What a shame. >> Wow. I see. Are you Okay, good afternoon. Welcome to your Fort City Council work session and happy new year. I will call us to order and I believe hand the meeting immediately over to assistant city manager William Johnson. Thank you, William. >> Thank you, Mayor. We're going to start with a couple of uh updates. First, I want to call up um Matt Carter, Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo president, general manager to announce the 2026 Works Stock Show and Rodeo. Matt, thank you, Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mayor and Council, for having us here today. Uh we will be brief, uh but we just wanted to come today and talk a little bit about the 2026 Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo. will be the 129th edition of the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo. Uh we are very excited this year. Uh we get to debut uh the renovation project of the Will Rogers Memorial Coliseum. Uh we cannot express our gratitude to you all enough for putting your trust in the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo and how proud we are to be partners with with the city of Fort Worth in this. I'd like to just give a little bit of a of a compliments to the public events staff, uh Allison McNamera, Chuck out at Will Rogers. They've done a tremendous job and have been a tremendous partner as we've gone through this process. Uh Mike Crum who I believe is here and and Keith Chisum have also been amazing to work with along with Jess McCurin. Uh we we really just have taken this partnership to the next level and and I hope that you all will be pleased with uh with the product. I I really do believe that you will. Uh it's been nine months and 20 days since we got started. Uh and I really don't I think that you won't be able to believe the transformation that has taken place there. Uh as you know, this is the first of many phases uh with the hope to have the Will Rogers Coliseum completely transformed by the time it turns 100 in 2036. So uh we'll look forward to continuing the partnership and we are just very very proud of the long-standing partnership that we've had with the city of Fort Worth. Uh beyond that, I'd like to introduce uh with us here today Jessica Burge. She's our administrative director. Uh Lauren Murray, she's our executive vice president. And then I'll I'll introduce Philip Williamson, our chairman here in a moment. Um, thank you for all that you do for our city. Uh, thank you for walking the line every day, uh, bringing us together and navigating the waters that that you all have to navigate. Thank you for the long nights and, uh, and all the hard work. We sincerely sincerely appreciate it and we couldn't be more proud to be part of uh, part a partner with the city. Our show dates this year will be Friday, January 16th through Saturday, February 7th. And we hope to see you out there. And now I'll turn it over to my colleague, Chairman Philip Williamson. Ouch. So, city council members, mayor, we are delighted to be here and and um um on behalf of the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo, there are some uh badges in front of you, our stock show badges, which which we're we're wearing here. And we uh want you to wear those with pride and proudly. and hopefully we'll be able to see some of you if not all of you on horseback for the uh grand entry. But we do really appreciate our long long relationship with the with our partnership and and so many great things have happened because of that and and uh as we've traveled to some of the other cities uh with to view some of their rodeos, I think people are envious of the relationship that we have here in Fort Worth with the with the city council members and and the mayor and and the stock show. So something to very very proud of and we again appreciate the partnership. So look forward to seeing you all at the at the stock show. Thank you very much. >> All right. Next we have Brian Doerty uh for the naming of the North Animal Shelter C Animal Campus in honor of Henry. Is Brian here? >> Here he comes. Okay, I think we got this in position. Um, yes. Uh, the resolution that you guys saw on there was uh sadly we had uh Henry passed away who was the Fort Worth Animal Care Control, you know, mascot for about 10 years. Um, greatly contributed to animal awareness as well as, you know, responsible pet ownership in addition to assisting to raise over $5 million that helped uh for the medical treatment ward at the Silox facility. And um there's also going to there is going to be an event that we plan where you know everybody's invited and we have a uh I think we're working on like a plaque not only a plaque but a a silhouette with a bench and whatnot but it will be an additional event. Um everyone will be invited. It'll be on everyone's calendar. Um and so we're uh honored to be able to you know give him his flowers. So that was that's where we're at with it. Uh it's it's just a the least we could do for considering everything that uh Henry did for the the city of Fort Worth. So that's all I got. >> Thank you. Brian, you said you don't have a date yet. >> No, no, no. We're still working on logistics and ordering what we need to get prepared and everything. >> Okay, that sounds great. Thank you. >> All right. And finally, we'll have Dana Bergdoll to recognize United Way Department coordinators. Dana. >> All right. Thank you, Mayor and Council. Dana Bergdoff, assistant city manager. I'm honored to get to be the champion for our annual employee united way uh campaign for um for the Tarant County. And so I'd like to recognize um Andrew McGee who's here with us today, corporate relations manager with United Way of Tarant County. Andrew, howdy to Andrew. Thank you for being here. So um we wrapped up our our campaign right before Thanksgiving and um our second annual event uh was was a huge success. This is our spooktacular which we held on Thursday right before Halloween and it's a great opportunity for us to bring together all of the city departments into into city hall. We had booths inside outside. A lot of fun was had. Um I'll point out for the benefit of Janette Goodall. We did have our M andC collaboration wizard um costume which is which is fun for all employees who get to work on M andC's. Um, but I want to thank the uh the department coordinators who put in so much effort to to make this happen and um and some of us got to enjoy the the dunking booth and um it anyway it was at least warmer than last year. So um what I'd like I'd like to point out is uh recognize the top five fundraising departments overall. Development services, city manager office, park and recreation, water and law. So they did an outstanding job uh re you know exceeded their goals that they had that they had set for themselves this year. So kudos kudos to those departments and those coordinators also then top uh departments for employee participation. Economic development knocked it out of the park with half of their um employees participating in one way or another contributing to the campaign followed by the city attorney's office and human resources. And then lastly the highest average for each donation per employee. So, city secretary's office, city manager's office, and and again, economic development. So, I would like to give a special recognition to Monnique Orwinsky in HR. She's the the power behind all of the accounting and tracking and helping all the coordinators. So, thank you to Mon'nique. She couldn't be here this morning, but hopefully she's watching and and knows that knows how much we appreciate her. Um, and then also want to recognize Allison Rich with uh communications and public engagement. She helped get the silent auction going and um did a worked with the communications with Alana Earl for employees to know about the event and and to and to contribute. So without further ado, I would like to let us let you know that we raised almost $100,000 this year, far exceeding uh what we raised last year. So if you if you don't mind, I'd like to recognize the department coordinators. Some of them are here today. If I could ask them to at least stand and and be recognized. We've got some out there. There they are. Thank you all. So, we appreciate appreciate your support. Appreciated um support from the council offices as well during this campaign. But thank you so much. All right. We have a number of informal reports. Um 25362 uh debt plan bond pricing results and Reggie Zeno is available if there are any questions. No. All right. 