the same time our five-year contracts coming before you here in a minute but I'm glad we were able to do this it's been a you know we think that Fort Worth had a lot of towns have their own flavor we think Fort Worth has more than most those words were first uttered 45 years ago when the actor Jimmy Stewart Who Loved Fort Worth had a lot of friends here Dave to the zoo was active in aviation and he did a voiceover for a promotional film for the city well Tom Martins are who heads all our creator for visit Fort Worth working with Jessica Christopherson our head of marketing um said we need to use that voice over our new commercial so we've launched a new commercial called the unexpected City I think a lot of visitors you'll agree with me find a lot more here than they expected and we're already getting a lot of PR adage the national Publications covered it visitors are checking out our website and frankly record numbers and uh we wanted y'all to have some some T-shirts and really the campaign's just getting started you'll see more of that to come thank you for your support of the campaign councilman thanks so much thank you I have a remark I'm sending pictures to your wife so she'll know where you were today thank you councilwoman thank you all right let's move on all right next I'm gonna call up Diana Giordano to talk about uh the upcoming Citywide job fair Diana so Diana Giordano HR Director here with the city of Fort Worth and I also think Fort Worth has flavor we also have flavor in our career opportunities and it's more than just a job we say it's well working here this is our second annual career fair that will be held on Saturday April the 15th it's from 9 to 2 p.m and we're hosting it at the Tarrant County College South Campus it's in their gym facility we will actually be conducting on-site interviews for seven different classifications we have over 20 departments and offices from the city that will be represented on site and we are encouraging all of you to tell your family's friends everyone that may be watching to really reach out and participate in our Citywide job fair to learn about all of the career opportunities that we have with the city of Fort Worth I also wanted to share for a very short duration from 10 to 11 we will also have a professional photographer on site that will do professional headshots for individuals so individuals that are interested come with your resume in hand meet the different departments and offices and learn about the various opportunities with the city of Fort Worth thank you thank you next we'll turn to excuse me informal reports the first informal report is on the emergency alert system available for Fort Worth residents and Robert Medford is available if there are any questions just a rundown you know for those that are tuning in David if if we can get that looking for Robert is it here all right Valerie Washington's got it thanks Val and just uh describe uh you know what the alert system is about just to our listening audience please now um the alerts alert sign up uh via a web-based software program to receive alerts of different kinds they can receive weather alerts um I think there's um weather alerts what alerts that would come from the Water Department boil water alerts but different alerts at different levels they can sign up and to receive so there's options as they log on to the website as to the type of alerts and the levels they want to receive so signing up for the alert system is done only on the City website can you access it through the website but I also believe you can access it I believe we have another portal outside of the city website but honestly let me double check and confirm that with you but I thought there was an alternative website that you could use as well all right okay thank you oh wait I'm sorry Michelle Goode actually she's all right I've been a big part of us getting the word out on this software we actually got the um unique URL Fort Worth texasalerts.gov so they can go to that directly and we also have a link on the website perfect thank you both and thank you thank you the next and formal report is on is an update on the MedStar EMS repartization efforts and Ken Simpson and Valerie Washington are available and I think councilmember Flores wanted to make some comments right thank you David as you said we're recognizing the Ken Simpsons with us virtually in WebEx and uh let's see we have Val and who's joining you Val's on Chief Davis is he here um he should be on his way he will be joining um but I I can go ahead and get started okay well Val for the purposes of our discussion you know on reprioritization please start us off and give us a little background on how this occurred how it was recommended as part of The City Gate study that and the committee that was involved in getting this set up please okay Ken do you want me to start it off or do you want to that's great as you all are aware part of the city study recommended that we take a look at our Priority One responses um which are our life-threatening time-sensitive critical illnesses uh specifically the the suggestion was that that bucket was too large that we had too many calls falling into that uh we talked with citygate about the methodology to address that and try to get down a little bit lower to the uh truly time-sensitive life-threatening uh medical issues by using things like the vital signs of the patients that we historically found for the different EMD codes as the calls were prioritized uh things like ongoing seizures and and that sort of stuff and using that methodology we re-prioritized the system um so again that the priority One responses when a priority one response came out we had a pretty good indication that it was going to be a time sensitive life-threatening medical emergency and that we needed to send all the possible resources we could to that to maximize the patient's opportunity for survival we went live with that on March 1st we took this recommendation before the EMS system performance committee which is made up of interdisciplinary group of subject matter experts there's folks on there like Jessica Rangel who is vice president from UNT Health Science Center uh Bill Masterson who is the CEO from JPS uh David Cook participates on that who I think you all are familiar with uh all our fire chiefs or several of our system Fire Chiefs also participate on that on that panel um and and again so we after agreement we implemented the changes and started that process on March 1st on the methodology together so that was sort of the first point was if we were going to look at this what methodology would we use to determine which calls go into the priority one bucket it took a lot of conversations but it was really a group decision and consensus in determining that there was a lot of back and forth conversation and I think it really did establish a good Priority One Baseline that I think everyone would recognize continues to be to be reviewed this has been in place since March 1st so there are opportunities to look to see if there are anything if anything that we're missing are there calls that should do belong in a different priority category the IR references some modeling software that MedStar has purchased that will help even more hone into ensuring that calls are prioritized the right way Valerie this is either for you or Ken or both councils received you know some concern some input you know from fire the 440 in regards to the performance to date on the reprioritization right we've already seen you know a number of uh you know fluctuations in call you know volume at some fire stations and all and the concern generally going forward with any change is we don't want a negative impact on our critical response right can you speak to that right I would say we agree with that the whole purpose of looking at this is to ensure that we are being patient-centric and providing services and working with MedStar to provide those Services we do want to make sure all patient needs are being taken care of especially the patients that are most critical um I I think that that's I mean that's first and foremost being patient-centric and providing customer service to the patients in the way that they need it okay Ken can you weigh in on that too I'm sure other council members will have their own questions or comments absolutely so so we share you know we share those concerns that's that's something that we always want to pay a lot of attention to before we went through the reprioritization we would get a lot of concerns to the other side of it on the number of low Acuity calls uh that resources were being sent to and how that's not necessarily the best utilization of those of those resources and some of our and some of our municipalities um and so we we again really wanted to sort of drill down into the life-threatening emergencies and categorize those out if you'll remember there are in a 911 system we went from four priorities to eight priorities with one being the most critical and eight being the least critical um and and just to be clear like it's the 911 calls come in they triage these calls based on what the caller is telling uh telling the call Taker and it's it's through that questioning process and that they come out with these emergency medical dispatch codes to uh sort of categorize where the patients fall in the Acuity levels and so um we as Val said We are continuing to evaluate um as the calls go through to make sure they're coming out as we anticipate and troubleshooting any issues that come up to us to make sure that we have the process honed in as as accurately as possible we all agreed when we went through this that this process in and of itself would not do anything for response times we're still responding to the same number of calls um we're still responding with ambulances to the same number of calls it's just when something comes in as Priority One we have the ability to send more resources to it to try to again maximize that opportunity for survival so his concerns were raised we look into them and see if there are changes that need to be made and I I think as we've been sorry Ken as we've been working with the with the committee there have been opportunities for um Chiefs and other to bring forward concerns that they've seen with the changes I know I've talked with Chief Davis and he's keeping um just keeping track of things to make sure there aren't any major issues Chief and I don't know if you want to weigh in kind of on that quality check process that you have in place now thank you um I to to the point that Ken made any any concern that's raised from a fire company that actually is there that uh that they get they send that we forward it on the office the medical director and to Ken for the committee to to look at um there there have been some um that we have asked them to do additional quality assurance on but um you know those are the ones that we know about and so the committee's work is going to um to be asked to look at that you know I just want to State for the record I'm very uneasy with this as someone who has suffered a stroke had to call 9-1-1 Chief you remember my call they played it here I had to drag myself through my house by myself until I could get to the front door and I knew within minutes you know fire was there and so just for the record I'm very I'm not comfortable with this change at all fire is always first always has been and people know that and we can depend on fire to get there there seems like there's this this this battle between firing MedStar so just know that for the record I don't like it Fowler can curious why the IR now if implemented changes were just on March 1st so it's a pretty short amount of time to look at data and do you anticipate bringing these IRS for updates periodically every month or what what do you what do you think is going to be the trend honestly I think that as we're looking at MedStar and they're making changes like re-prioritization um we'll be working our Metro will be working with their board to bring about response time standards to this mayor and Council our thought was that we would have more frequent IRS provided by the MedStar team just because we haven't had them reporting to Mayor and Council as often in the past I think there had been maybe an annual update and we think that it's time probably to bring some more substantial updates to Mayor and Council as we're working through these policy items so we're anticipating more frequent IRS and presentations I think with this one we wanted to just let people know that this was going on we had announced it back in January we had seen some not significant changes but some of the reduction in call volume even for the first couple of weeks of this pilot caught our attention and we again we want to be transparent and sharing information with MedStar um in a way that I don't know if we've been as upfront in sharing information before thank you no I was just going to say I think this follows on The City Gate stuff about being more patient-centric about sharing more data and particularly as we go into the upcoming budget year and some of the I think choices that might be put on the table related to how we become more patient-centric is going to be important thank you Val you mentioned there was a lot of time spent on the methodology and that communication and can you expand on that a little bit more in terms of what it was previously and any changes that um you know you all decided would be beneficial because what my concern would be is the Reliance on the caller to make a determination about what the best dispatch is because we don't know what state that caller is in you know they could be Panic traumatized themselves and is there a way to understand how this new methodology can be incorporated with that thought in mind or concern and if you don't mind if I have um Chief Davis and Ken Simpson answer this question um when I got involved in the re-prioritization they had done a lot of that data work where they were looking at prior year calls for service um I think they looked at the different priority levels which calls maybe should have been in a different priority level but I think Ken and chief Davis could provide a lot more detailed answer to that question Ken Chief yep yeah yeah so um so to give a little bit of background uh we use an internationally recognized emergency medical dispatch um call triaging system and it has standard questions that are asked as the caller um calls 9-1-1 and to take them through essentially an algorithm that leads out to one of I think it's like it's two or three thousand emergency medical dispatch determinants to to help categorize those patients and we've used this for probably 15 or 20 years far far before I came to Medstar previously we had four categories or four priorities rather that these calls would fall into one through three were emergency calls forward in our facility uh and I can't exactly speak to how those determinations were made other than uh kind of what appeared to be the severity of the call on on its face basically how that how the emergency medical dispatch determined it was labeled um what Val mentioned was exactly right we took three years worth of data and said okay here's how these calls came through the emergency medical dispatch system and what determinant they ended up in and how did the patient end up when we actually got unseen how were they stable were they unstable we looked at Vital Signs we looked at lights and Sirens transport the hospital we looked at life's potentially life-saving interventions like putting a tube in their throat to help them breathe defibrillating their heart to get their heart beating regularly and um and look for commonalities in that and then set set thresholds like uh anything less than I believe it was five percent five percent or greater would fall on a priority one for uh ALS interventions and we kind of went through the the eight priorities like that and that's how we that's how we split those out we talked with the committee about this um we ran several different uh versions and um and that's that's how we ended up with the one through eight priorities and you know and like I said the the methodology the foundation for this is that emergency medical dispatch triaging program um that is used internationally a lot of other EMS agencies as well there are other brands that do very similar things but it's a pretty standard practice in the in the EMS industry I think the only thing that I'd add to that as far as clarification is that um you know Ken spoke about the dispatching software but then it was matched with retrospective analysis of patient outcome information and that's where the office of the medical director collated the two to determine as Ken said which ones um fell into the highest risk category where an intervention occurred that was going to make a difference in the outcome compared to those that were dispatched at a higher priority and once upon arrival did not require that so I think that's where the office the medical director's office balance those two databases to try to rectify that the additional point that I'd make that is you know to Ken's point there were three priorities previously they added priorities um primarily I I think you'd agree with me and and feel free if you don't is that a lot of that had to do with the national conversation about trying to reduce lights and siren use in ambulances um so some of these responses now are two categories basically of