it will when I turn it on do you want it on right now oh wait nope think I'm good perfect thank you thank you thank you who's doing that going to call us to order welcome back January 9th work session it's good to see everybody hope everybody got somewhat of a break over the holiday and I will turn the meeting over to our city manager David Cook thank you and happy New Year everybody 2024 first I'm going to call on our assistant city manager Valerie Washington and she's going to introduce stuff to give us a update on the hotel explosion from yesterday David thank you mayor and councel I have Chief Davis Chief noes and Craig trojack are on their way up to provide an update on the sanman hotel explosion um just as they're coming up here this team came in and collaborated of course this impacted us Citywide um the Chiefs coordinated with tpw development services City manager's office um we're already talking about Lessons Learned and ways we can communicate better um especially with mayor and Council when these things happen um but one bring the Chiefs up so they can give us an overview of the incident thanks Chiefs thank you ma'am Sor I need to slide mayor members of council Mr cook um Jim Davis fire chief um yesterday at 3:32 in the afternoon there was a uh explosion at the Sandman Hotel which is a block over as most of you know um there is a couple things that I am here to report to you about it first of all there is significant damage to the building um specifically the first floor in the basement and into the sub basement of the building um there uh was the building was occupied there was approximately 28 29 rooms that were actually rented uh at the time of the of the incident there were um injuries that occurred there was approximately 21 people total that were um treated um there were some that refused assistance further assistance and and left against medical advice there were 15 it's min understanding that we're transported one in critical condition or very serious at this point the point that um a couple things that have happened overnight that I want to make you aware of is there were some social media I think the chief's here to speak to it as well but there is at this point it is still under investigation we do believe that gas was involved the question that we have that we're waiting to work together with atmas on is whether or not a gas leak caused the explosion or an explosion caused the gas leak but at the moment there is no nothing that we're finding that you know there was initial that this was some type of a Car Bomb then there was a uh a conversation through social media about nefarious Act of of of people trying to damage the building purposely and unless Chief noes has additional information that that he's aware of we have no evidence of that at this point do you concur Chief absolutely I concur mayor and counsil Neil NOS chief of police forward PD we have absolutely no indication that there was any intent by anyone to cause this explosion I was actually here here at City Hall when it happened I was in a meeting with bonal shumi and we heard the sound saw the windows rattle we weren't sure what it was at first and then my phone started blowing up at that point uh luckily I was close I responded to the scene and I got to tell you what I saw when I arrived it was chaotic it was devastating it was kind of hard to see here in Fort Worth in the heart of Fort Worth but what I saw was Fort worthan doing what they do I saw residents who were coming out people that worked at businesses they were assisting those who were injured I saw four police officers some who had gone in the building to help FD with the evacuation others helping those who were injured I saw the for Worth fire department doing it only what only the Fort Worth fire department can do rendering Aid to those who were victims saw MedStar on scene providing Life Care Emergency Care to these victims we we had a lot of our federal Partners FBI ATF HSI responded to the scene immediately without even being asked even though I was only a few blocks away and was able to respond quickly there were already dozens and dozens and dozens of your First Responders who were here on scene within a minute or less they were here on scene doing what they do from our standpoint once we arrived first it was whatever life- saving care we could provide and then it was assisting the fire department with their operations making sure we secured the scene set up a perimeter and expanded as necessary to make sure all vehicular traffic and pedestrian traffic was out of the area and making sure everyone was safe I was really proud to see the way everyone all First Responders and our residents responded to this incident obviously it is not something any of us ever want to see happen anywhere especially as close to home but I want to tell you you should be proud of your First Responders and the way the residents responded as well and thank you goes out to business owners like Gloria Starling at Capitol Grill Chef Tim love John bonell with the Buffalo Brothers that are providing food coffee whatever our First Responders need to make sure that's one thing they don't have to worry about while they do their jobs and we thank you for your support many of you showed up many of you called you offered your support and it means more than I can say just a couple quick things I'd add on to that and where moving forward so the emergency Operation Center was activated can't thank Craig uh and our team enough uh on top of what Chief said um there's a lot of other people that I I think I want to make sure that you understand the cooperation we've had first of all um the folks at MedStar have been fantastic to work with they're still on scene over there I just came from there Atmos gas has been very Cooperative they're still on the scene they're over there um Cody and his team uh from environmental were talking about you know what how we get get it cleaned up the things that have to happen next uh DJ Harold and his team have helped us go in and structurally make a quick assessment as to whether on the stability of the building so there's a lot of other folks we working with Cody are planning on hopefully completing the what we're doing now which is completing a secondary search of the Void spaces in the building we completed a primary search we removed all the victims that we could see but there were there's concrete down from the first floor pancak into the basement so what we did overnight was we um attempted to well we got assistance from the state of Texas and the federal FEMA task force who brought caber dogs in to just run them through there make sure that we um took a you know we we have a a concern that we're missing somebody even though there is nobody that's unaccounted for at this point I want to make that very clear we have nobody that's unaccounted for but out of an abundance of caution we've done that and we've also as part of that femat Tas Force they've brought in a collapse structural engineer who has helped make sure that as we move debris that we're not creating a further problem so that's what's going on over there and and again on top of the police I want to thank the marshals that was one group that I forgot to to mention uh in my haste here we hope to have this turned over back to the building owner um by dark tonight as we complete our our process eighth which you can see in some of the pictures there's significant damage to the road so Road's going to be closed for a while until they figure out how to repair that road talk to Cody there's already a plan involved in how to assist the building owner in securing the building the damage is pretty much glass wise and um from you know an exterior to the second floor but the main significance collapse damage is from the first floor in into the basement sub basement which is where laundry a restaurant things like that were we're very lucky that at this point there's no fatalities out of it um and if there is I'll make sure City management is is notified immediately that we've had but we our thoughts and prayers are with those that are impacted uh the police have been fantastic working with the folks that um were uh guests there and try and recover their belongings and make sure that their travel vouer or their travel uh documents are all accounted for and things like that so I think the one take-home message at this point is we don't have an official cause we can say we're very confident that gas is involved at some manner but we don't know what and the take-home it finds the lowest places in building it finds the lowest places in buildings So Below street level the basement and then at this time of year furnaces kick on hot water tanks kick on stuff like that and if it's in that flammable range of not too lean and not too rich to burn then it finds that ignition source and that is what potentially caus causes something like this to happen in people's homes and Etc so this is um not unbeknownst to the fortwood Police Department Fort wor fire department s that we respond to incidents like this but our message to the public is if you have a threat of this or you're concerned about this call always call okay anything else that I miss folks no thank you very much thank you very much and your teams Craig I don't know if you've gone to sleep yet but hopefully you get to rest at some point this afternoon you didn't excellent job last night communicating to the public and it was amazing to watch yall work I mean everything was very calm at the EOC on scene and also special thanks to Nim kid um from TM who's been in town today and his um cooperation from the state of Texas governor abot reached out immediately I think Nim knew before I knew honestly the explosion happened and he had already called me to say I'm going to get there as quickly as possible so this is what y'all train for and we're so proud of you truly and thanks to Medstar and everybody else that stepped up and City of Arlington understand red back up to the fire department as well to make sure you had the services that yeah May I'm so thankful that you said that the City of Arlington actually sent resources to backfill our city U because during the course of this um there were two additional fires that occurred in the city in different areas and so um thanks to Brett stum the fire chief in Arlington and his folks as well thank you for pointing that out yeah absolutely it's good to have friends right yeah so thank you'all for keeping us updated hats off to our First Responders thanks Chiefs for all that next I get to uh talk about a few of our new employees that have joined us and first I get to talk about and I want you to know I'm excited to announce that Mark McDaniels our new Deputy city manager as many of you know it has taken me about a year to talk him into the job uh he joined us about a year ago and has been working side by side our team um his company was helping us set up the Fort Worth lab he served as our first Chief transformation officer and most recently went to become our Green Space Champion working on open space and the mayor's good natured Green Space program and I think he missed working with the rest of us on just doing the Green Space stuff and so I am just so happy to announce that he's joined us as Deputy city manager he's got tons of experience he's been city manager of kville city manager of Tyler Texas he's even spent some time down the street with the city of Dallas as assistant city manager um but but uh we're excited to have him to be part of our team let me uh give him a moment uh Deputy city manager Mark [Applause] McDaniel well uh David kept removing obstacles for me and uh it wasn't hard because I did I did miss working with the team every day and uh this is just a tremendous Council you all are just great leaders you love your community and the shows and um I couldn't be happier to uh support David and the rest of the executive team in service to you the council in this great community so thank you very much congratulations [Applause] Mark so one of Mark's Jobs when he joined us about a year ago was to figure out who the chief transformation officer was going to be for the city of Fort Worth and so we've also completed a national competitive search for who should be that person and I am excited to announce that our chief transformation officer is Christian Simmons Christian join us up [Applause] here Christian has experience with the city as you know uh for many years she told the police department what they could do with their money right that's a not the easiest job as you might think and then most recently she's been the assistant director in the Fort Worth lab she's got both public and private sector experience uh she was one of the founding board members of our young professionals group so she brings a lot of energy to this job and I just need you to know that she when she interviewed for the job she knocked it out of the park awesome and her vision for the Fort Worth lab is exactly what I think we need so Christian Simmons glad to have you on board thank you David for those comments mayor and counsel thank you uh for your support so far of the fort with lab in our initiatives I'm really excited to be standing in a spot I've stood in before but in a new role as the first permanent Chief transformation officer you've seen some es and flows and the team is super excited to have steady leadership we have so much to do um the vision David talked about for the for worth lab um that I just want to just tell you um is a quick three-prong thing so we're looking to build um a culture of curious learning and collaborative thought partnership um where we're doing you know enterprise-wide collaboration um and and also standing in defense of the taxpayer and making sure that we're honoring our commitments and keeping our promises asking the right questions and enabling you to answer those questions when you're out in your districts in the community so thank you you had to know you were going to go with a for worth girl um for the CTO spot so I'm really excited to uh serve my hometown in this way at such a critical inflection point for the city so thank you very [Applause] much okay now I'm going to call on assistant city manager Jessica mcaer to introduce our new library director perfect mayor and councel you've already seen the announcement about madori and some of you have already met her but I am thrilled to formally introduce her to you today and just tell you a little bit about how we got here uh we are just beyond excited to have madori join join our team so you all know when man left she left some pretty big shoes to fill and we knew that we needed to search far and wide to find a really Dynamic leader that had exceptional experience in the library but also understood that purpose of why the library exists what its role is in the community and how to continue that role in the future what does it look like in 20 or 30 years to be the fourth Public Library we hired an executive Search firm that specializes specifically in library Recruitment and they did a phenomenal job for us they reached far and wide um and also I'll note Mana Shore did a tremendous job in trying to uh drum up some applicant for us as well we received more than 40 applicants from all over the US um our search committee narrowed it down we did some preliminary interviews and then we brought ultimately three people in for that finalist interview and Midori Clark who stands before you today just knocked out of the park um it was a unanimous decision we all just saw the vision her passion for service and knew she was the Right leader to continue taking our forth Public Library forward madori has more than 20 years of experience in library Administration um she most recently served as the Director in Aurora Colorado as well where they have multiple branches a lot of the similar initiatives that we have um she also previously served as a news anchor and a Communications manager so I think that's going to be really helpful in this role though again to continue communicating what all the library has to offer and reach those residents that you know maybe just don't think about it on a day-to-day basis um I am tremendously excited to welcome Ador to the team she has hit the ground running she's been here for exactly one week so far getting settled in um and she is just loving it so far and we're thrilled to have her so I'm gonna turn it over to madori now as well thank you well thank you so much for the wonderful introduction um I am just absolutely thrilled to be here and be part of this incredible and just this amazing Library I know they're going to be honored for an award today and you'll get to hear just uh how amazing the work that they're really doing so thank you so much uh for this opportunity and I look forward to working with you all in the [Applause] future thank you the next up is Marilyn Marvin to recognize one of our library employees yes good afternoon mayor council and David Marilyn Marvin assistant Library director I am really excited to talk about an award the library has received in 2020 the library launched a program called amplify 817 where we help local musicians start their business and promote their music and a dedicated team under the leadership of Rita and Teresa has not only created a dynamic brand but has also created a unique opportunity for our local musicians in Fort Worth through a stream a free streaming platform called amplifi amplify 817.034 th000 through grants and through the help of the library Foundation to support our local musicians to build their music Enterprise because of Rita Teresa and the dynamic teams that they support we were awarded by the Fort Worth by Fort Worth Weekly the local music Ally award for 2023 from their Fort Worth Music Awards thank [Applause] you thank you and congratulations next up is Chief Neil NOS something about somebody's retirement mayor and Council I've enjoyed my time here thank you no uh I am not announcing my resignation but I am here to recognize someone who is you hear me say oftentimes the only reason for any success of myself with the Department is not me it's the grace and blessings of God and the people he puts around us and I am surrounded by some amazing people at the Fort Worth Police Department one of those one of the highest ranking and very long tenured members of our department is assistant chief Joe Sparrow he has dedicated himself to this department uh with his entire heart and soul from the very beginning he's a man of integrity a man of Faith uh when I appointed him to the assistant chief position I knew I was going to get someone who would give everything they had to make this department successful we hate so much to see him go but he's got a family at home is just as ready for this retirement as he is maybe even more so uh we know that we are a better Department having had him in our ranks for so long and although we will miss him and he does not like public attention we felt it was important to recognize him today Joe would you mind coming up [Applause] please good afternoon Marin councel and uh City manager's office I it's been my greatest pleasure to serve the city of Fort Worth uh these 28 years and uh to work with such a great group of officers and City leaders as you hear me say a lot uh this city is one of the best in the nation and there's a reason for it and without going into too much detail because I can talk when I want to um continue continue to do the good things that you do and continue to put people first one of my favorite um authors Thomas Soul said if you want to help people you tell them the truth if you want to help yourself you tell them what they want to hear so it's important that we tell people the truth and we deal with City Problems by looking at true ways of dealing with them rather than things that just necessarily we kind of go with the flow I'm not going to go into details with that you can read my books if you want to find out about that but um this group of officers that we have here in Fort Worth being the highest ranking black member of the Fort Worth Police Department um if if I saw a bunch of racial issues negatively going wrong in this office this this department I would be the first to speak out about it I am not afraid or ashamed and chief noes will tell you that to say anything if I need to now I have to bite my tongue sometimes because I am kind of straightforward um when I'm not trying to be political but this group this is a good group of officers and sometimes they make mistakes but they intend to do the right thing and for these officers to put their lives on the line every day how many of you do that how many of you signed up to be willing to die for people they don't even know for this group of officers who do that that is awesome and and and they're going to have my praise and support and you know what when they do wrong we're going to hold them accountable and that's what we do so listen everybody in this room if I know your name I pray for you by name been doing it for years because and I will not stop praying for you I will not stop praying for the city thank God for our mayor a little disappointed she's not running for congress but I understand for somebody make a decision like that to stay with their families God bless you for that because years ago when my when my daughter was born uh my wife decided to stay home she homeschooled my kids and they're better for it one son finished College another about to good kids so God bless you and um continue to pray for [Applause] you all right now we're going to turn to informal reports you can tell we haven't met in a while there's only 14 the first informal report is on the 2026 Bond program yes we are starting the 2026 Bond program and Eric flater is available available if there are any questions I have one question mayor council city manager cook I'm Eric fliger with the fourth lab hey Eric um thank you for putting this together my question is uh on slide three when it mentions the draft goals and objectives I see the last one there's support areas that produce High tax generation per acre um and I want to know how that plays into um the equity analysis that we do as part of we did as last year's Bond and I saw that it's a criteria in this year's Bond but sometimes those two things don't go together and so I'd be interested to know how we're going to prioritize both as we move forward uh thank you for that uh question uh councilwoman U the the purpose of uh that uh particular objective is to ensure that uh we're acknowledging and we're recognizing that uh different types of development uh across the city generate different tax revenue on a per acre basis um and because we have to maintain in perpetuity uh all of those capital projects that we construct through the bond program we need to ensure that uh the city is able to cover the maintenance costs of those new facilities and all other facilities the city is responsible for maintaining so uh so the purpose of that is just to acknowledge that there are areas that uh based on the type of land use based on the type of density uh based on the type of construction uh tend to generate higher tax revenue and those are worth supporting and acknowledging that they benefit the entire city okay and we haven't done that in years past that's correct what we have done is is done a sort of a proxy for that and that is is uh focusing on economic development as uh as an objective as well so this is just taking it sort of one step additional still focused on are we generating the economic activity uh that's not only going to create employment but also allow us to sustain uh you know fiscally uh and maintain the city rating okay uh thank you any other questions Council for Eric go ahead Jared this may not be for Eric maybe for David David we've had a conversation I appreciate youall putting it in this presentation on neighborhood streets um and I think it'd be good for our residents especially in District six um for us to just really quickly talk through the difference between neighbor Street Rehabilitation and also maintenance um and I'm glad it's there and um personally I would like to see us do more in terms of both maintenance and Rehabilitation of neighbor streets because sometimes it's hard to get into real deep in the neighborhoods on repairs and so um would you mind kind of highlighting what you talked about um in our 101 I think it's helpful for our residents to understand as we move forward with planning sure as we talk about the upcoming Bond program and the capital projects that we try to tackle each and every year um we know that Transportation needs are are are um pretty vast and so it's not only the arterials for new capacity but it's what do we do with neighborhood streets and how much of those need to be part of the bond program as opposed to just being part of an annual maintenance schedule with pay you go our preference is to pay for neighborhood streets through pay you go or the maintenance of them through pay you go