25363 Texas comproller transparency stars Reggie Zeno is available. There are any questions? >> Council member Hill. >> Reggie, do you mind just giving us a quick overview? And I know we're we're in process of two of the stars and kind of what that process looks like. Yes, the um the Texas controller has established a transparency stars program. Uh it's been in place uh for a period of time. I don't know exactly uh when it started, but uh we've been able to accomplish several of the stars, five of the four of the six stars. Um and those are you know um illustrated uh in the IR uh there are several categories there are six categories traditional financing finances uh and there are very specific data that's required to be posted online uh for each of these uh debt obligation uh transparency star public pension transparency star open gov and compliance uh transparency Uh and then the last one uh within finance would be the contracts and procurement transparency star for each of the four uh the finances debt obligation p public pensions and open gov uh the city has actually accomplished the star uh through the state uh controllers's office. Uh we just recently submitted data uh for the purchasing uh star and we should be getting uh some notification of that uh relatively soon. It's approximately three to four four week uh notification period and then hopefully the only outstanding star would be uh related to economic development. So we're really proud of having achieved those over the past several months. We were actually waiting to present the star information with the year-end close in the annual audit, but we're real really excited to present this to council today. >> Council Flores, did you have a question or comment? >> No. Macy's got a cover there. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> All right. Thank you, Reggie. Next, we'll have an African-American museum funding update and Casey Thomas is available if there are any questions. Any questions from from council? No. I do want to acknowledge Dr. Bernett here in the audience. Um, thank you so much for being here and for your tenacity for this project. We are incredibly thankful. Council peoples. >> No, I was just going to ask Casey, can you give us a quick funding update and then again, I do want to thank Dr. John Barnett for being here and for his persistence and amazing resilience in getting this done. >> Yes, certainly. So, Casey Thomas, a neighborhood services director, happy new year to you all. And the funding update is um as it relates to the money that the city of Fort Worth allocated for the museum. Back in 2022, we allocated $40,000 which was going to be used to help fund their economic and feasibility study. At the time, the group was looking at several different location potential locations for the museum and wanted to use the study to determine which location was the best. Since that time, they have actually been able to one um form themselves as an official 501c3 organization and then they have also selected a SLI site, purchase a site across from Texas Wesleyan University. And so the need for the FES feasibility study went away. And so the museum has requested that they be able to use the $40,000 that was allocated towards their construction cost for the museum. And so we are recommending um because the funds that were used are capital dollars and so we think that the the requested use is in line with the funds and so we are requesting that we be able to change the use of the funds and also to be able to pay the museum directly now that they're a 501c3 organization. Before we were going to go through the North Texas um community foundation. >> Thank you. >> All right. Stay there Casey. We have property tax exemption requests for existing affordable housing properties and Casey Thomas is available if there any questions. >> Council Rebeck. Yeah, I just I want to clarify the um the apartments that are eligible today. Are they currently are eligible to request this? Are they currently what we would consider affordable today or does this allow them to move into the affordability category? So, the four that we have received so far are all affordable um multif family developments. Now, they're either 60% um area median income or lower. So, they are all currently affordable housing projects. >> Okay. And if we were um and I read your recommendation, given the tax shortfall, you recommend we not do that, but in the future um maybe if we have better, you know, better years and we're looking at it, does this allow this tax exemption? Is there a requirement that the um the affordability rates be adjusted within the apartment complex that's already affordable? As it relates to the tax code, it does not have any requirements specific to what the rents look like. Um it's just providing the tax exemption. Um so yeah, so that's what I would say. So there's no econom there's no financial requirement. And I will say one of the um multif family developments they are also looking to get housing tax credits and so by if they are able to get the housing tax credits they are required by the state to maintain a certain level of affordability. >> Okay. But these others like we're not moving from a 60% AMI to a 30% AMI because we're allowing the tax exemption. >> Not that I'm aware of. No. >> All right. Thank you. >> Any other questions for Casey? Thanks, Casey. >> All right. Next, we have the appointment of substitute hearing officer and William Rmuli is available if there are any questions. >> No questions. >> Okay. All right. We have the city of Kennedale interlocal agreement to support Salt Road repair project and Jim Kazelle is available. There are any questions? All right. guidelines on panhandling and responsible giving. Monica Martin is available if there are any questions. >> Yes, Council Peoples. >> No, but I do want to thank Deputy Chief Martin and her team for the work that they've done around the panhandling initiative. Uh I had a huge problem on the east side of East Chase and uh had complaints from many neighborhoods there. uh Monica Martin, Deputy Chief Martin and her team put together a detail and I went through there the last two weeks of the year and it was absolutely clear and this has nothing to do with people in need not getting money but I just wanted to make sure that uh residents weren't being disturbed by this. All right. Next, we'll have installation of panic alarms in local YMCA's and Buck Wheeler available. There any questions? Council