for e e for everyone I think we're here I will call us to order this is the um special budget Workshop led by David Cook and Christian hi Charlie looking good in your tie look at that um I will turn it over I think David you want me just go straight to Christian who's at the mic is that work good morning Christian how are you good morning good how are you thanks for joining us this morning okay so welcome third budget work session today we're going to talk about preliminary property tax scenarios this is an early preview um based on April estimates and you won't have to hear from me for the first time I'm gonna delegate some of my work finally that's good um I'm gonna let you hear from Brady Kirk um and David together as a dynamic duo um so for those of you you've heard from Brady once before but Brady Kirk's one of our budget managers in the forth lab um and he focuses kind of in a new role where he's pivoted to revenue so property tax sales taxs and some of our other major Revenue sources and so what you'll see today is um mostly his work so we're going to let him take the lead and then uh David will help facilitate conversation as well so I think this will be good conversation healthy conversation at this time in the budget season so I'll kick it over to Brady and David this morning let's give it up for Brady let me make uh just some introductory comments too you guys look different from over here I it's the first time I've stood at this Podium it's because Jared's wearing a suit today and Jared's wearing a suit and you're bald yeah and I know so this is intended uh as Christian said to be conversational so we're going to share information in real time and explain that this is very draft information at this time and we want to share with you all the assumptions that are behind it because as assumptions are made as we move forward into the future as reality happens these numbers if there's one thing I'm going guarantee you these numbers are going to be different by the time we talk about the budget but I think this will be helpful in describing what happens between April and July when we or August when we present a budget what's happening with apprais values and how that impacts our conversation around the tax rate so we have made a bunch of assumptions is at this point in time and I think my job is as Brady's going through the presentation I say hold on Brady let's stop right there and make sure we're clear on some of the assumptions that are involved in the presentation but we want it to be very conversational as you have questions along the way please feel free to stop us as we go from there all right Brady take it over all right well thank you uh thank you all for being here for the budget work session today and like David said we just got these numbers last week so they're very preliminary but we're excited to share it with you these is such a big part of the budget process and giving us an idea of what we might be able to fund in a future year and and it's so exciting that I might run away with it so I'm glad I've got David as a tempering influence up here so before before we even put a single number on the page I just want to reinforce what David said that where we are in the process is that we only have the very earliest look at what property values might be so in April on April 30th all of the appraisal districts send their estimated values to the city and all the taxing entities then between April and July there's all kinds of ways that things can change and we call that erosion the biggest way obviously is that people protest those values but there could be properties coming on and off the roll properties could get new exemptions so those numbers can be really different by the time that July 25th comes around and with Taran County the tan Appraisal District in particular they've extended the deadline to protest your property valuation it's not a huge extension only goes until May 24th but that's another variable within all of this and throughout the presentation I know you've all heard about the no new Revenue rate and the voter approval rate and I just want to say at the start that where those come from it's all really defined by the state of Texas in a program and a concept called Truth and Taxation and so that really mandates a lot of what we have to report certain disclosures it puts bounds on what the property tax rate can be and even though it's not always stated explicitly a big assumption within truth and Taxation is that if your property value has increased even if the rat's the same they say that the governing entity increased your taxes so that's a big concept within truth and Taxation Brady before you do this I forgot to recognize that we had Appraisal District expertise at the council table okay that's right so I'm going to be careful what I say because I might be checked by by one of the council members so rolling into those numbers that we got from the appraisal districts last year forget about the market value even the apprais value what we care about is the net taxable value and last year that was about $116 billion as David said these are only the April estimates you should expect some erosion before we get to July but right now what's been reported to us is almost 130 billion so a lot of that the majority about 3/4 more than three4 is from the change in taxable value so throughout the presentation you might hear us refer to that as existing growth and that's good we're always happy to have existing growth and and that says good things about our city and our economy but the number that's really key here or at least I would say more key in in all of this and our Revenue discussions is new construction so properties that have come on to the role they were not there last year so if we break down by county that 130 billion this is what it looks like now you probably all know that the vast majority of our property is in tant county and that's not changing it probably won't change as long as any of our careers last but where we're seeing a lot of our growth is in Denton and in Parker so 10% growth in Taran county is is really still pretty good but look at how much Denton has exploded and especially on the new construction side there's major major growth there and and proportionately really a lot of new construction growth and Parker as well now in Wise oh God do wise in Wise County you know all of our counties are special to us they're all meaningful but wise is not very large with in where the city of Fort Worth has its City Limits so I looked at last year's roles and there were 80 properties in Wise and 70 of those were mineral properties and no one likes to see 62 and a half% decrease in value but that's mostly just a decrease in Mineral value so a lot of that has just been taken out of the land I was just going to emphasize so thinking about new development new construction almost a third of it came from Denton County so when we think about the growth of the city and where new values are coming from almost a third of that you a third of it is outside of Taran County and that's not an aberration either last year it wasn't a billion dollars in D but it was within uh close range of this value so I think that's likely to continue so here's a look at just year-over-year we talk about the growth 12% overall this year almost 3% new construction and this is how it's stacked up against some previous years so existing growth really is stronger than we might have thought it had been a few months ago some of the news stories we heard and some of the initial estimates we saw just almost by Word of Mouth coming out of the appraisal districts the 99.3% for that is pretty good but we would have hoped to have seen a little bit more than 2.7% in new construction so this is going back to at least the last six years is the lowest we have seen last year we were three and a quarter and at this time of the year last year we were 3.9% so we've got a big decrease in the rate of new construction and this particular combination where we've got high existing growth and lower new construction that can be kind of a challenging combination further on when we start to talk about some of those truth and Taxation rates so we've talked about erosion it's really it's a big part of this discussion from here on out we probably won't say too much more about it because we're going to settle on one scenario but if we just look at last year what happened with erosion it was pretty significant it was above average we lost about 4 and a half% of the total value that we got in April by the time that we made it to July 25th and that