and if we have to build new capacity or reconstruct streets entirely that's the purpose of a bond program and so what we'll look at on the neighborhood streets is um and I think I mentioned to you that every Street in Fort Worth has been evaluated and so we know the condition of uh all the streets in the city and so we could tell you how they're prioritized both from a reconstruction standpoint and a maintenance standpoint but we're going to be looking at what needs to be part of the bond program and how we can shift more the maintenance needs to an ongoing to be an on goinging one whether it's pay you go or some other source of Revenue thank you so much for that David I look forward to that especially as we head into the retrieve for next budget just looking at what more can we do to improve neighborh uh the amount of investment we put into neighborhood streets I me then one last thing I just really appreciate also traffic signals being in there um that's something that is um not unique to District Six and I know my colleagues probably could talk just as long as I could about traffic signals and the importance of those so um just look forward to the planning and thank you all in advance for all of the hard work yall do over the next months and uh a year or two thank you sir thank you Eric and I just want to highlight it uh as part of that process is there's plenty of time for public input it's 2024 and we will finalize that list of projects in about January of 2026 so there's a lot of public input in that process in front of us next informal report is on Central Arlington Heights Redevelopment and Jennifer Dyke is available if there are any questions council member Hill has questions all right Jennifer Yes Jennifer um just a couple questions um do we have a date yet for the community meeting no um kind of I think talking with the the bidder um I think we would want to make sure we move forward you know with the MNC um and then as he's um I'm working with him right now on some ride of Entry so he can get a better understanding of those properties his initial plan is to elevate most of those homes um but it's kind of based off if that's actually technically feasible so we did do a site visit um for all interested bitters earlier or guess late last year um and so that was just two days but now that um his bid is moving forward uh for approval he wants to go and take a better look to see you know are these technically feasible so get his experts out on the site so I think um probably once those are um evaluated in some more detail working with him to schedule that meeting with the community so it's very clear what his plans are thank you could you've actually back up and kind of walk through the process now that we do have a bed um and how that process will go through the city side and then what will happen after that right definitely so um so when the the MC is scheduled uh for January 23rd and so um if that moves forward then we will U work with him to actually sell the property so move forward with closing um we've reviewed his bid everything um is in compliance with what with the requirements um so we would work closely with him he's got uh 48 months to basically develop those sites um and make them livable so that's pretty much elevating the existing homes um there's one home that's uh slab on grade I think the plan is to demolish that and then build a new home um in conformance with the requirements in the bid package so um so he would go through the typical development review process we've already given the development review um Team ah heads up on this and move forward um with the bid proposal um just to make sure that everyone was on board on what we were proposing so he would work with through the normal development review process we've just got those kind of higher standards outlined in the bid package um and then really um we're relying on the developer to make sure the community is aware but we're going to be working very closely with him so we'll be available for questions as well okay great um and then should this not move forward will it automatically go back to the original detention Pond or not DET space guess yes so if it doesn't move forward um the the plan was that if we could accumulate enough of these properties together that we would explore doing a detention Basin um of course we've been ordinating uh that with the community um and and I'm not going to say that that we were able to get everyone on board I know that there's um some that would prefer Green Space some that would prefer Redevelopment um but if if we go back to the Green Space option we would work very closely with the community we want to get their feedback on the type of design that they want um and see how we could take their um their feedback into account in the development of that storm water detention Basin in the Green Space perfect thank you thank you you thank you next informal report is on city council notification of alcohol license and permit applications and DJ harell is available if there any questions DJ I'll have a question later but I'd like to have him present an overview ask good afternoon afternoon DJ just go give us an overview again of this IR please okay uh so Council had uh requested uh information on how we can better facilitate you guys' ability to protest an uh alcohol license with TABC uh and uh staff uh and development services worked with our legal department our city secretary's office and our financial folks to determine the best place of notification for you all uh and we found that um when someone comes into the City requesting an alcohol distance check it's the first touch in the city and it's the most appropriate time to notify the council and the uh District director that that application has come in and give you give you guys the ability to to enter into the TABC process for protest yeah I I tend to agree that would be very helpful uh I'm going to uh reference back to an IR that I requested back in um last year on in April uh IR 23- 0689 in which uh I had had to contend with a similar matter right uh with a alcohol distance uh uh permit request and at that time the lay of the land around that area there was a child care facility that had children coming in from Eagle Mountain sagona ISD for an educational portion or program there at the child care facilities now you know daycare child care versus school yes you know there's a distinction there but function you know functionally speaking they're similar so at the time I asked staff to evaluate you know whether or not it'd be of interest or helpful to consider day you know Child Care Facilities is is part of that uh at the time we you know we chose not to embark on it uh maybe within the context of this I would ask that you'd look at it again I do realize it would increase uh the number of uh you know Board of adjustment requests possibly in that regard but when you have you know sensitive uh you know business businesses like a child care you know facility I think that you know in the spirit of what we're trying to do with alcohol distance permits that might be considered as well so those are my comments he sir thank you DJ yeah sorry I just stay right there um having protested uh licens before it can be a really lengthy process so um for our benefit um whether I don't know if it's appropriate today or in the future if you could just let us know what that that process looks like and what we can expect if we actually do um protest this particular uh Pro protest either a new license or renewal and maybe also um it would be helpful to have legal come in as well do we do it what's the process if it's officially from our council member capacity versus mayor and city council Etc I know that was something that um that was we had to navigate when I um protested a TABC license in District n and so I think that would be helpful to kind of smooth out that process on what that what that timeline looks like for us once we uh protest it and what internal Communications we need to go through to protest it and then um education on what grounds we have available to us to um to have those protests so that we're not just protesting for the sake of protesting but we have a good legal standing to do so yes ma'am thank you all right our next informal report is on civic education opportunities offered to schools and Lawrence Thompson and Michelle gut are available for any questions of course I want to hear details there we go while they're coming I'll just tell you I'm excited and delighted that we've organized this as opposed to my rantings about we need to do this uh we will have students coming up uh I've talked to Jess I forget the specific date it's a daytime meeting so you all know I promised everyone that you all will be taking pictures with them and we'll be giving them Molly pens I didn't know the educational component you know that staff is going to provide that's a good thing I would encourage you if you can be available for that as well and what brought this about is I got really tired years ago of what I call bad behavior at at city council and this was a time Carlos can can recall we were occasionally cursed out uh we were treated shabbily and I didn't like the idea that that was the message to students this is how government works and so when the daytime meetings became a a part of our schedule I'm excited to see this and this is a way for us to help the younger generation know what it takes to be an elected office and also what to do when you come downtown and it doesn't always amount to people uh treating you badly we've even had senior citizens who refuse to come because they don't know what to expect they get afraid and so that's my uh those are my remarks uh thank you staff for taking this on and now explain what's going to happen LT uh Lawrence Thompson education strategy manager and my colleague here introduce yourself please Michelle good Communications and public engagement so as you can tell this was a uh a partnership opportunity between education strategies office and Michelle's team and communication engagement and the way that I received the request was to find um opport upcoming opportunities to provide for students to come to city council to learn about Civic engagement and how Council Works uh collectively live and so um I began to collaborate with um Michelle and my role in the responsibility is really the relationships um leaon relationships with the ISD superintendent and the programmatic side of the U equation has been handed by Michelle and heart te I don't know if you want to share more well I think the opportunity for them to come has always been there but we're being more proactive about reaching out and with Lawrence reaching out to the superintendence and getting their support it makes it easier for us when we go out and contact schools if they have you know their leadership in the ISD that's supporting the effort and so we're um not just going to have them come and visit the council meeting we we laid out kind of an agenda so that we can let them know what they're going to see um and then afterwards talk with them about what they saw answer any questions so they really understand the whole the whole process and the goal is to have similar age groups come to each meeting so that when we have the conversation if we've got high school students or we have elementary students we can um have the appropriate conversations and presentation ready for them but we're going to be open to anybody who wants to come but we're going to be proactive about targeting certain schools in school districts and lastly as indicated in the IR we have Eagle Mountain ISD and Fort Worth ISD that will participate in the in the first event coming up in February and then we um we already have the roster moving forward with Castleberry and Everman uh thereafter and we'll continue to work the list thank you so very much and just so you all know the reason why it has to be daytime is because when we meet at night it becomes an extra cost daytime is considered a field trip you know for the students and that way they can come and be happy and be educated thank you staff thank you thank you next informal report is on next informal report is on climate pollution reduction Grant and our Council of government Regional air quality improvement plan and we've got Cody Wittenberg and Kelly Porter available if there are any questions somebody should that somebody will work on that okay other than a temperature check are there any questions for Cody and Kelly okay Kelly you stay there you got the next informal report the next informal report is on the locally preferred alternative recommendations for the Eastside Transportation plan and Kelly is available for any questions and we've got a whole presentation and presentation's coming want to wait for that all right Kelly next informal report is on the is on closing the live release rate and communication gaps and Chris mallister is available if there any questions Chris come on up mayor council city manager cook thank you Chris McAllister assistant director for animal control Chris maybe to start with why don't you just do a overview of what's in this IR for anybody watching then we can ask specific questions okay sure so I'm going to kind of paraphrase from it's five pages so what we're asked to is provide a report back to council mayor for the live release rate and kind of our strategies on how we increase that the live release rate is measured uh by taking your live outcomes and divide them by your total uh outcomes so this is algorithm if you will where numbers plug in so we when we reach 90% shelters are considered no kill so it's a benefit for the animals and staff to try to hit that number right so currently we're floating in about mid 80s and we looked for some strategies on how to get that up that's kind of what we culminated in this in this IR I'm going to skip kind of ahead to what the strategies are there is some data in here about you know owner surrenders adoptions and kind of just some historic information in there for you some of the strategies we had uh to to kind of move forward and these are progressive for Fort Worth one of is a is a community intake uh system where we' work with SP network uh and they would provide Trio for scheduling for people in the community who wanted to surrender animals right now our Sur owner surrenders account for 25% to 30% of our intake uh and as an Open Door shelter we never know what's coming to the door I could have 60 in one day I could have 10 in one day so this program will allow us to kind of get a handle on it so we can better manage our resources and Staffing uh and know what's coming to the door this also allows us to network animals more uh and so again this is what one strategy to increase that number up it's our primary and I could go through those mayor if you'd like me to just that's okay um any questions specific to Chris Elizabeth so I appreciate the list of strategies um the one question that I have I know we are really fortunate in the city that we have particularly when it comes to cats um in neighborhoods that have um strong feral cat cultures of the porch kitties and whatnot um of the trap and you know spay or neuter and then release as part of helping to control that population correct and it's my understanding those are largely volunteer organizations that go to volunteer veterinaries that or veteran veterinaries that provide those services for them free of cost um what can we do to be better partners with organizations like that because I know um some of those specific to District 9 the veterinarians that they have historically worked with are retiring or no longer providing that service sure um and that's free labor for us at the city of for worth I mean they're going out with their own traps and they're providing the food and the care and and the cost of um the surgeries can we set aside funds to be partners in that where they can bring these um animals to us particularly I I don't think we catch and release dogs but when it comes to cats we know that that happens sure and what can we do to be better Partners in that so I just had a meeting with Operation Kindness I mentioned them during during our the feroc cat IR I kind of recap that so we just met with them we're going to have a lot of follow-up meetings they have secured a number of Grants on our behalf uh with best friends Society uh one of the big organizations in the country uh and this is going to be a two-year program with us as long as the funding maintains one of the initiatives that we're pushing with the Mr D more feral cats they are currently currently in our shelters uh to a facilities agreement and they are helping us spay and neuter so they are currently supplementing uh what our veterinarians are doing uh but again you know a big part of that conversation is including the feral cats yes we could just continue to try to work with those Community Partners maybe that's an Outreach um because if they can bring up here and we can do it provided at a lower cost it helps those folks in the community and they're able to traic cture more thank you that's the plan I really appreciate your efforts on this I know it's not easy I'm sorry sorry Macy then Carlos okay I was going to start at the beginning and work my way back is that okay um so when you talk about the live release right you talk about live versus um not um are there any other aspects to the live release rate that you take in consideration animals that are aggressive that are unadoptable those are transporting out those all part of the equation so unhealthy and untreatable and owner surrender so I'll just example it out so if an owner surrenders an animal and we deem it unhealthy untreat there's a whole there's a whole listing of how we make that decision right those do not affect the live rele in a negative way but I'll tell you for December it was 16 so it's not a large number uh as far as animals that are aggressive or medical uh we make those Humane decisions when we have to uh you know for aggressive I can't put an aggressive animal back out in the community uh if an animal is suffering that we make a Humane decision uh but those do those do affect our live release rate number but it's the right decision in the moment yeah in El Paso and Houston their live release rate is a little bit higher than ours currently what are they doing differently than we are doing currently I personally I believe it's because they are managing their intake which is part of our strategy for a community intake program again I can't plan the day if I don't know what's coming to the door and for us at 11:00 p.m. or 11: a. rather I have two lines out the door at each shelter so with this partnership with spay neuter network uh they are going to triage all the scheduling they are going to offer free services and that's one of their big pushes you know if someone calls and goes I need to surrender an animal they will offer food vaccinations spay neuter anything to try to keep that animal in its home so that allw happened before it even comes to us so it'll be a good push to try to keep those animals at home and are we able to utilize they have a free clinic on East Seminary are we able to utilize that clinic or push clients that would have to wait at our at our shelter to get spay neuter can we push East are sorry yes and yes so we do both we push them that direction and if we have to send someone out a voucher uh to to get an adoption at the door we will use a voucher program with them okay and will you go into just a little bit more detail on what a managed program would look like for the city forward so again spay neuter will do The Upfront so again exampling it out someone will call in the number to surrender their animal if the animal is healthy and adoptable then they're going to go into a q system right once all the other things all the offerings if they say I still want it to to surrender then they're going to get in line that may be a week maybe a day you know but they're going to get in line line if the animal is aggressive or it's medical we're going to take it immediately we're not going to put you in line it's an immediate take right so once an animal comes to us a lot of things have already happened as well it's on their website and our partners our transport and rescue Partners can see these animals before they get to us so part of the hope is the animal again will never reach our doors there'll be networked prior to to coming to the shelter if that makes sense it does and when we talking about Community Resources my last question I promise um when we talk about community resour resources and being able to provide you know food if someone you know is struggling financially and that's the reason for wanting to give up their animal and we're providing food or blankets whatever they may need is there a way for residents to contribute to that program either financially or do donations currently yes so donations always uh but but right now we receive a lot of donations that door we have a lot of nonprofits who work with we have some of the big ones uh corporations Petco PetSmart and and we get a lot of donations through them so we actually have food pantry at both shelters so if you come to the door and say I can't feed my animal we turn you the to to the pantry and let you take what you need yeah thank you Gan I think you had a question and then Carlos too sorry Carlos okay thanks mayor uh question Chris uh Macy covered some of the points that I wanted to ask about um I was just looking generally at Trends here I mean you know as the report States you know Co had a lot you know to do with it I mean there's some things that kind of of stand out a little bit like City of Austin you know on theirs I mean but you know come 2020 and uh 2023 I guess they weren't collecting data then on their um uh live release rate yeah we couldn't obtain that data it wasn't published and we were never provided with the data all right yes okay then the only remaining question that I had is this when it comes to area rescue groups and other you know nonprofits that help out has that number changed significantly since right before Co and after Co I didn't pull the data prior to co but I can tell over the last three to four years that number has has increased dramatically has increased has increased and that's you know we have we have a lot of rescue Partners we work with and transport uh some of the big ones in the area they are pulled in the bulk of of the animals uh as well as Oregon uh rescue that we work with okay they pull a lot right and just a general question it's not so much directed to you but maybe this is a larger question involving development but you know from time to time when council members deal with um uh considering the approval of a multif family you know development right A lot of the times you know amenities go a long way into swaging some of those you know concerns that some of the neighborhood stakeholders may have uh when you offer dog parks for instance that kind of helps right where you have a place some green to take your animals your pets too uh that goes a long way is there any way that maybe the city can uh encourage that a little more you know when it comes to multif family developments I know as a rule of thumb I try to look for avenues like that you know to to give you know the likelihood of of renters there you know residents there to be able to uh you know have animals in the first place I think it's a brilliant idea I think it shows the wel welcoming nature of a complex I think that's more of a Development question honestly on what can be required uh at site planning and and maybe I'll put that in the form of future item okay on that as well gotcha okay thank you thank you Janette Chris I know we take in a lot of different animals that are surrendered um so the bulk of animals that are euthanized are dogs because I know we take livestock we take Birds um so how how did that compare with dogs and cats and other animals so the live release rate that's a great question the live release rate only measures dogs and cats it doesn't doesn't measure chickens or Lizards or and and you're right we get everything do we use Geral and so Geral they we get those out the door really easy chickens I would say generally all of your livestock we get those out the door we work with a number of local feed stores and we pick up the phone Geral we have the PetSmart relationships we can get them in there um and kind of to answer the initial part of your question it's it's primarily large dogs that that we euthanizing those are the hardest to place just Char um thank you Chris for the report um I don't really have any questions on that thank you for the strategies as well I just wanted to uh take a moment to thank you and Val Wason um for supporting um Taran County Council Sandra Lee this weekend um I know that there was a dog that was um caught um in a fence um and y'all responded right away and I know that the work that y'all do sometimes the