretty significant particularly when you look at the disabled veterans as we have more and more individuals qualifying for that 100 disability again they don't pay any property taxes once they once they reach that ranking and so again as we project out looking into the future something that the budget office does very carefully ensuring that we're accounting for the growth or the loss of property tax revenue from the exceptions that are provided here's the slide that Colonel Western was referencing earlier showing the historical property tax rate going back to FY 2004 again you'll see the gradual decrease year over year going all the way into about the year 2011 and then you'll see the increase again as a result of the increase that we've done with the police force the additional Staffing the additional academies the rollout of the 2012 quarter of Life bonds and those operating costs associated with those and then as well as the debt associated with those capital projects as well really but when you look at the last five years you'll see the tax rate flattened out and then has begun to drop in the last two fiscal years with the current year and then what we're recommending for next fiscal year one of the bits of information the council asked for we did this presentation in the last couple of years when we present the budget and we'll update this information as well when we get to certified values we're looking historically at the trz's our transportation reinvestment zones and our tax increment reinvestment zones and the change in valuations going back to 2020 as I mentioned and as Elizabeth Triggs mentioned when you all modified the turs 10 boundaries that's an area that has been growing pretty dramatically in the last couple of years and then as we look ahead again to the preliminary data that we receive from the appraisal district again those values in that particular terse 10 has continued to grow pretty significantly and so the modification to that tours again that's additional Revenue coming back to the general fund and so as again those properties continue to grow that's again an additional valuation that we'll be capturing for the general plan as well and so one of the discussions that we've been having during the briefings and again not final yet but something that we'll continue to take a look at is the overall terms is looking at the project financing plans is there any ability to make any modifications to these or is there any ability to make any modifications to build our boundaries so something that Colonel Western's asked us to do and I know that staff has been working on that we're not sure 100 yet whether or not we're going to be able to get those done for this upcoming budget but again something that we're working on as we move into the future the next couple of slides are looking at the capital projects that we have in the debt service that we are going to have not only in the upcoming year but as we look ahead over the next couple of years so this slide shows our 2012 Court of life our 2019 Public Safety and our 2022 cap Community progress Bond out of the total 1.15 billion we have issued 558 point I'm sorry yes we have issued 558.2 million of that but as you see in the pending to be issued still over 600 million dollars of bonds to be sold in the future from those 30 General obligation bonds approved by the voters and so again that 600 million to be issued over the next six to seven years you'll see the encumbrances that we have and then the year-to-date expenses and then the far right hand column there are taking the difference between what's already been issued and what's encumbered or expensed and you can see that we still have quite a bit 178 million dollars of cash the bond proceeds that we've actually issued therefore in reviewing the balances available for each of these different General application bonds the decision and the need not to make a debt issuance in this upcoming fiscal year and so again as I mentioned the recommendations and as we're looking at developing the budget again looking at not just the current year but also looking in ahead a few years so this slide shows again taking those three General obligation bonds that have been approved by the voters going back to 2012. this slide shows you the next four fiscal years and so looking at the 2023-24 budget which is the budget we're discussing today and then as we look ahead the plan to assurances amounts you can see in the bottom total there 135 million 175 and then 130 million again these are numbers that are built into the debt model which are subject to change these are all based on various assumptions that we put together budget office Contours myself working closely with the capital Improvement Department Santa Rodriguez Hernandez to make sure that we're funding these projects as needed but again not funding them unnecessarily if we don't need to again just based on some of the Slowdown we've seen from just the chosen Supply delays and moving these projects along but again no impact to any of the capital projects by not doing a debt issuance again just utilizing the cash on hand that we have to keep funding them and so this site here in the far left hand side shows our current debt service rate 27.7 cents is the current debt service rate at the next borrow over you'll see The 23-24 Debt Service rate which is what we're discussing today which will be adopted in August would take that service rate down to 26.2 cents so a decrease of 1.5 cents and that's a result of not doing the data issuance and the retiring of the 2013 CEOs which would be fully paid off at the end of this fiscal year but as we look ahead as I mentioned to those future debt issuances over the next couple of years you will see that The Debt Service rate is projected to increase slightly in 2024-25 by about six tenths of a Cent and then 25 26 about another Penny and a half and then 26 27 about another 1.7 1.8 cents and so a lot of assumptions built into this slide here but really important that we continue to have the discussion and making sure that the council's seeing this information particularly because 600 million dollars of debt remaining to be issued again we've worked you know very strategically about the timing of that debt and how we're going to issue it in order not to have large fluctuations in the overall Debt Service rate again Really Trying to minimize the impact on our taxpayers this slide here shows the sales tax comparison going all the way back to September of 2020. on the far left hand side there and that was again if you think back to that time period Apostle had just gone through another serious spike in the covet cases and so we did see a flat sales tax for those three months we saw two months of decreases in sales tax but then you'll see beginning in February of 2021 and then you follow blue bars it's by month here really significant growth in the overall sales tax and so we're looking at what we've collected in the last two and a half years unprecedented growth you follow all the way over on the far right hand side there you'll see that we did collect our April sales tax earlier in June and that was the first decrease that we had seen comparing April of 23 to April of 2022 a decrease of about 2.3 percent the first decrease that we had seen in 28 months so again I talked about how will sells Texas performed nothing that was unexpected something that we've been paying very very close attention to particularly as we developed the budget for what we're discussing uh today and what's coming this coming year but also again as we look ahead into the future realizing that we're not going to continue to see 14 or 15 increases in sales tax this is the same information just in a table format showing the year-to-date as I mentioned we have only collected through April we've talked about this again there's that two to three month lag from the state we will be receiving the May sales tax allocation on Wednesday and so Wednesday morning we'll have a good idea do we continue to see these negative amounts or are we going to rebound and start to see a positive again I think just based on everything that we've seen on across the board not only El Paso but Across the Nation more than likely with what we're projecting we're expecting to see that slow down continue expecting decreases for the remaining few months of this fiscal year but again maintaining overall positive growth when compared to the prior year and so that's what this slide does this slide shows the last several years and I've shown this a few times really to provide some context of looking prior to covid and you'll see in FY 2018 on the far left hand side there compared to FY 2017 to 18 the increase of 4.5 million or 5 percent that's pretty much on on average that's what in an average year we see as far as overall sales tax growth about four and a half million dollars in new Revenue about five percent increases you know pretty normal you'll see in FY 19 we saw it again the 4.3 million 4.8 percent FY 2020 and mid-years when covet started and so even with that we did see a four percent increase because we had performed extremely well in the first half of that year and then you look at FY 2021 and FY 2022 and so as I mentioned just unprecedented sales tax growth more than three times the normal amount that we typically seen and so as we look to again what we're projecting for this current fiscal year again projecting still a little bit of a Slowdown for the next several months but still maintaining overall positive growth of 2.8 percent compared to last fiscal year and then the budget for next year recommending well 132.7 million so still projecting Positive Growth overall of 1.7 percent but again a little bit lower than what we've seen historically as I mentioned that a little bit lower than that five percent we've seen on average so again expecting a little bit of a Slowdown the economy but nothing too dramatic is still projecting Positive Growth overall as we look to franchise fees again same time frame here we looked at FY 2018 all the way through the fy24 preliminary again in the far right hand side they're projecting about a two million dollar increase from the current projection about a 3.3 in overall franchise fees and so if you looked at a few tables back the overall budget to budget shows franchise fees up by 7 million this is looking at actuals and so again as we developed the budget for this coming year again ensuring that we're really right sizing the budget based on the actual collections that we've seen not only in the current year but over the last 18 months really to help formulate what we're projecting for this upcoming year uh here's the franchise fees by category and so you can see the Texas gas will pass the water in El Paso Electric and then the variances here you'll see the Texas Gas the first row there from the FY 23 to to the FY 24 increase so budget budget 4.9 million again as these utilities are raising their rates the cities collecting more Revenue as I mentioned though there is a little bit of an offset on the expenditure side that a call will cover as far as the overall utilities that the city pays and then the slide here is really just intended focusing on the revenues and so when I talked about presenting a two-year budget and so as we're making decisions for the upcoming fiscal year again but thinking ahead another year in advance and you know really thinking about what we're projecting now as far as the overall revenues in the clouds are slight at the very end that will show the revenues and expenditures but on this as I mentioned so the blue bars here are what we're projecting for the upcoming fiscal year and so on sales tax here you'll see 22.5 million as I mentioned but as we look ahead to the next fiscal year expecting it to come more in line with what we've seen historically on sales tax and so going back down to about a 3.9 million dollar increase so much less available Revenue to offset some of the increased costs that we're projecting property taxes are pretty flat you'll see franchise fees there we're not expecting to see large fluctuations or increases on the utility rate side and so that overall Revenue growth is projected to get more in line with the historical average of about two men a year compared to that seven million a year and so really providing this information again you know Colonel Weston's job and my job is to make sure that we're providing all of the information to council because it's important as we're developing the budget you're not developing a budget just for that fiscal year we have to ensure that we're looking ahead as well because we do know that we have these costs that are going to continue whether it's on the capital project side the public safety side The Continuous investments in our streets we know that those costs are going to continue as we move into the future and so I'll pass it over to miss Cody unless there's any questions on the revenue slides when you're looking at like for example um it's like 29 and you look at annual tax collect at 132 so is that currently here to date we still have a few months to put in there that's correct so the FY 23 projected again that's what the information we've collected as of April so it's working off of eight months of data it's projecting out May June July and August yeah and the next slide was the same thing I didn't want to make sure that we pointed that out correct thank you I have a question yes sir thanks Robert I just wanted to clarify here on slide 26 The Debt Service property tax rate and I guess it pertains also to the slide before 25 all of the pending debt to be issued that's to say the entirety of what's driving the the projected future increase in this Debt Service property tax rate that's 100 coming from motor approved GEOS correct so nothing no cos left pending that's correct so that's slide 25 here showing the these are all General obligation bonds approved by the voters that put the approval date there for the 2012 2019 and the 2022 General application bonds all right thank you thank you anyone knows who's that Cody good afternoon good afternoon mayor and Council Nicole Cody managing director so I'll be covering the expenditures here you'll see let me go one step back the source of funds and so this includes buy goal including our general fund and our non-general fund funding for each of our goals so this gives you an overview of the budget by Vision block and the variance for the general fund and so what you'll hear from the Departments today from not only your Deputy city managers but also the department heads and gold team leaders is they'll get into detail by goal by department for each of these areas both general fund and non-general fund oh Pala you're right Robert it is I'm I have a heavy thumb okay so preliminary General offend expenses so here you'll see the expenditures by categories so we have um the detail based on this information is also included so sales and wages and you have your employee Ben and benefits and as as our city manager interim city manager indicated that's really the majority of the expenses for the city is going to be found in our sales salaries and wages and employee benefits so here you'll see a little bit more detail regarding our general fund major variances so it's an increase of 46.9 million dollars and so it's a significant investment we'll get into more detail for our Public Safety of 22.4 million for both police and fire and as well as our civilian compensation increases we do have built in for the new opening of the capital projects for quality of life include 3.6 million dollars as well as the increase that Robert talked about on the utilities of 1.9 million and are increases that we're seeing on materials and supplies one item I'd like to note here is there is an investment in our facility Renovations and our city-wide vehicles of an additional five hundred thousand dollars as well as our neighborhood traffic management plans of an additional 250 so we're we'll get into more detail on that but there is that investment so here it is the same information that was on that graph but in the table form so you can see the detail and those major increases that we see in our general fund budget this year so our investment in our Workforce so mayor thank you for pointing out the importance of distinguishing the civilian increases and so as Robert mentioned the 50 cents again will be in addition for September and then 50 cents in February or March time frame of 2024. so that will take up the city's minimum wage from 12 11 to 1311 and so at minimum all employees will receive a two and a half percent increase we do have increases on average are ranging from four to six percent for our general service workers and our professional and managerial workers our general fund budget the major changes here we just touch on Lightly for each of the Departments you're going to see compensation increases across the board compensation is one of the major increases that we're seeing but we really it's an investment in our Workforce so I'll be pointing out those additional changes in addition to instead of just the compensation increase so we'll also have here is there's a transfer of the real estate division to streets and maintenance and for our non-general fun side under Aviation we have an increase for our Airline Management Services as well as various outside contracts and their electricity on the Utility side for a destination El Paso you'll see an increase in capital and they do have several Capital items that they are planning over the FY 2024 in addition to that we do have seen an increase in the convention contract so there is an increase they're seen in Staffing requirements we do see an increase for economic development on the auxiliary franchise fee as well as International Bridges we see a staff additional Staffing to assist with the toll collectors as well as the transfer to the general fund so anything above and beyond their operating budget does come back to the general fund as Revenue so there's an increase of about 670 000 there we're seeing also across the board in outside contracts it includes both security and janitorial contracts and we're seeing those increase cases across the board we've been bringing those contracts to city council for approval as part of the awards and we we see that reflected in our preliminary 2024 budget as well for a general fund on safe and beautiful neighborhoods we see our increases for our fighter firefighters for station um 36 as well as the impact of the collective bargaining agreements and our Baseline physical contracts along with the ambulance and billion collections for Municipal Court we do have the reduction of the temporary Court will not be in FY 2024 and for police we have the increase of academies graduating academies to three along with the impact of the new CBA that'll go into effect on in September in addition to that we have a community and human development we do have the transfer of the veterans and Military Affairs division that's coming into the department as well as a slight increase for the climate and sustainability division on non-general fun side I do want to point out on fire we have a 3.4 million dollars and that 3.4 is to the full appropriations of the safer Grant they do have a safer grant for 21 firefighters for the station 36 and in addition to that we have so the police so police I need to explain because I did not do a good job I'm going to admit I did not do a good job of explaining this previously so I'm going to to clarify so under police you're seeing a reduction of 4.8 million dollars it's not because they lost grant funding they received one-time grant funding for renovations for their tag which is the Texas anti-gang so I'm looking at Chief Texas anti-gang Center Grant and they received renovations to their facility as well as additional equipment which included Furniture physical equipment and as well as PPE so that funding was one-time funding in 2023 and it's not Inc included in 24. so they didn't lose operating dollars it's not going to have an impact on operations it's just that one-time funding did I get it okay all right thank you Chiefs and so in addition to that you'll see that transfer for streets and maintenance to environmental services and that's those three programs which includes both media maintenance street sweeping and your graffiti programs are moving over to Environmental Services in addition to that I do have that footnote for Sun Metro and environmental services it's important we mention this so what's occurred is because we have to show the flow of funds between their funds the revenue is generated in their operating fund and then it moves to the other funds as required and so in the budget it actually ends up doubling those transactions and so the amounts that are listed there as part of the footnote are for those operating transfers but it's not reflecting a true increase to their overall budget Animal Services also shows an increase because we do have additional Staffing as well as food for the pets as and part-time veterinarians included as part of their budget as well the reduction oopsie the reduction in federal grants for public health is the title 10 Grant and that ended in 2023 and so that's why you're not seeing that continue and there's that reduction in 2024 preliminary budget you'll also notice that it's also included in the schedule C for the fees are also reflecting the ending of that title 10 Grant as well for Public Safety so we have of course that 22.4 million dollar investment along with the seven million dollars for Fleet and capital replacement with four million dollars for fire and three million dollars for police overall in public safety you're seeing an increase in compensation due to uh two things one is of course the collective bargaining impact which is really changing the base for our police officers it's increasing the base as well as increasing the cadet starting salary we're hoping that will also help with both Recruitment and Retention across both departments and we're seeing an additional Academy as well to ensure that we're meeting our our officer goals so Crisis Intervention we do have it was established in 2018 there's four currently 14 officers and in February we did bring the to back to council extending the city's partnership with the emergence Health Network in addition to this we do have an additional presentation that will be provided after this after the Gold Team presentation regarding the requests or questions from City Council so collectively bargained agreements this really gives you a breakdown based on rank on what we're adjusting this fiscal year as part of the preliminary 2024 that adjustment to the base is really ensuring that we're able to be competitive within the Seven Cities that we do look at across the board in addition to that it tells you on after that the cost of living adjustment increases along with the step increases that will continue for the life of the agreement so police long-term Staffing really for preliminary 2024 our goal is to meet the 1196 in officers and so it's critical that we look at every possible way of achieving that 1196 and the department is we'll go into more detail during their presentation to explain their efforts in achieving that along with the three graduating academies so here it gives you a historical and uniform Staffing and really the three years that we have a negative growth which include 21 22 and are projected for 2023. for the fire department here you'll see the two graduating academies that are projected for Foy 2024 and again as I mentioned the safer Grant does pay for 21 of the 31 firefighters needed for fire station 36. streets and maintenance so streets of Maintenance as I mentioned we have that increase of 250 000 to Ada on-demand request funding and that's taking us from 500 000 to 700 000. under the neighborhood traffic management plan we're continuing their