yes good morning miss pine good morning mayor we do have a quorum yes sir good morning this is a meeting of the el paso city council for tuesday august 23 2022 present in council chambers is mayor lisa along with representative hernandez representative molinar representative rodriguez representative lizarraga representative rivera is running a few minutes late this morning it is now 9 01 a.m and now will everyone please silence their electronic devices so as not to disturb the meeting and rise for the invocation delivered by police chapman robert hemphill jr good morning mr mayor and council members and dignitaries please power his at this time holy and loving god the prince of peace in order to assist the mayor and council members in addressing their agenda items and making difficult decisions that will result in positive on incomes and outcomes i come to you this morning and ask for your blessings your wisdom and spiritual direction father please help us to function as a cohesive unit show us the joyce an enthusiastic way to carry out our work and as you lead our mayor and city representatives in this meeting today let your presence be recognized please lead us so we can do something we appreciate you father since we are aware that you are always there for us and your people in your name we asked this army chief rodriguez can you lead us in the pledge please thank you chief i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you sir good morning for the record also in council chambers are representative vanello and representative salcido mayor pro-tem schwarzmine is also running a few minutes late this well morning pro tim schwarzwein is also present in council chambers good morning sir we ready to begin yes sir we do have a quorum that brings us mayor i made a request to speak go ahead man representative hernandez was requesting to speak no that's okay um um i did want to make a motion to bring item eight to the forefront um if that's okay with the rest council and i heard a second over here with mr molinar there is a motion and a second to move item eight to the forefront of the agenda all in favor yes anyone opposed the motion carries item number eight is discussion in action on a resolution authorizing the city manager to sign the articles of agreement between the city of el paso and the local 51 international association of firefighters for the contract period covering september 1st 2022 through august 31st 2026 mr cortinas we have a lot of chiefs here huh good morning american council jorge rodriguez el paso fire so as part of this new contract we want to congratulate and thank our city manager the negotiating team and of course all of our members of the el paso fire department this new contract is going to offer a 3 annual increase in pay for all of our members are also going to be expanding vacation slots as the department has grown over the years this is going to keep up with that additionally we have incentive pays for our specialized teams and also additional incentive pays for higher education for all of our members so again we want to thank our city management council uh and local 51 for for for getting us to this point thank you chief how many um firefighters are currently on the fire department we're at 9 40 9 43 and what's our goal we're going 40 000. pardon me our goal is to get to above a thousand oh okay yes sir thank you so much let me turn it over to local 51 president paul thompson thank you good morning sir good morning mayor and council good i'll keep this short paul thompson president local 51 good morning mayor and council we have been preparing for this day for over a year we did a survey last year to identify the priorities of el paso firefighters we then formed five working committees to narrow down those priorities as you may know already el paso firefighters voted last month and this month and approved the contract with 600 yes votes and 50 no votes a ratio of 12 to 1. i can't remember a time when a contract passed with that much support neither side got everything that they wanted but that is the nature of negotiations i want to thank the committee chairs deputy chief frank reyna battalion chief george cortez battalion chief daniel roy captain hector santiago and fst daniel mendoza i also want to give a thank you to to fire chief killings and his team for always getting us the info that we needed when asked i also want to thank the city manager and his team especially chief finance officer robert cortinas deputy city manager mario de agostino deputy city manager dion mack nicole cote with omb the hr director especially assistant director mary michelle and especially especially especially monica antaros and her team at the fire department this truly was a team effort and uh i can't i would be remiss without thanking my executive board who worked long and hard on this effort it was a monumental effort with that being said we stand here before you and we ask you to approve the contract between the city of el paso and local 51. thank you thank you thank you very much sir and uh you know the numbers you just showed us is uh you know it's the unity and that's really important and the leadership that we have within the city and also within the fire department to see those type of numbers over 650 is a great great leadership and i want to congratulate you all in your leadership and and that the fire department feels so comfortable in in continuing to with its with the leadership and the new contract so congratulations mayor i moved to approve representative hernandez thank you mayor so what a what a change and difference from when i first came to office and unfortunately um the two parties were unable to come to an agreement uh we're in an impasse um fast forward several years and and thanks to our administration and and your leadership under your leadership mr thompson um i think that we have a great resolve resolution that's going to support our el paso firefighters so i want to first thank you and your negotiating team for being prepared and for also having that open door policy with members of council so we really appreciate all the work that you're doing saving taxpayer money so that we can negotiate here as the state constitution allows so thank you firefighters for your sacrifice we know that the work that you're doing um is is a is a love of labor and you all are there 24 7 and so the pandemic has demonstrated that you all were invaluable to fighting um this this virus and so we're thankful for all of the work you did during the pandemic so with that said i do have a couple questions for our finance team really quickly as it relates to the budget mr cortinas thank you thank you mr christina's um so as part of the agreement if this action passes today when would this go into effect their current contract expires the end of this month and so it will go into effect from the date that assigned to become effective so no later than september 1st right and so as part of collective bargaining if it's going to go into effect september 1 has this been factored into the upcoming budget that we're getting ready to approve today yes it has so it's factoring in all the salaries for our firefighters yes it has so we've been negotiating now for quite a while with the fire union city manager kicked off negotiations very very early in the budget process to ensure that we had an agreement we're able to negotiate something before we finalize the budget so yes all of the increases what we've been presenting all the way back to april and may what you saw at the end of june when we did budget presentations all of that accounted for the increases not only for the pay but the incentives and the health care as well that's including the agreement and you mentioned the incentive in health care so so everything that was voter approved for the benefits that's also been included in the upcoming budget everything that we negotiated as far as the pay and the incentives and the health care is included in the agreement is included in the budget for next year um how many academies do we have in the upcoming budget as well two two fire academies two police academy scheduled and so as we presented i have it in the presentation a little bit later this morning but we've talked about with not only on the police staffing plan for the new police stations that we have coming online in the near future we also have one of the big ones very exciting a brand new fire station for the first time in quite a while fire station 36 over on the west side of town and again as part of that we're getting very proactive as far as the number of staffing number firefighters that we have on board and continuing to increase through doing those multiple academies to add over 100 net increase of over 100 firefighters over the next few years so i can confidently say that this body and the city council and the mayor that we're listening to the public concerns we're funding priorities we're funding public safety we're ensuring that not only are your wages competitive but we're taking care of our public safety officers and so i just wanted to congratulate the whole team i know it took a lot of work but i want to be clear to the public that our budget is reflective of ensuring that el paso's streets and neighborhoods are safer having our firefighters and police officers um there and taking care of them so congratulations to all who put the hard work in thank you thank you representative nundes mayor pro-tem followed by representative molinart thanks uh mayor and uh thank you for everybody that that did this um i think it's clear that when it comes towards our priorities um as a community and especially our obligations responsibilities as a council public safety is consistently the most important thing we can do a vibrant community wonderful neighborhoods wonderful parks none of that happens if our citizens aren't safe if people don't feel safe being in their homes and going to work and that comes down to the responsibilities and the service of our firefighters and our police officers and no more do we see this importance than reflected in our budget here today and i'm very excited to see that um working with the union working with the firefighters and working with city management we're able to come to an agreement like you said not everybody got what they wanted but everybody feels that they were heard and are able to move forward together and this to me shows also an example of how we can work together and how others in our community can work together to to make a better el paso as well um it it is uh no loss to me uh how successful this truly is when i came into office in 2015 and i think there's a few of us in this room that remember what that was like there's actually a voter referendum for the firefighters right and that was not an easy process for anybody it wasn't enjoyable i don't think it was enjoyable for the officers i mean for the officers for the firefighters for the union and for the city as well not to make mention of that council at the time i wasn't on the council i was i was asking people for their support as a very very uh fresh elected official to be but it was very clear at that point how passionate people were in supporting our firefighters and supporting keeping a safe and healthy community and so to see where we are today from where we were in 2015 is nothing short of remarkable and so again want to thank everybody that had a chance to to work on this um let's hope that as we move forward with our other um public safety entities as well that we're able to come up with a resolution again to honor obligation responsibility as a city council to keep our community community safe through our firefighters and police officers and again thank you everybody um for working together in in such good faith thank you mayor pro tem professor molinard followed by representative rivera thank you very much mayor i cannot begin to thank all of you gentlemen and your sisters who are not here as well i know negotiations aren't always the nicest road to go down under that's a lot of work a lot of commitment a lot of pride and responsibility that goes with that i want to say thank you very much from the bottom of my heart i can tell you that much having been a city representative now for a while i can tell you that i've been treated by the utmost respect by each and every one of you wearing that badge in that uniform i've been to two graduations now and one went down and i'll continue to support that in other ways as well but it means a lot i can tell you that much having been a police officer and working many times with so many other firefighters it's a difference to see what you do on the line not just at the house but in the line how you save lives how you save property how you change lives for the better and so it's a heartwarming and it's very proud moment here that i can say yes and you'll have my vote and my support thank you thank you representative thank you mayor um i guess everything's pretty much has been said i believe uh representative fernandez has brought up most of the questions that interest not only council but our public and it shows again how fantastic the city and our public safety work together to negotiate to come to a conclusion and uh that that benefit that benefits all to be honest with you yeah and and of course not everybody can get what they want but you guys saw through that your your staff mr thompson has been magnificent in in the treatment of of counsel and uh i too have been to some of your graduations for which has been fantastic and of course mr cortinas always has the right numbers and with along with with his staff and makes everything possible for us for the for the community as well since the beginning of my stint here at the council i have seen the fire department grow into something that uh is magnificent you accepted the drones with with much uh pleasure you use those effectively you make our community that much safer uh and so uh everything that you do is going in the right direction i understand it with those and with the recent equipment that you have you you gain a little more notoriety throughout the state which is great for el paso it speaks volumes for not only the city but also for our fire department our police department is next hopefully and and so uh i want to thank you all for your hard work your dedication and most of all your courage to be out there at all hours of the day putting out fires and saving lives thank you so much thank you mayor thank you representative representative um rodriguez followed by salcido thank you and good morning i just want to say that i'm also very proud to be part of this council to be able to support you all whenever i see your men out on the streets you know even though they're attending to an emergency it brings comfort to me to know that you all are there i see you all on the freeway coming into work because there's never happens there's some sort of accident on the freeway and again it brings me comfort knowing that you all are there to attend to whomever is in that accident just to share something personal when during covid you know the fire department came to my home because my husband couldn't breathe and it was i was so grateful for you all to be there you were there in seconds and minutes i'm sorry and you were able to attend to him and just like my story i'm sure there's plenty of other families that have very similar stories and so for that we're all very grateful that you're able to provide those first responders services and you know my husband is fine now think thankfully and part of it has to do with you all what you all did so thank you of course i'm going to support this um you know anything else that the fire department needs moving forward you know we're here to help you all we want you all to succeed and we know that it takes a huge team to make this effort successful and with your leadership i know that we will continue to to be successful for many years to come we will continue to be an example not only to the state but to the rest of the the country because can you um elaborate on that on the recognition that you all are receiving from the state levels and the the federal levels so i don't have the name of all the awards memorized but i will tell you this um we have received numerous awards at the state level at the national level i just attended a firefighter conference 1900 firefighters from across the u.s and canada attended um and i can tell you this that when when i tell them about our department and what we're doing they're amazed and blown away at what we've done what what we've accomplished and what working what we're doing so um i just want to say one thing i know you guys have a long day and a meeting i'll keep this short but for the record representative schwarzbrain brought it up so i just want to make make it clear for the record that our current city manager he came in in 2014 the process for contract negotiations had already started i want to commend the mayor and city council for trusting him and his his staff um you know prior to that the previous city manager would spend a lot of money on outside counsel to bargain i would say to battle to put it lightly and our current city manager and his team have been excellent and that's been proven by the last two contracts so thank you so much thank you thank you so much thank you so yes so that's absolutely impressive and that's testimony that you know the investment that that we're making into your department is is proving to to be successful so again thank you all you all truly deserve this all the fire fire department deserves this and i look forward to approving this for you all thank you thank you representative thank you mayor and uh thank you again to you all and everything that you do for our community to keep us safe and healthy but i it is a testament here that the negotiations have been blissful in a sense um it shows that this council is willing to work that we're here to work together like you mentioned you didn't get everything that you wanted and neither did a boy but it was the best compromise for us to be able to work together and really serve the community so just want to say thank you and i absolutely support this thank you thank you and i do want to you know everything we've talked about everything goes to one thing commitment you know when you walk out of your home every morning to go to work you're committed to your community whether it's ebola monkey pox covet a fire an accident you don't think twice about being out there and you know we do talk about that number one thing is public safety but our number one thing is public safety but also you're all safety so we thank you for for what you do and um congratulations again on um on a great team and i know chief diagostino i know you just retired and you're a big part of this so thank you and congratulations sir and with that uh we do have a motion in a second yes so there's a motion made by representative molinar seconded by representative rodriguez to approve the resolution on that motion call for the vote roll call for me representative vanello aye thank you representative hernandez yes thank you representative salcido thank you in the voting session and the motion passes unanimously [Applause] thank you that brings us to the consent agenda all matters listed under the consent agenda will be considered by city council to be routine and will be enacted by one motion unless separate discussion is requested by council members prior to the vote members of the audience may ask questions regarding items on the consent agenda when the vote has been taken if an item has not been called out for separate discussion the item has been approved council may however reconsider any item at any time during the meeting is there a motion to approve the consensus there's a motion made by representative celecido seconded by representative molinar to approve the consent agenda on that motion call for the vote in the voting session the motion passes unanimously that brings us to item number three on the agenda and this is presentation discussion in action on the proposed fy 2022 2023 budget if it will please bring up the presentation good morning everyone there we go good morning members of council addis aliquera managing director this morning we have a presentation for you regarding our workforce updates it'll be a brief presentation but we'll highlight all of the work being done across our organization to really improve our services to our employees internally if i t could please make it full screen thank you so as we look at our leadership system plan we look at how we develop and deploy all of our systems and people is are really the core of how we're able to do any of our leadership system planning and achieving our goals so this morning we will be covering our recruitment and retention tools i'll be going briefly over that miss mack will be covering some stories and some spotlights and we will also turn it over to mr cortinas he'll be talking about some key investment strategies for our workforce so when we talk about our key recruitment and retention tools we're looking at how we can engage our employees and our workforce and make sure that they're involved in the process so we go through different process improvements and we have a lot of projects that are ongoing in the coming months you'll be seeing a lot of those being highlighted and they will be coming to you from the employees the voice of our workforce we also look at our hybrid workplace we continue to utilize that as a tool to retain and encourage individuals to apply it a professional career with the city when it's available and also our hiring incentives that are continuing to be given out our partnership approach we've been working with the workforce solutions borderplex to really engage and see all those individuals that are currently looking for employment and making sure that we are able to work in tandem with them to fill positions that are difficult to fill here at the city and then lastly our learning and development we have our tuition assistance program which has been modified and it is now including our part-time employees this morning you will be hearing from some of our workforce really engaging in those stories and listening to the impactful way that the tuition assistance program has helped them really develop and really continue their professional education so just briefly we're taking a look at where we were where we are and where we're moving towards into the future as i mentioned earlier we will be coming back in the coming months to really highlight a lot of the process improvements a lot of the manual processes or processes that hadn't been updated in quite some time had been reviewed and really taken a look at through our employees they're leading these projects through our performance office really highlighting what it is that needs to be updated and listening to our workforce to make sure that we're updating these projects so you will hear a lot of the detail upcoming but i really want to just take the time to say that a lot of this is really due to the fact that we have a great training and learning development team that has really done wonders with a lot of the programs that they now highlight to make it available to our employees so i'll go ahead and turn it over to ms max she has some stories to spotlight for you in our workforce good morning good morning dion mack deputy city manager quality of life good morning ma'am as ms guerrero mentioned we value listening to our workforce our compensation and benefits evaluations have been driven not only by the formal compensation study we completed a few years ago but also through feedback received directly from our staff the city manager hosts town hall meetings and sends regular communications to the leadership team i mean as the city manager mentioned a few weeks ago the leadership team is empowered to study and implement required compensation adjustments the performance office innovation team has developed a set of systematic approaches to help us really look at improvements throughout the organization my lean six sigma project focused on quality of life hiring and one of the things that uh we utilized as a strategy was focus groups with our team i received over 160 points of data and feedback from that team in terms of ways that we can improve our aquatics hiring and retention strategies and i'm happy to report that the recommend recommended improvements will be implemented at the end of the week within this fy 22 budget parameters this is just one of the examples of how we approach finding solutions to fill hard to fill positions it is my pleasure to introduce two of our quality of life team members who will be sharing some insight with you and i just want to take a moment to acknowledge my aquatics and zoo team who are with us i'm so proud of that team and all the work that they do every day and we will continue to ensure that we are fulfilling our mission by listening to our staff by providing them the tools they need to carry out our mission of being exceptional in terms of delivering service to our community and with that i want to introduce mr jesus avilar come on hi good morning hi so i'm jesus avila i'm the aquatic supervisor for the west side auditorium so i'm here to tell you my story and my background so since 2009 i've worked as a lifeguard head lifeguard swimming instructor trainer lifeguard instructor trainer and also supervisor for the city of el paso and fort bliss however i wanted to work more for the city of el paso as more opportunities presented and sent me on the path to advancement but in order to continue to grow i am currently taking benefit of the tuition assistance program this program has encouraged me to grow personally and professionally while also becoming a better asset to the city of el paso despite all these opportunities not many people have had the opportunity to benefit from this program as our organization is currently facing workforce capacity challenges such as lifeguards this challenge was and currently presented to the aquatics division during pre and post pandemic period some possible solutions that i researched that can improve our lifeguard shortage is the following better compensation retention program incentives increase of training and also continued career advancement in essence if we pursue these solutions together i'm confident that our organization will no longer face a lifeguard staffing shortage and will continue to take pride and joy in the ways we leave behind as we develop his skilled workforce thank you thank you so much jesus as i mentioned he was in our focus group and many of the things that are mentioned are going to be our strategies in terms of improving that service i'm a pleasure and it's my pleasure to introduce rocio who's from our zoo department i just wanted to take a moment to explain how this particular issue came to the table the city manager sends out a note to our management group periodically and a member of the team from the zoo reached out to the city manager and expressed some issues and concerns that he had with our retention as well as recruitment we then had mr cortinas and mrs guerrero go out to visit and the solutions that we will be presenting later on in the presentation came to us through that process so it's not only the budget process that we look at in terms of improvement but it's really listening to our staff in terms of their recommendations and if i may just add a comment to that when she says management she's referring to the middle management of the 500 that really are the supervisors that lead our team of 6000 plus employees so that's the communication that takes place on a regular basis and we get feedback from them periodically okay and with that i want to introduce with you good morning good morning thank you so i've been working with the city since 2017. i started with the department at the water as a customer service rep i later moved into the municipal court at munich court and in june of 2019 i got the opportunity to join the staff over at the el paso zoo i was very excited to be working at a location that focuses on animal conservation and preservation the city has constantly demonstrated that it cares for and invest on the development of their staff and it was through the tuition assistance program that i was able to obtain my master's in public administration this last december this was a big dream for me i know i would have never been able to accomplish it without the tuition assistance program due to the pandemic the zoo like several other departments had to close my entire team was furloughed at that time and i was very honored that a few chose to return our biggest challenge since then has been to restaff to hire and retain valuable people in this challenging works for market although we have since reopened and are operational our limitation in our staff means that we have to limit the amenities available for our guests in order for us to deliver in our mission and vision we have to hire the right personnel and be able to keep them the city and the zoo have demonstrated their willingness to listen to staff concerns and find viable solutions towards a win-win for our community our guests and our staff i do think the new hire initiative is great but let's not forget about everybody who shows up day in and day out to keep those services available for our community our my staff in particularly shows up every weekend we give up our weekends and our holidays to support the community and have review open everybody in the customer service relations has a passion for customer service but in this landscape right now there's a lot of opportunity so i i applaud them for sticking with the city and staying with with our department at the quality of life so i do think it's very important for them to feel appreciated as they show up every day for our community thank you for your time [Applause] and with that i turn it over to mr cortinas good morning and again good morning before i go through my slide i just want to thank jesus and rosie for having the courage to stand up in front of you all and share a little bit about their stories again these are just two examples of the many employees we have the city of el paso that do this on a day in day out basis so thank you for being here and sharing your story if i t will bring up that presentation again please so as you heard discussed and a little bit of their their stories of these two individuals these two employees really what is it that they're looking for and so it's really about gathering that feedback from our employees and you've heard us you know talk over and over again about how we gather that feedback through our employee surveys all of our cross-functional teams they identify issues we allow them to participate on different teams to get them involved and so it's not just always about pay pay is very very important obviously but you heard for example jesus mentioned it's about the pay it's about different incentives it's about the professional development giving them the opportunity to take advantage of the tuition assistance program to prepare them to be able to advance not only in their current position to continue to advance throughout the organization and that's been the approach over the last eight years and so again focusing on different wages different incentives which we've built into the budget over the last several years and we have a couple of new ones that we're recommending today that's built into the budget resolution for next year as well continuing to reward those employees that have been the city for an extended period of time through our service time incentives that we have of something that's new our performance pay again listening to the feedback of our employees by providing them an additional lump sum amount as a result of their performance evaluation focusing on the benefits again if we want to be competitive as an organization pay yes is important but it's also about what benefits you provide to your employees into your workforce we had the fire union here today and that's just one example of what we've gone about doing to address their specific needs and the things that they're looking for in those agreements and so our city employees what we've done with healthcare so the last four years now of not passing on those health care cost increases to our employees and instead the city picking up those increases providing the ability to take advantage of different wellness initiative incentives whether to shape it up take advantage of our wellness clinics which are free to utilize taking advantage of our city gyms again to encourage a physical activity for them to take care of themselves the professional development again the strategy that we've implemented the tuition assistance program you heard out of celia talk a little about that one of the great things we did again this year we revamped that process to make it easier for employees to be able to take advantage of that and so now not being so strict and how we go about letting people qualify making it much easier providing it to part-time employees making some eligible costs that previously were not able to be eligible such as books and different things that are required for their classes are now eligible give them the opportunity to take advantage of different professional development trainings through our linkedin library that they have access to free of charge links exciting across functional teams many many opportunities that aren't listed here that would provide our employees to be able to again become the experts not only in their current positions but again to be able to promote and advance throughout the organization because they are again the future leaders of the organization and you know we talk a lot about our succession implementation it's important that we continue to invest and not only be competitive on the pay but continue to invest in our existing workforce as well and so i've talked a lot about this already again these are just some of the examples that we've talked about some of the things that we've done again we've been doing this continue to revise and revamp get better implement new ideas new recommendations for our employees to be able to continue to be competitive as an employer in the area so when we look at uh wages and what we're recommending there's a couple of changes that we have in the budget resolution which we'll take action on here in a little while so there was an agenda item a few weeks ago that wanted us to look at quality of life and our animal services positions we've done that you heard dion talk a little bit about some of the work that she's done with her lean sigma project and really identifying where the greatest need is and so the greatest need the largest area that we've had issues in is in the aquatics you've heard about the animal service issues with the staffing there and so what we're recommending what we're actually building in for next year we're already doing wage adjustments in the current year that dion talked about additionally in that second bullet point there at the bottom similar to what we've done with our cdl incentive we did that a few years ago for those positions requiring a commercial driver's license as part of their job we are building into the budget resolution a 90 per pay period incentive for those positions which require immunizations for the health and safety of not only the employee but for the animals and so this will apply to the animal service employees as well as the zoo employees so this will be an additional incentive on top of the base pay on top of the pay increases we have built into the budget for next year and so with these changes and with what's recommended on the wage adjustments for our aquatics and our lifeguards that'll bring the aquatics the lifeguard positions as well as the animal service positions up to almost fifty a little over fifteen dollars an hour which will be in march of 2023 when that second phase of the pay increase takes effect and again this is really to address the area in which we see the greatest need the greatest number of vacancies i believe the last number i saw was about a 73 vacancy rate in our aquatics which again is really impacting us being able to fully open