includes a loss in new construction and that that can happen even in new construction you wouldn't expect a lot of that to come off the roll in rare instances we've actually seen new construction increase between April and July but I wouldn't Bank on that and this is 45% erosion that we got last year Brady do we have I mean is there kind any historical trend on the percentage of decrease there is so we're using a historical average and that's how we've modeled it throughout the rest of the presentation of 3% and it's exactly 3% I think the worst we've ever seen was almost seven but what's pretty typical maybe the median would only be two two and a half so just continuing on that exact same line of thought what we're modeling when we look at possible rates and re Revenue scenarios for FY 25 we're considering about 3% erosion which is the average since 2018 so that's a seven-year average and that would take us down from 129 billion to a little bit less less than 126 billion and we haven't modeled too much decrease in the new construction but that is variable both on the upward and downward end so just to emphasize so we have an April number that's the 129 billion for the sake of this conversation today we're just making a set of assumptions based on a seven-year average and we need to do that so we can have the conversation around property tax rate scenarios what I am going to guarantee you is that number will be different by the time we get to July so unless we are just that good and the seven-year average is right on but we need to make an assumptions of what the assess value we think will be in July so we can have the conversation around tax rates that's it exactly we have to at least place the Assumption somewhere and between now and July the appraisal districts by law don't have to tell us anything but sometimes we can get a little bit of a look into how those are evolving the the general trend is there's a big decrease in the next month or two and then some of that rebounds as protests are settled in July Brady I heard we had an inside run at Taran County Appraisal District so get I've heard I don't I don't know I've heard the rumors but any anything helps so now moving into a little bit more substantive conversation about the rate itself if we've got some sort of an assumption made about what the values are going to be our overall rate I'm sure you all have it memorized and it's repeated to you constantly is 67 and a quar cents and probably our taxpayers are are really interested in their total tax rate what they're paying and we've done a a pretty good job I think as a city all the way going back to FIS grw year 2017 and a lot of cuts to that rate back then it was in the mid 80s um all the way back in 2017 when I first started as a budget analyst and and started seeing the rate come down those two things probably are a coincidence but also important within the rate overall for our City Planning and even things that we have to disclose as well under truth and Taxation are is how the rate is broken up so it depends on if you're looking at no new Revenue rate or voter approval rate how these things are prescrib but we get some allowance on at least the voter approval rate for the debt rate which is right now at 14 and 3/4 of a Cent and then we've got the onm rate which funds the general fund further broken down into what's our typical operations and what funds our pay as you go Capital we call that our Capital maintenance rate which is said it's seven cents so the no new Revenue rate this is really above all I would say I would characterize this as a reporting requirement and unlike the voter approval rate this is not a binding rate in any kind of way but the essence of this is that if you have similar properties between last year and this year you need to report on the rate the no new Revenue rate which raises the same amount of Revenue only on those properties it's not a suggestion or a mandate but it's really kind of a math-based illustration of what it would take to not make the typical taxpayer pay more now about a decade ago there was a series of videos and you might have heard the phrase Honey Badger Don't Care the no new Revenue rate is a lot like that if you've got a huge New Capital program no new Revenue rate don't care if you got no negotiations going on with staff if you have more debt than you did previously if you have a big change in the nature of your property tax base the no new Revenue rate doesn't make any distinctions for that whatever those property values were and how they increased that defines your no new Revenue rate no matter what you have to spend the money on so knowing that this will change as David said based on our estimates of erosion what we're projecting this is what you might see the no new Revenue rate look like in July so if if you try to see this 123 billion again in the presentation it might not show up but this is only the growth in those existing properties that we had on the road last year so it's it's pretty straightforward as those amounts go up by 6% the no new Revenue rate is going to be a 6% decrease proportionally from our current tax rate of 67.2 just for a little bit more of a visual demonstration you can see that as those properties go up it really just pushes it down it all hinges on whatever that Levy was last year that's going to remain constant and the rest of it all circulates around that pretty I don't I don't know if this is a good time to bring this up but I'm I'm curious I'm following along with these slides and and I'm trying to um understand something I don't want to make an assumption what percent of the uh tax base for commercial versus residential uh what assumptions are still valid what are you assuming now because when I last heard we were trying to achieve we being the city to adjust the commercial portion to 60% for the ratio so where are we at has there been a change in the assumptions there you want to take that first David well uh what we're using here is actual numbers that we've got from the appraisal district we haven't broken it down by residential or commercial uh so one of the things we could bring back is what does that commercial residential mix look like by county and the composition of the new development and what has happened over time and again we'll bring back some of these numbers is residential is growing at a much faster rate than commercial but it's in the existing values it's not necessarily reflected in the new development but it's more reflected in existing values residential increasing in a faster rate than commercial but for this presentation we didn't make a distinction between residential and Commercial okay thank you that's well said and I appreciate the question council member because it is a big focus on the nature of the city and yeah those properties they all factor into this at the same rate now when we start going into the increment I know this is where I'm probably most at risk of losing you so I'm going to make it as as quick as I can but another one of those truth and Taxation rates is the voter approval rate that is a no new Revenue rate plus 3 and a half% growth for your maintenance and operations and then whatever you need for debt and by definition the voter approval rate includes what we refer to as the unused increment for previous years where this comes from is that the state of Texas even though they hold you to these certain rates they'll reward you a little bit for the fact that maybe you've kept rates low over time you haven't increased it by the max so for at least up to three years if you went below the voter approval rate then you can carry some of that increment forward and appli it in the future to your voter approval rate now if that wasn't enough for you there's actually been a change in the way that that is applied so whereas before you could take the whole pennies themselves and that would have been almost three and a half cents now they're kind of reconsidering this and they're saying that Penny now it's worth more in 2025 than it was worth in 2022 so you can only capture the revenue equivalent of that Penny this year so there is still some unused increment and we'll we'll come in into that and how that affects the various voter approval rates but since now all we can take is 31 and half million those pennies are more like two and a half than three and a half Let's test that let me say that again so in the redefin and I think that came from the comproller right that comproller yes they said you can only go back and capture the revenue loss not the equ equalent in the tax rate and so we've calculated