funding of 350. we have 1.5 million dollars continued for intersection safety and then you're seeing an increase in materials and supplies for all petroleum-based products really so it's 2.2 million dollars along with that where the utility increases of two million dollars and then we do have that additional investment in our facility renovation and vehicle replacement of 500 000 for each at a total of one million dollars and as I already mentioned we are transferring those three programs from streets and maintenance to Environmental Services included in some Metro's budget and they'll get into additional detail is a 10 fixed route buses for a total of seven million dollars and then you'll see a transfer of their salaries from back into the operating fund that was previously funded through grants in 2023. Aviation we continue to see a healthy increase in passengers putting us back to the pre-pandemic levels as well as increases in commercial and passenger vehicles for general fund exceptional recreational cultural and educational opportunities we have the 3.6 million dollar increase as a result of those capital projects that are will be opening in the next few months Inc also included in this is includes Security Contracts and publication subscriptions for books and online services at our libraries as well as the capital contribution for the LA nubes children our children's museum of three hundred thousand dollars and then the operations and maintenance including the additional Staffing for our Mexican-American Cultural Center for our Parks and Recreation we do have adjustments to the aquatics positions as well as an additional Parkland management crew of four individuals that will be assisting with the installation of Park amenities and then increases that we've been seeing just normal increases due to materials and supplies and then we do have the full year impact of our Penguins exhibit for non-general offense side we are going to increase Staffing to keep the passport program at Armijo Library as well as it's that Capital contribution that you see coming over as well as repair and maintenance funding for a total of 324 000 in additional hot programming dollars and then finally you see the full impact on the operating side of the new penguin exhibit so here you'll see the projected opening dates we have penguins expected this fall of of 2023 our Mexican-American Cultural Center expected to open in January or February of 24 as well as looking at the summer for landumbe and Children's Museum we continue to have funding for Sports Court maintenance and park amenities at 400 000 along with additional phase two of automated irrigation projects and 1.3 for Park amenities and there'll be additional detail as a short presentation after their gold team presentation to give you additional information regarding the automated irrigation project and park amenities this shows your overall investment and our quality of life projects of 22.5 million dollars since we first started our general fund High performing government here you'll see on the general fund side it which includes about 1.1 million dollars in addition for it maintenance contracts we do have the compensation increase for both City attorney and additional Staffing and then it's important to remember we do not have an election budgeted for our preliminary 2024 budget in addition we had mentioned the investment in tuition assistance of approximately five hundred thousand dollars and that you'll see in Human Resources as well as the transfer to Animal Services it's the general fund contribution of 1.9 million dollars for their additional Staffing the rest of the increases you're seeing is just due to normal compensation increase for our non-general offense side the increase in Human Resources we are self-insured and so that includes the prescription benefit payments that we are seeing a significant increase in and so that's what you're seeing as part of the non-general fun side for human resources as well as the increase on the non-departmental side includes the increases we're seeing for tours two and three as well as the compensation increases we see for office of the Comptroller and tax office FTE comparisons so here you'll see what we've talked about really is any transfers from one Department to another anytime we're transferring those programs I've mentioned those but what I haven't mentioned is under Fire gold 2 and the fire department you're seeing a reduction of 118 ftes and that's really mainly due to the vacant covet operator positions that have not been filled over the past year we're just deleting those out in addition to those you'll also see that transfer of our streets and maintenance those three programs over to environmental services and then you'll also see a reduction in public health and so this is also reflecting the final closeout of that title 10 Grant on the next slide and ft comparisons you'll see what we talked about where the investment in our quality of life departments for museums and cultural Affairs for the Mexican-American Cultural Center as well as in Parks and Recreation and um and two and I think that's it on this positions okay preliminary all fun Staffing so this one I'm going to walk you through it very slowly so just please stay with me and let me know if you've got any questions so what we're looking at here is we really wanted to be able to capture a way to explain how we take attrition at this at the city level what we're looking at overall and so it's important that you know that we cannot fund a hundred percent of the time all of the positions it's not accurate it's not factual and and it's just not fiscally responsible to do so so what you'll see here under authorized is really if the preliminary budget is adopted that would become your auth adopted Staffing adopted FTE authorized Staffing by department and then the next column you have are the filled positions so this is what was filled as of June of this year for each of the Departments and so authorized minus filled gives us the vacant positions so the total filled positions is one thousand five hundred oh the total vacant positions is one thousand five hundred and sixty three positions Point 23 and that's vacant so now in the next slide for slide 64. that now that's on slide 64. that vacant column that we ended with now becomes your beginning column so now our vacancies again are 1563.23 vacancies for all of the Departments including all funds including our Enterprises so once we look at those vacancies we're also looking at what's the average salary of the vacancies what's the average salary of the vacant positions and what you'll notice it's going to vary from Department to Department because each of the department has different operational needs they each are going to have different positions so you can have challenges that they're seeing hiring different positions as well and so from that we then go to the column that says unfunded or attrition amount so that total is 26.462 or 26.5 million dollars so that amount is what is not funded in the Departments we actually are backing that amount out of each of the Departments we're taking it out of the budget because we know it's not going to be used we know they're going to have turnover we know that there's still going to be challenges that we're working on with each of the Departments to be able to fill and continue to ramp up their departments and their operational needs and so then when you equate that dollar amount to two ftes you're looking at a total of 585.92 and I'm looking at that row at the very bottom that says grand total highlighted in blue and so we work with each of the Departments to be able to identify their attrition to look at what their operational needs are going to be for the upcoming year and also what um what they're going to be ramping up what struggles they've encountered what are we doing with and working with HR to be able to really identify those and overcome those obstacles to allow them to meet their operational needs yes sir so I don't what the message that I don't want to convey in this when we're taking 37 percent back net out for attrition we have to be responsible obviously and I'll leave that all funded I mean it just doesn't make any budgetary sense but that doesn't mean that we're not going to be continually aggressively recruiting for positions of need we'll continue to do that and if we get to a point where we need to have a conversation about being able to fund some of these other positions will do that but we think that's a reasonable number in terms of what we can expect to fill over the next year I actually have a question foreign I turned it off okay thank you uh so I completely understand I think this makes a lot of sense um but you know I see that we're saying what are the the positions you don't think you'll fill but in a lot of these departments you also have staff asking for other staff that have not been assigned right and they're they're not being approved but then we're not feeling you know then we're taking this attrition down it's like and I'm sorry Terry you're behind me but it just the first one on the list is Animal Services uh you're taking one million dollars out for their attrition but they're asking for several staff that could be really essential I think one of them is a behaviorist right if and I understand why we're doing this but has there been a conversation about maybe filling some of the new positions they need with these dollars rather than taking them out I guess yes ma'am do you want to take anything let me take it so what we do we work very closely with every department and so it it just doesn't make sense to add more positions to the budget when you have so many vacancies currently on on staff and for every Department and so we'll work very we will work very closely with any Department we do it all throughout the year whether it's looking at existing vacancies where they may be having challenges and changing the title and recruiting for something else that fills that need we have to get very creative and how we're addressing some of these challenges I mean with animal services we increased the pay last year you know I did the compensation increases but we did the incentive that gives him the additional 90 per pay period so there's various things that we've done to increase the staff being over at home services it's just not at this point with the number of vacancies 1500 vacancies it just doesn't make sense at this point to add more positions on top of what we already have if we need to get creative and move positions around that's what we're looking at doing but I mean at this point it just doesn't make fiscal sense to add more on top of what we already have that's not filled I mean again because Animal Services is first on the list now we're going to hone in on it I think that that argument isn't great to me it might not make sense to create new positions because we have so many vacancies but that doesn't mean that a behaviorist that isn't in a category already for Animal Services wouldn't completely change the way that that the shelter operates right I know there's positions on here for Community Development to deal with the climate action plan that didn't exist last fiscal year and so it or or other positions for the center for civic engagement which has really grown as a I don't want to say building but as a space that we have right so just because that wasn't a category previously doesn't mean that it's not something that could completely change a department and help them function a little bit better but this does also doesn't prevent departments from taking existing titles that may be vacant and changing those titles to fit the roles that they actually need and so I have animal services have specific needs they can take the current vacancies change those titles to fill whatever need they may have any Department can do that at this point but then you would be stuck into the same category of like pay and right and so are those Meeting those exactly to what's needed I mean I just feel like there's a lot of questions that I have in regards to that just changing over positions that are already existing doesn't necessarily mean because all of those are funded through whatever the salary is for that position correct you can't just say not necessarily so the attrition is Nicole gave you the amounts but that's a snapshot in time right there's positions that become vacant all throughout the year and so while we're looking at the snapshot in time that we're presenting here today you may have 20 bacon Animal Care attendants today but too much from now you may have ten I mean those numbers fluctuate all throughout the year we're trying to capture historically what's the amount of attrition that departments generally have ensuring that we're not impacted Services working with them to identify areas of need I I hear your point but at this point with the budget that's recommended we didn't feel the need to add more positions considering that we have 1500 vacancies currently across the Florida and All City departments and I understand and I just want to say again for the record I I don't not support a no new Revenue I just have always said that we should not be building a budget on the basis of no new Revenue if there are absolute needs from our departments to function we shouldn't be not filling them because our goal was no new revenue and and I see that we're just like taking out this budget for attrition it looks like we weren't actually having discussions about what positions could have been created by staff that they needed and they requested um and so that is not directed towards you Robert I know that you're working under the direction that you had but I want to be very clear that that's why I said we should not build a budget based on no new Revenue so I mean a behavioralist for Animal Services it would make a huge impact for the Dogs coming out of this coming in and out of the shelter we are just to just to be real clear um we are going to have adjustments that we're going to need we'll see all throughout the year we're going to operations ebb and flow and the need for and making different you know putting different requirements in for what we have to do as a city does we we have been working with the Departments we have to come to some type of Baseline in terms of what that attrition looks like but again I don't want to convey to umair Pro Temp or anybody else that if the need arises that we need to fill for this community and for the city we're going to do that and we can do that we can make adjustments from within but we have to also be come up with a realistic expectation for what that attrition should look like and what would be unfunded we're not going to fill 1500 positions this next year and so for us to keep that money funded and and that dead money doesn't make any sense so again as we see needs within the department the department two months from now comes up and has a critical need that we didn't address in this budget process I still think we have the flexibility to be able to make those adjustments I mean I I understand that I just again when I see streets of Maintenance asking for resurfacing staff when we're pulling out these contracts for larger surfacing they don't know how that isn't a necessity I mean we can have that conversation when we get to that goal but I just I would say that this slide in particular is is a little upsetting to me when I see three pages of departments asking for additional staff and I think we'll see that you're not we're not not going to fill a position that's needed to make sure we continue to operate we can always suggest we got 1500 openings right now that are not going to be filled you know the majority of them so why keep it on the books and why have the taxpayers pay for something we're not going to be able to use even if on a good day we couldn't fill them but we will feel all vacancies needed to continue to operate the city well I know and I understand that but what I'm also seeing is all of these positions pending none of them approved when we could be moving those dollars over to approving these positions that staff is asking for and that's a conversation that I would like to have when we get there we can have that because there are pending and they are essential then we do need to make sure we we get those people you know to operate and help us operate yes representative Hernandez Cody I'm just trying to understand again from our budget conversation I didn't understand why you were bringing this and the amounts the 57 million is there an adjustment to the budget or is this just for our awareness so this is this to reflect exactly what was taken in nutrition for each of the Departments so this is part of the FY 2024 preliminary budget those reduction amounts so the unfunded or excuse me so help me understand I'm looking at the chart on it's a different slide for me 63. so the ftes the 585 FTS you're removing those so we're not removing them what it is is we've taken attrition against them so what did it just and we needed to translate it and ftes and so that's what that number reflects based on the average salary of their vacant positions but what it would do with the Departments and and and they're all here and then they can explain is that they really have the flexibility so we're not saying you are not Richard you're not going to be able to hire that general service worker period because we took attrition on it if he needs to be able to hire for it of course he's going to hire for it but what we're saying is you can't keep every position filled 100 of the time it's just not going to happen each department has their historical turnover and so that's really what we're showing here in dollars and then we try to equate it to an FTE just so you could get an idea well what does that mean how many positions are we talking about I understand now the way you're trying to communicate it what is the direct impact the budget based on this so the direct impact is the 26.5 million dollars so if we filled Everything 100 percent of the time 100 of the positions we would add back 26.5 million dollars so you're just showing us a number you're not we're not reducing it currently from the overall budget we're taking yeah so let me show you until next slide that is the comparison so we go through this process each year and so what you'll see in 2023 that shows where we had reductions or attrition amount of 31.1 million and this year it's 26.5 oops sorry I changed the wrong slide and so what I really want to highlight here is Sun Metro so the big difference you're going to be like well Nicole you took less in 24. not necessarily because of Sun Metro and so what they did was is they took additional attrition because their Staffing was being paid for by a grant and so now that that Grant ended in 23 there have their Staffing shift back over to their operating fund and so you'll see a reduction of unfunded attrition for Sun Metro and that's why you're seeing a reduction from 31.1 to 26.5 and just to reiterate it's built-in already the reduction okay so you're staying within this budget as okay that that's what my my question was so so and Carrie Weston Mr Weston um thank you for that comment because you know what we hear often for from you know from our constituents and from their conversations with staff is that hey we're not hiring right now because we're on hold we've been restricted there are no budgetary available dollars for Staffing and that's pretty a consistent theme in my entire tenure that I've heard this and so so I just want to reiterate that you know if this is the attrition you've accounted that into your budget but it will not Impact Services it and I really believe the culture that we've created is that our budget is restricting our ability to open um positions and then our inability to provide those critical services and so you know one one area that I wanted to highlight was just police um and I know you talked a little bit about it but there there was like 200 vacancies and so I just want to make sure that this is not going to impact our academies or things of that nature okay because there was like 200 and that worried me no absolutely no ma'am it will not impact their ability to hire and I'm I'm glad you bring up that point I think it's a critical point especially that we're all here in this room together and we have a responsibility to be able to communicate that all the way to our program managers that there is an ability to hire and we have a responsibility as department heads to be able to work with HR to be able to fill those positions we have it on record I'm just kidding no I'm just messing but it's important because we hear this from our constituents well it's a staffing issue that's what we're hearing from managers at Rec Centers that's what we're hearing from Aquatics and it always reverts back to Staffing because there's hiring freezes and so what I'm hearing today that that's not going to be the impact I certainly you can't you know reconcile what I hear from the public and then base What I Hear here but that is a major concern from the public and that is what they're hearing from middle management supervisors in the in the face-to-face Services okay so you'll hear in the in the presentations later there are challenges I'm not going to say they're not challenges but that this isn't one of them they are offended yes ma'am thank you representative um yeah there have been a few I just want to touch on a few of the Departments that have come up and again just purely using them as examples but um you know I see animal services FY 22 adopted was 141 and 1.5 full-time employees 23 adopted 143.5 so an increase of two and then FY 24 preliminary is 163 so an increase of 19.5 full-time employees so the fact that there's still attrition doesn't mean that there's it's not a reduction in in the Staffing at the department now of course in reppinel I agree no I know and I and I agree with you I I think that there's definitely a benefit of looking uh to toward funding some of the positions that that the various departments need um instead of uh building a budget based on on a preset tax rate um but I also don't want the public to think that that attrition means reductions right there can be increases in Staffing within various departments without uh fully funding all of the vacant positions in an organization this large inevitably there's going to be vacant positions across different departments because people retire and people leave for other jobs attrition is largely capturing that it's not necessarily uh the decision about what uh level of funding to allocate to Staffing in different departments that comes you know we'll see that in the different goal team presentations and and you know that is in many ways the the venue for looking at how we can increase funding for additional positions um attrition is just your your modeling right it's again you're taking a snapshot to model uh the future not it's not a plan it's not what we want to see it's a model for what we expect to see over the next year and trying to capture that in the budget so that we're not over funding making positions exactly and then that's why we work with the Departments to ensure that is if there is something new that's coming online as far as operational needs or or what they're seeing then of course we would take that into account in the interim between the adoption of this budget and the adoption of the budget for 25 is there the opportunity to use for example operational savings to oh of course um supplement the you know if we see some sort of decrease in in attrition absolutely okay so that's something that would happen as an amendment to the budget resolution in the in the interim or would it just be an additional online right now it's really it's working with the department heads to be able to do that I think that's what Mr cortinas was detailing