for for for I think we're about ready to get started um we may have Janette jump on remotely so we'll watch for her if she does um Mark do you need to kick us off is that correct I know that Christian looks like she's loading some PowerPoints thank you all for organizing this it looks like a great agenda and look forward to the conversation yes I'll go first and then we'll start I think with Dian and then then go to Christian so this is your last preliminary uh Workshop this year that we've started uh hopefully the ones that we've had so far have been help ful and giving you uh some good information to be thinking about we don't have any um significant new information regarding the property tax um or the levy just because uh they're going through their protests right now and uh hearings and we won't get a certified role until late July and then right after that we'll be uh providing the recommended budget so today we turn our attention really to other major Revenue sources particularly on general fund and namely Sal tax you'll see it's much more modest growth that we've seen in the current year and I'm projecting for next year but um please ask questions about some of the projections we have uh we also want to lay out some major cost drivers particularly in the area of personnel uh as you know it's the largest part of our budget and and drives a lot of our costs and then I want to emphasize that all figures and proposals have not been fully vetted by CMO we actually had our budget bullits last Wednesday Thursday Friday Friday and so we're we haven't even begun to look at some of these proposals including Revenue proposals so it's all very fresh and you're getting it in real time uh again so that you can take it all into consideration early um we had up to I mean over aund million in new requests from departments um and that's so far uh we're going to comb back through all of our notes from you all that from our one-on ones to make sure that we've captured those and some of the uh deliberations that we will'll have before we bring you a balanced budget uh and you know go back through and scrub and make sure that uh if the Departments didn't ask for certain things that we feel like you know you all really wanted we you know we'll we'll consider that for sure and then finally um it's getting pretty clear I think that this budget will be tighter than the last two or three um we'll spend the next 60 days putting together a balanced proposed budget as required by state law and City Charter and as we put the puzzle together um a lot will hit U The Cutting floor just because there's only so much we can afford um within um our current revenue streams and of course ultimately you'll decide what's in the budget and what's not and hopefully this is uh again these sessions have been helpful early uh and and giving you real time information so that you can then consider all of your Alternatives uh so we will after today we'll be back to you uh for a presentation of the proposed budget in mid August um and then we'll go through a series of additional workshops public comment and so forth leading up to adoption in September so um with that unless there's any questions I want to turn over to Dianna who will get us started so di girano Human Resources Director and I'm gonna talk about some of the major budget drivers and total compensation that we offer and provide to employees here in the city of Fort Worth and so first start off with just kind of what is total compensation what does it include we provide employees with a menu of robust options that kind of meet all of their individual needs as well as that of their dependence and so that includes all of these different benefits that are listed there but kind of the top of of the total compensation package is pension and pension is still a great benefit that the city of Fort Worth extends to all of our full-time employees in addition to that we have a medical program uh where we provide um for it medical program that's free for an employee only on the consumer Choice plan in addition we have a high deductible plan and the city contributes $540 per individual and up to $1,000 where an individual has their family on their medical plan we also provide a menu of options that related to Dent dental benefits B uh basic life insurance is provided at cost to the city so no cost to the individual unless they have uh they want to upgrade the benefit coverage we also provide robust sick and vacation leave Banks as well as nine paid holidays two personal holidays and a wellness program which also includes an insurance premium discount for the medical plan that the individual elects and then an employee assistance plan and I want to just highlight just on the medical plan this is all for General employees as well as police I wanted to just note that fire administers their own um health plan so what does it mean um to be fully insured the or self-insured the city of uh Fort Worth is a self-insured insured provider so we basically take on the risk and the financial responsibility of all of the claims that we experience within our health plan and so um we're responsible for paying all of the bills associated with that we're responsible for all of the risk that might be associated with the health with the health expenses of our employees we do hire a thirdparty administrator which basically processes all the bills on behalf of the city but to be self-insured it allows us to kind of shape our program to meet the needs of our individuals that are on our members that are on the health plan and so we look at data that uh looks at Cost drivers or medical drivers so that we can shape the plan to meet their needs we also have stoploss coverage and that's basically supplemental insurance for claims that will exceed 1 million and so I'll tell you just in the last two years in 2023 we had um three claims that exceeded that $1 million expense uh this year we have two claims that will hit or exceed that $1 million expense and one that's even nearing $2 million so as we are self-insured we have to monitor all of that data and aggregate it and make business decisions or even plan design changes to make sure that we um are trying to contain costs here's just a group fund overview for the last few years and what we're proposing for fiscal year 25 so we are proposing a 5% increase on City contributions so that's um comparable to what we did in fiscal year 24 as well as in fiscal year 23 the employees saw an c a premium increase in 2023 and that was the first time since 2018 and so basically their plan elections of what they purchased on the medical plan side they didn't see an increase for a significant number of years that increase did occur in 2023 in 2021 kind of as a result of kind of the covid dip where individuals weren't seeking coverage we had two premium holidays and so we were collecting more premiums than we were paying out in expenses and this is a benefit of being self-insured because you're able to kind of have those modifications and changes we've also added just four different point Solutions um to make sure that we can address the needs of our our members that are on our health plan and just so that you know we have over 9,952 belly buttons on our plan so this is not just employees but their spouses their dependants and all of those individuals kind of make up the uh medical plan for the city here's what our claims cost has been experiencing and so there's um kind of when you go into starting in 2019 we made some significant changes but we saw the same dip that every other organization saw as it relates to Medical Health claims in 2020 and so that was the co year and you'll see kind of coming out of covid in 2021 and 2022 we start to spike and then the numbers increase very significantly in 2024 and some of what we're seeing is delayed care and so individuals didn't seek medical treatment even coming out of Co there was still some hesitation in 21 and 22 and some of that delayed care or uh late detection of issues or concerns is driving up some of the cost again three claims in excess of $1 million in 23 we're seeing complex metal medical conditions we're seeing inflation cost in even just the medical industry as well is what you're hearing kind of in every other industry and then we are seeing cost drivers U on the medical prescription side and these are the glp1 prescriptions for weight management you've all heard it OIC wovi all of those different uh gp1s since they're fairly new it's trending and they're trending higher and they're very expensive um we do hope that it has a long-term effect that individuals that are able to manage those weights that their weight are going to have uh not have those significant issues that come as a result of it so overall increase in treatment costs so we're seeing the same that you're seeing across all Industries in our health health plan as well here's the health fund proposal again the we're asking the city to contribute an increased 5% um in City contributions for the employee health plan that's $2.7 million for a total of $ 62.9 million that's in the in the budget we're asking for employee premium contributions of a comparable amount it's much less so 474 th000 spread that across those uh employees that that elect to take our plan here's how it kind of breaks down we still have the consumer Choice plan that's free to employe so if it's just an employee only they get that at no cost uh to them if they're looking at the health center plan um employee only the increase is 332 a month and that gets even smaller when you start to break it across 26 pay periods for employee and family on the health center plan which is our most expensive plan the increase per month is $23 and that actually um turns out to be about $10 and some change per pay period for employees and family on that Health Center plan the consumer Choice plan is 1672 per month and so you'll see the increases um for both the city and the employer across all of those different funds and how those contributions are allocated here's just an overview of pension contributions and so I share this because the the pension is a significant portion of contributions and and budget drivers by the city the general employees in group one and two as well as fire employees the city contribution based on their average on their salary is 26.6 4% the employees contribute at varying rates from 10.95 for that group to 11.65 for group one and then fire contributes at 13.65 police is contributing at a higher rate they have a a richer benefit if you will as it relates to pension City contribution is over 27% and then employees are 14 .73 I'll share this um you know these are the contributions that we experience here in the city we don't contribute to Social Security so there's a little bit of an offset as as um you would see in other employing organizations but I want to share with you just what does the total compensation look like on average our employees General employees make about $65,000 a year so if we look at 65,000 then add in some of the other benefits that we budget and and account for the healthy challenge incentive is a 2 $50 benefit that we can award to employees medical insurance I'm looking at the most popular plan the health center plan for employee and family that's over $119,000 that's uh allocated on the in the city's budget holidays uh $2,750 paid vacation days 3,750 paid sick sick leave 10 days per year it's 2500 of course the city contribution to the pension is over 17,000 the basic life which again we provide at no expense to the city is $60 and then the employee assistance program at 23 and so it gives you kind of a total compensation for an individual making 65,000 the total rewards package and this doesn't include um sick leave or holidays it's $166,000 so it's a something that we share with our employees it's available for them to see not everybody sees all of the benefit or cost that comes associated with their position they just see what they take home and so we have to um make sure that this is available to them just so they can see the total package and the total compensation for employees as we look at just what does that look like you heard Mark say it's one of the big biggest expenses to the city this is the total Personnel budget when you look at base pay benefits and and pension and it's $888 million proposed for fiscal year 25 it's 70% of the general fund budget and so these are just information that we kind of keep at the Forefront and we work in partnership with Fort Worth lab because every decision that we make on the HR side has a huge financial impact on the budget side and so we have to stay in partnership with those um with that div with that department questions on benefits or total compensation questions from Council for Di Macy just one clarifying question what is the difference between group employees one and group employees two it's their higher date and so it's individuals there were significant pension change that were made and I want to say in 09 and I'm looking to my team to validate that in 09 there was pension changes that were made and so that's where the group one and group two were created y May fortim Bivens di great presentation I have a question for you but there's no urgency today to answer but on the slide where you show the 2024 compensation I think you said the average salary is like 65,000 yes at some point can you give us the demographics of that breakdown because when I hear