now that that number would be equivalent to 31 and a half million dollar which in today's terms right would be less if we applied the tax rate equivalent and just for fun I think he's got Brady has this in the presentation too just for fun we could say a penny in today's terms is 12 million bucks so you kind of take the 312 divide by 12 and you get close to 2 and a half cents so it's 2 and a half cents equivalent in today's dollars is what we're talking about so before we even look at Revenue scenarios we know you I mean you could see the values went up there's new construction you can't have that happen and not have new Revenue but we want to bring top of mind some of the cost considerations that are going to weigh against some of that new Revenue so one of the biggest ones is 40.6 million of existing commitments and that that takes a lot of forms could be prior year commitments our cost allocation increases negotiations with some of our staff and in the previous budget work session I believe there was a breakdown of of what all goes into that number there's been many conversation so far on on Street Maintenance and we know there will be many more but that's estimated at 66 million for next year and then our EMS solution has a cost estimate of about 10.9 million and you also heard within the past month an estimate on what it would take to give a property tax exemption to some of our child care providers in the city and then this afternoon you'll hear about if we were to do another increase on par with last year for over 65 and disabled residents what that would cost so there's a lot of things in play on what we would spend the money on and this is some of the new Revenue we might be looking at at some of our different rates so uh Brady let let me stop you right there for a moment I'm not going to overly dwell on that number because I know that these are preliminary but for EMS 10.9 yes I was under the impression it was a little lower than that maybe 10 being the ceiling but again it's an estimate I get it it's nice to be conservative so just want to double check sure we'll present that today in the EMS presentation but our number the fourth lab number is 10887 okay all right thank you and I'm not the expert on that so I I can't give any more commentary at all I'll wait till this after afterno on and I'll learn along with everybody else but so far everything that we're presenting right now we got four scenarios for you pretty much the typical ones these are all assuming that we keep our debt and our pgo ratees constant oh sorry so this means that all of that variability pretty much in these scenarios would be absorbed by our maintenance and operations rate in the general fund as David mentioned you can see within the numbers the value of Penny there it depends on what happens with erosion but it is going to be somewhere around 12 million on the high end and then some of that is lost to things like tax ceilings and collection rates but if I go from from left to right and just walk through these a little bit you start with a no new Revenue rate um you can under this scenario we would only be getting any new revenue from construction so it's no new Revenue rate on existing properties but we get a little bit of that from properties that came on to the role and most of that is eaten up by the increase in the debt rate well not the increase in the debt rate but holding debt constant so as property values go up if the rate is constant that claims more Revenue and we have a little bit there at the bottom that's net new to the general fund 3.58 we just remember this is before we take anything from the previous page into account so next we're looking at the voter approval rate if you don't count that increment in there so this is the 3% growth plus our debt and that comes out to 66 cents pretty much exactly and this gives us a lot more Revenue to work with uh but it's still below even that first number of 40.6 million let me add to that real quick so that is if you remember when the state changed the law they said you can have all new development and you can have three and a half% of existing growth so that's what the equivalent of the voter approved tax rate is assuming no increment new development three and a half% right I want to emphasize that there's a key assumption here that we've made that still is a choice of the city council and that is what should the debt rate be we kept that constant right so you could argue you we could bring the debt rate down some percentage we kept pay you go tax rate constant so it's still at 7 cents Debt Service rate is still at 14.7 five but those are policy choices that we can make also when we talk about the budget in July okay thank you one quick question could you explain the math to me on the minus no new debt Revenue why why the numbers are different and they're kind of not linear I can I know that looks confusing so the main reason for that is that as the rate goes up the debt rate makes a smaller percentage of the overall rate and then with all those other funny things that happen mostly in in this line the amount that's lost to tiffs and and Frozen values that's why you see small differences across there I think if we were if this was July 25th and then we were we were adopting we would we would obviously standardize that across there and we make it pretty clear it's going to be constant what the debt rate gets but it's a good question so moving to the next column so just as David said this first one is using no increment at all and it's not acing any increment for future years either but if we adopt at this rate that big amount from 2021 that's that falls off permanently and now that's gone so the next one is just a scenario in which we keep the rate flat and now we're moving at least above where the 40.6 was of existing commit ments we have new Revenue in the general fund of almost 47 million and it takes some of that increment about half the increment exactly to keep the rate flat and finally just theoret theoretically if we were to use the full increment available to us under our estimate of erosion and go up to the max rate without having an election we would be at 68 A5 using two and a half cents of increment and then we would have $61 million new Revenue in the general fund so these are the same Revenue amounts just in the previous slide but now you can see the how the rate breaks down and once again just note that the the M rate in the general fund like David pointed out that's absorbing all the variability but it doesn't necessarily have to be like that if we think that that a smaller amount of growth which these amounts exceed would be all right for the pgo rate and the ins rate then the general fund might be able to come out better than these amounts can I jump in with one question sure um on the the um ins rate how much of that rate is needed to fulfill our debt obligations and I know we're preparing for the 2026 Bond so how much theoretically would we need so in all the presentations that we've shared with you whether it was me or Reggie getting up here in our modeling we use 4% growth into the future right and so based on those numbers then we've been able to share with you that we could do 800 million in capacity for the upcoming bond does everybody remember that right so that's based on a 4% grow growth rate in the short term and it gets more conservative over time but based on the numbers that we've seen we're going to get more than 4% right if we go beyond the no new Revenue part right so if we are comfortable with 800 million as the capacity then we could stop the growth at 4% right in the upcoming budget conversation or if we decide that we want more budget capacity then we might want to keep it at 14 and 3/4 C in order to generate more capacity for the 2026 Bond program that's a policy Choice there but we're modeled at 4% thank you so taking these Revenue numbers into account I want to give you an idea of what it would look like now with some of those existing commitments built in so on the far left we've got a lot if we were to really consider no new Revenue rate situation just funding the things that we know are firm commitments leaves us with a pretty big hole we would have to make up whether that was really looking for any new funding streams or any other kind of situation to make that amount up in the budget the with the voter approval rate obviously that's a tax rate increase that leaves us with some left over but the rate comes up in that case and then if we look at what it would be keeping the rate flat we're at least pretty close right there in this model