task is large um but I really appreciate all the hard work y'all are doing and thank you again for that yeah well thank you sir and I'll tell you it's it's it's the team it's not me I'll make a phone call and and I'm not downplay my part but they're the ones out there boots on the ground they're the ones in the shelter it's always all about the team uh and so they're the ones doing the hard work but but we appreciate thank you yeah Charlie Chris just one question I'm glad you brought up the aggressive dog thing because you know we're still dealing with the issue in District Four on that one um but with the idea of the the queue and the line U if someone were just to say yep it's aggressive just to skip that line and get it to surrender how do yall verify or do you have a way of verifying if the dog was in fact aggressive or how do you I guess you know it's a great question something like that if we can't verify at the point of intake because of the nature and and the dangers of a dangerous dog we're going to take your word for it if you call and and go the dog just bit you know my child or killed my cat whatever we're not going to Hound you with 100 questions we're going to tell you to bring the animal we're going to make our own assessment at the door but we're not going to leave you in limo say well send us pictures or proof we're going to take your word for it right so but you're doing an assessment though to see if it is in fact an aggressive dog and if you determine it's not then are you able to adop out so Spain NE network will do that on the front end of forest okay they're going to do all that so really once the schedule happens everything has been triaged uh for us at that point gotcha thank you anybody else questions no Chris I know that at the on the fourth page of the IR you've laid out several different um recommended changes and um that you're making in your department so maybe it might be helpful over the next several months just do updated IRS and how you kind of think that's going um especially this new partnership with span neuter Network sound like that intake process change may be significantly more helpful and then a real emphasis on how we communicate some of this I know that we talked about that in another meeting um it all comes down to how we're telling the public and and how we're how we're telling the story so thank you for taking an interest and focus on that in the future and if our offices can be helpful council member crane said he'd like another adopted dog I already have one at the moment we're going through it sounds like we're all at capacity for Animals I think let me start taking names down yeah exactly yeah Council Williams I do have something now that you brought that up because I have two adopted dogs and David you and I have talked about this uh there is an ordinance that families can only have two dogs is that correct or is the number three that's three that's three okay um that's something good to know I don't not necessarily advocating that we increase it to four but I know there are some families out there who would take in another dog so she's going to start calling you right now we still have we still have one more before we hit the max but um it's just something that um I thought was interesting that I personally didn't know um I wonder Chris if that's something that you run into that families have three and they can't get another one Etc to help with adopting or fostering does fostering impact that as well with that or so fostering does not that's a good question so if you have three animals that you own let's say three dogs because it's you can have three dogs and three cats you can't have a mixture like four dogs and two cats it's three and or three right or three and three you can Foster and the way ordinances are written there's not really a limit so you can have your own and then Foster an additional three or four where my staff look at is the density of the population where you're at the neighborhood right uh do you have ample space are they be kept being kept humanely so there's no magic number with fostering it's it's your environment your situation for the animals that's good to know and that was something that I didn't know was on the books that our residents and that's one way that they can help in terms of fostering and potentially even adopting so thank you thank you thank you Chris thanks Chris thank you all right our next inform report is on uh Dallas Fort Worth International Airport Bond financing for 2024 any questions on this hi Chris how are you thank you somebody asked him a tough question he came all this way prepared happy answer any questions no no no no I've already had this briefing so I knew the oh Michael Morris no heckling from the gallery over there Michael no heckling Chris we appreciate you being here y'all are doing an excellent job we'll have a larger briefing on the airport in the coming months for Council thank you very much next in former report is on police fire and MedStar strategies for addressing fentanyl abuse and we've got Chief Davis Chief noes and others if there are any questions I think have them all come up here both of them come thank you all right everybody up here Chief may we start with just an overview of um of this ir and also um really special thanks to your incredible team and the work that they're doing I know you've gotten some um really well-deserved press from cbs1 here locally on that team um so if you want to talk about that as well that'd be fitting absolutely Neil NOS chief of police for PD mayor and counsil thank you for allowing us to speak on this anywhere we go these days someone wants to ask a question about the fentel crisis and rightfully so one thing I want to point out first of all uh related to that team that you mentioned which was highlighted on cbs1 recently often times the best ideas come from the people doing the work the idea for this overdose Response Team came from our narcotics officers who were watching Trends nationally they knew it was going to spread even to our area at some point and they realized if we didn't get out in front of this before it hit us like some other major cities that it would spin out of control rapidly they've been doing an incredible job I thought the report done uh showed really well the work that they do how dangerous it is but how important it is as well uh so for 2023 just to give you an idea of what we're facing in Fort Worth when it comes to overdoses especially those related specifically to fentanyl in 2023 we had 489 calls related to overdose from the use of drugs of those 489 98 of them fit the criteria for our overdose response teams that criteria includes any overdose where there's a death any overdose where there's a juvenile involved or any overdose where someone survives but they are willing and able to talk to our investigators and they will respond on a 247 bases of those 98 76 were fatalities 76 of the 98 they responded to were fatalities one of the things we're doing in addition to targeted enforcement where we're going after the dealers and that's the goal of responding to the scene for this team they try to work back to the people who were supplying the drugs in the first place but in addition to that we want to preserve life and since 2017 we've been training officers and some of our professional civilian staff who go out in our neighborhoods on the use of Narcan we have issued 357 individual dose kits of Narcan and since 2017 22 of those have been administered in the field by our officers and that's in addition to what the forth fire department and MedStar do as well so those 22 quite possibly could have resulted in even more deaths when it comes to the prosecutorial side of things we work very closely with the Taran County District Attorney's office work very closely with the US attorney's office and for 2023 we've already arrested 44 people for overdose incidents that were fentanyl specifically of those 44 23 went to the federal side 21 went to the state side and something we have in our toolkit now that we did not have until very recently is a new law because of house house bill six that was passed in April of 2023 went in effect September 1st of 2023 and basically what that law does is it allows us to charge someone with murder if someone deals Fentanyl and that drug results in someone's death from an overdose they can be charged with murder and I am proud to say that the Ford police department was the first agency in tarant county and one of the first in the state to charge a fentel dealer with murder what I hope people walk away with from this IR is we are doing everything we can including working with schools with our administrators our teachers our counselors to make sure they're informed on the dangers the fentel and proper response to overdoses we are going after those who are dealing it and a message to them is we are coming after them we have a team dedicated to finding them we have a team dedicated to hunting them down putting them behind bars and we will prosecute them to the absolute highest point we can including murder charges and we've already proven that we will do that I'm extremely proud of the work this team has done as well of as all our other officers who respond to scenes like this our forward firefight Fighters our MedStar Personnel they're the ones out there on the front lines taking care of this and I could not be more proud now if we have any questions I also have deputy chief David carbahal here who is over our narcotics unit obviously we have MedStar here as well so if you have anything to present please feel free I just um appreciate the opportunity to be here we've um worked through several programs uh as well um not obviously so much on the law enforcement side but on the the treating the effects of it Fels obviously a very uh serious thing um so in in collaboration with resource recovery Council we have a grant program where if we give Naran to a patient um Brandon Pate here and his team will actually reach out to that patient in their family do some education teach them uh CPR provide them with Narcan things like that because what we know is that people have to be ready to seek treatment you can't force treatment on people um so from that side of it we wanted do the best we can because it's very you feel very powerless when it's your loved one that's overdosed and you have no way to treat them or anything like that and so um you know Brandon has a lot of the statistics and things like that if you're interested in hearing it I think some of it's included in the in the IR as well it's been a very successful program uh it it does take close collaboration with the Police Department fire department and uh and MedStar and the nonprofit Community as well to try to uh help take care of these issues so thank you Ken any questions for chief noes or Ken Janette Chief I have um constituents who live near areas where individuals are consuming drugs in broad daylight and they call the police and um you know they they feel like nothing's being done what what would your recommendation be to those constituents when they are seeing this every day they're driving by on their way to school their children are seeing this on their way home thank you very much for that question it's a very important topic because what I think is misunderstood sometimes are our tactics in dealing with situations like that sometimes those situations uh need an immediate response from a uniformed officer sometimes they need a response that is more subtle they need a response in an undercover capacity so we can actually go in and make buys from these drug dealers to build the evidence we need to to be able to go in and not just to arrest somebody maybe for possession but arrest somebody for delivery or selling of these illegal narcotics we need that information from the residents of Fort Worth we need people who will call us and tell us what's going on and exactly where the only way we get ahead of this even more and make sure we're doing everything we can to stop this crisis is if we are working with Partners like MedStar and the fire department but critically that we're working with our residents as well Macy Chief will you talk as the best your ability you can in public about the relationship with the DEA and for PD and how that um especially with the prosecution of these cases and how that works absolutely we have several Partners we work with uh some of those are federal Partners like The Drug Enforcement Administration and one thing that's really critical for us in that relationship with the DEA in addition to the resources their agents can provide when we go out and we do conduct operations is they ease the federal prosecution that we may be seeking in certain cases and there are certain thresholds that need to be met before it goes before a federal court sometimes that's the best way to go other times it's best to go with our state courts we have a great relationship with the Taran County District Attorney's office as well but having that relationship with the DEA and our other fed Federal Partners opens up another another Avenue and sometimes prosecution in that Arena can do more to keep people off the streets longer so we definitely value those relationships with the DEA and others yes ma'am Carlos and then Elizabeth oh sorry go ahead Elizabeth thank you for that um I have Chief I have one question for you um the the overdose response team I think you said so but I didn't write it down I didn't catch it how long has that team been in place since about the summer of 2022 so it's relatively new okay and um are those full-time positions or they is it a special detail are they just trained Patrol or other officers how how do we staff that that is their only job okay um and are they there you said they're 247 correct yes ma'am okay awesome and then my next question is um to what extent do any of y'all whether it's PD or MedStar um work with Community organizations to help get Naran out to places that maybe um they don't want to call the police or there's some hesitancy or even if it's just um locations that we know we typically see that so training service industry workers or community volunteers is there any of that happening right now I know we have officers as I said that are working in the community to educate people on the the dangers of Fentanyl and the proper response if they think they encounter it or encount en counter someone that's experiencing an overdose as far as the issuance of Naran I'll turn that over to you if you have any information yeah as I'm mentioned with uh specifically with resource recovery Council as an example um what I was just asking Brandon was sort of the process um but basically if somebody refuses all care we still go ahead and leave them uh Naran we also do Naran um Administration it's relatively easy to use but some people still want to know exactly how to do it because obviously in those sort of situations it's very emotional so we go through that process and if um anybody outside of those situations did have an interest in gaining Naran we can help them link them to the appropriate resources so if like a community organization that was Naran focused wanted to come in and say we want our volunteers to be trained but also to have Naran to administer in you know whatever situation we can send them to Medstar or PD or just MedStar okay and we would definitely work with them on that education piece okay I think that that's probably one place that we could better I think it's a great program and I didn't I didn't know we were doing that so really hats off to y'all for doing that um I think that's a way we can help get it um tentacles out in the community a little better is maybe working with some organizations to help be that next line of defense great idea yes ma'am any other questions Charlie just one CH now hopefully mine's quick um first thank you and your team for what you guys do especially the danger of just coming in contact with it the danger it could POs to them so you know I'm thankful for your team uh one of the highlighted areas uh in yellow here that's actually in District Four is rampant with transients and homeless in that area and again hats off to Commander conjura for doing a hell of a job up there and personally going cleaning out some of these camps and getting people on their way um and he talked to some folks down there who actually they admit like we're what we can get in this area is a lot easier or it's a lot easier to get fitel here in this area than a lot of other areas um so aside from special details is there any way that we can request um especially in these areas that are highlighted that we know are are bad I guess more attention or special details in those areas um because it's one thing on the education piece which I think is great but for a lot of these folks they know the dangers they just they're Ian they have their issues uh so should we be like requesting additional details through our division commanders or what do you think the best approach is to essentially get those areas back from yellow back to green or what do you suggest I think that's a great idea what you suggested just is I was uh saying how critical it is for us to have uh cooperation with the community you represent the community every sector of the city and oftentimes you may receive information that we don't so if you have information on an area that we need to focus on yes please reach out and more often than not your division Commander is going to be the first person to reach out to you can obviously call me as well but please share that information because any area we see that's starting to become a hot spot if you will we definitely want to focus on that to prevent it from becoming even worse yeah Macy sorry Chief one more I'm so curious about the the Everest response team can you tell us how many members are on that team yeah I'm going to ask Deputy gief carbal to step up and talk a little bit more about the team if you got that information as far as the number of members absolutely mayor and Council Deputy Chief carbahal Deputy Chief over tactical command which includes narcotics it's really a pretty small team but they're very effective you have four officers and a sergeant and these guys are dedicated they're going on call pretty much every every fourth week to where they'll respond day and night uh cuz the biggest thing is you want to get out there when this happens uh when there's an overdose step evidence starts going away immediately because you don't your your your best witness has expired which is unfortunate so they get out there immediately wherever it is and they start making calls trying to figure out and solve these get get your first leads before before they start to disappear so very dedicated very Dynamic and very responsive yes other questions no the only comment I had was mainly for the fire department I think that there's some note in here about some additional um multiple disine lawyer work with other teams just ensuring that they are also according with MedStar and their partnership recovery Resource Council because that seems to be working really well um so just a note to the fire department if they're listening thank you thank you thank you Chief next informal report is on the process to move council elections to November and Dennis M Roy is available if there any questions all right the next informal report is a proposal to amend the neighborhood empowerment Zone basic incentives and tax abatement policy and Victor Turner is available if there any questions we're rolling the next two informal reports are on Council initiated zoning changes in District 11 and Leandra Stringfellow is available if there are any questions Leandra I have a question Leandra it's really easy good evening hi so um I'm getting asked uh what type of uh development would fall under low density multif family so just some examples of what that would look like so you're really looking at more of your garden style type Apartments but also town houses would be appropriate for that zoning District okay thank you thank you and then the final informal report is on valet licenses and parking meter rental processes and Peter Elliott is available if there are any questions Peter how are you good I just want to thanks for putting this together I do appreciate it I have a question it says a license may be revoked if licy fails to comply with Ordinance do we ever revoke one for nonuse we have not okay we have not we I think we may want to look at that as part of a process if we're using city streets Etc and private businesses are using but they're actually not using it and so we are in some instances shutting down places that could be for parking or for other things so what we what we do do is um if if there is a sense that there is nonuse we will we will do an audit okay and uh in in one particular case we we have done that and um and basically took those particular uh valet zones and and reverted them back to um commercial loading zones and passenger loading zones but we don't really have a formal process so to speak Rel we may want to I'm just saying we may want to explore that is is essentially it's just sitting there not being used in some way shape or form and we don't we do evaluation process but it sounds like you get a sense it's not being used but do people need to report it well right B based on the B on AIT every so often right based on our audits which are at least every six months um we we we see that um you know what we don't have is sort of like a a minimum percentage use so if there's some use you know so maybe that's something that we potentially could look at yeah I mean if something is I I guess to say we have to blabber it here but if it's a valet use and there is no valet ever there we may want to consider turning that back into public use thank you thank you thank you mayor that concludes my report okay we made it through IRS you ready to keep going yes okay um next is any questions regarding U changes in memberships or boards commissions for January 23rd meeting or questions regarding significant zoning cases that are upcoming okay we are going to move Dr Ramsay's presentation to another date so we're going to move straight into the East Side Transportation plan Alternatives Lauren prier you're up first and Kelly and Michael Morris and randki oh William's gonna kick us off okay good afternoon mayor and Council William Johnson assistant city manager um we're we're going to see a presentation today uh about locally pref preferred alternatives for the East Side Corridor and this has really been a long collaborative process um led by our uh and coordinated by tpw and Kelly Porter I want to thank them and their team for their work um it's it involve it has involved multiple public meetings uh and lots and lots of collaboration and it really informs environmental processes around three major issues if you will the expansion of I um that teex do is is working on uh and the environmental processes associated with that potential highspeed rail which uh Cog has really been pushing for Fort Worth to be a a stop along whatever highspeed rail uh project should come into the region uh as well as high capacity uh Transit and economic development for the uh Lancaster corridor and it would be remiss for us to think that any of this could have happened without huge huge amount of cooperation and a major thanks to our partners in all of this uh specifically Tex doot with Ricardo Gonzalez who is here representing teex doot um Trinity Metro with their CEO uh rich andreski and the North Central Texas Council of governments with the guy that probably doesn't need an introduction um Mr Michael Morris um I think we all agree that if we're going to invest1 180 million to $200 million along that East Lancaster Corridor we want to make sure that those Investments maximize the benefits to our community uh and maximize our opportunities for economic development and I'd invite any and all of our partners to uh have a word uh or add a comment following Kelly's uh presentation but it's been kind of a long process getting here so without further Ado we'll jump into Kelly's presentation and then you guys can have uh comments afterward thank you okay so it was uh two years ago when I got in front of council and uh presented on at the time what we're calling these Lancaster corridor plan but through the cooperation and work that we've done with ntcog and with triny Metro and of course tech. it's turned into something I think a lot more robust and broader and so uh just want to thank our partners for all being here today so uh as William talked about uh remember we were talking about East Lancaster and probably miss Biven you can remember this has been talked about for probably years and years and years and years is just he's Lancaster but with the direction we decided to go in was to really be able to toggle East Lancaster which is State Highway 180 on this map and I30 together we've got probably billions of dollars of