up a lot of our our facilities for our community to take advantage of we believe with this again listening to our employees as you heard jesus mentioned listening to the ideas and the recommendations they that they have in incorporating this into the budget for next year i know that the employees will be very very happy and those future employees that want to come work with the city as well will be very happy to hear additionally built into the budget resolution as well i've talked about this but just so that it's clear posted in the back up on the budget resolution is the addition of the one thousand dollar sign-on incentive to continue that through fiscal year 2023 it's helped and so we want to continue to be able to do that program for new employees who want to come work for the city of el paso and so this is just a list of some of the improved incentives that we have built into the budget for next year some of the new items the things that are continuing and then some of the other benefits that we offer as well really wanted to highlight this slide though because this slide really does speak to all of the wages all of the incentives all of the benefits that we provide as an organization again to be competitive to be able to attract new talent to the organization to be able to retain our existing workforce and so this is a list of of those various items and when you add all of these different items up it's very very substantial in the offering financially these are financial incentives that the city provides again to be able to be competitive with all of the other agencies all of the other employers in the area and so with the wages that we have built in for next fiscal year again the one dollar increase to the minimum wage building on the 75 cents we did this year again about a 17 increase in the minimum wage in less than one year the performance evaluation lumps on payment which is new again listening to the voice of our customers or our employees in this situation continuing to shape it up employees can take advantage of that again eighteen hundred dollars of a financial incentive that's not eighteen hundred dollar discount on their wellness that's eighteen hundred dollars that they receive every paycheck up two hundred fifty dollars on their paycheck in the form of an incentive continuing the hsa again when i talked about healthcare not only not only not increasing the healthcare but providing them the health spending account to be able to offset if they need to utilize their health care benefits the tuition assistance program which is a very very beneficial program not only for the city of el paso but one of our part of our vision statement is providing exceptional recreational cultural and educational opportunities it's in your vision statement city council so continuing to invest in that tuition assistance program we have about a 200 000 increase in the budget for next year i expect we're probably going to blow that away once employees start taking advantage of the tuition assistance program so city manager and i will figure out how we're going to be able to fund those that budget because i anticipate that we're going to need to probably increase that budget throughout the year which is a good thing whether it's employees that are taking advantage of that to stay with the city of el paso even if they go on to work for a different employer we educated with what we provide those employees and hopefully to be able to keep them within within el paso and not move away and so i won't go through all of these but again as you read through all of these different incentives that we provide again very very attractive and very very competitive obviously we still know we have a long way to go with our overall wages that we provide to our city employees but making tremendous progress and that's what it's been about over the last eight years is continue to make progress with our workforce with our investment in public safety with our investments in the streets with our investments in our parks museums libraries and our zoo all these different areas continue to make progress and move the city forward and so with that we will be happy to answer any questions either out of sully moscato miss mack or myself would be happy to answer any questions so members of council i asked the staff to put this together to show the council not only a recap of what you've already approved and what's in next year's budget but also show you that we have really underscored the importance of those specific positions to open up those areas where we need them the most and so that was the intention of this presentation and also to show how committed we are to the training development and then also the formal education of our employees and to his point you know if we run out of the money in the budget we're going to put more in we're very committed to the educational component of higher education and we're going to be coming back with future presentations to show how many employees have been positively impacted by that it's only going to make us better to train and educate our our folks because they're the ones that are executing the strategic plan that is part of your vision and part of the the values that you aspire to and what you do on a daily basis and that's that's what we do in return uh we make sure that that's being executed and that you see that execution and that sense of urgency that we have as do you uh for these specific facilities that we want to open up uh back in in 22 and 23. thank you mr gonzalez tonight and i can tell you that the emails and letters and the people i've met with that is one of the most important things that we've been talking about whether it's a swimming community or you know other entities that the um the amenities continue to open and we continue to reopen so thank you for that uh representative anello followed by representative ednandes thank you mayor thank you robert for the presentation i'm glad to hear that there have been further investments made on workforce but i wanted to know if you could elaborate so you mentioned that after the conversation and the agenda item that i had placed was it last council meeting august 2nd some council meeting ago um you've actually been able to adjust some of that pay and can i don't know if you have specifics on what those positions are um what that percentage increases what you're basing that on what it was before i guess generally break it down for us so full understanding so i'll start and then i'm gonna let miss mack actually come up and finish because it was part of one of her projects that she was working on prior to actually the item that you all put on the agenda on august the second and so really looking at animal services something chief juggerstino's been working on for quite a while looking at the pay for those areas as well the zoo if we have several individuals who constantly email and say you know continue to look at our pay we think that we should be treated similarly to animal services we deal with animals you know we're exposed to you know similar type situations so we had been working on those things prior to the agenda item we don't have unfortunately right now we don't have the time to meet the requirements that you all put on the agenda to be able to get that wage analysis done but we do know that these are critical areas that we do have high number of vacancies in right now with animal services and aquatics and at the zoo and so what's built into the recommendation is one for the aquatics we'll take them first is wage adjustments that we're incorporating essentially we'll do wage adjustments to bring them up to a little over 13 an hour if i t can bring that slide up i actually have it there just so you can read off of it thank you so the wage adjustments so increase in their base pay they will receive the additional dollar increase over two phases again we have built in also not just increasing the their base pay but then also any compression type issues where if we're increasing lifeguards we need to increase the head lifeguards and so that we don't have any compression issues with those supervisors so that's one is adjusting the wages for our lifeguards again with the intent to get to that 15 an hour on the animal services and the zoo employees so we're also doing we'll be doing wage adjustments for animal services again very similar to what we're doing with the aquatics however with the animal services in the zoo we have the additional 90 dollar per pay period incentive which is consistent with what we provided for the cdl the commercial driver's license incentive that we started a few years ago so between the wage adjustments the additional incentive that will put animal services employees up to at least 15 an hour again by march of 2023 when that second phase of the pay increase kicks in and so it's a large number of employees and so these wage adjustments just real quick one more point is these wage adjustments that we've done are not just for these individual groups these particular groups these are groups that we've been working on over the last several months now we're working on right now reviewing our fleet mechanics for example which is an area we continue to see high number of vacancies in and so ellen miss myth has been working very closely with mascara myself to look at adjusting the wages for them we've done different wage adjustments for various esd groups we've done wage adjustments for some metro bus drivers weight adjustments for our sanitation drivers so we continue to evaluate potentially future wage adjustments just based on the need and based on the number of vacancies throughout the organization dion is there anything else you want to add on the lifeboards yeah i mean i just i had a a like technical question but i i'd love to you know and i i i feel like there was a missed opportunity right this is a conversation i'd been having publicly for a while uh put this item up would have loved to have had you know a sit down with y'all to kind of understand the work that you were doing on because you know it's great to know now that this was happening and would have loved to have been a part of that conversation before and so i guess just asking that moving forward right if we're where we're voicing your concern y'all are doing the work let's sit down and have that conversation together but yeah i'd love just some feedback from you i think i mentioned when we when i did my budget presentation i was beginning my lean six sigma project and so we were able to put this in place within 60 days and i just come to the portfolio and we began to dig deep into the numbers and understood some of the challenges with certification and other issues and understood that we needed a different strategy from our aquatics versus our recreation side of the house and so we we continue to look at these things as we move forward we look at the numbers you know although we the the resolution that came forth was about quality of life in total you know i look at what our highest attrition rates and vacancy rates are and we really honed in on those pieces as robert talked about we had a 73 vacancy rate uh in the aquatics we were down 120 lifeguards we were already open for the season it is about certification it's very different than just the entry level positions and so on the recreation side our strategy was to partner with workforce and others to help us to be able to fill some of the positions that were entry level and then strategy on the aquatic side was to really look deeply at what we had seen historically as some challenges in that area in addition to what was mentioned we're also implementing a shift differential policy that came out of discussions with staff my hardest field position is at five o'clock in the morning so it's really thinking about what is the staff telling us what are those challenges that we see and so it's not about just this moment of trying to restaff but really being an employee employer of choice and so we're not having these conversations continuously as we move forward in future years i was a part of the the compensation study that we did i had hr in my portfolio at that time some of the issues and concerns that we're dealing with we're not right-sized by that so you have to have a whole set of tools in your toolkit to be able to continue to evaluate that process and just you know for the record that took about 24 months at least from the time we issued the uh the rfp there's lots of interviews there's lots of other things that happens so i think continuing to utilize all the tool sets to make sure we're addressing the issues as quickly as possible are going to be important the things that we talked about today are going to be in people's paychecks beginning this saturday so i can start to advertise and ensure that i can start to move forward in these areas i have a 31 vacancy rate at the zoo we have a 58 vacancy rate um in parks and recreation mcat and libraries are less of a concern for me right now because they're at about 10 they're doing well they're fully open fully functional so we really use the data to help us to understand where we need to focus and put extra effort and i'm very proud of all the teams that came together to help this put this in place and help help us to move towards this for our teams thank you miss mac and sir robert i just have one technical question so um there's an additional 90 per pay period for animal services in zoo um but how does that impact hourly employ is that also hourly employees or just salary employees so it applies to anybody whose job requires they have those immunizations in their job specifications okay and so whether your hourly salary doesn't matter you will receive the 90 dollar per pay period incentive okay and what job positions have those immunizations about all of them at the animal services and the zoo have that requirement okay great um and i don't uh know if the council's aware the the day that we had the conversation and the next day um other cities in texas took up employee workforce i know austin increased their employee minimum wage to 20 i believe that same night waco looked at 17 an hour a small city like waco um so we're not the only ones having this conversation where this is not a unique situation to el paso um but we it it does seem like we're a little bit behind and or we're doing it the right way right we're looking at these wages the right way um but i i am still uh i do still want to sit down miss mac if possible and really understand some of the things that you're talking about um you know me i love to know every little detail of something for no reason um but also uh you know am excited for this quarter and looking at that competitive wage study and what y'all can pull together um in addition to this so thank you robert i really appreciate the work that you did on this right and so it's all about making progress right this point i just made it's about continuing to make progress in this council within the last years again increase the minimum wage by 17 percent and so while yes we know we still have a long way to go to get to 12 and 11 cents by march of 2023 a significant progress in a very very short amount of time and continue to increase the wages for employees to be competitive it doesn't come cheap though and so when we talk about again 75 of our budget is our employees four thousand civilians two thousand uniform employees when you apply these type of increases the one dollar per hour for example one dollar per hour doesn't sound like much it's a nine percent increase in the minimum wage but it's about a seven million dollar annual impact and so that one dollar again is it's very very expensive but we will continue to build upon what we've done over the last eight years continue to vote upon what this council has approved in the last several budgets again to be competitive without only the wages but all the other incentives and the benefits that go along with it as well and and then just counsel just um to follow up with what robert is saying we identify concerns or complaints or issues whether it's through the cr system or through the resident surveys and we we are constantly assigning those problematic areas to uh lean six sigma green belt candidates and black belt candidates and in this particular case uh ms mack had already been working on that for quite some time because it was assigned out quite a while back we look at weaknesses in order to improve service delivery and we also look at areas where we can segregate based on specific duties because one of the things that was budget budget's concern was that look if we do these across the board we're going to see these increases in the future so the other thing i've asked robert to do and nicole cody is to look at the future budgets and forecast those budgets because when we're back at full staffing that's seven million dollars he's referring to would be on top of being the full staffing so we're planning for that as well so that we don't you know run into a roadblock in the future but not having thought of that thank you representative hernandez followed by mayor pro tem thank you mayor um i did want to say thank you to jesus rocio for sharing your stories and having the courage to do that it's so intimidating to come to council um and congratulations for your um your future and your denver's with your educational attainment um itu was the recipient of the tuition assistance program with the city of el paso working for previous city council members and so the program is working and i'm proud that the city of el paso is making sure that our employees uh have every opportunity that other employers are providing uh for uh their employees um where mr gonzalez we're what the fourth largest employer that's correct in the city of el paso we're the entire community we're the fourth largest employer and so it's important that we lead the way in wages and we lead the way in providing exceptional services and benefits to our employees and i think this budget is reflective of that um it's no secret we have more to do but i think this is a concerted effort and we have strategies in place that we can increase wages not only for city employees but for all el paso ends and so proud to be part of that progress um i know that this item is related to um the budget but there's other items can you talk me through what are the actions for this item so there's no actions in this my my budget presentation i'm going to go through here in just a minute no action required of this so what we did with the changes is it's all incorporated in the budget resolution which i mentioned so it's the new incentive for animal services and zoo employees so those jobs requiring the immunizations so that's new in the budget resolution and then the continuation of the one thousand dollar sign-on incentive that we started back in so that will be the so the action that's already up to the budget resolution which will be uh so that will be an action precipitated by what they've already shared with y'all okay so it can come at the next item so i saw the budget resolution in the next item so i i didn't want to speak to it but since you mentioned it um and and missing this just one more point my apologies for interrupting you is that this is in direct response to a lot of what council had said was a priority has been saying for quite some time we didn't just start working on it this month i mean we've been working on it for months because they have to vet it not only with hr with the workforce relations but also in the finance department and also with the city attorney's office so has to go through a litany of scrutiny before we execute it okay no i appreciate that you all know how i feel about indiscriminately choosing departments i think every department deserves competitive wages but you know there's going to be some pressure points to the budget so we need to have an honest conversation about what that means for your tax rate um but i did want to just touch on the thousand dollar sign on bonus i saw that it's in the budget resolution through the entire fiscal year 2023 i saw one line item that shows for uniform or excuse me non-uniform um in one paragraph but not in the next paragraph so i just want to ensure that this is also for uniform officers for trainees trainees for trainees correct okay so are they not cons if you're an academy or are you not concerned until they graduate yeah and they get it right before they graduate okay so they so it does it does apply yes so they do get it when they get on and then when they finish the training they'll get the other 500 before they get commissioned okay that was just my only concern as it relates to our workforce um i'll wait to ask other questions about the budget resolution thank you thank you representative i think this is also direct in response to creating jobs within our community and creating good paying jobs and and we have to keep up with the companies that are coming in to our community that we've had the opportunity to bring in that are willing to pay you know 15 16 17 an hour and uh for us to continue to to keep up and pay livable wages based on the thing that we committed to the community and one of the other things merit to that point that we want to be even more aggressive with is to point out those additional benefits that the employee gets that they possibly don't get at that competing company to your point and that sometimes they don't see that and that's the reason robert had that slide that fifteen thousand of potential additional benefits that they could derive from being involved in those programs that's a that's a very good point you know and it's it's a great point because at the end of the day you use the same wallet day and then they out to pay your expenses so these benefits are really really important to our team members thank you for that mayor pro tem thank you um i was happy to see that the percentage i said 10 is the the at this point the vacancy left for libraries yeah the libraries currently have 13 vacancies they're fully opened all their hours and their programming has been restored and so that's pretty much the rate that we see average and it's not the same 13 days are the libraries open on sundays right now the libraries have not been open on sunday's main library was our sunday location they're currently under under construction and for saturday what hours do we have we have our normal restored pre-pandemic ten to six ten to six and then do we have an idea with the rec centers what the vacancy are are with them so our our we had 43 vacancies with rec centers and we're supposed to be opening next armijo don haskins and seville unfortunately what happened with that is that we had a civil service concern there was someone processes the hiring list and so once that gets through civil service and we can sort that we can install those three leaders and those will be our next series the hiring bonus has helped us as well as our partnership with workforce development so that line in the line item in the resolution is very important for us in addition we will be actually advertising at that new increase rate once that that first um half of that one dollar goes in do we have an idea when we might see those those i don't have the timeline for civil service arizona because i don't know when that next meeting is i'm just concerned september 8th because don haskins is the only community center that we rec center that we have in district one so just want to make sure that that is there so correct um so i know we were talking about don haskins i know we also you know talked about some senior services at seville and i know that mr pipe has been in communications with you all regarding these pieces i do think that once we get those leadership pieces resolved we'll continue to flow into getting the rest of our centers open and our hope is to continue to be very aggressive with the strategy for both aquatics and our recreation centers through the end of the year so that we're really coming into our busy seasons fully staffed and then i guess this question is for you uh mr cortinas is what trends do you see with with adequately staffing them with wages for our employees in the future budgets i sorry i didn't hear you a few trends future trends you anticipate to see as it relates towards wages and towards our employees i i believe with what we have built into the budget for next year is going to make a tremendous impact a positive impact on the hiring of being able to hire individuals as i mentioned we've done several different wage adjustments we'll continue to make wage adjustments where necessary i've gone through and i'll say it again with what's built in for next year so again dollar increase in the minimum wage equates to a nine percent increase in the minimum wage continue to increase our service time which is a key component because we want to make sure that we're not only attracting new employees but that we're keeping our long-term employees that have been city for a long time we know we're going to continue to need to look at i mentioned the fleet mechanics is an area that we're looking at now that's one of the areas that working with this might that we need to continue to evaluate one of the big areas that we're probably going to continue looking at is our streets and maintenance department and so again that's something that we'll continue to look at continue to evaluate every area where we're seeing you know hard to fill specialized positions electricians plumbers those type of positions are getting a little bit harder to fill but it's really just across the board right now unfortunately just the labor challenge that every employer is facing right now it's hard to find not only skilled labor but then also your your entry level whether they're lifeguards or recreation center employees so i mean as far as trends it's really across the border and i think you know code we talked about this uncertainty it's really thrown sort of a wrench into not only the health stamp stand point but also the financial the operational as well thank you sir thank you represent molinard followed by representative fernandez thank you mayor so good morning mr cortinas i know you started your presentation you're talking something about the pay well you know people do need to buy food pay their bills put gas in their car and all kinds of other stuff those are all very important items to people the employees their families and i understand that correctly we're always trying to do great things for them trying to move forward for them but i will tell you as a former city employee i think we haven't mentioned the word pride you know i can tell you i was very proud to be a city employee for so long and um i know there's others on this guys that are former city employees as well i know i had a very served under different mayors different chiefs of police and it was always a great day to put on that uniform and to go out there and try and do the best as possible and working with once again like the fire department and others whether it was the zoo the parks the libraries whatever you know just seeing the the pride that people do work for the city that they feel that sense of pride so that's an intangible that you cannot put on paper that's an intangible that we heard right now from two uh i'm gonna call them young city employees mr avila and ms nevadas and whoever else might be in the red shirts there but you know it's a sense of pride period you know when you get up in the morning or if you've got to go to work at 10 o'clock at night or whatever it is you know it's a sense of pride that you hey i can work for the city i'm working for the city and the opportunities to promote uh within the city that's good i can tell you i'm also a recipient of the tuition reimbursement program back then what they call it but so it's it's a different world i understand now we're still living kind of post covet i notice those two barriers are down which is a good sign and things like that so let's continue moving forward thank you sir and that's an extra point it is the pride but it's also city manager shares the story a lot when he does this town halls there was one group a while back and it was a very simple question and they asked him i hope you don't mind understand the story sir but they asked him do you care very simple question do you care and so looking at what you all approve every year with the budget and where those dollars are going continue to go back into these employees whether it's the tuition assistance whether it's additional incentives don't say it do it and you all have done it you all have invested in the workforce thank you representative um molinard and i think uh cinemander and chief d'agostino yesterday and i talked about we're really not post coded we still have a lot of uh things that we have to deal with today and as we move forward with the budget and things how we roll out the programs we're covet's still here and we still need to be very cognizant of that and we still have city and city departments that are being impacted with employees being out right now which that's sure is having an impact representative hernandez just a quick question regarding schedule b the staffing table um it states all funds fte 7 295 employees can you clarify if that also includes enterprise funds and the el paso water it does not include i'll pass the water it does not so it does include some metro altitude bridges airport okay so we have 7295 employees and can you tell me what the percentage of our budget with all funds in mind what is the percentage of all of our city employees of our budget in terms of like what is the cost it's about three quarters it's about 75 percent of the overall cost are related to employees and so that's ftes that you're looking at that's not an actual number of people of employees that's ftes time yeah well full-time amp part-time so it's ftes so right now we did mention that we do still have a large number of vacancies and so those vacancies are included in that number that you just referenced okay i see what you're saying so we are funding all of these positions with the assumption that we're full capacity and there's no vacancies that's okay that's the goal okay that's cool it's still a very significant number um so we're prepared to hire people apply and hopefully we can we can get quality candidates to come in um my hope is that there are you all are being aggressive with hiring fairs working with workforce solutions because i'm very concerned about the vacancy rates that i've heard today is that a choice are we so we are working very aggressively to identify new partnerships get creative on the job fairs attracting different pools of talent retirees utilizing volunteers i mean a lot of departments rely upon volunteers to help address some issues and so yes yes hi good morning alas ali again so we are working with workforce solutions borderplex we did sign an agreement initially it was just for a couple of departments so we've expanded that agreement to cover all of those departments we're working on some hiring fairs that are coming in the following month in september we haven't finalized those details yet but we will be advertising that and then we will also be coming back in september to really talk about our volunteer and internship program and the growth that we're we're working on and if you could make sure you send council updates on that so that if it's in their district they'll send out a newsletter and get people out there and they might even want to participate absolutely yes thank you araceli i'm really excited to see hear about that partnership and then my final point about the budget so it's three quarters of the budget so if there's any efforts to to continue to cut the budget it is it going to be for personnel to save money we would not recommend making any changes or reductions to the workforce and the things that we have built into the budget for next year okay thank you thank you representatives on this episode and the reason for it it would be counterintuitive to what the council has directed us to do in terms of open up these services that are of high priority in nature for you and for the community and not only do we have a few employees here with us today in person but we have a lot of employees that are very involved they watch all of the city council meetings they know what's going on they know that today the budget's being adopted so again when we talk about you know the investment that we've made again they're watching making sure representative vanello followed by rodriguez thank you mayor um i actually my question is for miss mack she said sorry uh miss mac based on the conversation that and the questions that representative schwartzbein was asking um i was wondering if you could get us kind of a schedule for the reopening of rec centers um i know currently now in the south central part of district 2 there are no rec centers open in the north part of district 2 only one rec center is not permanently well because permanently closed is not the correct there are some that are permanently closed because of disrepair and then there are some that are in construction but at this moment there are no rec centers open in district two um but i actually know that because trying to schedule meetings staff has allowed us to use senior centers after hours because there are no actual other city facilities available so just and i understand right we've had a whole conversation now for over an hour about why that is so i'm not um i'm you know not complaining about that but just would love to understand kind of while that staffing gets up what is the plan which facilities will be open so if you can get us that list and schedule the question really is the order and not necessarily the date because yes yeah yeah what's happening is you know we have to temper the covet we you know we're moving people around to make sure we can provide coverage and so there are some unknowns in terms of having solid numbers for staff but we do have a strategy in terms of how we intend to get these these open and what we hope that that will look like in terms of those staffing yeah that's and i apologize for um the incorrect terminology just understanding kind of what that plan is and and and i i also i guess just want to say that that we could still go through this entire budget year and still not be fully open um right because it's contingent on being able to hire um which is only yeah i got a plan okay well i'm going to improve the budget i would love to see that plan that's right let's have a conversation but realistically i mean it could be out of everyone's hands and that could happen and so would love to also see if there's a plan for are there alternate programs that we can be doing in areas where their rec center's closed right ray gilmore is closed because the foundation has i'm sorry not ray gilmore leona ford washington because the foundation has collapsed right that we don't have the dollars to fix that facility um and you have a facility that was very heavily used but there is a park there can we be holding events um and you know basketball tournaments or something in that park should be giving the youth in that area uh a space right that they that they no longer have because we have we don't have the funds to fix that facility so um that's something else that i would love to work with you with over the the year as it starts to cool down a little bit okay that also require hiring so that's it don't also promise um for my team but we will definitely help you to understand our strategy in terms of how we're approaching this you know it is data driven in terms of no usage uh making sure that we have some spread across the city you know walkability for people and things like that but we'll get that to you okay thank you thank you representative rodriguez thank you mayor so robert my question is earlier this year you were trying you were proposing an amendment to our charter to help um i guess with the hiring process would that be another strategy to help fill some of these positions it's definitely a strategy so that will help and if you heard ms mack make the comment right now about when we go to higher civil service people who are not qualified or disqualified for one reason or