is is that the Departments can look within their budget and identify those opportunities um to be able to to restructure what they need so if they've got savings somewhere and they need this position of course they would just request to hire for that position okay but I'm talking about not even necessarily within the Department's budget but within other savings oh the city has available absolutely general fund and so that's an important Point mayor did you wanna I'm sorry I thought you were gonna so what we're going to do and I think that's an important Point Carrie is that on August 1st so we're also will bring back the third quarter uh projections and about allocating additional or identifying potential uh funding so we will be bringing back the third quarter present as well as the certified or the introduction for the tax rate itself so that way we'll have final numbers on the tax roll we get the certified values on July 25th and then we'll also have the third quarter projections so that way Council sees the whole picture and then you're able to identify at that time if there's additional items that Council would like to either change or modify based on all of the information so I understand that process I'm saying if we get to February 2024 and you want to do it again and yeah um we hear from I don't know the streets and maintenance department that suddenly there's uh a whole bunch of people available to hire for positions that have gone unfilled um you know I don't know yes sir there's a whole a whole new graduating class of Engineers somewhere that need jobs and and they're looking at El Paso are we able to then pivot yes pivot and add allocate additional funds to Staffing yeah I think that this sometimes this gets mislabeled a little bit so number one I'm going to say it again because there's no hiring freeze zero no hiring freeze for everybody here on and staff in the public that's not the issue here this is the attrition model something that's done every budget here it's very similar to what was done last year again you bat you out you have to look at the reality of being able to hire in a year time frame and what you're seeing historically the CFO and OMB have to make a determination of what do we what are we typically seeing now obviously there's there's some years that were really very difficult for us you know in hiring but that's not going to stop departments from continuing to hire to meet needs and if we need to make adjustments from within we can do it and I think we have enough flexibility because I doubt very very strongly doubt we're going to hire 1500 people and be a hundred percent filled as a city it just doesn't happen so we have to look at the reality in terms of what does that mean of backing out a certain amount of money and building that into our budget that we're not going to be putting to positions that aren't going to get filled and that's the bottom line and that would be hiring 1500 people net right that's that's as well we will continue I mean that's that's what the What's the total vacancies that we have and so all we're saying with this budget no different than what we've done in the past is that we're going to take about 37 and a half percent attrition which is what we kind of expect would it be possible for us to see uh sorry to put more work on staff would it be possible for us to see uh historical attrition sure um looking back I mean covet obviously is presented us a unique challenge but looking back pre-covet as well yes okay thank you I think what's important to realize is that this is one budget and it's not a silo and if we can figure that out and understand that we'll make sure that every department and everybody gets budgeted properly but also staffed properly and work as one budget it'll make a big difference go ahead man I'm just going to make one more comment because I can't let it go inside so we don't disagree that there are needs in various departments for new programs or enhanced programs but going back to the discussion that we had when you're developing the budget for the upcoming year again we have to look ahead as well right and so we have to understand consequences or benefits of the decisions you all are making because we talked about personal services the salaries benefits and taxes for our Workforce make up 73 of the budget those costs continue to go up every year as we're doing pay increases as the city continues to take on the increase in the health care and not pass that on to employees that's additional impacts to the city and so we have to be very thoughtful and very very strategic about these new programs that we are funding so no the all do not get funded we need to look at utilizing existing resources where we can but we have to be very careful about continuing to add to the Staffing levels because those costs are the ones are the primary budget drivers that we talk about every year when we do not only the all of the budget updates throughout the year we talk about the five-year forecast that's where you're going to see the deficit is that as you add more Staffing that's where those increased costs are going to come from thank you okay on the next slide we've got our supplemental requests and so this includes uh us a segment of the supplemental requests that were submitted by the Departments and this represents 23.3 million dollars of requests that are not included in the FY 2024 preliminary budget and so this does range from equipment replacement as well as additional positions and HVAC units and also um items that have been identified as priorities that are currently not included as part of this budget next I'll turn it over to Robert so where did this information is well this was a request from Council a while back about the general fund Reserve levels so this goes all the way back to 2012. and so we've talked about the number of operating days and so look at the middle of the page here shows breakdowns the number of operating days based on the available general fund reserves only looking at the unassigned assigned and committed categories the restricted is not included in that calculation since set by Charter and any use of that would be required to be paid back so when we do that calculation you'll see back in FY 2013 we're at 18 days then it's up to nine days in FY 2014 which is what you've heard us referenced quite a bit and then where we stand currently with the 15 million dollars with the year current year savings that we put into that pay for futures fund would put us out right now based on the preliminary budget that's being presented 92 days once you back out the 5 million dollars being recommended puts us right around 89 and some change really close to the 90-day Target that we feel is ideal of the level that we need to be at as far as general Reserves and so this information again just provided as a response to council I asked to see this and so I put it into a table format for your reference so real quick Robert so one of the things that we talked about that I think will help us from a budget standpoint going forward is not making a recommendation to go past 90 days of operating reserves I think that's sufficient don't think it's going to have an impact on in terms of the bond rating to keep building that past three months three months is a good healthy Reserve so if we look at that there might there might be opportunities in the future to to address us to bring back some things to council and address what we can do if we have that additional cash in terms of meeting more of the needs of the city whether you know whether it's facilities whether it's city-wide Fleet and those types of things but but in any event we would bring that back to all of Youth for that discussion last year we put into the fund balance close to 50 million 49 8 something like that around 49 million yeah so I mean that's a big difference so we that's something that we don't need to do that this year in the budget and and that gives us a lot of operating cash to be able to do a lot of things right exactly it's like what we talked about with us putting more into the paper Futures fund offset the increased costs we know we're going to see from the workforce or some of the other items that Colonel Wilson just talked about so on the paper features again currently as of today we've allocated the 15 million from the current year savings through the second quarter into this fund So currently 15 million dollars the recommendation and the way that the budget policy was written was its intended to last over a five-year time frame and since it is one-time Revenue the recommendation would be to slowly gradually each year decrease that amount since it is again one-time Revenue once it's gone it's gone so again the recommendation for next year is to use 5 million of that and then decrease that by one million each year over the next five years for next year beginning in September you have a question I was waiting yes sir thank you mayor if you go back to slide 666 so when you talk about Citywide Municipal ID 250 000 what would that Encompass the equipment salaries Beyond Mac Deputy city manager sir when the resolution was passed for us to begin the feasibility study which comes back to you next month one of the items there spoke about having funding available within the first quarter of the fiscal year we're not yet at a place where we understand the complete cost but that is a placeholder based on the amount of money the county has already said that they would match within their budget as well okay detail will come next month in terms of the plan and the recommendations in terms of how to move forward so you're looking at 250 000 for the first quarter no sir that would be the annualized cost in addition to the supplement that we will receive from the county in a matched amount okay and that may not be the final number so that really is a placeholder yeah I know we've got to start with some things and so what did you can you please repeat what you said about the county of Obama so in our initial conversations with the county I believe that they have budget budgeted within the last two fiscal Cycles dollars for this amount so our assumption moving forward is however we move forward with a plan uh if Council so wishes that they would be matching the costs and expenses for that that's been the commitment that we received from County Commissioners all right and you say uh next month we'll you'll come back with a recommendation yes sir I'm aiming at the August 22nd I believe is a date that we had identified when we did the resolution all right thank you man that's all I have to Mayor row Proto no okay go ahead please so then the last slide before we get into the the budget calendar dates so this slide is again that two-year snapshot again if you think about looking at this as a two-year budget again just to provide an Outlook not only as you consider this budget that were presented today but as we look ahead to next year as well it shows you the current year the FY 23 which is our current fiscal year that we're in the FY 2024 preliminary which is what we're discussing which will be adopted in August and then looking ahead to the FY 2025 budget and so really the intent behind this is really just to provide again that snapshot particularly on the revenue side as I talked about earlier the sales tax growth that we've seen the again the overall budget that's being presented today is estimated to increase by almost 47 million and a large majority of that's being funded by the growth and sales tax but as we look to the FY 2025 so taking that five-year forecast that we do scaling that down to really just look at the next two years and what we're looking at as far as potential again a lot of assumptions potential Revenue growth really gets more back in line with what we see historically not only on the property values coming down a little bit from where we're currently that sales tax growth coming down to more based on the historical averages the franchise speed Revenue again getting back in line with what we see historically so instead of 47 million dollars of new Revenue looking at only 16 million dollars in new Revenue and then if you look at the bottom portion there it's all of the cost again based on taking again that fire forecast really scaling It Down based on the budget that we're presenting today looking at what those increase costs are going to look like in the coming year and you can see that those costs are expected to increase right now by about 25 million creating that deficit Again by about nine million dollars and so nothing that's unusual I mean every year when we begin the budget development process we always start with a pretty significant deficit but we you know continue to work through identify adjustments all throughout the process ultimately bring a balanced budget before Council which we're doing today but again just really pointing out that that sales tax growth primarily the Big Driver something that you know we took into consideration when Colonel Weston really wanted to you know develop a budget that again not only likes up this current year but again keeping that mindset of of Futures as well because the budget challenges we know aren't going to go away whether it's new programs with positions or whether it's the need for more funding for facilities and Fleet which is an area we know we need to continue to address but it's about coming up with the really comprehensive plan that's going to address this and not do it sort of piecemeal and that's something that we're going to continue to work on not only this year but as we you know move into the future as well so again this is really just intended to provide some context of where we're at currently and again looking ahead to the next two fiscal years and then we do have the slide the council action that was done on May 23 2023 to identify potential adjustments to achieve the no new Revenue and this budget as we presented achieves that and you see some of the areas that we're able to utilize in order to make that happen whether it's the use of the current year savings the modification to ters 10 as I mentioned The Debt Service and not having to issue debt next year and so those are some of the key areas that were contributors towards achieving that no new Revenue rate and so as we move throughout the process this is the budget calendar we are in our budget work sessions today it says July 10-12 but we do have the whole week scheduled I mentioned that July 25th date that's two weeks from tomorrow we'll get the certified values from the appraisal district the tax assessor Miss Maria pacias will work closely with us and calculate those tax rates according to the truth and Taxation software we have to calculate the noted revenue calculate the voter approval and we'll see how that compares to our estimates and then we'll come back on August 1st and present all that information to the council and then on August 1st as well we'll actually do the introduction of the tax rate and so that will set the tax rate moving forward that will dictate the public hearing requirement as well as the adoption on August the 15th and with that we'd be happy to answer any questions on the ovary we do have again all of the Departments here that we will be going through the additional presentations for each of the gold teams broken down by Department they'll provide you more detail from what we just presented that counts with y'all want to break for one hour for lunch and then come back and um start after an hour I'm fine with that I would just ask again if we can ask the public if they would like to give their public comment before we break pardon me some signed up just for items yes yes sir uh Robert back on slide 69 you have that projected deficit which again I know is something that that's that's a starting point that you you build off of for the development of next year's budget um do you recall what that starting point deficit was one year ago when you were at the very beginning of the development of this balanced budget that you've presented to us today usually when we start the budget process it's about a 20 million dollar deficit nothing out of the ordinary and again it does take some tweaking and some adjustments some fine tuning and really looking at you know all the different programs through the department so I mean 9 million dollars it looks significant but I mean we've talked about some of the areas that we're already beginning to look at whether it's modification to some of the existing tax increment reinvestment zones there's some other things we're working on as well really just to provide that you know that look ahead but understanding that we're not sitting back doing nothing about it obviously you know we have a plan in place and we'll make sure we're being proactive to ensure that when we come before Council next year obviously we don't have a nine million dollar deficit yeah and I ask because you know I can understand that it's it's scary to see a number in red especially a number pushing you know two two digit million dollars so we're not it's not quite there this time um but this is kind of a normal I just you just said it but I just wanted to emphasize like this is a pretty normal starting position for the development of a budget for the future year this is not you're not saying where we have a nine million deficit right now no in this proposed budget that's correct you're talking about a year out and we'll be able to find we anticipate will be able to find deficiencies and and other savings and he's also being very um conservative in his assessment of what's going to happen in terms of sales tax growth and those things so there's a lot of things that could happen uh you know aside from the different strategies that were that we're looking at now whether it's with tours or others that could that could make that a little bit better for us in terms of what that bottom line Looks like that we'd be facing thank you that's all there and also just with the understanding as well that so the fy24 preliminary is what we're presenting today that will be adopted in August so when it increases to that budget to the fy24 budget widens that deficit as we begin the budget discussions for next year thank you now we do have some statements that will be read when we do get to the parks but do we have anyone that's here that would like to comment on anything that we covered earlier today come on up please sir good afternoon please state your name for the record and you'll have three minutes now it's on wonderful okay I'm currently an assistant County attorney and I'm also a newly elected board member with the episd school board so I just wanted to make it abundantly clear that I'm not speaking on behalf of the county attorney's office or on behalf of the El Paso Independent School District but my daughter has been part of a swim team here in El Paso since she was three she's now 11. my son has been a part of the swim teams since he was four he's now seven there are seven swim teams in El Paso that are all part of swim USA or Borderlands swimming the natatorium was built on the West Side along with the Beast which is on the East Side in hopes of attracting other teams and other Talent from across the state so that they could come train here in El Paso and compete and I think a lot of people forget about it because of our elevation we're at like 3025 feet above sea level Colorado Springs just to give you an idea they have their Olympic Training Facility there here they're a little of over 6 000 feet above sea level so in us trying to attract these different teams it's wonderful that we have great facilities but we just don't the aquatics facility the natatorium was built in 2018 and I think months after it opened it was already shut down again for more Renovations this last weekend primarily we just had a meet on Friday Saturday and Sunday and these are athletes that range all the way from five years old I think Amber started swimming at four competitively all the way up to 20 21 22 years old so these are you know little itty bitty toddlers almost all the way up to adults and when you check the temperature on deck and in the stands it was above 90 degrees the athletes were dehydrated their times were bad I know it's one thing you know to say that there's you know so many bigger problems but if we don't advocate for ourselves no one will but you know seeing my daughter and seeing the other athletes compete and not perform to their Peak Performance you know is is not fair to them especially with the fact that we have different facilities like Aquatics all the different water parks that we're building all the different things that you know that the city is doing that is wonderful um we need to make sure that we maintain what we have now right instead of just building and moving no maintain what we have right that's the whole point of having an infrastructure and having those maintenance funds allocated uh but you know it's it's it's not just me it's all the different teams this last meet I think we had six different teams from Chihuahua that came in and I can guarantee that those six teams are not going to come back because they saw the facilities because they saw what would it what it was like and just so that you all know every time we go in uh it's three dollars per person per day doesn't matter if you're a baby or a child you're going to pay the three bucks every day their Lane fees I think we paid you've reached the three minute limit sir can I just finish that last statement yeah please do that last um just so that you all know in terms of what we're paying per week just to use the lanes it ranges anywhere between three thousand to five thousand dollars a week just to rent Lanes to swim in thank you so we just want to know where that money is going thank you all so much thank you very much thank you thank you ma'am for being here and with that do we have a pardon me yeah for one hour yes ma'am ready there's a motion to recess is there a second there's a motion and a second to recess the special city council meeting all in favor anyone opposed and the special city council meeting is in recess at 1 30 for one hour all right everyone ready we're back in uh session there's a motion in a second to make a moon all in favor opposed women is back in session at 2 38 pm all right Colonel Weston yes sir so we left off after the uh the overview briefing and we're ready for the first gold team presentations which will be uh safe and beautiful neighborhoods good afternoon Ellen Smythe Chief Transit and field operations officer I'm going to kick off gold teams 2 7 and 8. as you can see on your screen these three goals are the standard for a safe and secure City enhanced and sustain El Paso's infrastructure Network and nurture and promote a healthy sustainable Community this is the largest grouping of the departments in the city with the largest budget so you'll see that coming forward next slide let me figure out how to talk and do this so you can see here as I said the vision block safe and beautiful neighborhoods the three goals and here's the list of departments that we're going to be covering Animal Services Capital Improvement community and human development Environmental Services fire mass transit Municipal Court police public health and streets and maintenance there's that that okay so um the overall offense budget for um this grouping is 1.3 million dollars um one point yeah three million dollars and you can see it broken up here I know that Nicole and Robert recently went over all the details of all the different funding so I'm happy to pause it anytime that you have any questions but it is what you've already seen presented earlier this morning Gold Team 2 is fire municipal court and police gold seven is capital Improvement streets of Maintenance and some Metro and then goal eight is Animal Services community and human development environmental services and Public