investment and transportation investment that's coming to the east side and so it's really important for us to be cooperative to be proactive and to be thoughtful about how we're able to leverage and toggle some of these different pieces together and I think we've really been successful today in that so the purpose of this Eastside Transportation plan uh the primary one was to bring everybody to the table and adopt a uh LPA a locally preferred alternative um which I'm happy to hear council members saying that it's been a process it's been about 10 years no 13 years since the city's adopted the LPA and I believe it was uh Michael correct me if I'm wrong I think it was Tower 55 is when you asked for an LPA from the city so it's been a while but this is a process as we continue to get up towards a million people and are a global player that we're going to be going through probably more often going forward but this LPA is uh publicly supported and data driven it uh brings together the transit enhancements to Rod 89 which is the busiest and most used transit line in the city of Fort Worth the Reconstruction of East Lancaster Avenue and then I30 specifically are two local streets of parallel I30 Brentwood steering Bridge Street making sure that we're in alignment with tech now this is a two-step process so mayor Parker asked me how do you speed this up I think it was two years ago and we said okay well we'll bring it as a two-parter to where this is going to gain us another six months of time um by getting this LPA done in a in a two-step process so first step is going to be the LPA on East Lan cash I'll be able to hand it off to teot hopefully on the 23rd and then we're going to continue working with community on concept plan um development adoption that's where we're going to look at some of the techn technological factors um looking at form based code and zoning and thoroughfare plan amendments as well as economic development catalytic projects and incentives go along with it the project list so it's an implementation plan it's not just some of the planning factors and in pretty pictures it's going to be real implementation and that step two is really going to let us leverage this um these Transportation Investments that are going on the area there no point in rebuilding a a road to a worldclass standard not having the zoning and the policy that goes along with it so this is just a quick definition of an LPA um it's really a recommendation that we're going to be able to hand over to our local Partners um specifically teot and triny Metro for them to go forth and develop um through their Federal processes um further develop their their projects the transit component and the roadway component so this is a really important step to make that um make that official so this was a one for worth effort and will continue to be a one for one Fort Worth effort we've had um participation from many of the Departments around uh the city um we wouldn't have been able to do the public Outreach the way we did it if we um didn't have um Environmental Services um with the survey um QR codes at the environmental collection centers um we made it easier for folks to be engaged in Civic processes um such as um Amy connley showing up with her uh neighborhood survey and I can keep going on and on I don't want to turn this into an osar speech but it's really been a one for Fort Worth effort it's going to be a one for worth effort going forward to make this as robust as possible Fort Worth City of Fort Worth tpw was the lead department on this we brought the different partners together with Cog who's our funer they get things programmed for us um teot is going to be the owner of both those big corridors in the area and of course treny metro running the transit which is a they definitely a major component of this project stakeholder advisory committee was made up of about 16 or so different entities um which included um people from Taran County we had blue zones involved um East for worth Business Association social services and a whole host of people uh the study partners met once a month so you all know know that and then the stakeholder advisor Community made about four times over the last uh let's say about year or so at Key Crossroads this builds off of past plans and studies and as you all know there's been plenty of studies done on East Lancaster this is going to be the final decision on that bringing all these different pieces together as well as new information to the table and robust Outreach based on really also we have to think about a postco world on this as well and so that's going to be really important to uh the development of this LPA the eventual adoption and we've already had some great wins um with the work um with Cog and our study partners we've been able to get additional $20 million grant for East Lancaster which is filling in that funding Gap as William talked about you talking about1 180 to $200 million potential project um in the grand scheme of things but we've also in this broader East Side area got a $3 million towards rosdale for the juneth museum um we've also got Texas uh Innovation Alliance award that we won with Cog um that'll help uh develop a uh smart Grant later on and then of course an Oakland Miller State streets project through Cog and the stop six improvements that are focused on caval place so the East Lancaster uh funding picture and profile will um right now we're um pretty much on our way to um this Corridor being fully funded we just need one more UTP cycle to get the last little trunch of funding in there but Lancaster from Pine Street on down to 820 is looking like it's fully funded which is awesome path forward for this uh once we get the LPA over to teot um nctcog um and teot will begin the environmental work the finishing the funding work um Tech doot uh expects to wrap up their environmental clearance sometime in 2027 with construction to begin after that that's actually kind of a good thing because that keeps us um from having a road torn up that's going to be major conduit to Arlington when we're in the middle of World Cup so it actually works out for us pretty well and then the anticipated uh construction completion be 2029 on I 30th we've um text excuse me NCT Cog will be um getting the highe RO environmentally cleared this year and then U they're going to be starting their uh formal study from I35 down to Cooper Street uh this summer and environmental clearance would be in 2027 is what we're expecting so today we've got really um had really amazing uh public Outreach over 750 surveys were turned back to us um through iPads through online online um through paper surveys we had English and Spanish available um we even had help getting surveys back in Vietnamese um at the temple there on rosale and um and so really robust Outreach throughout this process this map gives you an idea of where we um heard from people the darker the color the more folks we heard from that area but we heard from every corner um of the study area uh thus far we've conducted two rounds of Outreach there'll be a total of three rounds of Outreach um the first two rounds um we had uh three three public meetings in addition to the second uh the second round where we had three public meetings as well and those stars represent where we had those meetings um really good attendance um at each of those the final round of Outreach will coincide with the uh concept plan the zoning and the Urban Design Elements and so we expect to start those sometime in Spring and we've done multiple small presentations and um conversations with different uh groups and individuals so some of the things we heard in the first round of Outreach is that people want uh saf convenient comfortable Transportation they want destinations to be able to get to because we're talking about uh walkability and we're talking about Transit and other things then it's going to be incredibly important for us to also have that Economic Development component along with it uh they want more direct service if they're going to use Transit so part of this study actually gets to how to create more Regional connectivity and people can get to more of the destinations around the around the uh Metroplex not just here in Fort Worth by creating some better connectivity frequency is important um safety and walkability are important as well as just general affordability and reliability round two we uh got a lot of comments in as well um through the public Outreach round and then just having a public comment card available online um and so uh traffic calming was important pedestrian safety was important and also this part of East Lancaster is on our hry Network so we want to make sure that uh that that safe we heard from the public and they validate that safety was a major issue so I'm going to go ahead and just go through this and let's go ahead and get right into the Alternatives so with uh let's go a and discuss Transit LPA for uh Rod 89 um Universal elements of this are going to be essentially world class um when we're thinking about Transit and we're using the term premium Transit amenities we're talking about features that could include um you know platforms that are a bit longer so we can increase the capacity and run more um run more service along the the corridor level boarding so that's kind of metr like type of um service and uh service quality and experience um so think about if you're in a wheelchair if you're on a or you need to walk upstairs you can um easily just hop right on um offboard Fair collection which is important for um streamline operations my favorite thing on here is the air condition stations potentially at Key at Key spots and um using really technology to help create a more um reliable Corridor so we looked at two different um alternatives for the rod 89 uh as you know it goes from downtown on to Hanley and so the thesis was well let's look to see where people are going in the study area so um one of the biggest destinations was going to be right there at East Chase at I3 that also allows for us to connect to a future um high-intensity Transit line that'll be running through down from downtown Fort Worth to downtown Dallas and so we looked at two different routes to extend this line from Hanley uh we looked at a Hanley edville route that um is the green line that you see the green rout is what we call and then we had a red route that ran down East Lancaster and then up to um Doland to East Chase so the LPA that we're recommending for this one is the red route because it's uh actually allowed for a faster travel time it was left disruptive and easier to construct um there's also more available right away and more development potential so that'll be part of the resolution um on the 23rd so we looked at several modes um which we have to kind of think about what type of vehicle be using we looked at everything from rail to other types of bus modes and we ended up um with an LPA for uh what we're calling tech-based Rapid Transit which goes back to that premium Transit service um we're looking for a higher uh quality ridership experience um looking at um just general better reliability um really good frequency based on the LPA um and then we're also looking at different operational features um using technology uh to ensure that not only uh that Transit can get through the corridor quicker but also Emergency Services and then whole Suite of station enhancements will be part of that next phase so let's go and talk about roadways real quick Universal assumptions um you know we are talking about technology on all the roadway um uh elements that we looked at um we're looking at accommodating all modes um increasing safety um of course technology is a big part of what we want to look at I believe in the long range plan that this Corridor is called the Lancaster technology Corridor and so you can expect to see that um right now we're working with Cog on a a similar project on de to add fiber vaulting to that area and um you could expect future State facilities to have that as well start off 158 alternatives for this and ended up with one so for East Lancaster from Riverside to main main street to Riverside it's not a lot you can do with that one because it's pretty RightWay constrainted but we're looking at some enhancements maintaining that four-lane cross-section based on the traffic couns or whatnot that works but as part of any sort of new rebuild um this is what we would consider and then really looking at to East Lancaster going further out from Riverside over to D ly we're looking at this is just a general cross-section there's different places where it's going to get narrower but a general six Lane cross-section with a managed technology uses along it access management is going to be incredibly important as part of this we have to do something about the driveways and um different um median Cuts along the corridor um because in our analysis we found that um with this rebuild if we do this access management appropriately we're looking at 31 % reduction in crashes and then let me hop on to um I30 Corridor with rwood s and Bridge Street we have two two two way roadways along that Corridor and so our LPA that we're recommending you all is to either maintain those as four lanes or if the modeling and eventual data um or the modeling shows that we can um with additional capacity on 30 that a lot of the trips will be accommoda on that Regional facility we may be able to go down to two lanes but maintaining the two-way connectivity is super important to the community because it just allows for better CC culation so the next step will be January 23rd council's going to adopt their LPA U LPA with a resolution with a suite of environmental requested environmental commitments from Tex doot that's where we're going to document a lot of the public Comon as part of that and we'll be able to hand that over to teex doot and then this winter into spring we'll be able to have um some solutions workshops around the economic development zoning and so that's the uh long and short of it any questions for Kelly no Michael Michael Morris director of Transportation at the North Central Texas council governments mayor city manager Mr city manager it's nice to uh be with you uh time to put on your jogging shoes because we're we're moving um hopefully with the action of your city council moving very quickly and an integrated partnership between tech. try Metro our office and your city uh mayor mayor protm she's only your mayor protm she is actually my chairperson uh asked me to just tell you or remind the audience Tower 55 is the probably the largest east west north south crossing of freight trains west of the Mississippi and it's all in your downtown area so credit a shout out goes out to triny Metro 20 years or so ago we asked try Metro to fund uh engineering of a freight project which they did for us because we thought we'd win a major uh funding competition we had we won that competition improvements have gone in we had school children Crossing stop trains if you remember at Tower 55 and um that has tremendously helped the northsouth East West movement of freight trains uh in our particular region six 6.7 points I want to make quickly Ricardo is here from teot he's going to be leading the environmental for the Interstate 30 uh Reconstruction from downtown all the way out to Cooper Street it's a major transportation project being slotted at the same time as our focus on East Lancaster it's important for the community to know Regional trips let's move into the regional facility and let's do something really cool and different on on East Lancaster second point we're entering high speed rail environmental any day between downtown Fort Worth and downtown Dallas with a station in Arlington uh once you enter that environmental phase we're there for a year year or less so we hope to be environmentally cleared if we can go in tomorrow we'll be environmentally cleared a year from now we just won the corter ID program for highspeed rail so we now qualify for federal funding for the implementation of highspeed rail that highspeed rail thank you to R cardo is being toggled with the freeway design so does the main RightWay go to highspeed rail and the and we'll have a serpentine freeway or do we keep the freeway where it is and then High-Speed Rail will respond to where the freeway wishes to go it's a really nice opportunity third East East Lancaster you've inherited a roadway that literally was the Bankhead Highway that went from the White House to California happened to go on East Lancaster it's time for the function of that roadway to be modernized and to focus on the humans that live on that quarter so yes I'm I'm looked at as a transportation person East Lancaster is a human endeavor it is to engage with economic development um the one item I'm going to request in your resolution is all hands in the city of Fort Worth be a partner with us on East Lancaster to bring an economic iomic development Vitality focus on the human Spirit uh to to use Transportation Revenue to build a brand new East Lancaster to um basically create a Grassroots opportunity for the public and private sector to build jobs and and create a future for East Lancaster that that you could not do without a new Transportation project number four this is all about technology the regional transportation council is claiming correctly so equal access to the internet is a transportation mode and should be able to be implemented and funded with your transportation Revenue equal access to Medicine equal access to job interviews elimination of food deserts equal access to education Broadband being integrated in Ricardo's corter and a utility Vault so we can Implement both technology for Next Generation traffic signals but bring Broad band to every single home is a critical component of this thinking outside the box of what a transportation project should do the fifth is for the first time when we did Rosedale 20 years ago Rosedale was the first pro first Transportation project we implemented that had nothing to do with Transportation it had everything to do with creating a new opportunity for the residents along Rosedale uh I'm proud of how Texas Wesleyan University has turned around round I've stood here 10 times my job is done when people root for Texas Wesley and University in this town as much as they root for TCU and there's tremendous Improvement at Texas Westland we did the sustainable development project on the south side of that campus we have left to the private sector to respond to Rosedale in this particular case we are not going to leave it to the hands of just the private sector we wish to keep an active role as a public sector entity and therefore I need all hands in Fort Worth to help me as public sector hands and thinking about how we make sure there's no red lining by the Banks how we bring in development corporations how we call on our friends to make private sector Investments to help create a job housing balance within the community so the transit system has doesn't have to work as hard in creating access to jobs for people that live in that community when there's not a lot of jobs in that Community um I do need that one Fort Worth and I just want to end mayor and councel you've been very patient and very supportive of of our efforts your support for Kelly on East Lancaster your support for Transit our office teex do we thank you it is not unnoticed and it has been difficult for us to be on this Glide slope every year we're putting 20 to $30 million into East Lancaster at the regional transport a council we are meeting Ricardo's uh environmental schedule as Kelly told you to be fully funded by the time we go to construction but it's been difficult for a chairperson who represents Fort Worth it's been difficult for her to see us bring these particular items uh to the regional transportation Council where it doesn't look like um my chairperson is Whispering to me that East East Lancaster is important we've been on a five-year Glide slope funding this project for a long period of time so I would I respectfully request your support at the at the full Council I specifically request an item in the resolution that says the Departments of the city of Fort Worth will work with transportation to build potentially something that's never been built before because we're going to use not just the transportation tools not just the tech doot tools not just the RTC tools we're going to use housing and economic development and finance and development corporations to do what we hope has never been done and to finish the job we started on rosale taking it now to to East Lancaster I welcome Ricardo and Richard if you have any comments you wish to add since we're all Partners in this particular vision and I'll take any questions so mayor councel Ricardo Gonzalez for Texas Department of Transportation I'm the director of Transportation Planning and Development so again I just wanted to kind of come in and kind of encourage the participation that we had here on the corridor development plan so again it was a great opportunity for us to kind of get that feedback and kind of get that public involvement started early so that was a great opportunity for us to kind of get that vision and and everything else that was incorporated again this is a long time coming NCT Cog did a feasibility study on what this Corridor would look like it pretty much got uh a lot of confirmation through this other Corridor study that you guys LED here and getting a lot Public involvement started for us so again all this is really to kind of help guide us in what we're moving forward with making sure that we're implementing this high-tech technology Corridor one of the first that we're trying to implement here and again great vision that what we're trying to get done right fiber Network everything else what are the backbones that we need to get done but again your encouragement on trying to make sure that we have that support right again contined working with NC Cog Trinity Metro make sure that we have this Corridor that meets all the goals of what we're trying to accomplish here but again on behalf of Tex we did appreciate being part of it and we want to continue that support on other venues or other aspects along the city to try to continue that proactive approach and identifying a lot of this stuff before we get into the Environmental Studies so again just wanted to kind of continue that thank you very much for letting us participate and being part of it but again please let us be part of it from the future thank you Ricardo Mr andreski all right mayor Parker city council U David thanks for um letting us share a little bit of our vision with you um I I'll tell you you I've been in front of you a number of times and I I'll say that you've heard me talk about the value of Transit why we invest in transit and this is a a case in point so last year we carried 6.8 million people on the Trinity Metro System throughout Fort Worth and Beyond um 850,000 of those Riders were on the East Lancaster Corridor uh and specifically the 89 bus route so that's extraordinary when we think about um you know a high- performing first class transit system um we have a route here that is is knocking out the lights but there's a lot more we can do here um people use transit for a number of reasons we invest in transit because we uplift we give people uh a hand up in terms of opportunity access to employment uh Educational Opportunity Mobility um importantly though you heard about economic investment so what we hope to accomplish with this project is better Community connectivity uh the 89 bus route right now is doing really well but better connections to neighborhoods to Residents that live in this Corridor is essential um not not necessarily the safest Corridor right now in terms of pedestrian access and Crossing um Lancaster particularly in evenings um we we hope that will be improved uh Last Mile connectivity as well so better sidewalk connections uh bike sharing programs expanding uh into this community um it is a significant step forward in the investment in public transportation and we're happy to be partners in it so thank you any questions for rich or anybody else no so I don't want to miss that this is a huge deal I know maybe it seems a little wonky on paper I know how hard people have worked up to this point especially want to thank Kelly where'd you go Kelly in your bow tie you look very nice today um and you minimized your sarcasm I'm shocked today um but you've worked really hard to Wrangle the cats on behalf of the city of Fort Worth and we're really excited to get started there's a tremendous amount of Interest as there should be from the residents of East Lancaster individuals who spent decades really advocating for their community and I think that this plan really encompasses all of their hopes and dreams for East Lancaster at the same time really focused on the transportation issues that we do face um in different pieces of the corridor one question I wanted