thank you good morning for whatever reason to be all they wanted um Mr Vega standing [Music] I just emailed Harold he didn't respond did he um what is it you should have yours in your folder okay take that one add extra coffee thank you a new nation conceived with liberty and dedicated there you go my goodness thank you excuse me do you remember foreign thank you [Music] foreign how are you are you ready for us all right we're ready good morning yes good morning this is the El Paso city council meeting for Tuesday March 28 2023. it is 9 05 a.m president presiding as mayor liser also present in council chambers our representative Kennedy mayor proteminello representative Hernandez alternate mayor protein Molina representative Salcido Fierro Rivera in Canales and now if everyone please silence their electronic devices so as not to disturb the meeting and write for the invocation to be delivered by El Paso Police chaplain Joe Mirada and good morning good morning sir if you would like to pray with us today we ask that you let us bow our heads together and let's call upon the Lord Heavenly Father we thank you for your goodness and your mercies to us we thank you for this day and the life and strength to be of service to you and to this community we pray for peace upon our city and its residence we ask for Comfort For The Grieving strength for the week a voice for the voiceless and peace where there is Discord today we ask that you blessed are elected and appointed officials as they conduct the city's business we ask that you bless them with wisdom and understanding as they hear read and discuss and make decisions on the issues impacting this city and the lives of its individual residents grant them discernment for the challenges and difficulties as they seek to make El Paso a better place to live a better place to work a better place to start and raise families and a better place to retire we look to you for guidance and direction in May your presence permeate not only this meeting but our city and our community and finally we ask that you would bless all our First Responders and their families that you would keep and protect them in your name we pray amen let's see well um well the Police Department please lead us in the pledge please thank you all and I thank everyone for being here we um we're very blessed today to have Chapin High School basketball which is one of the best in the state which is a great to be but we also have Carol Paso's finest and you know we talk about El Paso finest which is our PD and I look around and we're not just El Paso's finest we have the finest men and women that protect our community in and day out in the state of Texas and the U.S and I want to thank you all for always being out there for us and making El Paso as she said sir a better place to be and a better place to live thank you all and God bless you with that I want to have a moment of silence and I'm going to let representative vanilla start and then I'll finish that out representative thank you mayor I just wanted to take a second to recognize my former staffer Laura Montoya yesterday I attended the funeral of her husband who died unexpectedly and so I just wanted to add her her nine-year-old son Max um her two-year-old daughter Mila and her husband Marco Montoya into our moment of silence thank you and also um you know we've had some horrendous tragedies within our country and no one worse nothing worse than what happened yesterday in Nashville and um this needs to stop and there's no other so much about it and you know to have a moment of silence we're doing it too often for young men young kids teachers and you know I want to have my own silence for the families the kids but also let's pray that it never happens again you know it's um the Nashville Police Department responded and did a really good job but again that's something that I we never need to see again and also 39 migrants in our sister city lost their lives last night and we need to keep them and their families and our thoughts so um please uh let's we have a lot to think about and then as we look around in this room not only a lot to think about but a lot to be proud of and a lot to be happy for so thank you thank you all God bless El Paso and may God bless every one of you come here Proto or Diana Mr Mayor we do have three proclamations the first one is Child Abuse Prevention month I'm going to start with the child abuse which oh over this month Proclamation by the city of El Paso whereas there were 4817 completed investigations and 1 519 confirmed victims of child abuse and neglect in the El Paso area in fiscal year 2022 and whereas there were 1692 youth served by dfps prevention programs in the El Paso area in fiscal year 2022. and whereas child abuse and neglect can be reduced by making sure each family has the support they need to raise their children in a safe nurturing and healthy environment and by informing families about Community Resources and services available that could help prevent a family crisis or help them overcome one and whereas preventing the child abuse and neglect is a community responsibility and finding Solutions is contingent upon involvement among people throughout the community and whereas our community has taken proactive approach in the prevention of child abuse within with the formation of the Coalition of prevention of child abuse that is compromised comprised rather I'm sorry comprised of over 70 agencies organizations schools daycare centers and businesses that are actively involved in preventing child abuse through education and advocacy now there therefore be it proclaimed by the mayor and Council of the city of El Paso that the month of April shall be known as Child Abuse Prevention month and that April 8 2023 shall be known as go Blue day signed by The Honorable merely sir [Applause] good morning anyone with you Mr Mayor can I quickly make an announcement we have over 450 people in teams if I may ask that everyone please mute your microphone so that we don't hear any background noise yes ma'am thank you good morning family and protective services and all of those in our community who work in child welfare we extend our sincerest thank you to major leader representative Rivera and City Council Members thank you for declaring April as a Child Abuse Prevention month every day dedicated employees at dfps and many other agencies serve to protect children from abuse and neglect and to ensure positive outcomes for many families we hope these efforts can provide children the stability and the care they deserve as well as strengthen families we are dedicated to educating our community on these issues and we know that prevention is a key to success El Paso Community provides essential support to families foster care services and adoption education to change the lives of children we again are grateful for your support and the commitment of Partners in the community together we make a difference thank you what is your name thank you very much and you know um we really need to protect our youth and you know the they are the future of our country and our community and child abuse and children are abused some of these scars will never be healed and it's so important that we protect them and we prevent it and you know we have to be proactive because at the end of the day once they're scarred it's really hard to overcome so I thank you for what you do and you it's so important that we continue to love and hug our children and make sure that they are brought up in a safe community so thank you for that thank you thank you representative next Proclamation is Tyler Cooper and Christian Lugo day thank you very much by any chance is either the students Tyler Cooper Christian Lugo here or their parents please come up to the podium any school administrators from Andrews High School and chief Binkley and Mrs Binkley if you can come up to good morning Proclamation city of El Paso Texas whereas Mr Martine Vega a World War II veteran 95 years of age lives at on Sun Valley Drive whereas on December 1st 2022 looking out from his living room window he observed something shiny in the street in front of his driveway and whereas preventing his daughter to get a nail in her Tire he decided to pick it up himself whereas by the time he bent down to pick up the nail in the busy street of Sun Valley he realized that he did not have his walking cane and unfortunately fell hitting his head on the concrete whereas speeding Vehicles passed too close to him which made him come into Panic thinking one of the vehicles was going to hit him and whereas fortunately a white car with two young men Tyler Cooper and Christian Lugo ran to his Aid moved him to a safer location attended to his head wound called 9-1-1 and stayed with him until his emergency units arrived whereas if it had not been for these two young men Mr Vega would not have been fortunate to tell this story and whereas the city of El Paso recognizes Tyler and Christian for their heroism and generosity now therefore be it proclaimed by the mayor and the Council of the city of El Paso the March 28 2023 shall be known as Tyler Cooper in Christian Lugo day signed Oscar liser The Honorable mayor city of El Paso good morning make sure what I've been saying all morning long that the youth is the future of our city and our country and you guys just made that chain true because you are and for your what you did and how you helped somebody is um very admirable and I know this is a proclamation but I know that uh you have many thanks and I know the families here to thank you for what you've done and we thank you for being part of our community and making El Paso shine thank you thank you would you like like to address the podium well I don't really have much to say I'm just I was like it's just something that everybody should do it's like it's like we're just practicing you know like due diligence to be good people and it's like I would want somebody to do that for my family I mean that's pretty much it you know it's that old chain treat people the way you want to be treated you'll never be disappointed so thank you for that thank you again mayor we do have we do have uh Chief Binkley Chief Department good morning Chief how are you doing good morning mayor city council I am Robert Binkley Mr Vegas uh son-in-law on his behalf I would like to read this as a 17 year old inspired to defend the life and Liberties of this great country I experienced the Heartbreak of War and the Elation of a homecoming as a World War II veteran I am in awe by this community's response to the heroic deed of these two young men Tyler and Christian have been recognized for their compassion and bravery by the El Paso Independent School District Andrews High School kvia co-anchor Hillary Florin and the military military order of world wars receiving the youth Merit medal and today by this mayor's Proclamation thank you El Paso thank you mayor Lisa and City Council Members I am truly humbled and honored these two young men were Heaven Sent they are my heroes as in Scripture Heroes help those in need thank you Matilda Vega thank you chief You Know Chief I um I'm the owner by the way uh this is Mr Vegas 96th birthday I know I was just going to say I had the honor to sign his uh 90th birthday card and then 90 95th and today I got to sign the 96 so and not in so what it was an honor back in night you know when he turned 90 to sign his card so thank you all again and thank you chief Proclamation is National Public Safety telecommunicators week and then also if we may ask that all the honorees stick around so that they can take pictures after the proclamations thank you whereas the city of El Paso Texas recognizes the professionalism and Excellence of Public Safety telecommunicators who answer 911 calls daily Public Safety telecommunicators are the first First Responders providing the initial and most critical contact our community has with emergency services and whereas Public Safety telecommunicators are essential to the safety of police officers firefighters and paramedics by monitoring their activities via radio providing them critical information and ensuring their safety and whereas Public Safety telecommunicators ensure the prompt response of police officers firefighters and paramedics to protect life and preserve property and whereas the city of El Paso Texas is committed to providing the highest quality emergency communication system to the citizens in our community and whereas each Public Safety telecommunicator exhibits kindness and understanding to Citizen seeking assistance and now therefore be a proclaimed by the mayor and the Council of the city of El Paso through the week of April 9th through April 15th shall be known as National Public Safety telecommunicators Week signed by The Honorable mayor Oscar liser hi y'all congratulations good morning um thank you city council for inviting us here today it's an honor honor to be given recognition as telecommunicators for telecommunicators week El Paso 911 is comprised of many hard-working individuals and being a telecommunicator is not easy it can be fast-paced stressful but at the end of the day we do love our job what we do is for the love we have for our city in support of all of our First Responders and to help our fellow citizens thank you again thank you and as we know that every every second makes a difference in by the job we all do we thank you for what you do and continue to keep us safe and you know as the chief will come on up chief that will tell you communication is key to making sure we do the right thing so thank you again good morning mayor good morning Council Chief killings El Paso Fire Department I just want to thank you for this Proclamation and recognizing the hard work that these men and women do every single day 24 hours a day in support of First Responders across the the city of El Paso the men and women that are standing in line in this room today can't do their job without these men and women that are standing behind me doing theirs they keep us safe they make sure that we get home to our families and they're there they're that voice behind the scenes 24 hours a day seven days a week that that we rely on to provide services to the community so I uh these telecommunicators hold a special place in my heart and um they do a fantastic job day in and day out and I appreciate them so thank you thank you chief You Know Chief you talk about communicating and keep you all safe and and they're also communicating on the other online with you know whoever's sick a victim or anything else to make sure and assure them that help is on the way so it's uh very important so thank you [Applause] would you like me to proceed with the consent agenda or yes if you wanted to do 20 and 21. I'll do um let's do 20 which one you want to do 2021 that's your 20 and 21 absolutely and then I would like to do I know Mom representative uh I've done this as post uh 29 so I'd like to do 29 right before right after those two okay item 20 is discussion in action to congratulate and commend the Chapin High School boys basketball team for being the first team in Chapman's history to make the elite eight hi Aldi I want to come up to the podium it is my honor to recognize Chapin again this is the second year we're recognizing them but I would love to hear about kind of the history of how far they've gone I know this is not the second year they've made it this far or to the finals I also want to before I read the resolution I did not mention last year and I want to recognize um my staff member Matthew well I don't think that he played basketball he is a Chapin alumni um and he's always very proud of you all and he's always rooting for you so we've got a lot of shape and love in our office with that I will read the resolution and it states that was not a joke y'all either you're mean whereas the Chapin High School's boys basketball team made it to the regional one to five a basketball tournament for the third straight season in 2023 and whereas the Chapin Huskies controlled the action from start to finish during their playoff game during the El Paso Bel Air to win their third straight by District Championship following that they'd be Palo Duro High School in Seminole Texas winning their third straight area Championship Then followed up that win with the victory against Parkland High School at the Don Haskins Center to achieve a third straight Regional quarter-final win then after the victory for the first time in school history when a regional semi-final game against Fort Worth OD Wyatt and whereas the Chapin boys basketball team made it to their first Regional Championship Game the elite eight as District Champions and went undefeated against all El Paso teams during the season with a 52-game win streak against El Paso teams and whereas the 2023 Chapin boys basketball team was ranked 18th in the state by the Texas Association of Basketball Coaches and whereas in District 1-5a senior Bryson Goldsmith was selected as the most valuable player Junior Brandon Himes was selected as Defensive Player of the Year idalius Coleman was selected as the first team all district Jaden Leverett was selected as second Team all district Peyton Parker was selected as third Team all district Diego Villanueva and Julian Pacheco received honorable mentions and whereas on March 4 2023 after falling to Mansfield Summit High School in the region one championship for Class 5A Texas high school basketball state playoffs the triumphant chafer High School Huskies basketball season ended with a 30-7 record Under head coach Rodney Lewis now therefore be it resolve at the city council of the city of El Paso one commends and congratulates the Chapin High School boys basketball team for being the first team in the school's history to make the elite eight in making the state tournament for three years in a row two recognizes the many achievements of the coaches and players of the Chapin Huskies three recognizes the fans of the Chapin huskies and the people of El Paso for their dedication and support and for respectfully requests that the city clerk's submit an executive copy of this resolution to Rodney Lewis head coach of the Chapin High School's basketball team and the Chapin High School Administrative Office approved this 28th day March 20 23rd and I should actually make a motion to approve on that and so we're really excited to have you all here again excited for next year I know we're going to go further and we will be having a big parade for y'all when you bring that Championship home we're grateful to be here and thank you I usually don't use microphones I'm sorry I want to thank my coaching staff and our players and our admit Mr Cervantes from episd Athletics are our superintendent and everybody that supported us but I've been speaking on this um as a coach I really don't like to do this because I know it takes the players to do this so I I brought my five seniors to speak on this thank you for the record please I just told them that so now I've made an error um Rodney Lewis head coach uh hi my name is Diego vinueva I'm a senior here at Chapin I just want to thank y'all for the recognition I mean it's amazing to be up here for a second in a row and honestly um without y'all like we honestly couldn't be here right now at the beginning of the Season you know doing community work you guys truly give us something to play for so thank you thank you my name is Bryson Goldsmith I'm a senior I just like to thank you know the coaching staff and you know I just like to say that my guys are you know we're not just great basketball players we're great students we're servant leaders and we do a lot you know off the court so you know I just want to thank the guys I want to thank the god thank you my name is Dallas my name is hold on if anyone's in the meeting is in teams right now please mute and turn off your volume my name is Jeremy casabello I want to thank y'all for everything and the coaching staff and my teammates my name is Eli Rodriguez I just want to thank you guys for letting us be here and thank the coaching staff and the players for accepting me since the day one I got here and they pushed me every day to be better so you want to come back up I know it was kind of not you uh yeah we um we actually um we couldn't hear a word you said we had a lot of background in my name is idalis Coleman I'm a senior and I thank the culture staff and you guys for supporting us I think I got to play fair thank you sir and I do want to you know it takes a lot of great ball players and it takes a lot of talent to reach the elite eight but without great coaching and a staff that can have players play together and become one unit and respect each other and that's what coaching staff makes and that's what they do and and they get you all to get the best of y'all to make sure that they bring out the best and then that you all play as a team so coach I do want to congratulate you and your staff because you know we talked about mentoring we talk about uh you know the impact that we make on on the youth and it's very important that coaches can mold individuals and help them in the future of their lives so I want to thank you all for all the coaches for bringing these this team together to play us a team and understand that uh there's you know and just by listening to you all you you talk about that there's not one one person that got you to the elite eight but there's a lot of you that are able to do it together as a team and that's why it's called a team sport and you guys took the eye out of team and make sure there was no eye in team so I want to thank you all for representing El Paso making El Paso proud but also for carrying yourselves in a professional manner and doing what you did to bring you know this recognition not only to Chapin but to yourselves and I wish you all a lot of luck in in the future how many of y'all are seniors this year all seniors well coach got his work cut out huh all right [Laughter] no that um no I no God congratulations again in the incredible achievement but again congratulations for playing as a team and bringing the recognition to El Paso but again to yourselves thank you for doing what you what you do and again thank you coach and God bless every one of y'all [Applause] and we do have a motion to approve by mayor proteminello seconded by alternate mayor Pro tem Molina on that motion call for the vote representative Hernandez thank you and the motion has been approved unanimously next item is item 21 discussion in action to approve a resolution in honor of Cesar E Chavez Day versus for his contributions as a world-renowned labor and civil rights leader come here okay how can start uh um on June 20 22nd uh 22 2020 to the city council approved March 31st as the Cesar Chavez Day as a city holiday Friday March 31st the city of El Paso will make history in honoring and observing and uh Cesar Chavez Day the legacy of Cesar Chavez himself today I will ask a council as I make a motion to approve to honor this Legacy of Cesar Chavez with a unanimous decision second let me read the resolution is as whereas could I have the people oh there they are I'm sorry whereas Cesar E Chavez was an American born on March 31st 1927 to Mexican immigrants and properties proudly serve the United States Navy and whereas Cesar was an American an American Farmer worker labor leader and civil rights activist who with Dolores Huerta co-founded the national foreign workers Association that later became known as the United Farm Workers Union for 30 whereas for 30 years says heart tenaciously devoted himself to problems of workers in America the movement he inspired succeeded in raising salaries and improving working conditions for Farm Workers in California Texas Arizona and Florida and whereas on March 28 2014 President Obama used his authority to Proclaim March 31st as the national Cesar Chavez Day a day devoted to the promotional service and to the community in honor of his distinguished lifetime work and for what he's taught us about making America a stronger more just and more prosperous Nation and whereas local organization like uh SEIU sin Fronteras organization project Lincoln conservation committee Cesar Chavez Academy and service employees in the international Union Texas coordinate a variety of activities to honor Cesar's work and invite the community to use that day as an opportunity to serve others and now therefore deeply proclaimed by the mayor and city council El Paso that March 31st 2023 shall be known as Cesar Chavez Day [Applause] thank you I would like to thank mayor leaser and the entire city council for honoring SEIU Texas today as many of you know the contract for about 1500 HCA healthcare workers here in El Paso is up in May raising the minimum pay to 15 an hour is one of our goals I'd like to think that if Caesar were alive today he had approve of the fight for 15 and he might even march with us you might wonder why so many health care workers who make more than fifteen dollars an hour are willing to fight for those who make less well I'll take a quote from Mr Chavez he says we cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community our Ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others for their sakes and for our own thank you again for the honor cesapoli thank you your name for the record ma'am your name for the record again Diane Waldo and it's um when um when President Biden came he brought somebody that I'd been working with quite a bit to help us with the Asylum Seekers and actually every time we needed resources every time we needed help we would call Julie at the White House and we've been working really hard with Julie to come to an assist us and she did an incredible job of helping us and making sure that we have the resources that we needed whether dealing with uh she works for Homeland Security and I um so when she was down here with President Biden she came in with him and stayed a day and and I was sitting there talking to her and uh Estrella Escobar asked her she said let me ask you a question are you related to Cesar Chavez and she goes yeah that's my grandfather oh wow so it's a small world and she's been very impactful in helping us here in El Paso and we have a direct line to her that um to help us whatever we need and a lot of the things we've seen that we've been able to get whether it's funding and and help down in El Paso she's been very instrumental in helping us and again like I said she happens to be the granddaughter of Cesar Chavez so it was kind of kind of need to have the opportunity to meet her and that she's been very helpful to El Patio and I'm sure the rest of the United States thank you [Applause] and we do have a motion to approve made by representative Rivera seconded by representative sarcido and Pauline is open representative anello thank you and the motion has been approved unanimously Mr Mayor would you like to do the consent agenda let's do item um I'd like to do item 29 we have a lot of people here for item 29 I think uh be very respective if if I'm a mayor I'm sorry Laura cruzicos for the record if we can take photographs first so that folks can whoever I want to do item 29 first so we can I'd like to get a picture with them also if you don't mind okay thank you then we'll move on to item 29 and that is discussion and action on a resolution authorizing the city manager to sign the articles of agreement between the city of El Paso and the El Paso Municipal Officers Association for the contract period covering September 1st 2023 through August 31st 2027. motion to approve so Council this particular item was something that was made possible because of the financial position that we now have I know in 2014 we only had nine days of operating Capital which is in our fund balance an organization this size needs to have at least 90 days that's the gold standard we're at 91 today we also have a rate stabilization Fund in place we also have a pension stabilization fund and we're all we also mentioned yesterday that in an effort to pay for this that I recommended to our staff to start working on pay for futures fund so that we could pay ahead of schedule in next year's budget for these particular costs the collective bargaining agreement was bargained in the month of February we completed it early March and the first year in 2014 the cost will be approximately 14 million dollars in the second year be 6.1 in the third it'll be 6.3 and in the fourth year to be a little bit under 5 million for a total of 31.5 million over the course of the four-year period for the police officer this means a 13 increase what's not included in the collective bargaining agreement is a 10 10 000 increase to the cadet Cadet pay during their Police Academy time so that that would bring them from 37 to over forty seven thousand dollars after they complete the academy they'll get a 13 increase they also have a thousand dollar bonus prior to becoming a police officer for the the academy an advanced officer will get 13 percent a senior police officer will get 15.4 percent and then you also have an increase of 17.1 percent for the sergeant position we also added steps for those that were topped out the lieutenant pay goes up five percent Commander paid three and a half percent assistant chief two and a half percent and an executive assistant chief two and a half percent that's a new new position title created because we're growing as a police department all of them have varying cost of living adjustments that range from Two and a half percent to five percent depending on the rank and depending on how much the increase was in terms of the pay we also included a buyback provision for sick for sick leave in order to discourage sick leave usage and we also decreased the cost of Health Care in this particular agreement again we were able to put together a strong collective bargaining agreement because we're financially sound we're financially solvent and this was very necessary in order to recruit new officers in order to also retain the officers that we have in the organization right now and finally had we not placed the 300 net officer position program in place um approximately seven years ago we would be in a much worse position today in terms of the numbers uh from 2014 till today we're over 130 positions net additional officers but that's still not enough because during the early 2000s the numbers reduced significantly during that same time period the population increased significantly during the base realignment commission during the time frame when the city of El Paso grew exponentially in the east side grew in particular so this is why it was important to do the 2019 bond package to do the East Side Regional Command Center and the fact that it's going to require more than 300 officers and I sent an email report to all of you that indicated we probably need to be in the 350 to 375 number of officers that we need to shoot for instead of the 300 so we need to readjust the 300 plan for that purpose so that that in in uh in essence is a summary of the collective bargaining agreement you received a report I sent you an email a report on this subject gave you a copy of the contract the red line version as well as well as the uh the costs associated with this particular item on the agenda I can answer any questions that you might have but otherwise that concludes the uh the report I will add one more thing we had a strong team working on this the budget office I want to thank them I want to thank also Chief D'Agostino he helped with the wording on some of the policy changes that were made and I also want to thank the collective bargaining agreement on the police side they had at least 20 people at each meeting and they did a very good job on their end negotiating this agreement so unless there's any questions that concludes the report well I want to thank you thank the team and of course I'm sure there was an easy decision to make with such a great Police Department that we do have in El Paso and um I um again I want to thank you all for serving our city and for being out there day in and day out uh it's important in the job you all do and like I said you know we we call it a El Paso's best but I think it's a lot further than that it's uh Texas and U.S best and y'all I I couldn't thank you enough for the job you do and I know that it was passed at 99 percent of the officers that uh that got to see it and vote on it which makes me happy that uh our men and women in the police department feel like they're city leaders in the city of El Paso believes in them and takes care of them because I can tell you that I do believe in y'all and I'm glad we're taking care of you because you take care of us day in and day out and give us that opportunity to be safe in our community so thank every one of you guys God bless you and congratulations representative manilo followed by representative Nunes and represent molinard thank you mayor mayor Pro 10 I'm sorry I apologies um I want to say you know at this Council we've had a lot of conversations we took action I think at last council meeting to look at increasing our hourly wage to 15 an hour we have SEIU talking about their fight for 15. I think a lot of times people forget that the police Union is a labor union I'm a big supporter of Labor and I think it's really important that in this contract we looked at and succeeded in getting increase in pay in getting our Police Department to a level that is really important I think a lot of time people really don't focus on the fact that police are a labor union right it is really important to be negotiating the work that you all do at a fair wage and so I want to say congratulations on that Mr Gonzalez I do have some questions for you a little bit more on the administrative side in 2020 so about exactly three years ago Council directed you to work with outside organizations on kind of Publix requests and I think what came back to us was the communities interests in an independent oversight committee you worked with the team you came back to us at Council a year later and said that was going to take some amendments to the collective bargaining I don't see any of those in this this has been the the next collective bargaining agreement since you all approached us with those changes and so I want to know kind of what happened to those negotiations and and those kind of uh suggestions that were brought to council so when we did some work with the community we engaged the community we did a cross-functional team and we reached out to several groups in in our El Paso Community and we got all the input that was necessary we also gave a report to the city council relative to what other cities did and what they did not do in relation to review boards and things of that nature in order to give input to the police department so we gave the council that we also gave Council information relative to how the community is involved in that process already I don't recall that the council voted on making an actual change to that we did have some dialogue about that there was no changes to any of the administrative side of it in order to make it more um I guess more um concerning to the union so that was really based on us listening to their side and what their concerns were in terms of the national discussion about police departments so we didn't make any changes like that in the agreement again I don't recall that there was an actual directive to make that change because we did indicate that there was already public input in that process that we currently engage in okay so I mean I have community members coming to me that thought they were talking to you in good faith um this agreement has now been settled and they need to wait four more years how am I supposed to respond to them and the fact that their concerns in regards to this were as they feel ignored unacknowledged and and not proceeding forward in any way for another four years um I would say that we do not ignore the community input and that that's already built in with the review process it was processes that we have in place right now um and we feel like that is uh significant currently in terms of the way we do that uh process uh currently um and we didn't feel like there was any additional changes that were necessary based on the fact that we did engage the community we did that for over a year in the cross-functional team and with respect to any additional input like we said yesterday with the police chief hiring we are going to go out and visit with all the different groups and get their input relative to what they see in the next police chief we're also going to engage law enforcement agencies to include the police Union and and get that input as well before any final determination is made on the selection of a police chief well and I would just say that I respectfully disagree and I'm I'm very disappointed for the public that those things were not acknowledged your office came back to us and said these are the changes that will need to be happened at no point did you tell us you were not negotiating that that you were not moving forward with this I'm going to support this because I think it's great for our police and this is a great contract moving forward for our Union and for our officers but it's not a great contract for our community um and I just want to State on the record that I'm disappointed for our community members I'm very happy for our police very happy to support this but I think moving forward you know when you talk to a group of people and say you know this is what needs to be changed in the contract and then you negotiate the contract don't let them know that's happening don't