member Nettles. >> Thank you. Um I do have a few questions. I kind of wanted if you can give us a brief overview. I did read the IR to entirety, but um there was a couple of installations that happened at a couple of uh daycarees already. And then I think the IR also talks about there are a few more that's going to be completed within this 26th year. >> Yes, sir. So, uh, just to kind of give a a real brief overview, the, um, panic alarms that were installed in some of the local child care facilities stemmed from something that occurred back in 23 that led us to identify a gap where we can improve the safety. And, uh, we partnered with child care associates uh, to come up with a plan to use CCPD funding for those uh, those uh, daycare facilities. And at the time, I think there's about 270 throughout Fort Worth. U, but we identified quite a few. I think 11 is where where we're sitting at right now uh as far as installs that have been completed. And part of that also I think it's important to point out is not only are we identifying those child care facilities that may need a panic alarm, but also it's an opportunity to create uh some community police engagement. We bring their the NPO out or community engagement unit, do a site safety check um and then just come back for some routine visits, explain them when to use a panic alarm. But yes, we have two more that we have uh planned to be installed uh within the next few months and probably several more later this year. Do you know what the cost is for the installation? Cuz I think in your IR you recommended that um we shouldn't use the CCPD funding uh to install it at the YMCA. Do do you know what the cost is? And is there also a cost to the monitoring? >> Yes, sir. Uh so two things. Uh the the cost for the panic alarm install is right around $500 just give or take depending on what the security install company runs into. Uh as far as monitoring it, whether it be YMCA or a child care facility, yes, they will be responsible for having a security company monitor that. >> Okay. Um, I guess just your recommendation of not doing the YMCA, I think you talked about the funding. I talked to specifically the McDonald YMCA. Um, and I think the executive is the executive of McDonald as well as East Side. And so, um, the the the funding or the grant funding that you articulated in here, I don't know if the maybe the YMCA as a whole get that, but not individual YMCA. And I know each one of them have their own fundraising uh mechanism they have to do. My question to you is it feasible for us to look at areas where there's high crime or hot zones that these areas may be included in using CCPD funding for the panic alarm. >> The short answer is yes sir. It would be feasible if we have areas like that. >> All right. Well, I guess I'll work with you offline to see if we can look at that in the future to uh help support uh the YMCA's on the east side. >> Any other questions? >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Thank you, Buck. >> All right. Next, we'll have insurance procurement cost savings achieved and Donette Murphy is available if there are any questions. >> Any questions? No. All right. You have an IR on the naming on naming the North Animal Shelter in honor of Henry, which you just talked about a little bit, but Brian Dory is available if there are any questions. Okay. um a November 25 report on the release of areas from the ETJ by petition of land owner or resident and Landre Stringfellow is available if there are any questions. All right, we have an update on proposed zoning amendments to alleviate the proliferation of certain businesses, business uses, liquor and package stores, retail, smoke shops, and credit access businesses. Unless Landre is available if there are any questions. Andre, yeah, Jessica, come on up. Jessica, >> clearly missed something. I'm not She is here today, so I'm not sure if there's something happening, but I will do my best to answer your question. >> There's always something happening in this building, so it's >> never >> all good. Um, my main question was about the the smoke shops and cos. Um, our zoning commissioner actually found that quite a few were opened. Uh they they got their CO through I think it's general merchandise general merchandising and it wasn't they were not declared a smoke shop whenever they opened. Um and so is there a process that we can go through to go back and verify that they're legitimately operating right now or >> Yes. Dana Bergdoff who is my zoning expert still that I rely heavily on. She is nodding her head and she's going to come up to help me answer this one. No. >> Yeah. >> Then it just goes into the whole proliferation of all these businesses. Thank you, Dana. >> Yes. So, um yes, so development services um can go out and check to see working perhaps with environmental services when it when it's a commercial business for commercial zoning enforcement to see if the use that is actually operating is consistent with the CO um and consistent with the zoning requirements. So, we can do that at any time and if there's a violation, we can work with work with that owner to either change the use or if they need to seek a zoning change or a change to their CO that they have that due process. >> Yeah. >> All right. Thank you. >> All right. Next, we have the proposed nomination of the former power plant at 411 North Main Street for highly significant endangered landmark designation. And Laura Lee Willlet is available if there are any questions. Uh I don't have any specific questions, but I would like Lauraai to uh give council an overview of what discussions of late we've been having in regards to the power plant and the uh implications when it comes to historic preservation and how that ties in with development. >> Yes, absolutely. Good afternoon everybody. So, the um council has the ability to pass a resolution which is on your agenda next week for designating a property. Um for this particular property, it has been uh vacant as you know for over two decades. Um it's a very iconic building and the designation of a highly significant endangered landmark um is very similar to designating um just a regular landmark. Um the implications are that any future um exterior changes like changing out windows or doing addition or doing a demolition, anything like that would need to be reviewed by um either my office or the historic and cultural landmarks commission. Um and then also the benefit of having the HSE designation is the um property owner whoever wants to develop um can apply for the historic site tax exemption um which is our local site tax exemption for historic properties um and have that exemption for up to 15 years as opposed to 10 years. Okay. Um, I want to add to a little further uh clarity. Uh, back in December, uh, city manager, myself and, uh, Dan Beman with TRWD, I had an initial meeting, uh, with, uh, Chancellor Leblanc to talk about, uh, historic designation of the property and, uh, perhaps uh, uh, you know, uh, discussions on what they want to do with the property when it comes to selling the property potentially. So all this ties in together and uh not not to belabor the point but just to simply say that the preservation of the property as is uh would be of benefit to the future development of the area. Why? because a lot of that land around the the uh power plant is owned by TRWD and as partners as TCC is a partner as TRWD is a partner with the city and the county uh on development of the island it affects us