address here whether it's Kelly or whomever else is specifically around Hanley in that District area because there's been a lot of questions and concern um I was I was um appreciated the executive summary you provided to me and those um assuage any concerns that I had but you might publicly talk about that Hanley area and how to protect that historic district and make sure it continues to thrive for the businesses there yeah so we so let's with the LPA it's a recommendation and so it's going to be up to text at the end of the day decide what happens on that Court Ricardo is here so he's taking notes this is good yes and so we um so working with Cog um they do longrange modeling and so in that oute that section east of 820 has a deteriorating level of service so all the LPA is doing is saying text. you can look at the different Suite of options but we're going to hand you over this public comment we're also going to hand you over a resolution with a certain Suite of environmental commitments that we're going to request and so we went out there about a month ago and met with all the wedding District owners and I can't tell mayor protim when you say that it's really phenomenal District it really really is something special out there and so um we met with them walked the cor door um you know provided some feedback on how this process was going to go and how they can be included in this and that we're here to really serveing that means to be that conduit between tto and Cog um and what we found was is that you know um there's different Suite of design Solutions it's about good design and so there's a suite of design solutions that are going have to be consider in tex. process to ensure that that the development happens on the south side of that Corridor between thead the roadway and the the railroad that such as per the Urban Village that people want the walkable design they want safety they want the traffic to be slowed down um they want the beautification they want to maintain their historic character and it goes back to Michael's point of making this more of a two two place than a through place and so we want to be able to accommodate that Regional connectivity on on Lancaster but we also want to make sure that um we're respectful of community and so we went out there did some additional due to talk to the community inform them about the process had a really nice focus group with them and so we um hopefully we're able to provide some insight into that but the then the day it's going to it's going to be up to taex do and we're giving them a whole lot of sideboards to go forward with their design as they go forth to meet the need for the future thank you Kelly Michael Mayor I just add that I live in a world where I focus on getting something built and then I work backwards to do all the steps necessary to get it implemented my encouragement would be for you as a council to just take take your action have confidence in us that we'll sort out those particular details I really need to bifurcate these two issues I'm laser focused on High-Speed Rail Interstate 30 and East Lancaster from 820 to downtown the elements east of 820 don't have $150 million sitting in the bank ready to go to construction so give us the ball with tech do we'll figure out working with the community what is the best path forward um I believe we're we're we're bringing better balance to both Transportation as a throughput and as Kelly just mentioned land use from downtown including Hanley destination places and you got to be very careful that you don't speed up traffic too much when you're trying to create destination and and you don't want to speed up traffic if you're going to move to Greater illumination Advanced traffic signals and safety and crosswalks so instead of jumping into the Weeds on the subject right now my suggestion would be to support the document moving forward we'll create two teams uh we'll create a laser focus a20 and in and then the Mobility plan team will take up what is the future of East Lancaster with Ricardo and the community uh to see what should be put in the next Mobility plan if something could be expedited with consensus out there we're more than happy to do it but I I wouldn't get too wrapped around the axle because the decision east of a20 TimeWise is further out in time and the decision on a20 to the West is much more critical and much more timely oh to be clear I'm not wrapped around the axle I'm fully confident I think there's just been a lot of miscommunication in the public realm so those comments were perfect and I think that we'll demonstrate why this Council will fully support the LPA um in a public vote council member Bivens thank you mayor thank you Kelly thank you Michael thank you Richard and Ricardo everybody I first met Michael in 1999 right before Y2K when I was put on the t board which was called the executive committee at the time and I can tell you ever since then I see an Zeta back there high in I can tell you ever since then Michael has scored a 100 every time through the years we are blessed to have his expertise and his commitment but I want to tell you a little bit about Handley uh there was a guy named Bob dollar and Bob and his wife Francis own Bob dollar antique store and this is where the the town was because Hanley is a former municipality and it's all right and so there was a beauty shop in the strip shopping center strip shopping center now and they were complaining about Bob dollars customers taking up all the parking so he bought the whole strip and that could happen back then and Bob became a fan of public transportation when we had John basa as the CEO at at the time but ever since then the plans to improve public transportation on the east side have been tried proven and true and effective we changed through the years as we as we knew how to I will tell you when you look at the way people are thinking these days Michael actually has people looking at Transportation as economic development as Broadband uh you need transportation to go to work but you really don't have to go to a building to go to work but you do need broadband and so there are just different ways to think about how this LPA is going to serve not just the community you have to go beyond the community you have to know how all of this ties into the big picture of Transportation Tech doot is building stuff all over the state if you live in the area you've seen Transportation work on 820 I can tell you they have been very receptive to every comment and concern people had when they first met with us at Dunbar High School and at dunor high school mayor I had an argument with Charleston white and police had to pull us apart never we'll forget that but the east side is a very unique community and the I oh yeah it got it was pretty rough yeah I know not not as bad as you but I I support this plan and we have RTC members on this Council who sered with me on the RTC and Would Do no harm to Fort Worth and so just know that that's where I stand with this LPA and I know we'll be going in the right direction that's all I have to say thank you Gina anybody else council members questions no great presentation we appreciate all of you thank you thank you Council our next presentation is on business Equity program Fernando Costa is goingon to kick us off Scott Bennett you could have had a seat you know you stood the whole time he didn't hear me now you did off for him okay he decided to stand thanks rich thank you mayor good afternoon Council this week as we approach our annual observance of the M holiday we'll be hearing much discussion about the progress our country has made in providing all Americans with equal opportunities and we'll be hearing much discussion about the work that remains to be done and I think all this discussion serves as a good backdrop to talk this afternoon about the city's business Equity program we're happy to have with several of our partners who have agreed to say a few words about their participation in this important program which has actually been in operation for even longer than we've been observing the MLK holiday it has a rich history and we'd like to touch upon it I'd like to begin by discussing the general purpose of the business Equity program reviewing the legal basis at a very high level we have excellent lawyers here who can advise you in any detail talk about a brief history of the program and finally describe how we administer it in the diversity inclusion Department I'd like to call on Christina Brooks uh director of diversity inclusion then to talk about Trends and issues with data about our program and then to begin discussing a series of strategies by which we are seeking to improve the business Equity program starting with the ordinance that underlies the program and the business Equity division of diversity inclusion and then we'd like to call upon our partners uh I don't know whether Miss posie will be able to stay long enough uh if she can good uh she'll be able to talk about our business Equity Advisory Board followed by our friend Michelle green Ford to talk about the work of the Black Chamber Anette linderos about the Hispanic chamber and then Scott Bennett our friend from U Beck construction to talk about the the Beck School of construction which has been a big success and a big part of our efforts to expand the capacity of small businesses in Fort Worth and then we'd like to wrap it up with Christina describing the other strategies by which we're seeking to improve the program when we use the term Equity we're generally talking about how we deliver services in response to needs and I think the data will show us that the needs of underrepresented businesses in Fort Worth are significant and worthy of our attention so the purpose of the business Equity program is to promote our Economic Development by supporting the growth and stability of underrepresented small businesses in the city's Marketplace not just within the city limits but within a broader Marketplace serving Fort Worth and we do it in three ways by managing compliance with our business Equity ordinance by building the capacity of local business Equity firms and by encouraging the growth and stability of those firms in cooperation with local Chambers and other advocacy Partners now we don't have enough time this afternoon to cover the legal basis for the business Equity program in any depth if we wanted to we could go all the way back to the 19th century and a series of Supreme Court decisions and legislative actions by the US Congress all the the way uh into the mid 20th century we can talk about the so-called affirmative action area the affirmative action area era when legislation was enacted to provide assistance to under represented businesses but I think it would be best to focus on a specific Supreme Court decision about which we need to be mindful as we talk about how far we can go and what ways we can go to advance small businesses in Fort Worth and that's known as City of Richmond uh versus croen uh company uh a 19 uh 89 decision that established national standards for local business Equity programs it was a decision about a case in the city of Richmond in which Richmond had a very aggressive business Equity program and the court found that they had actually gone too far they had not adequately established the basis for such an aggressive program and so in that decision the Court established uh the framework within which cities May pursue business Equity programs and that decision established the Need For What are known as availability and disparity studies these are studies that are conducted periodically to establish the need for business Equity programs in any community and I think it's worthwhile to cite a quote from that Supreme Court decision where there's a significant statistical disparity keyword disparity between the number of qualified minority contractors willing and able to perform particular service if we have those companies in Fort Worth and the number of such contractors actually engaged by the locality or the locality's prime contractors an inference of discriminatory exclusion could arise so you could make the case that there is discrimination occurring if there's a mismatch between the availability of these companies and the use of these companies there could be an inference and that was a key provision of the croen decision and so they establish a principle of SC strict scrutiny that has two elements a compelling governmental interest and a narrowly tailored remedy address the needs only as far as necessary to meet that need but no farther so that's what the law says that's the law under which we operate and so we go as far as we can but no farther toward advancing those interests and so again I could go back uh in time with considerable details you don't have time for that uh I think it's important to note that this uh business Equity program by whatever name goes back as far as 1978 in Fort Worth when the city council established the first MBE program for federal transportation grants way back then the transit system which is now triny Metro was run by the city of Fort Worth before we separated uh the forward Transportation Authority from the city's transportation and public works department and back then we were receiving grants from an agency known as the urban mass Transportation Administration umta which is now the Federal Transit Administration and the council wanted to establish procedures under which we could help minority businesses to take advantage of the EMP grants uh for uh improvements and so so that's when the council first established the MBE program that's when downtown was starting the process of revitalization uh and uh the MB program was was a part of it two years later 1980 we added women business enterprises uh to the program and in 1985 we established the the first disadvantaged business e office uh within uh the staff of the city government begin beginning the the monitoring of MBE and wbe expenditures we actually started tracking those expenditures for the first time back in 1985 U you can see then that u in 19 uh 1986 a council proposal brought forth by uh several council members and approved by the full Council uh began including uh MBE and wbe requirements in bid documents and the initial goal goal were set at at modest levels 12% for minority business enterprises and only 3% for women business enterprises uh and then we established an advisory committee we have an Advisory Board today which we'll discuss in in a moment and we produced the first disparity study uh back in uh 1993 using a ncount Marketplace as the geographic scope of that study uh we established a mwe program uh in uh 1995 uh in compliance uh with the croen uh standards uh and then fast forward to 2009 the the next disparity study actually sponsored by Cog on behalf of multiple agencies in the region we updated the uh the program they actually created four programs looking at different aspects of underrepresented businesses uh our most recent disparity study was just four years ago less than four years ago in 2020 using a six County Marketplace and that most recent study was the basis upon which we moved from four programs to just one in 2021 it's the program that we currently operate with a goal of 25% for All City contracts of $100,000 or more including minority and women business enterprises uh the the history is uh much more nuanced uh of course but but that's a a brief overview suffice it to to say that uh uh this program has has a long uh background in Fort Worth and as I say it's administered by the diversity inclusion Department this is a department that uh the city manager recommended that the council establish uh in the wake at the task force course on on race and culture uh and it uh has become an integral part of of city government uh in Fort Worth it has as you can see uh three major divisions uh business Equity is one of the three big divisions in diversity inclusion and that division is led by uh Gwen Wilson uh who is our uh Point person uh for the management of this uh uh program and she has a small staff that uh participates in that process with support from the business Equity Advisory Board comprised of uh uh experts uh on uh small business uh development the diversity inclusion department has a has a modest budget about $2 A5 million about a million dollars is dedicated to Administration which includes contracts of uh $26,000 each uh with the black chamber and the Hispanic chamber so a total of about $250,000 uh for uh the chambers to help us in expanding the capacity of small businesses across the community the business Equity division itself has a budget of just under $700,000 so the total Associated the business Equity program is just under $950,000 under under a million dollars and uh when you see what we're actually doing with that modest investment I think you'll be impressed uh with the work being performed by our staff in cooperation uh with our partners if you were to look at other big cities in Texas it's hard to draw an Apples to Apples comparison because different cities do different things in different ways but I think it's fair to say that uh we're getting more uh bang for the buck in Fort Worth than any other city in Texas with respect to business Equity uh I'd like to call forward the person who's making most of that success possible and that's Miss Christina Brooks Christina all right thank you Fernando um for that overview mayor and counsel I want to take you through um some information and some data some numbers that will help uh provide context to the work that's being done in the business Equity Division and specifically with the business Equity uh program itself so um as guess uh can I get it to move here remot this one yes all right okay we're in business all right so in um in alignment with uh what Fernando just uh explained out of the croen uh Supreme Court croen decision there are two key elements uh that are required to run a uh compliant program and that is establishing a compelling governmental interest for establishing the program and number two is narrowly tailoring um our program um to address specific disparities that we identified so as part of what we do is um uh we we commissioned a disparity study um in 2020 and they conducted research over uh usually disparity studies look at data uh purchasing data in a 3 to fiveyear cycle and they look at all of the numbers that um uh that we've awarded and mainly what we've spent as a city and then they disaggregate that information and divide that by racialized groups for contractors and so when we talk about what is available in our Marketplace this is what the um disparity study um identified um using aggregated weighted availability for City contracts so for black contractors there is an availability in our Market in our Marketplace and that includes that six count um geographic location with a little asct and I'll get into that uh for Hispanic it's 9.2 Asian is 1.7 7% for Native American 6.9 for white women and then as an aggregate of all of those uh previous categories that mwb there is a 25.4% availability non uh mwbe availability is about 74.6% um and that's where you see the total there so um in measuring um doing this algorithm that measures the availability what's who what are the contractors that are available to do work that the city um needs done in the marketplace against how we use those contractors that's what we're talking about when we when we say what is the utilization in the marketplace and so we Define that disparity ratio by calculating the city's utilization of mwbes as Prime contractors and subcontractors uh against the availability of these firms in the market and they come up with this ratio that you see depicted here so uh basically anything that is is uh below that um 90% threshold means that it's statistically significant anything that falls below 80 is substantially significant um and so you'll see that those uh there are two categories that are uh actually bolded there um for black contractors that disparity ratio is 36.2% and Native American is 53.8 now what I will say about Native American category it is a very very small number um and so it doesn't uh there aren't there there isn't a lot of availability uh for Native American firms but that uh number does show that there is a great disparity what you'll also notice is that for Hispanic Asian and white women those numbers are over a hundred uh that 100% threshold and so um as part of the dis erity study when those numbers were calculated they had to dive a little deeper to to get a better understanding of what that means and so what they found in um that research is that specifically for Hispanic firms uh their utilization was really uh specific to uh less than five contractors that were making up that number uh for the whole city and so um that's why uh it was recommended in the disparity study that in order for us to have a more um inclusive ecosystem uh that they still be included uh because those were really one or two offs uh that we were talking about there so this next slide I want to show you um is um looking at uh the city's use of primes so in a previous uh presentation and IR you were able to see uh kind of the breakdown of of subcontracting but what we wanted to identify because of the changes that we made in the ordinance what was happening in the city prior to those changes how are we doing with um Prime contractors before we had this disparity study so you'll see that Top Line there that Gray Line uh is indicative of the Hispanic contractors and in 2019 um before we could actually count uh their participation as a prime um they were hovering about 4.86% and then the year of the study uh dropped down to 2.9 uh and then 2.83 after the changes and then you'll see after those changes uh what I want to draw your attention to is the steady increase uh of the other categories after uh the changes um were made so um one of one piece of feedback that we um received from uh as part of the disparity study they do qualitative uh interviews with our contractors that are here in our Marketplace and um you would expect uh in seeing those numbers especially for our Hispanic contractors that they wouldn't have been many complaints that was not the case um they were probably some of the most vocal outside of our African-American contractors about making sure that they had uh um an opportunity to participate in contracts because like I said that number was really made up of less than five uh businesses here um really it's probably about three um that were making up that number and the other uh contractors didn't feel like they were getting an opportunity especially to B did as a prime right um and so there's a big difference to coming in to a city contract as a prime contractor uh where the majority of the the money is uh and coming in as a sub which means you're only getting a very small portion of of the pie and so you see here a five-year Trend um and you'll notice kind of an an upward Trend here um starting in 20 uh the 2018 2019 fiscal year the 2019 fiscal year and then what you're starting to see is that that gray area again is Hispanic but what you start to see is the growth of the other racialized categories um uh in the continuing Years starting in uh 2020 2021 2022 and 2023 so how did that happen um here are just a few of the Improvement strategies that we've implemented since um uh the business Equity division in our department has been in place so number one we actually um again we changed the ordinance uh and language in the ordinance and I'll get into that in a in a in a minute um we reorganized and uh looked at different roles and responsibilities for the staff within the business Equity division um we expanded and enhanced our Partnerships uh we continued our relationship with the Beck Group and the school of construction uh and then we've added cdfi friendly Fort Worth uh We've added some um some informative tools the department utilization dashboard online major project dashboard the vendor scorecard and a waiver list so getting into the changes in the ordinance this was probably a key change in my opinion um that where we really started to see a c change uh under the old ordinance uh business uh firms business Equity firms um could only be a part of the program could only be counted as a part of the program for contracts under $100,000 or 150,000 for construction and so if you're familiar with the kinds of contracts that the city uh engages in um those are usually multi-million dollar contracts and so if you're only talking about um those small numbers you're not going to see uh a massive shift in in uh progress and most likely why we were only seeing specifically for African-American uh we never broke the 1% participation or utilization threshold for over 25 years um under that language with the new language uh that was effective based on Council approval in 2021 was that uh business Equity firms uh were eligible for participation for All City funded contracts over $100,000 giving them access