similar call types one where lights and Sirens would be used by the ambulance service one would be where they would not use lights and siren and drive with the flow of traffic you want to add anything to that Ken um it certainly it certainly separates that out with the with the lights and sirens and then the not lights and Sirens they did have again they did have different criteria as far as Vital Signs and lights and Sirens transport to the hospital um we did end up with more priorities uh really trying to make sure that we had uh metal responses as an example priority fours are uh lights and Sirens response um to motor vehicle accidents mostly for scene safety issues and things like that so there there was also the effect of if it's a low Acuity patient um it doesn't make a lot of sense to respond lights and Sirens to them so just one follow-up if I could um so the determination about what to be dispatched is that being done by a person or an algorithm uh a person puts the caller through an algorithm so it's a computer program that's that answers are typed in and and it comes out with a specific emergency medical dispatch determinant so the algorithm is is aiding and then I guess telling the operator what to do so yes in principle yes and that's happening at the MedStar end and then they make that determination from that determinant whether or not they send that request for assistance from the fire department over to fire to send a piece of fire apparatus um so that's that's how that's working that's how it's been working so let me add this I think in out of Good Intentions sometimes we create more questions and I think this IR has done that um and I might offer let's let's punt this for a future agenda item in the work session and really talk about this um I know Ken it's probably very hard to have this conversation in your car we've all been stuck doing that before so we'll bring you in person and um I think it goes without saying let's kind of just call it what it is there's a lot of concern over how we best interface between our fire department and MedStar because at the end of the day it's about patient care and everybody agrees with that and so in Fort Worth we want to have optimal patient care no matter what happens to you so let's get to that place and Elizabeth has a question then we'll close this out but it might be helpful too Val for you to kind of spend some time with each individual council member and then last thing I'll remind people we are still in the middle of and and councilmember Flores has graciously chaired this effort on Staffing as we prepare for this next budget cycle and that is really where a lot of these tough decisions need to be embedded but this Council has they want to be just as involved and making sure we're prepared for the next fiscal year so thank you thank you Elizabeth did you have any question I was just going to ask and it's probably more appropriate for the presentation when you bring that back um as I was going through this I noticed that there was also a it mentioned a decrease in the number of fire calls because y'all aren't assisting and so um I'd like to know in that presentation to what extent you're tied to Medstar so if MedStar has this new prioritization um are we Bound by that or can Fort Worth fire department say that and this is your prioritization but you know we choose to to continue this particular band of calls um is really what I'd like us to to focus on and if we can then what is our plan moving forward with fire department's plan moving forward with in conjunction with MedStar to make sure that we are providing that service we were provided with some data about how this re-prioritization has shook out and there were a couple of very concerning instances where if Fort Worth fire had not decided to show up the call would have ended very differently and I know that's some call taking and training experience um and we're not always perfect but if we can make sure that we are keeping our residents safe as MedStar continues to reprioritize I think that's the utmost importance to to me thank you if I may council member if you get anything like that from everybody if you get that to me I'll make sure it's up to everybody here to to to work with me on what you want how you want it okay thank you all right more to come the next IR is on Fair Housing exhibition Christina Brooks is available is there any questions I think Council mayor Pro Temp Evans had asked about this I'm I'm so glad to be bringing this to the city of Fort Worth and one person I told the mayor that we really need to make sure she knows about it is Ann zaida and then I first experienced this exhibit and it tells you about the history of redlining and so much more and for those of you who are not in banking I think you will find it mind-boggling and for people of color when I left the exhibit I just said oh I'm not crazy now that is still probably in question but this is a fantastic exhibit and I think Fernando thank you for pushing it through because we tried before we didn't have the money now we do have the money and we've got the right staff working it and so I encourage everyone to please pay very close attention to Miss Brooks and get ready for it exhibit that will change your life and may approach him I'll back you up on that too I've seen this exhibit in Waco a couple of years ago and so not only banking real estate because we have to go through these classes to understand and I'm glad you brought up and Zeta because she recommended a book called color Vlog that talks about this too and so for anybody it's pretty eye-opening to see and you can see the clear lines of Waco they'll take Fort Worth and do the same thing I think as part of this exhibit to show where um parts were not invested in or policies were put in place that kept people from investing in those areas and well let me tell you what makes it so great and Maddie you're going to laugh at me Dallas had this exhibit nobody knew they flopped on it and so I just want to see Fort Worth thrive in delivering it to people all around the area Mike thanks for those comments so go for it Christina maybe just give us an idea of when the exhibit's coming and where it'll be displayed thank you yes um thank you so much mayor Pro tem Bivens and councilmember crane and Council mayor so the exhibit is scheduled to run for two consecutive months um beginning June 2nd through July 29th the exhibit is interactive and it will be housed at the Community Arts Center at 1300 Gandy but what's a little different about some of the exhibits that you may be familiar with is the interactive conversations that take place to invite the community and multiple stakeholders including real estate experts developers and residents that would be impacted by our discussion around fair housing and more importantly affordable housing development as we grow as a city and so the idea is to Envision how we want Fort Worth to look going forward and learn from some of the lessons uh of the past so we're really excited about uh that aspect that's different from what Dallas did and what happened in Waco uh and so we hope to see everyone come out thank you Christine thank you next and former report is on the Fort Worth Public Library fill the bag event and my new Shore is available if there any questions let's hear from Manya let's work her as much as we can before she leaves here congratulations Vanya and what's your last name now hi everyone Manya Shore Fort Worth Public Library director yes I've I've had a momentous month that's for sure well if there's one problem that all public libraries have is that we don't know what to do with all the books and this isn't a problem that people understand they think we buy them and keep them forever but that's just not possible right we don't have space new books are coming out all the time and so it's always a challenge to figure out what to do with them because we don't want to throw them away so we work with a third party vendor for our adult books and DVDs and things like that they sell them online we get money back for that children's books do not sell so we decided we would try to solve a problem for our Educators in their classroom libraries because we all know that classroom libraries never have enough books and teachers often spend their own money on their classroom libraries so I'm a little nervous isn't that funny it's like the first time I was up here in front of all of you so in December and then again in February we hosted something called fill the bag and this was a bet an event masterminded by our by our new education and Outreach department where we welcomed Educators so that could be teachers daycare providers College professors school librarians anyone who educates our kids all the way up through college can come and fill a bag for free and as you can see in the IR the one that we had at the end of February we supplied 663 Educators with books for their classrooms that was over 20 000 books that we gave away which was a hundred percent increase from the first time we did it and we signed up almost 100 Educators for our special educator library card we're going to do it again in August so if you're an educator please keep an eye out for our announcement we want to fill your classroom libraries with books thank you very much that's great Manya thank you any questions from Anya not even one hard question for Manya nothing okay you're off easy thank you so much thank you next informal report is the January 2023 sales tax update and Richard Zavala is available if there any questions all right next informal report is a management diversity review update and Diana Giordano is available if there any questions follow-up hello thank you for putting this together I really appreciate it um there's a lot of really great information here and so I'd like the next step in this process to be an evaluation of um or a comparison of of how those different bands are paid to make sure that we are that we have equal pay amongst all of our employees in similar bands across the Departments and across the positions specifically I'd like us to look to make sure that we're paying women and minorities at the same level that we're paying our white male employees okay thank you thank you the next informal report is to authorize an amendment to an economic development program agreement with American Airlines and Robert Stearns is available if there any questions we're rolling next informal report is a contract Amendment with cdfi friendly America and again Robert Stearns is available if there are any questions next up is an update on the fiscal year 2023 mid-year adjustments for operating pids and the tourism PID and once again Robert Stearns is available if there are any questions all right turning to police the next one is assistance available to officers after critical police incidents and traumatic events in Captain Williams is available if there any questions Captain Williams good afternoon I'm captain Williams I'm over the Community Alliance division which houses um Crisis Intervention team homeless outreach program and enforcement police reserves and civilian response units and peer support how can I help can you tell us about your report just for the sake of the audience yes ma'am uh basically what cit's function is is to provide assistance to officers that's been exposed to a significant event which is any event that an officer is exposed to that may cause physical emotional trauma and affect have a negative effect on their overall overall well-being so critical CIT officer assistance by providing resources as far as getting counseling for these officers to ensure that they um are provided coping mechanisms to help them cope and get through the trauma the the reason why I wanted you to come up and Elizabeth knows more about this than I do but when I lived on a military town you know people in the service were less likely to want to seek that kind of help because they thought it might impact their ability to get promotions and so how do you avoid that type of hesitance within Fort Worth PD that's what we're trying to do is basically normalize and um normalize officers seeking help with getting through any type of traumatic event so we try to keep any assistance that we offer officers in a confidential nature unless it's involving a crime of involving a serious felony or misdemeanor but um we're trying our job is to try to keep these officers resilient and keep them in the workforce and get them back to work and to where they can be good officers and provide quality service to the citizens thank you Captain the next informal report is diversity of qualified candidates for the police academy and assistant chief Aldridge is available if there are any questions all right and then the final informal report is on flock safety cameras and deputy chief carbajal is available if there any questions I have one or a couple questions come on up good afternoon Dave carbajal deputy chief over tactical command thank you deputy chief uh just a couple of things one let's start off with a clarification just so that again our viewing public understands uh the contract that the city of Fort Worth has with uh flock to provide the security cameras it's it's for the service it's like a subscription it does not involve us purchasing Hardware per se that we would have to upgrade as technology improves correct uh no sir correct each year we pay for each individual camera or the software attached to it and if we decide that's not the direction that we want to go then we can certainly go another Direction okay and uh just to give you an opportunity to expound on the success so far that we've had with flock cameras and reducing uh some of our crimes uh I I know that in talking to PD it was able to make vast improvements the recovery of stolen vehicles for example uh HOAs and other neighborhood organizations that have adopted use of lawn cameras have reported uh you know decreases you know in property crime can you expand on that please absolutely it's a great program because what it does is it allows us to do the things like you just talked about get stolen vehicles get felons in custody stop the people that we need to stop but the best part about it is we touch nobody else so we're just going after the people that really need to get stopped and never have to come into anyone else's life that doesn't uh we have a very strong suspicion that we need to speak to them so that's that's the beauty of it in my opinion okay and then the last question that I have for you as part of the City Fort Worth contract and I don't know the answer to this uh there's a feature I think it's called advanced search uh that can be added you know to um to the suite you know Services provided uh does a police department have that do we pay for that advanced search option we have a really robust search system and I have to check on that particular one but we can basically we can enter anyone's license plate in there if it's someone we believe is involved in a crime or a car we believe was involved in a crime and here just in the Metroplex we have access to in the neighborhood of a thousand cameras and if we want to search we can search Nationwide so as as far as I know we're very happy with the search system that we do have but if that's another one we need to look into I can certainly go back and ask and get back to you councilman okay and then my understanding is that that advanced search also um has some kind of I don't know if it's an opt-in but an opportunity to also expand on that searchable database to look at uh ring camera footage for example and other things like that so if you can get back to the Council on that and let us know thank you sir definitely we'll councilman thank you appreciate you mayor that concludes my report okay Council any questions regarding significant zoning cases upcoming April 11th no any MNC log items that were problematic you need to bring to David's attention if not then we'll move to visit Fort Worth contract renewal with Mike Crum and Bob Jameson thank you mayor good afternoon members of the council uh we're going to start today's presentation uh with a little bit of context and and this will will help you understand where we've been with the culture and tourism funds uh where we are at the moment and where we hope to go if there is one thing that you remember from today's presentations uh is that none of the things that we are talking to you about today utilize either property tax or sales tax every investment that we plan to make that we propose to make that we'll be talking to you about making over the next several months comes from either our visitors through Hotel occupancy tax or through the users of our facilities through user-based fees so there will be a quiz on that later keep that in mind all right so where have we been uh everybody knows that the culture and tourism funds were the poster child for the impact of the pandemic on the city of Fort Worth the bottom fell out of the travel industry and thus the bottom fell out of hospitality tax Collections and it took a while for the industry to start recovering which it did in late 2021. uh we are now in a place where we see growth and stability in those occupancy tax revenue streams and so now we can start in Earnest uh to talk about how to make investments uh in Fort Worth's visitor economy which I'll uh remind you is worth three billion dollars a year and supports over 30 000 jobs in this community a quick overview of the culture and