Health the source of funding again we are both General funded and non-general funded we have the general fund grants as far as fees specifically the Environmental Services fee as well as the fees that we charge for some Metro but we are highly subsidized by grants that we receive from the FTA as well as many that the health department and Community Development receive as well and here on the screen you'll see the breakdown of all the different funding the internal Nurse Services fund is the fleet Department those are fees that streets and maintenance charge for example to the police department for working on their vehicles so that's an example of where the internal services oh thank you insert internal Services money is coming from and then of course CID also has Capital funding which typically comes from the bond money that we've talked about extensively this morning as well the safety Bond the quality of life Bond and the most recently the streets of Maintenance and park development Bond the major variances for fire the increase due to collective bargaining the two academies the reassignment a uniform Staffing from the grant to the general fund as well as the civilian compensation increases for the Municipal Court the major increase variances that you'll see is an increase again compensation and as was discussed earlier all of our contractual obligations have also been going up typically in the form of security and janitorial contracts and of course all of our utilities have gone up police the same increase due to collective bargaining three academies and a increase in services on the emergence Health Network prisoner transport taser repair and the city grant grant match for the body worn camera grants the major variances on goal seven in the capital Improvement Department again compensation reclassification and additional Staffing that was required in order to implement the bond money that we were recently received from the voter approval streets of Maintenance we've talked about this a few times already transferring the employees from Sam over to environmental services for median maintenance graffiti and street sweeping and then the transfer of the real estate division into streets of Maintenance to to coexist with the facilities division from Economic Development as well as increased compensation the inflation due to materials asphalt gasoline all of the motor oils and the city-wide additional funding that Nicole mentioned for Fleet and Facilities equaling a million dollars five hundred thousand for Fleet and five hundred thousand for facilities for some mention the variance is is due to the transfer of salaries from Grants back into the operating fund while we were able to use the arpa Grant and the cares Grant and those grants we were able to save you know or Bank our sales tax but those grants now are gone and so we're having to transfer those salaries back into our regular operating fund plus increase in the cost of natural gas of our CNG Vehicles the vehicle maintenance and the transfer to the capital fund for vehicle replacement and as we mentioned last year some Metro does now have a standard Fleet replacement plan and will be purchasing Vehicles every year goal eight major variances on Animal Services again compensation increase operational increase and additional Staffing we're looking at an additional location that you've you know we've talked about needing a second animal shelter preferably on the west side community and human development the transfer of Veteran and Military Affairs division from the airport to Nicole freeney's group at community and human development as well as the increasedness in compensation and additional funding for the climate and sustainability division Environmental Services we have increased costs due to the money needed for the landfill sales construction the Redevelopment of the Doniphan collection citizen collection station and again the transfer of the employees from Sam to ESD and in public health as was noted earlier the decrease was the end of a grant and so that that was the decrease in public health here is a breakdown on the general fund expenses and we've already covered most of this this morning if you have any specific questions all the department heads are here to answer any questions you might have you can see again the notes at the bottom are pretty much what I just said earlier this is shown in tabular form and then again on by category the Personnel contracts materials operating non-operating expenses and other uses so this is shown again the exact same information but categorized differently um on the expenses again here's the actual money in terms of the department by goal Nicole did already go over the difference with the asterisks on the side about how we have to account twice when we are using grant funding and therefore it looks like our budgets are bigger than they really are but that's just the way that we're having to account for it again same information different way of categorizing it on the Personnel contracts and materials um if you prefer it it's we present it different ways so that different um you know the way that people process the information differently again Staffing offense and we went over the Staffing earlier and the attrition and how attrition is calculated you can see the fire department variance is down 118 positions um and that was because of the uh 11 increase of 11 firefighters but a decrease of vacant covered operator positions you might remember they really staffed up in 2020 2021 to to run their hotlines and their Outreach teams that would go out and so they're no longer necessary so those positions are being deleted also a large variance shows up in the streets of Maintenance going down 95 positions Environmental Services going up 102 positions those 95 are Awash for the three programs that are moving over street sweeping graffiti and median maintenance so going on next to the priorities and planned accomplishments I'm going to turn it over to the chief it's going to now go to uh Chief killings for the fire department and Julia insidiaga our new interim assistant police chief good afternoon Chief killings El Paso Fire Department so for fiscal year 2024 the El Paso Fire Department will continue to focus on the initiatives that will provide exceptional services to the city of El Paso looking at community outreach and participation we have growing initiatives that focus on Mental Health needs within the community collaborations with a number of City departments to help combine efforts to reach the largest group of citizens Community educational efforts to include initiatives such as stop the bleed hands-only CPR getting involved with our Area Youth and then by actively involving our community and focusing on building resilience in safe neighborhoods the department can make a positive impact on the well-being and safety for its residents also we want to continue to grow and strengthen our organization through Staffing and recruitment we have new fire stations going in on the east side the Far East Side set to begin next year with preparing staff and those resources that will serve for the rapidly growing east side of El Paso no seems like Julian San Diego El Paso Police Department assistant chief for police fiscal year 2024 priorities our biggest priority was recruitment and retention and if you notice on the whoops hold on a second okay so an overview for fiscal year of 2019 all the way to 2023. uh we've shown an average of attrition for for fiscal year 2023 is going to be a nutrition of 65 projected of 65. so our loss for the fiscal year 2023 is 18 officers but in addition to that we're concentrating on exactly that increasing numbers of officers and retention for the retention we're in hopes that the CBA contract will hold a lot of officers to remain and also facilitating career growth for them we've been focusing on our police academies analyzing each phase of the police training and Ladder recruitment process and another addition to that is we where we are revamping our marketing uh ways of media for our in-person print-based and social media based recruiting methods so in essence what we're doing is we our motto now is make the change be the difference the in person we're we're visiting universities colleges also we we visit Fort Bliss their career day and high schools as well the print-based media of course you've seen our banners our Billboards and we've also implemented or have new Billboards inside the regional commands at each one or we send out online you'll see our new recruiting flyer which gives our our candidates or anybody that's looking on online and they look at our flyer they're going to get to see all that we have to offer as a police department which before we did not have also uh recruiting we're working on getting a recruiting trailer so that we can put an advertisement on there so that we can go throughout the city and make stops at certain areas to try and recruit as many people as we can social media another we've um embarked in reels so we all know that social media is big and everybody's on their phone and so that's what we're embarking in it's a pilot program and so we can reach more people on Facebook and Instagram recruitment process Improvement implementation so with that also we we're going through Neil gov so that we can continue to keep or stay connected with these probable candidates that want to join the police department so that we can continue to keep them interested in us so that they know that we are also interested in them coming aboard and that they feel they they can come on board as well the police training group testing what we're doing now is we're setting up as many testing sessions so that if we have those that we're going to have a high turnover in feedback and so that these applicants turn around and tell us where we need to improve the other one is skill bridge and that is also a training program that we're reaching out to Fort Bliss and that's in the works So eventually thank you sorry we can go ahead and get more recruits from from Fort Bliss as well so as far as the training academies right now we have the 19th and the 20th lateral which will eventually graduate in 2024. the 19th starts the 19th Academy lateral class starts November 11th of 2023 and the 20th will start March 4th of 2024. right now in session we have the 133rd I mean the 132nd and 133rd which will have a total of 37. graduates by November 9 of 2023 and March 15th of 2024. the 134th class oh I'm so sorry okay and so now for the Far East Regional command the Staffing equipment operations is what we're also going for yes I already passed Jonathan okay thank you and so um and just the 134th Academy class which um of course I already counted on so together all together with the lateral classes and the 132nd 133rd and 134th we're hoping to have a 82 total graduates to help with the Staffing okay okay one more okay apologies okay so for Municipal Court we're looking at the text reminder program and that's to reduce the number of case awaiting a hearing or trial I'll pass it over to Chief killings thank you and so professional development always remains a priority for the El Paso Fire Department as we continue our leadership courses at every ring throughout the department we've looked at revamping every level of the leadership academies and tailoring them for multiple levels within our organization construction of new fire station 36 on Trans Mountain is entering the final stages and we're looking forward to starting construction on fire station 38 on the east side off Tim Foster and Pebble Hills and then the replacement of fire station Central fire station downtown with the specialty team station we talked about building our staff in and investing in our Personnel we have a two fire recruit classes that we're planning for and we have also currently in in session right now paramedic class 9 that should that's going to add about 30 paramedics to our to our department by Spring of 2024 and we're going to continue to remain aggressive in the recruitment of our 9-1-1 telecommunication telecommunicators and we have a class scheduled to start there in September and we're looking at all aspects of the recruitment process to find the areas that we're seeing the biggest uh hiccups of the areas that are eliminating most of our candidates and revamping that to make it easier and and again more more successful um and like I said we've redeveloped our officer training and currently working on rank specific leadership academies and then also just to highlight uh our our current Paramedic program that we have in place uh we're piloting a civilian to paramedic course and we have five new recruits going through that which brings in new younger paramedic uh trained recruits when they when they graduate so here I jumped ahead of my presentation here but so here this chart of course shows from fiscal year 2019 all the way to fiscal year 2023. the blue column shows what we start every year our staffing at the beginning and so the orange column is graduates and then so you have the great column that shows our attrition so the average and the loss or as far as fiscal year coming up to fiscal year 2023 would be an average loss of 18 officers being an annual attritionist of five percent 60 officers okay and as I was talking earlier as well with the graduation classes um you've got the 19th the 20th lateral Academy you got the 132nd all the way through the 134th right now currently the 132nd and 133 are in session and we hope to get 37 graduates from there and as when the 19th and the 20th as well we'll hope to get 10 graduates from there and for the win 34th we hope to get 35 a total so making it a total of 82 officers to add to our staffing thank you so for Municipal Court our virtual cashier first Bond office at the West Side so there what it is is that we have at the west side any any individual can come and and go face uh FaceTime with a cashier over at downtown and if and or if the individual needs to be at Municipal Court that is at the Northeast they're able to connect to them as well so that service is provided for them okay so the online appointment selection for dates and times on certain types of hearings so that is for the citizens that they can set up a date that they can make it to and so of course that's only going to be in cases where the officer and or the inspector does not have to be involved so it would be like when they want to set up their dates for for court or they want to talk to the judge of course on on it didn't uh I'm sorry an indigency hearing okay so the third one is increase appearances rate at hearings and this is to help so there's a project going on through a lean Sigma so what they're trying to what we're trying to do is to send friendly text reminders to our citizens that there's a court date and or that they have traffic warrants that they need to take care of and or reminds citizens of their hearing dates and then if they also have a payment plan reminding them of their payment plan to make sure that they stay on top of it so with all this on the lean Sigma project it's supposed it's to help reduce the number of cases awaiting a hearing trial and as of May 1st it is fiscal year 2023 we have 48 856 cases and so our goal is to Target for fiscal year 24 33 000. and of course um once our Far East Regional command opens up the bond office is hoping to open up with one cashier in that area for that I'll pass it to Yvette Hernandez a capital Improvement Department I will be reporting on goal of number seven that's a three to pardon me no that's fine I just have one question with the state legislature changes on curfew and omnibase are there any budget impacts of that for municipal court or PD sorry so the state legislature has is no longer allowing us to have a curfew and is no longer allowing Municipal Court to use omnibase does that have a budget impact at all is no one aware of that no yes um no we're aware of it and so yes we're getting with the of course uh City legal as far as the impact budget wise I don't know but we can get you an answer on that sorry I'm from Municipal Court with omnibase representative this is Lee Municipal from Municipal Court really they're the only impact would be of course decrease in collections but I really need to check that because I thought that the omnibase actually was still in effect that it had not been removed my understanding and I've asked our legislative team for this update and we have not gotten it but my understanding is that state legislature is no longer allowing municipal courts to use omnibase I may be wrong that's why I've asked our legislative team a few times um but yeah I mean I would like to see kind of what our our ideas without that program I know you and I have talked about that for a while now we just have a reason to move forward with it right but if there'd be any budget impact to that I'll look into it and get back to you thank you just grab representative numbers thank you um and first I wanted to congratulate the budget team OMB and all the hard work that you all put to this it takes an entire year it feels like and more and and to Colonel Weston I'm really excited about uh your first appearance in this budget session so so thank you for your hard work um I I want I had a couple questions related to the I'll start first with the police department um there used to be a program are you all do you all have additional slides or is this it because I don't want to be redundant if you have additional slides for PD okay all right they're getting shorter and shorter over the years so I think I think we need to just as process Improvement I think we need to do a deeper dive especially when you have a newer Council on the programs that each department has which is why we dedicate a week-long for these um but at any rate there is a program called volunteers and Patrol and I'd like to know where we are with that program and if we have plans to bring it back up VIP the the VIP program Peter pacias interim Chief so yes uh there was a it's stalled out during the the because of the covid and the restrictions as far as it goes we are revamping our our program we're changing our whole application we're trying to go Technology based back in the past people would have to come in pick up the application fill it out we're all going uh we're going to the documents I could fill out and we can process them a lot quicker um we had a initial meeting with the three volunteers who have stayed with us through this whole time um and they're they're excited to go back out in the field so we're working on that right now to get a larger applicant pool for that great and so um initially when we had the conversation about the program there was a consideration to allow for volunteers who retired law enforcement or military who would who would volunteer to patrol streets and I'm not sure if they're Mark units or not there was an idea to put to place these volunteers near and around schools where there's problematic speeding and just the presence of them in the schools and I know the schools have their own patrolling but this would be separate and above and beyond and then you know one of my biggest concerns and which is why I wanted to address the police department right now is the increase in crime with with teenagers and gun involved incidents I think this past weekend I've been hearing from friends and family I've never heard from before about a real concern about crime in specific areas where there's juveniles and then you know I I'm going in just full transparency what I'd like to do is look at that data and I think it would be really helpful to come back to council to determine if there is a problem I just heard from representative minello that there was a Prohibition on curfews that was going to be my next question could we are we at the level now that would require curfews because we're seeing so many juvenile incidents with guns they're teenagers they're 15 they're 16 and that really frightens me I've never seen that in my tenure and so not to say that the VAP would be the solution but there are folks in the community who want to get involved and I think this is a really good time to to explore that given the increase of crime that we have seen especially when you have young girls getting shot at parties and so so thank you for that I'm hopeful that we can get more applicants and we can see that program come back I'm not sure if there's a budgetary request but if there is please let us know so that we can keep that into consideration you mentioned assistant chief and I'm in Syria that's a hard name to say you mentioned 82 officers that would be starting with the the academies you have now the lateral academies and then the others and I'm just curious because over this over my tenure I have seen 60 class full sizes and I'm trying to understand why if we're doing if we're doing multiple academies you know my expectation was that there was going to be a greater number is it because we are artificially capping it or are we struggling with recruitment yes ma'am well the truth is we're struggling if I'm not mistaken I was um told that initially with the large academies yes but unfortunately because we're having a hard time just like everybody else even in the private sector and or in other law enforcement agency we are struggling and that's why we were so um going viciously or aggressive on Recruitment and Retention and for that for those reasons so our solution was okay well then give us three academies where we can have 30 30 and then the two lateral classes so that we can go ahead and make up the as much as we can to get to to the amount that we need to but unfortunately that's what we've been seeing and and so but we are really really really really really going after and being aggressive and trying to get people on and even having our officers that are on stay on if if I could Mario D'Agostino for the record um while you might see an academy set at 30 they're not capped at that number they're they're actively recruiting and if we can get more into those academies we will and so that that's the way it's going forward they actually have some very good news to talk about as far as the recruitment right now we have well over a thousand applying for the next Academy and we haven't seen those numbers in a long time so no they're not capped by those numbers and I would think that with the CBA adjustment for new Cadets too that's just that's probably one of the one of the factors where you're seeing some of the additional numbers right now so we have to take a look to see how it proves out but I think that'll help right right okay now [Music] I've seen 60 at a time being graduated and you know my concern has been you know that the police department is not the profession of choice anymore and and so I'm happy to see that the wages are more competitive historically Chief pacias I have seen in these presentations response times and I'm not seeing that now are you all prepared to talk about what your average response times are for Priority One calls so our party one calls were still struggling and that's all due to the staffing issues that that we have as far as that goes like uh Chief D'Agostino was talking about we're starting to see an uptick and and law enforcement is it's a cyclical type thing there's times in in my career where we weren't very popular and then it starts ticking up again right now we're starting to see an uptick in the in the recruitment we're going we're like Chief in San Diego was talking about we're getting very aggressive on our on our Recruitment and using technology to our advantage um for the past three about three years uh we were maybe in the 800s and applicants to come in in those classes last week we just got a positive report we have well over a thousand applicants and the application process is still open for that class so we're hoping that we're going to get several several