to some of the large dollar contracts another aspect of uh kind of our Marketplace and refining that is understanding that in addition to uh those initial counties that were included tarant Dallas Johnson Denton park or wise um we also added a caveat because of what we were seeing we added the significant business presence uh language which means that the business uh would either have to have their principal place of business located within our Marketplace or um its principal place of business may be located outside the marketplace but it's verified uh to be in existence for at least 2 years and have at least 20% of their Workforce based here in our Marketplace or um they could do uh cumulative business receipts greater than a million dollars for work done in our Marketplace since 2013 the next change uh language change in the ordinance um was moving to those uh specialized categories of construction professional Services uh for MBE only and specifically Professional Services only MBE African-American um and then Professional Services for small businesses and all goods and services we move to just say this is going to apply to all contracts um with an annual goal based on the number that was established in the disparity study and then if we looked at the disaggregated business Equity availability and goals that would actually break down to 7% or 6.6 we're rounding up here uh 7% for African-American firms nine for Hispanic two for Asian one for Native uh and seven for Caucasian women the other change is in the old ordinance uh we were looking at uh partly because of the previous language that we just discussed looking at uh contracts over $50,000 and above but with that uh language change that we just mentioned now we're looking at contracts over $100,000 uh where City funds are used just to to align with what would come before you as Council uh and then I've already mentioned that um we included self-performance in the new ordinance uh for all prime and subcontracting awards that they would get credit for that so now the difference in the changes that were made um strategically in the business Equity uh division so originally the business uh the office of business diversity was housed in our Economic Development Department they were responsible for strategic Partnerships with the chambers as well as establishing the relationship with the Beck Group um and uh the staff within the um within the office of business diversity really focused in on contract compliance and those managing those Partnerships in the move over to diversity and inclusion we expanded those strategic Partnerships uh with those metrics and updated position descriptions looking at a more um proactive role for uh staff within the division and um for uh and also being proactive in capacity building and data and outcome driven Partnerships um so so some of those Partnerships uh are here with us today um and I'd like to invite Margot posie uh who is chair of our business Equity Advisory Board uh to talk through the importance of uh our business Equity Advisory Board and how they assist in the business Equity program uh Administration and support Christina as you're doing that I'm assuming it's just a typo all of these F of January 1st 2021 on and that's what I printed so maybe you've updated it but I think it was also 2021 on slides if you go back to all your charts keep going back 2021 2021 it's 2024 oh effective oh because so that is when it went into effect okay so the ordinance was actually you new today these are you're not presenting anything new today these are three years old corre those changes were adopted January 1st and when into effect January 1st 2021 okay got it do I get to the next slide push this button right there this one okay thank you Christina I am Margo posy president and CEO of the Dallas Fort Worth minority supplier Development Council U we just celebrated our 50th Anniversary we certify anthy mighty minority owned businesses we're considered the gold standard of certification by Corporate America across the country we've provide development services um to minority businesses as well as to supply chain individuals um we connect corporations and public sector agencies with minority owned businesses and we Advocate on behalf of um MBE as well as those entities that um believe and promote uh economic and diverse inclusion I also operate the D excuse me I also operate the department of commerce's minority business development agency business center uh for all of North Texas and I am um delighted to have been elected as the chair of the business Equity board um the Delight comes from the fact that I believe that the city of Fort Worth did something unusual with establishing a equity board and not good at that oh and and and I mentioned the Department of Commerce uh I op we operate that as well and I would tell you that in 2023 we were able to get $43 million into the hands of our MBE stakeholders from an access to Capital standpoint and we assisted in over 63 million dollar in uh procurement contracts to those stakeholders um but let's talk about the business Equity Advisory Board and why I think it's so important and uh unique it's Unique and important because uh it is the one place that brings together the voice of the city of Fort Worth um as you can see on the slide there some of the organizations that participate and when I say they participate they give ideas they give input to the business Equity Division and we don't always agree but we're not there to to agree we're there to help and support the city of Fort Worth and I think that uh we've done a pretty good job of that there's always work to be done okay there's always more work to be done and I want to also just commend the city um in their selection of Miss Brooks um because leadership really is everything it really is I mean and what Miss Brooks and her team have done is I think um put the city on track uh and be very significant and in a special place we are you are a much different organization and your utilization is much different than it was before you Incorporated the new ordinances in 20 21 um and I think that everyone on The Advisory Board uh would actually agree to that and so um as you look to the future I think that it's one of the things that will help uh our community help the city as we grow minority business inclusion and why is minority business inclusion is so important because it lifts everyone it's about economic impact it's about economic wealth it's about the survival of all of us so with that um again I I I appreciate the opportunity to serve the city in the role of chair uh I I I retired on December 31st uh it it it was a sad uh retirement I'm sorry to leave I'll still serve on the committee um but uh we have great leadership U that will be uh replacing uh me and and uh I know that this this group will continue to do what's best for both um the city as well as our MBE and all stakeholders okay thank you now we like like to hear from our other key partner um in business Equity program uh the president and uh the turnaround Queen uh for the Fort Worth Metropolitan Black Chamber of Commerce Michelle green for thank you thank you Christina uh mayor and councel good afternoon and I thank you for taking the few moments to listen to me I am amazed at the amount of information that you have to go through every time I come so I am I will make sure that I share what I need to share quickly but I am excited to come before you this afternoon just to give you a brief update uh forworth Metropolitan Black Chamber was formed in 1979 with one goal in mind that was to increase Economic Development and business development in the city and to create wealth in the city and to link arms with a community together so we could build this great City that we live in and that's still the goal so what I have today is quick I want to give you just a quick update um I want to tell you the great things what's working and then Fernando told me and then uh give us a little bit about how we what what else we could do so I'll tell you what Michelle's dreaming about at the end okay uh just a couple things uh one of the major things that happened this year many of you know this is that we renamed the business Assistance Center to the devoid business devoid Jennings business Assistance Center this is significant um um Deo JS was the president of the chamber for 31 years significant impact and I just want to thank the city for partnering with us to come out and celebrate that Milestone we stand on the shoulders of giants and we take that very serious so thankful for the city and that participation some other things that we're doing um you'll see us working throughout the city when we're looking at specific areas we're focusing on education we're focusing on collaboration we're focusing on better preparing our members so you'll see us uh looking at all areas of the city where it's Economic Development so we can become better aware of projects coming beforehand so we can equip we can give information and we can make sure people are competitive to do the work they need to do so those are some of our staff members you guys don't know William Johnson's our director of Economic Development um and yeah the other William is waving um we often get uh that the mix up they're both incredible people but William Johnson spent lots of time here with the city of Fort Worth and is and knows a lot about the city Shell Jones also 17 years with business Equity is now working strategically with us as well one of the things we just finished is our first pitch master class this these are the winners uh these are the participant and the winners is a partnership with prosperity bank and I bring up this picture because I think it's one of the keys of things we're dreaming about it was a comprehensive program where our banking partner Prosperity Bank locked arms with us and we did a education series it was held um in councilman Williams District in Ko and I will tell you that uh this particular program is handled throughout the state of Texas they said they had a class in Houston the week before and they said by far the pitch competition winners here all of them were better than the people that were in the competition in Houston can I just say that a little forward bragging right so uh again what are we doing education collaboration access to Capital uh what this what the participants put into this was their time their efforts they're learning what the bank put into it if they finished the six week course uh there was a matching if they saved $500 a bank put in 500 for them so those types of comprehensive programs there were some other incentives the first second and third but most of all there was an ecosystem working in collaboration with our mentorships and the City of Fort Worth was one of those mentors actually the person that won was mentored by a business specialist from robbert Stern's group uh with the city of forwart so those are the types of comprehensive programs that we think are moving to Dow with our businesses and we want to continue those as we look specifically at increasing the contracts here with the city of Fort Worth um what we do with the business assistance centers is another example uh we worked a lot with development in this case we had our developers kico who's developing on the east side um in addition to that we have lots of Partners uh you'll see a business Equity team members you'll see lots of individuals who are working together we meet quarterly so it's not just a chamber issue we recognize we're connected to a bigger system and together we look at how do we move the Dow with developments throughout this city so that's exciting uh this picture is just a picture of our state of the chamber meeting what I need you to know is that we're seeing historical growth with the chamber we had 450 members two years ago we now have 700 members and so we are excit excited about that we think that's the key to helping us move the numbers with the city of foot worth because now our capacity is growing with more people who can do the work and so just like the city's growing we see those numbers happening with the chambers so we're excited about that okay so we're making an impact I've mentioned some of these things I'm just going to hit these clear really quickly because I'm really focus on what I think we can do better uh more than what we've done so what we're doing obviously Business Development uh mentorships a big part of this we we track and counsil uh as part of our contract with the city but we're counseling people consistently on certifications we're counseling them on how to do business with the city um communication Outreach lots of networking opportunities we also have 10 banking Partners now in the city and with those banking Partners like uh Bank of Texas we just finished a financial empowerment series uh we also work with Simmons Bank I I mentioned Prosperity uh so many banks have said we want to be a part of the access to Capital I also serve on the board of CDF fi uh which really is key for Fort Worth and we're looking at how can we increase uh the capital that goes through and the city is a big part of that so again it's all of it it's the business Equity team it's the cdfi it's Chambers it's pushing in a comprehensive way to move the Dow we'll continue education and training and those are just some of the workshops being at the business Assistance Center is such a a a wonderful Avenue for us because we have our part Partners there sbdc score um we have an a wealth of cdfi there William man's there uh we have true Fund in the area as well people fund so we do have a lot of collaboration to help us move the Dow we're working with procurement assistance and I want to tell you that uh to move the Dow we're doing some additional things uh we've always had City opportunities in our newsletter we've now tasked our economic development director William Johnson with a comprehensive page we're dedicating a whole page to the city of Fort Worth so we just recently talked about the bonfire how do you advertise what do you do how do you uh bid what's changing so we want to really push the education and the information to help increase those numbers with business in the city okay uh Economic Development we mentioned that as well what I need you to know is historical growth I mentioned the 450 to 700 uh members we also won an award this year with the Texas Association of African-American Chambers there are 30 of them and we won the Chamber of the year for not only membership uh but I increase in sponsorship and Partnerships we have a 40% increase in Partnership as well uh scholarships are a part of it we're attacking this offense defense TCU is an awesome partner uh they awarded three MBA Neely business school scholarships this year uh and we worked with them to identify candidates for that and also our partnership with Texas Wesleyan is for a $25,000 Endowment in the name of D Jennings uh that was established so we're working with our universities to build up the next generation of business owners as well okay uh path forward leadership development program has been going for more than 10 10 years we just graduated another class we're raising up leaders who know how to go into Workforce Development and how to go into do work here at the city and we graduated I mentioned our first class with prosperity bank so that's a great news okay but I'm always going to tell you the whole story so what do we need to do and I want you to know as a chamber we take this very seriously and we take take the ownership of what needs to happen very serious ourselves so we know that we need to increase our African-American businesses Christina showed you the numbers in terms of the movement we have some disparities there um we know that we have to have a more comprehensive approach we have as a chamber and as a city looking at how do we move the Dow uh we've been doing great things and I want to tell you that the city is a wonderful partner as a matter of fact we awarded an award for a partner of the year to the city of footwork that I last year's annual lunch for that reason but we're looking at how do we work differently better smarter in this new year to move this down more so what we need to do is focus on our Prime and our subcontractors increasing those we saw a a change in our numbers when we had major primes that was doing a major project with the city but as soon as that project was over we saw a huge Decline and what that tells us is that we need greater capacity in that Prime level as well as the Su level and so we're focused on that this year and we don't want to have a situation where one contract or one issue can put us into a a situation where those numbers are not where they need to be so some of the solutions what's Michelle dreaming about um implementing more intentional focus on our African-American business participation we're going to focus on that that's what we're that is the reason the chamber exists to focus on that but to do that how do you do it create a business development program to increase the competitiveness of the African-American businesses we do not want businesses in roles where they're not competitive that's the last thing we want so how do we increase that competitiveness we think the things that we did with prosperity bank is one of those examples uh there's some real key comprehensive education to level up to make sure people are ready we think the focus real detail focus on how do you bid with the city uh finding out why people are not being awarded contracts is it they're not bidding is it the bid is not appropriate is it that we don't understand what skill level is needed are there barriers in the bidding process and I mentioned that as well so we're want to go a deep deep dive and work with with Gwen thank you Gwen Wilson and Christina Brooks for the partnership to say how do we do that better this year so you're going to see us really focused uh we just begun and those numbers are not going to be a problem I think you're going to see us in the years to come exceed those in great measure but that's where we are today and I want to thank you for giving me an opportunity just to share a little bit and let you know what's happening now and what we need to do differently thank you all right so now we need to hear from our other extraordinary uh partner with the Fort Worth Hispanic chamber of commerce and I don't think it's any um uh I don't think it's a coincidence that both of these Chambers are led by amazing women uh so Annette thank you thank you thank you everyone hello mayor and Council I appreciate the Oops I messed it up uh the opportunity to address you today um our chamber does a variety of different activities some of which you all participate and enjoy and thank you for that uh today I'm going to talk to you specifically about the work that we do in the mwbe realm as mentioned we are contracted with the city so we are partners with you in this and the amount that we receive from you annually is 126,50 4 I think that's the same if is different from what you said we have a problem but no so this has actually been something that's has been existence for a long time when I took over this role I met with all of our key stakeholders um from mayor price to even predecessors like Ros and avajar and I asked them all very just frankly um if there's one thing that you think I really need to focus on or one thing that you would put a lot of my time behind what would it be and I'll say that both mayor price and you know my predecessor Rosa avajar said specifically this this um helping the city make sure that we are doing our best by minority owned businesses um and both of them said there is this um rhetoric that the that there's just not enough businesses to do the work and or they're not qualified to do the work and we all know that that's not true so what can we do to to do that and so um four and a half years ago we put our heads down and what we did is started to focus on performing whatever the goals were if we exceed them we set the model for our businesses as well so what we're contracted to do is hold business Equity Firm capacity building we web uh Workshops the goal is 12 a year at least one a month we delivered 17 in 2023 um we are actually right now as we speak hosting one in the council chambers on bonfire it's bilingual there's 34 business entities signed up and that are either there remotely or in the council chambers and three of my staff members are running that um so just you know that in action we're on both sides of of the chambers here um we are also contracted to assist with non-certified firms becoming mwbe certified to be clear we are not a certifying agency Margot posie is an example of one but there are others and believe it or not there are several certifications so for a new business owner that's just trying to figure out how to navigate and take advantage of these opportunities they need help identifying which um certifications are right for them to access different opportunities quite frankly they're really kind of challenging to get so while we don't certify businesses we help them prepare so then when they do submit their paperwork to Maro Posey's team they will hopefully successfully make it through the gauntlet or at least be able to um be able to you know be a little bit further um along we do also help them if they get rejected or if they're ask for additional um information um we help them with that as well if you're asking yourself why is it so hard to get certified it's actually really important for it to be hard to get certified my previous career with was with usdot and mwbe fraud is a really serious issue uh businesses that are not truly minority owned posing to be to access these opportunities so it all makes sense that it be competitive and difficult for it to happen but we need to help be Navigators for the businesses that are already just trying to to be able to get their paperwork in order to be able to get certified so goal was to help six um firms get fully certified we actually helped 13 um but business counseling sessions is actually one that we we do a lot of and and as you know we are a membership organization um and we're really proud of the 850 members that we have however we help everyone whether you're a member or not last year with one staff member performed all of them we performed 84 one on-one business counil business counseling sessions and so those um took a variety of shapes it could be a business that's trying to get started it could be the people that are trying to get certified it could be the people that are I'm certified and now what how do I submit a bid we've actually done a lot of those recently um but 84 different businesses came to our office and sat down for one-on-one counseling sessions and that's just one staff member so we're really proud of that work that we've been able to do um other things that we are really trying to focus on is improve that case management um system so that we are able to follow up with them and make sure that whatever we visited with them and recommendations were provided to hear back and see where they're performing so hopefully we can give you guys an even broader picture of what that looks like we have a bid opportunities newsletter a newsletter that goes out once a week that includes all bid opportunities from all of our partners the city of Fort Worth thefw airport all the isds I'll be honest with you even Dallas county is really active in our bid newsletter as well because they see that a lot of folks are actually taking advantage of that and we do get feed feedback from businesses that say hey I got that bid thanks so much for including that flyer we're always really excited and slightly surprised because it's a newsletter you never know who's going to read it but the fact that businesses are looking through it and taking advantage of the opportunities show that it's worthwh a worthwhile Venture also we have build Fort Worth our construction Expo which we're really proud to say hosted 135 exhibitors and over 700 attendees it is the largest construction Expo in Fort Worth we are really proud of that and now we have actually garnered the attention of other Texas wide agencies to be here and be able to um advertise the opportunities that they have for these minority owned businesses um we also are really huge in advocacy and trying to grow on that that's something that we're hopeful to continue to to be more effective on but there have been situations you know on the state level that have required a lot of attention from our combined efforts of all of our organizations working together to make sure make sure that we drive home the importance of mwbe programs and opportunities for this year to come we are expanding on all the things that we're already doing we have we're partnered with the national league of cities on an anchor procurement project that's actually partnered with us with a national consulting firm to only further hone what we're doing we're