tourism funds there are five funds they are primarily supported by Hotel occupancy tax in some form or fashion they support seven businesses uh that the uh that the city is involved in um how do we use that money uh first of all we use it for operations and capital maintenance for the convention center and for the Will Rogers complex we also covered the city's Debt Service obligations for uh Will Rogers the convention center and for the city's portion of the Dickies Arena project we support visit Fort Worth through our culture and tourism funds and we also provide incentives for hotel development like your recent approval of the expansion of the Omni to 1000 rooms if you're thinking about how the dollars are distributed this gives you a good sense of at least in FY 23 what we're spending and where we're spending it and where the money is coming from uh in terms of projects uh that we have asked you to approve and that we'll be talking to you about in coming months uh we currently have 23.7 million dollars budgeted for improvements at the Will Rogers complex you have approved over 10 million dollars in investment in the Will Rogers complex since the beginning of the fiscal year we're about to sell the debt to fully fund the first phase of renovation for the convention center we're going to the market in May with a package that 43 million dollars of which is to go towards phase one of the convention center project the Omni Hotel expansion again a project that you approved some months ago will require 53 million dollars in 2026 and then today we're here to talk about the opportunity to rebuild the sheep and Swine Barn at the Will Rogers complex and we'll be coming to you in coming months with a conversation about other investments in the Will Rogers complex which sorely needs it and then the then we have to have a conversation about cracking the big nut which is phase two of the convention center expansion and just to give you kind of degree of difficulty uh in that when I arrived in Fort Worth in 2019 the total cost of that project was 377 million dollars so things have changed considerably over the past four years so where do we go from here so today we're going to talk to you about the visit Fort Worth contract which again is an investment coming out of culture and tourism we'll be talking about our public-private partnership to rebuild the sheep and Swine barn and then as noted earlier we'll be having future conversations about uh investment in the Will Rogers Memorial center and how to fund phase two of the convention center uh we have an approach on that we think that it involves bumping the occupancy tax by another two points there's a lot of ground to cover before we make a final recommendation to you on that uh but look for us to continue this conversation over the summer any questions on setting the table questions or comments from Council maybe just a thank you to you and your team Mike and to David I know that these are hard decisions this seems like a lot of money but again to reiterate this is not revenues from our taxpayers here locally this is our visitor tourism money that's on the table and these are projects while they may feel like they're in the concentrated in district 7 and District nine these are huge projects for the entire city so I know that your team's been a very thoughtful and special thanks for real Will Rogers we know how hard that project will be to execute on both what you have there and what else needs to be done to improvements there I think we can all agree Will Rogers is a unique Jewel for the city of Fort Worth so you have my full support yep thank you ma'am any other comments you're off easy Mike thank you okay well I I kind of feel like Robert Aldridge because I'm going to be standing up here for the rest of the afternoon right [Laughter] all right so I will call up my friend Bob Jameson to help me next president hey chief I love you but I had to take that one right he took it on the chin pretty well we can bring him up here if you want I don't mind I got questions he's got some Hospitality experience okay so uh first investment up on the slide this afternoon is an extension of the city's relationship with visit Fort Worth through FY 27 and Beyond come on now oh now I gotta go to the clicker all right I can do that okay so uh what we're going to talk about is that uh visit Fort Worth's agreement with the city expired uh on September 30th of 2022. we have not been operating without contract we have been operating under a one-year contract extension uh subject to your approval we have negotiated an agreement to extend the relationship and our proposal and you'll see why in just a minute is to is to have the new agreement supersede the contract extension Bob well let me start out by saying you know I appreciate the long-standing confidence and support that we have gotten from this body and uh certainly the collaboration that has come in the conversations that I've had with David Cook and his team Mike in particular as a partner for visit Fort Worth and as we've spent a good amount of time talking about this particular agreement reflecting on the fact that it was 10 years ago that Susan Alanis and I negotiated the agreement that were changing somewhat we're updating it because the world is of course a different place and and the world of Tourism and promotion of Tourism is a different place and we want to make sure that this is reflective of the work of the organization today and really speaks to those things that are part of part of our expanded Mission the foundation that was laid in that agreement allowed for us to grow our efforts and to reach further and to impact more people relative to um you know Fort Worth's story and we want to make sure that that effort continues um you know as uh Mike had said in his earlier presentation their couple of key statistics up there in front of you the three billion dollars in visitor spending and the thirty thousand residents that are employed by the industry all of us you know aligns with what we think is a major Focus for our city in terms of its quality of life and um you know as we have shared with you our focus is on Leisure Travel it's on convention travel we have expanded substantially into the Sports World and we have also expanded greatly into film as well as music and um and you know our efforts now touch uh you know the entire city limits um you know in ways that they have that they not always done and I think we're telling a much more representative story of the citizens of this community and the attributes of the city and were talking to a much broader operates audience in the process so what are we trying to accomplish with the contract uh first of all we want to update uh the agreement to reflect uh what it's like to operate in the destination marketing today and in the future we need to elevate Fort Worth's capacity to Market and Sell Fort Worth as a destination the growth of Fort Worth is a visitor destination is reflective of the growth of Fort Worth in general we're not anybody's kid brother anymore and this community is moving out from under whatever Shadow you want to call it and needs to be able to stand on its own two feet like 12th largest city in the United States should we need to try and address visit Fort Worth short-term financial needs while balancing those needs up against other demands on culture and tourism as we just talked about and also we need to continue to uh look at and embrace the opportunities to consolidate operations between visit Fort Worth and the public events Department as was described in the 2019 governance study and Gina and Carlos I think you're the only two members of council who heard that study so we need to get that get that out to everyone in the room so you know this is an ex this out lays out our current uh funding you know in fiscal 23 and so core convention and Visitor Bureau Corps visit Fort Worth activities are covered by the 10 million 834 thousand dollars there is uh additionally recognized in our contract a special public facilities fund and that uh assists in ensuring that we are incenting people incenting Meeting Planners to use the convention center and it provides other customer client support out at Will Rogers there's the cost of the Fort Worth herd which we manage um not covered in this contract covered in another contract is the tourism public improvement district and so we do have additional funding that is available to us in the form of 500 5 million four hundred thousand dollars which gives us a total of eighteen million dollars and change incenting means that if a client is coming in and they're trying to make a decision about where they're going to meet and they're contrasting the costs in Fort Worth versus the costs in anywhere else and um and you know we've got the opportunity to perhaps lower the costs of the rental space at the convention center then this is a fund that does that so essentially this money um goes you know is in our care we make decisions of it as part of the negotiation of a presentation or a bid to a you know but as we write that check it flows right back to Mike and back into the city coffers so I have a question about the herd real quick and you may or may not know the answer to this but do you know what the minimum pay we pay for like the men and women that worked the law we're at 17 an hour now okay thank you yes well everybody that doesn't take much I think it's 17 cents an hour that we make um you know other aspects of the of the agreement that are being posed are you know just outlining the difference between the current and the future is the term is another five-year contract it has two one-years extensions there have been times over the course of the history of the organization we've had Usos other times that we haven't um you know we have uh representation from two council members on our board of directors um you know not reflected on this list is that we also have ex-officio members um on our board which are you know the city manager and the assistant city manager over public events and then the director of public events um when we negotiated this one-year extension Mike and I and our respective teams really looked at simplifying the key performance um you know items the kpis because we had 34 items on there and it's really hard to focus uh you know when you've got a list as long as your arm and we really targeted the 15 that align specifically between the two organizations and um you know and so I think that is a better representation of our respective efforts in order to keep that building busy and to keep the hotels full um it says in the scope of services you know that current agreement we are responsible for sales and marketing for the convention center and Will Rogers frankly Will Rogers has a very specialized client for the most part we don't have that expertise so we have softened our responsibility for the sales effort we certainly have support UH responsibilities for those clients but um you know but this is really a reflection of the actual practice of how that facility is sold as opposed to the language that was previously in the contract so okay so let's talk about the financial aspect of the agreement uh where you're going to see change is first of all in sports where we double the uh amount of incentive dollars that we we use to fund visit Fort Worth again we've had great success in sports over the past several years so we're going to continue with that investment um the herd uh the herds uh Capital Equipment which they inherited from the transition from Parks to visit Fort Worth managing that program is aging uh and we have proposed as a public-private partnership to fund replacement of that that aging aging equipment the city's the city would do a dollar for dollar match with fun Capital fundraising from Friends of the Fort Worth herd capped at fifty thousand dollars a year uh you heard Mitch earlier in the day mentioned uh film this agreement includes uh uh Bridge funding in FY 23 for film uh visit Fort Worth and Robert Stearns and his team are talking about a more permanent funding stream out of economic development for film and FY 24 and Beyond and then uh really the the big piece of uh of the proposal is to loan uh visit Fort Worth three million dollars to fund their event trust fund efforts you may know that the event trust fund is a a state incentive program that brings help spring National events to Texas it is the Texas superpower when it comes to to going after events I know that because for 30 years I competed against it in Charlotte and beat my head against the wall every time we had to go up against the Texas City because the you had this ready ready-made incentive that did not take extraordinary effort to put in place so what we want to do is increase visit Fort Worth's Financial capacity to participate in event trust fund programs you have to invest up front and in many cases wait 12 to 18 months to be repaid by the state so there is a use of cash issue that we think we can solve through this three million dollar loan um this will Elevate visit Fort Worth's capacity to go after events that can utilize the the trust fund and we have positioned this as a rotating fund so as the money gets repaid it goes back into the fund to be used again and again and again questions about the trust fund okay uh yeah Mike um it may be worth explaining um how the events qualify for the trust fund just sure because there are some strings so there are there is a there is a hierarchy of trust fund events uh Fort Worth has uh 10 events a year that we can book regardless of their tax impact if we want to use the trust fund any event that generates more than two hundred thousand dollars in incremental taxes we can do an unlimited number of those under the current trust fund legislation and then there is something called the merp the major event reimbursement program uh which is for events that generate more than a million dollars in incremental benefit and that is the event trust fund on steroids we're one of the leading metros in Texas in terms of our utilization of the trust fund uh historically our our smaller inventory goes to support events at Will Rogers I I have a of course what really it starts with with a statement I forget the year but back maybe 2015 I'm not sure Bob you might remember but uh Bell Helicopter Lockheed Martin Rosa navajara with the chamber at the time so maybe before then and North Texas lead banded together and brought ship here and this is the society that that convention and those are Hispanic Engineers what I want to make sure is we I know you've got your resources your board members representing communities of color but there are a whole bunch of new people that you need to get connected with and I would like to make sure that there is a a good effort to bring those organizations representing people of color I think you know the akas the links you don't want to come here and just just know that we've got the we've had the capacity but it's all about knowing who's who in 2023 because who was who in 2010 maybe dead gone whatever but it's important to me that we use this to bring those people who spend a whole bunch of money and when ship came here I can tell you all of downtown was a buzz Carlos I don't know if you were involved at the time but we were Rosa had to make a trip on a Wednesday we forced Ralph Heath to say yes I'll be co-chaired by the time they got here those two CEOs had moved on but the companies were essential so you've got a lot of good partners who can help us bring even more and be reflective of the 12th largest city I like the muscle that from talked about yeah and and just for everybody's awareness we have two committees that have probably about nine or ten people each and one is the uh Hispanic Tourism Committee and the other is a black Tourism Committee focused specifically on those markets and we're using the term tourism you know in its truest sense which is not only Leisure visitors but it is also convention activity as well and so we've got not only you know so we've got people on our team that are part of that we work closely with both Chambers they're Partners in that as well as members of their board or other community uh leaders that uh of you know of all age demographics you know we've got you know plenty of young people in there as well as some folks that really you know have been Legacy leaders in this community as well and understand you know the importance of that those efforts well I I think there are some new younger people on this Council who would like to get involved in in some kind of way you know I think of the financial professionals coming I think it's called feed up forget that group but in as much as we can help please leverage us because I think you gain opportunities when you involve members of this council with the various trade organizations we are affiliated with absolutely thank you thank you may approach I would love to Echo your sentiments and this weekend is an example of what happens when we do that the Alpha Phi Alpha is celebrated their Southwestern Regional convention their 77th convention and brought over a thousand brothers from all over the southwest region Oklahoma Louisiana Arkansas and Texas hopefully we convince some to move to Fort Worth and maybe work for the city of Fort Worth as well but that's a testament of like the words you connect with our various organizations and diverse organizations across City we can bring some really special events that highlight