tell them that you're not moving forward with them they are going to feel like they did not get negotiated with in good faith and so for those community members I believe some of them are signed up today you know I want to sincerely apologize to them and let them know moving forward and I'm sure the police department would agree and then the new police chief and interim Chief would agree that you know working with our partners are extremely important and I think moving forward throughout the next four years of this contract that is going to have to be a real priority for this Council apartment but I don't want that to take away from the success of this contract and I don't again I'm fully going to support this and want to congratulate all of the officers here your work is very important you are a labor union I am a full support of labor unions and I'm happy to move forward with increasing your prey for the deserved labor that you do so thank you all so much and congratulations if I may Council without due respect I do not recall the council giving me direction to make that specific change I also don't recall that the report that we gave to the council is consistent with what's being discussed right now we have that report we gave that report in public I'm happy to send that report out again to you to the police Union as well it was not indicative of making that kind of significant change again we do include the public in input currently in terms of reviewing processes that the police department has the the review board as an example in terms of a shooting review board and we do involve the public we have an academy as well for the public we out we also have a pub a volunteer program I'm the volunteer in Patrol program that we just created we also work with all the different neighborhood associations with all the different different Regional command centers I'm happy to send that report out again I believe Dion Mack gave that report and and again uh Mr Gonzalez I respectfully disagree I do have the report I do not need Miss Mack to come up here I would like to end this conversation and move on there are other people here to speak there are officers waiting uh I've stated my opinion and so I understand that but I want to make sure for the public and for the council that we did not uh disregard the Public's input as a matter of fact we have that report Miss Mack is is able and willing to speak to it right now and I don't want him I don't want it I don't want to have misinformation on something as important as Public Safety uh and that's important to this community is important to this Council and is important to this Administration and I and I don't I don't appreciate you saying that I'm giving you misinformation I remember the report and as I said there are members I'm speaking there are members of the public here that are signed up to speak and I will let them do so I would like to let's move on to our next speaker please and for the record mayor I I did not say the missonello's has misinformation I'm simply saying that I just remember what we gave in the report and and what we recommended and again Miss Mack is is able to speak to that right now because this is an important subject no and I thank you for for that I'd like to move on to uh representative Hernandez followed by representative Molina thank you sir thank you representative hi good morning everyone and welcome to all the police officers and members of the association um I like you we we have um questions and we'd like to clear up some of the statements today I would invite Mrs back to come up in Chief basias to share any information because that we we want to advocate for transparency we want to give you the information and so if there's additional information that you can share Mrs Mack please come up and and share that with the public foreign good morning and congratulations good morning thank you so much as you recall we had a pdcft that worked for more than two years we work with the community discussing a variety of projects and things that were going on throughout the city we did more than eight presentations to council we did do a thorough analysis of the different types of review committees that we have worked on across the city across the country we also provided some short-term analysis and things that we would be able to do in the short term you may recall that back in may we had border Network here with us providing a presentation on what our next steps would be we did talk about a two-tiered approach to how we might look at this we did share with Council and others that in order to do some of the changes that were being proposed it would have required a charter Amendment as well as changes to the uh the bargaining agreement in the meantime what we did was continue to work to strengthen our existing drb we have an application process that's been developed and I will let Chief to see us talk a little bit about how we've integrated the people that we have on the committee to include members of the Border Network good morning mayor good morning chief of police so uh like Miss Mack said for the past two years through that CFT that was set up by the city manager's office to review the policies and procedures of the police department we uh spent countless hours working with with the public border Network for the human rights organization took a very strong lead as an organization in El Paso they went through a training session that took all day and then they spent a good uh part of an afternoon reviewing our discipline review board process procedures from those meetings and all those hours of hard work we now have two members of the Border network of human rights that do sit on our disciplined review board so our our commitment to working with the community is strong regardless of the organization we we sit down talk listen there's things that we can work through there's there's laws regulations that we have to go through the union works with us also it's all a synergize approach to making sure that the police department is working with the community and working with the directions that city council asks the city manager to do so we we did that we continue to try to work and improve our processes within the police department and our commitment to the community will never waver thank you sir thank you chief for coming up but thank you for your leadership and continuing support for our community so I thank you for everything you do and um you know and I'll congratulate you in front of all the men and women here of the police department well-deserved position as our interim Chief and thank you for continuing to lead our community in our city you are the best thank you sir thank you thank you Chief I see us um and so I wanted to highlight some of the reasons why this is good for our community I disagree with some of the statements just mentioned I wholeheartedly believe that our community is safer thanks to the men and women in uniform and thanks to your bravery and sacrifice because I know there's a lot of personal sacrifice with your families um so so here are the facts 99 of the members of the association who voted voted in favor of this I think in recent history that's unprecedented lessons learned from the early 2000s during excuse me 2015. I know we have some firefighters in the room who are supportive these conversations could certainly go bad very quickly and it could be in the hands of the voters today but because of the seamless Transit Mission with the leadership here but also you all operating in good faith coming to the table with trust and confidence with our city management you all were able to fight for and Collective bargain for the benefits for your families so you all should be very proud of your leadership we've stayed in constant communication every day they've gone above and beyond including the team have gone above and beyond what is required we didn't have they didn't have to do more public engagement they didn't have to come to the table with generous offers but we recognize the challenges within the police department and I think in good faith you were all able to negotiate a good a very good contract it's very hard to negotiate with Mr Gonzalez and I think our utilities and others would agree that he's he's a really good negotiator but because of our financial standing we have been prepared for this we have been saving um additional dollars in our rainy day fund we have we have done this deliberately so that we can come to the table in good faith to offer salaries and benefits that are going to help Elevate our community and make it safer quite frankly the other thing is that in 2025 the city of El Paso reported that 422 of you are ready for retirement and you know with having a Workforce of 1100 to less than 1200 you know that's really similar to where we're at um you know decades ago we don't have enough officers and we need to keep in mind to have retention and to have growth in the police department but that's going to have to come forward with a council who's willing to bring those benefits to you all we've looked at the salaries across the state we've recognized that your wages are are lower we want to be competitive because when you go through a 10-month training academy not only is a property taxpayer paid for that but we want to be able to retain you here because you we know that our local folks understand the challenges of our community and you all can better serve our community than folks who come out of our city into our city so we are very much the community is very much in safer hands having this contract in place that is going to grow our Workforce I wanted to thank the city management for your hard work negotiating in good faith understanding what the challenges are for the next 10 years you know I I get afraid sometimes when you hear about mass shootings we talked about this morning I'm afraid of you know the gun incidents have increased crime has increased across the city we want to make the police position a profession of choice again we want to elevate our department and work in tandem with our department instead of against you know we're not here to work against with you all who sacrifice your time and night to make sure that our streets are safer and our community is safer it is because of you that our community has been one of the safest cities in the country and I thank you and I applaud you and I have deep gratitude for your support to keep our community safe yes there's going to be some folks who likely don't agree and I think there's work to do it doesn't preclude any member of this body to bring forward an item on the agenda and give more direction to the C manager that hasn't taken place what we have done today is we have agreed to fairly compensate the department and give you the benefits that you deserve because of all of the the things that you do day and night to keep us safe so I want to thank you on behalf of our office on behalf of our constituents and I'm looking forward to supporting this today and representative and on this I did want to make a comment with respect to the the pay that you mentioned in terms of preparing for it two things one it's not the same kind of environment the police officer has to work in that they used to work in 20 years ago so it's a lot more challenging and we took that into consideration in terms of the safety not only the community but the safety of the officer and now in every pay category against their peer cities it's either one or two in terms of of pay in terms of the ranking we were in the third or fourth level that was the philosophy but the reason the philosophy changed this time is because of the numbers you mentioned the 422 that can retire we did a drop program before in the last collective bargaining agreement but again we needed to be more aggressive because we need to grow the department and I mentioned the 300 plus program that we put in place that we not put that in place we'd be struggling even more today but make no mistake the today's challenges of the police officer is is a lot more Dynamic than it was 20 years ago so we took all of that into consideration uh in negotiating this agreement thank you Mr Gonzalez thank you very much mayor Alicia so it's a very good day for the city of El Paso to the men and women of the El Paso Police Department I salute you to the sacrifices that you make each and every day whether you work at graveyard shift an evening shift a day shift if you're behind a desk if you're out in the field doing taking calls for service if you're doing an investigative following up leads whatever you may be doing out there you need to come home safely each and every day I want to make sure that you get compensated fairly correctly and justly for all your work as I look around I see certain people that I do know and I see certain people I certainly do not know but that doesn't matter you wear a badge you wear a gun and you do the right thing each and every day so thank you on behalf of my family and the people of District Four I will be voting yes for your contract thank you thank you represent milinar representative Kennedy um just to start with I'm supporting this item you are El Paso's finest well and Jerry uh I uh so I couldn't resist Jerry okay um first of all as a citizen I say that because you know the joke is who you're going to call and you guys are the ones we call okay last time I saw this many cops my neighbor called about a party at my house so it's good to see you guys in a better situation than that I will say that that as a as an attorney and I am a criminal defense lawyer so I've seen some of you in more contentious situations than this but there's always been a respect and the statement that I've made to other criminal defense lawyers is the one thing about the cops is they're not going to lie to you you know that if you ask a question you're going to get the honest answer no matter which side of the of the day as you're on I obviously have some friends here in this room also um and I think that I've come to know better by having friends that wear badges some of the tests and challenges they have to go through I want to I actually did read the whole thing just so you know obviously 10 of your guys didn't because they voted against it um but I actually have read through this whole thing and I sent a copy to a friend of mine who is a union attorney out of town so I'm comfortable with it I want to thank that it's bottom end loaded for those that are coming out of the academy when you can make more money at a big box store than wearing a badge there's an issue and when you start seeing the attrition of people that come out are not even filling up the retirement slots that's an issue and we're a safer City when there's more badges on the street and I think that's what this does I think that the conversation I've heard before is is there may have been less communication between this body saying exactly what we wanted and instructions it's hard to follow instructions when they're not given um than they should have been given you know saying this is what we want I would ask going forward the next time we have one of these that we make sure that we as a body are very clear on how we want the process to be because it's hard to follow a process when you haven't been told what it is I will say ultimately this contract makes El Paso safer it is bottom and loaded which I want to thank you for city manager I mean that's that was one of my biggest concerns in coming into this office was that we make sure that we're starting to fill from the bottom so that we don't have to lose it all out the top when people are retiring or they're they're leaving the firm I will tell you that I am from a union household my grandfather was vice president of the AFL before it became AFL-CIO and you guys did a good job protecting the officers on this and I think the city did a good job in understanding exactly what it needs so that you guys can do your job and obviously I'm going to be supporting this thank you representative Kennedy representative Rivera thank you mayor thank you Mr Gonzalez and staff thank you police union members President and Vice President everybody involved in this contract negotiation today his today is historic historic a contract signed Within within the time frame that it was is expected to and with our police officers getting paid what they deserve let me tell you what for those that kind of doubt these officers that I've some of them I know were their hearts on their souls on their sleeve just to serve the community give up time with their families precious time that you'll never get back so your negotiations are a fantastic way to for the city to say we appreciate you we love you we love what you do the thing is that you know having been a police officer and you all being officer yourselves you know there are a lot of doubters out there a lot of doubters that don't need you until they need you anything else has pretty much been said uh you know how strongly I feel about the police department I think it's one of the best in the nation and to continue that uh retention is important equipping you guys is important equipping uh the department with the new technology is just as important as keeping you all here today again I thank you so much for for agreeing to this and uh I guess representative Kennedy said it best we can sleep better with that contract that was negotiated for him to approve it wow it's amazing thank you and so uh I say thank you again to Mr Gonzalez and staff and now it's us for us Council to finish it by approving this Council by approving this motion today and Mr Rivera the staff was Bonnie Cordova in the budget office as well as Nicole Cody Robert cortinas and chief D'Agostino so those are excellent excellent again I can't thank them enough and I know when the smack was there she helped out quite a bit everybody D'Agostino Chief Augustine is there and so I mean I can't say enough these men and women deserve what they're getting today that's Neiman also reviewed the contract with the Herrick if if I could if I would be remiss uh members of council Eric Gutierrez who's our police advisor was thoroughly involved as part of the team the red lines that you all received were done by him and he was a part of that team as you all know our our contracts are viewed by all lawyers in our office and um this was Eric's first crack at a collective bargaining agreement but he was very excited to be part of the team and really is instrumental to to the work that you all see here today so thank you so you've got his representative Kennedy would say you got to keep her there so we gotta yeah good too thank you sure so representative Kennedy said well done because I did read it front to back did a good job Mr Neiman so highly approved by attorneys and everybody else that read that uh that contract and so again I thank you all so much for for doing what you did to compensate our Police Department and give them the equipment and the pay that they deserve for the many sacrifices they do thank you thank you representative representative thank you mayor and uh thank you Mr Gonzalez and staff for all the hard work also Eric Gutierrez which is a lawyer that actually took the first stab which I think came out with really good wording I want to thank you all men and women here that are with us in blue that make sure that El Paso continues to be a safe City I know that this contract is going to ensure that we are more competitive and I know that that's one of the biggest issues and I know that this is going to grow our Workforce Public Safety is one of the biggest concerns of District Five I am very happy to see that there's going to be a regional Command Center and that many of you will probably be there or we're going to be adding some badges to that unit so I'm looking forward to to better response times I know that it's not you all's will not wanting to it's just it's hard right we didn't have the the center point so I think we're we're finally there I think I know that I've heard a lot of you can retire and that a lot of you held on because of Chief Allen and I really hope because you believed in him and he was a great leader but I really hope that this new agreement is enough for you all to also keep going with the force keeping El Paso safe and for you all not to retire we want to continue to grow our Workforce and and at that point in time that'd be a great time to retire but we're looking to work forward so that we could continue to be safe and I want to thank you all for everything you do and to continue to keep our our community safe thank you so much thank you representative with respect to the response times that you mentioned I did want to make something clear for the public and two years ago we barely got at the number we were at 20 years ago from from that two year ago period so in 2020 2021 we barely got to where we were in 2000 in terms of the number of officers that we had in 2000 so that that's not on them that's the fact that there was a severe decrease in police academies in the early 2000s and the numbers were going down not up while at the same time we were growing as a population so that is the reason again why we do have challenges with response times thank you and I want to thank you all we're going to take um call to the public right now I think there's two callers signed up there's actually four people signed up okay before we do that I do want to thank you all and and um you know whether there's a difference in Council and there's supposed to be a difference in Council whether it's part of the process and procedure and I think the the union will will know that that when you sit down at a table there are differences and and you come to an agreement and one of the things uh I'm not supposed to count votes I'm not counting votes but I think it's going to be approved and I think you got the support and it um Council has the right to voice their opinion and have a difference but at the end of the day it's what's the end result and the end result will be that we're supporting our police and fire our police department and uh and the union and and the hard work that you all have been doing and we'll move forward with the new contractors like I said I'm not supposed to count votes but it's looking pretty good up here so um um anyway I want to thank you all and um I don't think ever any disrespect has ever meant to you all it's just um again the processing procedure is the only you know what we talk about not uh the great job you all have been doing so I want to make sure y'all know that and I'm very impressed that uh I have Commander rutya here from the sheriff's department I have Chief from the fire department and uh the head of cleat and the union head from the um Sheriff's Department that's a support we need and that's a support and this is how we talk huh well he grew a mustache I can't recognize him but Mr Thompson's over there this is the unity that our city needs for success and we can talk on one voice and protect and act with one voice this is success and I think we talked about it when we talked about the Chapin basketball team how the United played as one this is no different it's a lot more at stake but it's no different than what we're talking about we all you know are here for one reason and not to protect the citizens of our community whether it's sheriff's police and fire we all represent the same people and so do we up here and uh and you all are you know who we're here to and I think representative said it's one of our most important Public Safety it is our most important it's our number one responsibility to our community to make sure that they are protected and they're safe so thank you God bless you and uh I think I had representative um can others come up and then we'll take public comment thank you mayor um I'm a big supporter of organized Labor uh in my wearing my other hat and my other employment I'm uh I'm an elected union rep I'm in the 13th month of bargaining for a collective bargaining agreement so I commend uh the the negotiating teams on both sides from the association and from the city for for knocking this out quickly and coming to to an agreement uh that I think uh works for both parties uh very well in the the short space of of the month of February um I just wanted to address I know uh I'm well I'm looking at the minutes from the uh June 8th 2020 work session meeting um item 10 was presentation and discussion on the El Paso Police Department's Community engagement efforts uh this was it was during covert it was a virtual meeting I wasn't on the council yet but I was involved in this meeting and I remember uh how it went uh of course this wasn't posted for Action there was no action taken to give direction to staff I do think the conversation that day implied that there would potentially be some changes made before this this agreement uh came up obviously we're here three years later um point of order Mr Canales there were further items after that just want to be very clear Robin I I'm very I'm uh this this isn't a back and forth I was about to say refinella I'm very happy to work with you I think I agree I agree with everything you said not a back and forth here I agree with what you said I really would like to work with you on on a lot of the changes that you discussed I think that moving forward um you know I I will still I'll be at the very end of my term but I will still be in the seat uh when this agreement expires in 2026 and I think that there is uh going to be some some space to make some some changes before then um and you know I welcome the engagement of all of the council but especially I know repinello this this is a topic that interests you a lot and I think we can work together to to get to some of these things and to to give clear direction to staff to make sure that uh the community remains engaged and and we can work on some of the things that were discussed back in 2020 and and since then um that's all congratulations again on on I think a very good job uh like I said from both sides and I plan to support today thank you uh Diana please thank you represent Canales we do have four members of the public who will be participating via teams it's Carmen Rodriguez followed by Alan Lee saraga Irma Cruz and then Samantha Singleton Mr Miss Rodriguez star six to one mute your microphone you have three minutes Miss Rodriguez are you on the line star six to unmute your microphone we'll move on to the next person Alan release zaraga are you on the line star six to unmute your microphone Mr Lisa Raga we'll move on to the next person Irma Cruz Miss Irma Cruz are you on the line star six to unmute your microphone and last person Miss Singleton are you on the line star six who's this again hello Irma Cruz Miss Cruz you have three minutes uh good morning everyone my name is Irma Cruz and I'm with the Border Network for human rights and I'm here just today to support the world that the police do I think is very important for us as a community and we call them when we need them and we are happy to have them uh the support the benefits that they got today it is important to so they can develop a better work and they have to have the necessary training and everything that they need to to do a good job but I think it's also necessary to to have accountability when they do their job I want to feel safe when I called the police and know that everything will be okay and we we will be a result well and that we're excessive force or even worse with the death of a family members as we have seen in other some other cases and this is why I believe that an independent commission should be added to investigate and monitor and also do the necessary corrections to so they can have to do a perform a better job so we know that everywhere there are bad bad apples but if we don't do the necessary changes that will continue to grow we we believe that there's this has to be an independent commission to see in in know that it's gonna be corrections to the department I think it will be better for the community for the Department to to be better and also for the city let's not forget how much the city has been over the years in in lawyers in law firms at 20 sometimes the indefendable so that's why I support the the job that they they do but also to include a commission that review um their actions thank you very much got it so we'll try this again Carmen Rodriguez if you still want to speak on item 29 Alan Lee saraga or Irma Cruz I mean I'm sorry Jonathan Miss Singleton if you're on the line start seeks to unmute your microphone I don't think they're on the phone seem like they're on the line so let's take you out we have a motion but you can't unmute we try calling her again who who again miss Singleton oh and I think that someone else is there as well people keep getting kicked off just FYI I keep getting messages so we have over 537 people on on teams yeah that's a problem we do have quite a few people and I was noticing yes hello I'm here this is Samantha Singleton okay you have three minutes ma'am thank you so yeah there has been an issue of in I've been kicked out a couple of times but however good morning mayor good morning representative my name is Samantha Singleton I am the policy director as well as the police accountability task force for the Border Network for human rights so I want to you know very quickly state that there was a pin placed in the cross-functional team's work and we've not gone back before Council since um May or June of last year to present the additional recommendations in regard to the disciplinary review board um we believe that there are some challenges within the internal process and procedures that are taking place and there needs to be more accountability secondly I'm only aware of one in this visual that sits on the disciplinary review board that represents the nhr so I'm very interested in knowing who this second individual is you know I understand that everyone needs a salary increase because the economy is increasing in everything but as the nation struggles with common sense police reform There's an opportunity for the city of El Paso to be proactive and set a model that other cities can follow improved salaries should also mean improved policing which include transparency such as emphasizing policy procedure data information and decision making is open to the community accountability where one person is responsible for his or her actions and oversight creating a structure for an external oversight such as an independent accountability commission to say that officers do not lie is an inaccurate statement the internal policies that exist within the police department today is for the protection of the officer and officers do duty is to protect and serve their community so when the internal affairs Department can take their time to process alleged abuses and or misconduct of an officer allowing the time to expire and no disciplinary measures take place with the officer it says that the internal system is broken and therefore changes do need to be made immediately this is factual information as my son was abused by El Paso Police Department and Internal Affairs did not take an invested take the statement until four years later and Internal Affairs officer stated to me and my son that the officers that were involved gave a completely different statement than what my son gave but due to the time expiring there were no disciplinary measures that could take place that is a broken system so to say officers don't lie is inaccurate so as city council Representatives 33 minutes are up and again I'll try Carmen Rodriguez or Alan lisarga if you're on the line and you still want to speak on item 29 please start six to unmute your microphone let's take let's take the motion we have a motion in a second let's take this you have a motion made by representative Rivera second Ary Molina to approve on that motion call for the vote Paulina Representatives and the item has been approved unanimously um thank you come up sir thank you mayor mayor to be clear um there needs to be a change to the Charter if we go any further than what we did we did everything we could in terms of what we were instructed to do within the bounds of what the charter stipulates so I believe that item was voted down by the council I just double checked with Miss Mack I just wanted to be clear that whenever the council as a body gives me direction it gets executed and it happens so we respect the entire body of the council and respect the process and just wanted to make that clear to you and the entire Council thank you mayor no it's time to congratulate every one of y'all for being here but also what's the exact number police officers on men and women we have 1109 officers well we want to congratulate every one of them even the couple that voted against it they got a great contract and uh you all deserve it and congratulations to every one of you all and thank you for your leadership and and filling in as the vice president and doing an incredible job thank you for corruption yeah can I say just a few words sure so my name is Sergeant Victor Vela I am the first vice president for the police Union uh during the contract negotiation I was actually the interim president um also the contract lead um the men and women behind me we've been preparing for this day for over a year now so that when we did go to contract negotiations we would go with plausible data to compare us with other cities and our says and our Manpower woman power and I think they did a wonderful job they did not get paid for this it's 10 people out of 1100 people that carry the load for this apartment and I want to thank each of you and I think a lot of you can relate to law enforcement because as hard as you work you're never going to please everybody and you're as far as your constituents so you two feel the pain that we feel at times and we really appreciate all your support we just appreciate the city manager and his contract team we didn't get everything we asked for we didn't ask for a lot as police officers here in El Paso were not greedy we just thought it was time that we get paid for what we're doing and to keep the retention of the officers that we're losing and to entice more officers to join our force and as Greg Allen always said a candle loses Nothing by lighting another one and that's why we wanted to keep the senior guys we have so they continue to Mentor our young officers that we can continue to be a great city thank you I thank you for the negotiation but I think this gives us a great platform for the future and that's what's really important not only in contract negotiation but also for the men and women that will be in our Police Department so thank you and thank everyone the chair and congratulations again on a great job mayor motion to recess all those in favor all those opposed and if we may ask at this time that the police officers Association if you can clear the room and then the honorees for the proclamations can stay here so they can take pictures in this room in the back yes so um just to repeat thank you Miss Anna just to repeat if I can get the police officers if you all could go into the lobby area there is coffee and and some sweets for you all in there feel free to enjoy it if I could get the folks who are here for the proclamations and for the recognitions if I could get you all in front of the photographs here uh we're gonna go ahead and take photo with the Child Abuse Prevention month with Tyler Cooper and Christian Lugo day National Public Safety followed by Cesar Chavez and also the uh Chapin High School seniors high school students foreign okay can we um can we reconvene please if I can if you can hold off on that and we'll start at the mass transit and then after that we'll reconvene the regular city council meeting so we're in recess now so we can go to mass transit so we can just speak in mass transit that's okay with you yes we're gonna start with mass transit and good morning this is a special meeting of the El Paso mass transit Department board on Tuesday March 28 2023 it is 10 55 a.m present in presiding is board chair Lisa and also president Chambers our board members Kennedy anello Hernandez molinar Salcido Fierro Rivera in Canales we do have two items in the consent agenda if we can get a vote to approve the consent agenda items one the minutes and item three is the board appointment second and we do have a motion made by board member anello seconded by board member Canales to approve and the motion is open the Voting is open and the and the consent agenda has been approved unanimously and we do have item number four and that is discussion in action on a resolution that the city manager or his designee is authorized to sign the documents related to the FY 23 low or no emission grant program and the grants for buses and bus facilities competitive program offers funding in the amount of 13 million for 487 721.60 we do have a motion made by repres by board chair I mean board member Rivera seconded by board member Hernandez to approve and the polling is open thank you Miss anello thank you and the item has been approved unanimously motion to adjourn one second mayor I didn't capture your vote yes oh yes it wasn't popped it didn't pop up by proof one second I'm re-logging in again sure do we have a motion to reconvene you don't have a second motion to so I have a motion from board member Lisa board chair Lisa seconded by okay to reconsider the consensus item number consent agenda oh you didn't take a there was no I didn't vote on that okay all in favor any opposed all right so