[Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] thing there we go um David before I turn it over to you to get us started I wanted to First maybe have the um Mark and his budget office just stand up and as all the discussion and debate will happen around policy for the city of Fort Worth budget over the next few weeks I just didn't want it to be lost on them how hard we know they have worked to get us to this place um as someone that's been around the budget before I think what I've seen in this early stages is it's it's it's poised to be very well communicated it does align with the priorities we've talked about at Council you know there will be Ebbs and flows and discussion on this dice about what we want to see in the budget but I know that they worked hours entirely obviously through Mark's office through Reggie's office and through David City manager so I just wanted to take a minute to say thank you let's give them a round of applause to getting into this place [Applause] um and again we just I know that we were quick and our first introduction of the day and didn't want your team to feel unnoticed Mark so thank you with that David I think I can turn it over to you to get us started this morning good morning everybody oh so I'll start with just sharing with you what you have at your place today for the agenda we're going to cover the go into more detail on the property tax rate and we're going to talk about police and we're scheduled to go from 10 to noon we have put at your place two draft agendas for August 24th and 25th those are draft agendas of what we propose covering on those two work sessions we have more work sessions in September um it's also at this time as we'll get questions from different council members so we'll adjust the agenda as well as we go along so it's not set in stone but we wanted to give you an idea of those things that we think we need to cover on on those two meetings so going to today's material before you you have a present the presentation slides I'll go through which is on the recommended tax rate you have another sheet which is our tax rate comparison of pure cities so it's the top 10 cities in the Metroplex and the top 10 cities in Texas and what they're recommending with their property tax rates this year and then finally there is a little package for those of you that like spreadsheets and formulas and calculations and it is the worksheet that we have to fill out for the State Comptroller to send them related to the voter approved rate no new Revenue rate and we'll go through this in more detail as well as the voter approved rate with approved increments but more on that as we do the presentation and now I'll work my way up to the podium and we'll start on the property tax rate foreign there it's coming now as I start uh I hope today is a lot more informal mayor and so this is the time that as we go through I think it's appropriate appropriate to ask questions along the way to make sure that uh I'm being as clear as possible and answering questions along the way because this could get pretty mired and uh nuance and jargon of property tax rates so please stop me along the way if I need to explain something further you some of these slides you saw from Tuesday so I won't spend a lot of time on them but this again shows the history the blue line is the total appraised value for all property in Fort Worth the orange line is the taxable value that's what the line that we will use to calculate the property tax rate and then the bottom line is the total property tax revenue that is generated both history and then the recommended for 2024. this tells you how we get to the 115 of net taxable value the current value is just about 100 billion all existing values grew at about a 12 clip a little over 12 percent and then there was new construction added to the tax base of just a little over 3.2 billion this is a slide you have not seen so I want to take a little time walking through it this goes back uh six years it includes the recommended year for the upcoming budget and then shows six years including the current the far left column is the property tax rates over that period of time back in 2018 the tax rate was over 80 and a half cents that year we experienced new growth of 4.1 percent existing growth went up 7.6 and that just gives you an idea of what growth has looked like over the last six years What proportion was new growth and What proportion was growth in existing values and so you see we've had some healthy new growth percentage-wise as the tax base gets bigger it requires more New Growth to just capture the same percentage does that make sense and so in the current year or the upcoming year what we're going to talk about the new growth will make up about 3.4 percent and existing values are growing by 12.4 the reason that 0.49 is circled and we'll come back to it in a later slide and I'll try to explain that is during covid and the projections on assessed values values in Fort Worth grew by less than half a percent so going back to covid fiscal year 21 existing values grew by less than a half a percent and that was about the same year that the state changed how property tax rates were calculated and what you could capture and the theory back then and again I'll try to explain this in another chart coming up the theory back then is the state says we've got to limit what local governments can collect in Revenue and so what we're going to do is we're going to allow cities counties other governments to capture the new growth right so you should be able to get the new growth but we're going to cap you at three and a half percent of existing values theoretically and their idea back then this is before covet was well if you don't get three and a half percent you'll just increase the property tax rate we tried to explain that really local governments won't increase the property tax rate during the recession or a difficult time right that's generally not how local governments operate and so there's a part of the law of the when they changed the property tax rate that if you don't grow by three and a half percent and you don't raise the property tax rate that year you can capture that value within three subsequent years and so we'll be able to show you that we still have what's called an increment that we can use we're not recommending that we use it but we are allowed to use the increment that we did not capture back when the tax base did not grow by three and a half percent this is again I'll walk through this one this is valuation growth over time the orange being existing growth the blue being new development new construction that's occurring year over year and so if you see we had that dip in 21 but the greatest growth that's occurring in the tax base is from existing growth I don't believe we have a slide here uh well let me I'll do it as we get to the next one this will show you new growth in the breakdown between residential and Commercial and going back to 2014 if you look at 18 19 20 21 22 commercial is outpacing residential but in the other years for the most part residential has outpaced commercial and when we talk about the tax base in general the money that we derive from commercial mostly subsidizes Services we provide for residential does that make sense so it benefits us to have a greater increase in the commercial tax base that helps us property tax rate down and if the growth is primarily occurring in the residential side it's I would argue it's harder to keep the property tax rate down since that's where a lot of the service costs are in these slides that I'm showing you multi-family if it is more than four units is shown in commercial later we try to break that out so we can get a true distinction of what's really residential because we think from a service standpoint multi-family is residential right from a tax-based standpoint though the way the appraisal districts do it they put multi-family in commercial right so that's a calculation we have to take out at a by getting more data from the appraisal districts but this just shows you New Growth the breakout between residential and Commercial and as you see over the current fiscal year and what we're projecting into next year the base is largely residential as opposed to commercial another way of showing this over a longer period of time and this goes back to 1998 there was a time when the tax base in Fort Worth was predominantly commercial and now it's predominantly residential and let me do this and these lines are con they're diverging and we actually want them to converge uh and if we moved the multi-family that's currently in commercial to residential that Divergence is even larger right part of what is also going on you saw that a slide before that shows new development residential commercial and we'll have this set of future work session too if you looked at existing values and what is happening with residential and Commercial residential values are increasing at a much faster rate than commercial values right so it's not just new development in the past year that is showing more on residential than commercial the same thing is happening with existing values they are diverging at a faster rate and you're seeing this in this slide right here another one just for historical purposes this takes the tax rate back to 1990. it shows you when we establish the environmental fee it shows you when ccpd was established when the storm water fee was established and then what has happened over the last 10 years so when I shared with you on Tuesday that this is the largest property tax rate reduction since 1990 both in real terms and in percentages this is what I'm referring to back in nineteen oh what is that your 95 that tax rate was almost 98 cents and just 10 years ago back in 2015 about 2014 Fort Worth had the highest tax rate of any of the major cities in the state right so one of the goals of the mayor and the council at that time was for us to be more competitive primarily from a business standpoint we needed to reduce the tax rate so the goal over the last number of years has been to reduce the tax rate that has been a specific goal of the council to reduce the tax rate so that we could be more competitive and so when you look now at the comparisons of our peers both in the Metroplex and Statewide we no longer can say we have the highest tax rate in the state which is a good thing right or we don't have the largest tax rate in the Metroplex that's a good thing too and it also makes us more competitive from a business standpoint so we can recruit more commercial tax base which then lessens the pressure all the way around stay here for a second and this is related somewhat to the tax rate and you talked about it at the last presentation but especially for Council Members whose number one priority is around infrastructure Transportation or otherwise and the 2015 demarcation for pay as you go is very important that's sometimes difficult to explain to Residents and the significance of that but had we had that fund 10 years before that and had pay as you go and relying on our bonds to keep up with capital infrastructure imagine where we would be today you would not have the same consternation with orange cones and everyone begging for wider roads or more infrastructure so it's a very positive thing that we now have had that since 2015 that's why it's so important to protect that that's why in David's recommendations on Monday he did not recommend buying down any property tax rate out of that pay as you go fund it's all out of O M and we can try to all of us can work together how do you communicate that more clearly to Residents to make them understand how the significance of that dedication of that fund and why that was a really important management and Council decision at the time Elizabeth go ahead it might be helpful just to explain how Pago Works differently than o m on that note uh thank you what we what we have done it's out of the o m and in Texas they make a clear Distinction on your property tax rate it's either what they call interest in syncing or what we call our debt service fund or its own m so with that distinction in Texas we carved out of the o m the part that we call pay as you go or the cash that we use out of the tax levy to maintain the infrastructure that we've built the ins supports the debt and the bonds to build the new infrastructure and we needed to do both we needed to have larger Capital programs to build more infrastructure that's another reason why we're recommending keeping the ins rate the same or the debt rate and the cash which is the maintenance of your infrastructure is growing by the total tax base by keeping the tax rate the same because as our infrastructure gets larger it's going to cost more to maintain it and as the mayor is pointing out we needed to improve both on the maintenance side a number of years ago and we're still not there yet that's why at one of our work sessions we'll spend more