another had the ability to appeal the civil service right that they have to appeal which slows that process down and so civil service commission only meets once a month sometimes if they don't meet quorum those meetings get delayed maybe multiple months and so it does slow down the hiring process it does impact the opening of those facilities that we just talked about so these are things that we have talked about not only with muscata but also with obviously miss neiman because it's right now currently in the charter with what's allowed what's allowed right now in the charter well i'm so on your question there i'm talking about the appeal process is one of the things that does slow us down quite a bit again we want to make sure that we have a thorough review we're giving everybody the ample opportunity right but right now it's it's a very lengthy process it can very much add weeks or maybe a month to the hiring process and if we were to amend that that part of the charter um how would it speed up the process mean we would have to revise our prizes to allow for some form of appeal whether it be done through our workforce relations to have the managers actually do the the review and uh review the appeal i mean there's multiple things that mascara and her team have been working on as far as recommendations of what we're going to bring forward this part of the charter amendment okay it's just about working again with the civil service commission getting their feedback also working with our employee unions who are regular members or participants of those meetings as well to show that they don't get the feeling that we're trying to do something sneaky or that's not in the best interest of our employees that's never our intention and in fact it's the opposite everything we do is for the best intention of all of our study employees and so there are some opportunities there that we'll continue to explore to to help expedite those processes that right now we're facing yeah so i i understand that that was the part of the amendment that wasn't passed by by council um either way we're not going to see any charter amendments until potentially next may but i think that that that strategy right there was a really good opportunity for us to be able to fill a lot of these empty positions and so you know i would encourage you all to continue getting creative on how we could fill these positions i know you all are working really hard including increasing pay and hosting um the different the workforce the i'm losing my train of thought here the oh my god and that's that i mean you're you're touching on key points of things that we've been working on to get creative and job fairs how do we speed these things up because it's it's not uncommon now where an employee applies we do our civil service processes that we need to make sure you go through qualify the list by the time the department's ready to interview make an offer the person that was interested is saying i'm no longer interested i already have a job opera then i'm gonna start next week somewhere else so we we've got better but we still have obviously some issues we need to work out relation to civil service and some other processes that impact that yeah and i would say just because i do hear from a lot of different people that are applying to to the city they want to be part of our team um they're saying that like what you just said that the process is taking way too long or for some reason you know they're not getting the job and so i don't know what needs to be explored there where the position people aren't getting the position but the position remains open i don't know any other strategies that you all may have we have the we have the team working on it it's the process he's referring to that we have to abide by i mean that that was put in place different a different government structure and so it's it's somewhat antiquated uh but the things we've put in place for employees and the type of feedback systems feedback loops that we have are very contemporary and and some of them are cutting edge in terms of the like the pay increases and why are we looking at specific uh departments that's based on the service delivery and and based on metrics on which ones are bleeding the most quite frankly so we're triaging this whole program in order to attack the the problem in order to be able to get the type of result that you are after and so i guess my final comment or question would be are we looking do we have a model that kind of looks at hiring within so looking at our existing employees and wanting to i guess incubate them from the the most basic position and grow him into managerial positions we've gotten very aggressive with that i'll let robert add anything i may leave off but when he talks about and i talk about succession planning we call it succession implementation because we have multiple examples of examples of that one example is in senior management positions we've had like over 60 women that have been promoted into those positions we've had hundreds of promotions over the years in terms of in internal promotions and so the type of training that we put in place is to develop our leaders the the mid management is called the 500 and so when when miss mack and mr cortinas were talking about my interaction with them i send them periodically messages via email on just a variety of things just to stay in touch with them and when we do employee surveys and get that feedback for them we find out like what their interests are some who want to promote some who don't want to promote want to just get better at what they're doing some that want to know more about other departments that's where lean six sigma training comes into play that's where cross-functional teams comes into play and that might motivate them or inspire them to want to do more things and be involved in other departments so everything we put in place is for the development of our employee in order to become a leader not a manager we say often we want leaders we don't want managers we want people that are going to innovate and we say we're a learning organization that's why we're committed to the the training and also the formal education that robert talked about in our tuition assistance program so robert you can add whatever you think i may have left off we do it every day and that's what we do is every day identifying getting creative on how we go about assigning new roles responsibilities to employees changing titles giving them opportunities to move into a higher level position taking on more and more but obviously that creates a trickle down effect where you know if somebody moves up and promotes and obviously you're freeing up another position down below them but again getting very creative and maybe we only need one person to to do that function and we don't need that additional position so it's a combination i mean it's it's really about promoting encouraging our players to take advantage of all the opportunities to continue to promote and advance not only at the senior leadership level but all throughout the organization i see it on a daily basis because the workforce relations department reports directly to me so i get to see a lot of those requests that come through by departments to try to get creative and really about addressing the needs within their particular departments to assure that services aren't being impacted and so my final question is i know that um we are you mentioned number four as far as the largest um higher employer in the city do you happen to know who one two and three are you gonna put me on the spot i i believe it's fort bliss one of the school districts i don't know off the top of my head okay but we are number four and that's i believe it's fort bliss el paso independent school district and socorro and then we're four number four yeah i think those are the three ahead of us and that's one of the points that i've been making over the last several weeks with the media and just all the different meetings that we've done say imagine makes the same point is that i don't think a lot of people realize how large of an organization we are right representative fernandez wrote 7200 positions when they all get filled a very large 1.2 billion dollar organization that has a significant impact on this community over 7 000 positions when they're filled rely upon their employment stable pastor to provide for their families and so i don't think that i could be understated enough of the importance of what we do when we develop these budgets to take care of our workforce and just to tie back previous presentations we made to the council we've shown you where as a result of our capital improvements division we have supported over 42 000 jobs with regard to our capital improvements projects we've said that we've got almost a thousand projects that we've completed since the strategic plan has been put in place in streets almost 500 there and then almost 500 general capital projects that are done throughout the city that have been put in place and as you all know and can attest to we still are far behind we are far behind because of years and years decades of just a lack of investment and and just ignoring uh like for example the east side that was growing exponentially and they didn't have the public amenities uh whether it was the um the way i describe how you have to continue to pay for things that are in existence and i make comparisons to like when you have horses and you have skinny horses and you buy new horses and you want to feed the new ones we have a lot of skinny horses that haven't been fed some that are dying on the dying on the vine uh and i know i'm i'm cross-purposing with analogies here with the dyno on the vine part but there that's what staff's referring to there's that that lack of investment has been there over years and now we've we've invested in streets we've invested in police and fire in terms of the personnel and also equipment replacement so those have been really the top priorities the council has placed the top priority to museums to libraries to parks but as you again can all attest to we're way behind uh in in the parks area there there's a a master list of an inventory of all city facilities that i asked for back in 15. it took staff about 15 to 16 months to get that completed and that has a a a list of red items the red items were the things that were in dire need uh and the whole thing's red uh and and so now it's probably a different color if you can get more you know a different color other than red in terms of a higher need but a lot of those things that y'all talk to talk about rather we don't disagree with you it's just a matter of doing a funding source so that's why we had the discussion and the dialogue with council about coming back with a quality of life package in 2024 one of which not only looks at all of this maintenance has been left behind in terms of that hasn't gotten the attention then also looking at some of the new things that some of you have brought up some of you have visioned with some of your districts and so those kinds of things are things we have to talk about because those are things that are still required now i also understand the balance with limiting you know the tax rate and and in this year we did reduce the tax rate i know there's been a lot of discussion about that but the bottom line the tax rate is going down from 90.7 to 86.2 that is a fact it's also a fact that values are still there so they are going to be paying a little bit more than what they paid last year because of the values so those two things are facts and and and they relate to one another we we just had a presentation to a large group on the east side and we made all these points with them in terms of educating them of the type of things that the budget has and what the budget doesn't have and what's still in store in terms of the needs in the future as we look at you know still maintaining a very large city that's you know over 250 square miles it's a very large city with a lot of needs and a lot of things that haven't been put in place to fund them properly so when we talk about having money in the fund balance we talk about having our finances in order that's the reason that's critical so that a lot of these things that the council wants and and when i say the council that the community wants and in a lot of uh ways needs them it's not just a want those things we need to work towards in order to fund them so that we can make them more perpetual so that this not just something that's a happenstance or something we're trying to stop from bleeding we need to we need to fix the patient and we need to get them up and running again and in a lot of cases you have that in your districts thank you and i know that i said that that was my last question but i was looking at the pie chart that you have here on slide 18 and my question here it says 72.9 percent are personal services of those personal services how many are our public safety police and fire it's about one-third of the total so if our total employees about one-third are uniform employees of that amount i i don't know the exact split but i mean public safety when you break it down the other way if you look at the other charter the other table we have in there public safety is 60 of our budget largest investment every year largest cost driver every year police and fire not only because of collective bargaining which you had an item on the agenda today for the fire we have police coming up but also the investment in the equipment which we talked about the investment in the facilities which the voters approved back in november of 2019 and so we have additional costs coming on and it's one of the things that we have a couple of slides in the presentation coming up that you're referencing we're going to have a future presentation again because we need to continue to not only remind the council but remind the community as well that's what we've been doing with the media but what those future costs look like what is it that what's the city's plan what is your strategic plan one of the number one things is the investment in police and fire not only through staffing and so again i'm jumping ahead here but when you look at the future staffing for our police department we've added about 173 officers net increase of 173 but over the next 10 years over 500 new officers that are planned right now to be hired so when we open up that far east regional command we're obviously going to need new officers to be able to staff so that we're able to adequately staff these regional commands when they do the realignment not only police but fire as well fire is growing we have mentioned the new fire station open on the west side another fire station on the east side will be opening in the near future and so the same thing with them we need to continue to grow the staffing levels in both of those departments and if i may it's very important to add this piece to it robert's right we have 173 net new officers in terms of the net increase i should say but how many officers to get to 173 takes about 500 because of the attrition so training is is vital and we need to include training in our in our portfolio and our packages in our budget for police and fire especially when you're getting a lot of new partic particularly in police a lot of new officers because that translates into risk and if you don't have these folks trained properly then we have failed not them they need to have the right training and we have to pay for that training so that they're in the best possible position when they face whatever it is that they face that they don't that they're walking into so that that's critical so those are other costs uh that people don't see it's not just a new 173 that those are net new we have almost 500 new officers that we have to train and we have to outfit and we have to have vehicles and things of that nature that again we weren't keeping up with in the past and i know this year in the budget we increased that in order to have enough money to pay for the true capital equipment replacement because the costs have gone up in that area as well all right so and that's stopping again just another point it's in the slide and you'll see some of the media here that i've met with over the last several weeks that's coming off the heels of that decline in the number of officers between 2008 2016. with the number of officers actually decreased by 118. okay so the investment in the plan that's been put in place has been working but with that comes cost increases okay so i'm out of time but i just wanted to i guess clarify because i know we're constantly seeing that 60 of our budget goes towards public safety and then this pie chart reflects 72.9 goes to personnel services so i guess if later on you said that it'll you'll clarify that further right i'll ask the budget staff if they can pull the break out of personal costs by police and fire the rest of the departments thank you so what you're looking at is my expenditure category is one the 73 percent is by category and the other one is by department essentially so place of fire thank you thank you miss prine so i'm going to recommend because i know we have some members of the audience here who are waiting on the mass transit agenda we have that scheduled at 10 o'clock in the adoption of the mass transit budget i don't believe there's any issues with that so i'd recommend we take that item absolutely all right is our motion uh recess in the mass transit there's a motion in a second to recess a regular city council meeting all in favor aye anyone opposed and the regular city council meeting is in recess at 10 34 a.m mayor may we convene the mass transit meeting please thank you good morning this is a meeting of the sun metro mass transit department board for tuesday august 23rd 2023 2022 we begin with call to the public this morning we have three individuals that signed up to speak the first person is francisca grajeda she will be followed by ruben montoya and ruben fur francisca gregeda has requested an interpreter and mariana orozco from my office will be assisting i don't think good morning we are here to remind you about the issues that we've had or faced with the live transportation i'm so sorry i'm a little bit tired i'm so sorry we are a little late due to another meeting we're here just to remind you about the issues of the lyft transportation and the meeting actually we talked about this lady she has been having the opportunity to do something and she has not for the past two years and everybody everyone is commenting on that issue is people with disabilities have been facing this issue for a while now and we um we just want to bring light to this problem um they they use this transportation to get to their doctor's appointments to their jobs and unfortunately they don't make it on time when they don't make it at all due to the lack of transportation or opportunities [Music] um we we had a meeting last sunday and unfortunately a lot of our um our partners were not able to make it due to the lift um they were not able to find any sort of transportation towards there and they they don't the lift does not go as far as their problem or their other houses we just hope the lady from sun metro is listening to this complaints we have already provided all our information and a lot of our people have been calling and talking about these issues and complaining as well so we're just hoping this can be resolved soon thank you thank you gracias process and thank you miss orozco the next speaker is ruben montoya followed by reuben fur good morning mr montoya you'll have three minutes sir good morning good morning oh there's shiny there's no buses and we're here on no rope all day we're hunting like many know her got them they know where i got that stuff from you know what i'm doing okay you know we want to go out on sunday me tell your wife tuesday i want to go out on sunday all day i mean if we go walk to animator and wait for the big that big busted that tamper you know then listen for that that means like you know me want to go out to me come on go see her family i'm gonna go see my family all day and then the right foot down you know we want to but take a bar to animator no to no loop and take a bus there's no buses on the side and all of them have problems on the on the league day well they were to beat bosses at nine o'clock in the night the red bus on the 8 30 there was to be a red bus you know what got you know how you i don't know how you got her and i don't know what her doing well then you know sorry i don't and we thought you were dying anything happened like my friend and they were sir aren't they you know he had to walk to walmart yesterday he walked to walmart you know what he went over you know nothing there caught a couple fear called me he missed the call he bought her the very way he goes to the hospital he called me you know i mean they gave me a warning and get up one day he don't have to walk to walmart all day you know how to take your word sir sometimes you hear an animal name you hear a cop we think if he be missing to him you know then listen for them you know why i got that shot for a minute no i don't know where i'm doing anything or something so i don't and only sorry uh then my phone sorry oh sorry sir thank you bear thank you sir thank you the next speaker is reuben fir this um good morning sir um i don't know if i coordinate here someone has answers and questions um i don't see a question and that is if you see that here but she answered a question why she end up she don't know what was doing it was me i will bid money anxious they're crazy and happy no matter what and she never comes to see her have my last week here here here we're here the number one our voice to a book i can't go but then whatever i put the body everywhere somewhere in certain pieces they worked and had been at home they weren't doing nothing i had to grow up her job is to be here anyway i want no issue here but i was here yeah so where are going to live to speak about i want to go see my friend perfect i can't and i i i had to be at home be nice i'm so prepared thank you mr fair you've reached your three minutes thank you thank you sir hey thank you that concludes the call to the public portion that brings us to the consent agenda all matters listed under the consent agenda will be considered by mass transit department board to be routine and will be enacted by one motion unless separate discussion is requested by board members prior to the vote members of the audience may ask questions regarding items on the consent agenda when the vote has been taken if an item has not been called out for separate discussion the item has been approved the mass transit department board may however reconsider any item at any time during the meeting is there a motion second [Music] there's a motion made by there's a motion made by representative rodriguez seconded by representative by mr molinar to approve the consent agenda on that motion call for the vote in the voting session and the motion passes unanimously that brings us to item number three on the agenda this is discussion in action on a resolution that the proposed budget for the mass transit department of the city of el paso sun metro filed by the city manager with the city clerk on july 14 2022 is hereby approved and adopted by the board as the annual budget for the fiscal year 2022 2023 which begins on september 1st 2022 and ends on august 31st 2023 good morning mayor and council ellen smith chief transit and field operations officer good morning um so the the um so metro budget this year we're asking right at 93 million dollars is what it shows on your paperwork but in reality last year was 71 million and this year is more like 72 million the reason it shows differently is because of the way we've changed our accounting practices to be able to incorporate our grant money previously you only saw money that was from sales tax and now we're incorporating the the money from the grants as well so when you see last year compared to this you don't don't think we got an extra 20 million plopped into the budget but i wanted to share with you just one of the questions that you've asked me several times is the vision going forward and what we have planned in the five-year capital plan is a sarah gosabrio we're programming money to be able to connect the montana brio down to the alameda brew because right now all of our brios originate in the downtown area and they run like spokes out to the various west side northeast mission valley and east side but there's no connecting the outside of the wheel so as we move forward in our overall city um plan and vision for transit um it needs to be reliable and connective so you don't have to come all the way back downtown to go to you know where you really want to go around around the circle so we have programmed um uh money for sarah gosabrio we are of course hoping the federal government will pay for much of it but if they don't we're still planning we're still setting aside money every year so that we'll have cash on hand to offset that project the other project that we're planning in the next five years is the renovation of the depot i've shared with you previously that the estimation for restoration of the depot is about 12 million dollars and by setting aside three or four million a year we can have that many available in the next three three to four years and so then in the meantime we can just keep maintaining it and doing the maintenance on it because i know that's a beloved building for the city for the architects and you know all of the the people who do utilize it for weddings and quinceaneras and graduations so it is one of our rental facilities kind of like you can rent a park pavilion you can also rent the depot and ellen uh texas tech offices out of that yes sir it's one of their services texas tech university school of architecture school of architecture and so by doing it this way council we don't have to sell bonds uh instead of having a debt payment of 20 or 25 years you know we come up with the money in four so this is the alternative plan to what we were discussing before about possibly putting this as a bond item and still paying attention to the importance of restoring historical structures downtown that's been a priority of ours and we've shown that we've done that and this is another example of how we've got a plan to make sure that we get that accomplished and we would be able to put that money aside in the next four to five years instead of the next 20 to 25 paying it over time um the other thing that we're working on really diligently is what i call the the neighborhood circulator plan and that's essentially to acquire small units you know 10 passenger vans that will run into the neighborhoods rather than putting our 35 and 40 foot buses in these units also will not require a cdl so we should be a lot quicker on hiring the drivers that we need to pull the people out of the neighborhoods and bring them to the closest brio line um and so we're that would be a kind of an on-demand service as we go forward we have deployed our ride sun metro app where you can already purchase your tickets online you can find where's my bus where's my street car that app has really taken off it's a lot of people are beginning to use it and in addition to that i presented to you just a couple of weeks ago the consultant's benchmark study of where we are right now with the entire system and by uh this fall in december january he should return with his recommendations going forward whatever those recommendations may or may not be will be considered for the fy 24 budget season that will begin next spring um so we're looking forward to see what um what his his ideas are going to be and then align it with the overall vision of the city of el paso the other thing that we've planned is to increase the hours for the streetcar they're going to be running from 3 p.m to 10 p.m wednesday through saturday and then from noon to 6 p.m on sundays monday and tuesday will be their days off any holiday will revert to the sunday hours so if it's a month like a labor day or a memorial day things like that those will be running well those are both monday right now but if the holiday where say veterans day were to fall on a regular streetcar out day the hours would revert to sunday service which is exactly what we do for the buses so currently the buses if we have a holiday in the middle of the week they run on what we call the sunday schedule the one fee increase was on the the senior discount and we did include the the verbiage that was approved by city council for the disabled individuals who'd be writing it and that would be 50 cents currently it's 30 cents and it's not been increased since 1995 other than that the fees that you see differently in the fee schedule include parking currently smg has been coordinating and managing our parking garage at glory road and upttt as well as the small anthony lot the anthony lot is owned by sun metro and it's next door to rocket buster boots if you are familiar with that we get a lot of parking for the the um the bar district in that area and so what we've done is we've automated those systems at all three of those lots and very similar to the airport and so we in the feast v schedule you'll see that the pricing that we pick mirrors what the airport charges so we didn't try and reinvent the fees or or come up with anything different but we basically copied what the airport charges for their hourly parking the only other fee increase fee schedule changes are for advertising so metro has been delinquent in capitalizing on the amount of funding that we could bring in new revenue for advertising on the side of the bus shelters and then moving ahead looking at advertising on the side of the buses themselves you know we do have a really beautiful wrap you know the the blue and green um some metro logo that we would have to figure out a way that when we take the wrap off we don't kill our paint job but those are the details that we'll be working on going forward with those fees on the bus shelter advertising we've started with very conservative numbers so that small businesses can afford to advertise as well and as we move forward if we find that it's a high demand or a lot of competition we can increase our fees accordingly as an enterprise fund we're able to meet what the market will bear um the one of the on the on the lift well let me talk about the grants real quick just this last month some metro was notified that we award we were awarded two really significant grants so big thank you to my team at some metro the grant writers they've done a really awesome job the first grant is what they call no low which is a no or low emission vehicle replacement and we were awarded 8.8 million with a 2.2 million dollar match for a total project cost of 11 million dollars with that 11 million dollars we're planning to buy 50 new lift vehicles so will be total transformation of the lift services and 25 charging stations so these 25 charging stations many of them will be at the park at the lift facility but some will be deployed into the various neighborhoods so in the event that they need to charge while they're out on a run um and the other grant we received is 1.1 million dollars and that was for security so with that money we're going to be able to replace the cameras right now we're focusing on glory road as you know many people from the cincinnati entertainment district do use the glory road parking garage for their use when they visit that area and so because of that our security incidents are increasing and so we want to be able to provide the necessary security so people feel safe when they park in a city garage we also along with starting the streetcar service on wednesday through saturday that'll be on august 31st coming up here shortly for the new fiscal year we're also providing at the new service option to william beaumont army medical center and so what we're doing there is that if you're lyft eligible if you already have your account you just call the lift like you normally would and ask to go to the hospital and they will take you there if you are a bus a customer you will call the our customer service number the 212-3333 and then we will find out where of course you live and what's your nearest bus stop and then we'll be able to either take you to the sylla vista terminal where we have a permanent route to the hospital um so that you don't have to make a reservation or if you um are not anywhere in the syllabus area we can then again take you directly to the hospital like an on-demand service we started providing that service when we cut some of the routes earlier based on the data-driven system some of the routes remember were utilized way less than 10 people in an hour but for those people who were needed it they just call us and we've arranged basically an on-demand option for them as well so my message is no writer left behind we will make provisions for you one way or the other to get you where you need to go either to the closest brio or to your destination in total if it just doesn't make sense to go to a brio and make that transition um i know one of the questions that y'all have asked me is how many vacancies we have on our sim metro drivers so of the 324 approved positions we we currently have 63 vacancies our pay has gone up to the 15 and i believe 64 cents an hour plus the one dollar cdl license incentive and as robert mentioned or he will get to in his presentation there are additional pay increases uh programmed into the fy 23 budget that will also be applicable to all the some metro employees um let's see envy uh the lyft they also pay 15 an hour and they they have a salary increased 40 cents to 15 and 40 cents an hour on september first i wanted to address real quickly the comments that were made about the lift we do still have 10 vehicles coming in december i have transferred five vehicles from environmental services from our motor pool to the lift to just use as a an interim to provide the vehicles that they need for customers who don't need a wheelchair dependent vehicle many of our customers are able to get in and out of a of a regular sedan so those will be deployed to assist with the shortfall there as well by the end of the year on september 1st once this budget's approved we'll order immediately 10 more vehicles for the lift and hopefully this next year the supplies will start rolling in a little bit quicker than they did in the last 18 months and i won't belabor the point of the supply chain you know it's just taking forever to get the vehicles that we order but one of the the the data points that i pulled since our last meeting the lift gets approximately 4 100 reservations a week and so um what the what really throws them for a loop are the cancellations of those over 20 cancel before the the lift happens so many of them cancel within the we ask them 24-hour notice to counsel so of the of those 857 or 900 people half of them follow the rules but the other um that there's 55 that are late like within one hour before we pick them up they're calling us to cancel um there's 43 no shows and there's um 64 people we actually show up at the door and they won't get in the vehicle and so that that 21 every week you know these 900 calls that we set up 900 calls that we have to cancel 900 trips that we scheduled and now it's not our algorithm is is having to start over and so i know that we have been strict on a couple of our customers when they no showed or cancelled repeatedly to where we um we ban them we kind of give them a slap on the wrist and say you can't ride for for a week or a month depending on how severe they're um and i would ask for your support if because the more um we can be um follow the world we just ask them to follow the rules and give us a 24 hour notice but to have a flat no-show or show up at your door and you won't get in the vehicle those to me i think are extreme um and you can tell me otherwise and but that's that's what we believe we could have a lot better service if we were able to be consistent with our scheduling and not have to go back and reschedule and change the schedule because other people who are scheduled with them like if they're sharing the the the vehicle it just