we have city employees who at the hourly wage are way below that be interesting to see you where the money is going okay and demographics to include education ethnicity sex age what have you goad Jared uh thank you di for this uh presentation it's very helpful on the slide with the health fund proposal I just want to make sure I'm reading this correctly for the employee plus family the health center plan for an employee to have insurance with their family included is $789 does that include children and spouse or is that yes children only or it's children and and and spouse and so that could be one child two child two children three children Etc right and then um just help me clarify uh the difference between Health Center plan and consumer Choice plan because I see that that's 574 in that same category the consumer Choice plan would be considered a high deductible plan and so you have an upfront expenses whereas the health center plan there's less outof pocket expenses at the frontend I see that makes sense High deductible what is what does that look like doll and I'm looking to Joanne to come answer questions if she needs to but the high deductible plan basically says you're going to pay an out of out of pocket expense up to a certain threshold and thereafter then your insurance kicks in I see last question just um and this could be information provided later but which um plan do most employees generally choose the health center plan which is the one that we used for the total Comp Health Center plan with with family okay great thank you any other questions from Council no thank you di all right I might need help okay but I get the pleasure of presenting the workforce pay strategies in the entry wage analysis and so I'll walk through this uh presentation with you and provide you with information that you'll need to kind of make informed decisions about uh direction for the city and so this information is going to give you just kind of what we've done to date and then kind of what that might look like going forward and I'll start with kind of just the entry wage analysis and kind of the history of where we began and so as you know the federal minimum wage has remained unchange for for for decades so so or at 725 and so that rate has has left has remained unchanged the city's minimum wage rate has increased about 74% from 2014 to 2024 and the current rate is 1545 and what we're proposing for fiscal year 25 is607 that started at just 725 in fiscal year or 7 88 in fiscal year 14 so it's grown significant significantly over that time for um General employees where they on average sit is about 3165 and so that includes all General employees do include any of the sworn individuals when we establish our minimum wage rate we apply that across all classifications and all jobs to include temporary and seasonal jobs the um cumulative increase that you see 3165 that is only full-time employees so it's just giv you kind of a baseline of where we sit as an organization with our with our Workforce when we look at Market competitive pay strategies typically what we've done historically is we utilize Market data to make kind of just Market driven decisions and to look to analyze just our current pay structure as well as just pay practices the last comprehensive compensation study was conducted in 2014 and implemented in 2015 in the city of Fort Worth thereafter what we've done is we have a biannual Market study that we do every two years so it's every odd years and we Implement uh that information using both public and private data so we look at Benchmark cities in the state of Texas and sometimes even out outside where there might not be good job matches in the state um and we also purchase private pay data so we look at purchased private industries that might have comparable jobs to what we do and we use that data to then decide are the jobs in the right pay grade are they being paid a market a market industry pay or do we need to move them in our pay structure we evaluate our our salary structure and really re evaluate jobs annually because there might be jobs that we identify as either hard to fill or difficult to recruit for maybe we're getting declined offers or just High exit strategies that warrants us to look at individual jobs and so that's done at an individual level and so we also look at um salary surveys so we may be reaching out inhouse to other cities or other entities to look at hard to fill positions and making adjustments as we need and so we do that on a regular basis and we've done that probably more frequently in the last few years than historically and that's just kind of the labor market where we have uh more jobs than people so here's what we've done in 22 um in 2022 we looked at the minimum pay rate which increased to $15 an hour we also adjusted our Market our entire compensation structure by 4% and basically what that did is it took all of our jobs and it increased the minimum and the maximum earning potential for every job in the city for General employees and increased it by 4% so the entire structure moved by 4% we also provided pay for performance which is uh paying individuals based on their demonstrated performance and contributions to the city we allow that range to be anywhere from 0% up to 7% so there's some flexibility for Department directors to make uh informed pay decisions for their Workforce in addition in 2022 you might recall this was kind of the arpa funds and organizations were making those one-time uh Awards or incentives to retain individuals it was $1,000 $2,000 you might have heard three ,000 we did Market pay adjustments using the same pay for performance data adding 2% for individuals that were valued and 3% for individuals that were accomplished so using that same performance data we added it to base pay so where other indiv entities were doing that lump sum we were adding it to base pay so that it was sustained and to the individuals pay and their take-home pay and so that was an initiative that we um implemented in 22 in 201 three we raised the minimum wage rate again to 1545 we also adjusted our salary structure 3% so taking the entire structure moving it again 3% we also uh had the pay for performance once again using the 0 to 7% increase allowing department heads the ability to um award for performance we had a market study for Market competitiveness which included again public and private data that was purchased we also had a 2.5% Market adjustments for hard to fill positions so we went through and analyzed High turnover jobs low applicant poll jobs uh jobs where we were struct where we were suffering and either attracting or retaining Talent those particular jobs received in addition to pay for performance a 2.5% base wage rate increase um we also implemented kind of a Citywide signon program as well as an employee referral program and again to attract Talent um to the to the organiz iation I will say um when we looked at all of that past Market data and pay strategies what we saw is that 84% of employees that received pay adjustments in 22 and 23 are still actively employed so we feel like those base pay changes did result in what we attempted to achieve for our hard-to-fill jobs uh we had a we saw a significant decrease in turnover we were experiencing a 32% turnover rate in 22 that dropped to 133% in 23 for those very targeted jobs and your calendar year to date it were hovering about 6% and so we do feel like is kind of had the effect that we set out to accomplish of the hardto fill jobs that was about 35 different job titles and 1,400 employees out of our um 4,700 General employees that exist in the city's Workforce yeah I think counc Flores had a question and uh on this topic right here here uh di what is or does the city have a specific Target in mind when it comes to retention you say that you your results indicated 84% and that was uh acceptable and satisfactory to you all but did you have a goal set out before you did this yeah so the the turn the attrition goal that we're hoping to get back to and it looks like we're nearing there is to stay below 10% so attrition is going to occur right we recognize that but historically it was about 10% we saw that rise in upwards of 20% for our general employees we're trying to get back to kind of a normal state so that we can manage uh with retaining some level of continuity with our Workforce so that was kind of our our ultimate goal and this is calendar year data so we kind of measure that at year end um employees make employment decisions at the year end and so we have to kind of just keep man monitoring that as the year continues okay and and the followup question given that uh Municipal Employees sometimes go from one city to the other uh do we keep track of what other comparable cities do in terms of their attrition goals yes we keep track based on just kind of our HR Network we really keep track of just kind of not only their attrition but just some of their pay initiatives organizations were doing kind of the sign on bonus we were also kind of leading the effort there as well um they were making just different pay decisions and pay strategies around pay I believe our e efforts were better because we weren't doing the lump sum onetime Awards we were doing base pay um effects so thank you C nles yes uh question on the heart of field jobs um you said was about 30 how many about 80 jobs so it was 30 36 jobs that we identified that were hard to fill 35 classifications 1400 employees could you list a few of them off I mean they're in the low level or on the high level as it they were everywhere so I can list a few off because it was jobs you know even in the um Deputy City Marshall engineering positions equipment operators um maintenance workers there were customer service reps Recreation assistance it was across every job in family so it wasn't just limited to the entry roles it was across all of our organizations okay thank you any other questions counc Hill So when you say hard to fill are those jobs that have been left vacant for a certain time period or how do you what what's the definition of that yeah so it was it was a combination of activities so it was everything from jobs that stayed vacant or that had a very low applicant pool so you know in normal jobs we can attract in upwards of 100 plus these jobs were seeing applicants of less than 10 and so we looked at that data we looked at turnover dat data we looked at decline job offers so we looked at a a variety of activities that would indicate that there was an issue or concern counc back Diana can you tell me what the um average cost is of on boarding a new employee to the city of Fort Worth yeah so there's kind of a variety of schools of thought there um it can be anywh and upwards of half the annualized salary of the position to just on board an individual and so you've heard me say it you know I I I get the attraction in the acquisition of new talent I want to keep the talent that we have in the organization I want to grow that talent and I want to promote those employees to have careers with the city of Fort Worth and so we aim to kind of accomplish all of that and so we have to have that Focus perspective that's across the organization as we make pay decisions okay so you said up to half of the salary correct correct is there a a bottom we you gave us the top is actually the top is a full salary I think the med the median is about half the annualize salary so if we're lucky we get a get out of it with about half of their salary as the total estimated cost for onboarding a new employee correct best case scenario and that's just kind of an HR rule of thumb sure all right thank you any other questions you can keep going di thank you so here's the results of pay for performance and I'll say having worked in three cities this be my third City in another County I've never seen a bell curve so nice as I've seen here in city of Fort Worth so hats off to the department directors that manage performance and their management Personnel that kind of manage all of these activities but you'll see um using that 0 to 7% it has a really nice spell curve where most of the employees are sitting at 4% increases for their um performance contributions to the organization in fiscal year 20 we also proposing that same 4% increase with 0 to 7 being the range uh for in 24 um it averaged right about 4.02% 99.4% of the employees that received more than 4% are still employed with the city so those are our high performers high potential individuals that are still with the organization this uh on fiscal year 23 about 88.5% of the employees that received more than 4% are still employed with the of Fort Worth and again those are the individuals that's your high quality talent that you want to preserve in the organization so it does show kind of a nice bell curve um distribution of pay for performance May Pim de just a a question for you have you previously run the numbers to show what it would take to get $20 an hour as our minimum have you run yes and I'll get to there's a slide in the presentation that will kind of talk us through that okay okay and here's the turnover data so this gives you kind of the aggregate data across all classifications the fire police and general employees we are trending downward in calendar year 24 and so that's good news right um if you look at uh calendar year 23 um and 22 for General employees we were exceeding 20% in 23 in 22 we closed the year at 24.25 per turnover that's