more so there is no cap going back to that as soon as as soon as we're starting to graduate the these uh individuals they still go through their fto program as far as it goes and we're hoping that all the these things that everybody's done the the the the CBA that you all approved to increase the salaries the recruitment efforts that our recruiters and our HR department are working on will start helping us work on those Priority One calls but uh as far as our our meeting our goal our Priority One calls no ma'am we're still struggling on that but I had seen oh man it's been some time maybe two or two years or so that the priority the the average and I'm not sure if it was all calls or just Priority One calls they're about 17 minutes um and so if we can help Benchmark so that we can determine whether or not filling these vacancies or increasing our Workforce is directly attributing to the reduction of response times I think that would help us better understand you know the need in the in the academies and the funding and so if we can see that at Future presentations I'd appreciate it we can get that yes ma'am I have a question for Municipal Court I wanted to to ask last fiscal year we had approved funding um because due to the extensive backlog and uh due to the pandemic there was thousands of cases there were pending we approved funding for a temporary court and so I wanted to know is this budget going to also include that same temporary court and then what where are we at with the current backlog so on in October 2022 we had over 71 000 cases awaiting a trial because of the temporary Court we are down to I think 46 000. the temporary Court actually seizes operations next month and uh I think my Municipal Code it's it's really only allowed for one year every every year so we were not planning on on re-igniting it we're not is it because it needs to we need to approve a new I mean I'm sorry yes but you would need to approve a new temporary Court I understand but we're we're pretty much caught up because at 33 000 that's the goal that actually our judges actually here over 20 000 in in one month okay so I mean if you all are comfortable with those numbers because I'm not sure what the standard is I just want to make sure that we that the the temporary Court work the funding was available and I appreciate that and in the past I had asked about amnesty periods um do you have you walked what are the considerations or how do you determine an amnesty period and how does that get approved we're we're actually planning one for 2025. so we typically have anonymity every three four five years and because we actually just um awarded a contract to a collection agency we wanted we want to give them time to see um if they will meet the performance standards within this next year okay understood those are all my questions thank you thank you that's okay um I guess I'll start at the most recent part of the presentation and flow backwards a little bit um forgive me I think I'm going to be a little bit annoying with these questions but there is some questions that I think I want to ask every Department um so you'll hear me repeat these a lot throughout the next day and probably a couple of days um I guess let's start we'll start with the police department like I said we'll flow backwards um this is an easy one for you we've already been talking about it but um I know you're not necessarily fully staffed do you feel like you are adequately staffed at the moment right now the short answer is no sir and that goes back to the earlier question of response times we need to get to Priority One calls in a more expedient manner those are priority One cry calls are crimes against persons in progress so and again I'll I'm asking we kind of had this conversation I'm asking because I'm going to ask the same to every Department do you think that's a budget restraint is it a recruitment restraint what is the big restraint on being adequately staffed it's going to be the the Recruitment and the uh the finding the applicants out there like everybody else it's hard to find people that want to just work in general much less have to go through the rigorous background check as far as it goes with with city council did by approving that the CBA is really helping us out and I think that's why one of the reasons why we're seeing the applicant pool increase on this go around as well so during that time period they weren't able to have academies and so remembering that it takes two and a half months to have an academy and then they go through the field training officer program not being able to have an academy for an extended period of time really did impact those growth numbers that we saw um I know you said there's no there's no artificial limit on the number that you can have uh within an academy the number of cadets if you have a an academy class that's bursting at the seams you can't get one more person in the room what what size is that Academy we have had Academy classes in the past of a hundred people up there uh and it takes us to the limit of the current infrastructure so with the the bond the public safety Bond and the new Academy hopefully when that's built that increases those numbers that we're able to put out okay but you could do significantly more than the 30 or 40 or even 50 then that you know we might and that's why we're doing the three Academy classes it's just we're taking that hundred and just if on that scenario I gave you we're dividing up into three classes that's what I was going to add that that might be a hundred but that's just with one class going on so having those multiple classes at the same time it does limit that factor a little bit understood in the current uh application process is that only for this the the most or the the next upcoming Academy or would that be spread across the three upcoming it's for the current recruitment for the next Academy class so we'll open up uh with our HR department will open up a recruitment and then close it down for a week because the next Academy class uh as far as goes um so it's open and close open and close but it's for the current class that we're trying to seat come up in September understood okay so you have a pool of more than a thousand applicants just for the one upcoming classes yeah as of last weekend still growing excellent okay um the next question I plan to ask everybody uh sorry management you might not like me asking this question what it what do you is there one or maybe more small unfunded needs that you have in the department something that whatever comes to mind I guess that's in our uh I just want to hear folks say like if if you had to prioritize like one small unfunded need like what is what is the one that that's in our supplemental request as far as the code officers that were spoken about earlier sure as far as that goes my next question was going to be a large a large unfunded is there a particular like large unfunded need that it's not even necessarily for this year's budget but thinking into the years ahead if we had to tackle something large that the department needs what is what is that it's a it's the personal and Equipment every every year we we go through that we work with uh the budget office it's it's going to be personnel and equipment okay so a lot of things Personnel Vehicles facilities equipment um okay again I I warned everybody I'm going to be a little annoying I'm sorry I want to by the way management doesn't have a problem with you asking about unfunded requests uh let's go back then one more step to the to the fire department um you're actually seeing attrition but it's because of the the um covid operators right otherwise you're uh you're okay at least adequate on on uh firefighters currently right so for our uniform Personnel within the fire service we're seeing attrition that's a little bit higher but that's just based on the number of personnel that we have reaching the retirement age but we are able to maintain uh we've been successful the the the pool of candidates is is shrinking but we're still able to fill classes and get get the candidates in that we need to get in to to get the Department staffed and we'll keep going through them what what about one one uh small unfunded need here sorry to interrupt just one really quick point is that it's a net increase of firefighters for them this year correct yeah right and the attrition again is just from the the decrease due to the covid operator positions being eliminated right okay is there a particular small unfunded need that you feel the department has now I think our small unfunded heat is going to be similar to that of what the police requires with the exception of personnel we're looking at the capital equipment for vehicles uh being able to add you know get ahead of that curve for the replacement of apparatus we're seeing a longer build out time for those apparatus so being able to get that money up front and quicker is always a benefit okay yeah I mean maybe maybe I need to think bigger I would I would put apparatus replacement at maybe closer to large large unfunded need that's a big one um okay uh let's go back one more we have uh Capital Improvement what's that oh I forgot Municipal Court I'm sorry you're right you're right no you're right um I hope I'm correct in saying I've never heard uh about any problems with Staffing at Municipal Court do you feel adequately staffed at Municipal Court we are adequate adequately staffed except we have critical High turnover in the entry level positions and I think it's due to compensation but I think it's helped that that the city has actually increased it because we have very high turnover with the entry level and this is the one of the Departments similar to what I said this morning about where changing position titles can make a big difference if you're having a hard time with one position tele recruiting um changing those titles paying a little bit more when they come in and get on board it seemed to help a little bit stabilize this department it's one of the examples that we've done that in excellent okay and then I'll streamline the questions here maybe I'll ask them together small a small and maybe a large unfunded need do you have anything no we're good it feels outstanding yeah everything's good we're good okay um if uh and again I I don't actually I didn't track towards the end of the legislative session I don't know where the omnibase question ended up if uh you are no longer using omnibase is there do we have some sort of solution that we've thought about besides uh the the collection agency to try to resolve cases um and trying to encourage people to come in using the text reminders um that's that would be that would be it yeah well and happy to share with you some of the research that I've shared with Municipal Court of what they've done in other cities that have got rid of omnibase excellent I would love to see that thank you don't you're right okay go ahead I forgot them not just kidding you're right Ellen already spoke we'll get there uh uh Chief and assistant chief how's your lateral program working is it uh far more successful than the first time that that it was tried so we're not oh the first class that we put out the application process we got over 75 uh applicants that came in there but by the time we get them into the tail end of the program they they start pulling out for whatever reason as far as it goes so um the incentive that we put into this lateral Academy process is we're trying to match them as close as we can to the salary that they came from from the previous uh Department uh if that makes sense so they know that they're coming in if they're like a P1 two or three or something like that that we're going to try to match up to stay competitive in that in that route we're hoping as we continue with this lateral program people start seeing especially now with the new CBA as far as it goes we're hoping that the lateral classes will start coming up good and do you go through the extensive background check with them before you you take them so they so they go through a background check as far as it goes we make them fill out the same background we go through that we ask them to sign the release so we can go back to their department and get their their personnel files so we do the same thing yes or no thank you and and since you lord of the fire department would something like that be able to work for you as well a lateral transfer program like that so we have looked at that in the past and it had limited success with the pre-certified firefighters coming in but with what we're seeing right now I think the the best way is to capture the largest group of recruits and that is through our traditional academies we were just seeing really small numbers of people laterally transferring in from so you integrate them with a regular Academy yeah so they'll be integrated with the regular Academy and then they use it kind of like a refresher program and and they just don't have to take a state exam at the end so your response times right now are good yes sir we've actually had a decrease like uh 20 seconds overall for this this past year for our response times thank you and it's an unfair question about PD but I think you should explain further what what hinders to your your response time even more such as besides personnel and you know such as the little things like traffic of other calls being pulled away from at the time so so yes I mean there's other factors that uh can contribute to the response times currently what we're doing also is we're doing a uh another process Improvement uh down in Mission Valley uh working with tablets and what the intent of that is instead of officers having to go back to the station and complete the reports they can complete the reports while they're out there taking the report as far as it goes kind of going back in the days of when we're there you're able to do the report in the car and writing it they're able to do it on a tablet and make that more efficient so we're getting a quicker turnaround on our calls our traffic accidents the same things getting in and out of those traffic accidents so I don't have to go back and do that so so we're looking at different factors to try to do process improvements so there's just a lot of things that can impact response times and so with this new state law that they're going to do away with citations so for curfew do you have something in plan So currently we're working with the city attorney's office right now to look at what adjustments we need to do with the city ordinances and things of that nature related to what the legislators done with the curfew okay thank you thank you very much thank you very much mayor program so um let's start with Municipal Court so this world um I know you mentioned cases that you have painting cases I think you said 71 000 no we had 71 000 but because of the temporary Court we've actually decreased it to about 46 45 000. okay thank you and so um can you tell us about outstanding criminal warrants that you have on file there um I'd have to get get you that information on the criminal Awards not the traffic once criminal criminal warns both misdemeanor and felony yes that you have on Final there at your I don't have that information uh traffic traffic warrants outstanding traffic warrants do you have any idea how much we may have there traffic we have a over a hundred thousand okay I guess that would Translate to multiple millions of dollars yes and possible revenue for the city and and of course I know there's changes and challenges uh whether they get dismissed the judge can have that discretion to lower the fines and fees and things like that so um and I know you've mentioned already you're going to have an amnesty program in 2025. yes sir okay so that's going to be part of that as well yes sir okay thank you thank you that's all I have for you um Chief pacias or chief in San Diego Thank you very much for being here today and I know it's been a long day already for you probably not used to this at all but anyways uh I think rapid none has mentioned something about gun violence that's happening are all over not just in Old Town so not just in the state of Texas that's happening all over and we see it in the news media we see it on social media people are dying people are dying at a very young age and to me it's very disturbing um we considered I want to say maybe once in my career we had a I don't want to call it a gun buyback program but a gun program where people were allowed to turn in guns that no longer reusable or they didn't want them or anything like that you recall anything like that sir I don't recall us doing that uh police department I might have missed something decades ago I believe the county is looking or entertaining that right now yeah that's because I remember at the northeast regional command they had people come in and of course they had to move them to a side and make sure the weapons were unloaded make them safe before they were turned in and so I just that's been a long time ago of course you know that already so uh let's talk about body worn cameras are you seeing um and I'm not sure where this demon went but anyways have you seen an increase or are you already seen requests for uh videos for body worn cameras whether through Internal Affairs or municipal court or just the public in general so there have been a requests coming in for open records uh right as far as that goes to the public or the news outlets Internal Affairs gets uh they can pull the footage that they need for any of the investigations that that they need the district attorney can do the same thing the County Attorney can also request any of the body worn cameras but they're being pulled yes sir okay so and later on in the presentation we're going to do a real short video on uh so you all can see how the officers are performing out there okay and out of the our officers right now how many are actually have been issued body one crank body worn cameras so we got over 800 cameras and they're all with our Patrol officers our traffic officers our CIT and our DWI officers and we just finished also uh installing the new camera systems in all the patrol cars with the exception of those that are in maintenance right now so okay so the program is working correct yes sir all right glad to see that glad to hear that um just like representative of Canales mentioned this reminds me of back in the days when Chief Allen was here and all respect to him but thank you for answering correctly when you said there's you know we don't have enough police officers uh to be out in the streets handling calls and you know taking calls for service even showing initiative on calls for sure you know because a lot of times U.S the officer on the district he or she knows is beat they know their District they know who the people are they know the vehicles and they would be able to uh do initiation uh work instead of having dispatch calls for service and that's always you yield a lot of fruit that way so thank you very much so that's all I have thanks representative molinar so I have a few more questions um chief of CSU said that one of your uh you responded to representative canale saying that one of your big ask was for code enforcement officers but I don't actually see that on your supplemental it's uh we're asking for four additional code officers and an administrative about alphabetical now and I'll ask off please remember to use your mics we have ASL translation happening simultaneously I thought I turned mine on I apologize I don't know maybe I'm just not seeing it is it on I'm searching the document too and I don't see codes yeah so it's not on here but you're like not your fault um but just wondering that was not approved yet um so the the positions have not been added there's no new positions for their code enforcement division there was a request to evaluate their salaries that's currently under review but you're correct I don't see it enlisted on the supplemental request how many code enforcement officers are there currently you need to use the I'm sorry thank you for being so uh assertive though I spoke in a loud voice too um good afternoon Steve Alvarado code enforcement director currently our staffing levels are 81 of full-time equivalents which equates to 39 positions we should be at 47. we're currently recruiting five in process hopefully in the next 30 60 days we'll be at 95 percent of uh capacity okay so you right now are funded for 39 positions and you're asking for four additional to bring you to 43. we're funded for 47 in total oh you're funded for 47. yeah correct oh because you said recruiting five yes you're asking for four additional to the 47. that is correct but you still have positions that are vacant we do we do we anticipate those reading Fields shortly okay um and they work Monday through Friday nine to five we work seven days a week starting from zero seven A.M to 2 A.M some days most days are 6 p.m they get off 7 A.M to 6 p.m Thursday Friday Saturday nights they'll be working till uh 2 A.M okay good thank you very much I always just didn't see that so I wanted to clear it up um and then chief of CSU I see on here Communications radios how many is that for I'm sorry I didn't hear you communication radios it says for 89 000 how many radios is that for that is actually for I'm sorry Nicole Cody again that's for the police Sergeant under Communications it's for the sergeant yes ma'am okay thank you that's an additional sergeant and then for Municipal Court we see certification pay what is that exactly we have an organization the Texas Municipal Courts education center and what many courts actually do is they allow staff to take tests and and do uh attend continuing education and then they provide incentive pay when you come up to the microphone please introduce yourselves no the world Municipal Court thank you thank you very much those are all my questions thank you who's next no one go ahead Colonel we can continue the the gold team presentation but good afternoon you've added on this Capital Improvement Department I will be presenting on goal seven this is three departments Capital Improvement streets and maintenance and then also mass transit the priorities for fiscal year 24 with capital Improvement is really understanding the market we know and I've been before Council to talk about material increase and cost labor shortage so really working with our Consultants making sure that we simplify our designs so that we don't see the liability or risk inflated in the bids that we receive and then also making sure to work with our procurement Alternatives that are available to us that we could have guaranteed maximum prices in addition to design build procurement which allows us to secure pricing while projects are still being designed and then making sure that we continue our feasibility studies so that we can be strategic in when we apply for state and federal grants making sure that we have these competitive grants really allows us to leverage funds when we look at that 20 to 80 percent match for streets and maintenance they brought before Council the three-year rollout so really getting a good start on the pro the streets that we have programmed for the resurfacing project and then also Community continuing the city council approved paygo funding and then lastly completing the city-wide facilities we know that we've seen shortfalls there are facilities that need attention and so completing that assessment to make sure that we understand the state of good repair for all of our buildings mass transit electrification of the lift operation and then also looking at vehicle replacement bless you so looking at Capital Improvement completing the street infrastructure Pro projects so the planned accomplishments that we have is completing 25 Street Improvement projects some of those larger ones include the Rojas widening project Schuster reconstruction continuing our