all. So having uh some clarity having some consistency and how we approach redevelopment of that area is important and preserving our history here locally is also vital. you only get one shot at it. So, this is why uh we have our historic preservation folks bringing this to us right now, presenting it to you all so that you have a clear picture of what it is that we're trying to accomplish. >> Thank you, Carlos. >> Um and William, I think we missed one. IR the lease amendment for 350 West Belnap Street jail facility. >> Yep. Uh Tad McAfee is available. Is there any questions? Okay, looks like we can keep rolling. Thank you. First up, council, any questions regarding changes in memberships or boards of commissions upcoming for January 13th? Questions regarding zoning cases for January 13th or the MNC log. Okay, then we'll move straight to first presentation, which is Madori Clark, our library director, presentation on library and community center gallery space. >> Of course you may. Yeah, Council Member Hall. >> I apologize. I did have a couple questions about the jail lease just to to better understand. I know in reading the MC that it's going to um expand the ability to have more video magistration. I was just kind of trying to infer the capacity and how that impacts us as a as a city um from our perspective as opposed to Taran County's perspective if you will. >> Yeah, absolutely. Uh Chad Mafy, I'm the DC over the jail. So to kind of not get too deep into the numbers, but we average right now for about the last 100 days, we've averaged about 40 arrests a day. So that's about 1,200 bookings going into our city facility. Of that currently, three times a day, we do video magistrations. Uh the potential is 30 a day. Currently, the reality is somewhere from 20 to 25 per day depending on the day. Of those that get magistrated, three to four out of 10 are released before they ever hit Tarant County due to making bond. This will greatly increase the potential of our daily magistrations um as well as allow for better workflow within the current city holding facility. And and the other question would be the proposal here is I think $40,000. Is there a reason why it's not more? I mean, as far as to increase, I guess, the potential or the capacity to do even more based on just the numbers as is. >> Correct. Not everyone, not everyone who is arrested is eligible for the video magistration. The most serious of our crimes actually are a face-to-face magistration which happen after county transfer. So as far as the potential of who can be magistrated, we feel at this time that this will help us hit that mark. Uh more necessarily won't get us more daily magistrations, but we feel that this is a good fit for right now. >> Thank you so much. And there's also some space restrictions on how much it could the the area could actually be expanded. So, um, we worked probably year and a half, two years with the county to try to get to this point. So, we're very excited that that we're finally here. >> Do you have a a ETA on the completion of the project or the expansion? >> We do not at this time. >> Yeah, the county is actually going to execute it. We're just they're going to do the actual expansion. We're just funding the upfront capital for it. >> But we know that they're going to do their due diligence to expedite it. >> They've already approved the agreement and they are going to be expediting getting it done because it's in their interest too. >> Yeah. They've been eager to do that. >> Yeah. What happens is the run out of capacity uh to continue to accept prisoners. So, we end up holding prisoners. So, >> correct. like that bottleneck that there that's going to be opened up with this, right? >> Yes, sir. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Okay, Madori is up now. Thank you. Good afternoon, mayor and council. I'm Madori Clark, the director of library, and I'm very excited today to present this preliminary look for all of you. Some of you might know um previously before I came to the city of Fort Worth, I was the director of library and cultural services. So, arts and culture is very near and dear to my heart personally and it's also been very rewarding professionally. So, just a quick overview. Um, some of you might recall that the community art center at 1300 Gendi did close uh at the end of 2025 and that resulted in less space to exhibit community art. Sorry, it actually closed earlier in 2025. The city does have libraries and several different community centers that have existing gallery space and also potential to add more. Um, and we could be programming this space for a variety of different kinds of community art exhibits. We um have identified a position within the library department that we think could um coordinate these citywide um community art exhibits. And so that is very exciting because if you have the space but you don't have the person that can program it, um it's pretty useless. So, um, what is exciting about this proposed plan is that it will help address two-dimensional art exhibit needs that we currently have throughout the city. But just keeping in mind, it does not address all of our arts and culture needs. Um, for instance, like community theater with with the closing of um the Scott Theater at at 1300 Gandhi. Also, things like music, ceramics, etc. I would love to work with all of you to find more solutions for that. Um, also the library is exploring a residence program for a variety of artists across um all of the different arts. We would like to incorporate this into the programming of our downtown library. Um, and what's really exciting about the the downtown library space is that we um anticipate having room for a very uh nice gallery there. Um, and then we also have an excellent ballroom space on the second floor. Have any of y'all been to that building? Yes, I see a lot of heads nodding. A really elegant and beautiful uh performance hall where we could go back to having music concerts um some theater limited theater um programs etc. So, we did a quick review of our libraries and you can see we've uh located we have eight locations that we feel um could expand or currently have exhibition space. Um they are located throughout the city and we've come to a total of 453 linear feet that have been identified. Linear feet is just literally like how much hanging space like uh feet across a wall where you could hang two-dimensional visual art. I want to uh thank Dave and Lewis and all of our uh partners at Park and Recreation. They worked um to look through all of the different community centers to identify some additional space for community centers. We asked them to identify locations that had um 15 feet of free space. And then we also added um free wall space. And then we also added 40 ft which would be um for open space where we could add movable art display walls. We think it's going to be maybe like um four panels that are five feet each. So you would have 20 feet in the front and 20 feet in the back or 20 feet on each side for a total of 40 linear feet. So that's what this represents here. And you can see with our community center um our estimate is about 780 linear feet. And that brings us to a grand total of about 1,233 linear feet that would be made available for um community art exhibits. And I just I what I'm so excited about with this is I I heard from um Wesley Gentle yesterday because I started to get curious like what what was the um amount of capacity that the former community art center had