one in for employees on the general employee side so that was a huge problem we are trending at 5.79 calendar year today and so we're projecting that that number is going to decrease and normalize uh council member Flores to your question earlier we're getting back I would hope but we're getting back to kind of normalized attrition and turnover you'll see the same is true in police and fire their numbers are coming down um and so we're seeing that um make some some great Improvement and then just across the organization it's it's getting to a a better place Diana do you see um similarities with national National Economic and job data based on Co the great resignation where the country was from a job perspective and things have kind of stabilized because the economy is where it is I I believe that is the case and that's what we're hearing in the just the HR profession is that things are starting to normalize just because of some of the uncertainty with the economy so there's just those predictions we are seeing where we're budgeting 4% for pay for performance we're seeing organizations dip that down so they're falling between 3 3.75 and 3.8 on uh pay increases so we're seeing things go back in I'm going to say normalized preo thank you councilor Williams yes M thank you um Diana I'm I'm noticing there's a significant difference between General police and fire in terms of the average retention over this time period um what are some of the drivers where um for police and fire that keeps retention low in comparison to General employees yeah I'll say for the sworn members it's probably going to be their contracts and their guaranteed step increases as well as just year-over-year increases to their rates of pay for General employees I think in 2020 during the covid year they saw um uh they didn't see the increase that they would have seen to base pay um and so it's it's going to be the contractual and then of course the the fire and police they do see that as a industry profession and so they grow in that organiz ation through those step increases and through the ranks for General employees it's still competitive right you're still competing to get into a higher role or for promotional opportunity and so the other piece is that just working in the metro area it's really just a matter of going east or west or north or south in the highway to get to a neighboring City and so that you know contributes to the um turnover issue when we have more jobs than people and so that's a an area of concern that we've identify that makes total sense I know that um as a council we um tackled that challenge with police um with and councilman nles was um definitely vocal on this issue but um when our with our recruit pay um it was severely low we were losing recruits to other cities um and um we decided as a council to do something about that in fact I think we all wanted to do more than what police was willing to do at that time because we thought they should be around 775,000 um but they they advised us to hold off we would get there um but um it's just impressive to see the differences in in turnover compared to police and fire yeah and I'll say just city government entities municipalities the trend is right about 10 to 12% so these numbers of what we were seeing in 23 and 24 and 22 a lot of other municipalities were seeing the very same experience and police and fire have always just historically trended lower so this gives you kind of just an overview of total compensation and I I Shar this go ahead sorry I didn't catch it before you slipped um so you said that the general that for General employees across municipalities the trend tends to be 10 to 12% correct turnover corre that's the normal Trend okay and so that would put us about almost 6% above the the a the trend that we see for municipalities is that correct 6% above are are you counting 24 or the previous years you tell me cuz I'm looking at the the general number for General employees yeah so for General employees we're trending right below 6% right now for 24 okay yeah for General employees but industry so where does I guess um I'm a little um can you tell me where the 10 to 12% comes from oh that's just a benchmark that's just kind of a traditional Municipal Benchmark it was about 10 to 12% preo so I think a lot of organizations experience the same Spike that we saw okay and so they're starting to kind of normalize um back to preco yeah and we don't know we haven't done that uh postco then I'm assuming we don't know what that Trend looks like no okay and so so this year we're under because it's only till April but it looks like for General employees we've been almost double correct some years correct okay all right so this gives you just a total compensation overview for um pension specifically and so I share this with you because it shows kind of just the position of Fort Worth and so Fort Worth employee retirement fund again the contribution rate just being 10.95 the employer rate 26.6 four um in comparison to Dallas employees retirement fund where their employee contribution is 13.32 but the employer contribution is 14.46 and so that's you know the closest city with a comparable pension fund uh similar to the cities but our contribution rate is in employers is a lot higher when you look at Statewide Retirement Systems so tmrs Employee Retirement System tcdrs um their contribution rates on the employer side at the highest with ERS of Texas is 16.83% [Music] so it puts the city at a slight disadvantage just because our contributions are higher on the pension side all for good cause but it does have an effect in the total compensation the other thing the other issue that we're faced with with the Statewide Retirement Systems is they're portable so people can move around through different systems and maintain that uh vesting schedule as well as their contributions where Fort Worth it's it's specific to Fort Worth and and Dallas would be the same so you have just some examples to show again just total compensation if we're starting at $20 an hourly rate once you add in all of those benefits uh to include pension and Healthcare it's more like 29 Point $29. 31 um for the total hourly rate and then the same is true at $25 an hour it's an upwards of $35 an hour for just the total hourly rate councilman Williams and then go ahead so di just as a point of interest and I'm looking at the employer contribution to the pension plans and we're talking about total compensation as compared to uh private sector or general standards do we have any data on what uh is generally contributed by the employer for 401k as an example iside of a pinion well the real example that I can share with you is MedStar and so um you know looking at how they contribute to their employer employees 401K it's a 5% match and so it's significantly less I think there's some positions where it might be 7% and so it's significantly less um contributions on the employer side and so that's a real example um I think it just depends it might depend on the position um in each organization but this this does you know the our contribution rate puts us at a disadvantage thank you councilor Williams thank you mayor um di on this Slide the employer rates for the city of for is that state Mand mandated or is that um our internal standard it's it's mandated by our code and I'm looking to the legals our employer rate yeah it was all dictated in 2019 with through all those pension changes to keep our pension stabilized so Mak I think Dallas would rather be in our position FR frankly but yeah that makes and that's how it's that's how it's being managed so we don't have the state step in right we're trying to make sure that we can manage the pension fund you you heard from the um pension board not long ago on just the financial standing of the pension Y and so lots of decisions were made to make sure that it could remain sound and decrease um the years to cover the liability and expenses for the fund that makes sense and one last question this might be very very Elementary but do employees get the chance um do they have the choice to cash out on their pension contributions or how do they access those funds okay so if they're um active employees first I'll say it's it's mandated so every employee that joins the city of Fort Worth it's full-time they have it's a mandatory contribution they don't get to choose second is they don't get to cash out their fund so it stays there until they either meet the rule of 80 or 25 years and out for police so once they meet that rule they have a calculated formula based on their High earnings that will derive a benefit that they'll be entitled to for the rest of their life so unlike a 401k where you get just the contributions that you put in this pension is really nice because you're going to get that benefit for the rest of your life but vesting is still at five years correct vesting is at five years employ could leave and take their vested interest in those those Pension funds and take it to another retirement fund and they'll get their contributions if they leave within that 5year period if they leave out outside of the 5year period that option's still open to them I'd never recommend it because you'd eventually hit that retirement eligibility age but that is an option and then last question from a budget perspective um what Revenue Source do we contribute the employer contribution out of and how's the funds held until the employees retired yeah and so I think it depends on where the positions budgeted but as I said earlier 30% of or 70% of the general fund supports um salaries pension and benefits so this next um slide provides you with minimum wage survey and you've seen this before so it kind of gives you all of the cities that we typically Benchmark against in the state of Texas it includes Dallas and tarant County just because then they're in our respective area but the survey average is about $15.31 per hour what we're proposing is607 so a 4% increase in fiscal year 24 we use the same cities for police meet and confer as well as collective bargaining that are in Texas so that we could Benchmark against them and so this provides you with just some data of where that rate is it's as low as 974 um in one city and as high as $20.80 in another so here's some different kind of wage analysis scenarios in um what we're showing here is that if we go to 16007 as proposed we'll have about 121 employees impacted across 15 job classifications there's no pay structure impact because again we're getting the entire structure and moving it up 4% and so the total cost to fund this initiative is about $679,000 we did provide some additional scenarios so that you could see the impact um to the other uh alternative wage rates and so I'll start with just using the example of $18 an hour and if we go to $18 an hour there's about 525 employees that are affected it's a cost increase of $2.9 million that's just taking those employees that fall below that rate and bringing them up to $2 to um $18 an hour but if you take that same variance and a spread it across your organizational structure the entire compression impact is about $ 65.9 million so has a much more much larger uh price tag if you look at the scenario of $20 an hour that's about 773 employees that fall below that $20 threshold the cost to increase pay would be 5.3 million the cost to address compression is $117 million and just to kind of put things into perspective for the $18 an hour if you did the full wage increase in compression that dollar amount um you know roughly right about you know the $66 million would be enough funding to for to close the gap on the street maintenance fee so just to kind of put things into perspective um and the $20 an hour uh wage Gap that's that's a significant uh dollar amount 117 that's a that's greater than all of the decision packages that have been submitted for fiscal year 25 so just to kind of give you some information I think what I'd like to share you know as you look at the $18 an hour looking at the $500 25 employees about half of those if not more are under the age of 25 so we have 16 17 18 19 20 year olds that are sitting in that pay range and the same is true when you even look at $20 an hour those individuals tend to be 25 and younger not all of them but a good probably about half of those individuals are right about that um right about that that interval so want to share with you just some wage compression examples and these are real people the names have been changed but these are real individuals and so when I first looked at this I was a little bit surprised because I saw the food and beverage attendant and you'll see that pay grade 503 and it sits right right right benath a code compliance Tech at 504 and so when I first saw this I was shocked but then I had to remember when we made some of our pay decisions we affected our salary structure and so there used to be a 500 a 501 of 502 and we've eliminated three of our pay grades to achieve the minimum wage rate entry that we proposed and so now you have a food and beverage attendant that sits comparable to a code compliance Tech and we know those jobs are very different very different skill sets very different value but we've compressed our structure and so if you look at the example here you have an employee that's a food and beverage attendant at 1545 we're going to propose 1607 so is going to put them just a little bit closer to the Code Compliance Tech if we go to $18 an