about infrastructure financing and what the needs might look like over the next two to ten years um but the pay as you go comes out of the o m and it's cash for maintaining capital jumping quickly to exemptions uh the orange bar would be the homestead exemption we'll talk more about that in a second the yellow bar which is you see that largest increase those are public Properties or churches or charitable organizations and so the values that are tied to purely properties that are not paying taxes probably had one of the largest jumps from 23 to 24 right and we'll try to break that down a little bit more because what it is a pretty big jump um and then just to highlight one of the actions that you've already taken is that's increasing the exemption for both disabled and over 65 to 60 thousand dollars we talked about that back in June you approved it and this kind of shows what that exemption for the over 65 in this disabled exemption looks like so that exemption jumps from the current year that we're in to the upcoming fiscal year uh not all of that is tied to the change in the policy from the city council that's also just overall growth that would have occurred otherwise you've seen this part of it this is a recommended tax rate current year at 71 and a quarter recommended to drop four cents to 67 a quarter all of it coming from the m o side you've seen this we'll spend more time on this when we talk about infrastructure but just to give you a sense of what it's looked like over the last 10 years David I don't you may not have this on the top of your head but if you go back to slide 11 or 10 on the over 65 yeah do you have any idea had we not done that how many additional pennies we could have reduced the tax rate by so that what we told you back in June and we're pretty close to that number is that change would be worth about a half penny total yeah about 5 million five and a half million on the revenue thank you foreign all right let me try to explain this one and this goes back to the Chart when we talked about voter approved rate no new Revenue rate and the recommended tax rate let me start with the orange dotted line that is the change in state law so that's when the state said we are going to limit Municipal growth to three and a half percent was the idea prior to that orange line the no new Revenue rate was referred to as the effective tax rate that's the blue line and the Gray Line was always the voter approve rate and before the change in state law that was essentially roughly eight percent difference between the effective rate and the voter approve rate and so as long as you were below the voter approve rate you didn't have to go to your voters to approve a property tax rate so you're within the range where you can approve the tax rate without a voter referendum the green line reflects the the resulting tax rate that the city council approved each of those years so we've always been in between the effective tax rate now called the no new Revenue rate and the voter approve rate so when the line changed when that orange line came about the narrowing of the voter approve rate and the no new Revenue rate is really a gap of three and a half percent does that make sense but that same year that it was changed the approved property tax rate was below both the no new Revenue rate and the voter approve rate to be in between it the city would have increased the property tax rate which really wasn't an option right that's just not an option when you're in a difficult period of time you don't put that on the backs of the taxpayers but it's that difference between the green line and the blue line that carries forward for three years does that make sense because we never captured it but we did capture a little of it in 2023. so if you look at the green line in 2023 the recommended and the approved tax rate was just a notch above the voter approve rate because we used it part of the increment from the prior year does that make sense we're back to a recommended tax rate for 24 that's between the voter approved rate and the no new Revenue rate but we still have increment that we can use this year and next year will be the last year to use the increment that was available from the prior year how'd I do on that did we get it very good all right I think I've locked something up here we go so this shows the effective or the no new Revenue rate from all those years and the no new Revenue rate for 24 would be 5136 the voter approved tax rate would be 53.15 and then the recommended is in between those at 52 and a half this just shows a calculation of the unused increment again we're not using it in the recommended budget but what is on the table is worth about eight cents so we could increase the property tax rate from the recommended by eight cents without going to the voters to approve the budget we're not recommending that right we're recommending the tax rate in between the voter approved without the increment and the no new Revenue rate that still leaves an unused increment that will be available next year about three cents on the property tax rate good so far as I mentioned we put at your seat the worksheets that we send to the Comptroller it can be mind-numbing and we would be glad to walk anybody through the spreadsheets and we actually have to have people certified to be able to fill out the form and send it to the Comptroller where are we raise your hand certified right there and we'd be glad to walk through that what I'd suggest is you take a look at it if you have any questions that we'd be glad to answer one of the things you'll find in there is that there you'll find two different calculations for the no new Revenue rate right and so based on different calculations as we mentioned here so if you talk about the no new Revenue line you could look at line 26 that's a calculation the no new Revenue rate from a gross standpoint and then on Line 39 you can find the no new Revenue rate for the m o that's the number I showed you before in the previous slide and then the calculations for the voter approve rate and the voter approved rate with the increment I wasn't going to take any time now to do that but if you want to do that individually or back again later collectively we'll be glad to do that so let's talk about what all that means so we took an average single family home and we grew it but we grow up by there 12 something like that and we applied the tax rate from the current year and the tax rate that's recommended in the upcoming year as you'll see that and we broke out the proportion so the total tax bill will go from 1419 to 15.35. a little under ten dollars a month and that would be broken out like it's shown there of mno and The Debt Service well we'll try to get with more information this is what we have currently is the taxpayer doesn't notice just what is happening from the city right and so this would show you all the taxing entities in Fort Worth what the record what the rate is in the current year fiscal year 23 what is been re if it's publicly recommended we've noted those under 24. right so we know that the county has recommended a tax rate reduction we know that the school district has recommended a tax rate reduction so this is to show you what the total tax bill would look like based on information we know right now now those can change just like when we're having conversation the budget so are those other entities yes ma'am did I hear you correct you said it amounts to approximately ten dollars a month the difference yes okay yes ma'am David I I think it's really important that we stress the big picture I'm looking at Senate Bill 2 and I know that buried in Senate Bill too is some very self-serving language for the folk in Austin and most people don't realize that that hundred thousand that's the schools you know that that's not all across the board so I'm hoping we can avoid a snafu when they leave Austin because Texas is still going to go up next year and so if we could get some help from Communications because what's going to happen if people once they realize everything didn't go across like they were told it would and the language is in there it basically says but for your estate and but for a voting in November you know this is what you would have had compared to this making themselves look like the the good guys and so that's that's a an ask I have making sure that we're covered in the language that our people will be hearing thank you for mentioning that because this gets complicated as you very quick and that a hundred thousand increase in the exemption because of schools doesn't kick in till next year that the change that the county made for an example of increasing their homestead exemption is effective this year as is our increase in the homestead exemption right so yes it is a communication Challenge and we'll do our best to get that information out there and I do think it is proper to do it from the broad perspective as you can see where just a part of that tax bill and this is the last slide and then I'll open up for questions the blue line is property tax revenue per capita and it's growing the gray line or the dark line there is population growth it's growing the red line is then we're going to adjust that all for inflation and see what it looks like at the end of the day and it's barely nudged from 1990. what I would tell you though is we want that number to increase even adjusted for inflation because it shows that you're bringing in a tax base that's not always tied to the number of people that live in a community and so if if I had to make a pitch for again our Economic Development activity right we need to be doing we need to be doubling down on changing that tax base that I showed you before with an emphasis on bringing in more commercial as opposed to single-family residential it's nice to have more people come and live here we love that but if we can't grow that property tax rate per capita adjusted for inflation some might argue or Treading Water right so we need to up the that red line needs to be growing at a rate that doesn't look like that and with that go ahead and try to answer any questions questions from Council um go ahead Carlos well I thought I may have had a question but this is an observation to your point that you just made right here David if you go to slide seven I'm looking at the property tax base right seeing where the trends go as far as residential and Commercial I mean it's it's not just a matter of uh increase in the commercial I mean the trend and again it you know terminates there at you know this last year it's going down I mean nationally what's what's happening incomparable cities like Fort Worth I mean yes you know you say yes and I totally agree we need to up the ante you know when it comes to you know our Economic Development pitches to improve that number but are we missing something here I mean is it more than just increasing our marketing efforts I mean what is going on I mean we're we're an attractive City to many they're relocating here what what else is happening there I I feel as though there's a missing piece so I think covid people are still trying to figure out the effects of covid on office retail so I think the jury is still out on if you just look at the last two to three years I remember that we showed a slide not too long a couple years ago which was let's look at the growth and the existing tax base and and think about the new development slide that I showed you the commercials been pretty good the new growth in commercial has been pretty good but why is it that the existing tax base for commercial doesn't grow is it that those values really aren't growing or are they better at protesting right yeah right so when you think of the level of resources that are spent right to protest taxes the growth has occurred on the residential side at a much higher rate than has occurred on a commercial side from the existing tax base I don't know so but that we have to figure that out okay yeah just piggyback on that can you make a comment on slide nine when you talked about the 100 tax exempt you said you'd go into yeah what that looks like a little yeah we're gonna get into the because remember the first slide was total assessed value and that's growing but a big part of that is this property that is completely tax exempt and so we're going to get into are those the new schools that are being built right so what is actually in all those numbers and we're going to do a much deeper dive into that yep yeah I have a couple of questions I believe the mayor asked for in our last budget session the question is as to whether or not what we're doing in this budget was setting us up for the future and future looking and so as part of that analysis um I'd like to also know our discussion you mentioned the scale as we get larger right our mno and we have more streets to maintain we have more water to maintain um and also we talked about the residential and Commercial growth in