lighting and Landscaping projects along Pebble Hills airport Vista Del Sol the last of five phases within South Central bridge and then also the completion of nine new traffic signals once again looking at completing streets through our pay goal funding 124 streets have been resurfaced but we still have a 267 that are within the queue for streets and maintenance looking to begin the multi-year upgrades to our traffic control really updating the technology and then also being wise we live in the desert water conservation so the installation of computerized irrigation controls within our parks and then lastly for mass transit to continue sorry improvements within our bus shelters Replacements of the ticket vending machines as was made mentioned earlier the vehicle replacement on the fixed routes and then also implementation of what we've seen in the study for the Sun Metro Rising we're beginning the installation of 25 EV charging stations and this is specifically for the lift facilities this would put 50 EVS into operation and then also the vehicle replacement as made mentioned 20 new Vans for the lift service and 10 new cutaways put into operation and then once again taking advantage of additional funding outside funding through the Texas veterans commission Grant this is 50 000 worth of free rides for our veterans and their families and then also as you saw at last Council optimizing streetcar operations and I'll go ahead and take questions for goal number seven thank you so I have some questions for Street and maintenance are you all going to present as well or is was that it yes ma'am Nicole Cody again they have a presentation on residential street resurfacing and reconstruction and then regarding the automated irrigation project they'll present after Gulf War okay do you want to go first okay go for it sorry yeah we're going to do it right now so it if you can please bring up presentation 2B Richard Bristol streets and maintenance so if you could please hit the slide I'm sorry Okay so in January 30th we're really getting from Council and get the streets for the 2023 24 and 25 approved in this first series of streets are exactly what was approved on that day and this represents both the pay goal for residential in addition to what was in the bonds for residential so this work identified in these slides here of course has not been done yet because these are depending on the new contractual tool that we had proved today real quick on District Five if you'll notice um that second line for 2024 we identified 62 66 streets for a high density mineral Bond overlay that's not resurfacing that's like a sealant when a street is within 10 years old it's a good practice to put a sealant on it and it kind of freezes it in time and extends useful life of it we have not used this tool here in El Paso it's worked in Tucson it's worked in Las Cruces it's worked in Albuquerque and we're going to try it here moving forward to the other districts uh sixth and seven are listed here again these are the next two years off of the Pago and the bonds and I need to point out where it cites 2023 because of the delays that we have had um getting this contract approved because we brought these forward in January some of these schedules may have to be Revisited I don't think we're gonna get all these uh resurfacing program for 2023 done depending on when we can get these contracts executed now for what was approved back in January for The Collector paygo there are the chart to the right are fiscal years 24 and 25. those are the streets that we're going to be resurfacing through the Pago program for collector streets we'll be on on Guru Loop Kenworthy and Diana and the following year we're going to be quite busy with six streets now I need I need to move ahead because of the way this was put together and show you the 50 arterials here there at that same meeting we approved the the first run of the arterials one of the uh the barn had two parts one was the 50 most traveled arterial streets the second was for the residential allocation so these are the 50 arterials this is one of the contracts that was approved today so upon execution of contracts we will be setting the schedule for this moving oh and real quick for the Reconstruction if I could point out if you look on um the treatment if you look down a little bit under Hondo Pass from dire to Diana that's going to be reconstructed as well as section of Pebble Hills that section from zero goes to the rich beam as will a section of Vista Del Sol the reason we are reconstructing them resurfacing will not do the trick they're too far gone we're not going to be able to save those streets with resurfacing they require reconstruction the rest of our presentation right here is the active list and now it's asked a question earlier today if we do have an active resurfacing program when we do and these are the Pago years from 20 actually 21 22 and 23. most of these are showing 22 and 23 on them now real quick um if you look at the district when these were approved it was before redistricting so a lot of these have changed districts since they were approved so we're only showing the district where these streets are in right now we've got 89 of these completed if it's in green it's completed you see the utility hold that is a process that we do and we're going to go pave the street we have a dialogue with the water company and with the gas company with the electric company and we let them know we are going to be on these streets and these years if there is work that you can get done prior to us working on this please do it so that we don't have to cut it open after we're Paving everywhere that you see a utility hold throughout as I go throughout this uh these slides or where that is happening so in most cases the water utility are involved and they're a completing scheduled line replacement or some kind of comprehensive tasks that they need to do on their lines prior to us paying it the ones in yellow are not paved yet they're programmed um again these are already under contract so what we will do is continue to ride this contract out until it's completed um presently this week we're in District Four I can tell you uh we're Paving four streets in District Four this week well they're underneath the sheet of paper that I've been recognized that's why I didn't get to them um they are uh Dunlop Edinburgh Dearborn Kendall um but we also have concrete work at other streets in the in the district four as well right now moving over to District this next rate of six these are all completed these are among the 89 that were completed we have utility holds here again this is work that our Utility Partners need to complete what they need to get done so that we can go in and pave it without it being cut open again anytime soon and then um more program for the summer and in a district eight we're going to have to take a second look at our schedules possibly for any time delays that we uh possibly may lose during the monsoon season that happens every year um sometimes when it's raining it's not a good not a good idea to be Paving and Milling and then moving into this last this is the active collectors so just as I showed you the collectors that were approved for the next two years these are the ones that were approved previously we've completed everything here with the exception of Montwood we will probably see Paving on Montwood starting as early as next week if it does not start next week it very luck will be the week after we're very close to getting that started it's going to be about a month long Paving job on Montwood and then we'll have the collector list approved for the present year as well and that is the presentation we had on resurfacing but um let me ask you a question so you get with a gas company you go with the water company electric company whoever to make sure that once we pave they don't come behind us and tear them up so in their scope of work they've set up some kind of money to redo these streets because they got to tear them up anyway are we partnering with them on the cost so we can save some money and be partners with it we do that often with the water utility sir and part of the reason is we get better prices on our Paving contracts so it's very common for us to use a street resourcing contract for the city to cover up a major Water Project I'll give you a very good example that was Stanton a few years ago that would be a good primary but what I'm saying is they got money set up and we're going to do it we're going to pay for it right can we get them to help us pay for it not not yes sir that's that's how we work it with the water utility they worry about the other utilities we have not with the other utilities sir because we're not in the same part of the same organization so to speak but we have done so with the water utility I don't understand that we are part of the same work we are the city I apologize it's a poor choice of words we have not chosen done so with the electric company and the gas company I'd like to see if we can do that I think we can really save some money because they have it set up in their budget to tear up those streets and resurface them and now they're going to do their job without having to do that and if we can get some cooperation I think we can save some money and be able to do more streets we'll have that conversation with them with our utility thank you sir next thanks so mine's a little bit a little bit they're saying um Richard so on your uh supplemental request you asked for additional maintenance for spray park swimming pools did you ask for that or was that a misprint on the spray parks was it under streets man it is yeah but I don't know if that's just a I don't think that's ours it is sorry Nicole Cody it's for Parkland management so yes how many spray parks do you have from Pac-Man management we all receive we don't do the maintenance of these spray parks we oversee the delivery of electricity so the actual maintenance is not being done by us so I do not have the spray parks in my budget it just says additional maintenance for spray park swimming pools and San Jacinto Plaza and Winterfest are you referring to the spray park at San Jacinto the rest of the spray parks are overseen by the aquatics Division and we've just done a refresh of those just this cycle and so all the maintenance testing of the water all that is from the aquatics along with the Aquatic steps I understand that's why I was confused that this was a streets and maintenance request and Joel McKnight streets of Maintenance I believe that that request came from facility maintenance because they do maintain lighting and other features at the spray parks the eight that are free and so on it's not for the actual maintenance of the water water portion itself it's for the added amenities such as the electrical lights those surface lighting That Gets Busted by rocks any electrical that has to be repaired as well as amenity replacement when it comes to benches not amenities in the water park itself thank you Joe I appreciate that can you give us a list of exactly what they were asking for for the 250 000. we'll we'll get that thank you I really appreciate that your first request Mr Bristol well I'm assuming it's yours is for six full-time employees for Real Estate yes ma'am I was unaware that real estate went to streets of Maintenance and I I'm trying to understand that without any context so can you tell me what how real the state is best utilized in streets and maintenance well we also manage the city facilities and we also pay the electric bill through our facility department and all the utilities and this is an opportunity for us to use some of the compliance tools that we have in place on the utilities on on the expense side established in the facility side to help support them so they moved over just a few months ago and one of the problems that we're seeing is we don't have much of a compliance section in that Division and a compliance section would be important because that represents all the leases to make sure the rents being paid make sure we're collecting money there are compliance issues tied with all these real estate items that are not uh it's not that they're not being done it's just it's an overburden on a staff of four presently so we're trying to expand this group out so we can better be more responsive there's a staff of four what are they primarily doing right now they're just doing this work it's just a lot for them they're overwhelmed they they manage a portfolio of about 4 400 properties and uh they're both the lessee and the lessor so they're handling the city Side so it's it's both sides of a real estate equation and it is quite complicated um the reason we ask for the additional positions immediately is because we want to try and rally behind this section and put as many resources behind them as possible to try and get this set up and functioning the way we need to have it running yeah I mean I've been very interested in the real estate department you all know that uh kind of our inventory of abandoned properties is something that I've discussed a lot and I've always told our real estate department isn't adequately set up for that and you're saying they're not even adequately set up for the things that they need to be doing um and just yeah unaware that they had moved over to streets of Maintenance and so I this is a conversation that I'd like to continue um because I do think that this department has a lot of value and I don't think that they have been working real I mean I'm doing a lot of limited work and and I know it's switched hands a lot of times I think this is the third Department that it's been under in six years I might be missing a few I know we've had a lot of turnover and I'm hearing you say that they're really overworked but I think this could be a really valuable department and would like to continue the conversation on how we're really utilizing this department for multiple reasons other than just our utilities in our leases which I know are very important as well I'm not disregarding those at all that's all thank you ma'am thank you ma'am yes ma'am representative ednundus and again please introduce yourself when you turn on the mic just because uh the public is listening um I was just going to ask if if we can have or maybe you can direct me to the schedule B because I don't see it anywhere so we don't provide schedule a or schedule B until the budget has actually been proposed so on July 14th the end of this week we will file the proposed budget at that point you will also receive a Redline draft of the budget resolution for the meeting on August 1st then as part of that anytime Council approves any changes to the budget we will then record them in schedule a and schedule B okay um I'll start with capital Improvement um Mrs Hernandez uh do you what is the last year that we had a capital Improvement program list is that 2020 okay yes sorry and and the reason why I ask is because more and more I've been getting a requests for Capital Improvements without any guidance or Direction because our neighborhood traffic Management program doesn't allow for those above and beyond like the tier one used to be called tier one um we've had multiple conversations about a potential quality of life 2024 Bond um but it doesn't necessarily include Capital Improvements and so I'm just trying to understand are is your team working on a list to bring to council is that something that we need to initiate for a 2023 or 2024 plan currently um since the funding source for our Capital Improvement have been a Geo and they've been Bond issued we are not currently working on an active list we do collect and we do have an unfunded list but it would work in partnership with what the council would like to see in the Improvement so that you can vote on the monies needed to make those improvements within our community I think what would be helpful to understand is what is currently on your list that's already been funded and how close you are to finishing that because if you're already at a point where staff is going to finish everything that's been funded then we need to have the foresight to have the vision about what are the next projects that our community needs um and so it's just it's something that we used to talk about two times a year and it's gone to like none and so it's really a big concern of mine that we're not having conversations about active Capital Improvements for our streets and for our facilities um and so go ahead and address that sorry um on the 18th we will be providing the quarterly update which will go over all the different funding sources and um the phases and completion of our capital projects and also the facility side of the house is actually in the process of doing that facility assessment and I think they're about halfway done right now so they plan to have that down within in the next several months as well so later took an actions on that okay great um because we'd love to see um you know there's a lot of needs in in the public and outside of a quality of life Bond I don't know how to direct them because you know granted we don't have enough funds in our general fund I wanted to ask for mass transit um the I saw that there's a significant increase to utilities and we've had conversations about you know potentially solar Farms um and to to try to help adjust do we do we understand where if that's something I can talk about so um the generation plan from the airport we've talked about that in the public um and there was going to be like five megawatts available there was a consideration for the airport and then there was additional uh wattage that would be reserved for another facility the closest location and one of the biggest biggest one in Sun Metro have we have we talked or thought about where that access um watts would go to which departments because used utility calls are pretty significant across across all the Departments anybody have an understanding of solar program are we are we on pause of that program at the airport yeah um yeah we're currently paused at that within that program we brief city council and executive with regards to the negotiations from the past electric and that deal is not moving forward however we are working on the um with Nicole Farina her team to identify opportunities for additional solar projects and we'll continue on that on that trajectory representative okay thank you thank you for that I wasn't aware of that um so thanks for that information um I'll hold off to look at schedule b um and I wanted to ask about um with our streets department the wheat the weeds um I see in your staffing chart there's a reduction of 95 positions but we are currently working with in-house staff to address the weed issue on our medians and state roadways and then so I'm trying to understand do you have the sufficient amount of staff to do that and then are we prepared with contracts because it's year over year over year over year over year I'm going to give another over a year that I address this budget session about the weeds all over the city specifically I get calls from tourists that come into our City who take Airway I've I've advocated for this over and over again I don't care that it's in my district but we have the airport and the district and that's the first impression and the last impression that they have is the weed excavation and I just don't know how to respond anymore so do we have the staff do we have the contracts do we have programs do we have uh pilot programs anything so that we can address a read problem um Nicholas you've added Environmental Services no currently we don't have adequate staff right now currently I have 36 openings for Solid Waste Service workers who are the employees that are actually in the field that take care of the weeds for us currently I currently only have two Crews right now of 23 people that are managing the entire city we do have one contract but with that one contract with exceeds they only have one group that works with us and they only have five people in that group so let me Carrie Watson interim city manager one of the things that we're doing in to get ahead of this because we're we're having these problems and we're not even at the in the monsoon season so to speak to your point and I'm hearing a lot of this across all the districts on problems with weeds so one of the things that Ellen Smythe is doing is working to do a summer surge a 38 additional folks we are going to do a summer differential and pay a little bit more money to get a group of folks in so that we can not only triage the uh your areas you're hearing about within each of your districts but then also to once we get these folks on board start looking at the rotation that's that we currently have in place and then giving you a better idea of what that rotation might look like with the additional Staffing during The Surge now my understanding is that there's a job fair very specifically for this this coming Friday since we put this plan in place and I suspect that this is going to be something we're going to have to do every single year you know looking at looking at conditions and doing a surge and getting some temporary help to come in especially during these really problematic periods so that's that's the the additional plan that we have in place right now and I know we had we talked about the bids and we had companies that bid out and they couldn't hire people to perform the service I know we tried within the city and we couldn't do it so then we went out and tried to hire a company and then the company had a problem hiring people to be able to perform that service and that was something that we talked about about 90 days ago right Ellen's my Transit and field operations officer we've we're looking right now at temporary services to just bring temporary labor contracted Services in-house shift differentials over time we we do we still have our Community Partners that we're having cleanups on the weekends and each one of your districts is you know can call for a cleanup at any time and in partner with environmental services and and so but as Mr Ibotta said the at the end of the day with 40 of our employees facing vacancies that really puts a kink on how fast we can address the weed issue but I believe that this summer differential is going to make a big difference along with the dollar increase that we're looking at and plus the thousand dollar sign-on bonus that we still have so we're trying to attack it from all avenues I appreciate that I so there's 40 vacancies um 38 for a solid service workers I believe five for the lead solid away service workers and then five for or I believe 15 for equipment operators so I I think those differential rates would help I just want to make sure that that's going to be available for the next fiscal year as well yes and um and working on the policy right now with HR and it will be reviewed by the City attorney hopefully this week to be up to 120 days differential every year so there'll be a recurring yearly and if we need it to be longer we can certainly adjust the policy going forward as well I also wanted to mention to you that non-profits including high schools who participated in the weed Patrol in the past um I'm not to say that I'm advocating for it because this is something that we need to do in-house anyway I just think that that model was something that was really appreciated by by groups doesn't need to be weeds all the time it could be other issues that we're having within the city um so the the other thing I I wanted to thank the streets department I've seen an increase in striping already so I'm really happy about that and of course the public it's gold when they see new asphalt on their streets it's like literally gold so really appreciative of all that work it does it does every time I see staff who are maintenance maintaining our streets I always stop and I think them because it's like 120 degrees