changes the whole dynamics of the trip um so i just wanted you to be aware of 4 100 a week with over 20 percent cancellations of so that's double work that we set up and then had to cancel so just keep that in mind the lift fee is not going up and the last time the the lift was increased was in 2006 so 16 years there's been no increase for this service 2010 okay sorry 12 years since we've had a fee increase on this service so we are i i mentioned at our last meeting the priorities for symmetra is always the lift is top priority we our budget just for these um about 350 to 400 customers is 9 million dollars so that's the budget for this program it is a top priority and i want that the customers realize that it is and that we're taking steps to improve it i have recognized that the customer service dispatch scheduling system is antiquated there's a new system being installed even as we speak it will go live on september 19th the staff will begin training on that new software on right after labor day weekend and so by october there should be a significant improvement on the customer experience both for the employees and for the customers to be able to schedule their rides so that was one of the concerns that also came up at our last meeting was you know we just should do a better job on how we schedule these rides so then after the lift the next priority is the streetcar the street before you go to the streetcar ellen i just wanted to share with the council that we will get a copy of all the names addresses and phone numbers of the individuals who spoke today and make sure that we visit with them communicate with them and and work as as assiduously as we can to ensure that these uh pickup times and things are coordinated well in the future uh so that we can address their concerns they've been here several times we want to make sure uh from a customer service standpoint and we sit down with them and and have additional conversations with them in order to ensure that their rides uh are sufficient for their future appointments that they have so i was going to say on the street car is um it is the second top priority for sun metro we're currently scheduling 40 hours schedule for this fy 23 but we have availability to go to 60 hours if we're able to hire enough drivers but before we can move up to the 60 hours on the streetcar my next priority is sunday service to in to be able to meet the needs as you heard earlier of those who really want to go where they want to go on sunday and then of course this fall on sunday november 6th is the kickoff of the montana brio and so currently that's where my focus is right now is to fill the positions for the drivers that are required for the brio system once that kicks off and everything's running we'll go back and focus again make sure the lift is good and then the street car and and and then the um just you know taking turns as i hire more drivers and that's pretty much my if i may if i may regarding the street car in addition to the expanded hours um that we're bringing in starting on the the 31st of august which i hope that you've seen the push and i appreciate the push that council has supported making sure that the public's aware there will also be a number of special hours that are going to be advertised and offered around certain events special times special dates as many of you are aware on the downtown becomes really really much more alive and busy the streetcar helps that to happen and we want to make sure that you're aware that we are looking at the special needs during other times um throughout the year including our celebration of we're talking about winterfest we're talking about chalk the block we're talking about sun bowl and then other special visits and meetings that are going to be happening in the downtown over the next several months so those those hours will be also pushed out to you so in addition to the standard 40 hours they're going to be extra special hours that will be offered as well um and and working towards getting to that 60 base hours uh with with manpower as we get them and again expanding those even more with the special hours as needed as well so thank you thank you for that and that's pretty much my budget thank you representative manelo followed by representatives thank you um okay so i'll start from the bottom up with the streetcar um so we're expanding the days from thursday to sunday what are the hours wednesday december wednesday thursday friday and saturday are from 3 p.m to 10 p.m okay and what are they right now right now they are three thursday it's thursday through saturday four to ten yeah four to ten so we added um the wednesday and the sunday two additional days okay and i i i wonder about in the summer because uh this weekend i had uh i was uh at the locomotives game um we took we always take my godson for his birthday um and he really wanted to ride the trolley after but we didn't get out of the game until 10 15. i will say that there was like the gentleman that was running the trolley was really kind and allowed us to take it from the stadium to the indigo where they are staying so i want to really thank him for that that was really sweet but also it's like the game is just letting out and if we're wanting people to ride the trolley um after things like chihuahuas and locomotives games we should consider running that to the hours that those games line up right um so just wanted to to call some attention to that okay um but if i'm a representative the hours that have been determined at this point are based on ridership data we track all ridership every day and we track it by the hour we've experimented with later hours and i completely understand your point but the data shows right now that that that this is where the the the ridership is we look to continue to expand the ridership and i understand that we need to do that to make sure that we've got it but we have offered it late in the past um and there was a there was a huge drop off of down to zero riders often times between the hours of 10 and 11 and then it got you know even lower through that time but we appreciate that feedback and we will continue to look at expanding hours as we can and as as as our drivers and as our budget allows sure and i wonder if the data also counts the people that are waiting at the trolley stop after the game only for them to be told that the trolley's not running because that was happening i mean there were about 20 people waiting at that stop and he let us on because we had again very grateful that he i don't want to be you know talking bad about the driver at all he was very kind and led us on so my godson could ride it but um there were significant amount of people so i i understand you know on a wednesday night uh downtown nobody's probably riding the trolley between 10 and 11 but i think on a game night um it might just and we've had i mean we've been having this conversation for three years now uh i mean i think that we're really like the biggest ridership that we're going to see on that trolley is around chihuahuas and locomotives games and it just doesn't seem like we're still kind of utilizing that right so when i reopened the streetcar last july we had very little ridership of course we had very shortened hours so as we increase the hours we'll certainly look at coordinating with game days that will be true at the utep area as well i'm on mute i apologize so right now the trolleys are uh they are free correct yes ma'am um but in your budget resolution on number 31 it states to allow city manager designee to waive fares for the boston streetcar service for a maximum of 10 days per fiscal year for city designated holidays and events and i understand that that's been in there since day one when it was but i did not see anywhere in the resolution that you would not be charging for the trolley um and i guess my concern is just uh you know we we go by this resolution you know our budget is built on that so just this is just a technical i guess question cleanup um we've talked it over extend extensively and we feel strongly that the the overhead administrative costs of collecting money on the streetcar far exceeds the money that we receive and the better option is to do what we did with the parking garage and then put in these fee schedules for the glory road parking because that way if you do park at glory road we will we'll we'll receive that funding rather than trying no i understand i'm not i'm not yeah i'm not trying to belabor the idea of charging or not charging i'm just saying that your actual like legal document says that you know you only have 10 days to waive the fee but you are saying that it is a free service so i'm just wondering i'm wondering about i think robert knows where i'm getting at with like the language yes i would ask there'd be an amendment to that we'll strike out streetcar because it should be excluded from that yeah again not i mean i know you know how i feel you know how the council voted i wasn't get like belaboring the idea of of the fees for that but just wanted to make sure so um do you need us to make that amendment robert or um to his okay so just amendment to strike out item 31 no the reference to the street car service okay so just well i don't want to say reference to street car service because i'm sure there are many other references to street car service in this budget resolution no so in item 31 where it says okay wait for 10 days eliminate strikeout streetcar service so that it doesn't apply because obviously it's free now okay so 10 days okay so i will make the amendment um to strike uh the word streets car service and item 31 of the budget amendment second thank you okay thank you robert um and so actually so glory road uh parking garage was a a question that i had so it's a good transition i was just wondering if you could follow up with what actually um the word has escaped my brain uh what revenue that we do pull in from that right now with smg we've received like almost no i don't know no revenue yeah smg really by the time they charge us further administrative overhead and again you have to remember that school wasn't in session and um you know the the games weren't running streetcar wasn't running and so um very well like i said in 2020 when i got there we paid smg but we didn't receive any funding and so we're in a negative position since i've got here in the last sure and we don't have to do the conversation today but i just was looking at it and was interesting and um and you bring up great points right like i'd love to see what it looked like in 2019 versus post pandemic what the um what the agreement with the university is with the agreement with smg i mean these are things i've never been briefed on and just um because i know that we are also always looking to build other garages in partnership with like texas tech and so just kind of understanding what that structure looks like and revenue stream looks like it's just something that i'm interested in i can bring back the information on the previous um revenue thank you parking grunts um and then i'm probably running out of time so really quickly so may i say something to the whole council with respect to that question i just wanted to remind the council that with regard to that garage we were looking to to have devil would not park in the neighborhoods so i will say that that's in as part part of the mix as well and to try to look at how we can maximize the usage of that by having more appealing type of rates but i just wanted to make that quick point before y'all got on to the next question thank you i appreciate it um for the beaumont lyft service okay this was a little confusing to me so for clarification so you will have a permanent fixed route service from the sila visa transit center to the new hospital yes okay um but you will also do an on-demand service for individuals who are you know not uh it's not easily accessible the syllabus of transit okay um so my question is we've been doing this on demand service i think since about last december when we started cutting routes is that correct um i would love a presentation to council on kind of how that's being utilized because i don't think we've had that update since we've implemented it and i would also like to know how you're going to advertise that to people or um to individuals using the new army hospital because i think that's right we can have a service is that me i don't think so yeah yeah so that's just that i would i would like to follow up with the presentation of council and on how that program is being successful and what outreach that we're doing to like are we going through the hospital themselves are we having flyers how are people finding out about this service so we have reached out to the hospital and we're awaiting any input that they may have thus far we've not received any back and of course we will do all the normal chains facebook social media twitter the advertising in in each one of your district newsletters and in the newspaper that you know whenever there's a service modification for symmetra we follow pretty much the same communication plan and thus far it's been very effective but um what i have found is our ridership is a really tight network and then word gets around very very quickly um yeah and i would just maybe suggest that we also utilize i know this is not a veteran's hospital but maybe utilize organizations that do help provide services to veterans right veterans nonprofit is one of them i know organizations like emergence has a veterans one-stop shop so just you know there are organizations that work very closely in social services with individuals that may be accessing the hospital that could help get that word out right and we do have the citizen advisory committee meeting that's coming up later this month and or i guess next no it's yeah this month and it's one of our agenda items and many of our board members and participants in that meeting are these same individuals representing the agencies you just talked about okay um and so my last and final question uh it's gonna be a fun one um is the the depot right so i see in your resolution um it says that you're using capital funds uh for any uh repairs is that correct yes ma'am okay but it doesn't say how much uh i believe this year i don't know it's the five year let me find it the capital here we are it's actually we'll start for the design next year 300 000 is set aside to start the design and then as we move forward it'd be four million for the next three years after that so that by the fourth year we'll have our 12 million and that is coming from sun metro capital yeah just star breaking okay just for um the edification of the public and council what are you what is the normal spending of sun metro capital funds i mean where does that money come from what does that budget been what do you use it remember prior to me there was no capital no i understand that but the the what we were able to do with the we we received over the last two years about 70 million dollars in chris cares and arpa funding and so much of that money was spent on salaries and safety measures during the covid but we were able to set aside 20 million for the future so that 20 million is going to be divided in the next five years four million dollars per year for the next five years and that's going to be able to cover our capital shortfall what the plan is in the next four or five years is our sales tax continues to go up and our population continues to grow and we get more ridership our our uh fees you know that we collect will increase and so that at that point will be sustainable okay so i'm going to say this because i don't i don't need any more information on it um 300 000 for design i understand i think that's fine i don't think it's very responsible to be using four million dollars of capital fund for the repairs of a building that is not utilized by riders of sun metro we have individuals coming up to this council every week talking about insufficient equipment insufficient staffing we're cutting routes right and we're putting dollars into the repair four million dollars a year into building i mean we're not doing it yet right it's hypothetical that we talked about in the following budget but it is i just it is irresponsible for us to consider using four million dollars when i'm sorry but our sun metro service is not up to the level that it should be and not even up to the level that it was five years ago which then was even subpar right we don't have full sunday service we don't have full lift service we don't have full bus service in general it is a you know i'm just telling you now moving forward unless a miracle happens um and over the next you know 12 months it will not be supporting four million dollars for a business building renovation that isn't even utilized by sun metro riders so um i understand what you're saying but currently we do have a lease in place for both greyhound um first transit el paso county texas tech university and amtrak so that building has five tenants in it so we either need to address the condition of the building or kick those tenants out i don't think but yeah and you don't need to be using four million dollars of our sun metro fund to do that right you can be raising rental rates to pay off repairs as most landlords do there are other options to do that and hold on and again i wouldn't be having this conversation if we were running our bus system at 100 but we are not right we are not running a sufficient bus service we don't run sunday services fully but we want to put four million dollars into repairs i just at this point and again i know it's a future conversation so we have a year to talk about it right 300 000 i think is reasonable for a design i understand that but i do think that over the year we should be looking for other funding mechanisms for that council because i don't think it's fair to ellen smythe um have this kind of conversation because i'm ultimately responsible for this and that when you look at sun metro and you look at the history of sun metro in terms of how the monies have been spent you know you have only half a penny okay it's not a full penny so right there they're hamstrung already secondly with regard to the operations of the department they have the funding necessary for a full cadence of an operation to provide these services so it's not the money that's been allocated that's an issue at all whatsoever in terms of providing the services it's just a matter of hiring the additional personnel getting the equipment delivered because of the supply and chain issues i know that we can talk about that until it's blue and we're blue in the face but that's a reality and that is a fact it's not just a perception it's something that's going on relative to the buildings that they own and the things they're responsible for if they don't pay for it because they are an enterprise fund which they're supposed to be self-sufficient in terms of how enterprise funds operate in the past the city has paid for a lot of the improvements to the the bus stations the the different uh station terminals that have been constructed with property tax money as opposed to sales tax money which is dedicated for sun metro so there's been millions upon millions of dollars that had already been spent with property tax dollars for an enterprise fund which it was co-mingling going on in the past and then plus we were upside down with regard to almost 37 million dollars in terms of a deficit in the department so in terms of of a plan i mean you also have council pushing uh back rightfully so on certificates of obligation and how things need to be voted on now that building was part of the geos which again would have caused property tax dollars to be utilized to pay for something that's a some metro responsibility that they should be paying for with the sales tax that are being allocated whether it's through a bond they can do bonds as well and then pay that over payments but that is a sun metro responsibility so i want to be clear about that when you look at municipal financing when you look at governmental financing in terms of enterprise funds they have to sustain themselves it's not something that a general fund purpose should be allocated for now if the council has a a vast policy change with respect to that then you need to look at that as just one more cost driver with regard to the general fund cost associated with the budget that we put together on an annual basis again that would be pushing up against a lot of the other needs that we've talked about police fire streets you know and the equipment replacement for those those high priority departments as well as the the much needed things that we need in parks so it is a vast discussion uh if we get into that kind of discussion but i want to be clear there is a funding available to get to the number of personnel that we need it's just a matter of getting people hired and getting equipment ordered and received so that we can provide those services well and i'll just end with this i i don't agree that uh sun metro should be self-sufficient i think i don't know if every other city in this country or texas is an enterprise fund but i do know that we are one of the few cities that do not put general fund dollars into our sun metro system i understand that there are things that we can't be helped like the supply chain demand staffing but again we were not a perfect system before covid we did not have and this is before you came in with smythe this is not anything personal to you whatsoever we were not a public transit system that this city should have been proud of and that anybody in this state was raising their hands in praise of and and i i get that there are limitations to being able to get these things off the ground and we're not and like i said i don't expect them to be done in the next 12 months it's nothing that you can control but until we are at a system that i think that we can be fully proud of and we are making sure that every person in need in this city is serviced we should not be looking at using dollars to anything but transportation are there alternate ways to make improvements is building which are necessary absolutely and i would like to have that conversation over the next year um so thank you mr gonzalez for helping me getting my thoughts in like a in a way that made sense but um i'm just letting you know that moving forward in the next two years that i'm here will not be supporting dollars for building replacement when our sun metro system needs an extreme amount of help [Music] and i can assure you that in the next two years you're going to see a huge transformation in this department because we've got so many things in the pipeline right now and the grant awards are coming in and then the master plan that we'll be implementing increasing the streetcar service just the whole thing it's just we just have to get through this what we're calling the coveted recovery period and i think we'll start moving along as well well i mean i hope so i hope that you can change my mind in the next twelve months because please maintain the club in the chambers but it's a com we can't i just again i'm gonna the last thing i will say is that this isn't i hope that we don't just jump in 12 months and have this conversation again it is one we need to be having very frequently over the next year thank you and if i may say i we do appreciate those comments you made miss vanilla because i mean those they're appropriate with respect to the vulnerable community that we serve the ada community is a high priority for us i since i think since 2015 we've placed 500 000 additional dollars for ada curb ramps that did not exist that 500 000 was not available in the budget it has been in the budget since 2015 it is a high priority for us the people who have spoken that that need access to this transportation they are a high priority for us i've already talked to forrest and the team and miss miss uh smythe to visit with them sit down with them and talk through what the issues are with them but i want to be clear there is enough money in the budget to provide those services a matter of hiring that personnel because it is a high priority and again we do appreciate the line of questioning that you had because for the vulnerable community especially it's something that's uh very precious and near and dear to our hearts and something that we need to make a high priority and we do and so we need to show that and not only say that but show it and we need to do more presentations in terms of how much investment we are making and and really speak to the hiring process and relative to the equipment that's not arrived yet uh in order to address those things but in the interim we're not going to wait for all of that they've already done a lot of things a litany of things in order to make it better and as i've said they're going to sit down with this group to make sure we answer all their questions and all their concerns to ensure that they're happy with the services that are being provided and we improve those to these individuals who have spoken to you thank you bye representative rodriguez thank you so thank you miss mai for all your hard work for the innovation that you're bringing into sun metro i know that rome wasn't built overnight and sun metro is definitely improving i want to assure the public that this isn't a matter of budget or money like the or the lack thereof or employees for that matter we do have staff we have out of 342 you had mentioned we only have 62 openings so so you know our percentage as far as positions that need to be filled is is low in comparison to the ones that are filled i think that what we're doing with with the depot station i think that's an investment that's an asset that that the city owns and sun metro is in charge of and much like the street cart that's also an investment that we need to continue to to nurture and grow and it's not bringing any money either it's something it's an asset that we have to continue to to hold on to um you know as an alumni of texas tech got having gone to that building having had a wedding in that building i definitely understand the importance of investing into that building and rather than using money from taxpayers to renovate a building getting creative with what what what you're doing i think is the better option um you mentioned it's 12 million dollars for the depot station and you said it's going to be rolled out between um i think you said three years because it's 4 million a year yeah so the design will be not not in 23 but in 24 and then four years after that so 2028 so there will be plenty of opportunity for conversation on this same topic and by then like i said we will be looking at fundraisers and maybe we can offset some of it um but in terms of a five-year capital plan that's what we put on paper okay and it could be offset okay i think sam rodriguez is on the line as well he might can speak to how we can be competitive with that design that we're investing in right now to potentially use utilize other dollars other than some metro dollars are you on the line sam yes yes sir samurai is our chief operations officer it's a really great conversation to have we had as as you all know the original discussion of the bond included funds for the renovation of the facility you know one of the success stories that we've had at the airport is getting a lot of designs ready uh and being very competitive for federal grants and i really see this building and the investment that they're making for the design getting design ready and on the shelf will certainly make this project more competitive for all grant opportunities and really in partnership with some of the tenants that are there because they have access to different grants as well through amtrak and potentially with texas tech being able to go in as a partnership for some grants that minus again may not necessarily be available to us it may be available to them and we're able to to partner up and get some additional federal dollars that way so that would be the strategy and the conversations that we have over the next year but again getting design ready i see that is a very strategic first step for us to make it more competitive and then just to add some additional context to the capital plan that we've had over the years with sun metro you know it's been funded through various sources um i mean when you look at the brio along alameda that was all funded through the 2011 certificates of obligation transportation plan that was approved by city council way back then a lot of the improvements that we've done over the years the brio to the upper east side transfer center um that was just recently opened uh or all funded through match dollars and federal grants through certificates of obligation again not funded through sun metro so there's a lot of general fund money that is already going through the capital side that we're going to continue to have that conversation for for alternative funding sources thank you thank you sam um so one of the other very creative and innovative things that you're proposing ellen are the neighborhood circulators to me that's a very exciting idea i don't know if there's any precedence for it as far as it being done at any other city in texas or in the nation but i think it you know seeing how we have sprawled out so much how you know we have people from you know one side on the east side going to the west side i think that this is probably the most um key or that narrows in the need for for the community to really provide that kind of service so not only that but we now get to compete with like uber and lyft right right and have this unique opportunity to again bring in sources of revenue for these sources for the i'm sorry for these services um with that said you know i know i'm kind of putting you on the spot and saying it's going to be competitive with uber and lyft but our the fare is also going to be competitive with uber and lyft or they're going to be similar to bus first you know um we haven't gotten into what the fares will because the vehicles aren't here and we haven't hired the drivers so that'll be a conversation that we have but i know that over the short time that i've been here that there is really no way that the customer can pay the cost of service they're just not because of like right now regular bus the cost is four dollars and you know we charge a dollar fifty and the lift a round trip ticket is 80 you know 80 dollars and we charge five and so you know i know that we cannot possibly ask you to approve a full cost of service which typically is what an enterprise does so we'll have to come up with some something you know we we will find a a balance and we'll have to have all the outreach town hall meetings and uh education and inputs that's required by fta so we'll be able to listen to everybody and hear what they have to say and what a reasonable affair might be for them okay and so to the the members of the public that are here you know you all are not going to notice you all we're having this discussion for you all i understand your frustrations but i want to assure you that you know the the issues that we're having are being addressed some of the issues that are going on are you know the lift buses have been ordered you ordered 10 i believe correct miss mike coming in december and december next week after this budget approval our order 10 more with the new fiscal money so within the next hopefully you know six months is the normal delivery and but it's been eight or nine this past year so you know if the supply chain has improved which i'm hoping it has within the next six months we'll have 20 new 20 more new vehicles to go with the 10 that we already have members of council assistant managing director forrest clancy i just wanted to elaborate a little bit more there's actually seven million dollars a year allocated for bus replacements one million a year for paratransit six million a year for fit for what we call a fixed route so brio buses the 35 footers and that this is allocating we already have three million dollars set up for cmac funding for well there's 1.4 left so we ordered six cutaway buses that already have been delivered to us we have another 10 that are coming december and we're already working on the next order of 10 on the cutaways at this point we'll be tapering off because as you just heard we have the new grant for electric vehicles right so the the rollout for the lift is 67 vehicles we'll have 26 that are already being delivered or on order at that point we'll start transitioning to working on the new electric vehicles because obviously we wouldn't want to be wasting money on cng vehicles when we're about to replace the whole fleet so at that point you know and i just wanted to say we never had six million dollars or seven million dollars for equipment as miss anello uh representative vanello was stating we didn't have that before we have a plan in action now and over the next five years we've already programmed the 35 million dollars or 7 million yeah 35 million dollars to address our vehicle needs so just wanted to put it out there the full plate of what is actually being bought and what we're looking for thank you and miss my how many buses how many lift buses do we currently have 65 we have 65 to service 40 of them are really in disrepair so you know and that is our issue right now it's the 20 that are pretty much not it's just it's just going to balance us back out it's not going to add it's just going to no no we're just taking the really old ones off and replace so it'll still be 65 it's our target like i said this electric grant was for 50 of them um i would suspect as forrest mentioned transitioning as we go forward we would transition and start buying electric vehicles with our capital to supplement the 50 back up to our 65 so because there'd be no sense in having half electric and half cng and so the the 65 that we will god willing have fully operational um hopefully in six eight months six or eight months that's enough they have enough capacity to service 40 4100 reservations yes a week yes okay so i mean those are some of the things that that sun metro is doing we are replacing old vehicles we are bringing in new vehicles we are struggling through the supply chain issue um which hopefully by december will have at least 10 more 4 100 reservations that were we're meeting every week another big issue that we're having is 20 our counseling 900 people you know i work in logistics and that that's a nightmare that that's something that just throws you completely off schedule and the person waiting the next person waiting for that service through no fault of their own is now affected because of those cancellations so it's i think very important that maybe um in in efforts to to help the the community out we put out some sort of campaign and letting people know that you know much like the recycling program where you know we're having to dispose of all of this um polluted trash you know we need to do similar campaigns where we let the public know that cancellations are affecting your your other people yeah and and that's not fair to them because it's now they're late to their appointments they're not being picked up and so it's a huge problem and i think that if we were to just do a campaign to address that in general that could probably benefit people a lot better i will okay and i think that is all i think you know you you are doing a good job ellen and i understand the constituents or the writers um frustrations but we're rest assured please that we are helping you out that we are listening to you thank you and it will get better very soon thank you mayor potem thanks again this is a very good and robust conversation about the past present and future of our mass transit line in sun metro um so i'm really happy to to hear this conversation as some of you all know i'm i'm a big supporter of mass transit in our community i don't know if you knew that representative have been for many many years um so i have a couple things i guess we'll we'll start off um so i think you're looking at the investment in the union depot building is absolutely the right one a little bit dismayed by some of the comments from my colleagues especially because this is not just a project an