of 4.6 million um that would probably come from either new revenue streams or some really small spending cuts somewhere else and I just want to bring it to your attention again a reminder that this is a flat rate but the state of Texas based on the truth and Taxation Concepts and philosophies that's considered a tax increase by the state so what about just to close it out what about Street Maintenance which we said was 66 million so if you add this into these amounts and these scenarios this is what it would look like so in the highest highest possible case legally going with the rate that we could adopt under the law we would be looking for $56 million to try to fund that if it was only going to come out of the general fund more realistically more feasibly the rates we would go with we'd be considering somewhere between 71 million and 14 million that we'd have to make up if the general fund absorbed all the existing commitments and the EMS solution and Street Maintenance without any help on that from another source the oh sorry um I just the Street Maintenance question that $66 million and I should know this and I just don't remember from the previous presentation is that what we need that's not what we need annually to so we need I'm getting a yes so we need $66 million annually from starting today until when forever to keep up with Street Maintenance I'm watching I know I'm seeing head nods so it is $66 million annually more yeah yes every year okay okay all right okay thank you can we further clarify I I had thought through our discussion that we wouldn't be able to scale up the capacity to to actually leverage that money for the first several years I think would it be necessary to do the full 6 6 million in year one let Lauren go to the microphone a you get it so yes we are working on a plan for kind of a fiveyear scale up I don't have that number that we would need for the first year um I would imagine to be around 10 to 20 million at a minimum but we'll have that for this afternoon I have a a question and it's just a general question stemming from Carlos's observations about what he thought were the dollars for MedStar or EMS uh Carlos left a meeting with $1 figure in mind your presentation shows a different dollar figure with the explanation we'll get TR up I guess in the afternoon are there any other areas that staff has taken this for lack of a better term Liberty so that we'll know just how closely we have to look because had he not mentioned that I wouldn't have known in other words I don't want to just get real real well I I think for the uh this afternoon you'll get a much more detailed explanation of the number all we're trying to do today is put some numbers out there that we think are consistent with what you're going to hear this afternoon there's so let me do one other piece okay these numbers here don't even include what the departments are going to request in the upcoming budget so these prior year commitments are just the things we know of it's the meet and confer agreement it's the collective bargaining agreement it's opening a new library it's opening uh a community center so these are the things this doesn't even include what departments may ask for in the upcoming budget so we're not trying to get too hard pressed on the exact numbers as opposed to Simply sharing a magnitude of a situation I can accept that I I do have another question and David you know for years you and I have had this running joke where I tell you you've threatened the life of a department heads firstborn rather than have them tell us what they really need uh what I would what I we've told them this year to go ahead and ask for everything well and and and and that's that's my hope that we can see the department heads budget before it gets filtered and that way they truly have to make the case you know for what they're looking for so thank you for that may I ask on this it's fine to use this slide as the scenario but David or Brady walk us through how if we decided to arrive at any of these four options that are before us how that would get communicated to the average resident here in Fort Worth and importantly what their tax rate or tax bill would look like if that makes sense without I know there's a lot of assumptions and I'm not going to hold you to numbers but if I in answering that if I could do one other thing because I want it here since we're talking about assess value and tax rates we're only talking about property tax revenue when we bring the budget to you we will be looking at all revenue sources which includes sales tax what's happening with fee revenue and otherwise so not everything is balanced off of property tax rate Revenue it is a big number it's what almost 56% of the general fund it's a big number but it's not the entire number so we're not trying to necessarily balance the budget here we're trying to share with you what Revenue growth looks like relative to needs that's all thank you when we bring the budget to you in August and what we try to communicate with the public based on their tax rate is what is happening to their assess value what is happening to the tax rate their values are gr up on average of you saw the number 9% right and if we keep the tax rate the same their tax bills going up %. right on average the key is what is in the budget that we want people to see value in so we've got to translate value to what people pay and over the like last year it was clean so clean so safe so green do people see it do they see the value of what we're spending tax dollars on and what they pay in property tax Revenue sometimes you don't get the connection but I think that communication starts when we present the budget because some people's taxes I think will be going up do they see the value and what we are uh spending the money on I don't know if that's but we weren't trying to show those relative trade-offs today because we don't know what will be coming on the spending side of the budget other than those things we know about I appreciate all of that and just one particular part of your question M Parker is how it's communicated and a lot of that is lined out just as specifically by truth and Taxation as calculating these rates are so it'll be in the newspaper there will be hearings it's it's really specifically prescribed how it's communicated to the residents so brings us about to the end of the analysis on what the rate could be and if this has to do with future policy questions maybe David you want to talk about this before I do oh sure um again the purpose of the day was to get us started having the conversation about the property tax rate to me there's three components of that uh one is the overall tax rate and making sure everybody understands what the no new Revenue means what the voter approved means and for you to know that we have the ability in the budget to use increment up to two and a half cents right those are all policy choices then within the tax rate how much of that do we want to dedicate to debt right we've made an assumption here that we' keep it flat but that could change as we again evolve with the budget and how much do we we want to attribute to pay as you go that is currently fixed at 7 cents in all these assumptions we will work with all the appraisal districts between now and July just to get a gauge on what is happening related to protests and adjustments right we'll get some signals from the appraisal districts to know whether the Assumption we made here that the 7 your average is going to hold or they could be worse or better right so what we're looking for is some indication to give us an idea of what the assessed value number will look like in July and then July comes July 25th I think was the date and then we'll get a number from all the appraisal districts that will uh is what we then do all the calculations on truth and Taxation based on that July 25th number so we will know the actual no new Revenue rate at that point we'll know the uh voter approv rate and so that will be used on the revenue side of deciding what the upcoming budget looks like we plan to use future budget work sessions to talk about um the capital side right both from a pigo standpoint to look at what options might be there and what uh options might be on the debt side as well based on what we model uh and what the actual numbers we think will look like I've I've got a a question and this is just tagging on to the mayor's concern know and I looked for Rene so I know he's here I really do want to know how we're going to communicate to John Q public and my concern is I've stated before you know very