hour that variance starts to close the gap between those two different jobs and if you go to $20 an hour and in fact if we go to $18 an hour that 503 and 54 are no longer two different pay grades they become one so then we have a food beverage attendant and a code compliance Tech in the exact same pay grade but this gives you kind of an example of just kind of what those um how these individual jobs are different then you'll see the 505 pay grade for a senior maintenance worker lead that's current currently making 1762 new to the organization not been here very long bring them up to $18 an hour they start to compress with all of the other jobs $20 an hour and you're paying three different classifications that were spread across three different pay grades the exact same salary and the other piece um that I wanted to show it's also happens in in grade compression and so you have a maintenance worker in this particular scenario making 1645 fairly new to the organization maintenance worker who's been with us for 27 years making $22 an hour and you just start to compress that and so what you know what you what I hear right in going out to some of the field sites and hearing from our Fields workers is hey it's great that you increase minimum wage but what about me right what about what about me I have to train that guy and I've been here for 10 years and it took me 10 years to get to that wage rate and does the city care about me and so we're like we're coming right we're trying we're trying to come up with solutions to look at and evaluate our pay structure and I and we've said that right we absolutely care about our employees and that's why a lot of our pay strategies that have been adopted and through the budget process by Council were to address our existing Workforce and so we do show that those dat that those data points have worked but these are just giving you some examples some data so that you can kind of just keep it uh front in center of how wage compression works and so you see it across the classifications and then even in grade um compression di question about compression if you go back and look at the figures in the chart um let's take the $18 example compression is 62.9 million is that compression figured into the entire Workforce correct all the way up to the city manager's office I think it goes up to director executive director and down okay thank you questions from Council yeah Carlos I think there's an important distinction here at least for me uh there is a difference between uh wage compression and uh grade you know compression I think that's what you're saying correct Di and I understand that structurally if you eliminate some of these too broad you know categories um of of pay grades your your able to uh afford yourself more more latitude right with the remaining bands uh to compensate for wage compression right yes okay yeah and and yes just the the pay grade compression we started off we've already eliminated three pay grades if we move to 18 we'll eliminate two if we move to 20 we'll eliminate four and so again then we have these job classifications 193 jobs spread across 11 pay grades we're going to compress that down to uh less pay grades and so these jobs are going to have overlapping um pay Mayor ptim de again hats off great presentation I just wanted stated in the record that Fort Worth Housing Solutions made a decision years ago to pay no workers under $20 an hour that took real strength real fortitude and some hard decisions to make but that's for wor Housing Solutions I've never been a council member to tell HR how much to pay people but I will tell this council at some point in time we're going to have to figure out and understand that you can't fund everything but you do need to take care of your people uh years ago when I had buddies like Zim Zimmerman jungus Jordan now we try to make the point that public art could be a place that doesn't really impact people's paying electric bills and food bills stuff like that I am not advocating for that I got one more year I'm I'm just I'm not going to wage any kind of fight but I encourage this Council to remember we have to take care of our people and just because the budget shows different categories of things that we fund we have to remember people and so you can have greater longevity you can have happier employees if you pay them decent wages and again a hats off to Mary Margaret lemons for leading that board nobody there makes under 20 bucks an hour and so that's just what I leave with you de you know I support you 150% know you inherited a situation and made it better but those are just some things that I ask this Council to think about in budgets to come yeah and I appreciate that and what what I'll add is in the fiscal year 25 budget what HR is recommending is a full compensation study to look at two parts not only to look at pay to include minimum wage rates but to look at the salary structures that we fractured but to also look at where our employees sit in comparison to their pay so you heard me say we do biannual Market studies we do Market studies all of that is great but we don't do movement of our Workforce and what I've noticed is that employees with 10 or more years of service they should be sitting at Mid Point that's not the case for the workforce in the city of Fort Worth so on average they sit right below 1% mean meaning they could go Garner a midpoint Market competitive pay rate in another entity that's the turnover I'm trying to turn off and so I understand the entry component but just as the employees when I had to sit across the table and face them to say what about me what are you doing to address me that's so we want to do a compensation study that's two-part looks at our salary structure looks at wage rates looks at Job classifications and then the second part to look at the actual um where our employees reside in their respective pay grade and how do we make movement for those individuals to move them further into the pay grade because if they're at 10 years or more service they should be sitting higher in that pay grade and that's not the case short women rule the world thank you councilman Williams did you have a question somebody did I missed a hand maybe was sorry Chris I jum in I I was really trying to wait until you got one more slide uh and so I was trying to wait till you finish but I wanted to kind of jump in there even on this slide right here um and I hear you and during summer when you was talking when you talked about the age and uh the pay grade I was ready to say objection but we wasn't in court I was like I felt like you was giving your closing remarks um and I hear you and so I wanted I want to say when I say $20 an hour I'm not just talking about the entry uh level or the new onboard employees and actually this slide actually shows that to go back to the slide you was just on okay this right here I mean to have a senior maintenance worker as a lead making $20 an hour a senior maintenance worker making less than $20 an hour say $20 an hour as a minimum wage not only increase the on boarding process but it's going to take his salary up to $20 although in your own words he should be making way more than what he's making now and the reality is that we as a city when we are not where we should be does not mean we keep on snowballing how we get there and so I think we should take a strong approach a bold approach and say nobody in the city of for worth is going to make $20 an hour hour and we then we're going to do a study in 2025 I don't care for studies uh because I think we already know the answers but for somebody come for us to pay millions of dollars to somebody else to tell us what we already know and I'm I'm not discrediting what you're trying to do I I I think we still can do the study but I don't think we need to study in order to say we need to pay people $20 an hour I think the study should say the movement process as you just explained I think that's going to be a great study and so if you go back to the next Slide the previous slide I'm sorry the previous slide even on even on this slide if we just take care of those who are making less than $20 an hour is a $5.3 million increase to the budget is that correct yes that's for just those employees just those employees now we're going to have those employees that say Hey you know I'm training this guy and I'm going to making $21 an hour that's going to be the compression for the next uh um compression cost for correct which would be um where am I 112 117 okay and and and go back to Mayor protim um uh discussion how you talk about um one of those could completely do our street our street and maintenance fees and x y and z we have some hard conversation that we need to have when it comes to the budget process and I think one of the hardest conversations we need to have is how do we take care of our inhouse employees and we know that $20 an hour is not even a liable wage it's about 22 to 27 and so we're not actually getting there we're on our way and so I'm going to ask this Council uh I have uh sent notification to David he's not here but he has it um that I believe that it's important that in this budget cycle that we increase the minimum wage as Jared alluded to earlier when we looked at the recruiting process for our police officers who put their lives online every single day just to get them to go through the recruiting process we was below the totem pole and we unanimously took that to a higher level um and I don't know what the pay is for different employees but I can only imagine that you talk about 16 18 year olds they're probably our library workers they're probably our pool attendant they're probably our lifeguards in X Y and Z and the reality if we don't have those people then we have to close the beautiful Forest Park Pool that we just opened up because we don't have people that can that's going to be and and I'm just throwing things out there I'm not saying that's the actual amount but this is just my closing remarks uh of what I believe that we should get to $20 an hour and I know you have another slide so I'm I have more things I want to say but I just kind of wanted to jump in on that the fact that a senior maintenance guy you can just take the senior off because he's not been paid for what his title talks about and I know we kind of had this when I deal with City management with some of our uh uh in the CMO staff they were having these I deal with it with you we were having titles that did not represent their pay and so you have these cute titles and they're not uh represent where we actually getting paid and so I think I have a problem with that and I think that study is going to help with that councelor Williams yeah thank you um this slide um is a beautiful slide because it gives the why for why we're why I am advocating for $20 um just to put $16 in perspective um that's $2,400 a month and we just saw health insurance for um someone regardless of their age if they have a kiddo they have to pay pay $789 for insurance for that kiddo well I'm not good at math but I think that's around $1,500 let's talk about rent average rent ,200 to $1,400 if you're lucky or you need subsidized housing at that point the check is gone and each one of these job descriptions when we talk about compression families in these positions aren't talking about compression they're talking about how do I pay for child care how do I pay for housing how do I put food on my table and if I can't I'm going to go see Jared at the food bank and all of these grades should be paid so that they can live with dignity in the city um it it hits me hard as a council member to hear us justify why we pay people a p beautiful wage saying that they're oh they're under 25 50% under 25 50% are over 25 and $6 an hour is 28,000 the federal poverty level for a household of two is $25,000 and I I thank the Lord that God values me and all of us more than a flock of sparrows and I thank the Lord that God said says that the worker deserves to be fed these wages they can't be fed and compression is not a it's an important thing yes we have to address it but that's not something we have to address today and we're not asking any employee to take a pay cut we're saying let's make sure all of our workers can be fed and we'll take care of compression we'll take care of the market study but we have to do what's urgent now our employees were getting paid $15.45 cents can't weigh another minute let alone a year for a study if it takes a year and so this is urgent for me um I I respect you a whole heck of a lot you have carried us a long way along with management um but as city council we have to set the values of this organization and we cannot continue to tell people they are not valued because of the job that they're doing That's essential to the city that if they weren't doing it we would be up a creek yeah and and as the HR Director I mean I have to close to say I support that that position and that we have to take care of our employees and as noted there were 775 employees that would be affected there's 4,000 employees that would be left untouched and that's just the part of you know that's the the reality of it all and so this last example just kind of walks back through just the structural changes that are um that will affect uh compression and overlapping and it's really just gets to the value of the jobs and how we start to kind of fracture that structure that was created um just shows some different