we are back on the consent agenda I have a motion by board member Rivera seconded by Ford member Salcido to approve the consent agenda on that motion call for the vote Orchard Lisa yes Mr Kennedy it's been approved unanimously so then we'll reconsider item for item four was there yeah so now for item four uh it is actually I need a motion to reconsider item four motion by board member Canales do I have a second by board member president all those in favor and we'll reconsider item four and again really brief it's for authorizing the FY 2023 lower no emission grant program to approve again move to approved I have a motion by board member none this seconded by board member molinar to approve item number four on that motion call for the vote board member chair board chair Lisa yes there and it's been approved unanimously now if we can get a motion to return all those in favor all those opposed and the mass transit special mass transit board meeting for March the 28th has been adjourned at 10 59 a.m and now if we can get a motion to reconsider for the regular City reconvene the regular city council meeting of March 28th all those in favor although suppose and the meeting is back in session and at 11 A.M if we we have one item on the revisions so I'm gonna make a motion to approve the consent agenda with the following revisions um page 17 item 57 delete per planning and expect inspections um page 18 item 58 postponed two weeks per representative vanilla is there a second so 57 is being deleted 58 is being postponed we do have a motion to approve the consent agenda as revised motion made by mayor Pro temanello seconded by representative Hernandez to approve the consent agenda and the voting session is open and I apologize um can I actually add another thing to that okay um can I move item 25 to the front per representative vanilla item 25 to the Forefront representative Hernandez are you okay with that revision the voting session is open representative Salcido and Rivera and the consent agenda has been approved as revised Mr Mayor do you want to take item 25 that was moved to the Forefront item 25 is an update to City Council on the implementation of Grace act resolution good morning again Peter pacia syndrome chief for the for the record item 25 uh is a update on the grace resolution that was passed in January of this year uh meets gold 2 Safe and beautiful city next slide please a little background on June 24th of last year the Supreme Court overturned Roy Roe versus Wade June 16th of 2021 Governor Abbott had signed house bill 21280 from the 87th regular legislative session which uh took effect Statewide 30 days after Roe v Wade was overturned and on January 31st of this year city council passed the grace act resolution next slide please uh this is the actual house built 1280 that was passed by the Texas legislator next slide please constructively making it a criminal uh felony act for a medical provider to perform an abortion in the state of Texas next slide please here's the council resolution that was passed in January of this year directing uh city manager and staff to develop a police policy relation to the the law that was passed by the Texas legislature next slide please and this is our policy that has taken effect within the police department the city attorney's office helped us develop this policy it reflects what the resolution said for us to do and in instances when uh the violation of the state statute is reported to the police department the police officer would have to report it all the way up to the China command up to the executive staff next slide open it up for any questions that Council might have mayor Pro Tem kind of about this policy that we passed and that other people are passing is what is the police officer's role and right I think that's something that's very unclear and the law that's been passed by the legislature um the idea is that we don't know who would be enforcing this law on the state level and so that's why we kind of came to you all and said I think it's important that we we make a statement to people that may be traveling through El Paso seeking Healthcare alternate Health Care outside of the state um that this isn't a place that that they need to worry about being penalized by the city police right we don't know um how the legislature will address that this year I know prosecution prosecutorial discretion is a concern when it comes to these kind of issues so looking at your policy I just want you to kind of be clear for somebody who might be watching this trying to understand what that direction is so if an officer gets a call this policy says they will not act on it they will call up to their supervisor who will then bring it through the chain of command correct yes so like any crime that's reported to a police officer this crime or this Statute in the state health code makes it a felony so if an officer is made aware of a crime they have to make a report with that they have to notify the chain of command and it has to go all the way up to the the chief's office on where to proceed from there but we are required as state peace officers to enforce all laws and so what does where does kind of set once it goes all the way up and I guess you know where I'm going with this question right but is if you know the state ever asks for that information are they you know will we give it to them so all reports that the police officer do is in a record management system uh that's that's where all this information would be kept as far as it goes that's where whether it's a misdemeanor or a felony that's where we keep all our information the detectives investigate all their statements though all those documents would be sent over to the district attorney's office or it could be the county the appropriate prosecutor to follow up if they want to prosecute on the case okay so we are sending this information over yes ma'am okay um I mean that's helpful right I think that looking at this uh the greatest act was the first step we need to be kind of understanding how we're protecting that information I know you're saying by law you need to send it to the district attorney um we have not you know the the prior district attorney I know individuals reached out to get a statement from her I don't know what that has been with the new district attorney but again I think that the concern that the public should have is with the removal of prosecutor I can never say this prosecutorial discretion um being removed by the state right and so but I'm just I'm saying all of this kind of for public edification putting it on the record is that by law you all have to send that over to the D.A but that is the only action that you will be doing is recording that and sending it over depends on the investigation as far as if the investigation doesn't result in any suspects or warns for arrest or anything like that or us sending over the case not arrested in the district attorney's office would make a determination if they're going to take it before grand jury that's all up to them so I guess part IES act that we pass you're putting in here is that we would not be following up with an arrest and we would not be following up with an investigation so trying to understand kind of how this language that you have on slide seven is reflective of that action so it they uh an investigation go one of two ways if you have a suspect we can actually place somebody under arrest with a warrant signed by a judge or we can send the case over to the district attorney's office as non-arrest and leave it up to the district attorney's office to decide if they want to take it before but I understand what the action or council is to not do those things so you're telling me you will still do them despite the action of counsel if if if the law is broken and we have suspects in in any case whether it's this case or any other case and we can prove the elements to probable cause to get a warn signed by a judge then it's our duty and obligation to enforce the law so you're saying okay so you're saying that despite Council action you will still pursue individuals who are seeking abortion not people see that's not what the loss is that you are following so that's I'm just trying to understand how Council action is reflected on this policy well what was said in the resolution is people seeking abortions the law doesn't even address those individuals so that's not something we would even look at to but it also says surveillance of any electronic surveillance device Hardware or software there that is capable of collecting capturing recording retaining processing intercepting analyzing monitors sharing audio basically you're also talking about keeping a database when this of individuals who are either assisting in or seeking an abortion when the exact language asks you not to do that no we wouldn't be doing that but you just said that you would be keeping through the database if a plea if a police officer is made aware of a crime in this instance the the house bill 1280 then the officer has to make a report it is a felony as a statute addresses it they'd make a report and then it goes through the chain of command on the decisions to be made on the investigation where they go forward or not on the investigation but it is not this does not go to somebody who is seeking an abortion the statute itself talks about the medical providers Chief pacias if I can step in mayor um for purposes of also um what what I believe mayor Pro Temp is referring to is that is the request that this be considered a low priority so the reason that the policy is written that way mayor Pro Temp is that the police officer that is report is receiving the report of the crime would then follow the chain of command right and then those decisions be made in terms of a priority that it is placed on that type of investigation versus other investigations of the department is handling so there is a vetting process that's been built in in regards to the to the direction that the council gave in regards to the lowest priority so that is how it's being built in does that answer your question it does so I'm just looking at what Austin had reported out when they passed this and so um my concern is that the database that we're keeping and I know you're saying that you legally have to do that but I just want to read kind of what they reported and see how you can kind of analyze that based on what URL providing us so it says a-t-s-e-m-s is not required in any ordinary course of its operation to report information about a reproductive health care act that is received as a result of providing Emergency Medical Services right those are kind of the things that is missing from ours is how of our EMS attaining that information and helping individuals are they you know participating with the police department in that and I guess an example of someone who's oding EMS will go out and then a police report is filed those are the kind of things that we're looking for here what is our process going to be if someone needs to acquire Medical Services right and it is revolving around either an abortion that has or will happen how will PD respond will there be a police report those are kind of some of the things they would want to get more in depth with I understand this is just kind of the policy but there are other incidences that can happen that could involve PD and that's what I'm not really seeing in this presentation on how we're laying out those policies so whether the reporting party is a family member FMS a doctor in an emergency room or things of that nature and we get called to that incident the officer has to determine what if in fact any uh penal code violation or any statute has been potentially broken then they would uh initiate a report if they believe that there has been a criminal act involved it goes into our RMS our record management system and then it's reviewed by whether it's a regional command investigative unit or headquarters investigative unit would look at it depending on how it's routed and they would conduct the investigation further from there to determine hey is there actually a a crime that was committed so the reporting party can come it can come from a paramedic a doctor and that's a concern with the law and I guess it's you're saying that this report will come in and it'll be up to the individual on how far they're investigating my understanding okay so so once that officer takes the it gets the the information as potentially involves this policy and this uh House Bill 1280 then that officer is required by this policy to start and informing the chain of command immediately at which time an investigation could happen it could happen but it's going to be depending on what we have we have to make decisions at that point I can't give you a blanket statement yes we're going to do this or no we're not going well and I mean I just feel like that's what the council action was and so I'm just a little concerned that we're not proactively making a statement to support this action from Council um but thank you for the presentation I know that there's another update I do believe in June um so I'd love to sit down and talk to you about it further before that update okay thank you I still I think we need to make sure that um we can't take officer's discretion away and that's something that's really important when we talk about enforcing the law here and you know and I understand what representative saying but we so have to allow police officers to have discretion and understand what and follow and obey the law and as Council we have made a directive but again at the end of the day we didn't make a directive to make sure that we don't obey the law of the State of Texas of the city of El Paso nothing that's really important so I mean I think it's up to the city attorney's office to work with everyone to see how we can move it forward but again not violate the law of the city of El Paso or the rights of anyone so I I we understand that and we'll continue to work with that because again discretion of a police officer cannot be taken away representative Canales thank you mayor I'll say at the risk of getting a reputation that I'm just the guy who reads things out loud I want to read the whole thing out loud I think just for the public you know we didn't we didn't go through it uh in detail and um not everybody is accessing the backup um so if you'll bear with me just for a minute it's one page I want to read this out loud uh 438 Grace act guidelines the purpose of this policy is to provide the guidelines for the grace guarding the rights to abortion care for everyone act for the El Paso Police Department it is the policy of the El Paso Police Department that accept to the extent otherwise required by state or federal law Department resources including for example funds Personnel or Hardware will not be used to a create any record of any information related to an individual seeking abortion miscarriage or any other event that could be prosecuted as a violation of state law criminalizing or creating civil liability for pregnancy outcomes B provide information to any other governmental body or agency about pregnancy outcomes unless such information is provided to defend the patient's right to reproductive care including abortion care or the health care provider's right to provide such care and C conduct surveillance or use any electronic surveillance device Hardware or software that is capable of collecting capturing recording retaining processing intercepting analyzing monitoring or sharing audio visual digital location thermal biometric Behavioral or similar information or Communications specifically associated with or capable of being associated with any specific individual or group or any system device or vehicle that is equipped with an electronic surveillance device Hardware or software for the purpose of determining whether an abortion has occurred except for the collection of aggregated data without personal identifying information or personal health information for purposes unrelated to criminal investigation enforcement or prosecution it is the intention of the El Paso Police Department that this policy does not apply in terms in cases of conduct that is criminally criminally negligent to the health of the pregnant person seeking care or where coercion or force is used against the pregnant person in instances where a possible violation of Texas health and safety code chapter 170a.002 is reported to an officer the officer will contact the supervisor the supervisor will make notification to executive staff through the chain of command again I I this pulls a lot of language directly from the grace act resolution that we passed um you know I I think uh of course there's a careful balance here between uh the officer's Duty and the police department's duty to enforce state law and uh what we asked uh you all to include in this policy and uh I I think that this accurately reflects what what the intention was um you know we'll we'll have a roll out of this and I think we'll we'll have to see how it works and I'm glad that you'll be coming back to us to report uh in May and hopefully into the future as well um so thank you all for putting this together and like I said we'll we'll roll it out and let's thank you thank you representative representative Kennedy Chief I was just going to say uh my impression is you're doing the minimally required by state law actions is that about right state law requires you to take some of these actions we do we by by being a peace officer in the state of Texas we have to enforce the laws that the legislature passes and is signed up but you don't make the prosecutorial decisions no sir we don't okay thank you representative molinar thank you very much mayor Chief good morning great to see you again so um things that need to be considered anytime there is like you stated earlier a an offense and the presence of a police officer something's being reported to a police officer that person or the police officer's Duty bound to file a police report in certain circumstances for example there's a motor vehicle with injuries felonies misdemeanors in the presence of views so all of that goes into your records management system correct correct okay so us as a body city council just recently had back and forth discussions and we had different funding sources to get body worn cameras okay so now how is that going to play into the fact that there's not going to be audio and digital recording of certain things in other words are we going to start carrying apart that policy making exceptions for this policy making that exception for that policy or how would that play out if you can tell us so the officers are required to have their body cameras uh activated with any public contact they're required by policy to have that that goes into our body worn camera system and it's used for the if it's part of the case then it would go with the case so the district attorney has access to it so they can pull that footage okay but if there's policies saying that they're not going to be any type of a digital imaging or recording audio things like that is there a conflict there's a potential conflict with that with it with the two policies but right now our body worn camera they have to wear it they have to have that camera on anytime they're in public contact I appreciate that I don't know um legal can you provide any assistance on that please okay go ahead good afternoon Eric Gutierrez with the city attorney's office um representative I don't think it conflicts with our body worn camera policy um the specific gray Sac language specifically talks about conducting surveillance with respect to uh the purpose of determining whether an abortion has occurred and so I I don't think those two things conflict in addition to that because there is body cam storage of these conversations that doesn't mean they get released to the public it goes through our office with respect to open records and so if there is a conversation that's recorded and it's requested there's a variety of exceptions that apply to that information being released to the public okay and so surveillance can mean many things to different people and so the word probably needs to be defined I mean I could be watching something two blocks away and that's my surveillance and I'm doing a visual on it and I can probably do an audible on that for to a point you know loss of hearing in older age but the thing is at some point you may act on it so it just it depends on the set of circumstances that's there and forget you know necessarily the abortion what if all of a sudden you see another felony in your presence or view so it changes the Dynamics of that as well sure yeah and so I think you know when we look at the specific language of the grace act I think that's kind of where we we get that excerpt from subsection C and we compare that to our PD policy on those body cameras um based on my review of both of those and assisting and drafting both of those I don't think those conflict um and we haven't had any situations since Roe was overturned or since the grace Act was enacted that we've had this situation come up okay just food for thought thank you very much sir and thank you chief thank you thank you Chief and there's no other questions thank you for being here like always thank you thank you and I was going to announce and I didn't realize until we left that uh Sergeant natividad for everyone's uh just Fairwinds knowledge is the new president of the Police Association so I just thought I'd let everyone know that so congratulations to him he said he got voted in about seven days ago and there's no action on item 25 and we'll move on to the first item on the regular agenda which is item 18 discussion and action on a resolution that declares the expenditure of District 4 discretionary funds towards the funding registration cost of the 2023 National neighborhoods USA conference is there a motion to approve second episode thank you very much and so um this is a great event that's going to be happening in our city of El Paso in May and I fully supported having been a president of the neighborhood associations two different neighborhood associations it's really close and dear to my heart that neighborhoods develop a community communities develop into cities and it's a reflection of all of our diversity it's a reflection of all of us and who we are it is a very proud day that we as the city of El Paso can host this great event for our nation I look forward to being in attendance there look forward to meeting new people I look forward to all the work that's being done in the planning stages and I believe it's going to be a great day so thank you very much and I do see Nicole verini thank you very much for in your staff for everybody that's doing the great work on that thank you thank you we have Motion in a second we do have a motion made by by mayor Pro temanello seconded by Representatives zero to approve pulling is open representative Fiero and the item has been approved unanimously moving on to item 19 and that is a discussion in action and a resolution that declares the expenditure of district 7 discretionary funds also towards funding the registration cost of the 2023 National neighborhoods USA conference second we have a motion in two seconds and we have a motion by representative Canales Rivera seconded by representative Molina and the polling is open and the motion has been approved unanimously representative Hernandez not present for the vote thank you moving on to item 22 and that is discussion in action regarding a solicitation for an executive Search firm to conduct the national search for the hiring of a permanent city manager including but not limited to consideration of the scope of work for a national search thank you and I know that Miss Cody and a team that was assigned has done a really good job of kind of identifying the process and I'm hoping that everyone up here at the Dyers has been briefed have you had a briefing with everyone yes sir so you'll kind of have a process and kind of what uh what to look forward to so if you would go forward I appreciate and thank you for appreciating everyone doing good job Nicole Cody Mary Michelle will be joining me just very shortly um so we met with each individual representative and one item that did come up multiple times was really regarding the interview panel so we'll we'll go into just the timeline on the procurement and then when Mary gets in we'll I'll pass it to her so as requested hi Miss Mary no I was about to as requested um on March 14th was the motion that was made by representative Canales and seconded by representative anello for us to come back uh with information regarding the past executive Search and then also regarding the scope of work for the solicitation for an executive Search firm and so I'm just going to briefly as I mentioned go over the RFP process and then I'll turn it over to Miss Mary Michelle so here you'll see um the timeline the tentative timeline that we have regarding the executive recruitment process and this is the request for proposal this is the RFP process itself and this is in order for us to be able to go through the procurement process for a selection of the executive recruitment team and as mentioned is the selection committee below would be it's going to be formed from Human Resources our City Human Resources as well as an external human resource department so I'm going to turn it over to Mary thank you Mary Michelle Wiggins Assistant Director of Human Resources so then the next uh steps I believe that each of you received the project scope um and so we're ready to move forward I think the action today is to to make sure that we're all in agreement with the project scope before we start though one item in the project scope that we had recommended we had given you some past history as far as the panels that had been used previously and so we're going to do a red line item on the recommendation for the project scope on the section 6E the section that actually States the different panels our recommendation is that we're going to redline that we're going to strike having those specific panels named out and we're just going to change that to say a minimum or a maximum a minimum of four panels that there will be a minimum of four panels that will be utilized in order to to make this decision that way we're we're not focusing right now on what those panels are going to be for the purpose Services of today and the project scope we just need to be able to agree you know what's in there and what our requirements are and be able to move forward and then we can later agree on what those panels are going to look like so we're just trying to to move that forward a little bit is there any questions I think it's important that we're going to have four panels panels will be an advisory role and to show the final decision will be up to council to vote on correct yes so there'll be the different panels but the other panels will be making recommendations to the mayor and Council and the final decision will be with mayor and Council um we're just we're recommending that we the search firm that we're going to utilize they understand that we are wanting heavy citizen involvement and that we want them to go out to the citizen groups and we want to gather that information and make sure that we're hearing what our citizens are saying they'll you know we want a panel of our employees we want to make sure our employees are heard so those are the items in the project scope that have been outlined and trying to make sure we hit all the marks on what we think is the best items to move forward now how do you plan on as every council member appointing a member to each panel well and so that can be something that we will will finalize later but uh our recommendation will be when we get to that point our recommendation for like the citizens advisory panel we would recommend that mayor and Council will each choose one appointee to be on that channel on that panel if we choose to use an internal employee panel our recommendation is that mayor and Council will each choose one and pointy from current city employees to be on that panel so yes those employees would be come from each one of you great thank you for that I had representative are you done I'm sorry I'm done okay representative uh Kennedy followed by representative um uh before you wander off real quick um the RFP selection committee will actually be the council as a whole correct no no sir so through an RFP process as we go through that process that is a committee is put together that will review all of the rfps and then and that was the one that she mentioned that it would be the we'd have two Human Resources Executives from City and then we're recommending One external Human Resources executive so there would be three three committee panel and so what would happen is is they would review all of the bids they would score them based upon a scoring sheet I believe I attached and so the final the recommended one would be brought back to council and that would be the one that we would um that we're making the recommendation Council will have the final decision on that choice and then at that time also if Council so chooses we can have that person come and you know do a presentation you know for you as well okay and you'll share all the scoring with us so we can make a determination based on that yes that'd be great of all of all of the individuals not just the recommended one correct correct okay I just want to double checking thank you thank you for that uh representative thank you yes thank you I was trying to find that email that you sent out and so uh thank you rep Canadas who sent it to me could you explain that penalty again the panel labeling that you're going to have explain all the paneling well the panel that you're going to have yes you're gonna have two different panels aside from the four could you could you go back no so what I'm saying is is for the for this process so that we can agree on a project scope we don't want to name the panels we're choosing at this time to take we're not having any finalization on who the panels are we're just going to put in that project scope that up to four panels will will be on there so that way you're not forced to all have to agree on what those panels look like today that can happen at a later time for the purpose of this scope we just want to let the it's just letting the executive recruit firm know that there's going to be you know at least four panels that are that they're going to be working with and so we can name those panels later okay but just for those listing it's it's going to be a combination of everybody involved yes business or citizens so our recommendation you know would be that for example the citizens advisory each of you like I said would be able to appoint someone and in the past it has been the mayoring council has appointed business you know members and different people from you know the organization from the citizens um different different areas and same thing for the internal group they were able to choose any of the different levels of employees that are current city employees because I also remember the issue I brought up was business the business Community as well correct and so that's you know that's what we can do that's why we're not wanting to Define what those four panels are right now where we're um we're saving that for a later discussion so that you can all come to an agreement on what that looks like we don't want to hold up you know going out for recruitment at this time so we want to just say up to four and then Council and mayor can agree later what those four panels look like to you okay and then and then again for those listening that panel will be part of the numbering system that comes in for Council that panel so the panels that we're talking about that we're putting on here those are for the selection of the city manager okay so the committee for what we're talking all this is for today is to go out for an executive recruiting search form okay and so that committee will be three Human Resources you know Executives and so once everything is scored and tallied and a final recommendation and you know we talked with each of you whenever we're doing it we want to make sure that we are comparing Apples to Apples you know we want to make sure that that you know that the recruiter understands the quality you know of what we want going forward and so we'll answer all those questions and then we will come back and we will bring to you who we feel um was the highest score and is going to do the best job for the city at that time then you will be able to vote and agree on that person okay but then again when does that when do those panels come in so then once we have the executive recruiting search firm then we're ready to move forward now they're going to come in they're going to meet with all of you they're going to want to you know hear from you they're going to make sure that you know like the job spec everything is in agreement we agree with all of it what the recruitment's going to look like what your expectations are going to be as far as the citizen involvement and then we will form those panels of what the final because there's a lot to even get to that point and so at that point once that's done it's to the request of the mayor and most and I guess the majority of us saying when you bring those numbers will include those panels already have been having had their input say that again please I said those numbers that the mayor request and I believe another representative well those numbers he's requesting are for the executive recruiting search firm that we're going to bring forward so let's just say we have six search firms at bid um we're going to come forth with who number one is but he wants to see two through six as well he wants to know what those scores look like and then we go and then once you um you choose you elect the the search firm then we start moving forward with what the next step is going to look like okay gotcha thank you thank you man thank you mayor thank you representative representative followed by mayor Pro Temp Mrs Cody mayor Michelle thank you for your work um just I I was reviewing your scope of work and this is going to be the language that you place as part of your selection process correct correct that's going to be in the RFP that'll be part of the RFP will be our scope of work okay so um there's some things that um I have I have worked with different interview panels specifically with the Socorro ISD and I mentioned to you this in our conversations um I thought socorro's superintendent search was really really well done um what they I don't know if any of you any of you interviewed with them um and I I even suggested like um I don't know that I'm in your jurisdiction um but I really appreciate it the fact that they Incorporated um different stakeholders and leaders um but at any rate uh they that was the search firm that the school district had hired that was actively doing those interviews with different stakeholders I think they had said they had that they were conducting over a hundred I think there was even more that they achieved so there are some things that you know I truly do believe should be incorporated in the scope of work and so of course stakeholder engagement I see that in in the um the the proposed scope of work looking at stakeholder interviews Community meet and greets meeting the panelists staff meetings I think is really important to have an internal process staff should have the opportunity as done in the past to participate in meeting with finalists and interviews looking at um the actual vendor I've always been concerned about um you know maybe the the candidates that they propose aren't the candidates or maybe they pull out or you know something of that nature so making sure that the firm will guarantee their search and no additional fees will come from that so if the first round is not meeting the needs of council then to make sure that we put there that they're going to guarantee that within no additional cost to the taxpayer that they would bring back a second round or a third round looking at um search committees key staff and Community leaders and stakeholders what I what I think is really important for search firm is to have a dedicated point of contact for this region and then also have a dedicated group who will do that one-on-one interviews with neighborhood associations with different Faith groups and stakeholders I think that's really important given the the high profile of this position also making sure that our search firm is able to go across different digital platforms so making sure that they're utilizing social media we have found that social media has been really supportive in in public discourse and dialogue I don't know if this Council would want the firm to help with negotiating salaries but I think that's something we should explore and then the final thing I wanted to make sure is that having you know because there's a lot of confidentiality you know making sure that confidentiality is stressed uh to protect candidates who are applying for the job but also making sure that they have a robust Pio team who is able to work with the city's Pio team so that they can release that information in concert so there's a clear strategy on announcing to the public getting the time frame and engagement from the public so um I I would ask if good with Council that we asked we add those additional requests to the scope of work because that may filter out firms that are