few people can afford a subscription to the Star Telegram uh we no longer use that full page City page the county got that now I think even that's gone uh the so clean so green you know that deal was was great but that was an internal rallying cry I think you get better buy in from the public if the public is engaged and so I'd like to know I I want to hear some ideas what we're going to do different so that people do understand why they need to give input what we're proposing and how an impact uh people are very very pleased to see us coming out early this year and I hope we do that every year so that's enough tap Asing to give some some kind of idea as to how we are going to communicate this to John Q public I this is a subject I'm we've talked about this uh Council bons that I'm passionate about and in just a few minutes since we're not delving as deeply into pgo as we we thought we would today we need a little more time to model scenarios what we're going to do next is preview some of the engagement tools that are rolling out at the open houses so that you can see the different ways we're trying to engage that are different than before through like thought exchange and through um some Balancing Act tools so I'm going to ask the lab's engagement team to do that in just a few minutes so that'll hit a little bit on what you're asking for Macy okay David this was actually very helpful I thought I think moving forward too if we can have another session like this that models including sales tax and the fee I think that would be very helpful just to see um and then what the scaled Street Maintenance amount would be starting year one to year five I think that would give us a better picture of what we're dealing with and then talking about the value ad for the taxpayer I think we can all agree that that's the potholes those are the essential Services the the trash pickup those are the value ads that the that normal taxpayer sees that doesn't understand all this and whatever we can do to make it comp less complicated for them to Gina's Point that's what we need what what are we doing differently to make sure their lives are better and the quality of life is improved well said the other thing that this I don't know I think this is possible but I'll throw this idea out there if we're seeing um property tax excuse me appraisals increase across the board in the city of Fort Worth or if we're seeing them in specific districts or regions of the city um and you could do a heat map to kind of demonstrate that because I think it also helps back to your point about communication are what we're telling people is the information we're telling people in District 3 the same as in District 10 as in District 2 just based on averages right and I realize that not everyone that's going to apply to but I think that's helpful especially each individual council member and then to to Macy's point and maybe this works to do this in June based on timing to come back and look at all the funds and all these scenarios and because that on on Slide whatever this is with the 60 million includer 66 million that's really not accurate sounds like we're not going to use $66 million in year one so if it's 10 or 15 based on Lauren's team coming back to us I think that's important um and then the last thing is when you're looking we get outc communicated because all people are reading is their um their property tax bill from the tax assessor right and it's either it's up or it's down and that's all they seem to carry yeah right never down and so what additional information do we need to put in people's mailboxes or how we're communicating ahead of ahead of that is going to be increasingly more important to people um especially right now when there's a sort of heightened awareness around the economy and will continue to be so um the last point is this was to Macy's Point incredibly helpful is it it may be necessary I don't know when do you fin finish decision packages and budget process for department heads this year budget submissions are due on Friday okay this Friday um and then we'll do budget Blitz in mid June and so um really all sort of wrapped by June 21st and then we start you know moving puzzle pieces around so based on this today's conversation it came up again from Gina but I think especially at the end of last budget to the extent it's workable to bring some of those highle decision packages to the council in late June allowing us to just see what y'all are grappling with you're not done with the decision process You're just showing them you know in Parks or in tpw these are the things that they're asking for and this is how we wait those as CMO and then this body will have feel like they have more Buy in and understanding so that when you come to us in August and you've made those decisions they feel like they've been more a part of that process and furthermore in July to the extent that they want to they can work with CMO on the things that they feel very strongly about in certain departments because everybody may have something that they need in their District um if that's workable based on that timeline I don't know when our budget workshops are outlined for for June Charlie do you have anything or is just the dogs tails wagging just dogs okay good deal anyone else yeah go ahead shared I'll just jump in this is a really good discussion the um thing I would add um in the mix is especially when we're talking about the $66 million and additional funds needed um for um Street Maintenance I think it's important especially for me as a council member to have a list of the projects already budgeted if we keep the status quo and then what additional 10 20 million will do in Phase One of this fiveyear ramp up um I don't have any concept of whether or not I can go back to district 6 and tell my residents there's value in that additional 10 20 $60 million if they're isn't a single project especially if it's not a neighborhood street being maintained and that's something that neighbors see in um talk about a lot in district 6 the second thing I think that's important is if we can talk in terms of pennies of what we actually need in order to fulfill a $800 million bond that could help us kind of compare across the different rates um how many pennies we actually have to work with to kind of achieve multiple goals and sometimes competing goals to make sure we're creating value and also giving residents um you know some some breathing room um in a really tight economy Jared I I'll add to that I had to live that in real time but in the 2014 bond election D5 did exceptionally well we had two rec centers in one B bond package at same district never seen that before 2018 came out it was like but I had to remind people of the streets and the projects that came through in 2014 because they only think in real time time and so I encourage I think it was venables then to make sure to bring some type of History you know to a presentation as opposed to what we're looking at now and if people can look at previous wins you know they are more accepting and understandable we should definitely add that to the mix that way we can create the value over time for any other questions no great job thank you very much thank you okay I'm going to ask amethyst Sloan and her team to come up to the podium while we switch gears here to engagement we'll just take us a few minutes and so we get to see some of the members of the lab strategy and performance team today I'm gonna have you guys little drive over there and Isaac or Brian I'm gonna have you drive the map portion since I'll be standing over here too we get everything pulled up so mayor and Council nice CEO amethyst loan strategy and performance manager Fort Worth lab and I'm pleased to introduce you to Brian Bellamy strategy and performance analyst and Isaac robl also strategy and performance analyst we're going to walk you through some of the engagement tools that we are launching this year but first I want to talk about um a lot of what we're going to show you are part of some of the things that CPE so Renee and Michelle and their team are launching and then in the lab both the engagement processes for budget and the comprehensive plan we're really starting to we have opportunities to use those really early on so we're trying to capitalize on that and do as best we can so David spoke a minute ago about like our organization our ability to translate value to what people are paying so a lot of things so the first open house was last night so big shout Michelle is here so big shout out to Michelle they had really good um there were a