criteria than issues with any changes that might be proposed by Council Council back I really appreciate this di I know um a ton of I can tell a ton of work went into laying this all out for us it is certainly not a um inexpensive Endeavor to raise the city's minimum wage to 20 or to 18 or 17 if we look at these compression charts um I want to urge you to find a way to get to that 20 uh MIT says that a Liv a living wage for a single person in the city of Fort Worth is $22 an hour so we're not even getting to a wage which a city of Fort Worth employee can uh pay for rent and food and transportation in to live in our city and I think we all take so much pride in the city of Fort Worth to so to say that we're setting our employees up so they can't take that same pride and choose to live here without some sort of subsidy says a lot and when we speak to that subsidy we'll come back to this table and we often talk about affordable housing and the number of affordable housing units were short in the city um Mary marginet is not here and uh Gina has stepped out but I would venture to bet that that raise that Fort Worth Housing Solutions got was tied to the fact that they didn't want their employees to have to need U they didn't have to build housing for their very own employees and I think we at the city don't want to have to build housing for our very own employees um I will um end on a a couple of things because I really don't want to belabor this point but it's $41,000 a year if we if we made it to 20,000 seven members sitting at this table today said that $60,000 was a livable wage for members of council and we went out and asked the voters to give us that raise which is $2,000 more than what members of this Council are asking you to give our our lowest paid employees um uh annually in a raise and it is a tough budget decision but it was a tough budget decision when we didn't have enough people to answer 911 and we gave a significant raise to those folks to to retain them here at the city we did the same thing for our police recruits we gave a significant raise to make sure that we were attracting and retaining the best that we possibly could uh we did the same with lifeguards councilman Nettles brought up Forest Park Pool and last not last summer the summer before we were in Dire Straits with our lifeguards um and we couldn't keep those pool U our pools open in the hours that we had promised because we didn't have the basic employees to keep to keep those was operational and what did we do we gave them a pay we gave them a pay raise um and so that's really what we're asking for here and I the the number that I would like us to look at and where I'm going to ask for some additional information is when we talk about onboarding and retention what the data really shows is that as we value our employees and we value them through we have a very robust comp compensation package one that I'm very proud of um that really wraps around our employees but at the end of the day they want to be able to pay their bills and um and so that we know that pay increases help with retention and if we're to talking about half of an annualized salary to on board if we're lucky half of that salary so at $20 an hour that's $20,000 that a new employee costs the city of Fort Worth and so what I would like or the numbers and um I appreciate the lab working on this as well is what that um attrition and hiring those new employees cost because I my guess is at half it's pretty significant so if we if there is an initial cost to the city in raising that minimum wage but what cost savings do we have in the fact that we are no longer um losing employees at a rate that's double what the national average is and I think that cost savings needs to be um incorporated into any analysis that we do moving forward whether it's $20 an hour stagnant 16 whatever that is I'd like to know what that is because I think that helps us make a more informed decision caros uh this may be something that uh staff has prepared to present maybe later but um I know that you know I've been approached you know by some folks and the MIT study has been referenced even back at our prior council meeting right uh I looked at that calculator and you know poked around with it but you know I'm no expert with it I know what factors go into it I mean they're essentially eight right Child Care uh Civic engagement food Health Care housing internet mobile Transportation other necessities that you know many of us have already mentioned here while we're talking but what I would like to see again and you know we're all talking about wanting to see numbers but you presented here is helpful but I'd like to see some numbers run through that calculator want to see some scenarios that uh see how they correspond or correlate you know to what these numbers here that you're presenting uh have right I think that's a would be a fair you know comparison because ultimately I think where we're all at is this we all agree that our city employees are valued and that value should reflect in their compensation I think we all agree with that our challenge is to find exactly what that compensation figure is and balance that against our budget it's very simple right but getting there is very involved so we need to afford ourselves every measure uh to see exactly where we lie you know what you know again what we can afford and what they need you know to have you know a a wage that helps them to live to thrive and also is commensurate and sustainable and I'll share with you we did look at that analysis and so we used all of the city and the MIT living wage tool not one city meets or exceeds the living wage that's recommended okay they all fall below San Antonio being the closest at $245 variance but it's all over the board and that's just for one adult will we have a breakout of those we can break that out we have that analysis it was kind of late and you know I'd been out for a couple weeks so it's kind of late when you look at two working adults the Gap gets closer and we're right on par with where we need to be but there's so many varieties and different factors that are used in that living wage tool but we did go back and kind of look at it in comparison just to see are we comparing apples to app exactly inflation being one of those factors that has had a lot of variability lately I mean if you look at the graph it really depends on what slice of time just on that one factor you look at so that's what I'm interested in seeing yeah and we can provide them but again we're providing just facts you know the the will of council uh will be the direction that we go but it's just factual information so that you can make an informed decision if I can interject Carlos I actually um had the same thought you did about when you're looking at this comparison so I went to the MIT uh website and just pulled Austin Dallas dent in El Paso and then I kind of stopped so um none of them no City gets to that livable wage right um Austin is $20 and their livable wag is 23 so they're about $3 under $20 puts us at $2 under C city of Dallas is $22 for as comparable to Fort Worth and they're at18 City of Denton 23 and they're at 18 city of El Paso um is $18 for an hour for a Lial wage and they're at 13 so no one does meet that that perfect number but we're not asking for that perfect number that um today and so I think that puts us on par with other cities and being close but maybe not quite there and just ask some context I know that Dallas didn't Austin are all looking in this budget cycle to increase again I and so they're going to get closer to that living wage council member lorf yeah so is there I we can we or I can get a list of all those um the employee job titles that are currently under the Trin dollar range because one of the things I'm I'm I'm worried about and you kind of alluded to it earlier is going to be uh the attrition and to um council member Beck's point on onboarding and the cost associated with that you know looking I think the wage compression example that you gave is it's it's pretty alarming um and I think we could see where it's probably going to go um you if you have a code compliance technician who's out there you know cleaning up erret poop and they're getting paid 20 and then you find out that food and beverage attendants also now going to get 20 well they're going to leave that job and they're going to go start slinging uh slinging Snickers you know and so what's it going to cost to replace all those Code Compliance officers who who wouldn't leave their job if someone else is making the same amount of money for far less I guess effort I guess you could say they're still valued but they're just what they're doing is not not as difficult it's not going to require as much training um certainly not being hated by neighbors for driving down streets taking photos of you know code compliance issues or um dealing with homes uh and disrepair so I would like to see the list of all those employee job tiles because maybe there's something we can look at for some of those very low uh entry jobs perhaps you know food and beverage perhaps there's a contractor out there that can provide those to where we're not having to pay the 26% uh retirement fund and all the additional things that put their their total package to a much higher number right so perhaps there's we can find uh because I think what you're going to find is if we do move forward with something along those lines everyone's going to be flocking to those jobs making $20 an hour and then we're going to have all these vacancies that we can't fill then we're going to have residents coming out it's like hey this isn't happening this isn't happening well there's no one to fill those jobs because they're they're they're going after you know that that food and beverage intended job so I know I I would just like to see a list of those job titles that's under 20 just to kind of see if we can figure out where we where else we can maybe staff those jobs from okay we can provide that Kel Martinez you didn't have any questions did you sorry I wasn't looking at the screen no I was just waiting my turn go ahead please just just want to say that I'm in support of the $20 minimum pay wage we just this this is the right thing to do we need to take care of our employees and then figure out how to make it right in those other um higher uh positions um so just just wanted to make it known that I that I am in support thank you Council Martinez any other questions council member Hill um not really question just general comment um I firmly believe we need a run the city like we run our household don't spend more than you make the money has to come from somewhere so we're going to have to cut somewhere else to make sure that we're getting the $20 an hour that y'all want I don't disagree that we need to pay people a livable wage and pay them for the work that they do and I think pay for performance is the way to do that I don't think the $20 an hour minimum across the board is the right thing to do at the city right now I mean we're looking at a huge deficit on Street Maintenance fees people want to pay for essential Services that's what they believe their tax dollars go towards so let's be cognizant of that how funding this what we're looking at but we can't spend more than we make so I think we need to have some tough conversations on are we running the city as efficiently as possible the positions that we're currently funding getting the job done do we have too many positions do we have too many people those are going to be the tough conversations we need to have yeah counc anybody else around table council member U no I I I agree and I think um and I spoke with some people other day and the question was what do you cut and I think that bars down to our city staff of actually bringing together a package that well we can do this I mean mayor protim alluded to and I don't think she's against it but she alluded to Art I mean there there are things that this this city of forward you are against it okay since you gave her the opportunity yeah so I I I I wholeheartly agree that we don't want to spend more uh than we make and I will say the city forward does have the capital does have the money and and I asked for this I think when you first came on is that at the end of the year uh we sit at um not a deficit we sit as actually brought in more money than we actually spent out and I like to call it a a slush fund and you know when we had that slush fund she's not here so she have to hear on recording we spend $2 million on relighting the seven Street bridge that already had lights we didn't need to spend that money on that we could have spend that on something else as into employees so I think there really are funds that we have there are available that we have budgeted that we don't spend and so I think it's really incumbent on staff to where are those places that we know that we're going to have extra income coming our extra dollars SL around that we actually can maybe maybe it's not 20 but it cannot be 16 it may be 18 but we cannot leave this table and and I'm not trying to rally for 18 my position is 20 but where can we go from here I don't agree that it should be 16 and I agree with the fact that we as uh Charlie stated and even uh Dr Williams stated is that we can't fix everything in one budget cycle last budget we aregu I think we was three months in three three weeks in and we was arguing for additional