communities all across our city so I completely Echo and support that and would love to serve in any way y'all want to put me to work thank you Gina thanks for saying that I am a membership and have been for uh you know since I was in underground I think Stella Martinez Stewart is working on a convention in fact I convention to get it here into town is that correct yes and we got a verbal definite from them good good you yeah okay so uh why alone first of all it increases visit four hours Financial capacity it gets trust fund Investments out of their operating budget and on to their balance sheet which is creates additional capacity for the organization it's dedicated so as a city we know exactly where that three million dollars is going which is to bring visitors and their spending and their economic impact to our Market um we can change the loan at some point in the future we can forgive it and convert it into funding if we so choose and we can also react to any changes that take place down in Austin that may affect the event trust fund program Bob has run this concept by his executive committee and I believe we're good to go with it yeah so what we've provided for you on the next three slides are a couple of looks at the funding for our competitors let me just say on these particular slides these represent data off of their 2019 990s we have um you know we have more current numbers for some of these cities that we can provide to you but it just gives you an idea of um you know Arlington Austin's San Antonio's Dallas and Houston's funding levels um you know the Austin is at this point really at about 18 million as well that is without a tourism public improvement district they're getting a tourism public improvement district so that'll probably put them at 23 24 million dollars San Antonio has a tourism public improvement district as does Dallas Houston does not so um so those are Texas competitors and then just looking real quickly at uh you know at a list of other cities to whom we lose business or compete with on a regular basis and you can see their funding levels as well most of those numbers are are fairly similar because you know from 2019 to 2023 because of the impact of the pandemic I would um so but it just tells you that it is a very noisy Marketplace it is a very competitive Marketplace and uh and uh you know and hopefully you're confident that we're putting the funding to good use last page is uh one of the largest cities and you can just see where we fall in the you know in that midst again 2019 990 filings so any questions on any of that so the source of the funding for the visit Fort Worth contract is our seven percent occupancy tax what we call fund 20101 and here just we make the point that uh the three million dollars is a one-time uh dip into that fund and does not negatively impact our capacity to meet our other obligations that come out of the seven percent so we are essentially done negotiating the agreement uh we're here today to brief you on the core deal points uh this is currently scheduled to come before you as an MNC on April 25th with that we'll take your questions from Council nope looks great thank you both great thank you appreciate it Mike stain because he has one more item yes ma'am not going anywhere Will Rogers Memorial center sheep and Swine Barn design agreement coming up hey chief Aldridge can do it I can do it yes sir you're good take your time okay so while we're uh while we're loading this up uh one of the things that I would start with observing uh is that what we're going to talk to you about now is one of those extraordinary Partnerships that I think makes Fort Worth special usually when you're in my seat as the venue manager and you have a core tenant the caliber of the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo it tends to be a one-way relationship where if the tenant is not happy they will come into your office and pound the table and maybe yell a little bit and if things are bad enough perhaps threaten to move that is not the partner that we have uh in today's proposal and so yep so I I think just an appreciation of how extraordinary this type of relationship is and the public-private partnership that it represents is is something that we should note and should appreciate do I have to keep talking okay so uh the uh so what we have today is that the the Stock Show and Rodeo and its supporting organization event facilities Fort Worth have approached the city to fund the next phase of barn renovation projects which includes a run a rebuild of the sheep and Swine Barn at the Will Rogers Memorial center this is an opportunity both for the stock show and for the Will Rogers complex to increase the quantity and the quality of the events that are hosted at the venue we good oh cool let's catch up okay the other thing that that we need to realize is we've been here before so uh we have done agreements very very similar to this to renovate cattle barns one and two and build the Will Rogers Memorial center Tower Promenade okay if you're thinking about the Will Rogers complex if you were to walk through the front door of the tower rub Will Rogers nose for good luck walk out the back door all the way down the street to Barnett Tandy drive and take a right the sheep and Swine Barn would be the last building on your left before you exited the complex um this is a rendering of a master plan that was done uh several years ago that contemplated that over time uh we would partner with the stock show and event facilities Fort Worth to renovate all of the facilities uh that uh host Livestock in the complex the building the original buildings at the Will Rogers complex opened in 1936 sheep and Swine barns opened in 1943. so the building has some mileage on it and it lacks some Modern amenities which restrict its use uh capital investment as we have talked about and we'll continue to talk about has been limited and this building needs a refresh so this is a good look of the uh the current state uh there's not a lot of flexibility in the state all of these pens are are permanent so the the spectrum of use in this part of the complex is very limited uh this is a floor plan of what exists today again uh all of these are fixed locations again which limits our flexibility so what do we want to do uh one we want to keep the historic front facade and then demolish everything behind it we want to build a new multi-purpose building that is ADA Compliant and not only can be used by the stock show but also by the Will Rogers team to host events through a broader spectrum of the year same time we want to get rid of the chain link fence on Gandy and put up the decorative metal fence that you you see along other parts of the complex between Will Rogers and Dickey's Arena we also need a new pedestrian entrance in that part of the building because to get people more easily between Dickies and the Will Rogers complex estimated cost right now is 40 million dollars this is a look at what the new complex would look like uh again the Arena conditioned with pens would be movable again which increases our flexibility we've looked at designing in uh flexible space so that some of our equestrian clients can utilize the space going forward uh and so this is just a a perspective view on uh what the uh what the building would look like going forward again uh embracing the history of the building embracing the history of the complex uh but with a modern feel so uh what we're going to ask for approval on uh hopefully on April 25th uh is to fund what is called a design procurement agreement so this involves events facilities Fort Worth and the stock show pre-funding design expenses for this project and then getting repaid once the debt is sold for the project which we believe is going to happen in November uh it would be a culture and tourism-funded project construction would take place uh starting the day after the 24 Stock Show and ending before the 25 Stock Show and then the Unique Piece of this is that the city and events facilities Fort Worth would share equally in The Debt Service payments on an annual basis again very similar to the agreements that we've done before um after the design procurement agreement then we will negotiate an extension of the stock Show's lease of uh of the Will Rogers complex which will include that that debt obligation we're here to talk to you today about this our goal is to have an m c in front of you on April 25th uh coming out of that then we'll negotiate the uh the lease extension one thing that we will probably be back to you with sometime during the summer as we did with phase one of the convention center project is some temporary Contracting some temporary funding capacity because we have a concern that there are long lead items that we're going to have to order this year in order to have them next year in time for construction uh will sell the debt in November uh start the project in February and one way or the other be done before the 25 Stock Show with that we'll take your questions we have a couple subject matter experts in the background in the back who have been very patient today so if you have any questions to them I'm sure they'd be happy to come the only question I have for Matt and Brad is why aren't they in the Home Building business I've talked to a few friends whose house is under construction for two or three years and if y'all can do that in one year that's very impressive so um looks great to me any questions from Council Leonard anything from you've been really involved in all this you feel good about it no I just uh would comment uh thank you Mike and Matt and Brad's leadership on this has just been tremendous and the vision that they have uh as just a piece of the puzzle out there that's so important um is just only going to improve it for you know the next 50 100 years that we're going to make use of it so it's exciting it's really exciting and and needed is I think the most important point okay thank you Mike we appreciate you thank you Brad Matt thanks for your team for being here today we appreciate you okay we're now moving to the briefing on the boards and commission transition recommendations following the May 2023 election I think Dennis is going to present along with Jeanette I'll go ahead and get started while they're getting the slides loaded uh Dennis mcquary city attorney's office as y'all are painfully aware of some of you the we're about a month out from the election for 11 council members now so we will be expanding in connection with that we will be expanding um some of the boards and commissions and so this is a mixture of some housekeeping matters uh probably some routine things and then probably some things for some discussion and feedback uh from the council regarding as we change the boards in commission so uh big picture putting this in context we have three types of boards generally some are appointed on a bi-district basis some are done at large and then some are appointed directly by the mayor today's presentation is focusing on that first group the ones that are by each of the districts so um obviously big picture there will be two more council members so for all these boards we would need two additional uh board appointees and then as we're doing that um we'd also be looking at revising the city code there are a couple of decision points towards the end of the deck that we'll have probably have some conversation regarding regarding Trinity Metro and then the boards of adjustment um 9 to 11 this is pretty straightforward uh all of your advisory boards that have a per District representation Aviation libraries Parks the recommendation would be to increase those from 9 to 11. uh same with all of the city created corporations where all of you sit on the board so the revising the city code um as since we're going into the city code anyway to amend from 9 to 11 we're proposing some cleanup there's an article in the city code regarding boards and commissions and it's got some general rules and one or two of the board formation instruments ordinances are there but not all of them so we'll be proposing moving the basic this is the board this is what it does this is how many people all into that one spot so that a member of the public wants to see what our buy District boards are can go to one spot and then we'd be also looking at um kind of beefing up the general rules that apply to the all the boards and commissions the city secretary's office has brought on Tammy Castillo who is focused specifically on boards and commissions which has allowed them to kind of beef up their efforts on board training uh board materials and so we'd be looking what's proposed is we'd be bringing back an ordinance to amend the city code for those changes on the boards and commissions and then also to charge the city secretary's office with developing training materials ensuring all the board members are trained developing standardized attendance currently the attendance on the boards is somewhat well records of the attendance are somewhat dependent upon the staff Liaisons so having Tammy and the city secretaries as a centralized Point they'll provide better information give them the give the departmental Liaisons for these boards the tools so they can keep better attendance and keep you all updated on a regular basis so you know if you have a board where your member is not appearing um and then another the kind of the first point where I think there might be some conversation is there was also a request for the city secretary's office to take a stab at general rules of decorum for the board members and the folks attending the board uh the city council we sort of look to the city council rules or procedure which have General um rules of decorum you know don't be abusive be respectable other people you're there to address the body those kind of things uh so the city code provision will simply say the City Secretary shall promulgate and then Jeanette's already started doing some uh consideration on that matter and the idea is just so that everyone knows the rules the road for these boards and commissions um so one of the questions one of the issues that's come up in some recent appointments is concerns about the lack of visibility where something will just appear on the city council's business agenda for an appointment and other members of the council aren't aware that it's coming forward they're often last minute so just to increase visibility and transparency what we're proposing is that if at a business meeting say next on next week on the 11th if you had a proposed nomination the week before as part of the uh the council grid the thing you see asking about mnc's there'd also be a one-page report saying these are the appointees for next week so it's really just to enhance awareness and visibility and also frankly it helps the MNC Center because they have some Advanced planning and they're not having to make last minute changes on a Friday for the immediately following Tuesday this of course is a council rule so if there's a true emergency and you need to put someone on classmate you could but the idea would be to get a weekly lead time um and then similarly to the attendance once we have the better records you all would get reports on a regular basis in a work session kind of like an IR that says what the attendance has been for all the boards and commissions for the preceding period um and then another place where we need to revisit our city code is our attendance-based sanctions currently we have those general rules I mentioned and what they say is if a board member misses three meetings out of 12 on a rolling basis um or misses a certain number within the last quarter they will get a nastogram from the city secretary's office and if they get two of those they're automatically off well as I said at the beginning we don't have the best consistent attendance records right now because it varies so much so we're not really taking advantage of that so we'd be revisiting that kind of making it clear attendance is important but really to make it more focused on giving the council notice of attendance issues so that you can decide if it's important to you for your attendee to be there can you um I'm sorry can you back up and repeat on their second um that that's what the code says currently is if you've missed three out of the last 12 you would get a letter from the city secretary and then if that happens again you'd get a second letter and you're automatically off the board but that's the current code and we're not really following that because we don't have the attendance records and that's a rolling 12. it's a rolling 12 or I believe it's or if you've missed three consecutive okay so what are we proposing the change to be well hopefully we will catch them uh a lot earlier than and be able to resolve them what we have done is started uh we've met with the staff Liaisons and so we've already implemented having them turn in their attendance reports within 24 hours after the meeting so that we can keep track of them and we can give you all notice up front if one of your appointees is having some issues so that you could reach out to them in advance before we get to a situation where we're looking at um if is someone being removed typically in what other cities have done is um my office isn't necessarily involved in the removal process my office is more involved in working with you and the board member to either resolve the problem or find a replacement so it's a little more um nicer approach