telling them specifically what we're doing with the city of Fort Worth and trying to yield best practices on what they're seeing other folks doing across the country and because of that we created entire new role I had a list of all the people we have traditionally been a very small team of six and so I have a list of dream people I'd love to hire an event and we have finally added one person and he is an mwbe specialst role and so already in the four weeks with he's been with us he's done 15 business consultations and five meet and greets with members to better understand how we can improve what we're doing is it working what do we need to be doing better he's getting all that feedback he is going to be fully focused on that in addition to the other staff member so our hope is that you're going to see tremendous growth in what we're providing for your investment and we appreciate that and just as a simple reminder that while we continue to talk about um business attraction and how important that is to attract the right uh businesses to our city this is economic development that's equally as important growing the businesses that are already here in every neighborhood and every um community of our city so thank you so much for that have a great day thank you Annette was that five minutes great job all right our final partner is Mr Scott Bennett who has just been uh a stalwart of um professionalism and continued uh friendship and partnership with us to to educate as many people in our Marketplace as possible about the opportunities and construction so Beck School of construction Scott Bennett thank you Christina mayor Parker C Council city manager office thank you for having me here today I'm really excited about this um again Scott Bennett with the Beck Group uh this program was born out of a partnership between the city of Fort Worth and the Beck Group in 2019 as we neared completion on Dicky's Arena uh public private partnership with the city um during that project we realized that we could set goals around minority and small business participation but really the work was in building local capacity and that was not easy and really that needed to focus on helping businesses and business owners be ready to pursue the work but also be prepared to successfully put the work in place that they had won a big risk for small companies the risk oh thank you the risk the risk to small businesses is significant and for all of us to truly be successful our Focus needed to be on helping them succeed so they could do it again and capacity could be built the program was developed around education mentorship partner parip as we built capacity in Fort Worth but we also allowed them to develop relationships with Builders like Beck Architects like Beck and and other gc's not just focus on just one company truly spreading it around to build capacity for Fort Worth we're now entering our sixth year uh we wrapped up our fifth year last year we're going to be having our graduation this first of the year here um and uh it helps it provides comprehensive training for men and women visas uh men and women minority veteran owned small businesses uh in increasing their knowledge of all the aspects of the business such as marketing accounting bids and proposals scheduling project manage it supervision safety but also just providing uh opportunities for partnership and a place to go for relationships and questions that does not end on the day they graduate so some metrics for Success today the program has graduated nearly 100 graduates uh we have over 80 companies that have been a part of that the city of Fort Worth has had a number of individuals that have gone through their program which has been absolutely fantastic um graduates of the program have been awarded more than $30 million worth of City contracts and over a $100 million worth of contracts with Beck at multiple tiers so we're making an impact um we are extremely proud of the the relationship that we've had the city of Fort Worth Christina Gwen the entire team on this is has been a huge success for us in fact we have municipalities Gwen doesn't love this but we have municipalities coming to us all the time wanting us to do one for them and it's not that easy you don't just do one for them you got to really care um but we're not going to stop here uh we're going to continue forward to expand the impact by increasing the offerings uh we're looking hard at architecture too which is not something that people know that the be group does uh we were just recently awarded the JPS new main hospital design and so we're going to use that as an opportunity to really get out there and start to explore these opportunities with the design and consultant firms as well so uh thank you very much for this continued participation I'm very proud of it thank you very much thank you Scott thank you all right so I'm going to quickly run through some other strategies and it just dawned on me that last year we had uh a purple t-shirt that all of our staff were wearing where it says we work for DJ DJ harell we should actually have one made that says we all work for Robert Sterns because most of the presentations today have been about supporting the work of economic development in the city of Fort Worth and the following strategies are no different so I want to uh take you through um cdfi friendly Fort Worth's um impact on small businesses here in Fort Worth there were 194 loans that have been closed to date 34 million in New Capital as you recall we started with about 10,000 of lending capacity uh at with one CDC here in the city of Fort Worth and we've grown that in about an 18-month period 74% um or I'm sorry 74 small business loans were issued out of that 34 million that made up about 23% of all the loans that have gone out through cdfi friendly Fort Worth have gone to small businesses um to either maintain expand or Provide Capital Investments the other strategy is our department utilization uh dashboard so we are not only tracking what's happening outside in uh the public sector but uh and and the the uh contractors that come in to do the work for us we're looking at each department and how each department is fairing um in their uh goals uh for um utilization and so uh based on a all of the Departments combined there were about 271 contracts uh and this is of those that were awarded from um October 1st of 2022 to uh September of 2023 um a little over uh 635 million and our goal um for all of the city departments was 16.1% um based on the work that is being done individually within our departments and working with our business Equity division we smash that goal and we hit 27.1% utilization um and we are leading by example um the city leadership in each one of the Departments is is helping us lead by example and showing um the community that we are putting our money where our mouth is um we're not just preaching this to others but we are actually doing the work ourselves we have a an online major project dashboard um I if I could zoom in I would show you but uh this is um an example of what's posted on our website uh that um actually features uh the future city hall uh spend report and so this is going to be kind of our Norm going forward for major projects uh you'll see kind of three columns uh for this particular uh um report and it each column represents a phase of the contract um it uh breaks it down by the the project phase the project phase progress so how close are you to completion um in that phase the remaining opportunities uh complete with all of the bid due dates uh that are colorcoded content work that's being requested um and uh the package name so when people go to look it up online they know exactly what to type in so they're not kind of just searching uh aimlessly and then we also list the business Equity Firm utilization progress toward the goal and we will we will uh track and we are tracking whether or not uh during the course of the the execution of the the project whether we're underperforming whether we're on track or if we're exceeding the goal um we also look at project award amounts in this uh dashboard um the award amounts not the payments to date and we disaggregate that by racialized and gender groupings uh so for this particular project that's up on our website right now um for the future city hall project 80.56% uh went to Caucasian males 11.76 Caucasian females uh 4.42 to African-American males 2.6 to Hispanic males 055 4% to Asian males and 04 for Native American uh males so this is a way of uh making sure that we hold ourselves accountable uh for each one of the major projects that we have in the city we've also established a vendor scorecard uh which is strategy 8 um the vendor scorecard really looks at making sure that we are managing kind of our action after report um uh and looking at business Equity goals the utilization and good faith efforts um our payments uh ontime payments or prompt payments the communication that took place over the course of that project uh the Community Partners that were involved and then other non ordinance issues that are measured in the scorecard so this is just an example um to the right you'll see kind of the ratings just like when you were in school a through F uh and a is um 35 to 40 that's excellent um um and then anything less than 20 is uh a fail and then we've also established a waivers list this is critically important to us in understanding where are the opportunities that we don't set goals because we don't have any availability in the marketplace and how can we work with our uh Partners like the chambers uh and all of our partners on the business Equity Advisory Board to encourage growth uh and development of companies in those areas where we right now don't have anyone in our Marketplace that performs that activity so these are just uh kind of a highlight of of the ones that we um have identified Milling of the roadway joint ceiling uh barricades construction signs pipe suppliers uh fuel suppliers concrete suppliers uh steel rebar um these are probably the most common that we'll issue have to issue a waiver for because we don't have any avail avilability in the marketplace and that concludes uh our presentation and we are certainly available for questions Gina Christina I only have one question I first want to say thank you to everybody who participated good to see my old buddy Margo in Fort Worth when when you look at the small contractors African-American contractors that you're working with or recruiting or support ing what are the common issues or challenges you find them having there there used to be a time when the problem was not reading thoroughly or not filling out applications thoroughly not having access do you have any got any idea of what's holding people back and not just African-Americans because I I know that you have diversity there but what what's the most common challenge yeah um there are are three that come to mind um the first is really understanding especially if they're um new to uh doing business with uh with a large organization um they don't always understand kind of the nuances of how to submit a bid and what goes into that and what they need to make sure that they're highlighting um and uh getting rid of uh you know including things that really don't have anything to do with uh the bid advertisement and that's where our partners with the chambers come into play so that they're educating them on what a competitive bid looks like um and then we've had some challenges when it comes to the interview process uh if they make it through the first uh kind of hurdle um when they're interviewed uh by by the panel um they don't really sometimes they don't have a full understanding of of what they need to uh highlight about the work that they've done that is commiserate with the work that's being requested um and they may have done excellent work but they just don't mention it right or uh it it's sometimes really difficult for people that are not extrovert or people that you know don't like to talk about all of their all the great things that they've done to to walk into a space and be required to do that right and so making sure that we're coaching them on how to interview well um and then more importantly than than interviewing is just having the data behind it to back it up the third thing is is probably uh being able to um uh have the financial stability and the financial background uh and the financial track record to do larger uh projects um and part of that is building capacity with their bonding um because some of the larger uh contracts if they if they were trying to go in as a prime um you have to have a certain level of bonding capacity so if you haven't worked up to that it's really difficult to say like no we just did this great job but our bonding capacity is only a million well this job is requiring you know 20 million right and so um making sure that they understand that they have to be consistent in uh the bonding companies and insurance companies that they're working with so that they can help them build uh up to those larger projects uh that they may be um in line to receive thank you I I want to commend the city manager uh we're living in a day and time now where the word diversity add to that inclusion uh is is not encouraged and so I applaud City staff for sticking to the plan and doing the right thing to promote diversity equity and inclusion any other questions Council I kind of got a question I had it an hour ago um but Won Won um it was towards the beginning of the slides you talked about the availability um of the uh um contractors the contracts is that what's in our system um uh let me make sure yeah go back up wanted to right here so talk about availability what what does that mean so this these numbers are required for us to run the program and they were established through extensive research through in the disparity study so it established an understanding of what is available in the marketplace for us so this is literally what we use when we calculate on a project by project basis whether or not we can set a goal um on a project so so there are a couple of criterias this is of course um uh part of the calculation but we need to have at least three uh able and willing firms in the marketplace that do that work uh in order for us to even attempt to set a goal and then once we've passed that threshold then we look at the availability um and that's how we calculate uh whether or not we set a goal and then we provide the list of potential firms that could conduct the work um to the project managers so yes this is definitely an integral part of how we calculate whether or not we set goals when are you doing the next study to update these numbers usually there is it's recommended that you uh redo disparity studies every 7 to 10 years um but seems really what is it it it can be but um especially if you are not uh kind of tracking availability annually and so what has been uh in the in previous roles that I've had and and certainly something that we are doing um here in Fort Worth is we are making sure that these availability numbers are accurate today right as we start to see growth in the number of firms that are moving to our Marketplace how are these numbers shifting uh are they going up or going down now because this is the official number this is what we have to use but we can certainly be uh tracking on an annual basis what our availability is in all of these racialized groups and gender groups anybody else Jared um I think I have two questions but um just as context um first of all thank y'all for everything that yall do um this is certainly important work um and the city plays a huge role clearly with contracts um um of almost half a billion dollars a year and creating um significant Community investment that then creates return on investment in the community and so um one thing that um I think is important especially as we go into um our Council Retreat is um the importance of MBE and our performance and how do we continue to build on the progress that we've made and I know we've had a lot of conversation about Avail availability utilization um especially when it comes to primes versus subprimes um I'm personally really interested um in seeing how we can um really be even more aggressive um on that um um you know you showed a slide um for ethnic gender participation of contracts between fiscal year 2022 and 23 um I was really concerned earned um with African-American dropping um significantly um $15 million but even when you look at 5.4 million out of nearly a half billion dollars worth of investment um that's a that's very desperate when we talk about data outcome so um the data and the need is certainly there for us as a body to make continued investment um the second thing that I think comes to mind is um um and this is a question um how much have we invested um and I think an nette maybe said $126,000 as a chamber is that has per chamber per chamber has that been the same investment for how long how long have we oh gosh um that's been the number uh for the four years that I've been here the whole time um and so I know they're doing great work and I personally want to Advocate given the um um how desperate the numbers are that we probably need to double down on what's working between our partnership with the chambers I and consider that in the next budget cycle re-evaluating that um we're in the middle of an affordability crisis and the city certainly can help in a number of ways and we have this coun has been committed to doing that um and especially when we have a half billion dollars on the table that we're investing in contracts that's a Economic Development engine if I've ever seen one and so we really need to think about how we double down our Chambers have been great friends and great Partners um and I would like to see us prioritize that in the next Workshop next budget cycle and see what we can do about that any other questions Janette did you have one no sorry just mooved your hands okay Christina thanks for putting this together I appreciate it um maybe a note along the lines of what Jerry just mentioned I thought that the way Annette um compiled the updates on information and successes at the Hispanic chamber was really helpful and easy to digest and maybe creating that standard for um our friends of the Met metran Black Chamber as well as our city staff because I think if we don't measure it we don't know if it's working or not and then furthermore maybe tracking those and a Net's team probably could do that as to these individual companies that they've worked with to to qualify um how those companies are actually translating to specifically City contracts or other contracts across the community yes in the future it probably could be an IR it doesn't have to be you don't have to um do this again necessarily right now but I just mean I think that that format is helpful thank you yes okay that's it keep going Council we have one more presentation um Mark MC Daniel is sorry too oh yeah we have to end with the UN audited general fund performance so you might want coffee it's all I'm saying um but Mark McDaniel is gonna update us on good natured and our open space initiatives Mark you're up thank you mayor uh blessed uh Deputy city manager um so I want to ask um Brent to come on up Brent Brown is with BC Workshop he's also been working on this initiative with the mayor's office and he I work um pretty closely on this initiative since uh We've begun uh it was a pleasure meeting with all of you on the council to talk a little bit more about this initiative and explain kind of what we're up to but a little bit more information today so first question we always get is what is greenspace so think of greenspace as being the umbrella if you will over all of the um items like Parks whether that's a large park or a small park it could be the the urban canopy and medians it could be passive open space Trails so all things green and so we've been looking at all things green uh and myself spending a lot of time uh developing an inventory of what we have in all these areas is you know a beginning uh point or starting point uh for then tracking on hell what we're doing uh going forward why do we need all this well um you the council is extremely familiar with the fact that you know we're growing right and so the projection is that 270,000 people more in the next 24 years and so as we continue to grow it's important that we protect our water quality that we enhance flood protection and then we also promote physical and mental um Health uh through connecting back with the natural environment and so uh that is the um really the the tenant of of this program over to Brent now to talk about the next two or three slides um about some of the comparisons that are being drawn um through the trust for public land so Brent thanks um Mark uh good afternoon Brent Brown strategic adviser of the good-natured Green Space initiative mayor council city manager thanks for allowing me to be with you today first off Trust for Public land National Organization publishes a park score every year its methodology um um has criticisms it's not perfect uh but every city gets measured by it right probably the only city that that likes it is the number one city right um number two is really upset by the point margin that they're not number one um your city uh ranks uh it's the top 100 City uh based on population um your city ranks 88th um I think what you can take away from that is um we're in the top 100 uh but we've got some ways to go to improve U all right uh this particular slide taken shows you dollar spent per uh resident of City uh and so what you can see is a mixture the green to dark green to Orange shows different sources uh with the lightest green brightest green being that from the primary city agency or the municipal government right so your allocation annually uh other cities May provide less funding than you do annually but they make that up often through other mechanisms Houston is a real Prime example through other agencies and through private philanthropy they exceed you even though their annual allocation from City Hall is less than you so for that to take away um let's see um here for Park scores for cities greater than 500k so that would be less than the top 100 this is just comparing you specifically within Texas within the categories that they use for rankings U the brighter the green to the darker the green the better the more closer orange or red not so great right and so what I hope you're seeing from this is that they are considering things Beyond just you know size of parks or how many acres or how much money spent but also critically access access often is measured by a 10-minute walk so this is not just big giant Parks right these are the small neighborhood parks that often make the biggest difference for most of the families that live in our cities so uh this moves away from Trust for Public Lands information specifically to your comp plan this was from the 22 plan when we looked at this and what you'll notice I think uh most significantly as you know in blue here shows an area of undeveloped land within the entirety of your city the allocation in green is um basically current Parks or open space and then the gray is current development uh if you look to the column to the right what you're seeing with the question mark in that light gray is that undeveloped land that you are quite plentiful uh with you're a very unique City in this country in that you are just over half built out most cities are looking to try to understand how to take infrastructure and turn into Parks or Green Space right how do you take an old Harbor or a dock or how do you take a sumps or some infrastructure related to flood control and make it a park here you have the opportunity to create open space and Parks out of raw land uh which is very very unusual and a very strategic opportunity for your economic development in your city so there's a couple of strategies that we have in mind to not only enhance our existing Park system but also acquire more Park land um as you've heard uh in the mayor state of the city address there's a goal of 10,000 acres in five years but before that we want to look at our existing Park system and um the first step here would be uh an aspirational study so on your uh 23rd agenda you'll have an action item to approve uh commissioning an aspirational study all that effort along with Parks uh and others that'll be involved and that will inform then the second item there that's the parks recreation open space master plan that has already been launched in terms of public input phase so the aspirational study will be looking at um not the kinds of things that you're already going going to be getting with the the master plan but look at Best Practices Across the Nation and not only what kind of amenities there are in parks and and uh the newer kinds of amenities and looking at what parks might be 20 years from now 30 40 50 years from now but also how they're used and so this is