not prepared to do that much engagement for a community and we recognize that there's a lot of confidence and damage control that we have to do as a community and so I think it's really important that we over educate and include the include the publicist as much as we can and so those those are my suggestions and I know you all have a lot of latitude with the scope of work but I think they're pretty reasonable requests and I think a search a professional search firm should you know be able to do all that thank you thank you mayor Pro Tem for the presentation [Music] a couple things that I want to talk about and one is less about the search firm in the process um so I imagine you were all going to walk us through this process right so once the the company is hired and we're actually going y'all are going to kind of hold our hands so I think that this is kind of a relevant comment um and I don't think that anybody here on Council is going to be a problem but I just do want to State for the record that I think at our last hire um there was some poor conduct from Council Members right not sitting through the interviews but then coming in and voting I think it made this Council look bad I think it made the city look bad and so I really want to see how we can create I guess a code of conduct or some kind of guidelines for the participation that needs to take place from Council and what happens if you don't take part in that right you know we can't stop anyone from voting obviously they're a member of this body but I think it's it's really important that each of us kind of takes a pledge to be through every step of this process so I'm going to task you with that that'll be great the other is looking at the firms um I I think you know you said up to four panels you kind of listed for but I do agree I think the more Community kind of Outreach and internal participation in this process is important like I don't want to limit ourselves I know that we all appoint someone um and I think it's important for us as a council to appoint a committee right because you're representative Rivera say well the business Community wants to be involved right and I don't think that any one candidate should be interviewing with five different groups of people whether it's a business Community or like the non-profits you're never going to make everyone happy and it's just going to create a cluster and so I think it's really important to kind of focus on that one thing that I would like to kind of mention is we did this with a charter committee where we allowed uh non-voting member I guess I mean I don't think this committee will vote on anything maybe they will but from the labor union I think that's important that doesn't take a position away from any of the council but also includes people that are impacted and so I think that maybe having that as part of our appointed committee would be as important as well I also kind of I don't know where these comments fit in the sake of this conversation but you know a lot of times we see these companies that um just kind of have like a pile of applicants and so then you hire them and they've already you know people have paid them a membership and then they just kind of give you these applicants right without I think looking at what you really want whereas I know I just worked for a national search for a non-profit organization to find a new executive director and when we went through the process of looking at a company it we really looked at okay what do we want from the executive director right and there were companies and they're different because they're non-profit world but that look at diverse hiring right look at um kind of a philanthropic experience right things that are different to what we're looking for but I guess what I'm trying to say is that there are companies I think that look more at the specific candidate than just they're just like a pay to hire service and I think that's important and I think we as a counselor are going to have to sit down and say well what are those qualities that we want right correct you you know is this the time that we're doing that no okay no so that will take place like once we have an executive Search firm we're going to bring them in and we're going to set them down with all of you and that's when you're going to be having those discussions but I think I'm going a step ahead of that because I think what I'm saying is that there are search forms that are more diverse in and of themselves well and that's where my concern is because right now we're talking about that process for that search form correct I would like you know to see a search for him that is not just a pay to hire service I would like to see someone who is looking at diverse hire that is looking at um kind of products of equity right in the work that they've done before and so I don't know if this feedback now was helpful to you okay and so some of the questions that I have that are going to go in the RFP I mean that are those are some of my questions some of Ms Hernandez's as well so I asked a question on diversity you know I wanna I want them to give me a level I need to know that they are willing and wanting to work you know and address diversity I also asked questions on guarantees I want to make sure what happens if we don't get one and what happens if you know six months down the road once they start you know we want guarantees so I tried to place those kind of items in there in order to be able to help score to make sure that we are getting that right search firm great thank you that's very helpful representative Canales thank you mayor Pro Tim hi Mary hi thank you all for putting this together you've done a good job um I'm I'm gonna do it again I'm gonna read a little bit let me read out some of the questions that you sent I think it's valuable for people to hear some of the questions uh and to be clear by questions I mean questions that will be included uh in in the RFP for uh the for scoring and and to evaluate the potential uh search firms that we might hire uh the first one to it specializes in local government recruiting and there's length of experience conducting recruitments for similar positions number of city manager recruitments in the last 10 years provides a detailed project manager with career local government experience or significant experience recruiting comparable positions to the position being recruited has experience conducting stakeholder engagement activities such as stakeholder interviews Community meet and greets staff meetings facilitating media interviews Community profile input meetings surveys Etc uh number six experience and diversity equity and inclusion in recruiting candidates that emphasizes the importance of working with diverse populations highlighting existing diversity present in the community slash organization advertising the position with diverse professional organizations Etc seven offers online recorded candidate video interviews prior to finalist selection eight assists with salary negotiations nine provides an applicant pool guarantee search will be reported for no additional repeated apologies search will be repeated for no additional fee if initial pool is unsatisfactory and 10 length of service guarantee professional fee waived for new search if selected candidate leaves within specific length of time um and I think that those are pretty comprehensive they cover a lot of the concerns that people brought up today um and you know I think those are good questions that will Define a recruitment that hopefully will get us a good pool of candidates um you see and I think there's no one who wants to speak after me so at this point I will uh I move that we uh direct staff to uh use this the scope of work that is included in the backup including the recruitment questions that were sent to us and incorporating the additional the additional red line through that staff proposed earlier as well as the concerns and additional questions brought up by representative Hernandez and um thank you all for for your work I think that this is a good timeline this is you know just like represent Canal said you know it's got all these metrics you're all are going to look at and bring back in in some type of um order for us so thank you so with that we have a motion in a second we do have a motion made by representative Canales seconded by representative Salcido and that is to direct staff to use the scope of work that's included in the backup including the recruiting questions and additional Red Line recommendations as well as the additional input provided by Representatives okay to include the admission provided by the council member and again this is strictly for the search for correct for the executive thank you yeah I think that's one final important clarification to make for the public this is the we're discussing the scope of work for hiring the search firm uh this does not extend to the scope of work for hiring the city manager that this that the search firm will use that will come later I will reinstate restate the the motion just to make sure it says to direct staff to use the scope of work for hiring the city of El Paso executive Search services for the city manager position including recruiting questions the additional Redline recommendations and the recommend the recommendations made by council members and again to approve and voting session is open Representatives that's it thank you and the item has been approved unanimously and then mayor can we take a break before call to the public about 10 nine minute break um what time is it uh we got nine minutes to call the public so yeah but then we've just said to call to the public is it an action item or is this presentation go ahead man so with the next three and that is present points from the guidelines for recruiting a city manager produced by the Texas City management association by representative Hernandez okay so I wanted to come down here so I can um see the presentation a little bit better and and I wanted to thank you representative Canales for your leadership and pushing forward a process for the search firm I wanted to just share for purposes of informing the public because you know it's it's so important um what we're doing and so can you go to the next slide please so the Texas City Managers Association they've actually conducted a guideline process for City councils and this is all verbatim from the guide and so um what it states is selecting a city manager is one of the most important Decisions by a city council the hiring process for a city manager must be deliberate and not impulsive and please note when we talk about city council we are referring to city council as a whole as identified as a city Charter including the mayor so while a city council is responsible for providing policy and political leadership for the city the city manager is responsible for implementing policy and providing the administrative leadership necessary for continued progress and employee morale to the great extent as a resource to the city the city manager will make the difference between whether or not city council objectives and priorities are identified defined considered and implemented and since we've had a change of form of government we've had two City two city managers former city manager Joyce Wilson and former city current city manager Tommy Gonzalez who time will end in two and about 120 days so that puts you at June of this year next slide please oh so first steps while resources are available to assist the most important considerations for those making the higher decision are to know what you are looking for when recruiting to fill a vacant city manager position I think we have done a pretty good job at identifying you know what is it what it is that we're looking for just among city council remember that recruiting a city manager is a two-way street the city has a responsibility to present the position attractively show interest in the applicants and be competitive be sure the recruiting process is well organized and coordinated from the onset I think we've done that and so really proud of the council for doing that don't lose control of the recruitment process or the hiring decision to others such as search firms employee groups Community groups or other elected officials involve people in the recruitment process who are knowledgeable of local government and how the council manager form of government works recruitment First Steps next slide please City council's first steps when a vacancy becomes known and prior to the recruitment act promptly but deliberately to announce the vacancy and recruitment timetable we talked earlier about looking at the by the end of this year hopefully the recruitment process will be finished me to plan for the recruitment process we've done that the past two Council meetings and today appoint an interim city manager we have done that obtain status report on current problems and important projects defer key actions where possible for the new city manager next slide participants of the selection process of course city council were responsible developing a framework I think the search process is the first step assign key staff to assist with search firms I think those who have risen have been Mary Michelle as well as Nicole Cody we need to be clear on identifying key staff internally citizens committee if desired by city council and structured properly it is possible for citizens to play a role in the process this Council has made that clear we would like to include the public while citizens involvement can play an important role in recruitment two cautions must be noted the city council must not lose control in terms of making the final decision so that candidates do not receive the impression that they are being hired by committee as opposed to city council itself most often the public does not fully understand the job of a city manager especially how it relates to the city council how government works the complexity of the public policy Arena and multiple diverging perspectives Etc so the Public's preference should not Trump the council's preferences next slide timing the timing of a city manager recruitment can sometimes be affected by publication deadlines which are important in terms of properly advertising the vacant position deadlines we should consider deadlines for submitting resumes and an ideal timeline could be 30 to 60 days from the start of the recruitment applicant reviews 30 to 60 days to review the resumes have interviews conduct background checks and make a selection after selections a minimum of 30 to 45 days to for this new city manager to relocate to the city if if that's applicable overall the recruitment should move forward in an expeditious way allowing adequate time for a thorough and comprehensive process next slide selection criteria because no one's an is an expert in all areas and because city managers have various backgrounds and experiences it is important for the city council to reach a general consensus on competencies experience education levels skills this new city manager should possess and objections that they will look to him her to achieve by reaching a general consensus on the selection guidelines criteria the parameters can be used in three ways during the recruitment process for the advertising of the position for the selection criteria reviewing the resumes and for assessing the performance of a new city manager next slide compensation I know the public is really interested in hearing this a final item to be considered at the at the outset of the recruitment is compensation while it is important for the city council to have some general understanding of salary parameters it is also important that the council leave itself some flexibility in this area some City councils leave salary open to measure it with background and experience from a practical standpoint every city has political or other limits in terms of compensation and this can be taken into account by reviewing the current salary of applicants at the time of violence are selected another approach is to consider the listing the current city manager salary or the proposed salary range while stating the salary is negotiable for determining a salary range the tml Texas Municipal league has an annual survey of salaries and benefits provided provided for 27 positions in Texas cities including the positions of city manager next slide I did that search everything that's in white I took directly from the tml survey and that was sure this year but it has entry dates these are surveys volunteer voluntary from different cities but I didn't see any larger cities in Texas that are comparable to our population um so I went above and beyond and I got additional cities San Antonio Dallas Austin Fort Worth and Arlington so in in the little notes on the bottom there you will see that for the top five city managers respective to this chart only the the average salary for the top five city managers is 386 822. the average salary for all city managers regardless of population size region some cities don't have city managers they have like for example the Houston area there's a Pasadena they have a chief of staff that Chief of Staff makes 225 000. so it just depends on the form of government but the average salaries is 305 352 and 91 cents and that is just the average for all of those next slide so the recruitment process the position should be well defined the position to be effectively advertised a selection process consisting of interviews and total compensation package I just want this information to be out to the public because there there are guidelines I think just looking at the initial conversations I think we've I think we can get there I just think um once we have the selection firm we'll get deeper into the weeds next slide recruitment Alternatives is not applicable anymore because we just directed staff to do a city manager search with the search firm in the next slide there also are selection processes and so I would ask our team to look at some of those selection methods and they do go into detail about they even have a an addendum that goes into detail about what we should be looking for in a selection firm I would highly recommend our team to to look at that there's a lot of lessons learned here next slide diversity diversity for the Texas City Managers Association is actually really interesting the way they approach this there is a guideline in their guide there's a specific appendix that that points to the recommendations and diversities in hiring look in local governments the international City Managers Association and Texas state that due to the current lack of diversity in the profession the next generation of public servants may not see local governments as an attractive option making future talent and development recruitment challenging so they really try to focus on diversity I think most communities their their leaders should be reflective of that but that is something that the tcma highly recommends focusing on diversity because of the lack of diversity in the state next slide we should have a process for in-house applicants as well next slide I don't know how to go to the next one oh I think oh this one in-house applicants we should have our process in-house as well make sure that's on our City's online job application platform and to make sure that in-house applicants are treated in the same manner as all applicants next slide and the application review process unless the city council has retained an executive recruiting firm there are at least other Alternatives so we could receive hundreds of resumes for the city manager position so it's really important that our search firm puts the work in to to pick the the best qualified finalist next slide then finalists when resume review process has been completed it should be possible to narrow down the total group of applicants to a smaller second round group consisting of 10 to 15 applicants this smaller group will be the subject to more thorough background checks including references in social media and there's more additional information about background checks and interviews next slide um we can have a discussion about virtual interviews if you know I think now and after the pandemic you know I think those are pretty um pretty much uh something that our firm could consider and I would be open to that um but I think for final applicants we should consider them to be in person because there are a lot of cons and Pros for virtual interviews and the guy talks about that as well um you know not being able to understand body language and and making sure that uh we can we get more when we're in person and then um the final thing that I want to mention to you all because we only had like a week to to have this discussion about search firms you know other communities do extensive community outreach right before they hire a search firm we didn't have a lot of time to do that given the current circumstances our office released and partnered with efo media we released a survey just to kind of get a sense of how does the public want to be involved I'm sharing those surveys with you all today they're we passed them around and just to wrap up kind of the survey results 86 respondents or residents um the the question about how the public should be engaged in the city manager selection process the top three were to be a community Town Hall meetings um survey and input on qualifications and citizens advisory committee so there is a you know really firm um you know feedback not only from one-on-one conversations I've had but from the survey results that the public certainly wants to be involved in this process the the other leadership traits that they believe are most important for our next city manager to possess and the top three were ethical which is 80 trustworthy 69 and Visionary 44 percent the next question is which three of the following management styles do you believe are essential for the city manager to have to successfully lead up a Paso and the top three were top three management styles are strategic collaborative and team oriented the next question is which of the five falling abilities and skills do you believe are most essential to perform the work of a city manager the top three were to be good stewards of City resources to the ability for a city manager to think strategically and remain focused on the city's long-term goals and skill in Municipal Finance those were the top three do you think it's necessary for senior city manager to have previous experience in any of the following areas and we had over 67 percent believe that city managers management experience is critical what are the top three opportunities and top three challenges they're pretty lengthy responses but I have all of the responses if you'd like to look at them but in essence the takeaway is rebuild confidence making sure we have a city manager that is going to be an inclusive of all stakeholders and um and to make sure that we rebuild trust in the community and then we did capture kind of where all the residents live and there were we got respondents from all of the districts and um and most of them have over 15 years living in the city of El Paso and so I wanted to make sure that we had just some kind of understanding of where we want the process to go I I reiterate to my constituents that this is your government this is your management these are we're your public servants we are here to have open and transparent process and the more that we can over educate the community and include them I think we'll be better off this is the most important decision I will make and each one of you will make and so my hope is is that we take this process seriously as we have already and be as inclusive as possible and fair but also have the position to be as attractive so that we can Talent recruit the best talent for our community um that concludes my presentation sorry I went a little bit over you were nine and a half minutes no uh thank you for the presentation I think that gives us a lot of food for thought and I know that every city council member has a responsibility just like you said it'll be our you know one of our largest UH responsibilities as elected officials that we will make so it's going to be very important so this gives us food for thought and I think that all city council members will meet with their constituents and come up with some type of game plan as you did because I think it's important that we do reach out to our community and and bring it forward and I thank the Nicole Cody and her staff for bringing up the process that we're going to be looking forward to Houston so thank you again thank you mayor and with that call to the public we do have one member of the public Carmen Rodriguez Rodriguez are you on the line star six to unmute your microphone Miss Carmen Rodriguez star six to unmute your microphone I guess she's not there and then after college so um I'd like to go to call the public connection after that we'll take a 30-minute recess for lunch we'll take the city council is a local government body charged with serving all the citizens of the city and meetings must be focused on the meeting at church the City Council meetings are public meetings under the Texas open meetings ACT public comment is an accommodation and not a requirement of the city council all persons in attendance are expected to display civility in the Quorum that is respectful to other persons without the use of insulting profane threatening or abusive language public comment will not be used for personal attacks against the personal group's character or Integrity which are not pertinent to City business nor May any member of the public use this forum for political statements or campaigning please note that during the call to the public the city council may not deliberate or decide any subject that is not on the agenda however Council May propose that a topic that topic can be posted on a future agenda we do have nine members of the public signed up to speak the first one is Carla Ruiz followed by Miss kazen No cazen bemente Marina Chris Maria Cristina Rivera Richard Logan Wolfe Albert Rivera Barbara Valencia Ephraim Salcedo and Rich right and Miss Carla Ruiz are you hi yes good afternoon oh yes can you hear me yes you have three minutes to uh to address the council and her topic is proposed solution for our City's flooding issues perfect thank you so uh good afternoon thank you for having me my name again is Carla Ruiz I was um born and raised here in El Paso I left approximately uh closer to 20 years ago now uh in 2006 during the um one of the worst Monsoon Seasons that I think our city has ever experienced when we had some significant issues with flooding I just moved back to the city uh recently in 2021 and during that year surprise surprise again terrible Monsoon um it just doesn't get any better last year as well terrible season uh so bad that you know my mom lives in central her like tiny Fiat almost got swept away by the street flooding and torrential rain so this issue is an ongoing issue 20 years later I don't think that the city unfortunately has really come up with any um good Solutions at least not from what I can personally visually see around town um the same issues are there um I am not a city planner I'm not a hydrologist um in fact I'm just an attorney I don't have much expertise in water but I do know of a guy who does have this expertise and um his name is Brad Lancaster he works out of Tucson and I'm not kidding when I say he has literally found the solution to what our community needs and preventing all these floods uh how do I know that he's found the solution because he's done it in Tucson right he's done things like landscaping for rain and water manage instituted Water Management Systems um in a way that hopefully my colleague who is also here to give a public comment his name is Logan Ralph hopefully he can give you a bit more of the um specifics of exactly how he does it but the reason for my public comment today is to introduce this guy to you his name again Brad Lancaster and he works out of Tucson he's been able to work with the city to pass a variety of Municipal residential and Commercial codes that are transforming the city in a way that um really helps sequester the carbon filter contaminants from the street it does things like recharge our aquifers it grows wildlife habitats and the solution is is very surprising we just we basically have to cut our city curb to let the water go into certain Landscaping areas into basically and you can do this in every neighbor thank you for your public comment next person is and you have three minutes sir his topic as NMSU Financial Innovation lab opened to El Paso and Juarez residence innovative ideas which is why I'm here the fact that the financial Innovation lab is open to community members of El Paso Juarez and of course Las Cruces and this is my return because last time I was here mayor U.S signed a proclamation for World savings day our Innovation Kaizen rental Solutions is a financial lead design in this case his lead is leadership in economic empowerment design we have two Financial frames plus we intend to expand our decentralized pilot to include west of Lordsburg and east of Van Horn this project is similar to El Paso's goal for sustainable economic development but in this case Leeds is focused on the individual so sustainable economic development for the individual yes this is the I-10 Financial space Corridor and we have also designed the financial Galactic train which is driven by compound interest and the e-math constant this Financial Galactic train runs on the Carmen Financial Gold Line and that's related to the Bloomberg wealth number model so it's a scientific model that you can use the legislation would write and supervise safety and inspection rules for this financial leads and community members you would get on board to help build your account and benefit from this how to increase Community Prosperity without use of taxes or debt you drop the ineffective costly methods of the past and present and you you adopt the highly efficient Ai and EA effective altruism enhanced evidence-based proven Financial lead model for maximum time value of money compounding why we are focused on starting with prenatals to newborns and with with the idea it takes a village economic gardening Vision our motto is build right build once build on over time Community Prosperity truth everyone will experience from prenatal crawl walk run life cycle Financial education focus on how to develop and nurture their Goose to lay three to five golden eggs per day and especially how not to kill it mark your calendar your three minutes thank you for your comments appreciate it thank you for being here again sir thank you addressing Council and she's protesting against housing director and Mariana Orozco will be translating for her mayor Oscar Lisa um foreign [Music] Chicago [Music] news foreign nueve ctors hello hello city council members and mayor of Oscar leaser my name is Maria Cristina Rivera and along with my partner Miss Adam Linda Rodriguez we're here to protest and require to have you as a more prepared entity to examine the to examine and check the initiative from the director from HUD Mr chichon um from the hadan Chicago since they were not notified fully as part of the people who have been benefited by the HUD this is in a matter of the disposition number 18 um section 9709 they were not advised of any changes on in addition to this they were not asked directly on how these changes would affect them psychologically and financially due to this implementing changes from the director of Hud from Chicago Casas is housing entrances is [Music] the proposed the the this is Casas Administration is a um avasto Miss ions so back in March 27 2023 I spoke to miss Maria Flores the director of operations from public housing and the argument that was exposed was that it is too much of a cost for the maintenance of the property and the distance in between houses of the scattered uh scatter housing Scutter site I apologize um and that is why they cannot fulfill the requirements for maintenance also um they they decided or they exposed that they would be um getting they would be disposing the the houses for the family houses and the duplexes since again it is really hard to keep up with maintenance due to being scattered um uh previous administrations before them have not had an issue with the scatter side housing until now um the issue that was found was that Mr chichon and their um Administration have higher private companies for maintenance on properties instead of keeping the current the previous main Services which makes it hard to keep up indeed with maintenance but previous administrations had not had that issue before next person is Richard deyu and Mr de yuba's topic is encourage city council and citizens of El Paso to visit Fort Bliss you have three minutes sir thank you thank you mayor members of council very briefly and I've spoken to each of you on several occasions about our support for Fort Bliss for the record I am a registered lobbyist with the city under Thunder management but I'm here to speak to you personally through our support of Fort Bliss and our soldiers and their families so recently since General Eisenhower has taken over out at Fort Bliss he's made a concerted effort to bring Melissa back in the community and he's done a number of events within the community to encourage our mutual engagement with one another so I just wanted to share this information with you and by extension through the broadcast system to share with our citizens it's now become easier than ever to access formless any citizen who has a valid driver's license can go out to Fort Bliss and go to the Chaffee gate or the Buffalo Soldier gate spend about 15 or 20 minutes they do a quick background check and then they approve you and with that you're able to use your driver's license as access point to Fort Bliss for the next three years with versus just driving through as if you had a government-issued ID from Fort Bliss and so I just want to encourage all citizens of El Paso to take advantage of this opportunity become more engaged with Fort Bliss and our soldiers and their families and I thank you for your time thank you next person is Logan Ralph and his topic is storm water collection Mr and he's here in person thank you um good afternoon good afternoon to all members of this Council my name is Logan Ralph I'm a professional archaeologist environmental consultant and a homeowner in El Paso Texas today I'd like to discuss rainwater harvesting specifically strategies for increasing Green Space In the City by utilizing runoff to reduce erosion and the adverse effects of storm water when my wife and I purchased our home in central El Paso about a year and a half ago the contractor flipped the house left very minimal vegetation on the lot the vast majority of the yard was Bare compacted Earth the parkway or the area between the sidewalk and the street proper was likewise bare save for Johnson Grasso weeds since I'm a gardener and a proponent of native plants I began to research how I could green up my yard and the parkway I now have a series of Burns in my yard that plant the rain in my yard by slowing down right off and saving it and 10 treat native trees now Adorn the Western yard on my property as I said before the land between our property in the street was heavily compacted and runoff terrain past the Parkway and became a fast-flowing stream on the street and properties Downstream were at risk of flooding I wanted to plant trees to create shade and curb appeal in this location for the parkway three infiltration basins which can also be called Backwater or Eddy basins were created to capture Street runoff during rain events in the Watershed these are passive berms that are passive systems that use curb Cuts basins and mulch to capture random street runoff and provide irrigation we called 8-1-1 had the utilities marked called the city to apply for a permit to cut the curb and plant the right away I was informed that based on the description it can be accurately described as a landscaping project which it is and then a permit was not required I excavated the basins using hand tools rain falling in the water shut up slope flows down the street into the infiltration basins where water streets and grasses the land has been made pervious and is no longer compact rain water is the tree's primary water source and will be the only water source after three years when they are considered mature based on my calculations the 10 inches of rain per year which is the average annual rainfall here in El Paso the trees will receive approximately 8 000 gallons of water per year um um that's more than enough for these native trees to flourish with mineral effort here the streetscapes can be like verden Park Vernon parkscapes we enhance our community by planting trees that beautify and shade natural Gathering areas shade invites people to linger to talk joke and connect while reducing exposed Hardscape that creates the withering heat island effect according to Roman Rountree and shading our cities vegetarian areas intercept and transpire enough water to significantly modify the water blood in urban regions in a one-inch rainstorm over 12 hours the interception by rain in the canopy can reduce surface runoff by 11.3 million gallons or 17 percent um our company can help the city of El Paso draft and pass the rainwater capture ordinance and storm water to transform these city streets into living resilient green infrastructure thank you for