maybe okay and I think when I met with you guys I also asked about um the ability of unexcused and excuse absence yes so we'll work with law there are some best practice out there is what is excused or unexcused so for example in previous cities I've seen where an excused absence is if you're sick uh we don't want you coming to the meeting because we don't want you spreading whatever it is you have so that would be but if you're on vacation that's not necessarily A excused absence that would be an unexcused absence even if they call prior to because I think some issue maybe was because they're not yeah and we can we can Define it as well as if did you give you know X number of hours or days in advance so that we can coordinate to make sure that we have a quorum right um so we can work that out and it can be whatever requirements you might want to place on your members but the goal is so that when the staff and the other board members show up to the meeting we know in advance that the meeting is going to proceed because you have quorum um or it's going to be canceled and so we can cancel it rather than making folks attend a meeting unnecessarily I thank you mayor I had um some angst a little bit about attendance first of all I understand the importance of having our residents attending these meetings because they are giving us invaluable feedback and helping us move the business of the city forward and also I think it's important that we recognize that these folks are volunteers as well that nine times out of ten are working professionals I mean so I think having flexibility with early dismissals or late arrivals and also excuse absences is important I mean I also think like for certain boards and commissions the meetings are really long and so someone may have to take off work I mean that creates challenges with it with them being able to fulfill and meet the obligations of attendance and so I really want us to be mindful of that piece as well When developing these policies because some of our meetings are just I mean it's a marathon and I know we do it on Council as well but our board and commission appointees they don't have always have the same flexibility but we those are the people we need to hear from and Jeanette I have two issues to to bring up we really try to get people to do this volunteer work for us I do have some reservations about someone being kicked off because they took a family vacation and I think we need to look at that and perhaps offer some more leniency there we can talk it through but uh my question to you is unknowingly early in my early years on the council I appointed someone who had committed voter fraud and I did not know that until I saw a mug shot you know in the paper we were able to change the application process so that if any type of activity like that was in this person's background it would Trigger action on on your part in your office do you still have that trigger mechanism so that if there is you know criminality in somebody's background will at least know we do have a question on the application I don't remember exactly how it's worded off the top of my head as long as there is a question on the application about as long as it's there it's okay but that's the reason why I was put there is after we after we talked I went back and looked and there is uh that question okay thank you I just want to say well I appreciate the distinction between whether the absence was excused or unexcused I don't really know that it's applicable here um because you know whether someone is sick or they just were on vacation they weren't able to attend the meeting I think the question as to why really should be between the council person that appointed them and um and that board member for the council person to make a determination if they feel like they are adequately representing the residents of District 9 or you know whichever appointed District on that particular board and so I don't know that the distinction is important to me um really just the overall attendance because at the end of the day say if someone um became you know had a severe illness yes sympathize for them for sure but we also have to continue to do the business of the city and so um the distinction doesn't matter to me I really would just like to know so that we can have that that conversation um and then right now that that removal is by right even though we're not enforcing it correct like it's automatic council person doesn't have any if we were to enforce it the way it's written now yes yes yes that is the way that it's structured currently okay and as far as I know uh I don't know if if it's actually ever been enforced I think Richard Zavala has a story about the last time it was enforcedure about everything um not all of us have been here that long so um but yes no I completely agree uh these are your appointees and that discussion should be between you and your appointee uh and not between me and your appointee and so I know we don't have a decision Point here on this um slide like you've got some other places but I think this is probably an appropriate decision point do we want that to be automatic or do we want Council to have um you know that ability and what does that process look like and so I'm open to just feedback I'll jump in that's a really fair point that you brought up and I would love to be able to manage my appointees if they're not able to meet the expectations you know I'm more than willing to have that conversation I think future council members will as well so it gives us the flexibility to manage that and to determine for ourselves whether or not they're representing the district that we serve I just have a follow-up on mayor Pro tems question of is that question still on there of criminality other acts lawsuits other things that might have if is that you said it's still on there but is that grounds for automatic removal if they lie to that question or don't disclose it no that would just be information that we would provide to you all and uh to Legal uh and it may come up when legal is doing their review um I do think that there's probably a more robust legal review that probably needs to be have needs to happen for some of the candidates make it onto there onto that and it's not just an automatic because we want it to happen but I would also not want to be embarrassed by my employee by some something that comes to light later because mine was on the front page yeah I think you can proceed alrighty so it sounds like the consensus is generally on attendance will come back with something where attendance gets reported and then it becomes an issue for the council member to determine what to do with that yes perfect all right and then the other area where I do expect there will be discussion as well they're not labeled as a decision point is the removal of other board other appointees other districts appointees um this was something that was requested on the one hand there was a concern that uh if account if a border Committee Member is problematic it obviously does impact and reflect upon the whole city even if the appointing member the appointing council member doesn't want to remove them so there's a request to potentially have that as an option and then there was also a request on the flip side of that that there'd be criteria for what constitutes a basis for such a removal so if uh Mr Firestone wanted to remove mayor Parker's a point he wanted to have mayor Parker's appointee removed it's safe because you're not running for re-election um but if he wanted to do that there would need to be criteria so we came up with these as proposed potential criteria as a basis for that um repeated or egregious violations of the rules to Quorum so people are just someone who acts out Beyond The Pale in a meeting or has repeated issues acting outside of the board or commission's scope I put this one on based on some past experience with the park board years ago when they wanted to relitigate something Council that already decided which is not if you read the city code about what the park board does that's not part of their function so if they insist repeatedly to get on outside of their Lane filing a claim or lawsuit against the city uh or an unresolved conflict of interest related to a border commission function so if someone has one and it's either not disclosed initially or it's disclosed and they refuse to address it and they continue to violate that those could all be bases again this would be a council member in conjunction what I was kind of envisioning was something along the CP process as far as four council members the third of the council would have to ask to have that person removed and these would just be criteria so that it's not at the uh open discretion of the people who seek and to remove someone else's so this was just something again for discussion yeah I think it's pretty Broad it needs to be narrowed down a little bit especially when you talk about the violations of rules of the Quorum uh because we all this city has different cultures and the way we talk in certain settings and sometimes your your look out of it as a violation of the quorum maybe completely different for mines and so I think you there needs to be specifically things maybe cursing or um shouting out loud at a certain level you know uh towards someone in the audience I mean I think you need to really if we're going to put a criteria in there you know it shouldn't be broad I think that's just really Broad um yeah I agree with Chris maybe one suggestion might be similar what we're just talking about how it comes back to the council member that appointed is a formal notification process either by staff or a fellow board member commission member to let that particular appointees um councilmember know hey this happened we just want you to know that needs to be a formal process and allow that council member some time to look at it themselves and and bring it back then to the city secretary's office for whomever because at this point this does seem a little gray and maybe that will allow the council member some time to look into it themselves because oftentimes that's all you need to do is let them know and they need to have a conversation with that person so it doesn't rise to a repeat occasion um I I agree that's thank you for saying that because that's along the lines of um where I was going with this as well I think it's probably best practices to have some sort of a formal process for removal in the event that we do have something egregious or um you know find ourselves in that position that we make sure that it's fair and Equitable in the way that we applaud apply those rules I think the first step in if we're going to have a removal process I would not be comfortable with that process if it didn't first start with a staff recommendation so the board chair and then whichever um uh you know Department oversees that or um in maybe even something from legal as to you know which rules they specifically broke or were allegedly broken and I think that report should be transmitted to um Council first before any discussion is made what I don't want to see um is the CP type process where I can decide that I don't like um you know councilman Crane's appointee for whatever reason and even if it's even if we need three well I mean it's not hard to count to three at this table and it'll be even easier once we get to 11. so I don't want this removal process to to be used as a sword and political gamesmanship sword fighting amongst council members and so um I would be okay with that but I think the ultimately the person that needs to make that decision is the council person not other members of council it's their appointee councilmember back one of the things we have started doing um and our meetings with the staff Liaisons and as well as with a couple of the boards that we've been invited to and we're going to try to get on the schedules for more of them as we go forward is just letting the staff and the board members know if you're having an issue um let the city secretary's office know because we can be the neutral party um and we might be able to help you resolve it but if not then we can communicate that to the appointing council member so that they're aware of it so you're not taken by surprise and you can address it and so we're just you know that's kind of a New Concept here and so we're just trying to reinforce um use us as a kind of a communication venue to help kind of resolve some issues that may pop up um and or let us let the council members know so that they're not taken by surprise so that seems to be well received so far so as always you need clarification Dennis I know so sorry so it sounds like there's a general consensus that we should track whatever criteria we end up with report that back to the council member who appointed first so that they're aware and can deal with it uh then before it progresses any further than that it would be a staff recommendation regarding the criteria for recommending for removal but then I think Ms Beck's proposal was somewhat different than this basis which is and I I use CP simply for the math as far as it would be a third of the council but it would require four council members it sounded like Ms Beck was saying no it'd still have to always be the appointing council member so I don't know if that gets at what the original request of the overall intent was or if everyone's comfortable with that just being the appointing council member I mean I would hope that everyone at this table and anybody that would join us at this table or anybody that would Place us at this table would um heed a staff report I mean if we're receiving an official transmission that says they have you know there's some misconduct in the council person chooses not to replace that um that person on their border commission I think that speaks more to the council person's represented representation of their district and um and their voters should should act accordingly I I agree with you on that too and I would say I think if the behavior got so egregious that other members on the committee were wanting to quit and do and so we we other people were going to lose their appointees I think there's probably a process that we could still bring it up to even if there were some obstinence from the council member I mean if it's becoming a bigger egregious Behavior I'm just asking Dennis for guidance there and and before Dennis joins us what year I'm also hoping that by developing some training that the board members as well as the staff liaison would go through some of this will be addressed um at that level because they'll have a better understanding of what their role and responsibilities are um and especially for the chair we're going to develop some training for how to manage a meeting uh and so hopefully that will also um kind of add some structure where the chair is comfortable of interjecting and if there is an issue that arises during a meeting and you may also consider giving them additional information as board members on who to come to initially if they're concerned I mean they can obviously go to their appointing council member they could come to the secretary's office and go through this process so they feel like they're reporting it to someone when they're concerned because it may not maybe things are not publicly seen anyway yes yeah and so that's one of the the conversations we'll have with them is just as staff could report something to me board members can report if they're having an issue either with a board member or with a staff member because either way we want to be able to identify the problem and see if we can find a resolution to address it and so that would be the ultimate goal thank you something that occurs to me as a possibility regarding Mr Crane's question is uh again if staff's tracking the criteria whatever the criteria end up being as far as bases for removal they informally would notify the appointing member and then after the staff recommendation we could have something reported at the work session regarding a formal recommendation for removal from staff and then whether someone acts upon it or not it's out there for the world to see that's true I don't know if that public shaming is what you're going for but I just trying to think of a way of tap is that a workable yes okay okay so the two things that were labeled decision points that were not the only decision points obviously uh training Metro so training Metro the fort Transit Authority has a an 11 member board but only eight of those appointments Belong To The City since the 1980s basically since Trinity Metro came into existence we were able to do this on a bi-district basis but now that we're going to 11 we can't do that and we'd have to go down to Austin to expand for each of you to have an appointment so what's proposed is to follow a model along the lines of what we do for the human Relations Committee where there would be General criteria we're looking for and what constitutes that board and that's on the slide after this and folks whether it's the members of council members of the public anyone who says hey this person would be great for Trinity Metro they could funnel that information to the mayor and the mayor would kind of be in mindful of the criteria of trying to keep it balanced and uh diverse board and staff would assist with the actual vetting process checking folks uh Bona fides and then similar to what we do now the Trinity Metro is a reappointment every