those Trends so do we have one do we have projections on where we think and I know projections are projections but as a policy making body they would be helpful to know where we think we're going because that helps us shade where we need to be right now and so if we could get that if we have it that would be great and then that discussion of scale ties in yes to that as well do we have do we have any idea of you know as we I think it goes back to that analysis that I asked for in development services earlier this year about as we add to whether that's um by a lane mile a you know a water sewer mile a house are we capturing what does that cost so that when we add those we add them here too or we know the true cost of what that is and so if we could get I don't I don't know that I'm asking it no I think we I think I understand okay and we do have a session at an upcoming work session to talk about that okay perfect thank you questions Macy David is it possible to get a number a number of commercial properties captured in the tax base over time I guess it's in the 1999 or 1998 to present I mean like raw numbers may seem yeah so we could see you know how many are actually captured in the tax base we'll check to see how far back we can go and to get because I think you want us a number of properties right yes the number of properties to see how that Ebbs and flows see if we can get that okay thank you so to your point that would be interesting to know based on your observation which is likely they're better at um keeping their rates down or their appraisals down and so if if we want to see a increase in both but it would be interesting to make sure the commercial number of properties we have in Fort Worth continue to increase it'd be interested to um if we could do a comparison of what we're taxing these commercial properties at and what they're selling at and I know that data is really hard to come by because yeah the commercial nature of the state laws that probably need to be changed around it but um that would I think be helpful too for us because I think that would solve the mystery or help and even if it has to be a sample I realized that that could be really cumbersome for staff but if they could just pick a few areas across the city to show you comparison that's probably adequate questions are on the table I just had an observation if you go back to slide 19 you know each of us has it's it's a it's a policy decision right we all want to reduce property tax burden not just the rate for taxpayers at the same time we are the fastest growing city in the country and we don't want to be known as 10 20 years from now as a council that didn't adequately prepare and have the services needed to build a world-class City and this is an interesting slide to me because um I know that Tarrant County has already been very public about their decision on no new Revenue rate um if you look at this chart it's a two dollar savings per year for taxpayers and for our residents as currently proposed which we are still debating it would be an increase of 116 dollars per year that's real money I understand that to taxpayers but I think as we get into the rest of these discussions throughout the next few weeks on some of the big ticket items we're proposing to increase most notably police and fire which is 75 percent of our budget those are the decisions we have to make around this table you know what is worth it to us and then importantly we can we don't have to do it today but I'm curious if you are at the no new Revenue rate for the city of Fort Worth you know what would that what would that decrease if at all really be for taxpayers and let us weigh the real dollars out rather than these rates because I think it gets lost at least as on me and it's harder to explain to people out in the public eye as well you know I think it would be helpful if the entire Council knows what the entire city looks like and you'll buy sharing that with David on my uh initial tour for him he got a chance to see life other than where he was accustomed to living when I took and Zeta to stop six getting ready to rezone Lake Arlington she got a chance to see some things and went against her normal grain and so I think it's easier for people to consider something that they are pre predisposed to opposing if they look at what Fort Worth really looks as a whole yeah yeah cheers thank you thank you mayor um David I know Urban three has been doing a lot of work for us um in the arena of every square foot of the city costs uh dollars in terms of services delivered to that square foot I mean they've done some work in terms of the planning Arena of every square foot that we develop also has to make sense and covered in a cost ideally or theoretically that the service is delivered to that same square foot right yep um can you talk about where we are with that I know they were doing data visualization that helps us not only on the budgeting and tax rates side but also in terms of Planning and Development I think it's important for the comprehensive plan for zoning changes that kind of thing so can you talk about that uh that's a great question uh we're using them and I'm gonna if Fernando wants to chime in or mark because I think they're both involved too we're using them to look at the cost of infrastructure primarily right and so where have we invested where is the cost per acre in infrastructure uh Fernando's coming up so he's gonna save me on this one I'll let him finish that out because I think he knows when we're bringing that forward September 19th is the date of a city council work session at which we propose to brief you on the preliminary findings of our consultant Urban three from Asheville North Carolina on a study that's looking at the extent to which we are delivering city services equitably that is to say in proportion to the needs of our community not necessarily equally but equitably and then to what extent are those Equitable decisions reinforcing our tax base to what extent are they fiscally sound which is a direct answer to your question so we're working with our consultant we're working with the fourth lab to bring you those findings because I think they relate directly to the interest that the council has expressed to us you've told us you want us to deliver services equitably and you've told us you want us to do so in a fiscally sound manner so we'll give you that report next month thank you I appreciate that that is um you know I think it's so critical that we have that data back to Mayor Pro team's point about looking at what does the city look like um city-wide that data is so important to helping us make planning decisions and um you know represented in the far Southwest I'll be the first to say that um you know not all sprawl is equal and not all sprawl um is good because it costs services without providing Revenue to cover those services so I think it's an important conversation and thank you all for presenting that and that's a really great study I look forward to diving into okay all right are we ready for police come on up thank you David that was very helpful careful I made a mess up here at Old School coffee right here all right good job good afternoon mayor and Council good afternoon do we have this in paper copy you do not I can put it to you it's fine it's probably in Dropbox right Chris I believe so go ahead Chief thank you excited to be up here to talk to you guys today um I first before I get started this is a team effort I am the one standing up here but there's no way in the world I could not be up here without the help of Keith Morris and his staff um Christiane Simmons in the lab helped us out tremendously Fernando Costa with his leadership David Cook you know guiding us through this process I know the public safety is one of the highest priorities on almost everybody's list I get that some may be very disappointed that we didn't ask for more positions but I really I think it's really important for everybody to understand the lens in which we kind of looked at these positions one is that you know we want to be good stewards of you know the taxpayer dollars that's first and foremost second we want to make sure that we're good partners with every other department in the city because every Department in the city is important whenever we you know we're trying to Vie for a little piece of that pie it takes away from somebody else and so we want to make sure everybody's getting their Equitable share and really the last thing is what is a realistic outline of how we can get some of these positions filled so why would I ask for 200 positions if it's you know almost impossible to fill them in a timely manner so you know I really I kind of want to set the table there because I know there's there's been a lot of questions not only from the community but from our own officers out in the field and they're not frustrated they just don't understand so this budget cycle was very interesting the reason being is that you guys know we asked for a staffing study Staffing study was way late into the budget cycle before we got it so we kind of looked through the lens of our needs assessment which are internal requests from our department we listen to community concerns and then we had our Bureau request which we think are our priorities which kind of went through the assistant Chiefs um and then on top of that whenever we kind of reconciled all that information we got the Matrix study and lo and behold many of the recommendations coincided with what they cited so that's a good thing um that we were on target with what they actually observed so you know for us we're looking for ways to to make Fort Worth a safe place to live work and play that's that's what it's all about people want to be able to walk up and down the street no matter where you live having a fully staffed Police Department is key to maintaining that objective and so for us how we're going to maintain our attrition our new positions man that's one of our biggest challenges everybody knows we have a very long Academy and from the time we get somebody into the application process to the time they get out on the street by themselves it's well over a year and so you know there's a lot of Ebbs and flows that come into that this is me so right now this is the investment the city is asking or we're asking the city to make into public safety for the police department these are approximate numbers because some of these positions will be filled either mid-year or even in subsequent years but this will give you some idea that approximately 10 million dollars is our ask during this budget cycle and you can see they're broken down by each of the bureaus and they're broken down by sworn and civilian positions just so you guys can kind of kind of see what we're looking at here thank you look at it a little bit differently these are the individual units in which we're asking for these positions you will see Patrol is our priority always has been always will be we need bodies out there that are able to answer the 9-1-1 calls and be able to answer those emergencies as quick as possible this budget cycle we're asking for 21 officer positions I'll try and explain a little bit later in the presentation how we got to that number um you know the next largest ask of course is our Communications um there you guys get complaints about some of the 911 calls either dropping off or taking time to answer we want to make that investment into that you know that area to make sure we can answer those calls in a timely manner I'm not going to read every one of these at the end if you guys have questions about specific ones please definitely ask me about it so this is our current status We have basically two classes going on right now we're about to start a lateral entry class here next week and then class 157 is supposed to start in November those are the a remaining in the class in class 157 that's the projection we have right now right now we have about 141 bait we do have 141 vacancies 61 of those vacancies are specific to Patrol Those are Patrol officers those are call answering bodies seems a little alarming I get it I understand but I think whenever you see the next slide you'll see a breakdown of where these vacancies are so what's really important about this slide is to show that we are trying to be Equitable amongst all the bureaus whenever we have vacancies because I can promise you some of you guys have been to the real-time crime Center you guys definitely talk to other officers in the department every position in our department is important every position in our department is vital and everybody is is vying for resources and so you can look in here one of the key takeaways for this one is we have 39 officers that are in training right now so the vacancies that you see in the Patrol Division they are going to change a little bit whenever these uh new recruits kind of get cut loose and the numbers we try and make it Equitable