investment in our community in five um five tenants it's also a historic preservation project i mean we're talking about one of the most important architectural gems of our community the daniel burnham design union depot train station i mean my god if we're serious about historic preservation if we're serious about heritage tourism in our community it's absolutely important that we make sure that we do what we can to invest in that in that building that train station is more than just a train station that's our history and that's that's something we need to invest in right now as a stranded asset to to to no fault of anyone but it's something that needs to be invested in and looked at and so i think that that's something really that you know people can have their opinions and take their stands and i think it's important that we understand too that this is an investment in our community this is investment in our culture this is an investment in our history and it's also a great opportunity to work with amtrak texas tech and others who are there for those that aren't aware we have an architectural school in the heart of our downtown where we have students that are able to go and see firsthand our downtown and our architecture on a first-hand level and many of those students are first-generation students many of those students are coming from juarez each and every day so it makes a lot of sense to go and to have that sense of pride in ourselves and in our community and invest in in that in that stranded asset so i'm really excited to see about about that creative thinking i i do think that thinking about the next year ahead and the years ahead with this with this daniel burnham design train station is that i really think that there's much more of a robust opportunity for engagement and collaboration with texas tech university um specifically the school that's there now i know that um under the form under the former dean of the program they were able to bring the master's program in historic preservation from lubbock to el paso because it was in that building because of what was going on in downtown and i think that there's a great opportunity to to work with that master's program in historic preservation to actually bring that building back to life so i really think that there's a great opportunity over this next year's coming up to not just have um them as tenants but to have them as as as active engagement and for those that that know a little bit about some of our alumni groups here in our community in el paso i can't think of of one that might be as as rowdy and passionate as engaged as our texas tech alumni um seeing some of them in my office as well firsthand they are quite quite engaged in being proud alumni of texas tech i'm not going to get into all the other texas schools either but i think that there's really a great engagement to work with that alumni network and specifically to work with the historic preservation program at texas tech i mean my gosh if if they brought that program from lubbock to el paso let's use them to fix up that building um so i'm really happy to to see that there um there there are some things too that um i think can be um done better in terms of in terms of some of our other sun metro assets as well since i'm on the real estate thing number one there's a tremendous amount of storefronts and other unactivated spaces whether it's metro 31 the glory road transfer center even the union depot even the the union depot parking garage that's there i know that mcad has their offices there now um i know that they're planning on moving those mcat offices to the new um closer towards a core of downtown um so i think that there's there's things to look at as well i know that we have these consultants on board but looking at how to activate some of that that storefront property um is something to be looking at in the future ahead and i'm sure that you guys are probably doing we are working i'm working very closely with our real estate division marilo espinosa has been able to get the current appraisals for what those retail spaces should be leasing out on and then we've also contracted with cbre to help us find tenants we realize again that there's some missed revenue that we haven't been capturing and so we will totally be focusing on all these opportunities to avoid the increases to our customers and in terms of that's a nice segue thank you for that miss smythe in terms of looking at additional um opportunities for sources of funding i also think too and this is something that we brought up on the streetcar cft i also think too that there's a tremendous opportunity to look at do you need some water i am i need a tissue sorry i wasn't trying to make you cry i promise oh thank you i have allergies all right we're all happy as long as allergies are not not something else um i think that there's a tremendous opportunity to really look at a more aggressive approach towards naming rights both for street cars as well as the streetcar stops sponsorship opportunities advertising within the streetcars and then also even looking at unorthodox approaches like streetcar rentals as well for institutions companies quinceaneras bar mitzvahs what have you um and so um i know if you also maybe knew it or not but i i am terming out here on council so i think that um in the upcoming years ahead um there's great opportunities i think to really engage with it i think um covid was a challenge uh obviously for us on a personal level us on a professional level with the city and the streetcar was was no different but i do think that there's an opportunity with renewed vigor um to work with these consultants and look at at really coming up with a more robust game plan um for some of those naming rights and opportunities and and on some some of those things there i mean um every time we have tourists that are coming into town this is an opportunity um the extended hours with the streetcar both for the the 915 day and and the engagement with the kickoff for utep football i think is spot on with what we need to be doing and maybe the next step is seeing if utep might even go and sponsor one of one of the streetcars or stops along their route as well so i don't know if you had anything to happen right so um we will be bringing to the streetcar cross-functional team very shortly um dcm tracy jerome and i have been working on a policy for rentals chartering a streetcar i think that'll be a lot of fun and it'll bring additional revenue in as well and then along with the the advertising fees for the bus stops we are looking at um potential sponsorships naming rights of stops and um you know maybe even the depot you know i don't know but that's there there is a consultant who did make a proposal back in 2019 that um was never followed up on just because of the timing we ran into the covid so we will resurrect that and look at the sponsorship and naming rights as well so yes all those um you know non-fair revenue ideas and opportunities we need to capitalize on okay and we will and and and i know that that there was a segway with with with coming from first first uh transit and then bringing sun metro back in i do think that it's it's important as well i know that rides in metro is very much um being utilized much more aggressively but we do hear um information from from constituents that and see it on social media that the app is down because the the old ep street core app is still able to be download downloaded on there i know that that's probably like an it thing or something but it really needs to be addressed sooner than rather than later and hopefully before winterfest as well because that is a great opportunity to engage people and having a zombie app yeah it that it that old app has been problematic it's not within the city's control so we've asked the company who put it up to take it down and so we may just have to pursue legal course yeah but we've done everything we can do internally yeah it's fully aware of it and again we don't have control over it so they are they're still trying to find a way to get that taken care of um it's difficult when it is out of the purview of of the department uh they are they are trying to address that they've been aware of that and they have been working on that and we'll keep you posted on that because we agree we would like to get that down and so it's a third party i mean is there any response from the third party in terms of these requests well i don't know why we haven't at this point pursued legal legal remedies we'll make sure that it continues to pursue what they need to do to make sure that this is taken care of thank you okay um the other the other things that i had was um one of the other things in terms of of looking at at the improvement i think that is the coordination with the park and ride especially as it relates towards those holiday times winterfest i think is is probably one of the more popular times for people to use it just because we know of how many people come through downtown for the for the holiday lighting and everything like that i've already stated it before but i think it's really important to to look at coordinating with pd code traffic control um specifically around the streetcar corridor because there's a gum up of traffic coming off of i-10 turning right onto oregon street where the streetcar is and uh oftentimes the streetcars just can't get through the traffic so i think that being proactive on it for this this winterfest can have a more positive opportunity uh to engage folks that are that are parking and riding from uptown into downtown um the other the other question the other sort of statement that that i had or questioned was relating to the streetcar hours are currently 4 to 11 p.m but there is a lag time between when the streetcars stop running based upon what we heard with with representative vanello as well as what we've heard from constituents so when it states that it's 11 o'clock when did the actual streetcar stop running right yes i meant to address that earlier that was one of your concerns you had brought up and so um on when we moved to the 3 to 10 schedule on august 31st where we've put in our outreach material that the last streetcar will leave glory road at 10 and then they'll get back downtown 10 20 10 15 so that people who are at the far end of the of the loop um are still guaranteed to have that last car at 10. so rather than advertising um that we just yeah 11 but we really stop at 10 30 or 10 10 40. um we did we we totally agreed with you that that's not the best thing so 10 o'clock is 10 o'clock 10 o'clock is 10 o'clock from glory road and then um the they get back when they get back you know okay and then i guess um to to uh the last the last sort of comment that i have relating to that um is not about representing rivera at this time although he is doing a great job as the representative uh for district seven um my my other concern is is really looking is is i understand that we're we are extending this to 40 hours and we're adding the sunday service which i think will actually be a really uh nice opportunity for families for nostalgia and for tourism and especially heritage tourism which you know this council has made a goal for its strategic as part of its strategic plan and i know it's something important to so many of the city representatives here um so i think the sunday service is there but i do i do think that we really need to be looking at at a much more robust hours i know that we're getting close there but we're really not being at a potential that's unlocking the ridership and the population sheds that are there when this streetcar was discussed by previous city councils of uh of older years of uh the the the figure eight that is the streetcar line turbinates or stops or at the utep campus and that is that was by intention that was by design to capture ridership of utep students crossing over our international students crossing over the bridges to go to school but also those utep students as well and i really feel that until we we have the hours that are more robust pushing 60 to 72 hours we're doing ourselves a disservice by not really unlocking the full potential of ridership for the streetcar i know that there was you know comments even with the streetcar cft that some of the interns who were there with utep never had rode the streetcar before and they were doing research on it and never had wrote it and were juniors at utep and that's that's kind of you know that's kind of sad we can be doing better there so this decision to get up to 60 hours who ultimately is making that how is that decided to go from the 40 to the 60 hours in this upcoming fiscal year the drivers that i'm hiring right now will be placed on the montana brio for the launch in november and once that initiative is staffed the recruitments after that in november december will be looking towards the streetcar so it's just dependent on how many applications and how many employees we can bring in the door because we have the cars we just need the drivers and and again i would say um the 60 hours gets closer to there but unless we're unless we're at at a point where we're we're getting on a consistent weekly basis with morning hours i really feel like we're doing ourselves a disservice by by not utilizing the full design of the streetcar and that is that it it is there to to connect multiple neighborhoods population sheds from our our university population to our hospital population our office workers in downtown in the government sections like the county and the city as well as as well as international shoppers international students and and tourists as well and that's not to mention the five neighborhoods that all align within the streetcar and our award-winning uh downtown arts district so i i do feel that looking forward in a way i know that we've done and i do want to thank uh uh not representing jerome uh deputy senior city manager jerome senior senior deputy i'm getting all the words confused what happens when we talk streetcar too much um i do want to thank i want to thank her and all the work they're done because the work that submetro has done that mgat has done has really added a lot of of cultural life and vitality to the streetcar i mean when i've talked to other cities about about engaging arts and culture at mass transit um we're doing something very special here um and so i think that that's something to continue but in terms of the streetcar being what it was meant to be which is a mass transit opportunity also an opportunity for heritage tourism and and engagement um we really need to be looking at those hours to to have it in a more sustainable way you know people are always going to find problems with anything that anyone wants to do in their lives but what we have here is a very special investment by the state by our community to bring our history back to life and also to provide a great economic development opportunity as well we've seen five new hotels in the last five years built around the streetcar ten new ho ten hotels that are all within a thousand feet of a streetcar stop and that's not to mention what's been happening in the public sector with with investments like the mexican american cultural center the downtown library improvements san nacindo plaza um the plaza theater so there's a lot of things and a lot of good work that's happening here we just need to invest in ourselves and really look it forwards and and we're definitely on the right track here but i do i do be remiss to not say that that that investment of having those hours better align with our our utep students i think will really help to unlock further ridership right and that's our vision yes thank you sir representatives followed by representa thank you thank you ellen i first wanted to thank the speakers who came today um we value your opinion and to mr montoya and mr fur thank you for your opinion i just want to verify lyft services will be available on sunday yes okay is there any limitations to the list services well you know we started back fourth of july weekend and for the month of july and august our data shows that seven writers were not qualified based on the limited sunday service so we are looking at this data because if it's just seven or eight people and they're not going you know to horizon city or somewhere off the map and we might be able to accommodate them i need to but again the lift vehicles are the shortfall over there not the drivers so um on the submetra side it's the drivers so we do have data now at least we have something to look at and we can figure out this seven or eight people with a limited population but i'm not going to make a promise right now to those but the lift is available on sunday to the same routes in the same areas of town as a regular bus and again as i explained the lift is a complimentary service to the bus it's not an independent service that goes wherever it wants but because that's the fta policy we get grant federal funding for that very reason um and so we i will look at the data because it's not very many people and so for the if i'm able to accommodate them i will so i know you talked a little bit about the 20 cancellation i just wanted to give you a different perspective from some of the constituents i've been hearing from the reason why they have resulted in cancellations in their personal situations has been because they have been notified that the their appointments would be significantly delayed and so you know it they have to cancel because you know they're not going to make it on time to their doctor's appointments or what have you so if you can dissect that 20 data to further understand was the cancellation as a direct result for delayed pickups or expected delay pickups i think that would be a truer picture of what those cancellations are um i did also on a personal ellen i did want to congratulate you this has been one of the most comprehensive sen metro presentations i have ever seen um in my tenure and even before then really is a true testament to your growth in this role so i really like the the structure mr gonzalez that you have created in her role as the managing director because you had demonstrated there is a lack of vehicles but you're able to pull from a different department and then bring it to sun metro so that is a solution an oriented solution um direct response to a need and i think that this governing structure um is a testament to how we are responding to any gaps of services so um again uh your presentation today has been the most prepared um one of your best presentations so i i did want to commend you on a job done for last week it's like my my video went out so yeah i mean that's fine virtual virtual life but um you were very prepared in your responses today and i was very impressed um regarding the the budget um so really excited about the the federal allocation and the grants that we can expect so you have a plan on on fleet replacement um nothing short but amazing before we were operating in a deficit you took us out of that with the support of forest mr clancy and now we we have a capital plan an allocation that is funded through sales taxes not through out of lorem taxes your your property taxes now we are on track to make up for the capital improvements right as it relates to the 2.2 million dollar match for the nolo trying to understand your acronym um not yellow nello um where is that funding source the 2.2 sales tax as well okay so it'll be under your your reserves yes um for that your is that already incorporated into this budget it is when do we expect to receive those funds um i'm not sure when we receive it but we have to spend it within i believe it's 40 months it's either 36 40 months excuse me sorry the low no the match is actually budget for the fy24 fiscal year and the five year plan because we anticipate by the time we go through the application process and the final award and the scope of work and everything else it'll actually be end up in the fy 24 that we need if for some reason we need it sooner we'll come to council to appropriate the fund balance but it is part of our fund balance and is part of the five-year cip actually fy24 so it's not part of the fy23 budget we have a program for fy24 but like i said it will come to you guys if we need to appropriate the fund balance to match the grant if it comes sooner okay no i understand um and the reason why i was asking is because you mentioned that your financing practices have changed in the way you're reporting your budgets i didn't see it in schedule a and so i was curious if we needed to amend um to add those new grants like force it on the five-year plan so it is um in the 2024 because just the process of getting bids and designs and and unhave you and it's reimbursable and so we do have um the 300 000 that's that we have for design not for the depot but we keep design money available so that we can keep these projects moving so if for some reason that's not adequate we'll i'll come back and earlier mr clancy mentioned the cmaq funds i sit on the mpo i i remember the scrutiny on the city and sun metro not utilizing that money this is really critical folks because it was dollars that we were not even seeking and yeah so regionally it had an impact to our community so you've you fixed that now could we use cmac dollars for matching dollars because i mean it's technically the same pot of money i'm just not sure if we can do that yeah no ma'am i don't believe that you'll be able to match federal with federal funding um but we do the we have banked the sales tax by using the the arpa grants to pay for our drivers we're able to bank the sales tax for these kind of projects exactly so we you guys know we have switched over we went from a 20 million deficit and now you know we have a very significant fund balance and that for these type of projects so yeah i don't think you would be able to match we could look into it matching federal federal but typically they don't like that i'm trying to double dip here so no no but but i think that your point is well taken in what it what he's saying also is that by paying for uh an expense that was planned it frees up other dollars in this case like you mentioned sales tax so it in essence does what you're talking about but it just frees up other dollars that are sales tax or our money that can then be used as a match your presentation answered a lot of my questions and my concerns from the last presentation but the only concern i had with the with the schedule your fee schedule is the advertising you know how much i love advertising utilizing city right-of-ways and now our buses the fee will that cover the wraps and the ads itself the proposed advertising fees um are for the shelter not the bus itself oh okay buses will be the next generation along with the naming rights and and things like that so this is just the poster board type advertising in each bus stop okay the shelters on the stops okay i better understand because i mean it's very insignificant and my assumption is that there is a policy um to allow for those uh those shelter advertisements yes yes okay and um just my final comment um i did want to stress that if we are showing higher sales tax revenues than forecasted we'd love to have an opportunity in the first quarter of this fiscal year 2023 to talk about how we can further add funding to the streetcar operations okay um i know they're performing really well and so there might be some some excess dollars and i know that we have a capital plan and there's there's a lot of in the works but if we could if we could identify any extreme variance then our my first pitch would be can we ensure that we can put those dollars to additional operational hours for the streetcar again great work really great presentation and thank you for all that you're doing for metro thank you representative none of this represents salcillo followed by representative molinard thank you mayor thank you miss might for the great comprehensive presentation you did also want to thank the community for coming out and speaking on this issue i can tell you all i i grew up in the bus and i can definitely see the difference of the processes that are in place and where it's going so just want to say from what it was then to now i definitely see the the difference and we definitely have to make sure that we're investing in ourselves in order for us to be able to serve the community so if investing in what equipment that we need those are things that we need to make sure we're addressing in order for us to better serve our our community and with that i did have a question i know that the lift there was a concern is there like a what is the time period that they have to wait i know that somebody mentioned and it wasn't in this meeting it wasn't the prior one in regards to them waiting in the airport and they didn't wait in long enough and they waited there for hours almost a day the the rule is a 30 minute window and so when you make a reservation we'll say we'll pick you up between 8 15 and 8 45 and so and then if we're um beyond that it's considered late and when we have a five minute wait at the when on the pickup so if we go to wherever you are a doctor office a grocery store an airport and we wait for five minutes and we have your phone number right because you gave it to us when you made so we call the phone number to tell you we're here we're sitting here you know where are you or sometimes we're at the wrong door or they're waiting you know it's especially hospitals have several different uh entries so we we out we reach out to the client and tell them that we're here and so but sometimes they just you know they can't wait forever because again these are shared vehicles and so the next client is also waiting so each one is individual i'd have to pull a specific case if you wanted the details but generally that's the rule okay and that that is great i guess uh maybe a one practice and i think it's more to just the airport um do you know if it's running late i know a lot of people don't have are very savvy with their phones and they can't probably text if they're in there in the airplane so maybe there's like apps where you can see if that airplane is delayed and at least you kind of know um maybe you might want to wait a little bit longer but just kind of like a courtesy to the people right it'd be a way of kind of checking um in the flight information so when you're taking that down that number uh the phone number it's like maybe the flight number will help as well so they could just like yeah i could see if we could program into the software of a flight number i don't know how many people were picking up incoming you know i know it's easier to drop you off to catch a flight because you know that's i don't know how many of those there are but i'll check on it yeah just more of a suggestion just to be courtesy to them and and be able to just wait longer in case we could see clearly that there's been a delay um yeah because i think they mentioned they waited very long times and and so we don't want to do that and that's the thing if we've scheduled you in that window and all the drivers already have other people you end up having to wait until one of them frees up and then they finally work their way back around to so you know um like i was a lift customer with my sister-in-law and one time we waited over three hours for that very reason and so and what they told me was one of the clientele on the lift threw up and so they couldn't use that bus anymore so that whole route had to be rescheduled and so things happen you know things happen and that's why i say every one of these complaints is on an individual basis because they're not i can't categorize that they're all the same problem because they're usually not there there's usually some bizarre um but like i said we're doing four thousand a week you know sixteen thousand a month you know things are gonna happen they just are and um we we ask for their patience and we do they are our priority it is they are absolutely my priority above the streetcar the lift is the priority because of the you know the population their their needs that they have we're the ones who can meet them it's not just uh you know for for enjoyment or you know uh economic development there that's they need to go where they need to go and so they are our top priority and and i focus on them trying to fix all the the different issues but even that something's going to happen exactly no but absolutely thank you it's good to hear that you are your top priority so we will continue to focus on that and and just kind of seeing the presentation i know that we're moving forward it's a very very promising i can't wait to see i'll be back the the results and so i just want to thank you for all your hard work mrs mike very much thank you appreciate it thank you representatives thank you very much mayor um it's my thank you very much for a presentation great job as always a couple of things i just want to make sure you said right now that the lift is a priority over the the trolley system so that's great we have here citizens from our community who have voiced their concerns loud and clear and they were here recently saying the same thing loud and clear so we need to make sure that that is the priority and that remains the priority for sure so you also mentioned the depot that you were going to put aside so many millions of dollars and then other fiscal years you would have more fiscal money in different fiscal years do you have right now a figure on how much it would cost to restore it yes sir we've received a restoration estimate from one of the architectural firms and it came out 12 million or it was a 11.3 million but i rounded it off because everything's inflation is just crazy right now and by the time comes it may be more than that right that's the number and that we're targeting okay and as far as because it is a historical building that also includes all the different things that they need to do and not do to the building itself yes sir okay and you mentioned uh electrical vehicles currently right now in your fleet the sun metro fleet how many electrical vehicles do we have none okay so that leads me to more questions so we're going to be transitioning over and so where do we anticipate putting the charging stations and the money or the funds to build those charging stations the there's 50 electric vehicles in the grant and 25 electric charging stations and so most of them will be at the garage on fred wilson but others will be deployed around the city um in the event that the vehicles need to be charged in the middle of a route we will have a designer come in to assist us you know um with the placement and you know that hours of operation that each vehicle you know can run 200 miles before it needs charging and all those details that will work out and so i'll present on that as we learn more um mr gonzalez do you know anything about as far as the charging stations you know like one charging station can have so many ports if you will to charge multiple vehicles at one time yeah they have different levels of charging ability and some of them take longer than others and so one of the things that we signed an inter-local agreement with gm and what we looked at and how we're doing that with the micro grid that's planned at the airport is the type of stations that you have to put in place and how much so they're they're going to cost and where geographically they best fit in our community so to answer your question in terms of the the the type of unit that you would have you'd want one that charges as fast as possible because that way you don't have these lines that back up yeah i know we have some charging stations here also but i did have the opportunity to go to new mexico and they have one they're south of albuquerque and i-25 and it is test level it's not public transportation yet but anyway i was amazed that the the efficiency of that and how it went and i sat there for a couple hours just watching that thing people come charging their cars sometimes 15 minutes uh there's half an hour and they're on the way they're encouraged not to fill it up to the fullest extent that way they can get on because they don't need to fill it up to the max so there's a lot of different variables like that the other thing that i think that your question's uh very uh you know timely there's a study going on in terms of like the geography of i-10 because you have to like place them in certain points so that people don't run out so that's also part of the package and part of the plan sir if i can say something as well and sam razoria's chief trans operations officer so the city manager mentioned the mou that we have with gm and part of the the mou includes el paso electric and so what we're working on the microgrid looking at a couple of locations to include potentially the rental car facility as well as some of our operational areas part of that includes the smarts in coordination with el paso electric so that the charging can also happen in a way that's very effective to the grid meaning that we're not charging at the very peak demand of their system overall and that that comes along with some of the programming that would have to be required as part of the installation for some metro vehicles as well so we'll be leveraging what we're working on at the airport and so that we can take that technology across other departments to include some metro as well thank you mr rodriguez appreciate that so ellen i have no other questions thank you very much appreciate it thank you do we need a motion there's a motion to amend right but we also have uh public comment go ahead yes item we have mr josue rodriguez that signed up to speak i don't see him he left he left okay he left and then we also received a comment from nathan coleman to be read into the record which reads hello all i was wondering if the concern of coming up with a better system that allows sun metro representatives to get back to sun metro riders on the reported incidents reported online or over the phone with a representative an example of this is last thursday i wrote a complaint online and and i have not gotten back a callback as requested yet on the issue reported this is of concern to me because the longer it takes for sm representatives the more i feel the importance of the message isn't relevant anymore because by the time it gets reviewed the issue isn't important anymore because it wasn't addressed or reviewed closer to the time it was initially reported to keep better track of ongoing complaints with the same issue another issue is the inconsistency of the information shown on the online service on the day of the trip for example it shows online that the driver says that he or she has already arrived on location where they have not arrived i have suggested to mv representatives to see about incorporating real-time trip information to better track of when the driver is on the way to pick up the passenger instead of just going by estimates as it's programmed to do as you can see from the screenshot trip is placed as past trip when the actual arrival was at approximately 3 45. i heard that the existing buses were going to get be getting mvt screens and with 5g capabilities to do be able to redirect the driver if they're going the longer route instead of going the shorter route to do better in arrival times if that is the case when is a projected date that we should expect to see them being installed for use on the vehicles one final question is how come the trip arrival times were taken off from the text option used to obtain trip information via text i find that option very convenient especially when on the go have i have attached a screenshot of the online sun metro parent transit reservation thank you nathan coleman advocate for people with disabilities and i did forward a copy of the screenshot to counsel thank you thank you very much i think you know that we understand it's important to continue to see how we can improve and and i think this is a perfect example of you know the type of budget that we're looking at and continue to build the fleet and continue to look at different ways of making the system a a better system um so this might thank you and your team i know that um i see that i i do um want to thank you all for for