your time thank you for your thank you next person is Albert Rivera and his topic is noise ordinance decibel limits Mr Rivera are you here we'll go to the next person and that's Barbara Valencia topic is HSS and puppies in regard to Animal Services House program I see can we have the Elmo projected please it's a math problem today yeah it can you please turn on the overhead projector thank you nothing there foreign would you like to just make your statement without your we can make copies thank you everybody sorry I'm three minutes I'm Barbara Valencia with Huckleberry Hound Dog Rescue and as you can see today today is going to be a little bit of a math problem on the first day Haas was implemented 15 unspayed female dogs were denied intake and left on the street to breed with the unneutered male dogs also denied intake and left on the streets female dogs have two litters a year with an average of six puppies per litter so how many dogs and puppies do we have today let's do the math in 2020 we had the 15 dogs that had 12 puppies each that equals 180 puppies and because they're on the streets half of those puppies are unspayed females so in 2021 we now have 90 dogs having 12 puppies each that's 1080 puppies plus another 180 puppies from the original 15 dogs for a total of 1 260 puppies and half of those are unspayed females 2022 we now have 630 dogs giving birth to 12 puppies that equals 7 560 puppies plus another 180 from the original 15 for a total of 7 740 puppies half of those are unspayed females now we're into 2023. we now have 3 870 dogs giving birth to 12 puppies for a grand total of four forty six thousand four hundred and forty puppies plus another 180 from the original 15. which equals out to 46 620 puppies half are unspayed females so we start out with 15 dogs and by the end of this year we could have almost 50 000 dogs and puppies when you intentionally deny intake of unspayed female dogs and intentionally leave them on the streets with unneutered male dogs to breed you are intentionally breeding dogs it's that simple the city of El Paso is now in the business of breeding dogs you can call it host manage intake capacity for care but it all means the same intake is closed to healthy stray and lost animals when is enough enough how many dogs and puppies is too many a hundred thousand two hundred thousand five hundred thousand Mayor Lee sir and city council where are you going to put 50 000 dogs and puppies you can't fix this by building more shelters the only way to fix it is to end the contract with best friends which will end the Haas managed intake capacity Care Program using a shelter program that requires intake to be closed and leaving the dogs on the street to indiscriminately breed in the community will only make more dogs and puppies it's that simple how many is too many thank you thank you for your comments next person is ephraimedo Mr saucedo I don't see him are you here I don't see him next person is Rich right topic is the Strategic plan you have three minutes sir thank you hello Mr Right good afternoon mayor and city council my name is Rich Wright thank you for entertaining me and entertaining my ideas I'm here to talk to you about the city strategic plan it's good to have a plan like the Cheshire Cat said to Alice if you don't have a plan if you don't know where you're going any road will take you there but the city's plan is fatally arrogantly and tragically flawed the city's strategic plan has eight goals like the famous Jewish philosopher said a man who has two masters serves one of them poorly a strategic plan should have one overarching goal if you have eight goals you have tactics instead of a strategy with no ultimate goal to achieve then how will you know when the plant is working when it or is working or whether it's not like the famous Mexican philosopher Jose Alfredo Jimenez said you notice that the city's budget presentation predicts a shortfall in the years to come can you imagine a CEO giving that presentation to his board of directors in the private sector he'd be looking for a new job in a lot shorter interval than 120 days the city's plan gives no consideration to the taxpayer that would be like in the private sector giving no consideration to the customer it's notable that the city's plan doesn't address costs cost benefit analysis or return on investment no private sector Enterprise could do that but the city can do that because the city has a captive Market all the city has to do is raise taxes to cover the budget shortfall of course the market isn't as captive as one might Imagine The Brain Drain has actually accelerated since the Strategic plan was implemented a reasonable person might think that reducing the city's tax burden would be one of the Strategic plans goals the city talks a lot about quality of life but for most El pasoans their quality of life is dependent on how much money they have left over after they pay their bills and the city's tax policies are pricing many El pasoans out of meaningful decisions about their quality of life in short the city's strategic plan is beautifully presented and full of the right jargon but it falls short of becoming of being an effective strategic plan for the citizens of El Paso because it doesn't even consider the citizens of El Paso it only focuses on the processes of city government in a vacuum I think it's telling that the city's values are encapsulated by the anagram I reap standing for integrity respect Excellence accountability and people I reap as though the citizens were there to be harvested maybe that's a Freudian slip maybe the city accidentally revealed their true intentions I'm going to put an expanded version of this presentation on my website elchuceno.com thank you thank you for your comments item 24 should I move no we would like to reach out for lunch till one o'clock representative Canales to recess at 12 36 PM until one and so on all in favor any opposed dating is in recess at 12 37 pm everything's completely different it was just about expertise with dealing with border communities oh my God did you eat I'm about to go I was just trying to finish it up don't know yes foreign foreign foreign so cold earlier with all the people in here yeah oh it's too cold in here walk outside to defrost that was pretty good oh it's windy um I think they're from yeah speaker I don't know if we should add the section are you cold yeah the cold um that's that's wrong with myself hey there are certain kind of people that works at their feet some don't that's it 66 degrees that's cold there's a wind chill eight we're now at 24. we're starting at 24. yes well the good thing is but yeah I understand that yeah um oh yeah yeah at 1pm I have masks through all my coats but still oh okay starting um that they say here's what matters I don't know you'll see them back um there's one yeah so moved second we do have a motion to reconvene the council meeting for March the 28th at 104 PM all those in favor hi all those opposed and we're back in session item 24 sir and that is discussion in action on a resolution to appoint a member to the El Paso water utilities Public Service Board of Trustees and the area of expertise of engineering as recommended by the El Paso water utilities Public Service Board selection committee to approve and we do have a motion made by alternate mayor Pro tem molinar seconded by representative Kennedy and the session is open voting session is open and it is approved and not present for the voters representative Hernandez representative Salcido representative Fierro and representative Rivera are not present next item is item 26 and that is presentation and discussion on the capital Improvement second quarter update for active programmed and completed capital projects with the capital Improvement Department I.T can you bring the presentation up you look the same in real than on it in teams except I don't have my headphones on um so in your slide deck that you have there's a lot more slides that I'm going to go through today we'll put in the detail behind the presentation just just focusing on the highlights it I also want to mention that there is a video which forms the last slide in in the deck so we're here to talk about our second quarter results for the capital Improvement Department before you get started I do welcome representative Rodriguez at the city council welcome go ahead sir former representative Rodriguez so for the presentation today I'm going to provide an overview of the active project summary year-to-date results and accomplishments and highlights obviously we are still seeing the effects of covet in terms of supply chain and costs as well as Staffing this has caused some increases in some of our projects but we've managed to cover with contingencies that we have or savings from projects that were completed our strategic plan alignment is goal four and seven enhanced El Paso's quality of life through recreational cultural and educational environments and enhance and sustain El Paso's infrastructure Network we're constantly working on improvements we have CID internal controls our project managers and the training they go through we have processes in place for project management we have vendors and we manage the performance of these vendors through our vendor performance management system and we have support staff we have a number of external dependencies including user groups stakeholder utilities Administration service departments and the public going to our second quarter results these are the projects that are app currently active there are 21 in pre-design 45 in design 58 in bidding and 77 in construction for a total of 196 active projects results this is our FY 22 and fy23 results you can see in FY 22 we encumbered which means we allocated funding for 171 million dollars worth of projects and year year to date we've allocated 68.6 million our expenditures to date are 46.4 million and our impacts for the spending of 46 million dollars in total equating approximately 23 million in labor costs supporting over 2 800 direct jobs and since September 2011 we have generated approximately 44 212 jobs spending and employment direct spending 19 million indirect and induced in 2023 11.4 for a total of 30.4 and employment impacts 288 total fourteen hundred and forty four for a total of forty three hundred and thirty two we have worked with over 227 active contractors and subcontractors and here are some of our accomplishments we've completed nearly nearly a thousand projects you're programmed to date since 2011. the projects are not in one location they're spread across the city and they vary in size from Natatorium to much smaller playground improvements and things of that nature yeah so we've completed 28 projects to date we have the neighborhood Improvement program projects which are currently in progress we have a number of Park Improvement project Park equipment projects which are in progress the fire station recreation center and library Renovations are in progress and construction is ongoing on the east side Regional Command Center Mexican American cultural center fire station 36 Children's Museum and Street reconstruction projects we anticipate the East Side Regional Command Center to be complete with construction in January of 2024 Mexican American Cultural Center should be complete in September of this year fire station 36 in June of this year and the Children's Museum it's uncertain as a result of the recent fire these are the projects that we have completed in FY 23 so far and this is the number of streets that have been been constructed over the years 499 streets have been resurfaced since 2013. nit if you could bring up the video this is a video highlighting some of our 2023 accomplishments [Music] it's a great idea we all need to exercise we all need to lose a little bit of weight and I think it's well done looks very nice [Music] I just think it makes the whole city look a lot more prettier and makes it a whole lot safer to travel foreign it just makes me thrilled I'm just so happy it's opening it [Music] it's a great skate park it allows for both people who like to skate pools and people who like to stream skates like perfect [Music] I love it I love it El Paso definitely needs it the Northeast definitely needed something like this [Music] and that is the extent of the presentation if you have any questions I'll be happy to entertain them as I mentioned in your package you have additional slides which shows additional detail then I provided I just went over the highlights mayor Pro Tem thanks mayor and Jay I apologize I just closed the presentation on my computer so I'm not going to have page numbers but I have simple questions so the nation's Tobin's pool and Sports Center roof two separate projects right what was the funding source for the pool the pool roof was funded through certificates of obligation but the put itself is currently closed and not operational that is correct so we're improving the roof for a pool that's not usable no we we improved the roof over the ice ice rink yeah but it also says pool that's what I was asking is it the pool or the pool roof it's the rink we did not put a roof on a non-functional pool okay but you have it listed up there still so I'll correct that next time but it was funded though through and so Okay so we've just completely abandoned the nation Tobin pool in general there's no future plans for funding to open that pool or any of the pools in the area not to my knowledge okay just want to be clear and then additional funding that was funded through the certificates of obligation what has happened with that the additional funding for the pool well for the pool roof that's not being fixed I guess no the rink but on your slide it also said yeah I made a mistake and I'll correct that so was that not funded at all my understanding is it was funded and then the pool broke and so now it's not being funded well it was not funded okay well but I'll back up it was funded but there was insufficient funds to do it and since the pool was closed we did the rink okay so that's right so that money went into the rank yes okay um yeah disappointing would love to get those pools open um I know we have the aquatic centers I think the city manager himself said when we open those aquatic centers you know the the smaller public pools are important for those people who can't afford the aquatic centers and there's not one of them open in Central right now right neither Grand View or nation's tokens and so I think the council had put money towards fixing that roof not sure why the conversation wasn't had with them about the funds needed to actually open the pool but I know you don't make those decisions Jerry I'm just stating that my other one and I asked this to you all of the time in public and private but I'm going to ask it one more time the lower Beaumont project is still considered active but we do not have a lease agreement for that land is that correct that is correct um the project has to get Deputy assistant Secretary of the army approval the submission package went back and forth between mcom and Dasa and finally wound up at Dasa in I meant you to say December last week I learned that Dasa asked for Bliss for additional information they believe now that the the concept approval will be provided within the next couple of weeks that allows us to turn back on design finalize the program programmatic agreement for historical resources and begin to negotiate the lease that's great that's great news congratulations happy to hear it I'm happy I wasn't expecting that answer it really threw me off but um exciting if you could just keep me updated on that that'd be great thank you Jay if I may that there are plans for improvements to the facilities that you mentioned missonello with respect to what I said yesterday uh in terms of a 2024 bond package for consideration that Council needs to have a discussion about and then work on whether or not you want to approve that or not but there's a lot of facilities like the ones just discussed that need a lot more money than just roofs and so we are working on a plan it's just a matter of whether or not you want to go forward with some kind of fund plan in the future to make those happen because there's a great need not only in the facilities that were discussed just just a while ago just a little while ago but there's a great need in All City facilities in terms of the the dollars necessary in order to renovate and to refurbish a lot of them thank you representative Hernandez hi Jerry all right great presentation I missed some of it um wanted to see um we I got a notice to proceed a notification in my office regarding the multi-purpose Center wanted to see if you had any additional information on that we're ready to go forward we gave the contractor approval to order the materials and begin Construction and um by chance do you have scope of work the scope of work does not include the HVAC it includes some improvements to the pool area itself and I believe some restroom upgrades oh no um I believe initially we had talked about HVAC has there been any changes and why the the there's insufficient funding to do the HVAC at this time we are looking for other other resources yeah San Rodriguez chief operations officer so um the HVAC system is is you know representative right now this is in need of replacement so we are working with a contractor to establish pricing so that we can establish the funding source for that I know that you know it is our only therapeutic pool that is in the city's inventory and being able to regulate that heat especially in the pool areas is really important I know that the public has you know been waiting for their pool it's been closed for some time so I would urge for a solution to come forward and counsel um you know may be biased because this is my district but it is an asset that El pasos across the entire city use and so my hope is that this body can give that direction so that we can give back their pool and turn it over all completed at once as opposed to you know closing it again in the future and so I would just ask if we can you know present an option for Council for approval yes representative thank you Sam thank you Jerry anyone else thank you sir okay thank you for the presentation no action on that item next item is item 27 management update petition to add a climate policy to the CD Charter good afternoon ma'am good afternoon mayor and Council Nicole farini climate and sustainability officer it can bring that presentation up thank you so I'm in front of you today to bring forward some additional information regarding proposition K the amendment to add climate policy to the city Charter it's a little bit of History so that we all kind of know where we've been and where we're going on July 25th of 2022 ground game Texas submitted a petition to the city clerk's office proposing to add climate policy to the city Charter on August 2nd 2022 um the November 2022 City Charter Amendment election is delayed through May 2023 in November of 2022 the city clerk's office did ultimately certify that the petition was deemed to have the requisite number of signatures and in February of 2023 the city council ordered a special election for the submission of the citizen-led petition to add climate policy to the city Charter what is Proposition K proposition K is a proposition that will be included on the ballot in May of 2023 including climate policy into the city Charter and I'm going to get into in a moment what that climate policy means why is Proposition K on the ballot well proposition K is on the ballot because the city council approved placing 10 proposed amendments those are your propositions a through J to the city Charter and an 11th Amendment was added because of the citizen-driven petition understanding the impacts of this particular proposition is incredibly important and as directed by the council following the February 7th action staff was directed by UL to provide an analysis of those potential impacts from proposition K specifically you all asked us to look at three things the potential fiscal impact to the municipality which I will get into in a moment is actually required by law the potential impact to the city Bond rating that was a specific question that came to the staff from the council and the precedent and process for municipalization of the electric utility just going back one step I mentioned that we are required by law to take a look at the fiscal impact to the municipality and I'm going to say that one more time just for clarity we are looking at fiscal impact to the municipality to the city of El Paso this is pretty important as I get into the numbers um the law says that we have to estimate the anticipated fiscal impact to the municipality if the proposed amendment is approved at the election which is what I'm here to present to you today but let's break down some Basics what is the objective of the climate policy as described in proposition K well it's to pursue three main goals these goals are garnered directly from the petition itself and from the ballot language to reduce the city's contribution to climate change second to invest in an environmentally sustainable future and third to advance the cause of climate Justice what types of initiatives will be included on the climate policy Amendment the proposed amendment includes the creation of a climate Department that will be reporting directly to the city council definition of climate goals for the city and the community of El Paso promotion of climate jobs development of renewable energy generation and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions among a few other things those are the main initiatives that are indicated in the climate policy Amendment will there be a fiscal impact to the municipality with regard to the passage of proposition K the answer to that question is yes we spent quite a bit of time and I'm going to walk you through that working on what those anticipated costs would be internally in terms of Staffing and additional resources required but we've also engaged third-party expertise we engaged a group called year out energy to really take a look at how the particularly the renewable energy goals and the Energy Efficiency goals would have an impact to the municipality fiscally the bottom line here is that the fiscal impact through 2045 so from today to 2045 we are anticipating 154 million 995 thousand dollars the annual fiscal impact is estimated at 4.125936 right so just a little over 4.1 million dollars per year those are separate numbers and we felt like to be fully transparent we needed to be clear about what this would cost annually to operate and ultimately what it would cost in the long run here is a breakdown of those costs I'm happy to answer any questions specifically about any one of these we did break this down and this has been published publicly by section of the proposition itself I want to reiterate how much diligence and care we put into this really looking at every single section and trying to understand both what those costs were going to be again in the long run through 2045 and which one which of these would impact us on an annual basis what we do also know outside of the costs that we have published here is that there are some known unknowns there are some things that we know we don't know number one all of the estimates that you saw on the previous slide for proposition K are projections they are based on available data and current market conditions they do not reflect potential fluctuations in inflation they also do not include costs for upgrading existing Municipal facilities to accommodate things like rooftop solar EV charging and other Advanced Technologies what do I mean by that I just want to be clear the numbers that you see that are projected from year out energy in terms of what it will cost us to get a certain amount of renewable energy for City facilities by a certain year is literally a calculation of how much energy we need to produce and how much solar we need to do that it does not include an estimate or an analysis of every single City facility that may or may not need to be upgraded structurally or in other ways in order to accommodate that okay so I want to be very clear about what's included and what we're saying we don't know ongoing maintenance costs for that rooftop solar and or charging other Advanced Technologies that may be implemented those costs are not included in this number other Green Building measures that we may want to take advantage of as we move forward in Greening our city building stock these are not part of prop K but they may want we may want to consider them things like water conservation storm water management indoor air quality and materials waste reduction and without getting overly In The Weeds about this what I will tell you for example if we as a community say that a priority is to have better indoor air quality in our buildings often indoor air quality systems use more energy and so we've got to start to make decisions about what our priorities are Facility by facility and so this is why this is included as something we know we don't know because as we move through this and we better understand the priorities of the community and the facilities that we're considering upgrading we will better understand what those costs are but this is as good as we can get in terms of what that renewable energy by demand will cost we also don't know currently what the impact of the ban on utilizing City water for fossil fuel industry activities outside of the city limits would be as well as we don't know the impact of the cancellation of those contracts and that's mostly due to the legalities that we don't yet understand about how that would occur and finally we don't have a solid number we know we don't know what it would cost to ultimately municipalize El Paso Electric beyond the feasibility study now I'm going to get into that one so how much would it cost for the city to purchase El Paso Electric this is a question that I think a lot of you have been asked it's certainly a question that I've heard on many occasions very very clear it is unknown and I would argue impossible to know today at this time what it would cost to municipalize El Paso Electric the city has to conduct a feasibility study we have to determine an estimated cost for that municipalization I also want to point out here and I'm going to iterate it again in a moment municipalization is a very different process from private sector acquisition okay and so it's not um an Apples to Apples comparison to make some of those assumptions the feasibility study however we did engage um a group called H Bailey group who has extensive experience in this sector and the feasibility study from them is estimated to cost about 12 million dollars and will take us about eight to ten years to complete now that 12 million dollars is spread across that eight to ten years and a lot of that can vary as the process moves forward however this is the responsible way to study something of this magnitude we do know however I want to be fair and I want to share what we do know the utility was sold to iif for 4.3 billion dollars in 2020 but as I have mentioned municipalization and private sector acquisition is not the same thing EP electric has advised us that they have added assets to the utility since that time and they estimate that they have nearly doubled in value over the last three years additionally El Paso Electric has advised us that they intend to invest an additional two billion dollars in infrastructure over the next five years these are all factors that will be very very important as we pursue a feasibility study if that is in fact the direction we go at this time today the estimated value is about eight billion dollars according to El Paso Electric the utility is also not for sale at this time okay I've shared a lot of facts an argument might be made based on some of the information that I've shared that acquiring the El Paso Electric System will be 4.3 billion dollars because that's what they were acquired for in 2020. that acquisition price is not a good proxy for acquiring setting up a standalone city-owned utility there's an incredible complexity to that and again as I iterated earlier municipalization is a different not only legal process but also Financial process in order to make sure that it achieves the goals that we're looking for at this time I want to turn it over to Laura Cruz who's going to talk a little bit about our community outreach and some Community meetings that are coming up Laura for the record Laura cruzicosa communications director for the city of El Paso so as you see here on the screen we will be hosting um eight Community meetings throughout the community there is a ninth community meeting on April the 12th that is not listed here I didn't list that one here the organization asked us not to promote it necessarily because it's a small space they're concerned about the amount of people that they can fit in that space it is for I will tell you it is for the El Paso Democrats West Side Democrats is the name of the organization but they will be promoting it within their own organization the one thing I do want to mention to you all here and I'm going to go ahead and click on the link here you'll see the website um the website there is active and it provides a lot of information for the community that you can already start to share with your constituents it does have the list of um the community meetings on this it also has the ordinances that the council the council members pass the two ordinances to call for the two special elections as well as the actual citizen-led petition in addition to the information that Nicole just shared with you in terms of proposition K the financial impact related to that and then and I'll click on that link especially this is of special importance I guess to the community who continue to ask questions related to the funds the financial impact of that but it does include all of the information that Nicole just provided for you all in addition to the breakdown of that information again it also asks a question about the El Paso the purchase of El Paso Electric and we also include on here a list of FAQs of all of the frequently asked questions that we've been getting regarding these 11 propositions in addition to a link to the El Paso the elections department and our Charter in general for all of that and detailed in terms of all of the propositions that we have in place in addition to proposition k so we encourage folks to go ahead and please visit that website it is on the home page as well I'll click on the home page you will see it here on this button here it is on the homepage listed for anybody who wants to share that information that's it thank you thank you for that thank you and I just have one last thing that I would like to add before I open it up for any questions that you all have I mentioned on the very first slide that you all did ask us to investigate the potential impact on the bond rating I do want to say that well I don't have that information today we have engaged an economist Dr Steven Niven who will be producing a report for us we are working with him currently and I hope to be able to bring that information back to you all in short order thank you very much and I think it's important to note that um proposition K was brought forward by a group of citizens that collected over 39 almost 40 000 signatures and it's not something the city put on the on the charter election but it was brought forward and we um based on the signatures as we make sure they had proper signatures we have to bring it forward and we're bringing it forward as uh as but again what something that the city is bringing forward on their own uh representative feral thank you Mr Mayor actually my question is for um our City attorney do are we going to put the dollar amount on the ballot no sir it's not required to be on the ballot um it's required to be published in the newspaper and we have to publish it publicize it then but it's not on the ballot and then second question um I'm not sure for whom but what is the estimate cost to the city for this this um this being on the ballot um Ms Prime thank you Mr candy a City attorney oh Ms cruzicosta has that answer so for the for this item to be on the ballot is a question it is 700 no wait it's about 691 000 that's the estimated cost let's be fair this is not that this item is not on the agenda on its own there's uh uh actually there's a charter election there's other elections are being on there so this is just added on there it there is no correct additional cost by that by us adding it on to the Charter election well for clarity the the item was scheduled for November so it was an additional cost in terms of Hosting this special no no but I'm saying this particular item by itself it's not costing us seven hundred thousand dollars I just want to make sure we're fair to them when that question was asked was what is this item costing to be brought to uh the voters it's part of an election and it's not itself cost against seven thousand correct with the exception that it was a special election that wasn't scheduled it wasn't programmed it was a special election because of the delay and so it's an additional 700 700 000 that the council did not that's a whole that's a whole the whole election not just as one item for the mayor's point I mean we already had something scheduled for this time remember we have the charter election we have items on the charter election that we were supposed to bring in in November correct and we postponed the charter election to May and based on that any item that's not itself burden the cost it is an additional cost of 700 000 but like the mayor said all the items that are yeah that are going to be voted on what he's what he's um stating and he's right all of that uh it equals 700 000 but but for this not occurring right you would have either done it in November or waited till the next election and it wouldn't have been an additional 700 000. although you have several items listed for the election okay and you can see it on the screen right now for example that Nicole had mentioned earlier it was originally scheduled for November and because it was delayed we brought it forward to or push it back to me so Mr Pharaoh bottom line it is an additional 700 000. correct you just have more than one item on there to be considered correct right yes sir thank you representative mayor Pro Tem for Nicole Nicole um Nicole I think this is a great presentation um you know I know there's a lot of concern over several things on this proposition but you were tasked with looking at the cost of what we could control and I want to shift that conversation a little bit because I I these are big numbers that's not untrue um but I mean and this is a rhetorical question I would never ask you this I'm not asking this but like 2045 is 22 years away yeah if this is too high of a number one would be a good date and climate change is a very serious issue and so I want to shift the conversation to the Federal grant Center available um one we did miss the deadline by a couple months but the Energy Efficiency in conservative block grant which had 225 million dollars for yeah it says the deadline was February 9th um 2023. did that not pass that what is today's date is March I'm sorry I just I was talking about the eecbg yeah uh eecvg is something that we are um looking to deploy into this sure but and so I'm just trying to have the conversation about how what are the dollars that are available for that right yeah um and this is the whole Grant the numbers I'm about to give it's not like one municipality is going to get this right but 225 million dollars for building upgrades 550 million total projects if you got 10 of that it would be covering the four million dollars that you're talking about one that I found that was super interesting is totally sidetracking um is the three million dollars per applicant for actual constituents Home Improvements which are similar to the fee we had talked about with Texas gas I'm sorry I went off on a side note but thought that was really interesting because the federal government is taking really proactive steps into doing this um and so you know and there's also the EPA has a grant that's available right now um that I believe is about one million well it's about 20 million dollars but they want to issue about 21 million dollar grants for cities and nonprofits and counties to upgrade their large Vehicles right so we're looking at I know we're already looking at buses but there's also our trash vehicles um so there there are dollars out there and I'm not sitting here and in any way saying that these numbers are false no these numbers are very realistic and instead of sitting here and then I know we're going to hear some of it this is too expensive it's unattainable it is it is expensive I'm not but it's not unattainable and I think that 2045 is a good goal and for those who are going to say you know I I really disagree with it my question would be like well then what's a reasonable year for you because um I don't think we have that long when it comes to a lot of these things and I think it's really important I know that's why you're here I know you are not up here disagreeing with me but I think it's really important that we start today looking for the funding to do these things and so in no way am I supporting up here supporting this proposition I'm saying that we as a body need to be understanding what the resources are available to us to move towards a more energy efficient