whenever those recruits do get cut loose that we try and keep the same percentages across the divisions it's never perfect but we try and get close yeah so applicant attrition so everybody asks you know how's recruiting going what are you guys doing and these are really kind of the hardcore numbers so we're really pretty consistent on average around a thousand applicants every time we put out you know the the posting from that uh you know we get about 38 percent I think it is to sit for the test so for us that's a little bit that's a little concerning um that we have a lot of people sign up but very few people you know show up to take the test some of the things that we've learned is that you know we've tried to send out a mass email that doesn't really work most people don't read their email goes into junk file uh Julie Swearingen be the change has done a phenomenal job she makes personal contact with almost every applicant that's out there to try and encourage them to sit in for the test um you know whenever we talk to people sometimes they find a job elsewhere because this is a long process it's not anything that's very quick uh some of the other factors are people are just applying because of unemployment I mean it just is what it is they're just trying to fulfill that need so you know from the civil service test you know we have that many sitting you know for that test once they sit for the test our pass rate right now is about 82 percent so 82 percent of them go on to the next level they get processed and uh during that time there are minimum standards the state requires that they have to meet if they don't meet those requirements they get eliminated from the process we have polygraphs we have physicals those eliminate them from the process and then we kind of we get them into the review board once they get to the review board there are people that don't make it through the review board but you know a higher number makes it through more than anything else then we get them into the academy you know and then there's some attrition through the academy we'll kind of talk about that in the next handful of slides and then of course the graduation you know it's kind of astonishing that out of the number that we start with at least with the one that we have here six percent graduate so um you know it's it's a staggering deal but it is a rigorous process we do have high standards we don't want to put just anybody in a police car out there answering car calls serving our community so from that we look at recruit classic attrition now you're listening to some of these challenges please don't make don't take them as excuses they're not excuses these are just realities um the the Blue Line you're going to see is how many people we actually seated in the class uh the orange line is how many people actually graduated we have learned that lateral entry classes we lose almost nobody I mean the ones that start usually are the ones that finish they are licensed peace officers before they understand the process and usually have very minimal issues uh chief on laterals right now are you seeing them come from specific other bureaus right now are they all over the place so it's and if I'm skipping ahead you can keep going we can get to it I actually have a sheet of paper for the most recent class okay uh because I figured somebody might ask that so we have uh two from California one from New Mexico two from Wisconsin Kansas Oklahoma and then the rest are from Texas okay the one class that we had go through that was uh that graduated 25 or I'm sorry 24 starting with 25. those came from New York City Chicago Philadelphia uh Washington State California they were from across the country so one thing that we did a little bit differently with our recruit class that lateral class lateral class seven not the one that's about to start is that we allowed out-of-state applicants it's the first time we've ever done it and it was kind of challenging because they have to challenge the state test in order to become State Certified and then we run them through our Academy from that point on we ran into some hiccups because it's 120 hour class we gave it to them we helped tried to instruct them but we knew that we failed them because some of them had some real challenges trying to get through at least the state licensing test we actually have one she recycled into the most current recruit class which is 155. she's just grateful to be here and doesn't want to leave and I'm amazed that she wanted to go through a regular Academy but with the state test if you fail it three times you have to go back through an academy that's just the state requirement so you know the numbers look alarming to a certain degree for some people because you're like why aren't you graduating the same number of people you start with well again we have rigorous standards there is a certain criteria that we want to start one some of the challenges at least with these you know some of these previous classes is they weren't physically fit they weren't ready uh academically they weren't ready for the rigors of that some people actually as soon as the academy yes ma'am okay some people that actually started the academy they would get into it for a little bit and then their family members would go no no no I don't want you to do this anymore and so you know we we do out processing of every applicant that gets removed from the process or voluntarily leaves just so we can understand why it occurred to see if there's anything we can do to fix it on the front yes ma'am now my question and and I do know family members who this is the last thing they would want their their kids to do relatives what have you but we have a number of retired officers who are cheering for you guys in the background whether you know it or not my question to you is and this is for the sake of the public can you talk about or will you talk about the employee screening process sure so that we don't hire someone who was a bad apple from New York or Chicago absolutely so the screening process for a lateral entry is a little bit different than a regular recruit and the reason being is for a lateral entry officer if they're coming from another agency we we canvassed their background we go and look at their Internal Affairs record uh that's by state law now whenever the state law changed so it's not like if they did something wrong in the other department we're not going to find out about it we are going to find out about it with some of the people that were out of state if we couldn't get those records we flew to that state to get them and so because we want to do a thorough check to make sure we are not getting bad apples from other departments for the incumbent recruits the applicants that have never been police officers of course it's the civil service test then you have to do a pretty extensive background booklet and from that booklet that background investigators kind of comb through that information to verify what they put in that booklet ask up follow-up questions from that they take a polygraph of the information they provided in the booklet and there are some you know other questions in there after the polygraph is done if they pass that they will end up going to the oral board and the oral board is made up there's members of opam that's in there with us and members of the police staff that have standardized questions HR is in there as well with us if they pass the oral board then they go through their psychological and physical and as long as they pass that then they get seated in the academy you bet Chief I just want to say I don't think it's a bad thing that there's attrition you sort of alluded to that in fact if you came here and it was there was no attrition I'd have to be a project yes we only want the best and the brightest and I think this Council agrees that the best and the brightest in the streets of Fort Worth so that you have a rigorous testing program that they go through physical mental everything else that's what we want to see so I think that's okay that's a negative we agree it's just the outsiders looking in sometimes can't understand you know why are you losing so many people um and honestly it's not lack of effort which we will talk about a little bit later so one of another challenge is class size currently the academy itself is only structured to hold recruit classes of 50. you're going to see some of the plans a little bit later of some of the changes that we made to help accelerate that gap of attrition compared to our authorized strength so but we have two recruit classes we can shove about 60 people in there but that's putting tables on the floor adding chairs that that's that's really challenging um also the old schedule you're going to hear about the new schedule but the old schedule really made it impossible to stagger too many classes closest closer together so whenever you spread them out the academies at the time was 40 weeks long it's really hard logistically to get everybody through so class size definitely is a little bit of a challenge and then sworn attrition we kind of alluded to it a little bit on the previous slide 2020 and covid and the social unrest uh nobody expected nobody anticipated and even we didn't anticipate that because you can see the large number of people that have left now all of those aren't because of covid they aren't because of social unrest another factor is 30 years ago 31 years ago we had large Academy classes go through they are just at their retirement age but we have seen a lot more people retiring at 25 years not going into the drop not taking advantage of that and we have seen people that have left the profession altogether they left our department to go into Aviation to real estate to one left to be an engineer so and then some of this is a factor because of the social unrest and because of covet but I mean our numbers definitely are trending a little bit higher than what we like so it makes it very challenging on our projections when we look back to try and forecast forward Chief if I can interrupt you there sure a second because I think this is probably a good time uh you mentioned going from 40 weeks to I think it was 32 weeks I'll get to that in that okay if you can if you can wait let me get to it and I'll just speak to that yeah okay um and also when you get to it if it's appropriate I'd like to know because I didn't really see it broken down here your training staff yeah okay what does you know what effect if any does that have if you can speak to that as well absolutely and uh I think you touched on it before T call yes you know I think that even though we are compressing the amount of time that we need to get you know um officers out into the field it does not in any way shape or form you know uh take away correct you know from those high standards as you refer to if you can touch on those I will points I absolutely thank you chief on the previous slide slide nine you made a comment about class space yes how challenging is that and how do we resolve that so um we do have a recommendation that you know is on the table that we're working with City leadership that we do have a shelf space that we can create a larger classroom uh that is at the training academy it's about the only space we have left down there we have a very large class that started in July that was 77 so we kind of had to put them in the swap briefing room because that was one of the only rooms that could accommodate them um it's it's not ideal because it's not set up as a classroom setting so we are trying to work through that challenge by by getting a larger classroom that's a future discussion that we're definitely going to have chief on on that note is it is the issue just the class space or is also going to be Staffing as well if you add more so let me get to that and we can ask the questions about that oh and one other thing about sworn attrition I just want to kind of throw this out there we have 148 swarm Personnel that have 25 or more years on the department that are currently with us and we have 208 Personnel that are within 20 to 24.9 years so if you kind of do those numbers that's a large number of bodies that could walk out the door pretty quickly can you give those numbers again please sure it's 148 with 25 or more years 208 with 20 to 24.9 years and for those that aren't aware our retirement's at 25 years all right now we get to the plan this is the part that actually I kind of get really excited about so for us we kind of looked at the Academy and some of the changes that you're going to see they were made this year they were made at the end of last year with some of our minimum hiring standards and then they were made this year with the academy itself so class 156 is in there right now they are under the new protocol of what we're going to be doing so what we did is we looked at our actual you know we we looked at our our standards and we said hey what's going on uh we we're