lot of people there Isaac and I were there last year we'll be there at or last year last night we'll be there at the following ones too and we got to hear a lot of comment comary about we what we were doing with the budget and kind of our first initial pilot with some of these tools really positive feedback things to the tune of we're really excited to see a more modern approach to engagement um we're really happy that you're starting earlier in the process or questions this is earlier isn't it so people are acknowledging and what we're trying to do is being felt by residents even this early in the process which is really exciting um a couple of other things that you're going to see I'm going to I'm we're going to show you and actually have you QR code and everybody in the room can participate anybody that's here so you can walk through those tools and get a feel for what your constituents are being asked to participate in and so you can answer those questions when you get them too so again that was Isaac and I at last last night's um open house again kudos to Michelle for a really well set up and attended open house okay next so don't scan this one I'll have you do this one at the end okay but if you can click that link this uh brings you to our new One-Stop shop for engagement so the comp plan team is using this portal we're using this for budget and moving forward from everything and and Renee Michelle correct me if I'm wrong from capital projects to other engagement opportunities that we have there will be this One-Stop shop where if you're a resident you can go to this homepage and you'll see everything that we're asking for feedback on this is our project page for Budget engagement and on this single page will be every way that you can engage for this particular project um so for us we're going to walk you through we are doing a balancing act about Council priorities we're doing thought exchange about what you need specifically in the budget um there's a mapping tool that will show you that's kind of down here at the bottom in a minute and then of course um a link back to where our open houses are when they are Etc so we're going to start at the bottom I'm not going to ask you to do this one because you don't have any pictures to submit but if you can click this is the mapping tool so steer the budget so you're all familiar with the Molly campaign that CPE launched a few years ago residents really love that and what we're doing this year is Translating that into this new mapping tool that's a part of the portal so you can print out Molly you can wander around town when you enter this tool if you go to the little plus button it'll give you a pen so you have two options something that you love about Fort Worth so perhaps like I really love the way this community center is set up I would love to see more of that in neighborhood X Y and Z or need this intersection needs to be repaired there's no sidewalk here Etc so over the course of this phase one of Engagement which is the budget development cycle we'll have hopefully this map of all of these things we will also have location pins for photographs and comments from residents on so that's just one way we'll be able to show you kind of spatially what people are loving and want more of and are needing in the future so that's tool number one next we are going to go to and this one you can participate in we are going to go to thought exchange so anybody in the room snap that with your phone we encourage staff to participate as well and Isaac if you could bring that up too and Isaac is going to walk you through step by step what that looks like what folks are asked and I'll kind of talk a little bit about why why we're asking what we're asking to do you know how to get the other screen up on here too yeah it's you're good okay once everybody has the opportunity to scan this I'll move over can you get closer to the mic what was that mic mic yeah once everybody has opportunity to scan the QR code I'll walk you through the exercise together everybody get there anybody having trouble I'm here we'll give you another five four three two one okay I can do the presentation now awesome all right so thought exchange so we got to roll this out last night at the public open house here so I'm going to walk you through it all and we'll go through it together so here it is and we do have an opportunity here to change different to different languages using Google Translation so residents have an opportunity if they need to change their language here so go ahead and push the get started uh button this is how it's going of work uh there'll be an introduction slide some basic demographic slides which are optional for residents to answer you'll share your thoughts so there's an opportunity we'll ask you a question about the fy2 budget you'll share your thoughts and then for the residents There's an opportunity to rate other people's thoughts and concerns that they put in there it's a completely completely Anonymous so no one knows what you put in there I am GNA ask the council to not rate people's thoughts but I do want you to take part of putting in your thoughts and concerns here so we'll go ahead and move move to the next slide here so this is your introduction so pretty much quick tips there that I just went over um we are asking residents to put as many thoughts and concerns as they want to put in for the fy2 budget write other people's thoughts um it will stay open throughout the whole budget process so all these open houses so it doesn't close so you have the opportunity if you thought of something in a few weeks after the meeting you can always go back there put that thought or concern in there and also rank others after some other budget um or public open houses as well so privacy go ahead and accept it please so we're gonna move right zip code is not in here my zip code is not in here okay we'll we will check our list thank you okay so we'll go through the first couple uh questions here there is a prefer not to answer but as well answer these I am a resident select your age just as a comment as Isaac is going through these asking demographic questions is something you're going to see more of from us we're starting to have we're having an internal conversation we actually have kind of a small working group going to talk about what are the priority questions we need to start asking so that you know most most critically we can start providing you with better information about portions of the population that we are reaching or not reaching with our engagement it'll also help us um cater or be more specific about areas that we're not reaching demographics that we're not reaching so if you remember back to the community survey the results we got back about two months ago one of the biggest observation in that survey is our largest gap in satisfaction is between age groups so we think um that's a really that's something we want to keep tabs on when we're engaging in the future because that's where we see about 20 to 25% Point Gap and satisfaction between those that are older and those that are younger um there will always be an option to not respond but we want to provide that opportunity it just allows us to give you us to be a lot more data driven moving forward all right after you answer all your demographic questions you'll come across a a screen called share your thoughts so you can enter as many concerns thoughts you want and then the next box underneath there is why is it important to you so if you want to go ahead I'll give you about 30 seconds you can put in one or two of them and then we'll move on to the next slide I'll put in if I can spell today am at this while people are putting in their thoughts I've done mine uh I am I will be concerned about the uh non-tech Savvy yes and the disabled yes so a couple of things so at last night's meeting I was actually able there were two folks there that couldn't see very well or read and we actually walked through with them got an agreement for them and say are you okay if I enter that information for you because we really want it now I recognize that we won't be able to do that for everyone but I think that's the importance about this is one of about four or five different tools that we have including some that are being translated to more a physical opportunity at the open houses that Michelle and her team are facilitating so with these digital tools we're not trying to replace but to add to the opportunities I think the digital are always going to be an and not an or so once you put your thoughts in you can push submit your thought you