and he shared with me that they had um their art center galleries totaled 830 830 linear feet. So again, this is not a replacement for the community arts center in any way, shape, or form, but I hope that this will be a really awesome opportunity to partner with the visual arts community to create a really cool program where they will have um some space to show their work. And then just a quick bonus, um several of the community centers also have display cases. So that could be some potential opportunity to display additional kind of art, not just two-dimensional, but other kinds of like ceramics or other other kinds of art. Does that make sense? Okay. Um, so in addition to having more than the previous community center, I just also have the little note here that in my research, this is equivalent to about four large gallery spaces. And then finally, I I just started to get kind of curious about what the city, the capital city of Fort Worth was spending on arts. And so, um, did a little bit of a dive into FY25 spending just to kind of see, um, it's a little tricky here because we don't have it all under one umbrella like an office of arts or a department of arts, but just kind of working with um, our library finance folks and of course PARD's excellent team. Um, you can see our arts for Worth contract is really the top art spending that we do at the city of Fort Worth. Um that was to the tune of just over $1.6 million last year. Um and then you can see we have a couple of different library things that we spend money on that go directly toward um arts and culture. I love um did y'all know that we had a music librarian at Fort Worth Public Library? Is that just the coolest sounding job? Who wants to be the music librarian? I do. Sign me up for that. And then um you can see also we've got community center art spending. They teach a lot of classes at the community center. So that's um included in the total there. Um do y'all know about the pallet program? It is the uh mural program down at Trinity Park. So that's included there. Um and then also just our wonderful log cabin village and then our nature center. So our grand total for spending in FY25, at least from what I could find, um was just almost $2.6 million. And I think that is my last slide. >> Thank you, Madori, very much council. Um, this presentation could not have been more timely for me because I actually had um listed on um my list of IRS future agenda items to talk about arts and culture specifically. Um I first want to say thank you so much um because you have done a lot with what we have given you which is absolutely nothing. So, thank you for that. Um, which leads to my IR. Um, I would like and thank you for providing this spending on on arts. Um, what I would like to see is a a future agenda item um on our peer cities in Texas and across the nation as to um what their arts and culture department at their city looks like, how much they're spending on that particular program, um, and where that funding comes from. For example, um I learned San Antonio's arts and culture office, which is an office within the city, not just um an extra duty task to the library department. Um and that's paid through hot um the hotel occupancy tax. So I think uh if we want to be a world-class city, we've got to do worldass things and a robust art scene is one of them. So, um, thank you for doing this and I look forward to working with you on how we continue to support our budding and local art scene in the community, not just our major museums. >> Thank you, Council Hill. And then, Council Member Martinez, thank you for this. I think it's a lot of work went into calculating the linear feet and I think you're utilizing a lot of underutilized space and highlighting our local artist. My request is um as you're going through programming and trying to figure out what that looks like, would you please include our local artist community and whether that's a committee or helping do artist selections, but I really think their voice needs to be heard in this conversation and this is a great opportunity to do that. >> Councilor Martinez. >> Yes, thank you Madori for this great presentation. Um I'd like us to consider adding city hall to that list though. We have a lot of wall space and a lot of you know free space for freestanding pieces or installations. And so just wanted uh you to take that into consideration. >> Um I don't I don't know if it's appropriate, but I just wanted to share with you that um we the city does own a lot of portable works as part of its public art collection. And so I am really excited. Um we haven't put anything up yet, but plans are underway to install some of those pieces from the city's portable public art collection. So hopefully soon you will see um some amazing p you some amazing art in this building it but kind of back to my point without someone who's like coordinating this for the city we've been trying to kind of pick it up here and there with little bits and pieces but I'm really excited about that too. So stay tuned council publes. >> So Madori two questions. Yes. So the first is you said you'd identified a person on staff who could do this work now. So, we're just going to move them over. No increase to salary or anything. So, that's first thing. >> Well, we're we're actually this whole to to Councilwoman Beck's point, I think the timing of all of this has just coalesed beautifully. So, it's actually a position that is coming online. So um so for your question that they will this this position is not hired yet and so we hope that the position will be correct when we when we um open it up for people to apply. Does that make sense? >> That makes sense. So that was the first question. Now the second question I have been trying in my mind I was here when you did the presentation on the new regional library downtown and I know we're moving to a much smaller space and we talked about not having the funding to do everything. What does using that second floor ballroom do? Does it take away space from the library from our mission to provide library services? Because I know what that space looks like and I know that's um we're dealing with a much smaller space and I just want to make sure that that second floor doesn't take away from our ultimate mission to be a library. >> I really I appreciate that question. Um, so we were actually very excited about that space. Most of our regional, actually all of our regional libraries and most of our, um, smaller neighborhood libraries do have some sort of program space. So, um, it can frequently be used as like a storytime room or a meeting room or that kind of thing. With this location in downtown, we're really lucky because it's much larger and it also has a fabulous stage. So, it actually gives us even increased opportunity to do the kind of programming that we really enjoy doing at the library. And I was not here, but I have heard many stories about the incredible concerts that used to take place at the old central library. And um we hope to be able to bring some of that kind of programming back. >> Yeah. Council member Laur, >> thank you. I I agree. It's great timing. Um it sounds to me like we have a lot of amazing local artists, right, that really have amazing work. I know personally my art never made it past my mom's fridge. So I can't say why I I know what it feels like to have my art publicly displayed. However, as we're talking about this too, I'd like for for staff to however we can reexamine how we do our selection for