foreign good morning the council meeting will get started as soon as a quorum is established there are some council members running a few minutes late due to the partial closure of I-10 West this morning good morning mayor I think we have a quorum now this Prime can we begin I know where how long mayor Pro tem shortfein and representatively zaraga on the Deus please mayor Pro Tim hello hello hello hello one more BJ you want to come sit up here okay just checking I'm taking volunteers right now Vijay [Laughter] good morning good morning this is a meeting of the El Paso city council for Tuesday November 8 2022 present in council chambers our mayor Lisa mayor Pro tem Shortline representative anello representative Hernandez and Alternate mayor Pro Tem lizarraga Representatives Salcido Rodriguez and Rivera are running a few minutes late due to the traffic accident this morning and representative molinar has requested to be excused it is 906 am now will everyone please silence electronic devices so as not to disturb the meeting and rise for the invocation delivered by El Paso Police chaplain Joe Morata good morning good morning sir if you'd care to pray with us we ask that you would bow your heads as we call upon the Lord today Heavenly Father we thank you for the blessing of this day and As We Gather today for this meeting your word reminds us that when King Solomon assumed the Reigns of government he asked of you for Heavenly wisdom to govern his people you honored his requests and he became a notable king among his Nations history so today we ask for your wisdom as our city officials make decisions on behalf of the people give them discernment as they hear matters and discuss issues and make decisions we also ask that you would uh bless and keep our military veterans we are so thankful and appreciate these men and women who have served our country or may still be serving today we both honor them and thank them for their service their sacrifice on behalf of our nation and ourselves and again we ask that you bless and keep them pray for your protection on our residents today many of those that have needs pray that those needs would be met God that you would find a way whether through city services charitable organizations family or friends that you would keep them and finally we ask God that we thank you we live in a nation that gives us the right to choose our leaders and as many go out to vote today we thank you God for that opportunity and may we do it with diligence and appreciation protect our First Responders and bless them today and their families in your name we pray amen PJ would lead us in the pledge please pledge allegiance to the fire and the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation for the NTA Justice forever thank you sir and um good morning everyone uh you know as as we we got veterans say coming up we got our veterans here and you think about today's election day and the veterans and current men and women of the military people that sacrificed for our country gave us that right to be able to vote today and they gave us the right to be able to sit up here so I urge everyone the police exercise you're right that's a lot of men and women fought hard to make sure that we have our rights so with that I want to thank you all for anyone and everyone that's ever served our country and given us this ability thank you and may God bless everyone without Miss Pine thank you mayor that brings us to your proclamations the first Proclamation is Veterans Day and representative Molina has asked that I read this into the record due to his absence and it reads whereas November 11th has long held a cherished place in the heart of every American who recognizes the sacrifices made by our military from the inauguration of this treasured holiday in 1918 known originally as Armistice Day Day of Peace after World War One President Wilson declared November 11th to be a day of reflection and whereas President Eisenhower on October 8 1953 issued the first Veterans Day Proclamation encompassing all military conflicts and acknowledging every military member who has served and officially recognizing November 11th as Veterans Day he wrote let us solemnly remember the sacrifices of all those who fought so valiantly on the seas in the air and on foreign Shores to preserve our hair Heritage of freedom and whereas we recognize the sacrifice of the men and women of El Paso who have served in defense of this nation and the loved ones who stand beside them memorializing the heroes who gave the ultimate sacrifice and all those who have not returned home and whereas the city of El Paso has among its citizens volunteers and employees individuals who have served in the United States armed forces we are reminded of Our obligation to them to serve our veterans as they have gallantly served us and As We Gather here today let us not forget that freedom is never free and our nation and our community is Evermore indebted for their courageous service now therefore be a proclaimed by the mayor and Council of the city of El Paso the November 11 2022 shall be known as Veterans Day signed by our honorable mayor Oscar liser foreign [Applause] want to come up and uh first of all I want to thank God for his mercy and His blessings having us come here today I have uh will you introduce yourself please sir my name is David Garcia I'm the I'm the veteran Capital Ambassador for the county and for the United States and I'm also here presenting my brother here from the uavo he's a new president I want to thank everybody it's just thank our families thank thank for what you guys do for us too I want to commend your team from the military uh Affairs that you have here Paul Albright and Jerry Jacobs I would like to I got to commend these guys they work very hard and and now we're uh we're trying to put some together so that the veteran capital can can move forward into the future of El Paso and El Paso County the city I want to thank you for this I've got to thank Joe mullinar for for his bringing this resolution as Veterans Day and happy Veterans Day to you that have family members that served our country and God bless America thank you Mr Garcia thank you thank you all for your service and the next Proclamation is Dave's a pawn shop day thank you it's a proclamation of the city of El Paso Texas whereas in 1950 David