September so sometime late August or early September there'd be a list at work session of who's recommended and then about the following week uh again kind of using hrfc as the model where the mayor's kind of taking the big picture look at what the city and the transit authority as a whole to keep everything balanced and so the proposal for the criteria regarding the board is that we're trying to have a diverse and qualified board and we want to make sure that we are taking into account on the one side both the business type uh activities and experience and then also uh knowledge awareness affinity for the issues that Trinity Metro deals with the people who are using medical Transit the people who are Transportation disadvantaged people who are inside the loop outside the loop employers trying to balance all of those things and so uh those would be the plates that the mayor would be trying to spin and keep balanced if that's a agreeable proposal since we can't stick with our current model I mean I'll jump in and I'll um I think it's important especially when Transit is uh huge for our city and which we have a new president that's going into a different direction and so we don't want to uh we want to make sure that whatever we do here the city supports uh the Trinity Metro I don't see it in here but I know it was just kind of decision we made the mayor had made is having council members sit on there I don't know if that's still your idea moving forward I think it does kind of work a little bit now because Michael and I are able to um advocating we can answer some questions right at hand while we're sitting there in the room and so I think we still should move with that model um I think this is a certainly a conversation that should be maybe in the work session maybe a couple of times as we lead up to September having a group discussion about what these names are who they are and what their resumes look like um I think the mayor you're well capable of pointing but I think we have a group discussion because different East Side Southwest and all that kind of stuff I think it's a great method so what I'm asking for is more robust work session one or two prior to September reappointment and if we want to even discuss um time frames you know how long servants ship should be I mean because do we want to change the member every year versus what we have done is Council reappointed certain people year after year so just throw that out there yeah and I think it's going to take a little bit of time to get used to because you're obviously going to have more council members than appointed members on the train Metro board with our additional Council so we want to make sure that everyone feels like they're having a say and who's being appointed because we don't have you know Chris can't appoint some Elizabeth can't appoint somebody maybe one option might be to also utilize our transportation Mobility committee and you know whatever applications come in the mayor's office is considering have them go through that committee so there's more transparency and input there from that committee and then it can come to the work session broadly so maybe two steps there might be helpful and then each of you need to kind of think about if you're if you have an individual that's appointed right now technically you don't each have an appointment next time and so how do we best communicate that to our individual appointees to make sure it's a city-wide approach and this is going to take some getting used to at least for now because we only have that number of appointees so Elizabeth I really like the idea of the mobility subcommittee doing that just like legislative or boards used to do judges and whatnot um someone who sits on that particular committee I think it would be helpful for those of us that will be making that recommendation I'm assuming it would be a slate to Mayor and Council and helpful to everybody here that we collectively come up with some criteria for what we're looking for on that board and so if it's if it's highly particularized in a um in the realm of you know someone to represent certain quadrants of the city or certain sectors of the city you know it's some sort of geographical requirement maybe um much like you do on the HRC I think it's analogous to that but I think that would be helpful for that committee to then vet any of those potential names against and then also it because we're not going to have a one for one I think it's important that those criteria be written down and communicated to everyone at the table so that if your nominee you know if your nominee is the one that didn't make it um we can speak to why and and it takes it out of that political process yeah Michael and Jared um I like the quadrant idea I was going to also say in the process it may be helpful like if for example there was quadrants if councilman wears that overlap in the area we're able to submit you know letters of support for the committee or whatever body is reviewing these to consider um that way not only do we have input on the criteria but we can also vouch in the process for you know one or multiple candidates to the process uh thanks for doing this Dennis and mayor for bringing this up I after the last two years of serving on the board I like this idea too that we're looking at the end users a lot whether it's Hospital districts Etc looking at people that really have a background to serve on that board they might have a transportation background Etc so we can look at quadrants Etc there's obviously lots of ways we can do this but I think if we're talking about a really robust transit system it's more of a global look at what that board looks like and who sits on that board and we do a lot and we should continue to do the the users that need the system but we also need to figure out how to reach out to Choice Riders because that's what's going to make it more robust overall so I like this direction that we're going that's a little more and we'll figure out what that looks like what committee it goes to what it looks like overall but I like this idea that we're looking at more globally at the system and people sitting on the boards but we'll see how that will look forward to this progressing thanks Dennis all right and then the last uh the last decision Point has to do with our boards of adjustment um we currently have technically three we have uh Alliance Airport commercial and residential the alliance and Commercial are dual appointees as I understand it this is this is something staff has recommended currently the commercial Board of adjustment has a relative carries a relatively light docket and they schedule uh generally in the mornings so they often will be done you know they do work session for an hour in a meeting for an hour sometimes less than staff and everyone's waiting around for the residential which Jens to carry a very heavy docket and so then residential is often trying to get through things in a crunched manner the thought was if you combine them to one board it's not the resulting board wouldn't have that much more of a burden whether you appoint people who come from commercial or residential wouldn't be that much greater than what the residential board is currently carrying as far as far as their workload and it would allow that meeting to potentially move up earlier in the day so that it's a little bit more convenient for the board members because the residential Board of commission often while they get done uh generally by their set time some timeline technically they could push things to the following meeting which can back create a backlog and they also uh sometimes do end up running late so this was just a thought of collapsing those two and if you wanted to have kind of feel that out more Dana is available for further questions but that was kind of the thought was that the commercial is being staffed and scheduled but isn't a huge volume so if it got if it got collapsed they could that workload could be carried by the one board foreign so I I think when I met I didn't uh like this idea I made a couple of suggestions one was to switch the boards so the residential will be in the morning and the commercial will be in the afternoon to better uh fix that issue or to even change it to a different day um one of the issues that I had is when you uh residential and Commercial there's different rules and guidelines for whatever it is and so you're going to cause one individual to have to learn both of those rules and regulations as well as again them being volunteers um if the residential is going to be long no matter what you're going to cause them to do Residential and Commercial I think that is a heavy pill and burden on one individual um and so um my appointees I had selected from their background to represent on this board and so one has commercial one has residential experience and so when you when you do that think you're empowering one person way too much so I don't I think we should try to keep it separate um reverse them or put them on different days those that's my thought pattern counsel anybody else I mean that's amazing I actually I'm in favor of collapsing them I I think that councilman Nettles has a really valid point about learning the two different standards my guess is most people have to be taught those standards upon serving on those boards to begin with my guess is also and there's some folks here that maybe can answer those questions um might be looking at one or two right now um but those standards are communicated before a vote is taken right like we're not just putting folks on boards and then and saying vote particularly the boa because that's a legislative body so can you kind of walk us through that discussion sure thank you Dana bergdoff so I wanted to let you know that uh most cities have one Board of adjustment Fort Worth is unique in that during the building boom of the early 2000s we broke it into two a commercial board and a residential board and at that time we had well over 400 cases a year so it was defensible to have them separated um and to your point councilman Nettles they actually at that point even met on different days we went through the recession we also made some changes to our zoning ordinance to help I you know address some of the frequent variances so they wouldn't weren't variances anymore and then also just the board's been more careful about adhering to the zoning ordinance and the criteria that are required for a variance to be considered so in the last couple of years the number of cases has dropped down from 400 say in 2015 down to about 150 a year so it's really not that heavy of a caseload for the residential board or obviously the commercial board either the other piece to understand is that the the rules it's all one set of rules it's just zoning ordinance so they're all dealing with height setback and area for the most part that's all they're dealing with Heights that back in area so it's not what where you see the difference is we actually end up with some biases in the way the board members are treating cases whether they serve on the commercial board or whether they serve on the residential board and so you tend to have more restrictive thinking and decision making on the residential board and more permissive thinking on the commercial board and so that's a question of whether you want to keep those biases um or or if you'd want to merge them together and have sort of the thought process be diverse based on the appointments from the different council districts as opposed to just the kinds of cases that they hear so in any event the the idea of keeping them separate is certainly up to the council if you'd like to do that we will we will definitely do that but we were looking at again just Staffing and and efficiency as a way to go back to one board which had been our practice some years ago Gina yeah I've served on boa before and we have to get this one right because those decisions are not appealed to council they go to district court and that's very serious boa can be a hall and I'd be more interested in not the number of cases specifically but the duration of the meetings because if you're going to combine people need to be able to plan their lives and so I agree with your recommendation but I also just wanted to make sure this body remembers these decisions are appealed at the court level and so we're costing people more money but you know whatever decision comes up I don't I don't feel strongly one way or another but just know that we got to get this one right Dana I wanted to ask you something having served on the BSC I think that's another uh valid comparison to make you know BSC cases have fluctuated over the years they tend to be on the uh on the higher side of things what are they like now because be a you know BSC the billing Standards Commission is a quasi-judicial body and they make decisions too that are not recommendations that go to council and you know the genus Point can also be you know uh appealed at the court level right so the just looking at a couple of recent agendas it looked like they had maybe 20 to 25 cases a month uh whereas the board of adjustment total is 10 to 12. no they're not even that many yeah and BSC handles both residential and Commercial correct and again it Springs from the same ordinance correct so it's a manageable caseload well different ordinance sorry building standards building standards are a different part of the city code but but you're right they're the same minimum standards yeah yeah okay thank you I do want to just jump in and say although the case low may be different the time the discussion of the cases is what makes it go longer so I don't want us to make a decision because the caseload is smaller because I have talked to my appointee and spend sometimes at least I think I told you the last three or four times they was there five or six hours and uh this and you know uh sometimes they deal with transportation and trying to get back and forth now and picking up kids at three o'clock in the afternoon so I I'm just not comfortable with combining them I don't I don't know if that that uh makes the best sense but I'm just one vote can I count to three or four here you'll make dinner so I will just actually Echo Chris and Gina's concerns uh I I have uh reservations about combining uh for for the reasons already you mentioned this is quasi-judicial uh I I think we need to keep find a way to keep these meetings shorter keep people fresher because decisions are so important I would look at and see if there's ways maybe to coach the boa residential a little bit so they can tighten up their meetings and tighten up their discussion and that may make those a little less burdensome as well but but I would exercise a real caution and and making dramatic changes here I'll be the fourth so I think I think there's a way to maybe combine some concerns I I think what Gina said is most poignant this is probably at least in my experience at City Hall these Boards of adjustment meetings when something happens usually the most contentious and high profile because they're quasi-doo Jewish say the word Queen judicial there we go spit it out um and so I think if there's a way to combine them I think it makes a lot of sense I understand why length of beating is is a concern for people that want to volunteer and serve on this committee and and um and furthermore how do you create I think the overall we need to better understand what's going through our boa and boc and and making sure we're doing our part to appoint people that are really prepared for that type of appointment because it is um pretty significant time commitment and it takes quite a bit of time I've talked to people so you feel comfortable Gina could probably speak to that to feel comfortable making those decisions it takes a while um going through along with staff so maybe bring this back to us and let us kind of reconcile some of this conversation sounds good thank you I'll just add this as an aside you know every time I pass by the corner of Oakland and Meadowbrook I'm reminded of the case that got that that sign there it took us I don't know I can't tell you how many hours and when I look at ice houses on the parking lots what used to be grocery stores we were really at odds with that and so those decisions are quite serious and the idea that you know you're forcing someone to have to go to court because of a decision that a person not so qualified participated in it's a burden it's a burden so I hope we just we got to do it right thank you appreciate it so that was it as far as the presentation goes uh I will get something drafted up and circulated out for folks to weigh in on particularly on the attendance and some of the other issues that were points of discussion it sounds like that draft will not include Boa at this point thank you Dennis appreciate you we'll also a place in line sorry y'all next up is an update on litter abatement activity and street sweeping Brandon you're not Cody Wittenberg hello oh I know I know uh Lauren and I are giving the presentation today that I'm medical leave and we weren't sure if I would be back and I told Cody not to worry about it and uh not thinking about today's agenda and him being listed however I will say I think in the future updates we should get both Cody and Jim Kiesel from Solid Waste uh today's my day to brag about them and all the other departments and I think it was a great opportunity moving forward for them to brag about their staff and their