firefighters and we had to fight like the rock and stone cold for those that remember back in the day just to get those firefighters and so I think this Council uh has been uh willing to when we we had a lot of hard decision when we first came on Council and I think we're will to have those conversations and so I think if staff can show us I mean you guys are doing the numbers we need you to bring us packages that actually make sense and no we don't want to get rid of payo no we don't want to get rid of Street fees but some of these other stuff that we need to we can so maybe offer this as a potential path forward um because we have to make any decision in the context of the entire budget to Macy's Point what would you cut that we're willing to cut if this is a priority for the whole Council or if there's any pay increases at all and there's still a lot more information I think all of us have articulated we would like to see um Charlie mentioned a list of all the employees that would be impacted what their current pay grade is what their job responsibilities are I have a lot of questions and maybe even concerns around tenure um especially at our entry level workers that are interfacing with the public so often and if you've been at the city for 27 years in a certain position is there some consideration and prioritization of those people to make sure they're taken care of those are just open questions we know that the certified role will come out in July um I think maybe the best thing to do to make this most constructiv That We're Not Making emotional decisions is to think about the big buckets we're going to have as a city to face in a tighter budget year the very first week of August and really deal with these collectively rather than one by one this is a great start but this is s something that the council wants to come back to and really consider again um that may be there's a lot of other things that we've we've put forward Street mes fee has been mentioned as something um we've got a deal with MedStar um coming into the city of Fort Worth so what are the big rocks that we can with Management on that we know need to be considered and then what are we going to cut because if all of these things are on the table as additions to the budget there's only limited amount of Revenue we're also in a year of limited sales tax increase we have not seen what we what we wanted to see in Revenue increases and um and we certainly don't want to create more headache for Di um the other thing I would you don't have to answer it today I'm just curious how long um a true pay study would take um if is it a year is it half a year when would we have that data I think would be an important consideration as we consider any kind of entry level wage increases this year we would expect it to be completed in fiscal year 25 to be implemented in 26 why does it take so long it wouldn't take that long it would help us navigate through the budget because it'll still have a fiscal impact that we'll need to program in okay okay yeah and so um I I will close just by saying I can confidently sit across staff when they ask questions about what about me and say council is fully supportive of employees that contribute to making sure the business works and operates as it should and so appreciate the dialogue and conversation well we appreciate you you've worked incredibly you do an fantastic job your entire team in HR we're very thankful for your leadership and we wouldn't be here if it weren't for for you getting us to this place councilman rivens I don't want to clear my name but I do want to offer some clarity in terms of my being against public art I the I I can just tell you if you listen to your constituents your constituents will tell you that they appreciate nice streets sidewalks street lights I doubt very seriously if you have more than 5% who will tell you I need a piece of public art over there I will tell you when I came on board we had public art projects that had been approved in a 2004 bond election and in 2013 they still weren't done and so it's not that I'm against public guard I'm just for my people and as long as I'm riding around this city and I see potholes not just in five I see street lights out I don't care why they're out I see trash not picked up oh darn did I mention that again but I think if you listen to the constituents you know we'll know what they deem as priority so it's not like you're just saying write a check and don't worry about it just listen to the people but to listen to them we have to make information available to them and we do that in this process through the public hearings the meetings that we have and so encourage your people to come out who knows you may have a whole bunch of people who just love public art and make me look real stupid right now but I will tell you the basic Services of what people want to know that we're addressing and that includes taking care of our people and I think to to credit to City Management in the last few budgets I've presided over management has met that moment it's about quality of life when we go through our Council Retreat the things that we prioritized are most important are included in the budget let's carry that over into August um I would encourage each of you especially on this because there's so much data you'd want to go through to really work with Deana and Mark and the city management team to give feedback on that there may be some things you individually want to see um that can be provided to us over the break in July but um these are these are hard decisions right there are necessities and there are nice to haves and in this budget cycle you're going to have a lot of nice to haves we have to eliminate just because the budget is going to be tighter and because there's so much conversation understandably around housing affordability around property taxes and um and it's it it seems to be enhanced right now more so than the last several years at least in my opinion so appreciate everybody's dialogue next up di you're not done yet I'm not done yet but actually I'm going to turn over the Reigns here um we're going to we're one of the Departments that have partnered with lab on priority based budgeting which is kind of really the tool that just helps align budget with priorities so kind of to mer protim Biven Point uh and so Cynthia Hume is our administrative services manager with the human resources department and she's going to cover the priority based budgeting for HR Cynthia thank you good morning U just want to go ahead and and give you a little preview of what we uh did for our HR department on the priority based budgeting so during the exercise we actually identified two Community programs that we have housed in our department the first that you're seeing here is the Civic governance inside and our community engagement and job fairs program these are some of the programs that we use to uh support some of our services to our uh Community the next um programs that we're showcasing are actually our governance programs overall our department had 40 governance program being uh HR the majority of our programs do support our internal internal employees and so we are actually showcasing those programs that are being impacted by some of our fy2 change request additionally you'll see uh um some additional governance programs that we're highlighting here again with 40 we did not want to put a list before you that you kind of had to go through each uh individual one during the priority based budgeting process we actually went through and we prioritized um our program s we ranked our programs against our priorities and so for the community engagement and job fairs specific program we went ahead and did a ranking against our uh priorities for Community investment uh Economic Development Community safety infrastructure and responsible [Music] growth there you go the next phase that we did during the priority based budgeting is we did a program costing so taking our actual program and reviewing our personnel and non-personnel cost as they relate to the individual programs so it's allowing us to take that holistic view on the services we provide and what resources we use to support those individual programs and again this was that example of the community engagement and job fair program the next example that we're sharing with you here is actually one of our governance programs this is the employee Medical medical uh program and the priorities you will see for a governance program are actually Workforce fiscal sustainability operational excellence communication and transparency and so during this scoring exercise what we did is we worked with the individual managers over those programs and really got their feedback in terms of how this program really aligns with those priorities and so similar to our community programs the next phase in the PBB portion was actually taking a look and costing out our program what you'll see on this particular one this program is simply all of our um non-personnel cost associated with supporting that so there isn't actually an FTE impact related to this program and then a really quick uh glance at a glance overall for the HR department you're seeing our community programs those are two programs are overall cost related to those programs and our FTE breakout then we're highlighting our governance programs those are the additional 40 programs that we have in house and so the cost Associated or budget associated with that is the 156 million and it does um impact uh the 65.6 FTE and then overall impact of what those programs look like for HR um we wanted to give you an opportunity to look at holistically for HR again 99.85% of our programs are governance we do have that small segment M on the community program portion and then another opportunity that we had through PBB was to really evaluate what we do and how that breaks out between personnel and non-personnel cost so HR actually encompasses four funding sources and so being able to evaluate our services across all of those funding sources and really see the impact and breakout between personnel and non-personnel cost so some of our takeaways for uh priority based budgeting um I would say that overall we had the opportunity to step away from the yearly adjustments to our line items and and truly review the services and programs HR supports take that step back and evaluate what are we reaching how are we actually align to City priorities um and so we just we feel that it allowed us you know kind of that Breakaway from just increasing decreasing line items or [Music] contracts and it really allowed us to High to our 25 goals right so some of the things that we're focusing on largely for fiscal year 25 is our new Malu uh learning management system right so that is one of our key um goals for 25 we also have to support HR related business strategies and Lead change for the city to attract R train and transition support of our people so we do have some in-house uh HR business partners that support a lot of these programs Citywide um our third goal that we're focusing on for fiscal year 25 is our salary structure analysis and our flsa compliance and so that's that conversation that we kind of have ongoing um and then one of our last goals that we're really focusing on is the implementation of Creative Solutions for talent acquisition right so that recruitment aspect and how we make sure that we are recruiting that Talent uh for the organization and then do we have any questions no how would you say the process has been for you personally and the department again it was a really good opportunity to break away from just that line item view um especially with the nuances of HR being that we are spread across four funding sources to be able to evaluate our our programs holistically as a department in HR what are we doing um and having those con in-depth conversations with the managers that support those areas so um I would say we had uh it was a really good opportunity we had a great rapport with the vendor resource act they were great great um support during this process thank you for that appreciate it no other questions Council thank you back to chion looks like we're shifting to fiscal year 20125 general fund revenues thank you thank you HR for all of that hope that that as I pull up my next presentation here you can see that even though we're early in priority based budgeting implementation as we keep bringing departments into the fold it's going to make the conversations around what are essential services and essential programs and where are our programs highly aligned with our priorities those conversations will get easier and easier to have as we continue to implement that program so I hope through some of the foundation setting that we've done they're able to see how those things will connect um as we continue implementation of that program okay yes we're shifting gears into Revenue I'm going to ask Brady to come up while I switch myself here um Brady Kirk Fort withth lab Revenue manager going to walk us through sales tax use quicker okay all right good morning well we do really appreciate all of you being here today and your engagement on a lot of these things some of them more interesting than others I know but two weeks ago at our last budget work session we closed by talking about property tax and some different scenarios and at that time some of you around the table really smartly pointed out that we're more