we're having people that are kind of you know dropping out of the academy or we're having problem getting people in and the academy was really long uh is there some way we can create efficiencies so one of the things that we're doing I kind of I'm jumping into the recruit attrition because I'm really kind of excited about this part what we did is we look at the at the curriculum and we said okay what is actually needed compared to what is actually going on um our Academy was 40 40 weeks long it's extremely long not that it's not needed we want to continue that high standard but what happened what has happened over the years is that our Academy was in 410 schedules which means the recruits were there for 10 hours so the bpoc which is set forth by Tico which is our state regulating agency their classes are set in eight hour increments we used to put filler classes in there because we were on a 10-hour schedule so everything wasn't really lining up very well we were we learned that we were duplicating some of the classes from the basic peace officer course to our training that we have during the academy as well for example not that it's a bad thing but we were actually teaching uh technetic twice we had some units that would come to the academy just to fill in the Gap to talk about them about their unit that really isn't necessary they can learn that in field training we learned that if we put physical fitness and defensive tactics or control tactics at the end of the day that saved us almost two and a half weeks on the academy you wonder why showers we have to give them times and showers whenever we you know whenever they exercise in the morning so you know we reduced the academy after looking at it it came down to 32 weeks and so some people were very alarmed legal was extremely alarmed whenever they heard that number um but the thing is I'm gonna I'm gonna quote Buck wheeler so Buck is the Deputy Chief over training and buck goes just look at it this way I think your garage is really packed you need to get some more space all you're doing is taking everything out of the garage you're repacking it and you're acquiring more space and that's all that we did with the academy is that we did not take any standard that was there away the quality of training is going to be exactly the same as it was before these individuals take 1.6 tests a week it's gonna happen they're still going to take the same number of tests over the same material that they did in the 40-week academy all we did was eliminate the frivolous stuff that really they can learn at a different time so for us to create an eight-week efficiency but yet not sacrifice quality whatsoever is pretty phenomenal the other thing that we did is that the Texas bpoc the basic peace officer course is 720 hours so that's 720 hours was sprinkled in throughout the 40-week course well the problem is you have to keep a rigorous schedule because T cold mandates that you have to keep that standard you have to attend these classes it has to happen putting the beatpock in the very first part of the academy allows us that that latitude and flexibility on the back end so if for some reason the schedules get jumbled up or we have to move things around the Texas state doesn't care because that is our stuff that we're teaching our our recruits so from that it's really it's kind of it's kind of cool so let's talk about the the attrition of some of the class so I talked about the physical fitness standard uh we changed the physical fitness standard it didn't happen for 156 but it applies to 157. before recruits used to have to take basically a pat which is the Physical Agility Test most everybody can pass the Physical Agility Test it's 200 2 minutes and 35 seconds you're jumping a fence going up and down stairs it's a push-pull machine uh you know it was a dummy drag most people were not having problems with that little exertion for two and a half minutes we learned that when they came into the academy they couldn't run a quarter mile without stopping or without just passing out so we basically said look we have to change that standard we got to at least get them to be able to run be able to do some push-ups some setups because this is a physically demanding job and we're going to require them to do that and we do not want them to get injured so we had Morrison McDaniel come in they evaluated our PT standard and basically I and I'm going to tell you the numbers they're not so far out of whack that nobody can do this because they're set at a 44 year old female standard the reason for that prior to the law changing recently September 1st is that you could be you could not be 45 or older to apply so a 44 year old female basically that is the highest standard that we could you know the lowest standard that everybody it's equivalent across the board so the mile and a half run is at 17 minutes and 51 seconds uh 11 push-ups 22 setups and the 500 meter row is two minutes and 27 seconds so if you kind of think about that and if you guys are Runners you exercise a little bit those are not daunting standards for people to meet however we do have applicants that have come in that still cannot meet that standard so which is a good thing because at least they understand what the standard is coming in they can physically get ready one of the thing another thing that we did is that Roxanna Farren she's our PT kind of coordinator and instructor she sends out training guides because one of the things we usually lose people more so on anything else is running and she put you know couch to 5K and she gave that to him um she she made this she made she made this class she made this class basically report their physical fitness activities throughout the week leading up to the class and so you know we wanted to make sure they were staying on a physical fitness standard that whenever they get here we're not going to have people walking you know when everybody else is running one of the things we're going to do moving forward because we saw some of the academic failures which is you know a little bit you know for us a little troubling um but for for me uh it's okay uh they there's they're going to start sending out a study guide and so the study guide basically is going to help them prepare them for the T cold test So currently what we have is that if somebody fails a couple of tests four tests then they're eliminated from the process so if they fail basically a test and then they fail the retake they're eliminated from the process and for us it's you know it's it I know it stinks but you know we kind of baby step them along the way um since Buck and I kind of came over we've Incorporated a lot more tutoring classes after hours we've Incorporated tutoring classes on the weekends because there are some hard study sessions like the penal code the traffic code is very very challenging and they have a multitude of ways of getting extra help with those classes so whenever we talk about application one thing I we changed the standards and it's not changed them we updated the standards to really you know societal standards our kind of drug policy was a little bit it was a little bit out there it was a little bit Antiquated and just to kind of give you so if somebody does Adderall prior to changing these standards it was a permanent disqualifier if they did one round of steroids it was a permanent disqualifier well and what we were learning and it really highlighted whenever we did the last Leo application process we had some really really good candidates that did maybe around the steroids in college not knowing any different because he was a kid it's been 10 years he hasn't done he's a great guy he was a SWAT member on the department he was with he would have been a great asset but because of our minimum standards we couldn't hire him so moving forward if you do Adderall or if you do a round of steroids you have to have a five year break of whenever that occurred um yes is that um when you talk about the use of Adderall is that with or without a prescription with a prescription you're good there's no restrictions it's without the prescription and we we've saw that a lot of college students they borrow for Christmas from their friend help them study so I mean it happens so another thing uh that we changed which you know to me is it's it's really pretty good so the health and safety code you know something one of the things dealing with drugs you know some of the hard drugs marijuana uh not marijuana but I'm um cocaine methamphetamines things of that nature we had a 10-year you know rule that basically within 10 years you couldn't you couldn't basically partake in that activity we've lowered that down to five years and so even though we lowered that down that's still higher than most of the department standards that we evaluated across the country another question so for those folks that um pertaining to the lateral classes yes when they're coming from states where laws may be different than the state of Texas and how does that specific to marijuana which is legal and a lot of States not here um how does does that rule change at all because it wasn't illegal when they so it does it does change um but they're all taken on a case-by-case basis and so if we have an applicant that's from out of state that is from Colorado or wherever it is legal we look at that it is not an automatic disqualifier they definitely look at the recency and whenever it occurs you guys would be really surprised but whenever we ask some of these people some of them took drugs the day they took the civil service test or the day before they came in and talked to the investigator just happens um and so as and just to follow up to that as more states start to embrace psychedelics yes and is that also too gonna extend we we will definitely look at each one of those on a case-by-case basis yeah so we try and align our standards with what the state at the time has so the state they're coming from yes okay thank you so there are a lot of really good things that are going on and to answer councilman floors this question about increased Staffing to be able to help you know some of the stuff that's going on uh our staff does a really good job um they are still in 10 hour schedule they kind of float between Mondays and Fridays keeping people here to be able to reach both ends of the spectrum but we have not seen the need to increase our staffing to accommodate some of the things that we're doing so so the sworn attrition uh you know we're we're working um to increase officer safety and wellness in this plan there are a couple of Wellness positions that we're asking for part of that is to be extremely proactive for our officers whether it's Financial spiritual mental health or physical health they're going to look at classes that can be done they're going to uh they're actually going to start scanning some of the high stress calls that they go to and they're going to reach out to them just to see you know just to check on them make sure they're okay and see if there's any resources that they need it's something that we haven't done in the past and I think it's actually a really good thing for our officers to kind of keep them you know going in the right path and not kind of suppressing some of those things that they deal with on a daily basis we're going to make sure that we continue have competitive you know package and you know work with HR to try and work with that sliding scale of our attrition that's very very challenging so when you look at this list yes sir on the previous slide yes for a moment uh so the working with the CMO for the competitive compensation package yes what's kind of the timeline on that so every four years we go through the meet and confer negotiation agreement and so the salaries for our swarm Personnel are based on that agreement and so that we're going to start contract negotiations for 2024 October 1st 2024 and Beyond starting at the beginning of this year so the last contract goes till September 30th of this year or next year yes all right so when you look at this slide this will kind of outline the classes we have coming up the classes we have scheduled I will caution you when you look at this these numbers can change the size of the academy classes can change the number of people that graduate because I will tell you some of the improvements that we made at the Academy we will never know until we go through a handful of classes so until we test the process we're not going to know if it's successful our goal is to reduce the attrition of the number of people that are in the recruit class to hopefully graduate more qualified applicants that's the goal and our hope is is that we'll be able to do that and I know that the timelines you know pretty far out give you guys a frame of reference the 141 bacon positions we have now with attrition if we got no new positions we would be fully filled by our projections by July of next year so that will kind of give you