have an opport opportunity to share more if you want to or you can start rating don't rate today um we'll leave that up to the residents to rate everybody's thoughts here but I'm going to push start rating to go through the next step here so this is kind of what the rating looks like so you're able to give one star if you strongly disagree of the comments or thoughts from the res other residents or you can strongly agree from there so for just to move on uh from here I'll give this one and to give you some data on WE we've done a couple of these now and with a few of them that apparently residents have found more interesting we do have some numbers that indicate folks are rating like 50 to 70 comments so once they're in it it's pretty quick to do and I think you'd be amazed at how how much the average person gets through in about three or four minutes so we're hoping to see that um at the end of the process this process as well amethyst if um if I was not in this presentation and going through the app and there's all these misspellings and the the comments or not always proper English that reflects on the city because I don't think people may not understand that these are actual comments that people have written in is there a way we can make that more clear or we can try to do that we also that that thank you for bringing that up we also have the ability to flag comments take them down or comment on comments so for example if something someone says something that is massively erroneous we can correct it and say Here's the here's what that actually means or what is actually happening so we're monitoring kind of daily on the backend to make sure we're catching things like that too but we'll look for opportunities to make sure that folks understand that this is like a crowdsourced information from the public and not from the organization good feedback so through collecting the data and Reporting it back out uh thought exchange giv us a few options and um opportunities to look at what people put in here so this is a new one it kind of gives you some like kind of like a cloud uh word cloud so you can see what words have been um in there as that um listed as much or typed in so we'll finish there so that's that's the whole thought exchange so I'm going to go back to the PowerPoint to give you some other opportunities to see how we can report this out to the public and then report internally to you and to our department as well oh that's not the right PowerPoint so here are the other things that we can provide to you and we can see how many people engaged um using thought exchange overarching themes and highlights so taking all those thoughts thought exchange will be able to summarize it um you can will'll be able to see top priorities areas of greatest and least agreement by ZIP code key demographics and we can also play around with how we report it out infographic wise so this is just an example from last night um here so we're able to see where people rate it the comments from last night's open house so that was a quick one that we put together uh this morning to show youall so as we get more and more comments thoughts concerns using that exchange we'll be able to report it back out to yall and increase our public engagement and the reason we're asking for zip code is we toyed around with um council districts last year but the average person may or may not know what their Council district is and when we we can map um zip codes by Council District it's not perfect but it's pretty close and since we're talking about kind of qualitative moving to quantitative here we'll be able to give you uh we intend to give you at least two snapshots through this process of information by District um to help you make your decisions and and um thoughts As you move forward with the budget process all right okay okay the second uh next tool that's thought exchange and the second digital tool is called balancing act so Balancing Act I'll give you a few minutes to uh scan that QR code as well uh it takes you to an app and uh way we have it set up here is for Council priorities to give uh residents an opportunity to rate uh well to select three of the five Council priorities and then rate those priori them uh based off of what's most important to them two websites that they have to access to fully participate yes ma'am okay correct yes so the first page that it takes you to as an explanation and a welcome about what you're getting into and what we're asking you to do we can go ahead and click continue on that that site also gives you uh a link to the openhouse locations and the calendar for uh all of the open houses that are occurring this month then it takes you to our demographic questions now these are purely optional just like in thought exchange um you can either go through and answer each individual question or you can just click continue and Skip them all um since they're optional and that will take you to the main page page that uh list all of the council priorities we've included explanations about what the uh Council priorities include um as well as if you scan down just a little bit to uh Community safety uh there's a longer explanation about uh what ccpd is as a funding source uh for folks like me who see it on the back of police vehicles but don't really know what that was so uh that's to to help our residents understand uh what those are uh balancing acts is really cool it will um randomly uh put these in an order um so that your page is going to look different than somebody else's page some other residents page so um that is to help um prevent skewing uh of results on this so we'll go ahead and we'll just select the first three up there and perfect if you'll scan down to the bottom of the page you'll have an opportunity to rank these in order now we chose responsible growth Economic Development and Community safety but let's say I think Community safety is really more important than uh responsible growth so we'll we can just click on that and move it up and if we're happy with the rankings uh we can click submit and if you are somebody who constantly second guesses your choices like I do you have a second opportunity to rate your uh or prioritize those so we'll move Economic Development back up to the top there and um click on I'm not a robot and that will allow us to uh submit this um you're very good I'm glad you're not a robot can you get this right under pressure I think close a couple of comments about Balancing Act while Isaac's submitting that is so this we see this as an opportunity to get your priorities out and sub goals out in front of the public so you'll see your resolution coming forward to officially adopt those as we talked about in February shortly but a couple of ways that we approach that were a little bit different we actually put everything through a word filter to make sure we were using wording that could be read by an eighth grade level to make sure that we know we're not using complicated words we went through and had a couple of folks test it for us and you know notice things that we forget like ccpd we know what it stands for but maybe not everyone does um so we're hoping that this is a this is our our our um our take at giving you highlevel information about generally what people feel about your priorities and then we'll also have the specific budget items like I want to fix X Y or Z so we're trying to capture both ends of that spectrum and also appeal to folks that maybe want to get into the details or don't want to get into the details but they're still going to give you information that you can use to help make those decisions excellent and just like thought exchange balancing act includes a whole lot of analy analytical tools uh that you can use um it has everything from submission rates which is highly skewed right now because I've been in there testing it constantly so it's a little lower than what we hope it will be uh and you can uh prioritize things by ZIP code as well uh as as you can in uh thought exchange as well as key demographic data so um we'll be hopefully presenting that to you all uh again soon wonderful okay so to close again these are just a sampling of what we're doing here in the lab for the on the digital engagement side there's a lot of other things going on at the open houses and Michelle has some great activities that are more tactile that you can do during those meetings and um we are in the process of filming some instructional videos in English and Spanish that show you how to use each of these tools as well um some of them are to us they're pretty easy but they may not be to