accomplishments so this will probably be my last uh litter and and solid waste update for you and the rest will be giving down to Cody and and James so thank you for having me here today to give this because there's lots of things to brag about uh as you know as part of the fiscal year 23 budget strategy uh the city manager set a very clear course that we were going to have a safe and clean Community uh and we made a number of improvements in the budget in order to do that in the case of litter uh we took uh a fee increase in the environmental fund uh to add some additional staff including contracted litter Crews equipment operators Auditors to make sure that that that our contracted crews are doing their job and then we added some water quality experts and I got a couple of good slides here down the road kind of talk about why it's important to have water quality uh folks in with litter because everything that starts on the street that doesn't get picked up goes into the storm sewer and ends up uh in our our lakes and our streams and places like that uh important to all of this was that we wanted to make it where we had a goal of measurable and noticeable results uh by the second quarter we actually had a lot of these done by the first quarter uh but we Consolidated both the first and the second quarter into today's report um and in that um maybe some high level uh good news for you uh or just news for you is we implemented the new the new program on October the 1st so in the first 11 days of this budget cycle uh we had already gotten a contract in place with a private street sweeping outfit to start sweeping the streets uh and I will tell you I see the street sweepers many of you around the table if not all of you have seen the street sweepers uh it's a very visible thing people get real happy about you know we keep talking about having a game uh where you spot the street sweeper and you get a bingo card and uh get a line in a row and you win we'll figure out how to do that and then by the 25th of October we had in place our up Spire litter crew abatement plan uh and contracts that calls for Ted Cruz this is where we use folks that are either homeless at risk of being homeless uh or at risk uh it could be people that are prior offenders that are just getting out of jail or because of Prior offenses or having a hard time finding jobs that this is a great program to introduce them to a work environment and succeed so it not only gets the litter picked up but provides a path uh to a much better life for the the workers that are involved in the program we have a couple of special quarter quarterly events that we do first quarter we would hit Polytechnic Heights and Carter Riverside and these are ones where you know one of the benefits of having environmental solid waste and code all in a single department is those are the three big litter departments code does the private property solid waste does a lot of the pickup or contracted with the lit up and you have environmental who does a lot of the policy and education so we were able to use the code officers and get that Synergy of of working with the neighborhood folks to get volunteers to come out many of you I know uh council member Williams that you know we have the Dr J stuff uh out out in the neighborhoods uh and and cleaning things up and we would encourage um any and all of you uh to work with us to have additional uh cleanups in your area but I'll tell you we're already out there doing it and we'll continue to do it I'll tell you what's really cool is is and we did this there was a lot of departments that stepped up to help us uh parks and and Recreation was one of them you know they mow during the the spring the summer and the fall and as part of mowing they also pick up the litter on the medians that they're mowing but in the winter time when they're not mowing the litter is not getting picked up so they have worked with their contractors uh to go ahead and work through the winter months and when there's not mowing that needs to be done then they're picking up the litter uh and that's just that was a great idea on their part um and and it's working real well we did implement the new rates on January 1st so we I had three months of educating the public and the news of course hit residential commercial and Industrial customers there were some questions that came up but I wouldn't say there was a lot of questions it was more about what is the fee and what it's paying for and once we explained to them it had been since 1995 since the rate was increased and that we're working on litter and cleaning up the city uh people got behind that real quick abandoned shopping carts you know we just had that approval not too long ago goes into effect July 1st we're already getting a lot of input from neighborhoods and concerns and and working with us to make sure that we're educating the stores in their area and working towards uh having a more compliant store Base number one and then number two for those that aren't complying to get them uh in in order in very short fashion so in the second quarter um here's some more of our our special monthly cleanups uh the one I really want to to call out is on March 11th Mr Lake Como uh bandalon and there's a picture of it it's the middle picture there and what it is is this is Lake Como so imagine um Camp Bowie Boulevard and you don't think of late Como and Camp Bowie Boulevard but you should because when there's litter along Camp Bowie Boulevard there's not a lot because there's a PID and and other things right but there is litter when it goes into the storm sewer it goes through all those points and where does it end up Lake Como so working with Neighborhood Services to work on some grant funding cdbg funding to fund this and then working with our partners over at Parks and Recreation to maintain it we have this band along in in Como Lake and so what it does is at the inlet where this water comes from the storm sewers there's a big V and so all these floatables go into the big V and then they go into this this catch which essentially binds up all the the floatables and allows the water to go through and then periodically Parks will go there and empty the floatables out and we'll dispose them properly at the landfill that's really cool now this is also a pilot project because there are other lakes and other water bodies streams and others in the city that this may provide some more help on getting the litter cleaned up March 21st here this is just recently we ordered 12 street sweepers remember you gave us 10 uh as part of the the budget this year we had two old ones we were able to work the money and volume and get all 12 get the two replaced and get 10 new ones we keep hearing about 18 to 24 months because the supply chain our our vendor that we selected believes that they can deliver them to us before the end of the year I'll be happy if we get them in the first quarter of of 24 but if we can get them sooner that that would be wonderful and again that will enable us to do um even more street sweeping code and tpw collaboration this is really cool and in a minute I'll turn this over to Lauren to talk about her collaboration with um the the state because we know most of our complaints that we get into the council into the manager's office the mayor's office or about the state highways much more so than than city streets but one of the things that that we found out was when we started putting the contractor streets we papers out there is we haven't been street sweeping so there are areas in town where you can't even tell there's a curb because there's so much mud that accumulated that grass grew and it grew and it grew and now now the street sweepers when they go through they can't get it cleaned up because it's not loose rock or loose litter it's actual dirt and grass and things like that so we're using our equipment operators that would drive the street sweepers that we don't have yet we're using them to work with tpw to borrow their equipment so when they have skid loaders and other equipment that they are not using we pick it up and then we go and we use that to clean out the big dirt and the big debris that's in the in the gutter so that the street sweepers can do a better job as they they go around that's that's awesome and then of course the Cowtown cleanup um we had 5 300 volunteers this year that's really good it's it's not as well as pre-pandemic I think we're around 7 000 pre-pandemic but that's one of those things where we did it every year year after year and it was handed down generation to generation and then we had that pandemic lapse and then there there's that break and so it'll take us probably a couple years to get those those numbers back up uh this is a really cool slide I'm not going to go over all the numbers I'll go over the top one seven million three hundred and forty four thousand pounds collected to date um since October 1st this fiscal year that is that's a lot so if you look at last year for the whole year we were between three and a half and and four million pounds so we've doubled it already in the in the first six months and and we're just we've just ramped up now we're getting into the summer months we'll be doing even more of that our goal was 11 million five hundred thousand pounds for the year uh we believe will more than exceed that so we're we're ahead of of where we Benchmark and where we thought we would be and to some degree and I'll talk about this again here in a little bit but to some degree some of that is because the number of illegal campsites so remember as part of your budget uh we added a second hope team to deal with some of the homeless camps and and homeless dumping and litter and things like that because they're getting to more of the camps and they're getting to them more frequently uh that means we're doing more cleanup so that means more pounds of cleanup more litter in the long run what we should see is that will drop off right because there won't be these big camps that that will be there for a longer period of time generating the amount of of waste that they have in the past this is really cool this was staff driven so when we got all these new resources um instead of doing this point to point where someone calls and complains and we go or one day of the week we go here the next day of the week we go there what we what staff did is they came up with this quadrant so it's broken up uh into four quadrants so Monday through Thursday based on the different colors in each quadrant that's where we put our contract Crews our street sweepers we focus our illegal dumping Crews and people like that and the reason why we do it is we go into these areas we do this this big cleanup to the best of our ability on that day and then they move to the next quadrant the next day but the quadrant they just cleaned up that's where we put our litter Auditors and inspectors and they go through and say what got missed by the contractors or what wasn't on the list to begin with what's new maybe it's a one-time thing um things like that and then on Friday we can send the crews back to these hot spots that either got missed uh or new spots that we need to get on top of that's really cool uh and then what we'll do is as we grow our resources is that we will work with volunteer groups and and others to help be our volunteer spotters in these areas uh to help us with contract compliance and making sure that we get these areas clean uh on a month-to-month basis um I mean we're remember this isn't like annual this is month to month so what we have on the ground every month so in 22 we had three team contracted Crews on the ground we currently have nine and we're budgeted for ten it's a staffing issue just like other staffing issues or we'd already be at 10. we're working towards um getting there one of the things I'll call out is is for the matter of time is go all the way over to the street sweeper graphic miles cleaned we were doing 580 miles with our two street sweepers uh that we had uh with our contract uh this is just the amount of money that we could afford we've now more than doubled that to 1600 and our goal was uh to get up to 6380. what's what's what's kind of cool about this is the next slide over is the tons collected by the street sweepers so with two street sweepers we were picking up about 14 tons a month um with our contractor we've jumped to 156 tons that is a lot um and and we thought we were only going to get about 84 tons the reason one of the reasons why it's so high is we're having to drive some of these roads two and three times before we move to a new road and it's because they haven't been swept before so even in areas where it's not muddy and vegetation there's still a lot of gravel and uh dead debris and things like that that are having to be picked up so uh it shows that our contractors are working it shows that we're picking it up um and it shows that we're very serious about moving this uh to the next level each quarter moving moving forward so with that I'll hand this off to Lauren I guess you want to come over here Laura do you want me to move the slide for you um just just problem as a team quarterly meetings so how it works is our staff reports litter to text Dot and the response time is measured is typically between one and three days so we are that direct link to TxDOT six code staff members are driving 11 routes during their typical duties and Reporting back issues to the team next slide so textile is using a street sweeper contract to visit roadways a minimum of four times and up to 12 times per year so TxDOT also pays for a weekly debris removal So currently Tech stock will pick up anything larger than a cell phone on the highway system we're currently working as a team to efficiently utilize our budget increase the budget and raise the standard of care so it's also important that we look for root causes like adjacent properties not containing and disposing of trash properly that would blow onto the highway system so priority areas are typically addressed within one to three one to three days like we mentioned and it as always please use the my Fort Worth app uh it is the most efficient way to report litter so through our app it actually gives you a direct link to the TxDOT reporting system so I'll turn it over to Brandon for upcoming events and I can't I cannot speak enough about our relationship with tpw and parks and other City departments this has truly become a city effort and we talk about upcoming events one of the things that we're really pushing hard is for a city-wide staff litter training to get all of our our field Crews water tpw all of our department heads right um and speaking you know having like maybe a competition also uh between departments to who's picking up litter or uh things like that and I would be amiss if I didn't mention you know each year well for the last couple years anyways we've had March Madness for litter and it's been a competition among the different departments on who will pick up the most litter during uh March Madness uh and hot off the press that this year's winner maybe they're last year's winner too they're very eager uh is the city manager's office uh who just smoked everybody uh and so congratulations to David Cook and the acms and all of their uh support staff for getting out and and and helping us clean up the city uh but we but wait there's more there's always opportunity to help us out are there photographs of um um so there's always opportunity to do more uh here's some of the events we've got a couple of them there uh in councilman Williams area and then a few others uh and other other parts of the city we continue to work with our partners at Tarrant Regional water they have their trash bash coming up uh and and we'd invite everybody to participate in that it's much like Cowtown cleanup but they focus along uh the rivers so that's that's a good event uh and you know they they kind of have their Earth party celebration kind of like when we have our Earth party celebration that we kind of do it together and separately all at the same time uh council member Beck I know you were at ours so we appreciate that if anybody else was there and we missed uh I would encourage you to to make it to the trash bash it always shows that strong support work for our community and having a not only a clean clean Community but we know that clean equals safe that when you look at crime prevention through environmental design the more we clean it the safer it's going to be so with that Lauren and I are available for any follow-up questions that you all may have Brandon just have one um I'm assuming this happens but maybe we could just explain it I've seen some of the new streets sweepers out you know in doing their jobs wonderful it's good to see I have the opportunity to observe one where the operator ran into well didn't run into it but encountered a discarded basket a large one you know along the curb stopped got out picked it up and just put it you know on the side there in the park and then went back in and continued do they report that to some to the code officer in that area to come pick it up because it wasn't picked up for a few days thereafter no they don't their contract is strictly remember this is a contract right and it's strictly for street sweeping and they're they're facing the same dilemma that we are in in finding enough drivers to get everything done so he really has had to focus on in the truck sweeping the streets when we switched our Streeper our sweepers