really important to make sure that we're not just looking insular that we're not we certainly need to hear from our residents and their experiences elsewhere and what they like to see in their Parks but this then gives us that that another yard stick if you will to look at you know what are we not thinking of and what can we perhaps add to our own Park system the other strategy is um what you have heard and that is the 10,000 acres in in 5 years and so the first step that we have here Beyond just trying to get the inventory straight which is we're working on now um is to build a strategic framework and that include you know purpose goals definitions the Partnerships that we have that are already existing in others uh strategies for funding so making recommendations about how do we we fund this this effort and a three-year action plan uh so uh that will be the the the second effort in that regard and um it's not going to be a situation where the city is just actually going out and purchasing 10,000 acres it's a stack strategy so that's part of it but it's also what is trwd doing and how are we working with the core of engineers in the state in terms of their new century fund um and then also um regulatory um requirements on the the use of land or or maybe a conservation easement that might be there for tax benefit for for land owner and talking to some of our Economic Development prospects that are coming to town and and partnering with them on how we can do better in terms of preserving our open space and how will we do it this is the these are the three primary Partners us trwd and the a new 501c3 Conservancy um currently uh we uh have set up a Donor advised fund at the North Texas um uh partnership um so that we can begin to collect those those Monies the the communities Foundation um and then we also have very uh various existing Partners so the message here is we're not going to do away with all the you know great things that have been done to date we're going to build on that foundation so streams and valleys and and uh Brit and other partners will continue to work with us um as we partner going forward so I want to talk ask Brent to talk a little bit about um the the 501c3 idea and this idea about leveraging priv public dollars with private and some and three examples thanks Mark so um we took a look at three organizations in particular uh specific reasons for these uh one based on how they were established two uh what are the roles they play in relationship to um government and private activities all three are public private Partnerships in some form and then third um also uh scale geography and duration of time that kind of that kind of thinking we start on the left in in North Carolina of the triangle Land Conservancy which was which is just um uh almost four it's about 40 years old it was begun out of they had one parcel it was it was birthed out of the the the local Council of government uh to establish something that would partner with variety of cities and Etc to go and help to acquire through easement or direct acquisition uh open space uh and in the management of their growth as it was happening they've had significant success uh their 20 18 strategic plan to 2025 had the goal of 25,000 Acres uh they're about 23 24,000 ACR now a third of that is under easements a third of that is under um other Municipal partner ownership of sorts and then they own a third of that so that's their mix that has worked really well um if you move to the to the West Coast one of the longest standing uh Conservancy public private relationship is in Golden Gate Park Park this was born out of the federal government in the early 70s with significant uh Federal lands that became available uh Marine County and other things and but if you look at the way that they work today and especially over the last 20 years the operations and sort of some of the initial um Catalyst let's say funding may come from the federal government or a federal or governmental funding stream but the majority of all of the Capital Improvements that occur in their projects is coming through public private or private sector Partnerships right which helps to leverage that um um Regional kind of capacity as they're being very successful coming to Texas though and I think it's very important to always make sure we're looking as close as possible given our our state here um Buffalo Bayou uh sorry the Bayou Greenways initiative which was born out of uh Houston's uh mayor Parker uh about 10 years ago with aund million Bond program in partnership with the corporate and philanthropic community that bond fund was matched with $120 million of private philanthropy to help build now they they're just over 100 miles they're working on 150 miles of trails throughout the values as well as pocket park improvements all throughout that to connect the entire city I want to make a note with this it's I think it's very comparable in that there is a partnership between what is the city what is called the Houston Parks Board which is a 501 SE nonprofit it's not a a City Board it's a nonprofit even though it sounds like a municipal board and the Harris County Flood Control District so similar here with your Partnerships that you have with trwd uh where they created a local government corporation through that uh they took action to place a Citywide turs Houston uses turs uh based on economic development impact uh in in a way that would help to Garner millions of dollars over the next 25 35 years to help maintain the assets based upon the economic value that was generated as a result of the $250 million investment so they were really thinking long term and I think we should take from that as an example that the good nature uh uh initiative is not a five-year initiative it's a 25y year initiative to really help Steward the city and how it will be uh prospering 50 years from now in the same way the Kesler plan a 100 years ago began the process of creating a park system you're working to further that really for the next Century so um so just a quick uh sort of graph that shows you this is at the top is triangle in North Carolina Houston in the middle and uh Golden Gate here on the bottom looking at kind of primary activities uh private lead in red public lead in blue joint work in purple um interesting triangle does not do any Capital Improvements they are purely just a land transaction acquisition easement holder organization but they do a lot of planning and things like that that in the case of Houston what you find is that um Houston Parks Board is actually doing the Capital Improvements in Partnership uh with uh the public entities and they're Hands-On in the middle of it building the work uh so the question is what's the right fit for Fort Worth and that's what we look forward to continue to explore and talking about it's it's not any one of these in particular it's just how can we be inspired by the success that's happening in other places especially those that have had economic growth and population growth things like that so to to sort of close out from looking at those one of the things that we see across all of these and other successful public private Endeavors specifically around uh parks open space land conservation uh is a compelling Vision it's the big idea uh when you think of your city as being half built what is the other half a hundred years from now look like right and how is everyone participating economically Etc um there's a great opportunity here public private leadership uh which obviously here we know is exhibited in Fort Worth strongly compelling Catalyst this is something that um you know how do we get to a place of either significant gift significant acquisition um beginning with theou with trwd a big First Step um the ability to monetize the economic value of green space this is something uh that is in the Forefront of cities everywhere uh not just post pandemic the reality that parks and open space create value uh through Quality of Life Health but also just direct Real Estate Value we're seeing it everywhere and so how I you know and I believe that that parks and open space now and conservation are becoming kind of the new golf courses they're becoming the new roadways and highways of American cities that not only attract people but build that economic value that helps to Foster growth in your city as well and then lastly is how do you how do you maintain leadership stability over time because this is not a two or threee project it takes a long time and you've got to build a capacity and consistency to do it so so just the next slide is just a snapshot about how this definitely U fits into the overall uh strategic Vision priorities of the council and supporting all of the items um the three items the priorities Economic Development and so forth uh as quality of life and then just a last slide is what's next so um on January 23rd the uh Park system aspirational study will be on your agenda for consideration uh we'll have the framework out the first quarter of 24 so that we can share with you in more detail about the strategies and our goals and Milestones um and then um I'll be working on development of budget proposals for the next go around of budgeting to see what might be included uh to further uh this initiative and then uh we want to complete that aspirational study in summer of 2024 so that it can inform the the master plan for Parks which is to be completed in uh winter of 2025 and with that mayor we'll be taking any questions thank you questions from Council mayy and Jared um okay I just have a couple questions first the aspirational study that'll come before council do we know how much that study will be and who's the firm yes the the cost is $300,000 and the firm is hrna it's the same firm that is working on Panther Island currently and both Brent and I have some experience working with them in Dallas okay and then um last question the so the funding facility right now is at the North Texas Community Foundation and we're going to start our own 501c3 will that be an operating organization or is that going to be funded through a donor advice fund and will we have someone to operate I me will Parks end up operating the green initiative does that make sense yes so that's going to be slower start we need to we need to really think through how that's going to be set up um in terms of who will do what we don't Envision them actually owning property um and I think the idea would be you know one one to two years before the the the separate nonprofit might be set up in the meantime we're using the donor advis fund to be uh collecting the the private contributions Jared um thank you all for the presentation I'm really excited about this project and um I was really interested in how the city of Houston funded um the Bayou Greenways um how are we thinking about leveraging city um dollars to match what's I'm sure going to happen on the private side as well well so David has charged me with looking at a a new source of revenue for this initiative and at least recommending something whether that ends up being pgo or something else um and and then um us trying to maybe maybe maybe it's also the next bond election um in 22 you all had $15 million in the in that that election for open space um so it um we'll be coming forward with a recommendation on that great thank you any other questions Council um thank you both they've worked really hard on this um I know I announced this at state of the city but it is very important to me that each of you um kind of invest in the time with Mark and with Brent to understand how you can play a role as you said beautifully this is not something that any of us will complete while we're on Council and I hope it's something we look back on and really proud of furthermore you also know your districts incredibly well and you know of parks and green space opportunities you know of developers that you believe strongly should be a part of this effort um there may be land acquisition opportunities you mentioned conservation easements um so think about those opportunities as well and then the aspirational study that Mark will lead with the parks department is a unique opportunity for us to really enhance the parks department give them the resources that they need from a management standpoint before we go into this implementation of an open space plan which I think is really key to and a new parks and rec plan to really make sure you're implementing something that doesn't sit on the Shelf so kudos to Mark and Brent to really help us go through that process um and lastly I think Macy I raised some good questions about what good nature should ultimately be I think we're open to those options it was very important to me having founded a nonprofit that you don't found something that doesn't need to exist um and then we have other organizations across the city of for worth and Taran County that already doing good work so there'll be a series of opportunities maybe some of you have constituents or personal interest in doing this work as well and then lastly because we talked about Houston as a reminder the Houston Parks Board is a private organization um that we have that history in Fort Worth that's no longer the case um but just trust that each of you around this table will get an opportunity to really inform what we think is best moving for for the city of Fort Worth and working with Mark to do that so this is just the beginning and I hope today kind kind of got you excited and now you get to bother both of them on your ideas moving forward and that can also be text or notes you don't feel like you have to have an hour meeting it's just funneling things to them that you want to see um in the good natured initiative if you read some of the population demographic projections for North Texas or for ter tant County it will scare you in my opinion about how fast we're growing and I feel so strongly that if we don't do this we will ruin the city that we love today because having a city that is half-developed without a real plan moving forward um can be quite frightening and you can't let the private sector make all the decisions we've been very lucky that we've had some large developers and large land owners be excellent stewards but we can't be complacent so maybe charge you with that and I can send you articles to scare you if you haven't read them already about where we're headed in north Texas from a population standpoint but I'm choosing to maybe Channel some of that fear into good energy and to create good nature so thank you very much for entertaining these gentlemen today two bow ties in a row look at that than Good Vibes yeah thank you okay David Cook is up and he's going to talk to us about money 2023 fiscal close and I think Reggie Zeno is also GNA join him Ready set go so we're going to go from talking about the next 10 20 50 years to talking about last year all right so Reggie and I show up at this point in time each year and we tell you a little bit about how we closed out the prior fiscal year so for all the new council members everybody knows we have a October to September fiscal year so when we talk about closing out we're talking about last year which is fiscal year 23 we're currently in fiscal year 24 and pretty soon we'll be starting fiscal year 25 operating budget but we come at this point in time for a couple reasons one you'll see at upcoming Council meetings that will be bringing you like we will on January 23rd and MNC on the Final close out of the prior year and then we'll be bringing you in the March time frame the annual financial report that'll go to the audit committee and all the those things but when we come at this point in time it's Reggie and my goal to be able to tell you that we collected more money last year than we estimated right you always want to come in with more money than you had budgeted we also want to be able to tell you that we spent less money last year than we budgeted so we want want to come in to be able to tell you that we collected more Revenue we spent less than what was in the budget and that's going to enable us to increase the fund balance for the city year over-year because we have a goal to increase the fund balance the other thing that we want to be able to tell you is if we're able to increase the fund balance and we have more money left over after this that then we might have money that can go to one-time items like capital projects and we're about to bring you a list of capital projects in the next couple of months that are going to require more money than when we estimated those projects whether it was the 18 this is more about the fiscal reporting side because now we have already spent the money we've collected the revenue this is looking in the rearview mirror so we're looking at how we did last year the other part of this process that's important is we're trying to learn from what we did last year so it can inform us of how we can make better projections in the future that's the modeling and forecasting and then how we can improve in the budget process as well you've seen this slide before this has been updated for fiscal year 23 what we're recommending on this slide is that we would be able to increase the fund balance from 21% that's what we hit last year we're going to recommend that we go to 21 and a half% it's important that the trajectory is going in the right direction the goal is ultimately 25% or essentially three months of operating expenses on a fiscal year basis uh but that's a policy decision for the city council We could decide that we want to go with a higher number on the fund balance but I think with the capital project needs that we have that will be coming to you that the 21 and a half% will be sufficient let me take a minute on this slide and I'm going to take you to the revenue line so for fiscal year 23 uh when you look at the amended budget we had revenues estimated to come in at 936 million roughly we're going to bring in revenue from last year at 989 now I got to give you two caveats on that number that 989 includes 16 million from the sale of the downtown library so that's a one-time Revenue source that won't occur in the next fiscal year so that's a one-time Revenue so in some ways we would take that number out because that's not going to reoccur there's also 8 million in interest income that is shown in that 989 number and interest income is higher now because of interest rates and what has happened over the last couple years that hadn't occurred in Prior fiscal years right and so we're very careful in budgeting interest interest income but there's an additional 8 million in that number on the expenditure side we expected that we would spend 952 million in the year and this is just general fund I didn't I don't think I said that before just general fund uh the on the expenditure side we budgeted or we thought we would need 952 million in the budget we're only going to spend 927 so on the expenditure side that's 24.7 million point out a couple numbers here the current or if you looked at last year's fund balance at 21% that was $192 Million to get to 21 a. half% in the current Year's budget you take the 24 budgeted expenditures you take the 215% and that would say that the fund balance would need to be 2117 just under $218 million does that make sense so that's our Target and then we're going to back out the other numbers when you look at how we describe fund balance I'm going to hit a couple of these numbers there's uh there's the nonspendable amount uh I think this is required by gasby or something like that right um Reggie's here is my uh GFA backup uh I'm going to talk about previously committed funds and the additionally committed and what we're trying to we're going to work to is that 54 million which I'm going to recommend is available for Capital projects for one-time capital projects moving forward if you look at money that's already been committed uh for a period of time the state gave us more sales tax reimbursement that we were entitled to and this occurred back in the I want to say early 2000s or something like that 2000 time frame and there's a repayment agreement back to the state this is what we still owe the state State for the sales tax over payments that they gave us right so we commit part of our fund balance to paying that back over time we also have contracts that cross fiscal years so we might have had a contract in the prior fiscal year that got encumbered in the budget but the contract didn't end and it continues into the next fiscal year that's called a rollover so we have have contracts that continue beyond a fiscal year those are the rollovers so they're also committed in the budget and then last year we committed to using part of the money that we identified for the juneth museum is everybody remember that we set aside money for juneth Museum we set aside $5 million for the science and history museum and we set money aside for other capital projects but we're just pointing out that those commitments are still there the money hasn't been spent for that purpose yet so this takes us to the $54 million the first number that you see there is from the library sale the Central Library sale and so what we're identifying is that uh recommendation would be to keep that set aside for future Library projects council could decide that we can use it for any Capital project but for right now we're just saying we're setting that aside for other cap other Library capital projects the bottom number which is the 8 million is that interest income that's also available for capital projects and then the 30 million is what was produced out of the revenues coming in higher than expected expenditures coming in less than expected and that's really what we're using from the prior fiscal year for capital projects that are going to come before you that's a good news piece so what we're sharing with you is we think we can increase the fund balance by a half a percent from 21 to 21 and a half and we can still have $30 million created by last year's higher Revenue and expected lower expenditures than budgeted to be able to go toward capital projects for the upcoming year and so what you're going to see in some of the next steps is we will have an MNC for January 23rd about closing out the prior fiscal year we have the audit committee and the council work session on MAR F March 5th to talk about the uh comprehensive annual financial report and then we'll be bringing to council at an upcoming work session how we stand on capital projects from 2018 and 2022 both from a a scope budget and schedule standpoint because we have a number of capital projects that are going to need more funding for all those reasons that we've talked about read about before whether it's inflation supply chain or some of those or schedule uh and so those will be coming to in the upcoming years as well so I think this is a good news piece more money to increase the fund balance we will have some money for our capital projects and that'll be coming to you in the next couple months questions questions for David Council uh yeah so the capital projects that you're talking about you already have those listed we are going through a process now internally with staff to look look at fire station projects road projects pool projects that have identified that they're going to need more money than was previously identified when they were on the bond program in 2022 cool if at all possible we can get those sooner than we have a big discussion about it so we can sure thanks good point anybody else questions no thank you davidk appreciate it okay Council future agenda items Ready set go Elizabeth um I'd like a a presentation I think um of our noise ordinance by zoning District um and I'd like staff to um explore what buffers look like between those different zoning districts um how we um what noise looks like in our entertainment zones which I know is part of what um Fernando is working on and then methods um for what other cities do to allow residents to report um noise violations other than just calling 911 Carlos request that development staff look at ways to incentivized developers to plan create dog parks as part of multif family developments encourage uh those developers and operators to you know to adopt pets through their residence in that sense so this may additively help out you know with your initiative mayor with a good natured commission there questions yes Janette actually I was going to bring up noise ordinance too so to add to that um in the policy how we can um help support our Police Department if they are in Patrol and they see you know on fireworks and take it back say 5 years to now hoping to see a a heat map to see where the hot spots are because I think in southeast Ford worth we made a very positive impact not a lot of complaints but I'd like to see that spread but we need to know where the problems are so and however staff needs to modify that because I'm too sleepy to think clearly now but that be fine thank you Gina anybody else nope okay folks meeting adjourned