than just property tax we've got lots of different revenue streams in the general fund and and so today we're going to talk to you about that kind of give you an early look at some of our total commitments and in particular we're going to focus on sales tax and and some of the growth we have there and one of the first things that Mark said when we kicked this off was that all of this is really preliminary and I'll say that again but but I just want to emphasize that um it was only last week that we officially heard from all the Departments what their requests are for the new year and as we were finishing that up somebody one of our city colleagues who's not in budget told me that well now your real work on the budget starts and I think the only reason he said it was because it made him happy to remind me that some of us have a summer of budget work coming up and he doesn't but nonetheless he was right we're just right now starting to get all the pieces that are going to make up the picture of next year's budget oh gosh all right there we go thank you so here we've got uh a history for you over about the last decade of what sales taxes look like in the general fund and I think the best thing to call attention to right away is you look at it how it's gone up and down every single year even in 2020 we have seen an increase in sales tax over this period and in about at least 35 years of history that I've got there's only been a few times I think only three years when we've ever seen a decrease and that was during major Nationwide recessionary periods now a frequent trend is that we've pretty often done just a little bit better in actuals than we thought we would going into the year um now in Co it kind of threw that off you look at everything after 2020 and it's kind of your classic fool me once and shame on the pandemic a fool me five years in a row then I don't know because in 2020 we never expected a drop off like that so it it was still up but it was down compared to our budget then the next few years nobody expected the recovery to be that strong so you can see the the orange bars there above the blue bars we were doing really well and and then just when we try to correct for that this year and say that we know where the growth is coming that slowed down a little bit at the very end of 2023 pretty much after we'd already set this year's budget of 250 million so what we're forecasting right now based on what's come in and previous year Trends and also working with an outside Economist is that we think we're going to make 2395 million in the general fund which is 2.7% growth but that's against a budget of 250 million so we're down a little bit there we don't hope to be there again next year and we got one of our major forecasts coming up we're going to look at how that affects the general fund overall but I think really the best thing to take away is you look at the consistent growth overall um the growth this year might have even been a little bit better if not for some circumstances I'll talk about on the next slide but it's been pretty high kind of a long-term average of of 6% or so 7% I have a quick question about the um the previous slide and I'm sorry if I missed it is that year to date or is that anticipated um into fiscal year yeah thank you I meant to call that out that's anticipated fiscal year so we've collected about 175 maybe 176 so far and we've got three more months that still need to come in okay great thank you all right so looking at our sales tax budget or at least our forecast for what our budget might be next year um with sales tax being the other biggest Revenue Source other than property tax making up about a quarter of the general fund um we already talked about the 239 half we think we'll get this year and right now the economy is not bad but we're facing some things just the earnings growth the job growth is not as high as it's been and one thing we keep coming back to is the Nationwide interest rate environment we think is affecting a lot of things and at least so far we haven't seen the FED come down on that we think when they eventually do maybe start offering some rate Cuts that'll make things go better but they just had their June meeting and and aren't taking it down just yet so based on what we're seeing and how do we forecast next year so I mentioned it's it's the same as what we do interyear we do two different forecasts and we work with a professional Economist for that one is based only on historical Trends one's based on all kinds of economic indicators and and data from the fed and um and we also work with FMS on that and so what we've come up with is that we think we're going to see over this year's budget about 1% growth to 252 A5 million in 2025 so that 1% that represents new funding things that we can put towards new needs in the budget as far as actuals that comes out to growth of about 5.4% over that number that we're forecasting for 24 so I talked about it might have been a little bit better this year so we always get some sort of adjustments from the state when they remit our allocation of sales tax to us and you could call that a lot of things it's just adjustments um it affects a lot of cities in different regions and they're kind of reconciliations just correcting for any small things in the past but this year way more than we've seen at least in the sample period on the last slide there's been a large negative audit adjustment and without that we would have been doing so far $1.8 million better this year long-term average is a small positive one around 400,000 so that growth which seems pretty high compared to 2.7% of 5.4 if it was just a normal year to the extent we ever get a normal year and we gotten 241 and a half instead of 239 and a half then we'd only be looking at two uh 4.6% growth so we don't think that that's crazy um we're not really betting on a huge upside it still leaves some room for that if there's any kind of stimulus to the ray Cuts or anything else but we think right now this is a pretty reasonable number just taking into account we still have one more month data that needs to come in and it's it's still below the long-term average as well so with that in mind what we're going to finish on in this portion of the presentation is a look of at the general fund overall again and before when we came to you we had we had developed a list of what some of our needs are now we're dealing with stuff that's a little bit more concrete because this is based on Department requests um so that makes it the numbers look just slightly different than uh what you've seen before and I want to say again that a lot of this can change so we just had the budget Blitz and we have all those funding decisions to make over the next two to three months we have one more month of sales tax to collect which is the most important month and then it's already been mentioned in this presentation we get the certified values on July 25th so that'll tell us more about what we have in terms of property tax and financing but our you saw before a number around the 46 million new expenses the 40 million in Revenue the hu the biggest chunk is the property tax there's some sales tax and I know this is it's too small for me to even read from here but it'll be larger on the next slide but there's a little bit more than just property tax and the Gap now that we're looking at in the general fund with this is our current version of our working budget is about 7 million that our expenses are higher than our revenues so that's that's a gap to make up through either new Revenue if we get lucky or all the normal ways that you're familiar with this time of the year and I just want to emphasize anything that's on here including the property tax assumption it's not a suggestion a prediction or recommendation anything we just have to put something in we've gone with a more conservative assumption on that for now I had a quick question you said there's a gap now of 7 million and is that because of what's been presented from the Department's head no it's not they've made those requests and all of that is within that really large kind of to me frightening 104 million down there that's the decision package total anything that's just standard keeping business going is in the uh 1 billion 60 plus EMS is in there in the 1 billion 60 yes the EMS is factored into the $7 million gap okay so then moving on to the last bit um I promised we just wanted to show you a little bit about where the new revenue is coming from sources other than property tax and then a lot of the discussion I know throughout all the summer period these months it focuses on what we're going to spend it on and how we're going to use the money but there was a moment I just thought was great towards the end of one of the Department's budget Blitz presentations they had talked about some project that they did and one of our assistant city managers asked how had you funded that project and the department director responded with our resources and so we're looking at our resources too we're putting a lot of attention into that we had the regular meetings with the outside Economist and on some of these more minor Revenue items like this we're we're pushing the Departments a little bit maybe to go outside their comfort zone just what's going to be realistic what they can collect so the whole burden doesn't go on a property tax and sales tax any questions about this list or anything else that we shared thank you you know I did have a question um on that initial first slide I think you the sales tax um what did we project last year and what did we actually bring in I think you got the 24 projections but what did we project for uh I guess 23 and what did we actually bring in do we know that I don't have the budget the total collections were about 233 million we we were over budget by about I think 6 to 7% last year about 7% I don't have the budget number but 7% below 233 million we brought in more or brought in less we brought in more last year okay that's the question okay that was a good answer thank you have to do this annoying scrolling because I loaded the PDF not the PowerPoint okay so CHR do you want to come to other Podium just in case you can help me uh questions okay so with our remaining time um we wanted to give you really a high Lev couple of slides in order to supplement sort of the much more detailed information that you have in your packet that was sent on Friday um so in a response to and sort of a commitment to being more transparent with you early and often throughout the process you'll you'll note that you have a hefty packet um and so part of that packet is rate and fee changes these are requested rate and fee changes um that have been submitted through the budget process that's a typical thing that happens um in budget development we have departments analyze their service levels um and market conditions and all the different methodologies that they use um and of course there's a whole other rate setting process for water and sewer storm water has their rate um and so through the budget development process they submit fee changes and um we have compiled those for you in your packet and so rather than going through them all because it's a 30 page sort of budget response um we're just showing here quickly um a table on rates on the left so proposed changes in water and sewer these are increases um that water and sewer are working through this summer and then same with storm water as a continued commitment for some of their Capital delivery um proposing a 5% increase and so you'll see those notes in your packet and then on the right hand side these are departments that are requesting uh Fe changes um and again you have all of that detail in tables in your packet we also have the some a lot of the Departments here today um if there's anything that caught your eye in your review um but typically in August and September we bring back a lot of these details so um this is just a a quick supplement to what detail you have Mark go ahead no I was just going to say that this in your packet you didn't receive all the detail for all of these because they're still coming in on the revenue new side so there's still a lot of work to be done here but we we just wanted to see the universe of what people were already talking about by no means is any of this completed as far as a recommendation we we have to work that through the the budget process on our end on the next 60 days that's right thank you you have a question no keep going okay okay and then um I will let Christy I'll do scrolling on my PDF here um Christy lemon I want you to get used to hearing from her too with regard to budget and shees our newest assistant director in the Fort Worth lab um same sort of thing a universe of decision package requests good morning um so as you're aware the process for departments to request an increase in their budget is for them to submit decision packages so we we've just received those and we packaged them up and sent them to you on Friday so you can take a look at what's in there so far I want to emphasize that these are really preliminary so we wanted you to see them earlier in the process um but the analysts are still vetting details and we're still working through through some of those um we received about 240 proposals that included 235 new positions and the cost of all those proposals is about $104 million so that's kind of the universe of it um yeah you can go next slide