all of our public arts pieces because I'm assuming they're not getting paid for their work being on the walls. Is that correct? It's that great job. And yet we have out of state, out of city artists coming in, you know, with three, four, $500,000 pieces of art while we have potholes and other needs. And so, um, I'd love to see some of these artists become more involved in the process of being on that selection, uh, I guess in the selection process to get access to some of these, uh, really expensive art projects so we can take care of our own because we should be able to at this point. >> Thank you, Council Member Flores. >> Madori, I'm not speaking for uh, Artist Elar Rosa and their, you know, capacity, right? But you may want to approach them. I mean, they reside, you know, they lease out a city-owned facility. They have gallery space. Can't speak for, you know, what they have going on, but that could be a potential, you know, space for you to look at. And then just one clarification, you're also talking about exterior space at these facilities, or is it all just interior? >> It's all interior. >> Okay. Thank you. Mador, you may have looked at this when you did an evaluation of each facility, but do you have underutilized office space or areas that could be converted for artisan residents at any of these facilities? And did y'all look at that as well? >> We did not look at that. >> I just have heard anecdotally and to council member Hill's point bringing the artists to the table that are here as part of the forest community understand what they believe their needs are. that that had been something in the past had been brought up as a need for them to be able to even on a rotational basis share space um as an art studio and also make it educational. So maybe as I know you've got a lot on your plate and as as you bring this additional individual in um maybe that would be of benefit to depending on the location and obviously you don't want to overwhelm a library or community center if they if they're already at constraint but the ones I've been in occasionally maybe you could repurpose an area. So yes, I've heard the same feedback and there, you know, there's an incredible amount of potential. Thank you, Madori. Any other questions, council? Okay, we'll keep rolling. Next is fiscal year 2025 unudited general fund performance. Christian Simmons, our chief transformation officer, and Regginal Zeno. They're going to make this really exciting. I just know it. >> We are a dynamic duo. >> We are partners in crime or not committing crime. >> Yeah. Right. in lab science, right? Is that >> Yeah. Right. Uh good afternoon. Happy new year. I like being in the middle actually. Weird. Um okay. So, yes, we're here. Christine Simmons with the Fort Worth Lab here with Reggie from finance. We're going to tag team a performance on a performance a presentation on year-end performance. It could be a performance of the general fund for fiscal year 25. Um, and we will be making recommendations for use of fund balance in advance of the closing M andC that will come to you in a few weeks. So, wanted to give you a chance to see some of those uh items. So, I'll kick us off here. Um, just as a reminder, the financial cycle just never ends. Um, it's really year round and it's very uh symbiotic relationship, if you will, between budget and finance. Uh so for me in the lab in the budget team, our process kind of kicks off at the bottom of the chart with budgeting. We're about to kick off the fiscal year 27 budget process, which is hard to believe. Um and of course, many departments have already started their pre-work on that. But once the budget is set and adopted, then we monitor and report on how it's going throughout the year, making adjustments as necessary in real time through budget adjustments and amendments, and also influencing the way that we're budgeting for the next year just based on what we're seeing. Um, a lot of you know that when Jay returned last year as city manager, he reinstated monthly financial reporting and projections. And so, while we were still doing a lot of projecting and forecasting, um, we did two big forecasts twice a year before he got back. Now, we're producing an actual monthly financial report which goes to the audit and finance committee of council. Um, and so that process has been more formal in the last year. We have a big focus organizationally on that kind of fiscal reporting. Um and it's also an important piece of what we provide to the rating agencies as well. Um and then finally there's the future oriented action of modeling and forecasting. And so we look longterm at various scenarios. We model all kinds of growth assumptions for the city and its population and the tax base and just all all kinds of scenarios and analyses that help us with long-term planning and decision-m. Um both budget and finance engage in that type of modeling year round. So this is the snapshot of the general fund. again unodudited financials. Um but we began fiscal year 25 with um a fund balance of 332 million uh in the general fund. Uh from there you apply the unodudited revenues and expenditure actuals. So you'll see that we undercollected in revenue and then we also underspent in expenditures. So I guess if you're going to undercolct in revenue, you also want to underspend in expenditures. Uh so you'll see they almost netted against one another. Um so where from a budget perspective we um plan to end the year with 303 million in fund balance. Uh we're expecting 301 million in fund balance using a little over 2 million to offset the rest of that under collection in revenue. So Reggie's going to go over some more details about fund balance particularly unassigned fund balance and growth and recommendations there. But I want to just give you a couple of what are mostly reminders about the revenue and expenditure stuff that happened in fiscal year 25. I know this is a little small. I hope you have it in front of you. Um, so this is the summary of fiscal year 25 revenues uh across the general fund as a whole. So we have an amended budget for revenue of 1.085 billion. Uh, and at month 11, which is August, we were forecasting to collect just under 1.07 billion. And so then you'll see in the preliminary actuals column that we actually ended a little bit above what we thought, 1.071 billion. These are big numbers to say 1.071 billion. Um the undercollection is primarily due to property tax and sales tax and I hope that we've done a good job of telegraphing that to you throughout the year and that you're not surprised by that. Um those are our two biggest revenue sources and they've both come in just just about under uh budget by 2% which doesn't sound like a lot on a percentage basis but obviously we're working on a large scale here with a $ 1.1 billion budget. So let's talk first uh just as a reminder about property tax. So we've provided some history here for those interested in in that kind of thing. you can see the consistent growth in revenue from 2022 forward. Um, and we budgeted in fiscal year 25 for that growth in collections to continue. Um, but you'll see that while we did grow, it was just the smallest revenue growth as a percentage that we've seen in recent years. So, our budget for property tax revenue was 613 million, we collected just about 602 million. Um and of that 12, you know, 12-ish million dollar variance, um 9 million of that was in current collections and three was in delinquent collections. These are things we've hap that