a frame of reference then you add on these new positions on top of it it extends that timeline out a little bit more so to look at it a little bit differently just so you guys are aware I mean some people like the visual graph of how things go up and down and that's kind of how we we're projecting things so the last thing there has been a lot of talk about uh the new officer positions um concern you know where these 21 officer positions are going to go how they're going to be deployed one thing I would like to remind Council in just information for people that were not on Council last year whenever we did the budget there were 45 patrol officer positions approved last year for last year's budget this year we're asking for 21 so in in two years we're asking for 66 total positions just for patrol officers just call answering bodies so I know the number may not be as high as what some people would like however you know we believe that this is is somewhat reasonable giving the situations that you know the parameters that we have trying to get people through along with the priorities of the other needs of our department so what you're what you're seeing right now I took the numbers of this information came from Matrix study so I was able to replicate the math it took me a little while because I'm a dumb cop and you know working with numbers sometimes is very challenging however the whole goal of the Matrix they do Staffing studies across the country we would love to see a 40 percent proactive Patrol rate across the board that's what kind of the gold standard is that allows a lot of time for officers to be visible for police patrol make traffic stops be out in the community things of that nature so whenever I looked at the the Staffing these are the numbers that basically made a lot of sense to me to try and keep everybody within the framework now the outlier is West Division because West Division has West Seventh now although I can't exclude West 7th because they do answer calls but they answer calls in West 7th so you can't take out just the West Seventh calls because whenever they're not there on the weekends during the weekdays they Patrol other areas of West Division so that's why if you look at the number for West Division I mean I I took into consideration the West Seventh area along with the Staffing that they have for the patrol area you will see that you know North Patrol is projected to get uh you know their proactive Patrol time is going to be 44 but if you look at the response times their response times Drive the city response times are average so they're higher and far north and it's a you know a large concern for the citizens up there about you know officers being able to get to those calls so you can look at the bottom that's kind of how I got the proactive numbers is the net availability hours call for service hours divided by the net availability hours sounds nice and fancy a lot of this information honestly is in the Staffing study if you guys would like me to sit down and step through it with you I'm more than happy to do so because after yesterday I got a nice little tutorial in math and my head hurt so um the one interesting things Matrix did say that I thought was really kind of it validated some of the things that we're doing they looked at the Staffing on each shift first second third and fourth and they said from their evaluation that we were staffed appropriately the right number of officers were on the right number of shifts to handle the call load that was there so for me that I mean that was a good thing we weren't so far out of whack that we had to adjust things tremendously so with that I know it was long I apologize but it is an important topic Chief I have a question uh is there a recommended allocation or Edition for the wellness team so the wellness team is one Corporal one officer okay where unless I didn't see it where in your presentation is it so so let's see here training oh yeah it's under training I'm sorry yes okay well that kind of answers then another question that I had about that I'm just trying to make sure that I have all this straight so yeah the wellness unit is one corporate one officer and in the other positions in training I probably should have covered that a little bit better we're asking for a recruiting team so we're asking for a Corporal and three officers to be a dedicated recruiting team because we have never had one we have had one but I mean not to that degree and we haven't had one for quite some time and really right now we have one Corporal in backgrounds that's part-time doing backgrounds part-time doing recruiting and we're using volunteers around the department to try and you know close that Gap and try and keep people interested in becoming police officers okay there's another kind of program I want to throw out there I kind of ask a few people today I think you guys have seen it on your calendar this goes directly in recruiting local homegrown Talent we're starting a pilot program with Fort Worth ISD in the criminal justice program they're going to be having classes at the Bob at our training facility which I think is really really cool um because before you guys may be aware the only criminal justice program in Fort Worth ISD was at Eastern Hills High School uh talk to Dr signs and Dr signs said it's not working for us some people don't want to go to the school it's just not being effective so they opened up the criminal justice program across the entire Fort Worth ISD they ask if we could open up our facility that one or two days a week those classes could come down and basically have classes you know in our facility and we've expressed to them we're more than happy to do so we're more than happy happy to try and help them find a transitional job if they want to be police officers in communication or some of our other civilian positions after they graduate high school and we're looking at this as a long-term win that the more people that we can get into our system that are homegrown and keep them engaged the more local talent that you're going to have out there serving the community okay additionally under Communications can you break that down for me a little bit where where are those 26 positions going to sure so subcategories so 20 26 12 of those positions if you remember last year we asked the council to give us kind of overage positions to allow us some flexibility because the amount of time it took to train those individuals to become call takers all we're doing is making those 12 positions permanent the additional positions are going to be 12 call taker positions and two supervisors for Spanish control and those are going to be on the floor answering the 911 calls and the non-emergency calls and the hope with that is you guys have heard the rollover line is to minimize the use of the rollover line to try and make sure a person hears a person every time they call the phone so that's that's what those additions are for I'm clear thank you sir you bet I've got a question for you on the Homegrown program it's much like fourth isd's grow your own yes which I think they found to be quite successful are you guys considering talking with the Housing Community because being able to subsidize housing for a new officer gives a community a cop car in the community sure and that's worked before maybe 15 years ago I don't know is that something you guys are we're definitely open to it for sure yes that that would be Perry pillow would be your contact with the apartment association but I know that the Constable's office years ago used that and it was a real big help to help recruit yes ma'am [Music] um I do look forward I appreciate this uh presentation today I do look forward to a little more as we go through this process I'd like to see what what else is in PD's budget I know we'll get ccpd briefed but um these positions are both General and ccpd sure but I'd like to know I'd like to have a better understanding of everything else that's in the budget not just Staffing um so I I think David can work on that um I want to talk about the recruitment process so before we get them and this is just really um out of some ignorance on my part um we have I'm looking at the number of applicants and it does look like we have dropped slightly but not significantly um so and then when we get to the civil service exam right that's when we see huge drops and so what happens between the applicant and the civil service exam is that the initial PT test is that what is that no so really uh between the application and the civil service test it's people not showing up okay so they just don't show up to take the civil service test okay so we we have not Incorporated doing the physical fitness test in the right as soon as they apply yet um but we may end up doing that because that helps at least let people gauge where they're at physical fitness wise sure yeah um and then um for the applicants is that when we start the back so by the time they get to the civil service exam we've done the background check no no the civil service exam is kind of like the first step into the door okay uh because until we figure out who has passed the civil service test then we issue the background booklet then they fill it out then that process begins okay perfect and so in between the application and the civil service exam civil service exam got it it's not what it sounded like I said um we're not uh sorry um what do we do to engage with them to like to keep them coming back so did you pick up what it sounded like I said yes thank you Maddie appreciate that just when I started to come down from it you brought it back he's getting right right up there okay so back to what I said between applications and civil service exam what do we do to engage with them as far as PT or studying for that civil service exam so the study in par they are given a study guide and that's that's given by the company itself the company also offers additional study guides for you know more money um but you know if they study just the basic study guide that will give them some idea of what's going on um I will tell you that we are looking to adjust the civil service test a little bit because the reason being this civil service test that they're doing right now was established back in 2021 it has reasoning and logic along with academic and it's weighted more reasoning and logic so for example it asks you a question do you strongly agree strongly disagree in the in the Spectrum what we're finding out is that once that test was established we went from about one or two academic failures up to double-digit academic failures and so we're working with HR to try and see because the contract is up in October to try and revamp that to see if we can get more aligned we're not asking to remove the reasoning part of it just maybe the percentage in which it's it's weighted in the test so to answer your question yes we give them study guides like I said with assistant chief Swearingen and be the change she reaches out personally she sends emails we have members of the recruiting staff that does the same they keep contact with the emails they're trying to encourage them they remind them when their study test is and the dates and times we do pretty much just about everything we can to try and get them in the door to take the test and what is the the typical wait time between the applique so it's usually about three months so we're we're going to start taking applications I think either September 1st or October 1st and the civil service test is in January okay and then so and so with the new staff that you're bringing on um that we developed some sort of Engagement absolutely with them and not just around the civil service exam no no no so just so you you guys are aware even though I have part-time people doing part-time stuff for recruiting we haven't had a civil service test for quite some time but yet let me get to the stats here they have still gone to because I knew this probably would come up they have gone to 78 events or businesses 14 colleges they've visited uh eight Fort Worth isd's two military installations and six they created six social media and commercial ads so they're still actively recruiting even though we don't have a civil service test coming up let them back up because I think uh you might have misunderstood where I was going with that I don't think that they're not doing anything between the silver exams what I was asking is from the time of the application until they take the civil service exam because that's that's the starting point of the academy right like they pass that then I guess well there's a lot of other hurdles to go through but yes um is it possible to create some sort of um routine and regimented interaction with these folks not just around passing that civil service exam but maybe the physical fitness standards as well so that so it's funny you should say that so one of the things that we're going to incorporate from the