giving us a great presentation but also you know showing us how we're going to continue to grow in the very near future and then in the long term future representative rodriguez thank you mayor ellen sorry i know you've been stunning for a long time but um the that last comment the last email that was read um they suggested the a tracking system similar to that of the uber lift so for example when you have the app and you order a lift you're able to see where your driver is and then it dings you when they're outside and i know you were looking at creative things also inc with the app is this something that you're looking at right this new software system that we're putting in in september that i mentioned that we've recognized that this is a problematic area for our customers and so as soon as i um put together the training package for the employees i can share that with you as well on how they'll be able to track their right okay so you have something that's going to all get better i it's i know i keep telling you that but it's it's going to get better and we trust you you've been doing a good job you know but i just heard this and i thought that's a good idea and i guess i know that you're working on something that what that's come up over the last year and that we've had we have um purchased the software and like i said it's being installed right now and the training will begin after labor day and it'll go live september 19th okay so i am going to request that you invite me to one of those trainings um i'm very interested to see everything that that you're doing all righty thank you thank you and with that mr pine there is a motion made by representative vanello seconded by representative salcido to amend the resolution and the amendment is to on item number 31 of the resolution to strike out the words and streetcar on the amendment call for the vote in the voting session and the motion passes unanimously is there a motion to approve as amended there's a motion made by representative rivera seconded by representative rodriguez to approve as amended on that motion call for the vote this is for the budget resolution in the voting session the motion passes with eight affirmative votes representative aneello voting name the motion passes that brings us to the end of the agenda is there a motion to adjourn there's a motion and a second to adjourn the mass transit department board meeting all in favor yes anyone opposed and the meeting for tuesday august 23rd 2022 is adjourned at 12 21 pm mayor can we uh mary can we make a motion to recess till 1pm pardon me yeah can we do one public comment first i don't think we we have public comments we do have call to the public we have i mean we have a motion to reconvene the regular city council there's a motion in a second to reconvene the regular city council meeting all in favor yes anyone opposed the meeting is back in session at 12 21 pm may or may we move to call to the public yeah we have one yes sir thank you the el paso city council is a local government body charged with serving all of the citizens of the city and these meetings must be focused on the meeting at charge the city council meetings are public meetings under the texas open meetings act public comment is an accommodation and not a requiring a city council all persons in attendance are expected to display stability in decorum that is respectful to other persons without the use of insulting profane threatening or abusive language public comment will not be used for personal attacks against a person or group's character or integrity which are not pertinent to city business nor any may any member of the public use this forum for political statements or campaigning please note that during call to the public the city council may not deliberate or decide any subject that is not on the agenda however council may propose that a topic brought forward be posted on a future agenda this afternoon we have one member of the public that signed up to speak this is miss sylvia carrion is volunteer work good afternoon miss caron you have three minutes ma'am thank you um volunteer work that's my topic good afternoon good afternoon mayor council syria carillon president of the mission valley civic association president of the loma line neighborhood association executive director of the longhorn youth program a 501c nonprofit board member for project bravo board member for mission trail association i'm currently serving on the citizens advisory board for sid metro am a member of the el paso neighborhood coalition member of the campus educational improvement council for ballard middle school in loma terrace elementary member of the league of women voters and i served eight years with the city's park advisory board and currently a member of the security group for christopher catholic church the internet says volunteering is described as an unpaid activity where someone gives their time to help non-for-profit organizations or an individual that they are not related to one of the better known benefits of volunteering is the impact on the community unpaid volunteers are often the clue the glue to whole communities together the benefits of volunteer work according to google they connect you to other others within your neighborhood volunteering is good for your mind and body and bring fulfillment into your life provide you with a sense of purpose and counteract the efforts of stress and anxiety allows you to overcome challenges and helps you stay physically healthy gives you a sense of achievement and purpose helps you feel better about yourself by improving your self-esteem and confidence helps you to share your talents with others and also learn new skills you help combat loneliness social isolation and depression the top characteristics that are mentioned in the pieces of patients one motivation bravery steps out of their comfort zones humility compassion creativity flexibility because you must adjust to a schedule independents most of most have to have time to complete a task cooperative and leadership i think leadership is what i feel strong you know i do a lot of the volunteer work for the mission valley for the loma land for so so many other things and i bring forward a lot of programs that the the city offers and trying to stay focused on on the plan sometimes it fails but we'll continue and hard working we don't give up thank you very much thank you for what you do miss cardio thank you mayor that concludes call to the public motion of recess there's a motion and a second to recess and this is for how long until one o'clock until one o'clock all in favor five minutes to one so we can start at one anyone opposed the meeting is in recess at 12 26 and will reconvene at 1 o'clock p.m thank you yes mayor is there a motion to reconvene there's a motion and a second to reconvene the regular city council meeting all in favor anyone opposed the meeting is back in session at 101 pm we're on item number four mr cortinas and this is a public hearing on the proposed fy 2022 2023 property tax rate of 0.862398 no one has signed up to speak so we'll open it and close it okay so the public hearing is open at 102. so robert this is the presentation attached to number five i believe it's attached to number three i'll go through this one and then we'll go through the slides on the tax rate on the next presentation we've already covered a lot of this information but i still wanted to take the time to go through it again just for anybody that may be watching or listening and again just as a reminder i think it's important to go through these items because that this budget really contains a lot of the key things that are identified in the strategic plan a lot of the key things that are going to continue to push the city forward again not only for the upcoming fiscal year but you hear us talk a lot about the long-term financial sustainability of the organization financially and operationally so if it would bring up that presentation for me please thank you so again when we went about developing the budget going all the way back to february and march when we start doing when we do it year round but we really started getting into discussions about the five-year forecast the council had a couple of items throughout the year wanting to see a budget developed with a no tax rate increase and actually minimizing or lowering the tax rate and this budget does that this budget also focuses on providing tax relief for our seniors and disabled and our military disabled veterans as well continuing to provide savings from our utilities continues to provide additional property tax revenue from the economic incentives so it really encompasses that financial relief is not just the property tax rate there are many many things that are incorporated into that that statement the second part that went into developing the budget was continuing to really complete out those priorities finishing those quality of life bond projects moving forward on the public safety bond projects continuing to invest in our streets and this budget does that the third point there again we had a lot of discussion this morning with the presentation that we did about the workforce and the important role that they play and producing the results that we've seen on a day-to-day basis and what we've seen over the last eight years with the incorporation or the approval of the current strategic plan and then finally the fourth point there as far as the budget development process was really just having to deal with what everybody's dealing with right now and that's the impact that we're seeing with inflation and increased costs not only in materials and supplies and contracts labor costs which we've talked about in order to be competitive there's some other fixed cost increases as well the november election being one of the larger items that's about a 1.7 million dollar impact and then also now with the may election which came about just here recently which is not again that 1.5 million roughly cost for the may charter election is not currently built into the budget and so we will need to identify how we go about funding that election when we get a little bit closer at that time so again as we again develop the budget again the the key word cut phrase there the uncertainty related to covet and the impact it's had not only on the health standpoint but the financial and operational again again ensuring that we're being conservative that we're being realistic with future impacts related to not only covid on the health standpoint and potential future financial impacts but also just the other issues that have come about from again just the current economic situation inflation labor challenges all these additional issues which we continue to deal with again not only for this coming year but as we look into the future as well so this council again has been very proactive about ensuring that we maintain our financial stability as we dealt with some of the difficult decisions going back to march of 2020 and what we've done since then again continued to hold the line on the tax rate and then with this budget lowering the tax rate by the 4.5 pennies from 90 to 86.2 cents and at the same time actually increasing the tax relief for our seniors and disabled at the same time this is a very very important slide and so i'm going to spend just a minute here because as we talk about the budget it's important again and our strategy or the way the city manager wants to develop the budget is not again just focusing on that current fiscal year we have a strategic plan for a purpose and that strategic plan is not intended to be accomplished in one year it's a long term vision of what you want to be as an organization and so as we look to the future we had some of the discussion again this morning with the fire cba those costs do not go down those costs continue to increase every year we have the police collective bargaining agreement which we're currently negotiating with them on the cost of our officers does not go down those costs will continue to go up again because of the pay increases to be competitive again those calls will continue to go up from both of those agreements additionally the additional staffing as we talked about again this morning required to open up the new police station required to open up the new fire stations we're having those academies now so that we're prepared when that time comes to be able to open those facilities and have the adequate number of staffing available so the net 300 plan that we implemented back in summer of 2015 for the police force what we're doing now with the 911 communicators what we're doing with the firefighters all of these costs will continue into the future but it goes beyond just police and fire it goes into our workforce we need to continue to be competitive in the future we need to continue to identify alternatives to current health care because we continue to see health care go up every year the city has continued to pick up those increases for the last four years in order to not pass on those increases to our employees so that when we say we're giving increases to be competitive that the employees actually benefit and receive those increases and that it's not going towards increasing their health care i know there's other local entities that are not doing the same and that are actually increasing the healthcare for their employees however that is not what the city of el paso is doing and has not done for the last four years the public safety bond operating cost again we talked about the staffing is going to be the primary driver but there's also other operating costs involved with those projects the remaining quality of life operating as we finish out the remaining projects we do have again the children museum built in expected open next year but that's prorated again since it will not be open for the full fiscal year and so next year we'll have the full operating costs the mexican american cultural center the exhibits at the zoo and there's a couple of other additional park projects as well planned for the future facilities vehicles and equipment something that back on august 1st when you all approved adjustments to the proposed budget this is an area that we've talked a lot about the city manager referenced it this morning with the facility inventory that we took a few years ago that we need to get moving on when we talk about the paygo dollars that has been approved by the city council we talked a lot about 10 million dollars for streets we're now up to 7 million for police and fire equipment so that's police cars fire trucks and ambulances we've put dollars here and there where we can towards facilities and other equipment for city departments and park amenities however we need to get on that pago system similar to what we've done with those other areas so the adjustment again that you all approved back on august 1st includes so the budget now includes three million dollars for those items so 1 million for vehicle equipment replacement 1 million for park amenities so whether it's straight canopies benches playgrounds and the other million for facility improvements again when we talked a lot about making progress are we at the level of funding that we need no we know we're not but we're going to continue to make progress and build upon what you all have approved as part of the annual budget streets is an issue that we've had a lot of discussion about not only with what's incorporated as far as the paygo funding but with the november 2022 bond election and what of which 90 percent of that funding will go towards more street projects we need to continue to build upon again the momentum and the progress that you all have approved and taking care of the city streets it's something we hear about loud and clear we're hearing about it now i'm sure you are with the recent rain and the impact it's having on on our city streets so this is an area that we need to continue to to push forward on and continue to build up on the progress that has been made and so i've i've done a lot of interviews the city manager's done a lot of interviews a lot of different association meetings and so what i've been saying when i'm speaking to these groups and the city manager says the same thing is when you ask the media you say if you were to ask us a question seven years ago how much money did the city have in the annual operating budget to do street projects or to buy police cars or to buy fire trucks and i said don't laugh but the city had zero dollars to do those things prior to seven years ago zero dollars to do street projects to buy police cars to buy fire trucks to put a new roof on a city facility the zero city had zero dollars to do those things and instead the city's past practice was to debt finance everything when i say everything i mean literally everything we're talking facility improvements police cars fire trucks ambulances playgrounds everything was debt financed this council has listened to the recommendations we've brought forward has approved the recommendations we've brought forward and again not about necessarily the short term but it's about the long-term financial and operational sustainability of the organization because you all won't be in office forever city manager and i miss neiman we won't be here forever but we're all in this community and so the recommendations again are all about the long term and that's why this slide is very very important we'll continue to provide more information the city managers ask that we put together a more detailed presentation which will be coming forward before the end of the calendar year to discuss what these future costs look like because it's us to be proactive and to make sure that we're making recommendations in order to offset these future impacts from these costs that we know are coming down the line so i i love this slide thanks to mr cruz acosta and her staff for actually making it look a little bit pretty with trying to make it more of an infographic but when you look at the slide again this sort of reiterates the point that i just made about from 2008 to 2015 the city saw a decrease of 118 officers so how does that happen by not properly investing in doing your multiple academies every year not taking into account future growth of the city and again really having a short-term vision and not again looking at long-term of what it is we're trying to accomplish as a city so in the summer of 2015 with council's approval we did implement the net 300 staffing plan we have been doing two police academies every year and so when constituents ask where are my tax dollars going i have a couple of slides and we had a question earlier that i'm going to answer about the percentage of the personnel costs that go to police and fire but these are the two big drivers police and fire i also mentioned earlier this morning about what the future staffing for the police department is going to look like as we begin to open up that far east regional command which will open in the next couple of years we need to ensure we have the adequate number of police staffing available to be able to open up and to allow for the police department to realign those command stations to the best possible outcome come because they will need to be able to again provide that service to the entire community and so between 2022 and 2032 so over the next 10 years over 500 additional new officers are planned that's double what we've been doing we've been doing a net increase of 30 every year starting next year we're planning to do net increase of 60 every year so really becoming more and more aggressive on the police force so that we do have again the adequate number of staff to be able to patrol and keep our neighborhoods safe so this was the slide we showed back in february again and i already talked about what a lot of those costs are going to look like or what those costs are going to be and so these numbers are again what we presented back in february the fy 2023 numbers but again really just to highlight and point out that that orange line is our projected expenses over the next five years and the blue line is our revenues projected for the next five years again there are a lot of assumptions built into these numbers people ask well how are you going to close that deficit and that's the city manager's job that's my job that's all of our jobs all the department's job to be creative come up with new ways to deliver service to come up with identifying how we can generate new revenue to be able to close that deficit and still provide the high level of service for the community and so this is again going back to what i just mentioned this is what we're going to spend more time on over the next year i've really highlighted showing the council what those future costs are where those tax dollars are going and showing again that it's not just about what's in the budget for this coming year which is important but it's about how we position ourselves again for the long term so i mentioned earlier about the strategic economic recovery not just focusing on property taxes or the property tax rate but looking at again the tax rate that's provided for 53 000 homesteads that have either the senior or the disabled exemption 53 000 that's 40 of our total homesteads that benefit from a 42 500 discount off the value of their home when calculating their tax bill the city council last year increased that so not only did the city council last year hold the line on the tax rate but you also provided more tax relief this year providing tax relief to everybody by lowering the tax rate the 4.5 pennies miss neiman and her staff in the city attorney's office again at the council's direction holding the utilities accountable whether it's the el paso electric gray case the texas gas issue that we have with winners to murray and really wanting to push those costs on to el paso ratepayers which we were not impacted so there was no reason why those costs should have been passed on to us and so we were able to generate a substantial amount of savings so that those costs were not passed on to our utility rate pays whether electrical gas talk a lot about economic incentives again it's a continuation that we need to continue doing on educating the public on the benefit of those incentive agreements and how they benefit all of the taxing entities not just the city of el paso as a tax and entity but the other four taxing entities as well that benefit from that new property tax revenue so again the school districts with the 43 percent that they make up the county the umc and el paso community college that are benefiting from all of the new revenue being generated from those incentive agreements that the city is taking the initiative on and then finally again being very strategic with what we were able to do at providing rental and utility assistance really leveraging our federal dollars to help our most vulnerable members throughout the community so this is what the tax rate looks like and so again we originally presented and projected at the end of june a three quarters of a penny tax rate decrease when we came back and presented on august 1st the council introduced the tax rate at just over 86.2 cents representing the overall 4.5 penny decrease on the property tax rate and so i talked a little bit about this and when you put some numbers to it when you look at for example the over 65 and disabled again 53 000 homesteads that have that benefit equates to 18.2 million dollars of property tax relief that this council is approving with this budget for those individuals in our community another 5.4 million for the homestead exemption and then the state exemption for disabled veterans almost 13 million dollars of property tax revenue for those individuals about 8 000 individuals that have that exemption which again varies depending upon their disability ranking so overall 36.4 million dollars of property tax relief for these members of the community so what's in the budget again some of the key highlights we've talked a lot about this we had a question this morning again two police academies two fire academies the budget includes seven million dollars for police and fire capital replacement so that's police cars fire trucks and ambulances which again back on august 1st one of the adjustments that the council approved was adding an additional 1 million dollars for this because of the increased cost that we've had for fire trucks and police cars and such and so now we're up to seven million dollars against seven million dollars of set-aside funds in the annual operating budget that we have to go out and do that to purchase these items that means that seven million dollars that we don't have to go out and bond finance and pay back over a long period of time and instead be more fiscally responsible for how we're developing the budget and how we're going about procuring these items 10 million dollars for street projects again this continues to be in the budget that we've had over the last several years now uh doing the residential and the collector roads the traffic safety programs almost 1.8 million dollars for our vision zero traffic safety program which has kicked off within the last year and a half or so continuing to fund the ntmp again the neighborhood traffic management program half a million dollars in that program we know we have a lot of demand a lot of requests for that program again that's another program that prior to two years ago was bond finance the ntmp originally was financed through the 2012 street co package and instead again now we've shifted away from that practice and have now built those costs into the annual operating budget again we have funding for street striping you heard richard bristol about four or five months ago give a presentation we've purchased new street stripers and again in order to keep our communities safe not only for motorists but for pedestrians as well and then the traffic lighting program that we have on the court of life side again we've talked about again very exciting projects in the downtown as part of the 2012 quarter life bond package the completion of the children's museum which is going up very very quickly the mexican american cultural center and the main library renovations that are ongoing the exhibits at the zoo the joy badass and vino regional park just to name a few of the projects that are opening next year which again those things require operating dollars and so the 2012 quarter of life bond is for the construction capital cost and now as we build these annual operating budget budgets building in the costs that go along with all of the staffing required all of the materials all of the supplies that go along with these facilities and doing so at a high level the community approved 473 million dollars for these projects it's critical for us to ensure that we're adequately building in those maintenance costs so that five ten years from now we don't run into issues where these facilities are are in need of serious upkeep or uh having serious issues and so it's important that we build these costs into the annual operating budget and then finally i've talked about this already but you all see on the council agenda it seems like almost every meeting now where we're having to terminate contract with vendors because vendors are coming in to us and telling us we can't afford to provide the level of service that we're obligated to that's in the contract because we have increased costs as well we have to pay our people more and so we're having to terminate these contracts go back out for re-bid and in most cases award to the same vendor but at a much higher cost and so we've seen janitorial contracts security contracts our information technology contracts went up by over two million dollars in this upcoming fiscal year our utilities is about a half a million dollar increase next year we're a large user large user of electricity with all of our city facilities all the street lights that we operate we're a large consumer of water and so the city of el paso has over 200 parks that we need to maintain all of our sport playing fields and so we're not immune from the utilities when they have rate increases when a paso electric has a rate increase or a pass of water has a rate increase those rate increases are passed on to the city as well and so we have those cost increases built into the budget for next year as well again we talked about our workforce and what we have done over the last not only the last year but then also looking at historically over the last eight years or so again focusing on compensation focusing on benefits the incentives and then the professional development opportunities that we provide our city employees so the graphic on the right there is just what we've done in this fiscal year in the current fiscal year that's in the fy 2022 column and then what is planned for next year so you can see on average our hourly gs employees which is about 90 of our non-uniform positions equates to almost a 14 increase in their pay in less than a year a 14 increase in less than one year is substantial for managerial or professional managerial groups represents almost an eight percent increase again we need to continue to be competitive you all have approved not only with the what was adopted in the budget last year the pay increases that we did but also in order to be more competitive we've done major pay increases we did the sign-on incentive again just to make sure that we're being competitive with filling the large number of vacancies that we currently have and so there are a lot of additional items that we have built into the workforce for next year as well not just the competitive compensation but also looking at all of the other things that we talked about this morning and so i'll point out just a few because i know again that there are a lot of city employees we had fortunate to have some of them here this morning they had to go back and get back to work but they were able to sit down and listen this morning a lot of employees watched the city council meeting so they're very aware of what's going on we get emails quite often from city employees asking what's going to happen with the pay increases and so this list is a very very nice reflection and really highlights how competitive we are as an organization and when it comes to providing solid pay a lot of financial incentives very competitive benefits for all of our city employees and so with what we have in the budget for next year again a dollar increase in the minimum wage represents nine percent increase increase in our service time so every five years of service varsity employees increasing those percentages that employees receive we heard from as we revamped our performance evaluation process that our employees wanted to have some form of recognition through some form of monetary payment and so this budget represents and has that included a lump sum payment up to 250 dollars for them once we complete their performance evaluation which we do annually and then the tuition assistance program and so the changes we've made with that program and we talked about that again this morning increasing the budget by about 200 000 next year which i'm not sure is going to be enough as more and more people hear about how easy it is and how lenient we have become in providing that benefit to our employees but it's a good problem to have educating the workforce is a good problem to have and we will find a way to fund that program make sure we meet the demand so overall breakdown of the city budget you can see here broken down by the different types of funds you see the general fund there at 512.7 million you follow along there and that's our different types of funds that we have the cdbg is our community development block grant federal funding our debt service our capital project special revenue enterprise and internal service so all of those non-general funds are restricted special purpose type revenues that are dedicated for those particular departments or particular functions so overall city budget coming in next year at just over 1.17 billion when we look at the general fund the property or the general fund revenue you see property taxes there makes up about 40 of our revenue followed by sales taxes which we've talked a lot about sales tax and the performance that we've seen not only in the current year at almost 14 higher compared to the prior year but just in general the last couple of years with cove it's sort of surprisingly to see how well sales taxes perform that's really helped the budget for next year as well providing additional revenue to be able to fund a lot of things that are in the budget you can see there for next year we're projecting 6.8 million dollars of additional revenue on sales tax to put that into perspective typically on an average year we would be lucky on average to get about three to three and a half million dollars of new revenue from sales taxes so this budget next year again almost doubles that amount again in order to fund a lot of things that we've talked about and so if you look at the top slide there or the top line there property taxes 15.3 million this is something else that i've been pointing out quite a bit because again when community asks where are my tax dollars going you know we point to the 60 as police and fire we talk about 75 percent is our employees this light here if you follow the property taxes revenue the additional revenue second column from the right 15.3 million dollars of additional revenue to the general fund from property tax revenue so 15.3 million of additional revenue when you look at this slide and you go down to public safety and you look it's about three rows down four rows down our police and fire departments are increasing in budget next year by 15.1 million so 15.3 million of new revenue from property taxes 15.1 million of increased costs just from two city departments and so when it comes down to when we get the question where are my tax dollars going is going to keep our community safe to hire more officers to hire more police fire more police officers more firefighters more 911 communicators to purchase the vehicles and equipment that they need to provide the services to getting us prepared to open up brand new fire station to police stations that's where a large majority of the tax increase is going towards so when we go back to this slide again this is what we talked about earlier the pie chart 72.9 so almost 73 percent almost three quarters of the budget goes to personal services which is salaries benefits and taxes for all of our city employees so of that amount so of that 72.9 if you break it out 71 of that is police and fire so 71 of that blue portion of this pie chart is police and fire salaries and benefits and taxes the remaining 29 is all of our non-uniform employees and so when we break down those i know it's a lot of percentages and but if you were to break out that 73 percent again 71 percent is police and fire a large majority which isn't surprising when we talk about overall police and fire making up you know a large majority of the overall city budget and so again this is the the table format of the budget for the general fund for next year comparison from the current year to next year again overall personal services again salaries benefits and taxes 26 million dollar increase that's for all of the increased staffing for police and fire all of the competitive increases on the wages all of the benefits we're providing all the incentives all of the new positions coming online with the operating costs from those projects we talked about 26 out of 36 million is for our workforce so again the math always usually works out it's about i think over 70 percent of the increases in our workforce in the budget for next year so i talked about this slide again the primary drivers for next year public safety the next largest increase is in the quad of life which is the parks museums libraries and the zoo again very very intensive as far as the number of ftes the number of employees we have in these departments the opening up of the quad of life projects that i talked about the new museums for the children museum the mexican american cultural center the exhibits at the zoo and building in those operating costs and again this shows the overall 36 million increase in the budget from the current year as we look at the non-general fund portion of the budget again represents about a 67 million increase and again this non-general fund portion as i mentioned earlier this represents all of our restricted funds so whether it's federal state grants special purpose revenue that's dedicated for specific purposes our enterprise funds which is annual revenue that stays within those departments so environmental services our airport we had some discussion about some metro they're an enterprise fund they operate in a manner in which they're self-sufficient on the fees and charges that they collect that's what's incorporated here in this non-general fund portion of the city budget and so with that that completes the presentation and i can go through the since we are on the public hearing a relatively short presentation i'm gonna i got a question for you real quick on item uh slide number six you showed there was a impressive um slide on how we're increasing police department um the only question i have what have what to those numbers what that you use for attrition and what did you use i know when we have an academy that we would love to see to make sure that 100 of all our you know cadets uh graduate but we know there's a percentage of dead and so what percentage of that did we use to accomplish to that number we've shown that information in the february presentation that we did i can get that for you it's typically around 50 we have seen a little bit of a larger number this year as far as the attrition so we'll probably go back and revise this model typically on average it's about 50. yeah i just want to make sure we use that on that number i like that yeah we account for we account for expected attrition we probably need to go back and start revising just based on what we're seeing over the last couple of months and we're we work very closely city managers has told us you know they run into issues with filling academies so for example they just finished academy about to start another one if they don't meet the number they were targeting and we'll bump up the number that they're going to start at the next account the goal is to get to these these numbers we'll make sure we do that to get to that number because that's the number we need to be at right so because you know as we discussed earlier with the fire department you know public safety is our number one priority mayor to your point uh another thing that we're looking at doing is maybe coming back with some other packages that don't exist today i know that we had the the drop program the five-year drop program we might have to come back with a more aggressive program that adjusts that to be able to be competitive because as you mentioned this year we're thinking that or this year or last year the number was higher than 50. 