have happened before. It's just that they were happening on a larger scale in fiscal year 25. So, for example, in delinquent collections, that's when we receive, you know, revenue from tax bills that are prior year. Um and we actually we expected to collect a positive amount in delinquent collections. Um but instead, we actually paid net refunds. That happens when someone's paying a tax bill for a property that's value is under dispute and then it gets settled and then we owe them money because the value came in lower. Um and again those things have happened before. We just saw them happening a little more frequently in fiscal year 25. So for fiscal year 26 we expect again we're growing in property tax revenue. Um but that growth is just a little reduced from what we've seen in some of the more recent years. Uh and that's primarily due to some of the activities and shifts going on with the Teran appraisal district. Uh same same format here for sales tax. So um you can see that we had some double digit growth and and some of you were on council when that was happening. the growth has been slowing um and we know that in fiscal year 25 we we really did quite well for the first half of the year was about seven and a half% growth but we really saw that slow in the summer um to just about half a percent average growth year-over-year in May through August and then we had like a happy surprise in September uh and so September came in strong but um but our growth was really more about 4% we have mirrored that growth for fiscal year 26's budget about 4% again we monitor sales tax monthly. We actually engage with a professional economist um on sales tax and and even some of our other franchise fees and taxes. These it's just a little hard to predict and there's not really one driver here for sales tax. It seems to be just general economic uncertainty which I know probably doesn't surprise you. Um but certainly watching this closely. Uh we did include a quick view of the other tax category that's kind of the third biggest. It's made up of a number of franchise fees like electric and gas and telecom. Um and then it also includes the state mixed beverage tax. Uh so we didn't do as well as budgeted in electric for instance because of the mild summer. Do you guys remember that it was like a mild summer? I remember it was like July and I'm like what state am I in? Um so that does have an impact on revenue budget. Um, but on the flip side, we did better than we thought we'd do for gas because if you also remember months before that, we had a pretty cold winter with a lot of like teen days. And so those kind of offset each other this year. Um, we use that same professional economist that I mentioned to help us with second opinion budgeting for these items too because they can kind of be all over the place. And then you have some that are falling just as an industry like cable um and telecom. Um, so those are the major categories. There are a number of other revenue categories in the general fund. So, we have a SNAP here. The two biggest are permits and charges for service. Both of those categories in fiscal year 25 were impacted by the development services fee increase, which you helped us do in fiscal year 25 in the budget. You might remember that. Um, so we benefited from that in the general fund. Those increases led to healthy collections. We also saw great activity with some of our recreation programs which falls u in charges for service. Um we and had additional um fire inspection revenues. So there's just a couple of key things there. Um so that's revenue. And then a very high level view of expenditures. We um had well we ended we ended the budget year at 1% under budget which again is like so close. But when you're talking again about 1.1 billion, it's about $12 million um in under spend, which is very helpful because of the um the revenue situation that we just talked about. So, a lot of this saving was intentional. So, as we began forecasting throughout the year and certainly by midyear and we saw kind of the way the revenue was unfolding, we asked departments to curb discretionary spending. We did a hiring freeze as a city for discretionary type positions. So, not public safety, but some of the other positions. Um, and you'll see that a lot of those activities and directives from the city manager's office really paid off. We were able to offset a lot of the revenue issue. Um, with some of those discretionary uh, spend activities and slowing. There were a couple of departments that were overbudget by more than a million bucks. Police and fire, the ones with the biggest budget. So, that makes sense. As a function of their budget, they were less than 1% over budget, both of them. And both had to do with overtime. Uh so in police you know they have a number of vacancies right now and as a function of backfilling those vacancies you know a lot of that happens on overtime particularly for patrol and some of the other key positions. Um so we did give them money in the windup and in August they still needed a bit more at the end of the year. Um so they're $2.5 million over budget due to overtime. I know the new chief is watching overtime and getting regular reports on that. Um on the fire side again overtime theirs is a little different. not so much vacancy related as as much as uh police, but they do have disaster deployments. So, for example, you might remember the Kirk County flooding um fire was deployed on an overtime basis. Those eventually get reimbursed. They just don't happen quickly. So, right now it contributes to their overage, but eventually those expenditures do get reimbursed through the the deployment reimbursement process. Any questions for me on revenue and expenditures in fiscal year 25 spend before I turn it over to my best bud? Thank you. Um, this is in the weeds question, but when we do the transfers for capital and PIGO funds, is that when the project's awarded, project completion, is there a specific schedule for that, or does it happen at the end of the year? >> Well, budget transfers for PGO and capital. >> PIGO occurs at the beginning of the year to allow each department to begin spending those resources. >> Okay. uh transfers to capital will periodically occur during the year, but those would be based on any funds that have been budgeted within the general fund or those that are have been assigned in the general fund fund balance. Those will sporadically occur during a year. >> Thank you, Reggie. >> Thank you, Reggie. That's why you're my best bud. You coming over here? I would like Yes, you can come over here or you want the clicker. I would like all of you to know because he told me I could tell you this. Here you go. >> Said stop. I just heard him say stop it. Um, so finance and budget have we're we're really trying to increase our collaboration and the way that we work together all year long. So we had a joint Christmas party in December. It was so fun. And I asked Reggie to sing a duet with me and he would not. So I would like for you as council to compel him in 2026 to sing. I gave him a number of options. I left it up to him. He would have a whole year to practice. I'm just just for your consideration. Thank you. >> Only if he'll perform it in front of the council. >> I say I say you do that now. last meeting in December next year. I think it's a date. >> All right. Uh general fund uh fund balance. Uh we are uh >> get back to >> uh schedule to end the year with approximately 22.06% in the fund balance or approximately 