uh body body no that's all right organization thank you community yeah so if I may um stepping aside from the proposition K discussion because I want to make sure that I stay very fair with that conversation that's extremely important to all of us what I will say with regard to some of the federal funding that you're mentioning you know we've got cprg which is a climate pollution reduction Grant we've got eecbg which is really going to be focused um on helping our most vulnerable communities get to a place where renewable energy and Energy Efficiency is Affordable for them that's something we've been focused on for a long time I just want to assure you that either way we are looking at those sources and and we absolutely the you know we need to take advantage of the fact that the federal government is leaning in this direction right now we don't know how long that will stay that way and so I think that there's a lot of opportunities that we have taken advantage of and that we plan to take advantage of and I would also just say that our climate action plan that I presented on a couple of weeks ago I think is going to be hyper focused not only on identifying what is best for the municipality but also what is best for the entire Community because those things are very separate and that is the only point that I'll step back over a little bit into proposition K and talk about the number to make sure we're all clear when we say 80 renewable energy by 2030 and 100 by 2045 we are talking about the municipality we are talking about the city of El Paso facilities we are not talking about community-wise I just want to make sure that that's clear that that that's where the number comes from yeah no absolutely and um you know we don't have control over other people's businesses um and again I know that there are things that are in that proposition I know we've heard a lot from small businesses where they're concerned what's going to increase their cost I don't think that those are unreasonable concerns that is not what you're talking about today though right what you were talking about specifically and what the financial impact on the city would be to make the city and all of our fleets and our buildings renewable by 2045. and I just want to say nothing to do with the proposition just these numbers alone because I think whether the proposition passes or does not this is the conversation we still need to be having and I think that these are realistic numbers when you look at the federal dollars that are available I think people see these numbers I mean 154 million dollars if 155 million dollars is a lot of money but with the amount of grants that there are maybe not attainable within that time frame but not unrealistic to attain any of that makes sense got it thank you absolutely did thank you representative Rivera thank you man yes sir mine are simple Miss free mine are simple on the committee meets that are set whoever wants to answer them um are you going to have Spanish translators and interpreters president Laura Cruz again uh yes we can have interpreters we will be asking the community to let us know because in our experience when we bring forward interpreters oftentimes there's nobody who needs the interpreters and their they can um be available and once the community meetings are presented and over with and you'll usually have people that can't attend you know the elderly disabled account attend those meetings in some sort of way is a city going to send some kind of a notice to them through the mail or is it I can ask legal is that still against would that be against the regulations so are we we are we are going to put out a postcard in order to remind folks that um one that there is a website available for them to get more information and two in terms of when the election is going to take place keep in mind we um City staff are in City resources and funds cannot be used for any level of advocacy we are using this postcard only for educational purposes to advise the community as to where the website is located and also when the election is taking place okay and gotcha and that's why I asked for legal because oh yes I remember them telling us that but what if they don't even have a a computer to look at how are we going to get the information to them right representative River there are going to be some mailers but as uh was mentioned earlier in you introduce yourself please I apologize Kristen Hamilton Karen from the city um the City by law is also required to publish the ordinance calling for the election so the full text of the ordinance will be posted in the newspaper it will be in the El Paso Times as well as the Diario once a thousand times twice and it will be in English and in Spanish in both Publications and in that publication it will have the cost estimate for all of the climate Charter or the climate policy amendments so those will be in the newspaper okay thank you that answers those questions Miss free I just have one for you um what did the utility doesn't decide to sell for 45 more years after 2045. for a community our size is something that needs to be studied and and I think that that's something that we would want to bring experts in to help us manage that question I'm not I'm not equipped to answer that question for you today and frankly I think it could take five to eight years to answer that question properly Mr Gonzalez do you have an idea um other than I I believe that what the discussion that's been had so far is is on point I think for example missanello is correct the longer you wait the more it's going to cost the uh the numbers that are being presented to you today are conservative we think that there actually would be higher we think that these numbers are very accurate but as they pointed out it doesn't take into account the cost of the supply chain issues what covet has done to the to the inflation and other factors like that that's included in the presentation that she shared with you in in Irving when I was there and I've shared this with several council members they are aware of this and I was actually questioned about it so I could share some of the work that was done it is accurate that you could get you can get and even back in 0607 we were able to get grants to do like a net zero Library we were able to get grants to be able to do solar lighting but the money that's available you you're not you're not going to get all of it you'll get a portion of it so the numbers that are being presented are on are on point uh they're actually we think lower because you know of all the things that we've been mentioned Miss farini is is is not evading your question but no she's what she's doing is she's just caveating her her answer by simply saying that the utility was purchased for 4.3 billion uh they say they're not for sale and that their Investments take them their worth and their opinion to 8 billion and again they emphasize they're not for sale so we know that it would be billions of dollars but that's not what we're sharing with y'all today in terms of what it cost to taxpayers what we're sharing today is what the feasibility study would cost so I think staff has been on point with being very conservative and being very accurate so that both sides hear and understand that what we presented is is very unbiased and very objective so that we just share the facts with you and again and I thank you and I appreciate that but let's be real what if they're making a big profit and they don't want to sell I mean I'm saying the public needs to understand that as well right that's what we're saying that they've indicated they're not for sale and if they were for sale it would be in the billions of dollars not millions of dollars would it would it be as in bravo okay thank you so much thank you thank you thank you mayor and with that we do have representative mullinore and I know we have some public comment two people for public comment thank you thank you mayor so um I guess this question is for legal please so the fact that the El Paso Electric has already stipulated repeated itself many times they are not for sale what happens if proposition K does pass and they're not for sale right proposition K as Ms farini has discussed is to municipalize the the electric there's going to be a lot of dis there if this passes there would be a lot of discussion on not only the practical but the legal implications of that so it's not a question that we would be able to answer today or you know in the next number of years all right thank you obviously Force you can't force somebody to show don't don't leave okay so to me it's like this uh El Paso Electric Company they have a monopoly because they're the only utility public or excuse me electrical utility for the city of El Paso so they have a service area that extends near Hatch New Mexico all the way to Sierra Blanco Texas so we're talking about different jurisdictional issues you're talking two different states several counties several cities several municipalities so our towns Villages perhaps and so they have a stake in the game as well because to me it's like okay we take it over we have the 20 billion dollars to buy it so now we're going to have to do all kinds of stuff go ahead man I was just going to point you to some of the backup we did include in the backup the report that Ms Heather Bailey put together regarding what the process for municipalization might look like and she actually addresses at a very very high level in all fairness what it might look like for as I mentioned a multi-jurisdictional service area which is what we're talking about so there would be a lot of for lack of a technical term slicing and dicing going on so I think I would just refer you to that report in the backup because it might help to to make clear to your original question if it passes what happens the report is is pretty clear about the next step okay well some people don't have access to that backup so that's why I'm talking about it sure so the other thing too is so uh we have the Public Utility Commission of Texas The Stadium New Mexico has a totally different Commission on utilities for them for that service area as well and so um for this time I guess for Ms Laura Cruz Acosta so on the website are we in English and in Spanish yes all of our website across the city is English and Spanish yes okay so do we have a QR code as well by any chance we can create a QR code sure okay all right I just want to make sure that people have Total Access different ways to communicate that we're being transparent and clear on different things like that and so have we had any Communications with Ohio electric one-on-one team meeting in person anything like that with Miss Kelly Tomlin or anybody else no sir I have not had any direct meetings with El Paso Electric regarding proposition k at this time okay and why not yeah because it's it's um it would be precarious for us to do so regarding this issue I mean I think we meet with El Paso Electric on the regular about a number of different ongoing initiatives but it my understanding is it would be not be appropriate for us to do that at this time okay all right thank you yeah thank you Miss uh Chris Costa if uh is there a possibility of additional presentations if passed yes there is always an opportunity for anybody to request that there is on the website also a way to contact um the city so at any point in time anybody can ask for additional meetings um or information at any point in time thank you for that and mayor with respect to like additional information we can get into the details with regard to the financing I know that some of these things would wouldn't be we wouldn't do cos for them as an example I mean and I'm just for food disclosure I got asked by the media about this and until some of this might be General obligation bonds that I'd be voted on by the public and we did not include interest on those dollars we just included what it would cost in in real dollars not actual interest thank you sir yes sir Diana we do have Richard deiop Mr Dave and it's going to be followed by Nicole Ruiz so yeah three minutes thank you Diana mayor members of council city manager for the record Richard deyu principal for Thunderbird management consulting I represent a number of business organizations throughout the community both in the city and just outside the city in various County jurisdictions all of whom have expressed strongly to me their opposition to this initiative a lot has been said about this subject not only here today but throughout the various meetings that have already occurred throughout the community and certainly we're just getting started over the next several weeks before we reach the May 6 ballot date a lot more will be said about this I won't bore you with repeating some of the information that was already provided by Miss farini I'm allowed to be a little bit more clear in my position on this than the city or city staff are permitted to do the reality of it is however well-intentioned this group Sunrise El Paso are in terms of what they want to have accomplished and and we applaud them many of the businesses I represent many of the businesses in El Paso have already been taking steps to reduce their carbon footprint as the phrase goes in the community problem with all of this is and it was alluded to a moment ago in some of the questions they were asked in the responses that you received by staff is these costs that were plugged in that were just shared with you are related only to the properties owned by the city of El Paso and even those are not absolute they're just estimates to begin with to be able to take this to the next level and involve such issues as water being provided to services for businesses outside the city limits would just as an example how do we build without concrete and how do you produce concrete without water it's just one simple example but the ramifications to that relate to so many other businesses across our community that haven't even been considered the acquisition of El Paso Electric as you've already stated or I'll stated more strongly is patently absurd it is beyond the capacity of the taxpayers in this community to carry the burden and to the questions related to grant funding for various projects even for the city yes there are Grant dollars available but I want to remind everyone they're not free dollars it's because we get them through the federal government we're all paying for those things and that's the last thing any citizen in our community or across the country needs is a greater tax burden I see I'm running out of time I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you unless I miss my point I'll state it lastly and that is we are emphatically opposed to this initiative thank you for your time thank you next person is Nicole Ruiz good afternoon ma'am good afternoon mayor and City Representatives Nicole Reese director of government Affairs for the El Paso chamber and I just want to say I appreciate all of the questions you were asking today during the presentation today I'll be making a few comments on behalf of our CEO Andrea Hutchins yesterday the Texas Tribune published an article calling the climate Charter a Manifesto it is no wonder giving that the authors of this Charter refer to one another as comrade and publicly discuss their desire to take back control of the government it does make one wonder what their true goals are in passing this vague piece of legislation when the description of the details changes whenever challenged or questioned recently a group behind prop K sent out a poll asking who would win the next race for mayor could their desire be to create high ranking positions for new staff in the city while competing or strategizing for the highest of elected officials in the city be the true method and motivation behind the charter it is obvious that we won't truly know the motivation behind a group whose own definitions Change Daily most recently this group put out a release in response to the pushback they've been receiving from the business community and that release talked about everything but the details of the actual Charter instead it talked about inspirational goals outlined by the charter it implied that the IRA would be responsible for delivering hundreds if not thousands of climate jobs to El Paso if we would just pass the charter we do not need to tell you Federal stimulus does not create jobs businesses create jobs if we should find ourselves in a community with a business climate that pushes away business we will have no jobs recently the economic impact analysis provided by the chamber was referred to as fear-mongering however we provided a research intensive report detailing the economic impact of the charter today you have learned the extreme cost that the city will be forced to undertake if the climate Charter passes these numbers do not include Investments required by episd El Paso County and other governmental entities and certainly not the private sector our numbers took into account what could which could happen should voters pass prop k because as you know the city Charter is not a mission statement it's not a set of goals it is a set of rules laws and regulations which governs a community the words of our city Charter matter vaguely written City Charter amendments are a losing Court battle and will undoubtedly cost our taxpayers money which we cannot afford thank you for your time thank you for your time should we move on to the next item please next item please no action on item 27 next item is item 28 but did update five-year Financial forecast all right good afternoon Marion Council Nicole Cody good afternoon ma'am good afternoon sir So today we're going to be talking about uh The Five-Year Financial forecasts we'll be covering of course our calendar and the strategy that brought us to this point along with any challenges in the forecast itself so the integrated budget process as you can see is depicted here is truly focused on our mission vision and values and integrated with both communication and our strategic plan here you'll see an overview and I'll cover this again at the end of the presentation there's also uh the budget process timeline and so these are really a focus we're focusing on long-term Financial sustainability it truly is a cautionary tale it took us great time to a lot of time to get here and as you can see the being proactive and not reactive is really a key component of our financial sustainability the tools that we look at as part of financial transformation include our continuous Improvement but also include the creation of those funding in our operating budget our pay go funding for our priorities as we continue to focus on economic development strategies in order to help increase the revenues in our area and reduce the tax burden on our taxpayers through property tax additional tools that you'll see also include the creation of the stabilization Fund in addition how we've used debt refinancing to lower the tax burden and The Debt Service portion on our taxpayers so what is that strategy how are we focusing on strategy and how it's important both in short-term and long term for our financial sustainability well the strategy as you see here is the financial Transformer transformation that we've seen over the past seven years and you've heard the city manager talk about seven years of zero findings for external audit and it is a significant accomplishment and it speaks to the dedication the commitment of the staff the teams the city manager has created as well as City leadership to focus on the results for our community which includes the transit system turnaround includes us being truly financially sustainable and so it's important that we understand what that means Beyond just the results that we see here so it means also looking at how we leverage grants so you'll see it's 69.9 million dollars for total competitive Awards this is in one year these are the number of grants that we received for the city of El Paso to help provide additional funding sources for the needs that we have here for our city and also increasing our general fund reserves to go from nine days in 2014 to 91 days is truly a different view a different Horizon that we see for El Paso when we were at with nine days in our reserves it creates a bleak picture it's a bleak picture for those who want to invest in El Paso for us to be able to also invest in the services of the continuing needs and the expected resources and services that our community demands of the city of El Paso it limited us it tied our hands so to speak to be able to move forward and so today when you look out to the collective bargaining agreement that we saw this morning it really allows the city to be able to move forward and to be may be able to make those significant changes and investments in our departments and in our cities and in our employees so how do we do that so as part of the FY 2023 we look at helping our community so while we've had no tax rate increase while we also looked at increasing the homestead exemption savings we also had savings on the Texas Gas this Council the city council had voted to ensure that they are reducing the burden on our taxpayers that they're reducing the burden on our El pasoans on our community by reducing the cost of utilities ensuring that we're identifying additional revenues additional strategies to be able to assist the city and grow so we're not relying solely on property tax revenue as well as the rental and utility assistance and small business assistance that our community needs so the property tax bill what does it look like so we talk about how we're 29 of the overall bill so that's one less than one-third the the remaining is of course the school districts our community college the county and UMC and so when we talk about those economic incentives you've heard Elizabeth Triggs come up and discuss how there's a portion it's a portion of the overall property tax bill and we are really truly helping the other agencies we're helping the other agencies because as we see continued investment capital investment in our community then that means that there's less impact on the residents it's going to be on our commercial capital investment and it helps the other agencies the school district which is the majority of your property taxes it helps them to see increases in valuation so then they're not raising their property tax rates to be able to get to the same amount of Revenue so you'll also see here what's included so we talked about goal two which is Public Safety at 59.6 percent followed by quality of life and infrastructure and then we'll we've talked about this in the previous presentations as well but it's really important to note with sixty percent of the budget being Public Safety you it's important we communicate and continue to support so here you'll see those budget highlights which include the police and fire academies for FY 2023 that continued uh sorry vehicle replacement of seven million dollars and 10 million dollars for Street and traffic improvements in addition to that you'll see of course unfortunately the delay that we're seeing in Children's Museum but the Children's Museum the American Mexican-American Cultural Center our penguin exhibit that everyone's very excited about as well as the joy barasa and Vina Regional Park and overall you also see the impact or the increases that we've had under minimum wage and it's something that we know that Council has added to their goals by the vote that we saw in the previous council meeting so as we continue to look forward we're looking also at our budget priorities which was as the city manager mentioned this morning is really police Staffing where do we need to be at what do we need to increase our police Staffing and ensuring that by the approval that you had this morning of the collective bargaining agreement that we're in a position in order to be able to be competitive that we're in a position for the city of El Paso to be able to hire the officers that we need for this community in addition to that we must continue to include both the operation and maintenance costs of the quality of life bonds and Public Safety Bonds in addition our focus on traffic safety measures including the vision zero that you saw the presentation earlier this month as well as traffic safety programs and the neighborhood traffic management plan in addition to that we continue to see the priority for our community Through chime in of Street resurfacing projects and the needs that we know we continue to have in vehicle replacement work for course investment and further on so this is the slide that we showed we've of the past meetings that we've had there's been three meetings since January February and March and we have talked that each of those meetings the importance of the workforce the importance of our Public Safety and the Investments and importance of core quality of life capital projects and then the fixed cost that we have as a city so we've talked about this with 73 percent of the expenses being for personal services and as I mentioned before the 59.6 percent of the budget that goes to Public Safety or gold to so we have increased over since 2015 over 84.5 million dollars has gone to Public Safety this close to a 40 percent increase in that amount of time and so when we look at the major Investments that we've talked about which continue to be the priorities for our Council and for our community as both public safety quality of life and Street resurfacing that would be 110 million dollar investment or 34 cents on the tax rate but in fact the tax rate has only increased by 21 cents and it's through strategy it's through the continued strategy both on the public safety and our Economic Development strategy that allows us to be able to ensure that we have these results the significant investments in our community and still be able to maintain our tax rate so we're looking at how do we minimize that impact to tax taxpayers well we continue to look at the services that we provide for our community so our challenges is definitely economic uncertainty sales tax and property tax growth we know is not going to continue if you look in the news right now you'll see across the channels everyone's talking about the r word recession are we headed towards a recession it was similar talk last year but this year it's a little different right we saw the Federal Reserve increase the rates last week another 0.25 percent and then we saw previous to that two Banks two large Banks failing we saw that they rallied together and were able to save both of the banks so that does lead us to indicate right there's a concern in lending there's a concern in the market and what will that mean for El Paso so we also want to make sure that we're also minimizing impact to taxpayers we've heard time and time again it's a different economy we've talked about how there's inflationary pressures for everyone everyone has seen the impact of inflation and so we're also looking at how we can ensure that we're addressing that not only for our employees but also for our taxpayers in addition to that you'll see the limitations that we have had through Senate Bill 2 by moving from eight percent to a three and a half percent increase without voter approval of course and then also the estimated surcharge on our sales tax so I don't know if you all are aware but right off the top the state of Texas takes uh their portion to collect help us collect our sales tax of two percent which equates to about 3.3 million dollars so additional challenges that we Face are of course are additional departmental needs in in addition to those we also have Council budget requests and so we will be um we will be opening the Council budget request portion of the budget process at the next council meeting so we'll be able to provide you that information as well as well as the Decades of neglect that we've been facing with our aging infrastructure and facilities and Equipment as I mentioned economic uncertainty continues to be a challenge and it's something that I'm going to continue to talk about because it's part of this five-year Financial forecast so what are our budget drivers what are those expanding services that we're looking at that the community is expecting it includes both our Public Safety our streets that we've talked about residential resurfacing as well as neighborhood traffic management plans and the continued needs for our bond projects such as the quality of life and Public Safety bonds and ensuring that we're communicating as well as budgeting for those items and because we know what happens when we don't communicate and don't plan to include those operation and maintenance and Investments that we have as we saw in the 2012 quality of life so the future outlook so long range forecast is really to be a tool it's important that we plan and the reason it's important we plan is the results and the strategy that you saw as part of the beginning of this presentation because in order to be able to approve and do the Investments that we've seen before a Workforce for our uniformed employees both police and fire we need to have a plan and we need to have not only the Strategic plan but also that financial plan on how we're going to be able to achieve the results and the provide the services that our community not only expects but deserves so the five-year Financial forecast is our multi-year financial Outlook and so included in it and it's part of the backup to the agenda is not only the methodology but the economic forecast that we evaluate as well as expenditure and revenues that we'll cover today and so I'll go over the expenditures and then Robert cortheon srcfo will go over the revenue portion so so this is the five-year Financial forecast so for FY 2024 we're seeing a 17 million dollar projected shortfall so the 17 million dollars is from the revenue portion of 500 538 million dollars short of the 555 000 5 million sorry 555 million dollar expenditures that we're projecting so included in these expenditures here you can see the breakdown of both of the forecasts so on the top is going to be your revenues and on the bottom is going to be your expenditures so included in this forecast we have the impacts of the new collective bargaining agreements with both police and fire that have been approved we also include the new academies for both police and fire as well so that includes three academies for police and two academies for fire we continue our vehicle replacement plan for both police and fire vehicles as well as five hundred thousand dollars I believe for civilian vehicles or light duty Vehicles we also continue to show the O M impacts of both quality of life bonds and the public safety bonds so here you'll see for the uniform salaries and benefits of the overall budget that does still equal 46.9 percent with the civilian salaries and benefits at 26.2 and then the remaining 26 percent the operating costs so our general fund expenditures this really shows you a historical since FY 2019 all the way through the financial forecast and we have a little picture of the fire truck because it's important to remember that we've got both police and fire included in that bottom portion so let's get into public safety so we talked about Public Safety previously at the meeting that we had in February and so it's a key component as you know since it is the majority of our budget and it really is an important part of what the city does is public safety for both police and fire here you'll see the police Staffing the historical police Staffing and what we're projecting from not only for 23 because we still haven't completed this fiscal year but also through 24 through 28. so when we look at Staffing and when we talk about the collective bargaining agreement it all folds into our Public Safety strategy and the strategy itself of course it has to have multiple facets it includes not only our staffing but our capital and new replacement our improvements in technology and so Staffing itself started with a net 30 initiative to ensure that we were graduating and um seen an increase of at least 30 officers every year in addition to that becomes the collective bargaining how are we going to be able to be competitive in the market how are we going to be able to recruit for these academies and so then we need to build up to the three academies a year each Academy lasts between 10 to 11 months we can't add three academies in one year just because of the timing so in order to ensure we're graduating three academies we actually had to start this year and you'll see in a slide later on when those academies are as in addition to that is the investment that was made as part of the drop forward program regarding their pension as well as the different areas that we're looking at for retention of officers and the collective bargaining agreement that was approved this morning I keep referring to it because it includes specific items that we're looking at truly being able to retain the officers retain the experience that Sergeant Bella mentioned this morning in order to be able to train the new recruits in addition to that you'll see under the vehicle replacement also the technology so representative Rivera and you're a great commitment to the police department in addition to the body worn cameras and the digital video recording system overall which includes the vehicles and then also the city manager has mentioned also the city Watch program and I believe um assistant chief Xena also brought up both of those areas as well as the investments in the vehicles at the meet at the presentation yesterday so what's next is looking at that expansion so Representatives you mentioned as part of District Five the expansion of the the Far East Regional Command Center and how important it is to your community so by adding that it also requires an investment as you know in the officers and the equipment in order to provide that facility so ensuring that is also built into the five-year Financial forecast so you can see the impact of that as well so here you'll see the projected police Staffing and it relates to the Staffing graph that I had just shown you in the previous slides where we're looking at truly being able to ramp up while 21 22 and 23 had an impact on our overall net growth for the police department we're really looking at trying to be able to overcome that by adding in the three Academy three graduations in FY 2024 and really being able to increase the number then moving forward by at least 50 officers here shows you the police academies when they're scheduled and where they're currently at and it also shows the graduation dates for those that are initially coming up we continue to look at the uniform retirement as I've mentioned before that it's really important that we always have our finger on the pulse of of our experienced officers to ensure that we're able to also project both their retirements and also ensure that we're going to see that net growth in the department so future budget impacts of course we always continue to look at to the impact of the collective bargaining agreements will have the impact of the additional academies as well as the operating costs and Staffing that I talked about earlier so overall what we're seeing is part of the projected for FY 2024 includes an increase of the 14 million dollars that the city manager mentioned for the collective bargaining agreement in addition also includes the academies and smaller academies at least initially as we start to hopefully see the impact of the competitive salaries on our ability to be able to recruit and be competitive for police officers in addition to that you'll see a seven million dollar increase for fire along with them there are two academies of 35 graduates each and then as Jerry mentioned in the presentation earlier today with fire station 36 coming on board this June as well as fire station 38 in January of 2025. so here you'll see both police and fire salaries and this also includes the impact of the academies and so that's why you'll notice in 2025 and 26 moving forward there's a slight difference or increase in those amounts and impacts for the overall salaries so our investment in public safety continues as we've mentioned with Fleet Capital replacement for the replacement and investment of 18.8 million dollars since 2019 and that's a significant investment considering before we did not have replacement dollars in the budget in addition to that we have seven million dollars funded for both police and fire and we continue that vehicle replacement funding as part of the five-year Financial forecast through 2028 and we look we will continue to look for available funding in order to increase that knowing that the need for police and fire is really around 10 to 12 million dollars a year here you'll see the list of the different items that we've seen Capital Investments on and the importance of investing in technology to ensure that our departments are able to continue to develop to continue to improve and continue to serve the city so here are the list of the public safety Bond projects that we have and that what you'll see as part of the five-year Financial forecast and the operating budget and so please note that this was originally presented as part of the presentations for the public safety Bond back in 2019 while we'd continue to evaluate the numbers ensure the numbers are correct the actual overall plan as far as the academies the impact on the equipment has not changed and so we continue to look at a total increase just for the public safety Bond of 13.4 million dollars