um that our drivers will be expected to report it number one if it's small pick it up put it in the basket on the truck right if it's any larger than that I'll report it and I believe with our sweepers I don't know I don't want to misstate this but we're ordering ones that have a little vacuum on the side so not only does it vacuum on the street but if there's a pile right next to the to the roadway they can get out real quick and and vacuum that up so it's just a matter of the way the contract's written and we'll fix that with our crews because absolutely that's what better way to report it than the driver that's that's driving all the streets every day got it thank you Jared um first of all Kudos and all the products y'all made um I saw the upspire crew on Oakmont Boulevard um probably for the first time and also um just notice how visibly cleaner it is and that was one of the areas where we saw a lot of shopping carts as well um and so whatever y'all are doing when coordinating with the businesses I've I've visibly seen a huge difference in that I know I was reporting like four or five a week just in that area of the district I'm so kudos to that I think I just want to say on the record I think it's really important for our residents also to use my Ford dive it's really really helpful in helping y'all know where to clean I tell our residents all the time you know we all have a role to play and if you let us know where it is we can do something about it but if we don't know then it's going to still be there unless you do something about it right and so that's really important and then also folks participating in these community events they do get to yeah yeah coordinate with us like these these were already coordinated so they'll be ready but you know if anybody wants to do a cleanup in their neighborhood coordinate with us we'll provide gloves bags uh the little picker upper things um you know we we want to help people be successful in their neighborhood that we want the stakeholders to to help us with this and um we think that's the the actual the the the long-term um success of this program is going to be building the capacity of the community right to not litter in the first place and when litter does occur to clean it up early and that which they can't get to report to us and we'll supplement that it's not for us to try to always just clean up the litter that people continually dump right or to not have help from the community absolutely and then the other thing I would say is I know there's a lot of community events that are happening glitter cleanups and that's really really great um and I know our offices have coordinated I would love um to continue to be in the loop on events that are outside the ones that we we do so that we can promote those as well on our platforms to help get our residents you know and engaged and involved in the fun of cleaning our community and I appreciate you mentioning the app again and you know Lauren mentioned it one of the nice things about the app is that for people that don't know we just tell you know use the app when they're reporting stuff that's on a state highway there's actually a link there that sends them to the tech Stock Program where they can they can report it right to textile and I'll tell you it works when citizens get their complaint directly to TxDOT that speaks the text talk that says we're fed up right with with the litter on this highway or this area or for this amount of time whatever it is that that that they're they're angry about it's good for Tech stock to hear from them directly as opposed to it coming to the city and another city city agency just taking that and giving them the Reader's Digest version um to that regard I I have to I have to compliment uh Lauren and her staff Michael landick lavik landvik he he works with um TxDOT all the time uh he's become a source for us to go to uh we've done it on the south on set with South Point construction with the new Southeast connector project and homeless camps and things like that that that they're facing uh and I will tell you in that relationship you know with with TxDOT uh they have a new uh auditor contract auditor because it's not it's not just it's not that Tech stock goes and cleans it up himself they rely on contractors and a key piece to the contractors is you've got to make sure you're holding your contractors accountable to do what it is they're supposed to be doing and so we're seeing some improvement there and and it's got us real excited that uh we'll be able to see even more moving down the road well and on that note TxDOT is currently rebidding all of their contracts so we should see a different level of service coming soon that's good and then just one last question if residents are unsure whether or not it's a Texas Highway they can still report it either way and y'all are communicating back Senate it when in doubt send it to us absolutely okay right thank you yeah thank you any other questions Council this is awesome thank you very much for your hard work and for all the Departments doing this David this is very it's really good stuff yes thank you okay we have one more we're going to report on municipal election 2023 Outreach update with Michelle Goot and Renee last uh but not least we're the kicker we don't have any of our uh TV news friends here well actually mayor Pro tem knows what a kicker is I bet it's the the last story in the newscast that's uh the positive news that sends the viewer off feeling good so hopefully that's what this is going to be um so if you haven't heard uh we have this election coming up in a few weeks and um we want to share some components of our communication and engagement plan the whole point is to encourage Civic engagement and voter turnout in an unbiased way to present information that voters are going to need to make their choice and I just want to give a shout out to some of our team members that have worked really collaboratively on this um as you'll see our graphic designer designing the look and feel for the campaign our our web coordinator our one web coordinator our engagement folks who have visited a lot of organizations that are impacted by our rezoning and then our Communications folks for the placement of these ads and Research into how much it may may cost for some of the ad buyers you're going to hear in the in you're going to see some of the collateral and then also thanks to Michelle so um this is kind of a follow-up of the February IR that we gave to council we just wanted to go back and revisit some of the messages that we wanted to share and then update you on some of the tools that we've implemented so this was the primary messages that we had in mind when we approached this which was to educate the residents on the new council districts direct residents to information and provide a timeline and then another reminder this was the chart that was included in the IR and this is just to remind you that 36.4 percent of the residents are actually impacted by the shift in districts with this election so this is what uh is our staple piece um that we can call that all the other information is kind of pulled from but it's the basic of all the information and it has the the graphics looking feel for the entire campaign um of which all the other breakouts will be pulled from so Community meetings one of our focuses was to meet with neighborhood groups with particular focus on those that were impacted by the recent redistricting so we have actually at this point gone to 26 different neighborhood association meetings to share election information we have another eight that are already scheduled we did another push to the neighborhoods to see if they wanted to schedule additional meetings and for those that we know only meet on a quarterly or annual basis and we knew they weren't going to have a meeting during this time frame we sent them the information digitally that they could share with their um with their members during the meetings we do the handout but we also demonstrate some of the tools that are on the website so that people can use that themselves to find information but also find out whether a new district is and these are some of the ways that we're sharing it through our city channels City News Roundup um social media we're doing our regular posts but we're also boosting posts we're doing next door and that's for the targeted messages for impacted neighborhoods and then sharing with our partner organizations so last budget cycle we we worked with the leadership team to actually put some money in our funding for our department because we knew there'd be some informational initiatives we wanted to add buy with and so um this week we're going to begin seeing some ad Buys in the digital ads for the Fort Worth report the Star Telegram and print ads and the star of telegram La Vita in the Fort Worth black press are we doing any billboards okay thank you and in addition to the print um digital um we'll be purchasing uh video placements um the team has scripted and um it's on the election basics elections are Tarrant County elections Administration there are several ways to register to vote registration cards can generally be found at most public buildings including libraries post offices and courthouses you can also print an application and mail it or contact the Tarrant County voter registrar to complete the process for information on eligibility visit the Secretary of State's website once registered you may vote at any voting location during early voting in your county of residence on Election Day registered Tarrant County voters vote at any vote center location from 7 A.M to 7 pm for specific information on registering to vote finding voting locations or casting your ballot please visit tarrancounty.com elections or call 817-884-11111 [Music] that kind of gives the general information that we want out now and as election comes we'll be pushing a little harder um uh and building on that the resident information that may be interested in the specific municipal election so um indulge me for about a minute on this one por favor foreign [Music] then of course each of these videos has the English counterpart um to them um important English and Spanish including the mayor are up for election every two years here's what you need to know April 6 is the last day to register to vote early voting will be held from Monday April 24th through Tuesday May 2nd election day is Saturday May 6th a list of candidates for mayor and city council can be found on the city secretary's website we encourage you to check your Council District as recent redistricting may affect you there are two new districts 10 and 11 and the boundaries of all other districts were also redrawn verify your District by using the city's one address or District mapping tools visiting the Tarrant County voter lookup tool for full details and information visit fortworthtexas.gov 2023 election this is an example of one of the display ads that you'll be seeing on the Fort Worth report and the Star Telegram sites but we'll also be sharing it on social media when we do our boosted posts and then this is another video specifically I'm showing people how they can use the tools on the website to find out where their city council district is as I mentioned we're demonstrating those at the neighborhood meetings but this is a video that goes through it so for those people that we're not going to meet in person they can find it on the website and we're also sharing this on social media Council District this year the City offers several tools to help you find your District on our 2023 general election information tell me one address tool is a great way to find a variety of information about the city and city services that relate to your address there click on the one address link on the 2023 general election information page and type in your address on the left hand side you'll see a column called location data plus sign next to reference and scroll down to see both your current and future Council District the district listed under future is the district you'll be voting in for the 2020 you can also use the City's interactive District mapping tool the map shows the city's boundaries and council districts in the center of the page from left to right to view the current and future council districts current districts are labeled with a white number and future districts are labeled with black text that says future zooming in will allow you to see the boundaries of neighborhood organizations to easily view a specific location such as your home type the address into the search bar in the upper left hand corner and zoom to that location if you're a registered voter in Tarrant County you can also use the County's voter lookup tool enter your name and date of birth to view county-wide election information including your city council school district county state water district and U.S districts to name a few for additional details election information and links to all of these tools visit fortworthtexas.gov 2023 election and then real quick um we tried to make the the website kind of a One-Stop um One-Stop shop for everything having to do with the election so I just wanted to show you all that in case you haven't had a chance to see it um we have the um Flyers available for people to download um here's the the tools that we went over in the video the one address the district mapping tool which is my favorite and the Tarrant County voter lookup and then we also have the key dates some frequently asked questions and um we also have where they can request a presentation it will come out to their organization and we'll be uploading the videos onto this page as well so that um people can watch them and then we also have links to other sites that they might find interesting when it comes to the election so if anybody has any questions for anybody that's either a fan of the election they start running today for anybody that may be a fan of Tate or a fan of the election the ads started running today for you can see here on the screen and the election ads at the top of the um of a story obviously they're going to click on our ad not Taylor Swift correct our elections more popular of course thank you Renee looks great thank you Michelle any other questions Council okay with that we'll move to our last item which is future agenda items or reports requested by Council Gina looks like she's moving to the microphone I I need to get a report on the roadway signage we had that dealt with panhandlers of the text I guess the number was down for a while I don't know if this is still active or not and so I'll give this to Valerie or Brandon if he's here we we need to signage back up and if it's not it's not in my area where it needs to be Eastchester I-30 so have y'all seen these okay well maybe a panhandler took mine but I didn't want to report on it and to see just what's going on with it is it helping or what that's all Jared yes I have two um the first one um we've received a number of uh concerns from District Six constituents fall in a recent accident on Rising a road and I think it'll be helpful to provide a progress update during a future work session and informative of an informal report on this on PD and tbw's efforts along major arterials and along our high Injury Network I mean in District six roads like McCart Hulen and Risinger and specifically to address high-speed traffic reckless driving street racing Donuts that kind of thing um and then the second one is um probably for DJ and um Renee I would love to see the feasibility of um in a suit this way I would love an informal report that looks at the feasibility of um creating a list serve that residents could sign up for to receive a zoning notification within the district so that that listserv receives notifications concurrent with other organizations like about neighbors I know we had some hiccups recently with the zoning case and some folks didn't sign up and they didn't know that the meeting had got rescheduled and they would have loved to opt into those type of news so um love to see the feasibility of that and I think it'll be really helpful to the residents thank you Jared any other questions Council go ahead I'd like um probably more a presentation than an IR but how we prioritize violations from our Code Department uh we recently had uh there's a home in District 9 that is in AB it is just in disrepair and a point that it should not be left standing code went out and visited that and there were some citations but um in that same week an elderly woman received a citation because her grass was too high about 48 hours after we had had a massive rain event and so I think it's really important for us to know how we're prioritizing and responding to code violations so that we can better understand that and direct them through our districts any others Council with that we'll adjourned until six oh okay Jared reminded me of this I'm still waiting on a report from staff about a mapping tool so that when people are signing up to speak at zoning cases we know where they live and that's something that I think DJ and Jeanette were looking at we've we've had too many people who don't live in the area coming to sign up and so DJ told me that there is a way to make this happen but so that when you sign up our staff is able to tell us in that report how far away you are from the area impacted thank you any other questions if not we're adjourned [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music]