50 has been the standard number but you know it has reached over 60 at some point so i think that that's a concern of ours and we think we need to go back and revamp that forward drop program thank you thank you for that sir thank you yes sir representative thanks mayor i just wanted to ask some clarifying questions based on some things you said was a little bit confusing um i know you said you're preparing for collective bargaining right but just want to clarify that the current collective bargaining agreement does not expire until august 2023 correct okay um and we did in that uh in the previous collective bargaining agreement we did add pa like a scale um and increases for uniform police officers to kind of uh i guess lessen the impact of collective bargaining correct so that they would be getting yearly but were i guess bonuses more than once a year they would be on a scale um there would be i guess more of an organized pay increase for uniform correct so what we did what you're referencing is the prior collective bargaining agreement for the police department was we would do a seven city wage comparison so you never knew what on top of their steps what type of increase they were going to get there were years where they got zero additional increases but there were some years they got three percent on top of and so in order to alleviate that and allow us to be able to project out in the future what those costs are going to be and to ensure that they were going to receive something we did that flat percentage amount built into the case yeah and i just wanted to clarify that because if you didn't have that information based on things you would say it could seem like well collective bargaining is coming up in the next three months and there's going to be a huge increase to wages because we haven't done that but well we have done work over the years to make sure that it will not be i mean with the exception of the additional officers that we're going to need and equipment um but then my last question in regards to that is just for clarification so 9-1-1 communication communication employees are non-uniform employees correct and so they're not impacted by collective bargaining no they're not okay just want to clarification thank you robert thank you representative um hernandez followed by representatives we'll see though thank you mr cortinas we're nearing the end and i just want to thank you for all your hard work with this budget we started early in the year and i appreciate all the updates on how we got here today i wanted to ask if you can give a brief overview of any major changes that are significant of noting today as it relates to the schedule c and and something that i'm um that's on my mind is the the new fee i mean not the new fee but the residency requirement correct and so the the changes that we have and the parks department the library department is related to the county resident fee and so there is a slight increase compared to a city resident fee in order to recoup or recapture some of the additional revenue from county residents who are taking advantage of city services there's also some planning and inspection fees again related to cost of service they have several fees that haven't been updated in 30 years and so they're going back and not going back to 100 full cost recovery they're going to do it over a four to five year time period of increasing those gradually over time in the closer anything else nicole cody interim managing director of omb and purchasing so we also want to make sure we note the zoofies are going up so we will be increasing the zoofies as well and that's the gate ticket price and we did discuss it during the budget workshop but it's important to note that the public's aware yeah and and i'm and i'm okay with that um could you reference the membership is that the membership fees increasing or is it just a daily fees it's just the the gates ticket prices at this point i mean i have a big family i go to the zoo a lot and so the membership is really the way to go if you're trying to save money because just one trip to the zoo for my five children and our parents would be like over a hundred dollars so just with that one visit i could pay for a membership so i recognize that you can achieve savings that way um but it does it does um the the county related requirement for residency i just want to understand um in the event that someone is unable to present an identification because they don't have one what would be the response from city employees are they prepared are they trained are they ready to communicate to the public that this is a new requirement so this is something we're going to have to address as we begin to run in those type of situations i know that we tried this a while back during the county resident and it's always one of the reasons why we haven't or implemented up until this point for example at the different facilities we have because it is hard to ask for that identification or to prove that you live within the city limits but there's things that we can do i know there's talk of looking at another type of identification card potentially down the road as part of a discussion to be able to provide some some form of people to be able to identify camaraderie live in their roberts if i may interject my apologies for interrupting um this uh i've asked staff to we have an internal cross-functional team to look at exactly what robert said about looking at a id that would just be for city services and studying that and determining how best to go about doing that without making it an issue with the state or any other entity because there's there's a lot of folks that might get caught in that vacuum uh and and so yeah we've already started looking at that differently than we have in the past uh and again just doing it for our services and and really making sure that there's no one uh that's that's being left out of the mix for whatever reason because we also have homeless people in that in that boat as well and transient folks as well and we want to make sure we account for that so we're looking at it a little bit differently this go around than we did five or six years ago and we'll continue also the city manager you know the mayor have meetings with the county on i think a monthly basis and so we had met with them maybe two years ago we talked about having some form of agreement where the county would actually put up some additional dollars to fund having their residents be able to take advantage of some of the different services we provide whether it's the libraries or collection stations unfortunately gain traction on those agreements but it's something that i'm sure we'll continue to have discussions with no and i appreciate that i know that this has been underway um i really appreciate the open um lines of communication uh it is critical i endorse um that effort and so i'm excited to hear that that there's some planning underway on that now i would encourage and recommend uh some form of internal procedure policy for staff um you know as maybe ellen smith can tell you or mr ben 5 with with parks and rex you will see some form of grievance or process for appeals on these type of situations and so let's be prepared to respond to to the public so thank you for that um been hearing some concerns about budget resolution and some authorizations i know exactly how this works but just for purposes of sharing that information and educating the public and members of council on the budget resolution for item number six it states the city manager or his or her designee is hereby authorized to make budget transfers between departments and or non-enterprise funds or reprogram funds within an enterprise department not to exceed one hundred thousand to the extent permitted by law budget transfers between departments and or non-enterprise department funds exceeding one hundred thousand shall require city council approval can you explain in what situations the city manager would have this authorization so that one is not as common as i think the one you're referring to is the capital project out so we do typically do budget transfers but 99.9 percent of the budget transfers we process are within one department so i talked about for example the tuition assistance program right now we added 200 000 to that program it's over i think about 500 and 8 000 roughly total may not be enough and so the workforce relations department's gonna have to do an allocation or a budget transfer throughout the year to move money from one account to the other um not typical for us to do between departments i'm very rare that we do that the capital project budget transfer item something to count this has been around for 12 years at least since i've been with the city maybe longer and so what this allows for is our engineering department you all know they're executing a very very large capital project portfolio right now a lot of projects ongoing this allows them the flexibility and the capacity to be able to get these projects done on time without having to come back to council or have to go back out and re-bid certain projects all of the budget transfers related to capital projects are provided to council so the quarterly updates or reports that i do in the backup there's always the listing of the budget transfers that were done for every capital project so it's posted on the website it's there's backup provided again if anybody has any questions about where those dollars are going are being moved from or to all of the information is readily available and so that was added and so that million dollar limit is for existing capital projects and so everything that's been approved by this city council as far as those project lists and and that was my next question how does the capital project list get approved um that's developed by the capital improvement engineering department it comes to council council approves correct the budget the projects for every engineering project on that list so it's not manufactured by or mr gonzalez or the city manager of the role it's already approved by council this authorization is for capital projects only that have already been previously authorized by the city council is that a true statement that's correct and it's also and it's also for so if you think about it also so the other measure the other item to contend with or to take into account is you will approve every contract for these capital projects so those contracted amounts for these projects have limits there's caps on them this does not allow us to go above and beyond those contracted amounts and so for as long as there has been a council manager form of government and a city manager this has been as far as an authorization and i've been with the city for 15 years as far as i can remember this has been in the budget resolution and that and that alec and that uh authorization um authority is a million dollars by the city manager yes okay i don't have any other questions other than to uh i saw mr rodriguez did you have something you want to say yeah just wanted to confirm that's correct it's been in the resolution for since i've been with the city for 16 years um and again it allows us to continue to move projects along we we close our projects and we have project savings that we move into uh what we call a pcp balance or a balance that then we draw from uh to keep projects moving that are over um and within the authority of city manager able to push those along and those that are not that are over a million we do bring those to council typically as part of a construction award uh we'll bring those items to council as we did as an example with the water parks and whatnot we bring those accounts and as robert stated those are also reported on a quarterly basis i do want to point out that i think under the resolution the city manager is authorized to begin a new capital project under half a million dollars and this is to address emergency situations or emerging things that are capital that's a capital expense that require capital dollars he's able to to begin those up to half a million dollars and obviously those get reported as well as part of the budget transfers because there's a budget transfer involved with that as well great thank you for that clarification um it's it's important to to remind the public and continue to have these discussions um i'm going to switch over just really quickly to a conversation about turs are there any changes to any of the tours within the budget resolution or is that like future council actions so that we can transfer those tours funds to the general fund so that would be a future council action there's no changes right now to any of the tourists okay and then but we are looking at that we're looking at where we can uh capture some of that and put back into the general fund in order for us to utilize that on the general fund side ledger okay and then um for parks and recreation i just want to stress when we are modifying schedules during the summer when it when you open and close centers the backlash to members of council without any proper notice and i understand and i recognize the the labor issues i just want to make sure that there's continuity in our service hours for our rec centers for our community community centers because when we change those i'm having to go to every center to meet with folks who are frustrated because they want their gyms open so i just wanted to make sure that we're we're not adjusting ours midpoint and that we're keeping our hours consistent are there any efforts within this budget to to modify the schedules in the summer because dionne i know you're this is new to your portfolio this happened uh this summer and um you know we were all frustrated not necessarily blindsided because we recognize the challenges i just want to make sure there's continuity in in the time services that we're providing this is new to her portfolio but she's done this before as you as you all know and this is just part of our training and development and that dionne probably held every area except for finance and budgeting and i don't know that she wants me to do that to her but but she can speak to the questions that you've had absolutely we'll be working to communicate with you in terms of the work that we will be rolling out we clearly understand that right now even though we're open in certain facilities we're just open basically at basic service levels and so our goal is to ensure that not only during summer programs that we're able to reestablish club rec that we're out able to have those evening hours that we're able to accommodate our seniors who are looking to work out in the morning we've heard those concerns we have those listed when we're thinking about full service we're thinking about the things that people have come to expect from us in terms of high quality of service for quality of life so as we continue to roll those out and get these facilities open we will make sure we coordinate with you so you can continue to help us to let people know that we are expanding those services and they continue to be or will are re-established as we re-staff our organization moving forward correct and just you know when cdbg funds are reprogrammed re-allocated it would be helpful to know what kind of city services will be impacted as it i mean there's so many different allocations and so so many departments are relying on that and so you don't hear about the changes in the until like right before they need the budget adoption and so i think where we can strengthen our budget sessions is when we make a change to any allocations and it impacts our operations to the public then we need to understand what this is the decision and here are the unintended consequences and this this is how we're going to make up for it that that could be a process improvement recommendation um on how we we publicize that not only to counsel but to the public because i recognize that this year i was a little frustrated but i i recognize that city management is looking for funding to make sure that persons with disability seniors are never impacted and they are our priority exactly and you i think you posed a question to us last week and so what we'll be able to do is share with all of council the policy that allows us to provide a waiver that's already in place and if you look at schedule c closely there's already funding that allows financial support for that and so we will get that out to you and to everyone else to ensure that people are not coming in and are surprised or feeling like they don't have an option to really participate fully right my shameless plug the multi-purpose center we the public is is dying for their warm pool um on vi count and um it is so critical so i just want to make sure that i use this platform today to advocate on behalf of my constituents who are desperately not only not only in district 3 throughout the entire city they are looking for that therapeutic pool which is the only one in our inventory and so i should have mentioned that earlier when we had our aquatics team here but um it's critical and we don't stop hearing about it every single day and then i do want to know other questions of our about parks and rec or about finances at this time if something comes up i'll i'll reconnect but thank you mr cortinas thank you um question i do have i know that we when we did the budget we always talked about that it wasn't about dollars and cents about staffing it was due to you know we we couldn't we didn't have the manpower and then in our budget we did today we've we've actually allocated for additional funding so the question would be is if we've allocated for funding we've raised the taxes to the taxpayers why are we raising fees to the amenities when we have actually incorporated everything into our budget today which visa are you referencing mayor you know you're talking about the the the fees to for the for the fees for the parks why are they going up if we've incorporated what reasoning do we have for going up if we've incorporated everything into our budget today which is uh additional funding the fees for the parks are not going up for the zoo it is and so the purpose behind that is that building in the operating dollars the operating dollars paid for the general fund portion of the zoo pays for personnel the zoo utilizes their collection revenue that they collect to pay for all the operating costs i talked about not only the penguin exhibit i believe there's another exhibit that's going to be opening next year as well so they have an increase in the operating costs on the zoo side so it's a new amenity it's a new exhibit it's new attractions they need to be able to fund the ongoing operating cause associated with that so you're saying that's not in the budget today it is in the budget that's what i thought that's what i'm saying if it's in the budget today why is the gate cost going up to fund an increase in the operating cost and so separate personnel from the operating personnel fund no i heard that that's what i'm saying so is that part not in the budget is that that's why we're going up it is in the budget okay so that's why i'm trying to figure out why the gate fee is going up if it is in the budget i know that the gate fee additionally the additional fee will fund the increase in the operating cost so but that's so if we didn't increase the gate fee that would not be in the budget today to operate i'm not following your question mayor well he's asked you're saying it's in the budget because it's being covered by the fees what he's asking is it's not in the budget covered by the general fund correct yeah so additional dollars additional dollars that are required to cover the related expenses for those projects are going to be covered by the additional gait fee that is being included within the budget so what we're saying is that we're keeping the zoo whole in terms of its required funding that includes that fee as well as covering all the staffing that's required on the general fund side so we're not keeping them whole we're actually increasing the gate cost to keep it whole and it's not in the budget it is in the budget in terms of what they intend to earn through the gate charge that is being increased in the fee schedule so i don't believe it's in the budget then if we're increasing the budget we're increasing the gate fee to cover it that's just i mean i don't see that if it was in there we wouldn't increase the gate it's covered it would be covered it's covered by the additional revenue expected to be generated by the additional fee charge so it's not in the budget it's in the budget to increase the gate fee to cover it the increase in the operating cost is in the budget for next year i don't agree with that if it's in the budget it should be in the budget and now we're increasing the gate fee and increasing the you know to the taxpayers so the additional cost related to operating this is no i understand it so that's what i'm saying so i do understand it but i don't see it in the budget if we're increasing the gate fee to cover the shortfall of what it's going to cost us it's it's a combination of the two it's the increase in the general fund portion and an increase in the revenue being generated how much are we thinking based on the increase will it generate we've added in on the expense size 600 000 that would be covered by the expected six hundred thousand dollar increase in revenue so we're so we're adding roughly we're hoping that by gate fees we'll add an additional six hundred thousand operate whatever it's going to cover so sorry let me let me clarify so there's the increase on the general fund site as mr cortina said is for salaries and benefits so the general fund the increase i understand all that i want to know what the additional charge on the gate fee what's that going to cover it's only it's going to cover the operating costs specifically for the food and utilities and normal operating costs to support the new exhibits okay so now i'll go back to the question i asked a minute ago how much additional funding will that be based on the increase on the gate fee aaron says the discussion has switched to the budget i'm going to read item five into the record which is discussion in action on a resolution that the proposed budget as amended for the city of el paso filed by the city manager with a city clerk on july 14 2022 is hereby approved and adopted by the city council as the annual budget for the fiscal year 2022 to 2023 which begins on september 1st 2022 and ends on august 31st 2023 thank you mary we'll get your response to that question i don't know if you want to go on to any other questions that i'm sorry we'll go to representative salcido and then the representative ronella thank you that thank you thank you mayor uh and thank you city manager and staff for all your hard work that in preparing this budget today so over the last few months i have heard constituents concerns loud and clear and i will do all my part to alleviate their burdens as we know the budget is a working item as we continue to hear the constituents needs and comments so today i stand up for the taxpayers of el paso and the struggling families who have been negatively impacted by the record inflation and the ever increasing cost of living these have not been ordinary times for us el paso has been tightening up their budgets and city of el paso must do the same we must adopt a policy of reducing spending with the economic realities leaves us no choice and this is where we're at today we must adopt a policy that helps the community in a city council meeting a few weeks ago an agenda item that i posted along three of my colleagues and was passed unanimously also directed the staff to further adjust the budget to reduce the tax rate yes the proposed tax rate has already decreased significantly and it has been the largest tax rate reduction in more than 35 years because of the high certified property values that came into from the central prison district and i welcome that decrease but i think that we can still do further towards what we asked for in this agenda item with the new proposed rate we are close about to four pennies and above the new revenue rate that equates to about 16.9 million dollars and we're hovering just below the voter approved rate i think we owe it to the taxpayers to provide even more relief in the upcoming fiscal years and i do have a motion and a few questions but i am open to feedback from my colleagues and staff on this and i with that i do want to motion to adopt the no new revenue rate for the fy 2023 if i have a second thank you yeah what that's uh okay thank you so i do have some questions i don't hear a second but i do have some questions mr cartinas is is there something that we could um explore to look further on i know that we to revisit that sales tax surplus that we talked about last meeting and being able not to affect the pension and the stabilization fund but where we can get that those funds to cover to get us to the normal revenue rate so as i mentioned during that same meeting several times as i would not recommend and i do not believe it to be fiscally responsible to use one-time additional revenue to fund ongoing expenditures it's not a responsible way to operate and i don't think the city manager would recommend that nor would i recommend doing that and and also i know that it was talked about terse and there's you know some surplus there and that would be moved to the general funds do you know that amount and would that be something that we could be used to the city attorney's office and myself has been working for quite a while unfortunately because there's bond issuances tied to the trzs we're working right now with ms nieman and a snapper right now to try to help us expedite that we need to go back to the sib which is where we state infrastructure bank which is where the loans were issued through and make some amendments to the ordinances that were passed when those were created we're working on that it just takes a little bit of time for us to be able to do that i asked the staff to do that in order to look at other sources of revenue to accommodate the general fund and its rising expenses with all the items that we listed whether it be streets police fire equipment replacement for those departments and obviously the needs assessment list that we shared earlier that is a litany of items in the parks department and also we had a discussion earlier about maybe the general fund taking on more cost increases in enterprise funds and things of that nature that is a policy decision one of which we wouldn't necessarily recommend but one that we have to plan for we also talked about the additional costs of these incentives for staff that when we do get the fully staffed that would be an additional and minimum set of minimum of seven million dollars more on top of these additional things we're looking at with the collective bargaining agreements with uh police and fire okay thank you and on another question is there any fun that you think that we could you know be able to um accomplish this this goal without of course touching the pension funds so we provided information to the all of the members of council about two weeks ago i believe the budget as you said 4.5 penny tax rate decrease the largest in over 35 years an additional four penny decrease bringing the total 8.5 would require another 17 million reduction the budget staff myself mr gonzalez we've developed the budget that we're recommending without impacting services or impacting competitive wages for our employees i mean we've talked a lot about what what is the budget made up of almost 75 of it is our employees and if you're cutting other services or if you're cutting other operating costs at that point then why do you have employees coming to work if they don't have the tools and resources that they need in order to do their job all right thank you for answering all my questions thank you mr cornelius back to your question mayor so the addition and i believe we have joe montezano the zoo director on the line as well on page 589 of the proposed budget which is posted has been posted on the city website for almost two and a half months now additional revenue for the zoo is five hundred and four thousand two hundred ninety seven dollars as a result of the one dollar increase okay so we'll figure that that's gonna overcome the short based on electricity food and whatever other other items you that's those are not those are not included in the budget for the year mayor all right just to answer your question in line of questioning that you're asking these are for the new exhibits and it is in the budget um i think if if you seem to be having some concerns about the 600 000 the general fund would be the only thing that would be able to absorb that and we would have to cut something else out of what we have listed already so that that would be a way where that would not uh be an impact to the to the users it's a user fee and the taxpayer would have to pick up the rest of that and then take something off the list that we've shown y'all that we've used with those uh with those dollars so i hope that answers your question because i think you've asked it's not in the budget it is on the budget on the revenue side and expense side and it covers those new exhibits it's no different than the mac or the children's museum that's coming online that we have to pay for those expenses as you know we did negotiate a different situation with the children's museum where we only pay one-third but mayor to answer your question uh it is in the budget and it is a 600 000 as robert said and so if if if you're um suggesting or insinuating with your comments that you'd want the general fund to absorb that that would have to be something that's taken up by all of you and then look at that list that uh the council has been briefed on and determine which ones of those things we would remove and make up for that six hundred thousand that way so i hope that answers your question sir it did but i still don't disagree but you did answer the question yeah thank you representative vanilla yeah thanks um i feel like i've lost my train of thought again uh quick comment about a conversation was had with representative hernandez on the budget transfer that has been around for 12 years i don't know what the context of the conversation is but i do know that in 2017 we did increase that right from 500 000 to a million so i don't i was just i don't know why i felt like pointing that out i don't i was just saying it just to remind everyone um in the same line of questioning that the mayor had on the zoo fees so y'all are saying you are now increasing the fee for non-city residents at libraries you're increasing it um okay so what is that increase going to be for there's no change to the library okay because rob was only the zoo and the um the parks and so the libraries was our historical so parks were now doing it as well yes okay and so what is that increase going to be used for it's actually different per per actual um function let me pull up the schedule yeah i mean i get what the mayor is saying i don't think that he's suggesting that you take money defund something else in the general fund and and fund this i think he's saying that in transparency on how this budget is being balanced um right there are deficits that are now being covered by increased fees so to say that we've balanced out the budget totally so that's not entirely true right because a lot of this is contingent on right let's use the example of the zoo you're projecting six hundred thousand dollars from that increase if you don't get that six hundred thousand dollars you're going to have to make up what was projected somewhere else potentially right and so just understanding how you're balancing this budget right and and so what you're saying diana's each park is differently you're going to use the funds for this increase for county users and so understanding what that is would be a full understanding of the budget and this is the first time we're having the conversation um and so i don't know i don't want to speak for you mayor but i don't feel like you were saying that you wanted to take money from the general fund it's just the way that we're talking about the balancing of the budget the way that we're talking about funding of departments it's not a clean flush right a lot of this is dependent on revenue from these fees the zoo operates as an enterprise fund i understand that so so the zoo has a fund balance we monitor the zoo just like every city department to ensure they stay within the allocated amount they generate revenue not only through their fees and charges but the general fund subsidizes a large portion of the expenses related to the zoo but the zoo operates as an enterprise fund which means all of the revenue they generate has to fully fund all of their operating costs excluding their employees the general fund covers that okay um yeah so i don't need that now but if that could we could just have an understanding of what that fee you don't have to do that right now dion it's going to be minimal the parks generates minimal revenue the additional revenue generated from this will be minimal it's not going to be we just wanted to remind council i i apologize i didn't have the date we did present on june 27th the fees that were related to the zoo as well as the detail of what was going to be increased by um at the um parks and recreation line