everyone and we're looking forward to feedback Again part of this is just testing out some new things that are available to us so that we can work with Rene's team and deciding okay like what really speaks to our residents for what kind of Engagement so that we can start using more similar tools more often so the average person knows what it looks like and feels like to engage with the organization any questions for us more just comments I think this is really great well there's one question how long will these sites be up so during phase one of Engagement this will be up from now until the beginning of August and Our intention here is to leave this open a very long time again give you some snapshots of results by District um throughout that process and then we are going to be think thinking about what to do for phase two so once the recommended budget comes out in that last month between the recommended budget and adoption we'll be doing something smaller about uh you specifically about the adopted budget so this will be available until August Awesome um and just it could be user error but I couldn't submit the capture so like the second um noted Balancing Act okay um so I don't know if there's like a glitch there we will we'll check it out thank you thank you all for um all of the great work on this um I see the benefit of having digital tools like this um and also I think having two can be a bit confusing and The Balancing Act I'm not quite sure we um I'm not quite sure why we need it um because the priorities have already been set based on the feedback that we've heard from the community and limiting them to only pick three of all of our priorities which we said are priorities is misleading to the public and it also um I think is probably not the best selection it probably would be better if they if we were going to do that for them to rank prioritize all five versus limiting it to three um but I I still think it's misleading the second thing that I think would be additive to this is on the um thought exchange I think it' be great to do digital advertising with that um in a number of ways so that folks can find a link without necessarily having to Fumble through our website um or go to an open house to do it and we'll probably get increased amount of participation here absolutely and there'll be a lot of social media push for this in the coming weeks as well also you might want to try I don't know if there's budget for but paid advertising organic works as well as your Al algorithm Works in terms of if you're actually going to click on the city of fourth page if you're not you're not going to see it so done Rene says done um so I have a different take on the the ranking of the priorities um I think forcing people to say one two or three helps them really prioritize what they're looking for and then it helps us know what they're looking for and so you know I think we've all taken surveys and it's like how important is you know these five things to you and they're all important right because they're but if you had to rank them in importance I think that helps us shape the budget too so I like the idea of making them pick because in doing so it is their their value they're placing value on whatever that particular topic is I'm not saying it can't be improved but I like the idea of just making them pick because it's less in the wind if you don't mind me building I agree with that I think something that might be helpful is in the framing of the survey maybe asking them what's most important in this current budget and I didn't see it when I was doing on the phone but if I'm ranking it as a value just as a value set versus as a priority in this upcoming budget the respondent will give two different answers for that that okay no good feedback we can definitely do that I just wanted to give you all a compliment I went to the open house last night and I thought it was very well done very well organized and very well attended so that's all Michelle go good job Michelle out here we we just we just showed up to participate so big thanks to CPE for organizing that it was very well done wonderful um one small comment before I leave a note on The Balancing Act tool so that tool has a number this is one module of that tool is a prioritization so you can do that from everything from like you know I don't know what color Community Center do you like or we're using it for priorities it also has a simulation tool so it's much more complex it's a budget simulation too where you can have people play with everything with types of Revenue up or down what you want to spend on you can do it by priority you can do it by I mean it has a lot of options so we're looking into feasibility or how we might be able to deploy that moving forward so future future for the public if we get to a place where we're comfortable or and I think mayor Parker last time we had a a budget session you mentioned wanting more input on some of the more specific decisions that you're going to be tasked with making as we get closer to that process so there may be opportunities to do that there there may also be opportunities to create simulations for you as you're trying to look at how pulling specific levers May adjust the overall budget so we're just starting to look at whether or not that can be done how we can do it we did it um once with a like a I want to say dummy version for lack of a better term with the public in 2019 just to teach them about the budget and get them to sit at tables and make PRI make decisions together it went really well so I'm hoping we have opportunities to use it in the future so we have a long way to go there but we're looking into it as we move forward on Balancing Act is there a is there an addition that you can add into that um app that would allow you to just give a comment at the end yes I mean I like the ranking I think it's a simple way to introduce it to see it works but I just wonder if for those that don't want to toggle between both of them may I liked it better than the thought exchange just just me personally if at the end as you're submitting your like General comments about the budget or complaints about the city take them there and you can add them in however you want to if it's possible based on what we have right now absolutely we can add that functionality in um and we do still have the um you can submit input for the budget on the my Fort Worth app as well so that is another opportunity and we'll be listing that on that website as well thank you other questions comments thank youall thanks okay so I'll wrap us up here uh as I mentioned earlier in response to a question Department budget submissions are due on Friday so we have been meeting with you very early before we even have those and trying to give you some helpful context and topics but we'll have more meet after this Friday and we'll continue to work with departments um and that will inform our upcoming schedule so our next work sessions are scheduled for June 4th and then tentatively for June 18th um and we hope to bring you both some Capital modeling as we mentioned and also some of those highlevel Department asks uh and so what we see after Friday and into June will inform the upcoming schedule I'll aim to get that to you beforehand as requested um so departmental budget previews uh confirm the order later this month and I will provide you details in advance I know that you want that um Capital maintenance and then I actually already had a note in here for additional fy2 Revenue forecasting so sales tax modeling um and any other big chunks of Revenue that I think would be helpful um sure surely property and sales tax are the biggest but we'll we'll look into what else could be helpful um any other future agenda topics besides what we've talked about um or other feedback um could we get as we're looking through the departmental budgets could we get a I guess a snapshot of what's happened in the last five years and either that each department has increased this percentage or decreased this percentage just to give it I think that gives me a better idea of how much we've been spending in each department how much that's increased and Capt 2019 so we get Co in there and then pre-imposed covid if that makes sense five year history per Department got it thank you oh okay thank you very much Chan thank you so I think that's the last of our agenda items correct because I don't have a list but I'm gonna assume yes okay any other questions or comments regarding the upcoming schedule for Budget workshops no okay then meeting is adjourned we'll be back in 30 minutes for exec