for police and 14.4 million dollars for fire so we also have as part of the budget and as part of this forecast the new and enhanced programs that we've seen so this is the police enhanced programs that they have presented on and these are these major areas with additional Staffing the requirements and additional Staffing that are for these enhanced programs and these programs are truly to serve our community and truly to ensure that we are being sensitive to the needs of the community in areas that they see are affecting our El Paso so staffing needs Beyond this also include the as we discussed Far East Regional command they include the staffing needs as discussed by assistant assistant chief Silva and and the new police academy for the public safety bonds as well as the downtown Regional command here this is what breaks down those positions as we initially look at it it also includes the positions as requested uh as part of the body worn camera or the digital recording system that was originally presented so as we look at fire we have of course the fire station 36 that's opening that we're all very excited to have as well as Chief Killians had mentioned the safer Grant so we were awarded that safer grant for 21 police firefighters and then of course we have to build in the additional Academy that we'll need for fire station 38 and then they had requested additional positions as well for the training academy itself for the expansion and this reflects the graduation that we just recently had back in February in the upcoming graduation that we're anticipating in July so the civilian Workforce on July 31st we came to you Araceli Guerra and myself and really went over what have we done comprehensively for our Workforce is so critical that it's always that we always continue to ensure that we're communicating this because it's so important our Workforce is the of course the heart of the organization so here you'll see overall that six years of pay increases no Health Care increases for four consecutive years and I keep saying this but it's very important four consecutive years I hear anecdotally people feel like their health care costs are going up the health care but it's not the premiums the premiums are not going up for consecutive years we have not changed the plan that means we didn't change the the deductions we didn't change the premiums we didn't change but and but there's still this perception right because the cost for everything continue to go up but I want to assure you we have not increased health care for four consecutive years and in addition to that we continue to have the health savings account and contribution annually for the employees and for their families we have increased the number of Wellness clinics just for convenience for the employees to make it easier for them to be able to get the care they need this slide is really impactful so available overall available compensation benefits and incentives for employees is upwards of fifteen thousand two hundred and twenty four dollars so that reflects the wage increases the performance evaluation if they decide to enroll and shape it up which we continue to encourage our employees to be part of shape it up are they use the health savings account our tuition assistance program and it continues to go on along with our perfect perfect attendance incentive in our sign on incentive for new employees it really speaks to our commitment to our employees and the importance they are for us delivering exceptional services so competitive wages so this is important to note that this is civilian only but what we have here has been an increase in the minimum wage of approximately 17 percent and it just went into effect this on March 11th I believe the beginning of the pay period for March 11th so our employees will see it in their paycheck this Friday and so what this shows you is that we really looked at our entry-level employees the hourly employees the minimum wage it's that minimum rate that we're looking at increasing and ensuring that we're addressing where we're at for our entry-level employees we need each and every one of them and we need to ensure that we're able to retain our Workforce once we've trained them once we the recruitment process the training process all of it has an impact on our ability to provide services and so it's important that we retain our employees so that way we continue to provide as I said those exceptional services Healthcare as I mentioned for consecutive years and we see this in terms of rising costs and prescriptions we continue to see increases in our costs for prescriptions overall a lot of it's related to inflationary impacts that they're they're also enduring but we just can continue to see the prices rise streets as I mentioned we have 10 million dollars for resurfacing a 1.8 million dollars for vision zero as well as a million dollars for facility Renovations and then 250 for neighborhood traffic management programs and then I believe yesterday Miss farini spoke about the Ada on-demand request funding of five hundred thousand dollars so we continue to have that in this projection as well as well as the the Investments and quality of life as in future Investments for the remaining projects so we've seen 20 million dollars cumulatively invested in our quality of life departments it's a significant investment it's a significant investment considering one it was not planned for and two it was not communicated yet we were able to find a way to ensure that it was part of the budget these are the list of the quality of life Bond projects that have been completed and as you saw in Jerry's presentation earlier today there is a significant number of capital projects that have been completed throughout the city and quality of life of course is an important area for our community so we as I discussed before we have the penguin exhibit coming up and then unfortunately the delay in the children's museum but also the Mexican-American Cultural Center here again as I'm about to turn it over to Robert to cover revenues again shows the overall Financial forecast with a budgetary shortfall of approximately 17.5 million dollars for 24 22 for 2025 and so forth thanks Nicole Robert Cortina is Chief Financial Officer just to clarify so the information that you're seeing on this slide everything beginning in 2024 these are all estimates and so this is information that's provided to you all well in advance of really getting into the the meat of the budget for the 2024 fiscal year and so again our integrated budget process we're 147 days away from the actual adoption of the budget and so between now and then is the time that we'll really start to fine tune the budget really building Upon A lot of the information that Nicole has already presented of what's going to drive the budget for next year and then closing that gap down to again develop the balanced budget that we will present when we do our one-on-one budget briefings in May and then again when we do the budget public budget briefings to the community in late June and then ultimately with the adoption in August so just for clarification I don't want anybody to look at this and think the city is operating at a deficit that's far far from the truth in fact this is actually a very good opportunity to not only present to the community or to the council Community as well that shows how this process really works extremely well because as I mentioned we're still 147 days away from the adoption of the budget you're hearing a lot of the information now well in advance so that we can be proactive in making the adjustments necessary to get down to that balanced budget so just wanted to buy some context as to what we're working with on these slides here so Nicole covered a lot of the the meat of the budget of what's going to drive as far as the expenditure side but obviously the most important piece is the revenues right because you can't uh budget what you're going to spend if you don't know what you're planning to bring in as far as the revenue so as we look at the general fund budget the primary sources of revenue for the general fund budget property taxes sales taxes the franchise fees as we look at property taxes we did receive preliminary reports from the Central Appraisal District Ms Cody sent those out to you all forwarded those to you it's important to note those are pre-preminary and so what does that mean these are very very early figures that they're compiling it includes some updates to the residential as far as what they did because they did reappraisals on all properties this past year but it does not include commercial values does not include updated industrial values does not include obviously what's going to happen as far as protests over the next several months so again just pre-puliminary we utilize that information we do comparisons using past reports that we received again doing that analysis uh we'll receive another update from the present District we'll actually receive the preliminary later in April and then we get updates throughout the rest of the several months through May June July and then we finally received the certified values at the end of July which is what we use to calculate the tax rates for the no new revenue and the voter approval tax rates which will help guide the actual final recommendation on the property tax rate for fiscal year 2024. and so up until this point everything is preliminary estimates based on the information that we have again utilizing the historical data we are projecting just based on that pre-puliminary report that we did receive to see a nine percent increase in property values for next year I have a slide we'll get into more detail on the actual property evaluations but we are expected to see almost another double digit growth in property values which as Nicole mentioned is really really good for FY 2024 to see that strong growth in property values however when I share the slide on property values and historically it's well well above the actual average that we've seen as an organization as we look to sales tax growth again sales taxes as you've heard us say quite a bit over the last couple of years has performed extremely well of unprecedented growth in the last two fiscal years continues to perform well this year but again we need to make sure that we're being very very cognizant of the uncertainty surrounding current economic conditions as we're developing the budget for upcoming fiscal years because obviously we don't want to ever get into a situation where we're being overly optimistic with Revenue assumptions because you're well aware we saw that consequence in 2012 2013 and 2014 with some of those Revenue estimates not coming to fruition so it's important that we're very very conservative on those Revenue estimates to ensure we're not impacting operations so again Nicole showed you the breakdown of the expenditures this slide is a really good slide because it shows you the breakdown of the revenues and again really highlighting the key points here again property tax sales tax and franchise fees makes up almost 83 percent of the revenue sources and so really Reliant again on property values looking at sales tax growth in the world that that plays our second largest primary source of Revenue and then the revenue that received from the franchise the utilities for the use of the city rights of way so this I showed you a breakdown by those categories those three main categories and then the other the other categories include things such as Revenue we received from licenses to permits or everything we received from The Parks Recreation Department those type of things make up a small amount of an annual increase you'll see there in the bottom line there the annual increase over 25 million projected for FY 2024 and then you'll see that sort of start to taper off beginning in 2025 and again as I mentioned uh fiscal year 2024 really being driven by the property value and the sales tax growth that we've seen really helping to provide additional revenue for fiscal year 2024. so as I talked about property evaluations again we know that we saw unprecedented growth last year over 13 percent property value growth primarily been driven by residential multi-family and we hadn't seen growth that high since 2009 when we've seen manager touch this morning about the BRAC expansion over at Fort Bliss we saw a housing boom in those years leading up to the Great Recession in 2008 and the university beginning in fiscal year 2010 really tapered off between 2010 and 2018 we saw on average about a 1.4 percent average growth in our valuations 1.4 percent is a very very small amount of value growth the average value home during that almost decade stayed flat and so as I mentioned we did see that 13 increase last year as I mentioned just a second ago we're projecting a nine percent increase this could be a fiscal year and then slight decreases over the next several years and getting us more in line with what we've seen on historical averages from property values so there are a lot of assumptions as we're developing the budget primarily with property taxes because not only we're looking at property valuations we're also having to do analysis and calculations on how much of that is going to go into the tips the tax increment financing zones we also do calculations and look at analysis and doing comparisons on the amount of Revenue we're going to lose related to exemptions so for all of our Homestead exemptions our over 65 disabled exemptions in our veterans exemption as well has an impact on the overall property value of Revenue that's available for the general fund so as I mentioned again that city property tax relief here that's provided for homesteads over 65 disabled and disabled vets over 36 million dollars in this current fiscal year I will point out here and I did this presentation a while ago and Miss Turner got on me saying that I was attacking disabled veterans and that's far from the truth the point of the presentation the reason why we show this information is because it has an impact as I mentioned on the available revenue for the general fund so if you just focus on the yellow portion of These Bars here if you look at FY 2022 to FY 2023 so this past year there was an additional two million dollars of property tax revenue that the city lost because we went back into the form of the exemptions a wonderful benefit we're a veteran Community if we just received the the recent award and recognition of being a defense Community but it does have an impact on the overall property tax revenue that's available for the general fund to fund the operations of the organization and so as again as we're developing these projections and what's going to be available as far as Revenue this is something that we continue to take into account this slide just shows you the overall number of exemptions for each of those individual groups and so you'll see for example Homestead is over 131 000 are seniors so those over 65 in the stable pushing close to 53 000 that benefit from that exemption and that exemption this city council approved increase in that a year and a half ago up to the current 42 500 discount that they receive on the buy of their home so almost 40 percent of our total homesteads received that over 65 or disabled exemption again which is helping to minimize the impact on their property tax bill I talked about this already the number of disabled veterans and so we continue to monitor that just because of the potential impact on available revenue for the general fund unfortunately we do see this as I mentioned continue to increase not only the number but it's based on the disability ranking and so again something that will continue to factor in not only for the upcoming budget but as we look to the next five years as well and so I referenced this already the number of exemptions that we have I've talked about the additional relief that we provide for our seniors in disabled increasing that amount back in 2015 it was at thirty thousand dollars of a discount and we're now up we've increased that twice in the last six years and now we're up to forty two thousand five hundred dollars off the value of their home again minimize the impact for over fifty three thousand homes in the city of El Paso impacts on sales tax revenue so I've talked a little bit about this one of the things that is a little bit of a challenge for us as we're projecting out again Nicole talked about some of the uncertainty in the economy is the lag of real-time information on sales tax information again there's a two to three month lag and the information we received from the state and so the most recent report that we have for example is for the month of January and so we're already coming up on April here and we're still working off of information that's two and a half almost three months old and that plays a key role because that's an indicator as to how the economy is performing and so all those sales taxes up through January continues to perform positively that's something that will continue to monitor particularly as we get the February and March reports here in the next couple of months still sales tax revenue again just to provide some comparisons on how we're performing as I mentioned overall continuing to see positive growth in sales tax for the first four months of this current fiscal year September October November December overall 4.7 percent higher through those four months compared to the same time period last year and so again we want to be conservative not only when we do projections for the current year but also as we're projecting out for fiscal year 2024 which will not begin until September 1. this slide's a really good slide because you can see here the two red dots As you move a little bit to the left hand side of the bar here those are obviously coveted impacted months but you'll see it sort of flatten out and then really started to uh produce really Positive Growth beginning in 2021 early 2021 and we've seen that continue positive growth for the last commit upon two and a half years now the slide just shows historically how sales tax is performed and again the budget office utilizes all this information again not only when they're coming up with the projection and estimates for or upcoming fiscal Europe but again as we're developing this five-year forecast and this is really really important because again this is what the information that we're utilizing to make these recommendations for the city council to consider when we're presenting the budget but also as we're looking to the long term because it's important that we're sustainable as Nicole mentioned financially operationally and we can only do that by making sure that we're looking at the long term and not focusing on the short term and making decisions today that could have a negative impact on future years so franchise fees again this is a third largest primary source of Revenue and we've talked a little bit about this already again this is primarily being driven by the usage electric water and gas and also by the rates that these utility charge their customers and so as they're increasing rates not only does the city pay more for electricity water and gas however we do collect a little bit more additional franchise Revenue as well from those utilities this shows you the year to date on how we've performed on franchise Revenue so quarter one and Quarter Two again this is another example of real-time information so these payments are done quarterly for Apostle electric and Texas Gas they're done quarterly and so there's a about a two-month leg again with this franchise Revenue as well so as we're projecting out again utilizing historical data utilizing budget information that's being provided by the utilities as far as what they're looking at as far as their rates that's all factored into the projection estimates that we'll have for not only again the coming year but the five-year forecast so my last two slides here again just an update on where we stand we've continued to provide budget updates over the last several months we'll continue to do so over the next several months leading up into the budget adoption in August as I mentioned we're 147 days away from that date of adoption the budget office is already working closely with all the Departments beginning to develop their preliminary budgets and then scheduling the meetings with the city manager to begin doing the review in May so that we can start to do the one-on-one Council briefings later in the month of May and early June and then ultimately doing the Public Presentation for the community at the end of June and then finally again just some of the things that I already kept about talked about just to recap again we'll continue to monitor those major Revenue sources for the next several months as we get more sales tax data franchise data again on the revenue side continue to monitor the expenditure side as well and again obviously what's going on in the economy with potential fears of a recession upcoming so this five-year forecast council is just that we look into the future with so that we're proactive in the budgeting process as well as being proactive and how we report to council as we report throughout the entire year not just wait till budget season you heard me say earlier several times that we're creating a pf3 fund I asked staff to do that in order to pay ahead of our costs like the collective bargaining agreement costs to make sure that that helps and is just one more tool for the council in order to adjust the budget accordingly ahead of time so that we are again one step closer to making sure we have a good budget for the Council of consideration when you consider that in August and September thank you representative Pharaoh followed by representative thank you Mr Mayor so um a couple things one is one of the slides i s somebody made a mention about Homestead exemptions and how was the city involved in the homestead exemptions I'm sorry what was that sir uh someone brought up the point about Homestead exemptions uh and how the city was considering or entertaining how was the city involved in Homestead exemptions so the city council actually is the one that sets what those Homestead exemptions amount are currently right now for your homestead if you have that exemption it's a five thousand dollar exemption so that's essentially a discount at the value of your home the city also provides exemptions for our over 65 and disabled so those forms are available and we'll be presenting that information we can do that publicly and provide the links we typically have the appraisal district also come and present to the council provide that information on how you can apply for those exemptions but for over 65 disabled as I mentioned thank you but I understand that part but I'm referring more to the state exemptions how how are we going to balance the state exemptions on this last session there was 15 000 more appropriated as exemptions this session we have the lieutenant governor and the governor asking for property tax relief how is that going to affect the budget it won't affect the city that will impact the school districts so those exemptions will end up showing up on the School portion of the tax bill that says Nicole mentioned you have the five taxing entities those exemptions that you're referring to are related specifically to the school districts okay two more points that that stuck out to me we're talking about only in the the word only was in there increasing property taxes by 21 cents and then in the same sentence we use the word recession uh it doesn't you know there's a lot of people who think that including me who the only is not the 21 cents is not chopped liver and I think we need to be careful how we um when we give these presentations how we communicate that to the to the constituents that we're raising their taxes um and it's only this month and then talk about a recession sure and the point there being that not only are we maintaining current Services we're off also expanding services so as Nicole talked about we're expanding our police and fire departments not only with Staffing but facilities we're expanding the quality of life amenities with all of the additional facilities that we're bringing on point taken though thank you thank you Mr thank you sir representative none that's followed by mayor Pro Tem if you need great job Nicole uh just been really proud to see all of the work that you all put for this I mean even after October I always try to leave you all alone because of how much work you do to close the books and then you go right back into proposing the upcoming imbalancing of our budget um I looked at them as do you call it a mifo is that the shirt okay my phone I looked at the mifo um it's actually really really well put together put together document I also noticed on page 24 representative Canales is not here right now um that you all took into account the recent action and the efforts of Representative Canales to increase the minimum hour hourly rate to 15 an hour and I think um uh I just want to clarify what the estimated cost would be it says this would be a total cost of around 15.1 million and and that was from fiscal year 24 to 28 is are these still estimates or or is this a firm number no ma'am it's everything included is still an estimate so it truly is just a forecast at this point okay and because we don't understand yet the impacts of retirement and insurance of those what would be how would could we get a better clearer answer on what the overall impact would be for the next five years so it well there's as you know and you mentioned some of those factors right there but it's also in the other impacts are the number of additional positions we're going to have filled what other um the public safety Bond impact as well as the quality of life impact for the additional positions for those as well and so that's why I continue to say it's just an estimate at this point because as you know there's multiple factors on that and then including the revenue as Robert mentioned and so we always want to be mindful of what do those revenues look like what does the economy look like moving forward and what are our Revenue projections going to be for each year interested now we talked a lot today about police Staffing and it seems to be an ambitious goal of 2028 to get to 1400 police officers I keep hearing net 30 a couple years ago we talked about next 60 is this because the academies are not well attended or is it are we proposing to have three Academy still this upcoming fiscal year how do we get there and what would be the true net so the and I can go to that slide and so 34 slide 34. we are so really we're looking at making that for lost ground so you'll see the previous three fiscal years from 2020 2021 and 22 we did not see that net growth that we were projecting that we really were working towards and so in order to ensure that we make strides to address that we see that increase we still have the net 30 over this same time period but in order to achieve that the goals that were set by net 30 every year we do have to increase it to make up for that that net loss that we had for the past three years so that's why you'll see that increase to 53 of net growth under 24 25 52 52 and then 50 plan so we do expect by next fiscal year to have a net of over a hundred you're just looking at the the entire time span of for 10 years yes ma'am okay yes ma'am so it's really so we've got a period of ketchup so to speak is the goal to get to fiscal year 2020 2032 to 1600. so I'd have to go back and measure based on the previous fiscal years but I believe that it does push us out to at least 2020 2030. and so then we're just maintaining after that okay I think if we could clarify that number because I know that's going to be an important number not only to Benchmark how much money we put to the department playing catch up but also to communicate that to the public in my opinion it looks like you know we we're striving to get there but recognizing that people retire and so these numbers could be inflated not recognizing how many retirements we have I did want to ask Mr go ahead if I if I may as is the five-year projections this particular number I know this is based on growth based on uh planning instrument I would tell you that the number in my opinion and my recommendation would be that we go from 300 to 350 maybe up to 375 but then you'd have to look at that on an annual basis right now we're we're scheduled and projected on our trajectory to get to a 300 in a reasonable amount of time I would say over a five to seven year period i I think that this is based on growth factors and you have to take into account the growth of the budget and adjust it for for that but absolutely you have to get to 300 for sure and I would say based on the gross on the grow growth on the east side uh that 350 is a a manageable and a reasonable number to work towards attaining with three academies a fiscal year funded but they won't be completed each fiscal year that's that's correct that's the reason why I would tell you that's more of a realistic number and recommendation if um if members of the public were to ask after the approval today from City Council of the CBA what can we expect with their taxes this year are we projecting initially that there will be a tax rate increase that's why I mentioned I don't know if I made it clear I said it several times and that is that I've asked staff to put a pay for futures fund together that I'm calling a pf3 we've already included a pension stabilization fund we've concluded a race civilization fund we're at 91 days we're at nine days in 2014. today we're at 91. we've said over we've said it several times that the the gold standard is 90. you want to get above that number quite frankly and the goal there is to reduce the interest rate on your bonds that's the reason why that's important it's actually another reason why the pension fund is on the the ballot as a referendum so that we remove the cap in the early 2000s having a cap was seen as a good thing it seems counterintuitive to remove a cap and pay more but to contribute more shows the flexibility of an organization to pay more if the fund is not performing so that is the reason for that being placed in there but but the pf3 fund is supposed to be put in place to offset those additional costs in the future I would tell you this number that we have to start with is lower than we've had in the past uh in the last almost nine budgets that Robert and I and now miss Cody have done together we've seen the numbers much higher than that so 17 million dollars is not something that we feel like is is not something that we can overcome and again we've already put in place something that we're working on right now that will come back in April for Council approval in order for you to have those CBA costs off offset by this new idea and I I heard you when you said that earlier I just think we need to be crystal clear that there's um cost drivers that um certainly need to be included into this upcoming budget um and you know we need we need to do the work together to to see how we can soften the impact to the tax payer and I saw that when you when we were looking at the valuations and I don't even know which slide it was for fiscal year 24 they're still showing uh about a nine percent or over nine percent of increased values that was set by cat are you looking at cad's preliminary evaluations that's based on the pre-puliminary that we received and that nine percent does it include like carry over from that 10 cap from last year to this year is that why we have a better understanding because then you see a decrease year over year nine nine percent to about six and lower um I just don't understand um why why it goes up and then down if we are still if we see that new state law with that 10 that 10 percent cap shouldn't it be going up or is it is it going to continue to go down a lot of it's driven by the market driven by the appraisals that the cad does it's also driven by do they do reappraisals every year and so they did a reappraisal this past year just based on the market how strong the market has been and so if they don't do reappraisals typically you won't see a strong growth in evaluation what is their cats requirements for evaluations is it they have to do it at least every three years at least every three years but they can do it more frequently if they see Market disruptions or or Vitality of the market which we have been seeing um okay so I think it's important that we we invite the Central Appraisal District again to talk about what changes are coming down the pipeline I also know that you know their lawsuits have increased as well I'm not sure how if that's stabilizing but I think that's the best practice to include them as part of the upcoming budget discussions then I'm very happy to see the quantification of the total Workforce compensation and benefits over fifteen thousand improved benefits for our Workforce they deserve it it's it is a very expensive cost but but what we are seeing seeing are the consequences of not putting investment into our Workforce um sooner because of what we saw as the pandemic economic turmoil I know I know management was doing the best or can but now we can't open facilities because of the lack of benefits we need to be competitive with the private sector um so I think this is really important to share um when we're hiring or put it in our HR department because I think that is a really great sell point and so um I did want to thank you all for your hard work I know we're going to continue having these conversations we always start having these conversations once we get those preliminary values from CAD it looks like we have a lot of work to do but I have a lot of confidence in the department that we will continue to maintain our services looking forward to having conversations with the parks department looking at how we can improve programming from for all sorts of residents and so I'll look forward to those conversations in budget seasons one of the things that or another one of the another item that you'll need to take into consideration is the fact that a lot of these facilities can't be opened because they need a lot more money invest in them in order to refurbish or get them back up and running it's not necessarily always the case that it's because of the number of personnel that we have in some cases it's because of the fact that these buildings need a lot more money invested in them and the budget the operating dollars themselves aren't going to address it you will need another bond package if you want to open up several of these facilities that are in there at the end of their useful life we have done a report back in we asked asked for it in 15 it was completed in 16 that is a compilation of All City facilities and the lack of Maintenance has been done over years and years and years and so we have been catching up with police and fire pay with the equipment replacement for police and fire for streets and yes for a lot of these items like in the bond packages and the operations and maintenance associated with those Bond items but we also have other facilities that don't get the attention because they're not the popular ones necessarily but they're the facilities that need a lot of the attention that's been brought up by a lot of council members and has been brought up in the CR process and just want to make sure that you all take that into consideration in the future because so that you don't get frustrated so that you understand that in order to bring some of those facilities back online you'd have to spend the considerable amount of money on them and or consider just mothballing them and building newer facilities in a redistributed Geographic fashion based on where the need most exists based on the growth that's taken place in the community because a lot of these facilities that have are at the end of their useful life they were built a hundred you know some cases 100 years ago 50 years ago we're 150 years this year so we have a lot of older facilities that were built in the inner core of the city and the city has been built out and is growing outwardly and so some of these facilities that we're attempting to open we might need to take a different look at geographically where they should go so just something for you to consider in the future and that's what the school district is doing and I just wanted to ask one last question Mr cortina's when are we going to see the quarter four um quarter four is it revenues or whatever where we're at with our second quarter in the month of April the fourth quarter is not presented until December okay so then we'll give the second quarter second quarter thank you in the month of April probably the second meeting in April okay that would be an important one because the city manager mentioned we're looking at this paper Futures I mentioned the performance in sales tax and how strong that's been we should get another sales tax number I think probably the next week or two and so we'll have a little bit better idea for the month of February on how sales tax is performing and that's really going to be The Driver of the recommendation for funding something like the so imagine mentioned the paper and the bond Raiders have told us as much they have told us they want to see us put dollars aside for a rainy day fund for our pension stabilization fund so if you want to improve your bond rating I think that we should put some dollars aside for that thank you thank you representative on this