items yeah i didn't know the question was asking i missed you're right but doesn't mean we agreed on it but you're right you did discuss it yeah we didn't vote on it we do still have the right to disagree and say we didn't we don't agree with this yeah and i don't need that now but i do think it is a conversation with have we talked about it we didn't understand what exactly those those line item funding would be um so last question robert a few months ago when we i was going to say when we started the budget conversations but i think back in march we talked about looking at fees for short-term rental we were told that was being worked on hoping it would be done for this budget but haven't had any update on that we've made a lot of progress there's a lot that goes into that actually ms cody has done a fantastic job on getting that program up and running we have a cross-functional team that's tackling that you will be something to be seen i believe her timeline is scheduled to come back in september to present something to you all okay will that need to be a budget amendment or so the hotel occupancy tax is dedicated to specific purposes there will be additional revenue projected to be generated for as a result of the permits that would be required and at that time we can have discussions about what that would go to the fund we have obviously recommendations we're bringing forward as far as finding additional staff to monitor compliance and some other things we're planning to utilize a third party to help administer the program and so we'll bring all that forward okay um so we can hope to see that's really good news yeah no i agree i think it's a really important thing it's a good it just takes a little bit of time unfortunately to get everything squared away and then again the cross-functional team's been working on that for four or five months now okay well i look forward to it thank you as we plan the plan is to have that implemented before or by january of next year and actually this has been five managing director of cultural affairs and recreation if i may uh i would just like to jump in to address some of those questions representative vanello i would remind the council that during strategic planning sessions last november we did talk about the fact that uh you know the city uh city residents actually subsidize a lot of these services through their property taxes they are paying on the bond debts county users are putting wear and tear in facilities uh you know takes place in programs without having uh having actually paid for for that subsidy and so the increase in fees is really to just sort of even that out and allows us to plan properly and accordingly thanks mister i would also say i think some of us still feel like we didn't finish that strategic plan session by going through each category and uh as someone who's very openly doesn't believe that we should be charging uh for educational and physical fitness to to county residents i that was a conversation i would have liked to have continued but we didn't do that extra day for strategic planning but i appreciate the reminder i'm council also i know that there's been questions by a lot of you about what's covered what's not covered we we present the the budget items on a yearly basis throughout the entire year and so we have talked before about things like the terses and how we can utilize that revenue i think several of you have mentioned that i know like the airbnb item that was brought up uh because we were having complaints in the cr process i know miss uh hernandez brought that up and one in which you know we were following up with uh her on that and with the council i know that's been brought up several times so i just want to make sure that um you hear that we hear you loud and clear and those those two opportunities to get more revenue and and or take care of a citizen concern in the airbnb because that's how that came about and if you recall we said we had been looking at that for quite some time uh it wasn't something that just came up on us just kind of like the the pay increases uh to be more competitive with the workforce this isn't the first year we've done it uh this will be the fourth and fifth time we increase the minimum wage and it's something we've been looking at for years and things we've been working on for years so that's the reason why today whenever they presented that aspect of it they were able to present that in such a way that you know they had been doing their homework for quite some time it was it was even a lean six sigma project for her green belt certification for dion mack so a lot of these things that are being brought up we've worked on them we continue to work on them because it's because we listen to you uh i know this is the final throws of the budget and so things come up but you know in terms of this being a budget that you've put a lot of thought into you've given a lot of direction on the fact that it does reduce the budget 90 90 90.7 cents to 86.2 and as i said earlier that is the value increase a lot of its value increase we've had some savings as well some of the value that that has still is as an increase on the on the 86.2 that's going to go towards paying for all these things that we've talked about i won't repeat all of those but you know the the top three are police fire streets uh obviously parks still needs a lot of work and we've talked about that the equipment replacement a lot of those departments is absolutely vital so again we're listening to your constituents that you are the voice of we've heard this not only through resident surveys but also through the cr process these things need attention and y'all made a huge effort to give these things attention and to make these things happen so y'all been in a very aggressive council to really make up for a lot of those things that haven't been done over the years and so now we still have more catch-up to do and and this budget not only fulfills some of that but it takes on some of the new things that you have wanted the communities wanted that we're having to pay for and we're doing it as as best we can uh by also balancing the the needs and the concerns that we've heard today and that we've heard throughout the year thank you for that and for that we have representative rodriguez thank you mayor and again thank you to staff for your careful um careful process that you all have gone through the for the budgeting process you know i've also been listening a lot to my constituents and i know that you know this although we're giving them some relief in the form of tax reduction on the tax rate it still doesn't offset what's happening with the property values and that of course is through no fault of the city but i do feel that we have to do something better and and i want to actually second um representatives sal see those motion for the no new tax revenue thank you go ahead representative uh oops i had to turn down represent hernandez thank you um i know there's a a motion for an amendment but i also i'm not sure if there's a a separate motion that's already been um presented mrs prine if you can verify how many emotions are on the floor we need to actually close the public hearing we're still on item number yeah on item four we need to close a public hearing okay so you but you read into the record item five yes correct okay so um my first motion and then mayor i would like an opportunity to speak on the motion on the floor my first motion would be to close the public hearing second okay and this is for item number four there's a motion made by representative hernandez secretary you'll still have the floor by representative rivera to close the public hearing on the proposed fy 2022-2023 property tax rate of 0.862398 there was no one signed up to speak and no one in chambers or in the queue to speak on this item on that motion call for the boat representative hernandez yes thank you in the voting session the motion passes five affirmative votes representative salcido rodriguez voting a representative molinar not present so um for for my motion for item five would be to approve the the budget as proposed and we can look at the discussion in action for the for item number six and and so while i appreciate um their their uh desire to further provide relief for the taxpayer i feel strongly that this budget is funding priorities this budget is reflective of what i would consider to be life or death priorities for our public safety departments it is unacceptable that you can wait for priority one calls this this uh percentage may be different today but it's unacceptable but if you have priority one calls and you call the police department that you can expect to wait up to 17 minutes and that is just on average we need more police officers we need more public safety officers because there has been a significant increase in crime gun incident rates and we are waiting to hear from our public safety officers we all have an obligation today to ensure that our citizens are protected now while i recognize that there is a sense of urgency to reduce further the taxes i don't feel comfortable doing that today because i do gravely feel that these are life and death decisions that we're making today for the citizens of el paso and so i would strongly urge members of council to support the budget as is i will second that thank you thank you representative rivera we heard loud and clear for you mr curtinas that the majority 75 percent is going to our personnel of that 75 71 i'm a good student 71 is going to police and fire we don't have any room to adjust without impacting our city employees in our workforce as one of the largest employers in the city of el paso we need to not only lead the way with increased wages increase labor be climate ready ensure that our mass transit is up to date we're providing basic services making sure that we are stabilizing our budget increasing our revenues increasing our reserves so we are in my opinion being incredibly fiscally responsible with half of what other larger cities are doing we are so efficient that we have half of the revenues from your other larger cities across texas but we are providing the same services for half of what they have so while i recognize el pason's are suffering i also want to ensure that there's no more suffrage with not having the appropriate funding for public safety so i hope that council will support the existing budget as proposed thank you and that number if i'm not mistaken 72.9 percent is personnel and 71 percent is police and fire yes just want to make sure we have the the right number thank you right now near nearly 75 thank you thank you nearly is the key word here thank you mayor um i again want to echo my colleague representative hernandez in the urgency and necessity to approve this budget as is with the high percentages that we have heard relating to public safety towards fire and police officers this budget is a public safety budget i will not go on the record with my last vote not supporting our police officers and to vote for a no no new revenue tax rate is to defund our police officers and our firefighters that is what is at stake here today we talk about keeping our community safe we talk about obligations and responsibilities that this council has to this city that this council has to this community the first responsibility the most important responsibility we have to the taxpayers of el paso is to keep them safe to to not support this budget as is is to defund our police is to defund our firefighters is to put our communities our neighborhoods our parks our families in danger and i will not allow that to happen here so we have seen a budget that our city manager that our city management and that our staff has looked to tighten the belt and then tighten it again to have one of the largest property tax rate decreases that we have seen in decades in this community while still being able to provide the necessities of public safety of funding our police officers of funding our firefighters that is what this budget is here today when folks are complaining and saying that they don't want to see their taxes going up we understand the concerns we understand the very real concerns that families across the city are dealing with but at this point to go to a no new revenue tax rate would be to be cutting into bone it would be to cancel police officer academies that we have and how many academies do we have paid for with the upcoming budget two police academies and two fire academies i'm not willing to do that i'm not willing to do that here today so again i urge my colleagues while i understand the concerns that we have and i understand the concerns of the families that we have here they would want to make sure that we are providing the right amount of funds for our police officers for firefighters and when we have a budget that is over almost 70 percent responsible due to public safety towards funding our police officer towards funding our firefighters this budget is a public safety budget and we need to make sure that we pass it to keep our communities safe thank you and i just want to make sure that the item on the agenda is not to cut any particular item is that correct okay i just want to make sure you didn't okay i just want to make sure that wasn't the item that you would require going to the noni revenue rate would require a reduction of almost i know that i'm just saying but that's uh that's your question is to reduce the budget by 17. yes sir i agree uh representative anello followed by representative rivera oh no she spoke you haven't spoke you're right thank you andre thank you mayor yes sir i can't equal enough with representative hernandez and mayor pro tem have said this is very important to the community we're not just throwing dollars at our public safety this is what they want this is what they want to have this is they want to equip the both departments with the best equipment possible as was stated earlier uh the fire department along with police department have national recognition on this and it's due to the councils from that we we participated in participated in i'm sorry and so uh i do believe that any cut here will will impact another need for the city and so i do also urge you all to support this budget as i will thank you so much thank you sir representative vanilla yeah i mean i think it's been a little dramatic and disrespectful to our council members to suggest that they would be trying to defund the police um by going to a no revenue um however i also don't support that amendment um for several reasons and robert i have a question for you so um this year we are needing to reduce our general fund to make up for an increase in debt based on the state legislation that passed in 2021 2020 what year is it referring to the property tax cap yes that's that then included 2019. well then there was an amendment in 21 to add debt into that correct no that is not included in the calculation of the no of the no new revenue or the vote approval that is not included okay but we are having to decrease our general fund and increase in our debt increase is that model is increasing we are approximately one penny below the maximum voter approval rate allowed so we are not right at it and that's somebody i don't know which council member made the comment we're approximately one penny below okay which is about 4.2 million dollars of revenue that is not included and what was the tax rate so the tax rate in 22 was 0.907 and the tax rate this year is .86 862 862. so we have lowered the tax rate the debt it has increased but and so the tax impact is not you know there's still a bit of a tax impact because of that but we have lowered the tax rate by 4.5 cents yeah and so so when we're talking about okay so this has gotten confusing in the media when we're talking about the tax impact we're not seeing that much of an impact because of the debt but we have lowered our tax rate so i'm not entirely sure uh what the council members are asking for and i'm also not supportive of this because we have been actively working we were discussing the budget for a year but we've been actively working on this budget for four months now right the council members that have made the motion and second in the motion have also put up two different items to address the tax rate i you know i'm going to support this budget i don't like this budget there are many things in this budget i don't agree with and i'm not happy to put my name on but i've worked and asked a lot of questions and met with staff many times and you guys have answered them right we've had a lot of conversation back and forth about this budget and i think if if i hadn't done that and then i showed up today and said well i'm not going to approve this budget because i want to see it differently that would be disrespectful for you as staff it would be irresponsible in my role as a city council member to show up in the 100th hour or the very last minute and say well i'm not going to approve this budget because of x y and z no i have asked every question i could ask i have made all the suggestions i can make i've lost some of them i've won some of them but i put the work in and that's what my constituent constituents vote for me to do and so i am going to i'm not going to support the amendment i am going to support the budget today um and i would just ask my council members to remember that staff and council have put a lot of work into this and to show up at the very last minute to say no we don't approve of this it is just disrespectful to this community and to everyone here today so thank you thank you representative nello and i think as you said we are a penny below but if we had taken the four and a half pennies and not cut the four and a half pennies we'd have to go to the voters to ratify the budget because we had been over the allowed budget correct and we would have been i know we've had this discussion the current tax rate is above the current tax rate tax rate that's been introduced that council introduced on no that's what i'm saying the current tax rate is a penny below if we'd not cut it four and a half we'd been three and a half over and then we'd have to go to the taxpayers so we did so we had to cut it based on the evaluation of the properties current tax rate is 90.7 sure the voter approval is 87.2 yes sir yes thank you representative thank you mayor um miss neiman correct me if i'm wrong here but please uh we as a city council need to pass a budget for operations everything else for the city of el paso or before august 31st of this year yes sir that's correct okay what would happen if um this budget did not pass today so at the at the next council meeting we would uh either staff would come back with a new recommendation or we would have to pass a resolution to continue the operations of the organization until a new budget was proposed okay considered so we would have one more try which would be seven days from now august 30th correct okay all right and mr gonzalez thank you very much for everything you do for us i've told you this publicly and i continue to tell you publicly you know our budget is very important to everybody the workforce they need to feed families they need to pay groceries buy gas everything else and so when you say that you're gonna we talk about the budget year long we do and just like representative nello said if she asks questions sometimes she gets the good answers sometimes maybe not the right answer she wants but i mean we're having a conversation right you're listening yes you're providing some feedback you're answering our questions and that's what we expect that's what we need here to make hard decisions and um i do believe that our city our citizens our community need a fully functioning city that is cognizant of what they need to keep them safe that when they call 911 in the morning that there is a response time that's good that is quality that the officers that they're getting is top-notch they're trained they're they're willing to go for that fight our firefighters everybody that's going to be on that line fighting that fire our call takers um if you never listen to some of those 9-1-1 tapes you really need to do it and how they stressful they are and how they can impact on their on their personal well-being and besides all that let's flip that coin just a little bit and say hey you know i want to take my kids i want to take my grandkids to the zoo i want to take my kids to a museum i want to take my family out to a city park i want to make sure that those people are getting their their money's worth their taxpayer money we have a lot of people and yes i know we've we've done great things for our senior citizens and disabled citizens and things like that we have a significant veterans population and so yes we're doing good things for them but there's also others that do not qualify they're not veterans that live paycheck to paycheck and we cannot forget about those people as well so i just want to make sure everybody understands here and this dies and whoever's listening to the public is that we are trying and we are listening i know i have my community meetings and i get ripped many times mr gonzalez you've been there before you know we just had the gentleman mr alvarado from code enforcement i think his hair turned a little gray that day but either way i just want to make sure that what we're doing is the right thing the best thing possible for our community i would ask our council to think twice make sure that we're doing the right thing i would hate for us to send a wrong message to our community so thank you mr pride with that we have a motion his mayor there motion was made by representative salcido seconded by representative rodriguez and this is to amend the budget resolution to it by adopting the no new revenue tax rate on that motion call for the vote representative hernandez my apologies it doesn't show um this is the amendment this is the amendment my response no thank you and the voting session and the motion fails six to two representatives salcido rodriguez rodriguez voting i the remainder of council voting nay the motion does fail now we have a motion for the budget yes the motion was made by representative hernandez seconded by representative rivera and this is to approve the budget resolution as proposed on that motion call for the vote in the voting session and the motion passes six to two representatives short spine angelo hernandez molinar we have two more items thank you that brings us to item number six and this is discussion in action to ratify the property tax increase reflected in the annual budget for fy 2022 2023 for the city of el paso motion to approve there's a motion made by representative rivera seconded by representative li zaraga to approve item number six on that motion call for the vote in the voting session and the motion passes six to two representatives short fine angelo hernandez molinar rivera lizard representatives celcido rodriguez voting the motion passes that brings us to item number seven and this is discussion in action on an ordinance living fy 2022 2023 taxes we have a motion by mayor pro 10 that needs to be right into the record all right this is the language required in the motion setting this year's tax rate um this year's proposed tax rate exceeds the no new revenue tax rate the vote on the ordinance resolution order of the setting the tax rate must be a record vote and 60 of the governing body most vote in favor of the adoption of the tax rate emotion adopt the ordinance resolution order must be made in the following form and i will now make that motion i move that the property tax rate be increased by the adoption of a tax rate of 0.862398 which is effectively a 4.78 increase in the tax rate second second you got a motion in a second my representative the motion was made and read into the record by mayor pro tem schwartzman seconded by representative rivera to approve to adopt the ordinance living the taxes on that motion call for the vote in the voting session the motion passes six to two representatives short fine analogo hernandez the motion passes move to retirement executive there's a motion and a second to retiring to executive session all in favor yes anyone opposed and the city council of the city of el paso may return to executive session pursuant to section 3.58 of the el paso city charter and the texas government code chapter 551 sub chapter d to discuss executive session item one consultation with lawyer regarding city manager and city attorney employment agreements matter number 22-1043-831 under 551.071 consultation with attorney it is 2 36 pm we have a motion and a second to come out of executive session yes there's a motion and a second to come out of executive session all in favor anyone opposed and the city council meeting is back in session at 3 31 pm mayor pro tem we're on ex1 you don't have this in paper all right um motion is made seconded and carried that the mayor is authorized to execute the first amendment to the city attorney employment agreement dated for the employment of carla amneman as the city attorney of the city dated effective december 11 2018 to include the following terms that the employment agreement won that the employment agreement be extended until december 10 2029 and two that the attorneys will be eligible for an annual merit increase equal to three percent of the attorney's annual base salary instead of two percent if the attorney receives a rating equal to or above a meets standard rating subject to the limitations described in paragraph four below and three that in the event that the city provide any other new type of benefit applied across the board to its admin other administrative non-collective bargaining employees of the city the city attorney shall be also eligible to receive such benefit in the same matters subject to the limitations described in paragraph four below and four that the city shall annally no later than january 31st of each year of the employment agreement conduct a market-based review of the base salary of the city attorneys in the eight comparison cities and in the event that after adding a merit increase if any is earned the annual the attorney's base salary is lower than the average base salary a city attorney in the eight comparison cities the attorney's base salary shall be increased to the average of the city attorneys of the comparison cities further if after adding a merit increase if any is earned or any other salary increase to the attorney's base hour the average base salary city attorney in the comparison say is about 350 000 the attorney shall be shall receive an increase of up to the 350 thousand dollars unless the average base salary the three higher salaries of the city attorney than comparison cities is greater than the 350 000 in which case the attorney's base salary would be increased to the lesser of one the base salary with the merit increase or other increases or two the base salary the average of the three high city attorney base hours of the career cities if the attorney's base salary is eligible for adjustment based upon the market-based review such adjustment will take effect at the start of the pay period following the market-based review or at the start of the fiscal year immediately found the market-based review which have our cursors and five that the city will reimburse the attorney for the cost of a one million dollar term life insurance policy instead of current provisions reimbursing an attorney for life and or disability of insurance up to three thousand dollars as providing the current agreement and we said to reimbursement will we start to comply with section 409 a of the internal revenue code and sixth that the city attorney at 20 hours of vacation 20 hours of sick leave to the city attorney's leave banks each fiscal year beginning 2023 provide that the c city attorney receives a rating at or above meet standards parties acknowledge that the 20 hours of vacation 20 hours of sick leave is a set static amount which is 30 attorney will be eligible if she receives the specified rating and seven that the city attorney's auto allowance increased from 196 dollars and 15 cents to 300 per pay period and eight in the event that the severance provision of the employment agreement are triggered the parties agreed to enter in a mutually acceptable separation agreement that includes a full race for each party of the other party and other standard provisions in nine if the city terminates the employment agreement with cause the parties agree that such termination is subject to review by an arbitrator using the american arbitration association service and that the arbitration request shall be made within 45 days of separation of employment and final decision with 90 days thereafter the parties agree that the arbitration shall be the exclusive means of seeking a view of termination for cause or breach to the employment agreement agreement that the attorney will not be continuing her employment during the above arbitration time periods 10 the city shall amend the provision in the city's 457b deferred compensation plan to permit the city to make contributions of the 457 plan 457b plan for the benefit of the attorney the city shall make an annual lump sum contribution to the maximum amount allowable by law to the 457b plan beginning upon the immediate next pay period following the amendment of the city's 457b plan and that thereafter in january of each successive year that this agreement is in effect 11. if any provision of the charter are amended to substantially change the form of government included but not limited to moving away from the council manager former government or any other charter amendments it materially changes the role powers duties authorities responsibilities of the attorney's position the attorney attorney shall have the right to declare that such amendments constitute a termination without cause pass and approve this 23rd day of august 2022 our second second some motion in a second yes there's a motion made by mayor pro tem schwarzmine and read into the record seconded by representative hernandez this is on executive session item one regarding the city attorney employment agreement on that motion call for the vote in the voting session the motion passes with six affirmative votes representatives schwarzwang hernandez salcido rodriguez rivera lizard representatives anillo molinar voting nay the motion does pass um uh motions made second in carry that the mayor is authorized to execute the second amendment to the amended and restated employment agreement between the city of el paso and tomas gonzalez is amended in the first amendment to include the following terms one the city manager's base seller should not increase above 450 000 unless the average base salary of the three highest comparison cities under the employment agreement is above 450 000 known as a salary cap in which case the manager's base salary would be increased to a lesser of one the base salary with the merit or other increases under the employment agreement or two the base salary of the average of the three highest comparison cities if the city manager's base salary shall be is adjusted above 450 000 as a result of this analysis the new adjusted base seller should be the new salary cap for future analysis and two that the city shall allocate any excess above the salary cap for which the city manager is not eligible to the city's street department for use in street improvements and three that when the city manager's service is activated under the employment agreement cities shall basically manage base however such evidence on the amount the city manager would have received for the year in which the severance payment is due but for the salary capital iv that the city will pay the city manager's time service time pay increases in accordance with the applicable city payroll policy beginning at the anniversary of his employment with the city in 2024 which service time shall be paid annually each year thereafter as alum summit should not alter the city manager's base salary and five that the city will seek to amend the city's pension plan to pay the employees portion of the contribution on their city's pension plan up to the maximum allowed by law in accordance with the city with the terms of the city's pension plan the employment contribution paid by the city shall begin upon the next pay period following the execution by the city and the city manager of the second amendment provided however the city will reimburse the city manager or on an annual basis for any employee contributions to the pension plan that the city manager has made final execution of the second amendment until the city has amended the pension plan is provided here and commences making the employee's contribution to the pension plan in six that the city will amend the provisions of the city's 457 deferred compensation plan to permit the city to make the contribution to the 457b plan for the benefit of the manager the city will make the contribution on their 4-5 stage deferred compensation plan up to the max amount allowable under 457b beginning in 2022 and thereafter in january of each successive year unless the city's enabled do so and in such cases in the city shall pay such amounts directly to the city manager and that seven that the city will pay the premium for the health hospitalization vision dental and comprehensive medical insurance for the city manager and his family collectively health insurance and eight that the city will reimburse the city manager for all applicable taxes if any attributable to the city's payment of the life insurance premium provided for in paragraph 3.5 of the employment agreement and nine that the city will pay the cost of the core components of the executive health exam for the city manager at the cooper clinic for print of em preventative medicine in dallas texas on an annual basis to contribute to the city manager's health savings under account under the city's 125 cafeteria plan on an after-tax basis for expenses incurred for any medically indicated follow-up treatment procedures or prescriptions etc that are not covered by the city's health insurance in an amount up to five thousand five hundred dollars annually three paid travel accommodation expenses for the annual exam in dallas and any follow-up travel accommodations cost in an amount not to exceed five thousand dollars annually in four up to three days of leave used by the city manager handling for the examples we considered official even not counting against the city manager's sick leave bank and 10. that the city will reimburse all reasonable necessary legal costs and expenses incurred by the city manager in connection with discussions advice document preparation other legal services lie by the city managers attorney to the city manager relating to the first and second amendment to the city manager's employment agreement any such reimbursement will be structured to comply with section 409 a of the internal revenue code and 11 in the event that the severance provisions of the employment agreement are triggered the parties agreed to enter into a mutually acceptable separation agreement that includes a full release by each party of the other party and other standard provisions and 12 and reimbursement to the city manager will be structured to comply with section 4098 of the internal revenue code pass and approve this august 23rd 2022 there's a motion second by representative saga yes sir the motion was made by mayor protem shortline and read into the record seconded by alternate mayor pro tem lizard and this is regarding the city manager's employment agreement on that motion oh mine's not coming up okay well i have to say i was very impressed employment agreement in the voting session and the motion passes with six affirmative votes mayor pro tem shortline and representatives hernandez salcido rodriguez rivera the motion does pass and i want to thank council i know you worked really hard i don't support the item but i do thank you all for the hard work that you did and moving forward with that do we have a motion to adjourn the meeting second there's a motion and a second to adjourn the regular city council meeting all in favor anyone opposed and the regular city council meeting for tuesday august 23 2022 is adjourned at 3 49 pm thank you