243 million. Uh this next slide depicts the growth of the unassigned fund balance. And as you can see, we've hovered in the 21 to 22% range. We really haven't grown it over the past four years. Uh this is an area that rating agencies pay close attention to. Uh the goal uh within the unassigned is 25% of the budget. So we are, you know, significantly short of that. It's approximately 43 million, but we're hopeful to help to potentially uh build that over time. Uh but we are short of the goal. Uh as it relates to the total fund balance, um we're ending the year with approximately 30 um million in the ending fund balance. That's made up of several uh categories. is the non-expendable uh category basically the inventory that we end the year with uh committed fund balance as well as the assigned fund balance and we'll we'll dive into those two amounts a bit. Uh within the committed fund balance uh we still have remaining 15 million that's been set aside for the Junth Museum. uh we have a small amount uh being set aside in the committed fund balance for uh sales tax loans. Those are loans that the city entered into with the state controller uh back in 2011 and 2021. Those were due to overpayments provided uh to the city uh within the assigned fund balance. We are uh carrying over the balance of the FY24 capital project assignments. uh approximately 23.1 million and those dollars would be used for underfunded capital projects that where those projects need additional dollars to accept contracts. Uh but we will we have carried those dollars over probably over the last two years. Uh and currently we have 23.1 million uh in the fund balance. Uh we have set aside 2 million uh to renovate the 18th floor in city hall. Uh we have several department rollovers. Those are being rolled over for basically contractual uh purposes. Uh we have several other assignments um 3.1 million uh to be transferred into the group health fund and we'll dive into the group health fund in the next couple of slides. Uh we have 3 million being uh proposed uh for combination of activities. Net force uh program uh FIFA any uh related to any expected expenses that may come up related to FIFA and then uh the Hazel Harvey Peace renovations and we've lumped all of those into that one category of 3 million. Uh and then finally, uh the library community arts project. Uh you just heard from uh Madori. Uh and we've set aside a million dollars, uh for that project. So now we're going to delve into the government funds. This is a draft document. Uh we're still in the midst of the audit. uh but uh as of today uh we're presenting uh the reserve requirements uh for all of the funds in addition to uh the general fund within the other government fund category. Uh all of the funds are within the reserve requirement. There's a slight uh issue uh with the golf fund uh where they are short of their reserve requirement by approximately 700,000 and that's related to a combination of uh revenues that did not materialize uh during the year uh and I think primarily related to the Metalbrook Golf Course uh and then some expenses incurred uh for design work relative to a bridge that needed to be repaired. um within the government funds uh the EMS fund and we we've set up a separate slide on EMS uh their their ending fund balance is actually 302 million. There's a pending uh M andC I believe set for the January 13th meeting where uh $10 million of that fund balance is being set aside for specific uses. uh that will then bring the adjusted EMS fund balance uh down to 20.7 million and that actually represents a 23.6% fund balance uh for the year which is uh quite impressive considering the major transition uh that we went through uh in starting uh the EMS operation within the fire department. Uh so basically the EMS fund is in really good shape. um you know heading into fiscal 26 uh internal service fund um probably the major area as we close out the FY25 financials uh would be the group health fund. We've previously discussed the fund at audit committee. Uh and as we end fiscal 25 uh we are approximately $16 million uh short of required uh reserve. Uh that uh 16 uh million uh will be reduced somewhat by the 3.1 million being transferred from the general fund. And then additionally, there will be transfers from all of the other funds uh within the government operation uh that uh will help to support the deficit within the help fund. And if you recall, the city allocated 3.1 million of its interest income several months ago. And so that total contribution from the general fund of 6.2 2 million will then be matched by all of the other funds uh within uh the city government. That will those two transactions will reduce that deficit down to 9.5 million. Uh obviously still significant amount that the city will have to deal with. I know HR is working on a plan. uh they've hired a consultant to assist uh in developing plans uh to resolve the deficit. Uh but at this point it's a pretty significant uh result uh for fiscal 25. Uh the risk fund has in the past been problematic. I believe three or four years ago it's sat at a 1819 million deficit and it's uh come into close into compliance. Uh but a lot of work has been done within the fund. Uh and uh we're really excited that we've been able to resolve some of the issues in the risk fund over the past several years. Uh the only other operation that's in a deficits uh situation would be the uh IT internal service fund and currently it's sitting at a $7.7 million deficit. A lot of that's the result of it being an operation within the general fund uh two years ago got moved into the internal service fund without a designated fund balance. And so that's an area that uh it will be working on uh to pres to provide to finance a three to fiveyear uh restoration plan which will obviously call for some additional allocations uh from the general fund as well as uh all other funds to resolve uh that uh deficit within the reserve requirement. But those funds each of these funds actually have cash. So it's not necessarily a cash deficit uh but it is one that we pay attention to because we see the importance of having a reserve established for each fund uh within city government. Uh and in closing, next steps would be an MNC would be uh on the January 27th council agenda. And that MNC would amend final budgets as well as make final assignments and commitments in regards to the FY25 uh operation. Uh so that and those efforts are needed and as we attempt to close out the annual financial report uh which is scheduled to be presented to the audit committee and then on to the uh council work session on March 3rd and that's the end of the presentation. >> Questions? >> Questions from council? >> Great job Reggie. I look forward to your performance. I as well. >> Council, that is the last of our formal presentations at this time. Are there any future agenda items or informal reports? Council Rebeck, >> I have one more other than the arts and culture office. Um about a year ago, I asked for um a door-to-d dooror um sales registration program to be established, and I want to know where we are in that process. Any other IRS or future agenda items? Council. >> Yeah. >> Yes. Council Nettles. >> Uh I want an IR on the My Forward app. Hearing a couple of complaints within the city about uh posting pictures, but the app is not doing anything with it. Uh and then my second one is an IR about the NPO hours. Any other questions or comments, council? >> Nope. Okay. Meeting is adjourned.