out there with all of their outfits and and it just you know I really do believe not only is it a hazard to be on the streets which could justify the the differential rate but also the work that they're doing is not favorable so looking at those those salary those wages and I think representative Canales for for bringing that item forward about looking at that minimum wage for all employees because I think that's going to be critical in the next couple years I did want to mention uh regarding the um uh just a second here oh uh the street we have a lot of street lights that fall and I'm trying to understand who's like they never get picked up and so is it a funding issue or is it a staffing issue no um what it what it is we get Street let's get knocked down at least you can assume one's going to get knocked down on a weekend um it requires the uh the auger and the lift to get that thing out of there and and so what we're having to do is having to reschedule it at a point where the team that does that work is in the area sometimes it does take a little bit of time so we go do collect them we probably have about a half a dozen of them right now that we need to collect and it's a matter of scheduling because the team that has that piece of equipment is out changing lights so for them to just go pick up the equipment they're either try and work that in when they're in the area or when they're in the region or when they get to it um but that's it's scheduling them well I mean I think it's scheduling and Staffing so my biggest concern is there's a reduction of 95 positions in the department and so I just don't know if that's a true representation no ma'am Nicole Cody so on staff 40 and staff 42 on staff 40 we included that there is a transfer from economic development of real estate to streets and maintenance how many and four people and then from streets and maintenance it's coming we've got median maintenance street sweeping and graffiti all three programs are moving from streets Street Maintenance to environmental services and so that's the reduction in ftes that you're seeing so so how many so it's not true it's nice reduction of positions but the reality is we didn't reduce them they just moved to a different manager it's the same funding source it's the same I'm trying to understand what the reduction is from the streets department yes there's no reduction so no ma'am there is 99 fdes or positioned that are moving from streets and maintenance to Environmental Services then they added four for real estate and so that's the 95. all right so the the street lights let me go back to that I there's a street light at the at the on the airway that's been there forever I make several requests cello Vista neighborhood association has made several requests I'd like to know if there are street lights that are falling all over the city how do we prioritize that do you need a dedicated position do we need to hire a contractor do we need to set aside funds so that we can issue that out because I would consider you know a street light being in the middle of the road or on the median to be to be a priority we get them out of the right away our first priorities get them out of the right away so they're not in the way right get them off to the side sometimes they're in the median if it's a two or three lanes which is get them in the meeting and we'll get them when we get to clean it up now well I just want to be clear we're not leaving them inside the right away and again sometimes we'll get some help with the electric company when we're doing this as well but the truth of the matter is it's waiting until we can get to it to pick it up now do we need an extra crew for that we have the Staffing we have the equipment we have a hard time filling all of our positions so it is a staffing issue but I don't think we need to look at something new we need to just fill what we have okay I'm just going to make the request over and over again but but it is concerning that when a street light falls it's there for months and I you know a street ball being replaced is less of a priority than picking up the street light getting it out of the medians putting it back up the Aesthetics that way it could be functioning but they are there forever not only are the weeds there now our street lights are there and so I'm very concerned that the amount of dedication in our budget for maintenance is lacking I can show you my calendar to to represent how many calls I speak with constituents who talk all day about the lack of improvements in their neighborhoods that includes weeds includes accessibility to their for wheelchairs or or car seats it's street lights and the way and it's just it's all related to streets and so I I don't know if it's more Staffing that you need or if it's the increases of wages but it is a budgetary concern and I just I'm very concerned about it so I just want to to re-emphasize that the weeds the street lights and the light bulbs thank you thank you I got Russian Rivera followed by representative mayor Pro tem and then representative Canales okay thank you mayor representative Hernandez and has touched on a few things that are uh that I was going to bring up to but uh Mr Bristol I understand that uh you you do that and and I'll have I'll have taken is the email to send you and they've taken care of that so you might want to do that yeah I do get the calls about the street street lamps being down on the on the center median or inside of the road whatever it is that is a a very hazardous situation there um Mr bristle regarding the the streets uh that were for residential resurfacing on 2223 and their utility holes how much further are we looking at because I'm getting calls on that area being torn up and nothing's been well every one of these streets is a different project so I do not have the utilities timeline on whether they have them all done but they know that we are trying to get these done under the 22-23 time period Unfortunately they run into the same problems that we run into with construction with contractors or materials or construction issues so that's hurting them as well okay and I think the mayor brought up a great Point as far as these utilities getting involved in the payment of this the the cutting up of the streets and uh you know again I'll bring it up the metal plates and they just made a front page for the ink now people are getting frustrated on metal plates being laid on the ground growing like fungus throughout the whole our whole Community uh taking out wheel alignments and stuff but and I know you're doing your best uh but I think that I think you're on the right track with them but as far as getting together with the partnership with these utility companies uh it would be great and I know you're trying your best but the thing is that if it's only the water company working on it and it gets resurfaced and it gets again a perfect example would have been Hawkins and that's District three but you're traveling down that road and it was a it was a landmine full of potholes and everything so they finally get out there and do it and then the Community College comes along and cut S as long as right across the right across the street and it wasn't even a year later that they did that I mean all that takes its hole on the constituency around that area and so I mean he or a frequent user like you know I was at the time so uh the thing is that the Partnerships are very important who do we was it the mayor is it you is it a city manager that we can talk to as far as you know uh aligning some kind of policy program where this is done collectively so the city doesn't have to dish out all the the funds and then they do ought to they go out there and they do what they need to do and only to have another utility company or a subcontractor for the cable company come up and tear it up it's it's an issue for us to work operationally I mean this is this really is a you know fundamentally it's a coordination issue with us and the utilities and having those discussions if one of the things that I plan on doing is is having much more frequent touch points with the utilities and staffs we can address some of these issues but taking taking the notes today so that we can we can do just that and and going back to still with Mr Bristol going back to what you talked about putting in that new asphalt type that's going to be I'm pretty sure it's going to be costly right but it's going to be worth the the high density mineral Bond yes sir it's actually a it's a lower unit cost it's not as expensive as a surfacing but it like it's a lot it'll buy you another 10 15 years of street life it will right but you go lay that lay that lay that down only you have another utility company or a subcontractor go ahead and tear it up that that that's taking down the city and the taxpayers and uh I think that we should somehow also strike a deal with that um I'll let you off because you've done a lot you've done a lot and I thank you so much for that but uh uh my next question is from Miss Hernandez you mentioned uh construction and Landscaping Landscaping uh it's funny that you mention this because city manager and I had this conversation that I certainly don't want El Pastor to be experiencing what Phoenix is experiencing right now where they're running out of water literally running out of water all construction has stopped I'll build a stop and so uh I asked him and I'll ask you do we have a plan in place let me let me take this first um I mean it's a great question one of the things that I recommend is that we reassess our landscape ordinance yeah so we've worked with planning and inspections on this I will tell you that it only makes sense as you look at more modern approaches to Landscaping that you can still have visually attractive landscaping that's clustered and done in a way that really makes sense from not only from a water standpoint but also you know again still looking still looking attractive but reducing cost as well that doesn't mean you know that we we do landscaping so that Landscaping doesn't look nice you can do things within the means as well without having to have just the the standard uniformity and density that you would typically see with Landscaping I mean I I will tell you that um without getting into a lot of great detail I've seen firsthand over the last several years of of businesses that because of impediments to the with with the ordinance sometimes are putting way too much density within the Landscaping just because of the requirements of the ordinance or Landscaping areas that the public will never even see and an example of that is in some cases you know behind rock walls and truck yards so there's a lot of things I think we can do to fix that ordinance and bring those back to the and bring some of these things back to the city council if that's the direction that you'd like for us to look at I would recommend that we do that well I'll be bringing you something like that for because I had a lot of calls for my constituents especially on the weeds that were mentioned and so um I had out of ladies I had three tell me if the city can't maintain the the medians why don't you just or Brickman whatever it is but don't put any Landscaping that requires water because all we get is swedes so that's what I brought up to you before so that's why I brought up this issue of landscaping and running out of water it's very important for this community we are suffering just as much as uh states and cities for the West further east of us the heat is really taking its toll on this lower half of these states and so I don't want to be in that position where uh people are out of standstill in Phoenix in Arizona because they're running out of water and so if we can look at that I would appreciate that and like I said we could bring it in and save El Paso and taxpayers some money additional money on the Landscaping uh would appreciate that yes sir and Sir Nicole farini climate sustainability officer I just I had to chime in because you asked if we have a plan and the answer is we are about to it's called the climate action plan and I'm going to jump the gun a little bit I will be presenting that um here shortly but I think that it's really interesting that you're you're bringing a connection between the availability of our natural resources like water and how it can impact small businesses residences everyone and so it's a much more complicated issue I think than just the Landscaping but that is the start and I think it's important that we message correctly because revisiting the landscape ordinance in a way that makes sense and saves water is important but for example if you were to come back in and just Concrete in every median that we have you wouldn't have the weed issue anymore but the amount of heat that you would then generate and and exacerbate in our community I think we're all very sensitive to that today and so that's why it's important to understand down that the climate action plan will balance all of that and I appreciate you for that I get that I appreciate you for that but and El Paso isn't quite at that location right now as this this this state uh areas of the State of Arizona is so I mean I'm saying hey uh El Paso water was uh early enough to catch the conservation programs and stuff like that so we can do that now for the future as far as that's concerned because you know that's water we can't survive without water absolutely sir so that's uh thank you for bringing that I'll be waiting for your presentation on that and then finally I just forgot to ask the Chief and this is the citizenship on this uh important issues also bothering me as far as that's concerned and I remember being there and I'm pretty sure representative Molina does the same thing when when he was out there is when we handled accidents we made sure that the record driver picked up everything and that means any particle any parts of the car any parts of the headlights any parts of the headlamps or relative tail lights and the headlamps announcer and ma'am I'm seeing this as a regularly they just rushed it out to the corner adding to the ugliness of the trash that we already have in El Paso is there is are you also enforcing that for the record driver to do that I know in the past we did yes so um that that's part of the contract that we have between the record services and the police department we call them out some of the issues that also happen is when the person asks for a private tow as far as it goes it's a private company that's not related to our contract and we're trying to get all that stuff worked out with that especially with the upcoming uh um rebidding of the contract okay and I remember that private toll requests and we also made them do that too before that I just wish we could return to that because I know I heard mayor Pro tem go it's it's it's a sad State of Affairs when you're driving around town and all you see is uh you know accidents remnants on the roadway and that was never like that before so we'll get it done thank you thank you sir thank you into the water conversations something I've talked about a lot but I would remind Council in 2018 we amended our own ordinance to allow the city to water more um we need to be looking at our own house as well as everybody else's when we look at those policies I want to talk a little bit about um well first I want to talk about the light poles and the telephone poles that are down I understand that we put them to the side so we can deal with them but that can sometimes be months and for a lot of times it means that there is a poll on the side of the road where people can't park or they will park and there'll be males or they're on a sidewalk blocking Ada accessibility and I get why you do it I understand that you have to wait for a team but I think we're just seeing like a real occurrence of the that we don't have the the teams that we need to deal with these kind of things because they they are moving at a very slow pace and that brings me to kind of the 99 positions that were moved over to Sun Metro which is on side 42 I see that in the non-general fund budget but I actually want to focus on side 41 and this is of Robert and Nicole's presentation I'm sorry um I see an increase of 8.7 million into both Capital Improvement and streets and maintenance can we talk about what that is exactly we'll start with Capital Improvements I guess just because it's first on the list say would slide again sorry it was so it was from the first presentation from Nicole and Robert it was slide 41. so I see in well and you know we're going to talk about Capital Improvements I also see in the non-general fund you're a real decrease from 22 to 23. and then that started to go up were those old grants I believe the decrease was actually when we transferred out real estate in the money associated with that left to their Department that was in 23 I thought that just happened in this budget I believe it happened in 23. good to know who I learned something new a year later um okay so then the additional 700 000 for um the general fund budget that's related to the compensation increases as well as we had to do some right sizing of the salaries that were paying some of our Engineers we were losing quite a few of them to the water utility because water utility was paying a little bit more so we had to do some reclassification in order to make sure that we were retaining the staff I love that um and throw staff what was the what were those so that was ivetted none the CID that was uh 2.5 so the 0.5 is a part-time for data scientists we're utilizing him really to collect a lot of the data that strengthens our grants the second is the grant project manager that was previously under Economic Development and now moved over to CID and the same is with legislative affairs administrator it was previously Economic Development and now moved over to CID why was that what was that move for so it really helps out with the partnership that the grant funded program is under the CID umbrella and so really being able to work with them in Partnership of what we're doing with FTA Federal Highway just the grants program in general so it's it's been a good Synergy with those two to be with CID they are not limited to the grants that they write it's not specifically CID only for the most part Omar Martinez who is the grant program manager he is working CID airport and also Edie as soon as we get him more established I want to expand the the amount of grants that he works but I don't want to set him up for failure so those are the three that he is uh primarily focusing on but I know he's even worked with a community development in a small role yeah I mean that just I I that makes a lot of sense but I I do worry that if legislative and grants are just focusing on the grant side of legislation and not actually the policy side of legislation which I'm I'm sorry I do feel like did happen during the state legislative session a little bit um and I that is my only concern if those become two different positions and it makes sense but I just want to make sure that we have a legislative person that is working policy yes and I think one of the things is the narrative really working with department heads so they understand the functions of what Lindsey Adams is working on and how they could create that narrative to make sure that what is happening both on the state and federal is really meeting the needs of each department and also I'd like to point also with the capital Improvement department so they charge their time so out of the 7.6 million dollar Budget on the expense side they collect about 7.2 million that's charged at the capital projects and so that's most of their staff time all of the engineers all the project managers that's all charged they check their time and that's all charged to the Kepler projects and so that's you'll see that on the reimbursement side on the general fund Revenue Improvement apartment and then the 7.956 million increase from streets of Maintenance yes ma'am so Nicole Cody the personal services makes up 1.8 million dollars of that increase and so that's just ensuring that the compensation increases or also effect in that as well as ensuring that the positions that they're planning to ramp up for are all fully funded on contractual Services 1.4 million of that includes your Public Access maintenance contracts and Richard can get into more detail on those contracts that we've seen increases in as well as 318 000 for building facility maintenance contracts and then as we mentioned janitorial and Security in addition we have materials and supplies so that's 1.6 million and included in there we have Public Access maintenance repairs and so that's a million dollars as well as additional repair dollars above 370 000 and other maintenance supplies which is 187 000. the 1.9 that we mentioned before is under operating expenditures and that's their utility increases and 1.3 makes up the majority which is electricity and the natural gas is at 250 in water at 288. sorry if you get that over to us of course absolutely thank you Richard Canal is followed by the episode thank you mayor um I'll change tack a little bit in asking about small and large unfunded needs because I can because I can see them in the supplemental requests there are a lot of needs large and small um Mr Bristol if you don't mind can you walk us through the ones that we haven't discussed yet uh the the supplemental requests uh unfunded requests that we that we haven't discussed yet Okay so for that second one Richard Bristol streets of Maintenance we want to assemble a painting and Roofing team together and we want to take current vacancies delete them and create these positions for painters and roofers and have these teams doing only that 24 I mean only that as a task and we would have them painting inside and outside of buildings and the roofers will be doing patching constantly as opposed to what we're having to do now is pool employees together and try and attack some of these projects either on overtime or when we get a chance to get enough hands together where we have free time from Priority projects to be able to handle these um on that one sorry the it's uh listed at an amount of 623 730 is would that be net or you know is that a net increase or is that if you were you're eliminating positions we would eliminate positions which have have salary savings on them likely some of them could have Cyrus Amazon so we have we have to check with them but yeah that's what it would cost and so just to clarify I think on all of these positions that's been that's a conversation we're currently having with the Department that's why it's still pending is to know if there's going to be a net impact or not okay so this is theoretically a maximum potential cost yes okay but some of the savings from other elimination of other ftes could be used to fund these yes sir I understood go ahead Richard sorry um resurfacing um that's for the new contracts uh we have three contracts that are active now as opposed to one we've done a lot of Staffing table changes uh leading up to us Nicole has led us do stuff until we changes to move things around in all of our sections up until she cut us off when they had to follow the complete the budget um but that would be new positions strictly for the new keep an eye on the new work that's coming in supervisory positions for no they would be front line sir okay inspectors and such I understand um permitting staff is always important for us and we have we have a lot of struggles on the permitting staff uh because we're issuing about 15 000 permits a year with uh about half a dozen folks additional help there will help um as with the truck engineering planning those are the ones that that do like ordinance changes for speed limits they're the ones that will evaluate um safety initiatives like example uh someone submits an ntmp application or a lighting petition or something like