Yep this shows you that 10 Department requests make up about 98% % of what we received so you can kind of see what the magnitude of the requests is these are asks on the general fund general fund yes yeah and then just in terms of next steps so the analysts are working with departments to vet details um make any updates or adjustments that need to be made we are also going to be working um with the city manager's office to prioritize requests and for those departments that have already been through uh priority based budgeting we'll be using that as an additional lens to look at those requests and see how they align with your priorities um and then uh referencing back to Brady's earlier conversation with you we'll be looking at Revenue at the same time to figure out what the opportunities are for funding decision packages um and then in some cases we'll also be looking at different alternatives for addressing the needs so for example we might be able to reclassify a vacancy to um fulfill a need without new funding or additional funding so be looking for those opportunities as well so just wanted to kind of let you know where we are in the process and then what's coming next yes go ahead Chris I got one question um and so I know some of these departments uh have requested uh these changes probably Cycles before this one in our budget process have we included some of those into the $6 million this deficit already the deficit that you saw on Brady's slide is representative of prior commitments so things that maybe they were a capital package but now they have an operating impact and we're picking that up um and so that that's prior your commitments plus EMS that's sort of what's creating that deficit now so maybe old decision packages that have a continued impact um but as far as repeated requests for packages we haven't done any sort of um like hey you've asked for this three times so it's an auto incl or anything like that I'm just saying because I mean I think you got here uh a total of 235 jobs a new positions but reality some of those new positions could already be included in the prior commitment to previous years maybe maybe not no I don't think so no no those are new um yeah those are just all new ads not included in that number you saw have you guys received my decision package from my office not really sure I'm not thinking it's not sparking a memory for me Cal Willam the deadline's the deadline's passed well see next bu just kidding was a good one um two questions with respect to the fee changes are those proposed fee changes included in the revenue that you presented earlier in almost all cases yes we're not total I'm not I don't want to say 100% but almost all of them came through the decision package process so you would see them in both places um in the sample budget that you provided for so that 6 million includes additional fees yes and it when you see that chart the revenue decision package amount looks really small that's because some departments are also asking to stop transferring Revenue like from another fund to the general fund Solid Waste is a good example um so if you look at if you were to add up all the revenue decision packages um and then but then you would look at like individual Department requests you would see how those interplay together but I can answer more questions on that if it gets confusing that makes sense just kind of General reactions to the fees I know last budget I made I'm pretty I was vocal about the fees um I think it's a potential opportunity in this particular budget um to look at opportunities for fees that make sense to adjust the um second question I have is regarding the decision packet uh I think it's a page before this with the100 million broken down I'd be curious not today but um whenever y'all can get this before preferably August um of these requests how many of those could be included in a bond because it seems like there's we're right on the heels of the bond it seems like there's some things that have been deferred for quite a while streets in district 6 for example there's some that may be including this 43 million that probably since we're right on the bond make more sense to just be aggressive and catching up with this Bond so I'd be curious to know how many of um these I know like City Secretary City attorney Municipal Court those probably won't be included but the larger bu yeah sure yeah we are um we've taken a first a first pass if that I'll say I'm looking at Ashley as our Capital person um marking some things that maybe could be like debt instrument eligible and so we can get more detail on that sure Ma um just a general question as I was flipping through this last night there's a couple of these that spoke out to me that I know we're working through issues I'm going to pick on a couple departments um just as examples but so this um animal shelter you all know that I'm pretty passionate about making sure that we're running that as efficiently possible and making sure that we're taking care of these animals in a humane way so we're asking for $755,000 increase nine positions who's responsible for making sure that the addition of the positions is in alignment with the strategy that to make sure that the shelters operating to the highest and best quality that it is and so just because we're throwing money at it and adding different positions doesn't mean we're getting to the right solution so how does that process work it looks like Mark's turning on his button there we go uh we'll vet it through the CMO first when we go through our budget discussions we'll be every week at least twice a week um through all the way through AUST middle August and we'll be talking to the department heads about accountability around those and making sure we have confidence in that it'll actually achieve what they say it'll achieve um and sometimes they just don't get funded um if there's um something that is funded then that following year the lab will then uh track it and see how we're doing and then we started what's called Fort Worth stat where we meet with every Department twice a year outside of the budget process to look at what packages were approved in last year and positions and what are your metrics and then how are you doing are you doing what you say you would do and so there's some accountability around that as well and one more example so for human resources the HR child haare coner $150,000 how do people currently use this is is something we have how do we measure success when we have resources like childcare Associates out there they're nonprofits that can do the same thing so I just want to make sure we're not doing duplicative work at the city when we have other nonprofit Partners out there that can help supplement exactly the kind of questions that we'll be asking when we review all these packages and we'll go with these 200 plus packages will be we'll do probably two dozen passes just continue to review and and um and Whittle and also ask those hard questions thank you Mark any other questions Charlie so I guess mine is going to be an ask too on some of these um decision packages that they bring forward if there's any additional Revenue driver behind it for example uh Commercial Code may say we want an additional 20 people but those 20 people if out on the street like enforcing these vacant businesses or these businesses to do the right things that could generate additional Revenue so it's growth paying for growth in that case so those 20 positions could actually put us in a net positive for sure pay for those positions plus more right so when they turn in their decision package they're supposed to have that projection with it so there's a net cost but if they don't then the lab is doing work to to analyze that as well okay in their decision package detail if there's already a revenue offset will they see that in the fiscal table underneath do you remember I'm not sure I'm not sure I'll look and see you um in for those that are kind of a little more vetted and there's that little blue table I think that you should see a revenue offset in cases where departments have entered that um we are still working through to ensure that they have but I'll I'll follow up see if it's on so question uh Cristiana or Mark I don't know uh who's better to answer this but as we're going through the budgetary process here we have you know basically 10% of what's proposed in a decision package and 90% the other 900 plus million is just a continuation of what we've been doing is is that right I mean1 billion doll budget and about 10% or 100 million in decision packages oh sure more or less so the 90% of the money that we're spending are we taking a hard look to really ensure that we're getting the value there are we touching that at all yes as we go through this process can you tell me a little bit about what that looks like um up until budget Blitz that's primarily where all the focus has been with the Departments particularly those that are in the priority B based budgeting um program where they're looking at all the programs in every dollar and mapping that and and it's getting some scrutiny uh so we're doing that we're also uh David has asked us to go back and look at all the positions that were approved in the last two years and see if they're filled and if if they've been partially filled for part of the year really get a handle on are we being effective with those positions and then we're also looking at positions that have that have aged considerably in terms of not being filled for a number of years that are still carried on the books so and you know with Personnel being your largest cost um you know that that can help especially if the department is asking for additional Personnel when they still have vacancies that they haven't filled so um all that is on the table we we look at the Baseline we call it the Baseline budget as well thank you for that the the reason why I ask is uh and this is not pointing at any particular project or person or anything else is just knowing that we're looking and if we have something that is not effective or is is not you know really achieving results inside of that budget you know that that big part of the budget bucket uh how we really correct that and move forward and apply all our dollars to where they do the best good any other questions or comments no thank you Christian absolutely so to wrap us up today with our remaining three minutes uh Mark touched on this at the beginning but just to come full circle um the CMO team will begin working through their prioritization um sort of next really this week next week through early August um and we'll continue of course engaging with you even though we don't have any work sessions scheduled until the next one which is the recommended budget um but continue to you know we can do deep Dives on existing programs we can answer questions about packages that you see in your pocket or maybe that you don't see in your pocket um and we're also still taking public input at this stage you know we don't until the recommended budget for that there's this year the budget campaign there's other budget engagement activities on connect for worth.com um some of which we previewed in here like ranking the council priorities using the map to say you know sort of I wish I had this service here all those activities are live online um and then presentation of the recommended budget August 13th uh and then from there we do a whole another round of obviously your input through budget work sessions and of Engagement through both inperson and online engage engagement you know activities uh until mid-september and so that's sort of where we're going any other questions for the lab today C Williams thank you mayor um two questions one I'm really glad we're doing the community engagement in the way that we're doing um can youall provide us regular updates of that leading up to August 13th that way we can keep track of what the public is saying as we are thinking through these things yes and then the second thing um it kind of relates to this but um how are yall planning to use the summary and themes from the council 101 it's really helpful and um it's kind of condensed in terms of the priorities that are there how are youall planning to integrate that into this budget process that was my first attempt at compiling those notes from our one-on ones to look for patterns and then I in my first past I sort of bumped it up against the submitted decision package list to say like okay we've covered a lot of this or where are the gaps um and so I think we'll use them in our uh City management deliberations too to ensure that we're covering the big patterns and themes against the priorities Mark do you have any other thoughts on those no you covered it okay great there one last question is this um shared with the public too I think it's good for the public to see kind of what I don't know if that was included in the packet I'll find out it's help okay okay any other questions Council no thank you all very much very productive thank you Council we're going to adjourn here and then move into executive session the city council will now convene to Executive session on the following matters the city the city council will conduct a closed meeting order to seek the advice of its attorneys is authorized by section 551.071 of the Texas government code so e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e for e e for for for for e for e e e for