physical fitness side since we changed to running push-ups and setups um uh I've kind of directed the staff to have kind of what I call family fun days that they can invite their family to the academy but yet we're still going to work out we're still going to show them what the standards are we're still going to show them what is expected of them while they're there but also have the family component there so they can engage and the family can be also an active member in what's going on like do we offer say a Tuesday night um you know recruit club or whatever where they can PT standards and study as a so prior to the new physical fitness standards assistant chief Swearingen held many practice sessions because with the Physical Agility Test females had a real hard problem with the push-pull machine it's just unless you do it it's very unorthodox and until you practice with it it's I mean most people have problems with that so she had practices on the weekend she had practices during the week and our goal is to continue that along the way just to make sure people a they're staying you know in line with what we want them to do but B we're actively still engaging them and they're interested in becoming officers with us perfect um let's talk about class size for a second please um so you mentioned that we had a pretty large class we did there was quite a bit of attrition there was um do you attribute any of that attrition to the larger class size no I attribute it to the physical fitness standard because the large class was the last one that did the pat okay and then um do you is there a um like a national standard for kind of class size or is it all just resource dependent on each agency I'm sure it's resource dependent because if you go to New York they they have about 600 people that go through the academy and I will give an anecdotal story because I'm not trying to bash New York but our New York our New York recruit I've gotten to talk to her several different times and I asked her what the difference was between our Academy and her Academy she goes oh my God this is night and day difference it is so much harder than what I had to go through and I wouldn't have thought that you know but the standard she said the standards are so much higher the physical fitness standards the academic standards and she was very impressed compared to what she had gone through so I guess what I'm trying to get out here is we're not concerned that as we scale up these classes and make them larger that we're losing some of the richness the communication the training the reason why I say that is with the large class of 77 our goal is to try and put on several large classes to close the gap that's our goal 77 was a great number we actually were shooting for 90. so but we were only able to get 77 out of that list uh we did ask for I think it was one additional class counselor because of the size of the class and a class counselor kind of they mirrored the class throughout all everything that's going on um but for us is it a challenge absolutely because their sweet spot if you talk to training is 45 positions that's where they feel comfortable but sometimes you know we got to try things a little bit differently to see if it's going to work okay and so for me this new large class size was a good test case number one because the physical fitness standards was the old standard and we knew we were going to lose people but number two it lets us see if the training curriculum is actually going to work out the way we think it is okay perfect I want to switch gears uh and talk about uh those folks that we're losing that are already here and our attrition of officers sure so you talked about folks not going into the drop which is a pretty significant hit to their pension correct it is okay so that's um for me that's a bit concerning as to why we see a significant number of police officers electing to leave the city of Fort Worth instead of taking advantage of what is a a nice Financial benefit to their long-term wealth um we can talk about covid we can talk about civil unrest I get it it changed the way we did things across the country uh but we don't really see that here and despite what some people will let will lead you to believe we don't have um that rhetoric here in the city of Fort Worth the way that we see other places and so I am reluctant to to hang that hat on covid and civil unrest but I'm not okay and I'll tell you why and the reason why is because although it may not have been as impactful as it was in other cities it still was impactful to our officers because we had not experienced that in the past that's fair are we doing any exit surveys we do exit surveys with everybody okay yeah and so we we're pretty sure based on those exit service that's what that is absolutely nothing else I'm not going to say it's nothing else I mean some of it is family pressures because of what they see on social media because of what happened in 2020 and in all honesty some people are weighing is it even worth it to stay here past 25 years and go into the drop whenever I can take my pension and just walk out the door right and go do something else which is what they've done you know yes and we have some people that have retired prior to me reaching 25 years yeah I mean it's happened probably a little bit higher than what we'd like but it's not off the charts it's not one of those that you're like oh my God look at that number so we don't think that there's some sort of uh other systemic issue causing this particular training not that we're being told okay um and then my last question and then I'll let you off the hook maybe uh is what it is I know um when we talk about the new the allocation of new patrol officer positions um and so when I'm looking at the chart on Slide Five that's got the um the proactive time goal and whatnot Oh you mean that one that one yes yes okay so the the proactive time goal is with those new positions yes okay and so because I see like Central Division has the highest percentage of vacancies they do and uh the Northwest has the lowest but when we look at how we're adding them we're adding the same number and so is that specifically just to okay you're you're you're looking at vacancies compared to new positions that's okay it's a two that's a separate our conversation okay got it so vacancies are basically the vacant positions that are already funded that we don't have a body sitting in there right now so and as I said with the 39 people that are training those numbers will change whenever they get cut loose okay these are just adding new positions to the authorized strength got it and then my my last question for real last question for real I don't know so um when we look at the vacancies by division and we do see some big disparities is there a operational reason why we don't try to equalize that is that um so we do try and equalize that whenever classes come through we've been very fortunate because of this Council the city leadership that we've been able to have pretty consistent Academy classes and so with those consistent Academy classes when those new officers get cut loose we look at our Matrix and we look where the vacancies are and we allow so many positions for those uh for those divisions to equalize uh you know the numbers if they're a little bit out of whack so for example if Central Division had 17 vacancies I got a class of 20 people they're going to get the majority of those people to bring that number down but we don't do that in between classes no because the classes the class frequency is so great right now there's no need to do that okay thank you Macy and then Gina I had actually two questions about your side and thank you for putting this together I know it's a ton of work um we talked to me about response times I'm looking at the North what's the gold standard what do you want the response times to be and how should that look well the response times are now I mean you want them on a priority One call to be there as quick as possible what's realistic so you can see at the bottom what the average response times are um and that's 7.42 that's for a priority One Call 15 minutes pretty much for a party to call and the Matrix study said honestly with the priority two calls that's not out of line that's that's pretty consistent with the National Standard uh for us what I would love to see is us be able to get to a priority One Call in eight and a half minutes that's from the time the call is placed to the time an officer gets there there's a lot of things that go on in between there to try and make that happen uh but that that would be my gold standard just to start off with how can we reduce those times from like 18 minutes on priority to Priority 110 in the north so the funny thing is with the north if you look at the previous proactive time they had a pretty high proactive time of 40 percent the problem with North and I'm very familiar with North because I worked up there for about nine years it's the geographical enormity of that area and so at one point the infrastructure really wasn't that great you know the construction that's going on 35 there are not that many arterial streets to get from east to west or from north to south for that matter so really it's it's a lot of Patrol positioning where you put some of the positions you know the more positions we can have absolutely it would probably impact that number um but you know there are a lot more factors that are involved because if if you kind of look at some of the heads-up displays one accident on the freeway probably can wipe out an entire team if not more you know trying to block the freeway and keep everybody safe so it really depends on the call volume and North has the lowest call volume by all the divisions so um you know I we're trying to right size it because of the response time because in all honesty they probably out of this allocation if we wanted to keep everybody equal they probably would have only got two positions so thank you you bet this I this might be just a good time that's okay that's okay I'm going to over talk you um the the questions that I heard a council member Beck pose raised another question for me plus my eye contact with Diana and so this isn't really focusing on the police department but uh one thing that I know is covet gave us the great resignation then the giggers and now the return and now a number of people who are just not qualified and so when when Diana gives us her big picture I hope you can give us a comparison of what what happened in All City departments in terms of people who have Departed Chief I just want you to point out on the tail end of what councilmember hill was asking I think we all have an idea of what Priority One calls are imminent harm death that sort of thing but what are priority two calls so anybody watching would understand so anybody watching it's you know uh let's say an assault call but the actor's not on scene a disturbance uh somebody's in an argument uh there is a laundry list of things uh reckless driving can be a priority to call um there's probably about 50 things criteria the majority of our calls are priority two calls and so you know if as long as it's not life and death right now more than likely it's going to be a priority to call unless it's a report call if it's a report call that's priority three but anything else it's pretty much a priority too I'll jump in no you're all good that was quick so I got four things um first thing is um for folks watching um especially in District Six I know um one of the biggest needs has been the need for more patrols specifically for um high-speed traffic traffic enforcement um reckless driving that kind of thing um can you talk about patrols duties um real quick so that we understand kind of what all does that mean when we talk about a patrol officer yeah a patrol officer is pretty much the Swiss army knife of what we have any kind of problem that comes in they triage the problem they go address the problem that comes into reckless driving the racing speed concerns answering calls for service of course is their primary function of course they answer calls By Priority but another thing that we tasked them with is become beat experts no people on their beats no you know the businesses on their beats I can tell you with the 141 vacancies that we have right now the 61 officer vacancies that we have it's very challenging you know if we were fully staffed I think we might be having a different conversation because maybe some of the complaints that you hear from your constituents you may not be hearing because we would be fully staffed and they would see all the officers that were out there all right thank you for that at least my second question I know um our residents have mentioned quite a bit over the past couple months I'm not seeing enough presence special as a relates to high speed traffic and that's one deterrent of it and I noticed that in the vacancies Health