with that we have mayor Pro Tem thanks all right but I want to talk about salaries as well I know representative Canales and I put up an item for the 15 wage for our hourly lowest paid employees but we still have a real issue with individuals who have been here for 20 or 30 years I just spoke with an individual who worked at the city for 35 years that retired last week and made under thirty five thousand dollars the median income in El Paso is 45 000. I don't know how you could work at the city for 35 years and not even hit 40 000 because I'm you know from a different time I'm from now and so wanting to go back to the wage study that we did back in 2017 and we incorporated I know we didn't fully take that wage study and incorporate everything we kind of did it in a percentage and my understanding is we we kind of have done the incremental increases since then but we have not followed up on that and we have not even and this is my understanding I could be very wrong but we have not even hit the goals that were presented in that wage study so what we've done is we did the equity adjustments back then back in 2019 we implemented that study we did the equity adjustments which addresses the things that you just talked about so based on seniority Within the amount of time within that position those are things we continue to have to do adjustments on so it's not just increasing the minimum wage but it's also doing those Equity adjustments to ensure that we're accounting for that particularly now that we're hiring individuals coming into the city that are new and they're ended up making the same or even more in some cases that some people may be a city for three to five years so ensuring that we're making those adjustments as well and so that's something that we're factoring in with the recommendation something that we've done over the last several years as well to make sure that we're addressing those type of issues we have gotten very aggressive over the last couple of years we've not only done pay increases as Nicole mentioned every year for the last eight years but particularly in the last two years we've gotten really aggressive but again being having the ability to do so because again of that sales tax and the property value growth and so understanding that those revenues aren't expected to continue to perform at those high levels over the next five years so again doing it incrementally over the next five years some well three years is something that built into this five year forecast but that's only for the 15 right and I don't want to get off on a tangent because you know I'd love to do that but like one of the our Equity is a dollar a year so it's 52 weeks at a dollar it's like I mean what is that even coming out to for individuals it's on the is it on the 80s somewhere on the 87 sides if it would bring that up so this is since May so back in May of 2022 the city council approved increase in the minimum wage we did it again in September of this year and then again in March so if you look at the average hourly General Service employee that GS is General Service employee that's our front line workers primarily you'll see that for fiscal year 2022 which ended in August and then this year alone you're looking at almost a 14 increase in their wage okay what does that come out to if you make thirty thousand dollars don't have it exactly you're better at math than I am Robert but it's significant I mean a 14 increase within nine different a year I mean we're talking of May 2022 to March of 2023 you're talking about a nine month time period 14 increase is a significant increase in a short amount of time as I mentioned we'll continue to look at how we can be aggressive and continue to increase that however it's got to be based on the available revenues that we have also dealing with the Senate bill to the property tax cap that we have also just minimizing the increase on the tax rate which representative just made the comment about the impact on the tax rate and so again being very very cognizant of of balancing not only the services taking care of our employees but also the impact on taxpayers yeah terrible condition or we don't have staff and those are what I hear 50 of the time right and I think that really for me I'm going somewhere with this inside it's not just insulting anyone but for me I think moving into this budget season we really need to start taking a look at the services that we can provide whether it's our facilities or our staff because there are in my district about half of the facilities are inaccessible right now and it's for one of those reasons yeah he's been pushing for us to make sure that we're being aggressive we've done a lot of job players this past weekend we did two jumpers at 180 to the natatoriums HR staff is out there and so that ended up resulting in 60 job offers being made sure this goes back to my concern that you could work at the city for 30 years and make under the average income and so I don't think that people today when there are so many jobs that are remote and more convenient are going to be looking at that so um I guess my ask is that before we really get into this budget season we have a real breakdown on what our salaries look like compared to even that wage study because the last time we did it was 2017. I'm not going to ask for a new one but I do want to look at those comparables because we should be well over that at this point if we and we're not and I know we don't disagree yeah and so we I hear you loud and clear but again it's about balancing balancing those costs as well and again as the council as mentioned and I guess another point I'm trying to make is I feel like this is the year that we really need to make that the priority and if we need to balance out other things that's a conversation we as a council need to direct you to do well aware of that um but but speaking to counsel it's we're never gonna get out of covid if we don't catch up to the impact it had on the economy and salaries and we're not we haven't even touched that and we're three years out and half of our facilities I shouldn't say half half of the facilities in my district aren't open and half of those are because of Staffing it's it is an actual issue and we can't keep getting up here and looking at you Robert like why aren't we hiring people if we as a counselor not directing you to take the steps that are necessary so you're never going to hear me over promise we're always going to make sure that we're under promise and over deliver and so the city manager talked about the pay for futures not only dealing with police and fire but also dealing with our civilian employees as well now that we've reached the gold standard in our reserves of building those up putting us in a very strong financial position it's taken time it hasn't been easy it's been the result of difficult decisions from this Council but we're at a point now we're able to do a lot of things that will get us into a higher position and so that recommendation that we're going to bring forward I believe will address a lot of those key issues again but it's being financially responsible at the same time we can't do it all in one year can do it all in two years it has to be thought out it has to be planned over a multi-year based approach and Miss anello we agree with you you know in terms of increasing the pay we've been doing that every year it just doesn't seem like it's significant enough because the pay was so low and then also the health care increases that I know that five years before the council put the Strategic plan in place employees received increase to their health care costs in the premium and no pay increase so that like for five years straight they received a pay decrease so every year for since we've placed the Strategic plan in place that the council approved we've had some form of compensation and and so yeah we we agree with the comments are being made and I agree with what Robert just said and that's the reason why we've been working so hard on the finances piece of it so that we could be more aggress on a lot of these steps we have been more aggressive council's been very supportive of that we appreciate that and we we understand what what's been talked about today and we appreciate the feedback yeah I just I do think we need to become more aggressive if that means cutting back on other things I'd love to hear a proposal from you're all better on that if I can go back real quickly to Rift and fear of your your comment on that side an idea if you can bring out that presentation the point of the slide again just to be clear it's breaking down those cost drivers of what's Driven the budget in the last several years so between 2015 2022 really investing in those key things that we hear from the community whether it's through our China budget survey whether it's through the citizen survey that we do or whether it's through Bond elections so we've had the 2012 quite a life Bond we've had our 2019 Public Safety Bond and now our 2022 Community progress Bond so the point of this slide about the 21 cents is that had it not been for a lot of things a lot of the strategies that Nicole talked about earlier in the presentation it would have actually been a 30 force in increase and so that's the point of the slide is that again minimize the impact on the taxpayer by not having 34 cents instead of 21 and at the same time invested in those three key areas that's that's the point of the slide so what's been it's our annual cost from 15 until now is 110 million dollars more and 72 73 million dollars of it because every cent equals three and a half million so if you multiply 21 cents times three and a half million you're going to get about a 73 million dollar number a little bit over that and so what he's saying is we've absorbed the rest of that and I know that there's a lot that's said about certificates of obligation the increase to the budget but we've also had a lot of conversation about how police was ignored for decades quite frankly and the fact that their numbers and Staffing went down when El Paso was growing uh is a gross Injustice to the force and to the council and to the community so that's a significant cost as you can see with this slide and then the O M associated with the quality of life bond package that was not included in what information went out to the public and we made that clear to the council at that time they did not like hearing that but we had to share it with them we said you're buying a bunch of horses and you're not buying any food for them and so we had to then put the o m in there and so that's additional costs associated with that and then obviously everyone has had a long conversation about streets and that's for a very long time been ignored and the fact that this Council and previous councils have set money aside annually for those Street improvements is significant so I think that those are where the dollars have gone towards not to mention public transit because Sun Metro only has half a penny not a full Penny like most you transits and the general fund has been used or at least the general fund side of the debt side has been used for a lot of their expansion and that's unheard of cities do not do that they either wait for federal funds or they have a full penny for for public transit so there's a lot of things like that that go into the makeup of Municipal financing and the reason why overall we've been working so hard to increase the fund balance is to lower our interest rate because there's there's there's significant debt that we've had to in take on take on because of all the things I've just explained and when people bring it up we're happy to discuss it it's it's it's something that's that that bears attention and and needs the council's attention and we can't sit back and ignore it so I know that we've heard that you know facilities are not open uh again a lot of the facilities are not open because some of the facilities need serious upgrades and in some cases yes they need more Staffing as well but as Robert mentioned we've listened we've heard and even if you hadn't told was we were very much working on getting more staff on online for these services to be back back online as well Mr mirror thank you Mr Gonzalez thank you Ms cortinas um in but but I need to bring to your attention that the people who liked at me think only 21 cents is a lot of money is a lot of money on their their tax on their in fact there's a lot who think would take that as an insult that we're saying we only increase your property taxes 21 cents um and that's my point is that we we need to keep them in mind also and I'm sorry they interrupt you Mr um representative Vienna but but I had to respond to Mr Gonzalez and Mrs cortina's Point that's it's not only 21 cents that's a lot of money to taxpayers and we need to keep that in mind also and in the same sentence we bring up the word recession so I mean these it's serious what we're talking about thank you Mr Mayor thank you representative um you better thank you thank you sir I've just got one question and then refers to the facilities that were mentioned uh if they're sitting there closed because we we need to you know funding to Major repairs like you said and what what what can the city do to to how should I say either either Salem or or you know just wait till we get the funding is that is that what the what would be the best thing I I'll just respond to that um when you look at Services geographically you need to look at whether services are most needed I I understand that sometimes councils not just this one any Council in any City can't do that for political reasons uh because you can't close a facility that has a lot of sentiment people are used to having it there so that's going to be a challenge if you want to continue operating these facilities and bring them back online you're going to have to spend money and and that's going to be either with the operating dollars which means annual dollars or or GEOS General obligation bonds that you sell in order to make improvements of them and or keep them closed because the the fact that we are paying more in salaries whoa excuse me okay sorry about that sorry that Mr G I don't know what that was as I said this is a very sensitive topic and so the thing is that you have to consider these things as a council because when you increase costs that it has a consequence it has an impact it has an impact on on a variety of things and and uh Mr and I wish he was in here um we'll take that word only out that word should have necessarily been on there but again the point still is that there's a lot of needs and they have to be paid for some way somehow uh either that uh and I've had conversations with the mayor about this and he has said this you know either people need to stop you know there needs to be you know a stop on expenditures right uh or just a reality check on how much exactly can can you spend I remember the first year I was here I actually recommended a decrease in some of the cuts in the budget and I would it was it was voted down by the council they went against the recommendation so I learned then that this Council this community wanted to invest in their Community there was a lot of things that have been ignored for a long time and so I readjusted My Philosophy in terms of what I put forth to the council based on their guidance if this council is different it says hey we want to stop spending then you're going to have to re really re-examine a lot of facilities that are closed and the services that are being provided are not being provided and and y'all need to consider whether you want to have a bond election to put bring them back online or not that'll be something you'll have to look at okay and and don't get me wrong I wasn't I was just wanting to find out if if the city was to get up to option three that you mentioned sorry I was just meant uh asking because if the city was to get to option three and those facilities have to wait like 10 12 years to be repaired to get funding for them uh I was just wondering what what that option could be for the city I think the the reality of it is I mean since 14 I've been telling this Council and previous councils that you know we're buying new things right and we have to support those new things and yet we have old things that we haven't been investing in that's just a reality that's just the truth and so it's just a matter of of how you want to balance that in the future because that hasn't gone away those needs um and we can put different instruments together in order to help um make it easier to make these things happen but at the end of the day it costs more money just like everything is going up like when the electric rates go up water rates go up with the water department with the gas service we get those increases as well and so we have to either absorb those or or not make these increases that we've been increasing in areas that are priorities for this community and for the council so um I mean I I hope I answered your question yes thank you thank you so much it was just a question it was nothing against what would you what you always say I just wanted to know what what would happen you know if the city was to ever reach option three that you mentioned but thank you so much presentation great presentation from both uh you Mr gordines and Miss Cody thank you so much thank you sir and thank you for the presentation and uh one of the things I know we have a billion dollar budget and I know that uh this was a lengthy presentation and I know it was approximate what's going to be moving forward and I understand that um I just look at looking forward really to looking at every Department every item everything we can look at because I can tell you that when it comes time to vote whether we're going to have a rate increase or not I'm going to stay consistent and I will not support her tax rate increase this year so I look forward to working with the team and trying to figure out how we can make sure that we find ways to not cutting services but also making sure that just like representative was talking about that the community is not impacted so mayor I can tell you that the budget we're working on already a very instructed staff we're not going to have a recommendation with a tax increase in it I appreciate that because that's as you know I've been pretty consistent and I'm not changing today yes sir and and so as I've said we've said we listen and we you know whatever the the direction is from the majority we do come back with recommendations so yes sir we've heard that thank you thank you thank you again and with that I think we're at public comment no action on that item and we do not have anyone signed up for that we don't have love we call the public I mean we're on call the public now aren't we I'm kidding you I know that I'm kidding we're moving we're barely there it's been a long day we're moving on to the first reading of ordinances and that would be items 30 through 51. move to introduce first reading of ordinances and we have a motion made by representative Hernandez seconded by representative Salcido oh representative seconded by representative Rivera ah there you go Hernan it's been a long day the Voting is open and the items have been approved we're moving on to item 52 discussion and action and a resolution that the city manager or designee be authorized to sign an agreement for Professional Services between the city of El Paso and Johnson Miriam and Thompson Incorporated doing business as ECM International Incorporated a GMT division new to approve second a lot of people yes we'll take you represent it was it was uh Manila but that's okay it doesn't matter who do you have to approve and voting is open um and the item has been up Brett molinar uh the voting session is open this for item 52. so the item has been approved to its representative Fiero not pressing for the vote items 53 and 54 would you like to take them together they're related and 53 is discussion in action that the city manager be authorized to sign a consent to assignment from technique Data Systems Incorporated to Data Business Equipment and this is with respect to 2017 483 Payment Processing lockbox contract item 54 is discussion in action on the request that the city council ratified the award of payment processing lock box solicitation 2017-483 to technique Data Systems Incorporated in that the city accept pricing for maintenance and support motion to approved second motion made by representative Rivera seconded by representative Hernandez to approve voting is open representative thank you and the item has been approved with representative fieron not present for the vote item 55 is discussion and action resolution that the city manager be authorized to sign a two-year-owned on-call agreement for Professional Services for geotechnical engineering in materials testing on a test by task basis with Atlas technical consultants CQC testing and Engineering Intertech Professional Services Industries Terracon consultants and wsp USA environment and infrastructure move to approve motion made by representative Hernandez seconded by representative Rivera to approve polliness open and the item has been approved with representative with representative Kennedy Bodine and representative Fiero not present for the vote item 56 is an ordinance approving an amendment to the project plan and reinvestment Zone financing plan for tax increment reinvestment Zone number five to support improvements to the Henry trust court and to support improvements to West Main Drive between North Santa Fe Street and North El Paso Street adjustment representative Manila mayor Pro Tem questions I don't know if there's anyone here to answer good afternoon Karina roscala economic and International Development yes represented um you came to us a few months ago this is these are the same projects as well those were different those were across from San Jacinto yes okay same issues I have I feel like we're just using these trees to elevate projects that we didn't include landscaping for which is fine um however I still think that there are some serious issues downtown I think there are some real gaps in Improvement and I think we're just cycling this money through the same projects rather than enhancing downtown and in fact I would like to know if the DMD had any opinion on this because after our last conversation they seemed pretty not in favor of the city's proposal and so I would like to know if you you have a comment from them or sure so what I'll note on both of these requests is first that they were approved by the tourist V board which does not involve the DMD but just noting that that that's you know has appointees and then two in terms of the DMD and they did give their annual report to the ters 5 board mentioning several things one of those was the perceived cleanliness downtown that we consistently receive low ratings on Joe gutenrath mentioned that that you know based on kind of back and forth with some of the stakeholders he believes a lot of that has to do with kind of like abandoned tree Wells not actual trash pickup because they're very very quick about that um but they were generally in favor of the street tree master plan and all the associated improvements with that um so no specific requests from them but just they're just not right we wouldn't typically take these to the DMD for you know approval or recommendation but Joe does attend all of our tours five meetings no objections no concerns well I think that's also just a weird statement right because you've also put them in charge of enhancing downtown and giving them a significant budget to do so separate taxing entity so they do administer that tourist fight they administer a grant program using tourist five dollars and they report out on that regularly but they would be a separate entity no I completely understand that but if like we're putting them as like kind of the experts to downtown I do think we should be kind of following what they have to say and again I mean we still have blocks where there are no lighting where there's no trees um I think we're just enhancing certain parts of downtown um I don't think these are bad projects I just it goes back to what we were just talking about in the budget like what is the most important thing like where are we putting our resources and it just seems like we're recycling our resources into the same project rather than spell spreading them out equitably um through any of these projects I'm sorry if I may we will we'll take all of these comments because we we've heard you we've heard these comments from you and we twice two weeks ago during the introduction I know you shared these comments we're going to take a survey in the downtown and see where else if we're looking at equity in the downtown that you're concerned about where else the trees may go where all some of the other caramego and come back to you with that because we hear what you're saying we get what you're saying and we understand we're always you know working with a limited amount of funding but we hear you and we're going to make sure that you feel heard and that we we make sure the entire downtown is addressed and yeah that we can with the limited resources that we have I'm trying to pull up the map I know it's here on the presentation and I think just while you're doing that the only other note I'm going to say is that we do have a plan to bring a kind of larger overhaul of the turs 5 project and financing plan to coordinate with the adoption and recommendations in the Uptown downtown plan ters 5 the initial project and financing plan adopted in 2006 with the downtown 2015 plan you can imagine that's quite out of date at this point which is part of why we bring these projects as one-offs because they just weren't contemplated so we are looking in a big you know you all are getting several presentations on the downtown Uptown plan but a big component of that is equity how do we better leverage these dollars things like into our small business assistance revolving loan funds other Grant programs outside of the one that the DMD does for exterior improvements that sort of thing okay and this is doing any conversation about expanding the Taurus footprint because I would really like to especially when we're talking about tree improvements I know I'm just talking about lighting on my own it's not what this source of funding is but including the sugarlandio area so they can also take benefits from this funding I think would be beneficial because the map I'm looking at doesn't seem anything well oh well it's got it up here but it's not sharing no you're exactly right it does not include how much of this yeah I mean I think that would be a great conversation I think these are really the areas I'm not what I've been talking about this meeting the meeting before and a few months ago we approved the other dollars I was talking about more the San Antonio area but um if we are talking about areas downtown that could reap these benefits I think that expanding that area should also be a part of the conversation yeah absolutely but I won't be supporting this today thank you okay thank you representative Canales thank you mayor just wanted to move to approve so we do and we don't when we don't have any public comment so there is a motion to approve by representative Canales seconded by representative Hernandez and the Pauline is open and the item has been approved with representative mayor Pro temanello voting Nate and the representative Fiero not present for the vote next item is item 59 an ordinance vacating a portion of Mark street right away and a portion of Herbert Street right away within the Franklin D Roosevelt Roosevelt subdivision move to approve it and we do have a motion made by representative Hernandez seconded by representative Molina to approve and there was anello sorry motion mayor Pro Tem seconded by representative Molina and there is no public comment voting is open and the item has been approved unanimously with representative yet on that person for the vote item 60 is an ordinance amending title of 15 Public Services chapter 15.08 rent Street rentals shared Mobility devices to make the current permitting program permanent second and we do have a one person signed up to speak Mr Jonathan Lopez good afternoon mayor council this is Jonathan Lopez I'm the CEO of Glide scooter sharing won't take very much time just wanted to thank you guys for everything that we've worked on and gone through this started way back in 2018 so it's been a good four and a half years I wanted to specifically thank Philip a two way who's the director of this program Kevin Smith and other members of his staff and and some of you all who I've worked closely with over this time it's because of you that we have a successful program and I really believe that this program is a shining example for other programs around the country that can show that you can have a scooter sharing program and that it can be successful and I think it's ready to move into this next phase so thank you again for having me today thank you we have a motion and a second uh yes we do and we don't have any additional public comment and I have motion moved by representative Rivera seconded by representative Hernandez is that correct and the Voting is open and the item has been approved unanimously with representative Fiero not pressing for the vote item 61 is an ordinance amending title seven animals chapter 7.28 animal shelter advisory committee to reinsert a previously inadvertently deleted section in Title VII and who moved mayor Pro tem Manilow seconded by alternate mayor Pro temolina and there is no public comment on this item voting session is open and the item has been approved unanimously with representative here on that present for the vote item 62 is discussion action on the approval of the Department of aviation's El Paso International Airport five-year Capital Improvement plan FY 2023 through FY 2027 and to authorize the city manager to make all the necessary but the transfers and execution of the projects motion made by representative Canales seconded by alternate mayor Pro tem Molina I do have a presentation I don't know if you all are interested or thank you we are interested we just don't need to we've all done our homework I'm sure we looked at it intensely it looks great yes sir verification no questions right and the Pauline is open and the item has been approved unanimously with representative Fiero not present for the vote and last item is presentation discussion in action for the Centers for Disease Control and prevention Grant the ward number long number and then the the project is entitled I'm going to start doing that I'll just give the project title which is strengthening U.S Public Health infrastructure Workforce and Data Systems I hope I hope you have a presentation because I know you've been here all day of course I want to see your presentation sir go ahead go ahead doctor open until thank you very much and thank you for being here all day thank you for the opportunity because this is very exciting while we're here to present in for you guys to approve and we're requesting your approval this CDC has put out a request for Grants and we were one of the fortunate local Health departments to be awarded this grant this grant is a five-year Grant from the CDC which with the covid-19 pandemic they recognized that there were many challenges faced by local Health departments States and other jurisdictions that handle public health and not just emergencies but Public Health in general and this is what is intended to strengthen the public health it is aim at the prevention preparedness and respond to any kind of threat and the good thing about this grant is that the CDC built it with the most flexibility meaning it's going to have the minimum restrictions we're able to accommodate the grant to the needs of each of our departments and there were 3.2 billion with a B available in which 107 Health departments El Paso been one of those Fourier large localities say territories and three National Partners split the amount the total amount of the 3.2 billion so these almost 10 million dollars that we're going to be receiving is going to be used for Workforce which we're trying to retain Public Health Specialists we work in a public health have the heart for it and we need to retain those employees we need to compensate it properly we need to attract more public health professionals we're going to be also strengthening the foundational capabilities what that means is all the public health programs that we have we're going to need to strengthen so this way we're going to be able to also provide the services that we identify as in need in the community health assessment I presented to you the community health assessment with the three main areas in which one was targeting those chronic conditions education is empowering also going to the areas that need it the most and those are the ones that are affected by those chronic conditions making accessibility also a priority and mental health is also one of those areas that we need to uh strengthen working with our mental health authority and the other thing is the data modernization data is extremely important and that's going to be driving also our decisions and how we're going to be making these efforts and this uh plans actionable so the funds almost 10 million dollars they're going to be distributed in 9.3 million Workforce upfront 533 000 foundational capabilities annually and the good thing is that there's no matching required by the city all those funds are going to be coming to us and we're going to be able to address those needs as we identify in the community health assessment so there's going to be some short-term uh outcomes long-term outcomes but basically what we want is our community to be benefiting from these programs from this education from this Outreach and bringing those services to those that are in need that's what we need to do that's part of the accessibility that we want to have that's how we're going to be targeting those chronic conditions and that's how we're going to be looking at the mental health of our community that it is the needs of our community that's what we identified that we were going to be doing and that's how we're going to be applying those funds for and with that I'm not going to be taking any more of your time thank you thank you again for being here and um appreciate always the updates and the good work you've been doing for our community we uh you led us through a really tough time and with your leadership and I do want to thank you for um always coming up and giving us good better and different always giving us the news we need to know to be able to move our community forward so thank you for that uh representative Dr karanza I have really good news very welcoming to see outside dollars to help the impact to taxpayers I just want to better understand um you need to change the um the you need to amend the public health department what part of that just just the budget resolution not just the budget resolution and that's why by adding These funds we want to amend the budget that we have for the public health department okay so you need us to accept formally the grant donation so that we can implement it into our budget resolution yes ma'am okay and um where is Pio please announce this this is wonderful news especially because we have seen so many impacts to our health and especially after the pandemic and so really well receive news and should be highlighted thank you appreciate it congratulations thank you yeah we'll ensure we will ensure that the uh that this gets pushed out and there's lots of information shared because it is very positive so thank you very much thanks Dr thank you thank you and with that we do have a motion in a second I do have a motion made by mayor Pro tempanello and I didn't get a second I'm going now seconded by representative Molina to approve and the voting session is open representative anello thank you and I and the item has been approved with representative Fiero not present for the vote and if we can have a motion to adjourn second all those in favor and the meeting for Tuesday March 28th has been adjourned at 3 39 pm well I know it didn't ask any no I'm disappointed see anyone opposed yeah she's going to get it you do something specific to it just do it two more times tell her one day that's what happens I don't know I've kind of recommended like three times I always say no and then it kind of heals itself I don't know what's been going on the last week it's just like this by the way your microphones are on yeah just in case you feel silly but it's worth it to do like like some arm raises every day like 10 reasons lose your shoulders up fast and so with the thing is that the people can know about our shows it's just like when I played basketball they've been wondering um good as new but well that's what they say I mean I was there was a time he was young there was a time when I was in college for several months my knee was so bad it was nice what's that thank you thank you all right okay I do have pocket watches but this is usually the pocket watch that you have that it was your family yeah one of my other pocket watches is uh that's fantastic oh okay okay this was you too have a good one bye oh I know I think I'm gonna be there this week or we're not they're gonna do me give me a pin but I've been missing it because you're about right yeah so they're gonna do it because I wasn't able to um I forgot I was out of town for Austin we'll see you soon foreign [Music]