that those are the positions that will evaluate those you're asking for two ftes there yes sir okay um signal maintenance is a very serious situation for us right now um our signal technicians are very specialized we do not have uh we're going to have what we had before where we're about half full on there we have about nine vacancies and what we're running into uh right now is we're having a very hard time Staffing our signal section so that's an area that we in conjunction with this request we want to have to take a look at our positions and we're going to upgrade them because we're simply not retaining and attracting with current job spec the operations superintendent is an operational issue and that would provide another layer of oversight over the Street Maintenance supervisors I got this idea from Parkland maintenance they have four actually five functional supervisors for Geographic and one overseeing their special projects group in the playgrounds and then they have two superintendents overseeing them I'd like to try that model and I think that's going to help with our oversight because I don't necessarily need professional managerial and executive folks for it to have oversight I would like to bring in that that extra position and we can work with existing positions to do that um Fleet uh Fleet and Equipment replacement is always going to be an issue for us this first one represents heavy equipment those are your pothole patchers front end loaders are presently an issue bucket trucks are an issue we've been talking about why we need the bucket trucks um not only to uh to elevate folks to be able to work on either a street light or or a Navy foot Park light but also there also have a a lift where we can pick them up off the streets unfortunately we got three of them and they roll out daily um and they're rolling out daily uh fixing street lights section underneath that is well before you move on from that one that that represents a huge chunk that's 6.4 million the equipment there sir it it's heavy equipment this is diesel equipment a pothole patching unit we should estimate a pothole passion unit around 250 thousand dollars we should estimate a front end loader around 150 now these prices have gone up since covid dump trucks for example I have I have a couple of dump trucks that are Sterlings and we can't get to parts we've kept them running because our our decent mechanics are fantastic but I need to replace them probably looking at two hundred thousand dollars for a unit simply because what once costed 120 130 000 the prices have gone up especially since Kobe um so the 6400 that that is all uh heavy equipment the spirit okay this is the one that I was confused on earlier my apologies when I heard spray parks these are actually additional amenities for these areas for these Parks um that would be as Jill had mentioned earlier um it could be benches it could be any kind of feature to enhance those areas um Fleet Maintenance trainer supervisor is we want to dedicate someone only to teaching people how to one uh continuing their their uh education on equipment because as new uh as we buy different types of units we had to learn we would educate ourselves so we need to train our designated trainer doing that but it's also someone that's going to be training people on the ASE as soon as we get a new employee in our Fleet Services section we start working on their ASC certification and honestly that's one category where we're really proud of we will get to 100 and then people will leave we'll get new people but we do train our folks on ASE certification we're very serious about that and we have a very good program um the in-house Diagnostics and Equipment software is also with Fleet section um and that's electronic equipment to help us that's electronic equipment to help us diagnose what's what's wrong with the equipment better A lot of our equipment is old and it truly is and there's some new technology that we want to look into and purchase and we also want them um utilizing iPads right there on the station so they can look up things right there in the station not having to go to the computer and look them up we just want to automate our technology a little bit better on the HVAC units um that could be either for maintenance or we could do some Replacements some small units we'll take what you'll give us and the reason I said maintenance is because it costs a lot of money to maintain these large units when they go down like for this building for example um it's a hundred something degrees out and there's a lot of clients for the company that was service this air conditioner so if we go I think they're up on our roof today yes sir Folks up there yeah um Fleet replacement city-wide now that's different than what I just said earlier because when I'm talking about city-wide I'm not only talking about our light this is light vehicles we're looking out for the light vehicles for the entire city not just ourselves and there's some positions uh with some Metro that I will not speak to because I don't have that information um yeah again I think the in looking at all of these supplemental requests one of the ones that jumped out at me most was the 6.4 million for streets of Maintenance Fleet and Equipment replacement because I know those are uh you know heavy vehicles that are performing services that the public is clamoring for it's striping it's pothole dispatching these are you know very high profile uh things that the public wants um you know I know you know we we've made a concerted effort to do a good job in-house and we rely on these heavy vehicles in order to do that um city-wide Fleet and Facilities is a big concern from a sustainment standpoint going forward so one of the things that we're going to have to do is not make a a one-year fix to that this is something where we have to find the revenue sources where we can augment that and we can do that year over year so that we're not getting into this cycle of all of a sudden now having you know having to buy a number of vehicles at one time and obviously depending on what you're buying it can become very very expensive but we have to certainly put more in on an annual basis routinely than we're doing now on both sides of the house how long do you think we can keep the current Fleet going in terms of the heavy vehicles you know that's a good question the truth of the matter is every piece of equipment is different it has a lot to do with how the operators are treating it it has a lot to do with the condition that it's in and it has a lot to do with this continuing on the preventive side as well so it's very hard to ask for me to answer that question to you but I can tell you we are stretching our heavy equipment out longer than the manufactured recommendation okay yeah again I mean it's it's a large request for this budget I don't know that it gets addressed uh like the city manager said all at once um but I do think it's important that we look at some sort of longer term replacement plan for these vehicles in particular again because they perform such uh I concur yeah high profile services that the public really demands from us yeah we have to have a game plan and we can't have a game plan without knowing the life span of anything we're going to replace because if we over finance and then but it stops working and we have to replace it and then we continue to have to pay for it it becomes a bad plan so I think that to sit there and have a big wish list is a good thing but also having a game plan is twice as twice as important as a wish list so you know look at it and make sure that we understand the impact to the budget but also understand that we can bring it all on and then have it expire prior to the payoff again to the city manager's point I think that also uh speaks to the importance of of Staggering these these purchases so it's not all at once we're not burdened with uh huge debt-funded purchases all at once that's very important absolutely yes sir uh that's all thank you mayor thank you representative molinar and I know that Mr Bristol did not skip anything so good job Mr personal good afternoon ladies and gentlemen I know it's getting late but um I don't know Wesley you talked about the medians and others to raise the concern the Weeds on the medians and I know you mentioned something about Friday having a job fair but to me it's like we probably need to do this a lot earlier in the year I can tell you right now in District Four there's various streets medians where weeds are already popping up and we're not even in the monsoon season or the rainy season at all but if we could at least look at the prospect of probably yeah service a lot earlier before you have so many weeds out there I know we've already talked about the street lights but street lights being down but I'd like to talk about the street lights that are up because to me I know in District Four it's happened on Railroad has happened on Martin Luther King and now it's happening on Dyer Street where the streets are there new lights on the median oh street lights have been removed but the lights are out how ironically though at 9600 dire and 9700 dire the lights are on but from 8200 block of dire in District 2 all the way to the 10 500 block of dire the lights are out that's our email text out every other weeks they put brand new ones in District Four though it's affecting District Two and District Four and so when we talk about the city so well okay we're we're looking into it and we're going to get it done then you call TxDOT oh no no that's the city's problem no that's El Paso Electric Company there you call pass electric company no so it's just a lot of finger pointing back and forth and like I said this has been going on since I took taken office and so I don't know the exact answer for that and so I'll give credit to a gentleman in District Four on uh to prevent street lights from being taken down is that installed some large Boulders there near the street lights so that if there is an accident the car or vehicles or whatever it strikes The Boulders versus hitting the street poles when I thought about it I said well that's a great idea so the gentleman's name is Alfredo Diaz Alfredo Dias District Four constituents so is now on the record as that was his idea but if you've got to think about it hey what does a boulder cost you and so Mr perini you talk about uh you know climate change and everything else well I mean there's already Boulders out there I mean we live in the Sun City and we have a great Franklin Mountains we have quarries we can get those Boulders or anywhere else we need to get to but it's cost effective it could probably save a lot of aggravation and keep the street lights up and working so thank you thank you what did you know are you you kind of made a little bit off subject but he brought up a good thing about street lights where there's this Purple Haze and all these lights and these bulbs are faulty very obvious and there should be under warranty are we getting them all replaced so we do have proper lighting and disruption more than I was talking about sir I can address that um that's that problem is actually happening nationally and we are in communication with the manufacturer of these lights we have had two meetings with them and we actually have a plan with them they are going to be replaced we are identifying them as we identify them and provide them the information they provide us the new light and then we're making the transactions so we're actually working with the manufacturer to do this and what's happening sir is um there's a film over the LED bulb and when it's failing it's making it turn purple and that's that's that's what the manufacturers let us let us know what's happening so that's why they are replacing it and this is going to be a process that's probably going to take us a few years to complete okay yeah as long as we're addressing it because I think that creates you know areas that are not properly lit because of the faulty of bulbs the street light applications for public requests what is the current budget do you all have the current budget for this year so sure and then um I just wanted to bring to the attention of members of Council on some of my Bridge Terry requests were to ensure that there were street light applications that's a big request we get from the public and then funding for the neighborhood traffic Management program um I was hoping that you would have that in your presentation the the pending ntmp applications and then what could be funded and you know we're going to have several budget sessions so if we can at a future meeting see all the pending requests and then what the 350 that's being proposed would get us how many we can accomplish with that I think yes ma'am we'll have that ready and and the 500 000 I have that's a that's a larger number than I expected how many we can accomplish with um with the 500. right on the lights it's 100 000 for the lights okay I was corrected that was my right and previously historically we've put 150 000. we we actually were 50 years ago we upped it to 100 not too long ago and I had asked um Ted to forget his last name maybe before he retired Marcus Marcus Marcus I see him sometimes at restaurants OG type um so we have always asked him and it was 150 000. um and uh I have photographic memory for some reason but we would like to maintain that be consistent with that as a part of our request thank you thank you and thank you for that and I'm going to take the next item which will be questions intervention team update chief actually sir it's um goal late no we're gonna go to eight huh yes that's why I thought I'd take that one it seems a little shorter so we got 50 yeah okay so if I take him please bring up the presentation for CIT sir yes ma'am okay and then we'll break at five yeah we'll take a we'll take a um seven and nine sixteen hour break Peter pacias uh interim chief next slide please it was just an overview of where we uh started with uh the crisis intervention team uh partnership between emergence Healthcare and the El Paso Police Department when the ehn was awarded 5.8 million dollars next slide please there's a sorry because you swim so fast apologize so this right here is the uh Staffing that we currently have are allowed to have is a one Lieutenant four sergeants 19 officers and with the 19 officers is uh also the equivalent of ehn Specialists as secretary for a total of 25 individuals with seven of them being funded through arpa next slide please this is the uh this uh graph depicts uh the number of calls that uh were dispatched for mental health uh type incidents and uh what can be uh became of them as far as emergency detentions and then uh emergency detentions where the officer had to get a return with the signature the orange uh depicts uh calls that the officers observed and then if uh at types of when the reports are made related to a mental health call and this goes from 2018 all the way to a year to date of uh June of this year and rather than trying to tell a story of the the CIT unit is uh is uh effective you're going to see a real short body cam uh video of one of our CIT officers responding to an individual with a large knife in crisis this officer talks the uh individual down to surrendering his weapon and then walking him in to go get Mental Health Services we have we have several uh it can bring it up so and I'll set up this uh this video we've done extensive training not just with our our CIT unit but also our Patrol officers on mental health and how having to deal and communicate with persons in crisis and you'll see where this uh this individual in this video um his level of uh of um what I call aggressiveness or needing help is up there and the CIT officer is able to uh relatively quickly talk them down to surrendering his weapon then get him with the help that he needed that's all you're not in trouble it's okay subject does have the knife Oscar it's okay I just need to talk to you it's all right listen hey I'm just here to try to help you out that's all I promise still has the knife okay Oscar you're not in any trouble I promise I just want to try to help you okay it's okay I promise don't do that buddy hey Oscar don't do that it's all right what's going on what happened what happened it's okay what happened talk to me what happened Oscar it's okay I just want to find out what's going on talk to me please Oscar just talk to me guys hold on it's okay hold on Oscar because we were told that you had the knife and you want to kill yourself yeah so I want to try to help you I want to try to help you I don't want you to kill but I want you to harm nobody I don't want you to kill yourself okay listen Dan tell me what's going on listen can you please just talk to me yeah what's going on what happened okay okay please let me try to help you please what okay see your arm real quick I just want to see the cuts okay do you have anything else on you that's it all right you're okay all right can do me a favor yeah can you stand up with me and walk to my car yeah please here you okay there's nothing on me okay he's a good officer right here he breaks everything down de-escalates everything that's a good officer right there good job [Music] amen if you need something after any of this call me call Cit so that's just one of thousands of calls that are CIT and our Patrol officers respond to and the training that we're getting them uh to be able to communicate with these individuals and take as much time as they can to deal with them so that we have positive outcomes at these types of situations so uh is is the war of the CIT program worth it absolutely it's worth it and along with the the extensive training that we're doing with our Patrol officers uh throughout the whole year so next slide please got in trouble I just need to talk to you man I think we lost audio on teams so the question was a question was asked on uh [Music] Northeast so a question was asked what would the the need be for uh uh 24 7 coverage as far as it goes it'd be an additional 17 officers two detectives for follow-ups three sergeants 17 additional Mental Health Specialists from uh ehn and their supervisor equivalent for their Spanish control we'd also need the equipment to issue these uh officers out there in the field and then the vehicles would need additional vehicles to put them out there in the field for a total additional cost of 4.2 million dollars right now we're able to cover two shifts seven days of uh seven days a week so a day shift and the evening shift up to midnight with the peak hours being uh in the evening hours basically between four and seven PM that's where we have our biggest overlap of CIT officers next slide please and that will leave it open for questions question the budget right now for the true ships we are at um three a little over three million dollars so why would it cost you more money for a night shift than it does for because we're having to we're having to purchase additional vehicles and Equipment wouldn't you well you have to assure you yes ma'am you can use those vehicles but we're still going to need the additional vehicles for the graveyard shift officers it's not a wash completely out there some of the officers that are in CIT are also are are CMT so they have take home calls because they respond to calls 24 hours a day okay and you this is a full you budgeted for a full you like doubled the budget budget two shifts you said was how much 3.1 million about 3.3 million and how many sergeants are on that on the morning shift and the evening shift we have one Sergeant per shift and how many did you go back to that slide so right now right now because we we don't have the the sergeants that are covering there are days because our sergeants take time off so we don't have CIT sergeants out there in the field all the time with CIT but I'm not sure why you have one Sergeant in the morning one Sergeant in the evening and you're budgeting for three sergeants three additional so we have the Spanish control on the streets at all times not right now no man yeah so but that wasn't what the ask was the assets to cover the third shift and so I'm just confused is why you're tripling the budget for two other shifts rather than just showing the budget for a third shift we could put another we we can just take out and just go one more Sergeant over there but the issue is is the CIT officers that are out there on the days that the sergeants have off is we don't have supervision out there for CIT officers so in order to get it yeah for supervision we would need these additional sergeants is one example how many officers do you have right now in the morning shift we have uh seven because it's uh 14 total okay that again what I don't understand right you've got seven officers in the AM shift you have seven officers in the evening shift but apparently you need 17. for an overnight shift I I just I would like to see a actual because I honestly think you probably from I mean I don't know you're the experts but from the data I've seen from like one to four it's probably this less than what you have for the am shift right but for some reason this data is tripling the number of officers you have on an AM shift so basically when we have you have the seven officers per shift right now to cover seven days a week so that means we have basically two units out there for the whole city each day of the week and that's if the officers aren't in training or taking some kind of leave where they're sick or or on vacation so basically on the day shift in the evening shift we're putting out two units uh per day out there we're not just an additional shift but additional officers yes during the other shifts could you break that down for me and show me what a 24-hour absolutely plus an additional because I mean those are two different conversations I think happy to have both of them sure I just would like to see it broken down okay we can do that I appreciate that thank you so much Mario D'Agostino Chief if you could also include when you when you send the information over is talk about the investment you're putting into the training academy to train all of our officers at that basic level of CIT training well because we understand it that while we have CIT and they're covered the two busiest shifts of the CIT calls fifty percent of those calls are still made by Patrol am I wrong correct and so that's the augmentation of the team in its entirety to focus on the busier times and rather just focus on that last shift that's open no I don't understand that but I just I want what the ask was was for essentially a third shift um and and you guys gave me all of it which I appreciate I love to see all of it just would like to see it broken down thank you bye very good could I ask that you break it down by by ship what do you calls at night and the graveyard shift please can you put them down for that absolutely thank you yes sir uh yes sir so uh mayor and Council what we'll do um is we'll collect all the we've already had folks taking note of all the the questions that have come up today and some of the Duets and information so we can in the morning we can recap any of the information we have back for you we can do that when we first start and then what we'll do is at 9 00 a.m when we convene again tomorrow morning um we'll we'll do that momentarily and then we'll go into back into the safe and beautiful neighborhood starting with Goal eight in their Presentation tomorrow morning there thank you all you have a motion to adjourn there's a motion in a second to adjourn the July 10 2023 meeting all in favor anyone opposed and a special meeting for Monday July 10 2023 is adjourned at 502 pm Council you can leave whatever items you want to leave in here that are not we're going to keep everything in here so the council if you want to go ahead and leave your book binders here you can leave your book binders here if you don't want to study them tonight