vacancies we're at 15 I think we're the second largest of all the divisions what's the plan for filling those because I know part of what they're seeing in the field with not seeing presences a function not of having that many vacancies so what's the plan to fill that by when so one quick thing on that I know that there's different schools of thought about or placement of new recruits and I know there's one train of thought that would say you don't want to put all your new recruits concentrate on one 1B because you want to be able to commingle them with folks with experience what's the plan in addition to filling those by when for transfers versus new recruits absolutely so the filling the positions we haven't filled last year fiscal year positions so South Division last year got nine additional Patrol positions which again hoping by July of this upcoming year we will be fully staffed under that realm which means they will see more Patrol officers then according to the graph in you know 2026 you will see the full gamut of the people that you know we are approving now which will increase their Staffing even more so you know the timeline is long because our Academy still is long I mean it still takes a while from application process to get them you know by themselves so it's it's not a quick process and I'm sure you've probably heard some grumbling last year whenever we approved additional mpos took us a while to get those mpos out there because the goal is we don't want to take away from Patrol to basically create some of these specialized positions that we have because we need the call answering bodies and so it's it's going to be very tricky and there's a little bit of scientific nature behind how we feel what positions when um but you know for us again Patrol is the priority there is no doubt about it we want Patrol to be as fully staffed as possible and as quick as we can get them fully stuffed we're going to all the recruit classes they go to patrol every one of them they don't go to a specialized unit they get trained they go out to patrol so the quicker we can get those classes out graduated the quicker we're going to be able to fill those vacancies so to answer your second question so whenever we have a recruit class that is about to get cut loose we that's solo status give them the keys to the car they can go answer a call what we do is we open up basically anybody within the the patrol Bureau can sign up for other positions that are available so we unblock some of the block positions that we have and say okay if you guys want to move across the city Now's the Time to do it because all of our positions are based on seniority seniority is the basis of every positional move so we allow the most Junior officers basically to have pretty much the bad days off in the beginning until they can work their way up in seniority so usually what happens is when we open up the sign ups for anybody to be able to move around they start filling in some of those gaps because in all honesty we hold some really good days off back throughout that process that once they become open bam everybody kind of wants to jockey to get better days off or maybe move to another side of town then we're able to backfill you know with the new recruits into some of those other vacant positions fortunately for us because we have so many vacancies across the city we don't concentrate a large number of recruits in one area on one team we're able to spread them out among second and third shift pretty much in all six divisions great thank you for that two more and I'll be I'm done um you teed up a little bit in that my next question related to mpo another pain point time for District Six residents it is the size of mpo Beats and I know last year we were able to get an additional mpo I didn't see it in the breakout of stat positions it's not in this year's budget right and that leads to my next question um both with mpo and with Patrol I know you said you want to be conscious of other departments and I think that's a commendable and much appreciated and also we know how important Public Safety is do we need more Patrol and mpo officers in South Division and across the city well I mean I of course we need more people officers and mpos I mean but again whenever we look at the reality of being able to fill those positions uh and sir I know there's a finite number of resources finite number of dollars across the city I get that um you guys get complaints of potholes streets street lights Parks we don't want to take away from that we do want to be good good partners with other departments because again they are important I know Public Safety is important I really do but I've been I've been very blessed over the last couple of years to have some of the largest increases in our authorized strength because of this body the city manager Fernando Costa being able to guide us through that process I mean in history I don't think we've had this this many increases in this short succession yeah thank you for that um it leads kind of to comment for David I'm David I would like to see more Patrol in mpo in District Six particularly because especially with traffic enforcement I've I've had to drive by too many um makeshift memorials along the side of the road McCart Risinger Etc and I think it's too important of a conversation for us to limit ourselves because of authorized strength when we know that we're having challenges such as high speed and reckless driving and so I want to put that on the record um and advocate for District Six that we need an additional NPO and more Patrol last thing I'll say and I'll be done I know your team and chief swearing Jen and Deanna work really hard on the recruit pay and it does have to be in this session but I would love for us to get an update last year I know we raised recruit pay to try to be more competitive with other cities we didn't get as far as I would like I would like to see 75 80 000 for our recruits but I would like us to talk about that kind of where we're headed and where we need to go maybe not in this talk about that a little bit if you'd like it yeah so you know our sworn salaries of course are kind of regulated by the meet and confer contract right I do not want to pay recruit more than I pay an officer that's out in the field agreed that implies everyone else goes up that is correct and so what we have done with the recruit pay is basically we have kept it at 10 below the first year officer that's on the street by themselves and so that number is going to continually move up every time there's a pay raise with a meet and confer contract and so it may not be as high as you want to but you know I'm not going to insult the officers in the field by giving a recruit a lot more money to sit in an academy class right and I don't mean that anything yeah oh I didn't think you did I don't know and the reason I say that is and it kind of goes back to what Dave was talking about earlier but affordability in this city is increasingly becoming a challenge we saw the Alice report come back that average livable wage now for families is 30 an hour and so I want us to make sure that we're keeping Pace not only for our new recruits to be abstractive but also for our current absolutely employees in the force I think it's so critical that we keep pace of that year over year and just so that they're not in you know the food bank line 100 I'm working for a city doing a public service and I just for a reminder for people that weren't on Council our recruit pay was forty thousand a year and it had not changed in seven years but because of this body we were able to to bring it up in line with other departments so that did help that problem thank you thank you yes um I don't have any more questions I am going to cut us off as close to New as possible because several of you have to go to RTC I think yeah and drive that way so just sucks remember that I Know Chief looks real sad about that who else had questions Carlos and then Jeanette okay I'll be very brief okay I'm talking back to me on this long-standing NPO vacancies I know that there's some concern up north of the loop and then second we've been working on this we can talk about it later setting up a Stockyards bike Patrol I think that there is I know there's not funding for it in this budget cycle but there is opportunity we have two non-profits and we could maybe fund that in part through the pit and we're getting more money in there we really need to engage more on that front David I think because there is a need for more of a presence a a presence that can be very mobile through dense crowds they have to ride with boots and cowboy hats yeah thank you Jeanette so mine are gonna be really quick um with the vacancies uh District 11 actually has four different divisions oh yeah East South Central and Northwest um have we ever considered uh offering an incentive for transfers because East South and Central has the highest vacancies um and participation in the exit surveys at 100 and what how extensive is the exit survey so exit surveys of course are voluntary even though we try and talk to each every person that's walking out because we have to sign their resignation paperwork and so I usually call them in my office and ask them what's going on you know is there something that we can do is there anything that we can do to entice them and I will tell you as we were in 2021 pretty much after you know the the social unrest it was just the people that I saw leaving more so than not were because of that you know the political the the social pressure that they felt and it wasn't because of lack of support from the city of Fort Worth because we have great support from the citizens from the council it's just overall you know you got you got the family pressures and they got to think about their family first and I get it yeah uh Chief I did have a question a couple of questions I won't ask them all uh I would like to see uh in another presentation uh along with the office of vacancies uh crime response time and the hot spots that you talk about in uh in the ccpd uh budget uh because I'm pretty convinced that where the vacancies are the most is where we have the most high spots as well and so alluding to what a councilwoman Martinez just mentioned about incentives I I um why are some of our why why do we have so many vacancies in that location uh because officers are transferring out or because they are leaving is it a hard place to work yes so I mean every division honestly has its own challenges and I'm not trying to be flippant it's there some people are whenever they retire or resign that vacancy occurs um if for some reason somebody gets disciplined and get fires that they can see occurs sure uh some people uh their friends are working on another side of a town and say hey come over and work with me um very rarely is it because of the citizens that are there the call load I mean it's not because of that it's because of their own personal feelings about where they want to work because I'll tell you in every division we say we have some phenomenal officers doing some phenomenal work so you know and I and I will talk about you know the incentive of going to other divisions um again we're seniority based uh can't really offer incentives whenever we're in seniority based whenever we're talking about allocation and resources fair but we do have to be good at managing where our offices are to make sure we do a crime is low in every area I agree 100 percent Elizabeth uh I wasn't gonna do it to you but since Carlos started it I'm going to finish it uh bike bike Patrols in um in near South Side I know we discussed it um I think it's probably a little late for this particular budget but I do think I look forward to working with you in this body over the next year to talk about where as we develop and redevelop as a city and we focus on these Urban Villages and higher density to be a little more proactive on the types of types of areas that we think by Globe a by team would be most appropriate you know maybe identify those for for future as well yes ma'am thank you Chief only and we can talk about this later but on especially in the north and Northwest we've gotten a lot of emails of concern from residents about Patrol about response times do you have current mous with some of those other cities that are in the that northern part of the city like Keller or Justin maybe share that with us separately because I think there might be some misunderstanding from constituents about they make an assumption that they just stop at city limits and knowing that's not the case to try to drive down those times I think would be helpful yes ma'am thank you any other questions counsel so Gina wants me out of control we'll just switch it mounted can go to stop six and you can have your bike Patrol and Stockyards perfect yes very true very true okay great presentation Chief thank you very much appreciate it with that we're meeting adjourned foreign