Barron inherited his father's surplus store which operated during World War II and after converting the space and reintroducing it under its original name Dave's lonko Mr Brown began collecting trading and selling objects from all over the world and whereas now two generations later Dave's a pawn shop is filled to the brim with all sorts of interesting finds like retro children's toys graphic novels coins and medals that once belonged to prominent political figures freak Show Oddities antiques which over the years have made Dave's a pawn shop become an El Paso icon and a obligatory stop for multiple celebrities including Eddie Van Halen Billy Gibbons and Jack White and whereas the shop itself has become a community phenomenon while caring deeply and consistently contributing to the community although they are a business much of what they do is for the community and whereas Dave's received the Texas treasure business award from the Texas historical commission for their exceptional contributions toward the economic growth and prosperity of tech Texas in a historic building and whereas Dave's a pawn shop is one of the oldest operating businesses in the city but but more impressively it continues turning the page on South El Paso Street's fabled reputation with all the Mysteries the shop has to offer now therefore be a proclaimed by the mayor and the Council of the city of El Paso that November 8 2022 shall be known as Dave's upon shop day signed by The Honorable Oscar Lisa thank you ma'am thank you there's someone here someone want to come up please good morning my name is Clay Baron I really appreciate the proclamation appreciate your efforts here and city council and happy Veterans Day to you all thank you very much thank you [Applause] final Proclamation is association's academic achievement day good morning this is a proclamation of the city of El Paso Texas whereas only two in 10 students graduate college in El Paso County and whereas only 21 percent of El Paso's population holds a bachelor's degree or higher and El Paso residents have the lowest incomes among all major Texas cities and whereas the Border Youth Athletic Association was founded in 2000 with a mission to improve educational attainment rates that remain an urgent deliverable to support job creation and progress toward the go of raising the per capita income in El Paso and whereas the Border Youth Athletic Association uses Sports and academics to encourage and guide students in the pasta Del Norte region towards their highest Highest Potential and success and whereas compelled by this mission for over 20 years the board of Youth Athletic Association has served hundreds of low-income high-need students at elementary schools located within El Paso County's Colonia communities and Beyond and Raz border Youth Athletic Association has provided college preparatory mentorship to hundreds of students and directly aided nearly 60 Area Youth in attaining college scholarships opportunities and whereas with the help of our community we can now make College the norm not the exception and the passenger region now therefore be a proclaimed by the mayor and Council of the city of El Paso that November 8 2022 shall be known as The Border Youth Athletic association's academic achievement date signed by honorable mayor Oscar liser congratulations [Applause] foreign [Applause] faces here Darby Episcopal with the Border Youth Athletic Association we just wanted to say we're so grateful to be here today to help um with exposure and getting our name out there there's obviously a need about 75 of our kids are considered economically disadvantaged every school in El Paso is considered to Title One school so we are very grateful I apologize none of our student athletes are here this morning our programs are contingent on good School attendance so we thought that'd be counter-intuitive to our mission to bring them here um but again just thank you so much if anyone in your district is interested we're always looking for volunteers new participants in the program um but yeah we're here to try and make College the norm not the exception in El Paso so thank you all so much thank you thank you very much Miss Prine and if this morning's honorees will please remain in Chambers Council will have the opportunity to take some photos with you following all the recognitions 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 in less 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 okay um proposed revisions uh for the November 8 2022 meeting as of 8 20 a.m this morning page 8 item 17 moved to the Forefront of the agenda per representative Hernandez page 8 item 18 moved to the Forefront of the agenda for representative schwartzbein page 8 item 20 moved to the Forefront of the agenda per representative Rod I had a page eight item 20 my apologies moved to the Forefront of the agenda for representative Rodriguez page nine item 14 delete persity manager's office page nine item 25 postponed two weeks per City manager's office page 15 item 37. postponed four weeks per representative and page 16 item 41 moved to the Forefront of the identity poor representative schwartzbein uh Council are there any other uh other requests at this time okay is there a second here's a motion made by mayor Pro tem shorts Mine seconded by representative anello to approve the consent agenda as revised on that motion call for the vote in the voting session and the motion passes unanimously that brings us to item number 17. item 17 is discussion in action on a resolution that the city of El Paso probably honors and recognizes this November 11th has Marathon petroleum company and the creation of Refinery veterans Network day hi good morning Mary if I can have the so I would like if Marathon can come up as I read the resolution please so the resolution reads whereas a group of passionate employees at Marathon petroleum company El Paso Refinery formally started a network chapter in support of the company's veteran employees open to all employees regardless of their veteran status the chapter provides a forum for members to discuss their experiences perspectives and the challenges that veterans and their families face and Raz Marathon petroleum company El Paso Refinery is excited to start a veteran employee network chapter our veterans have made infinite sacrifices for our country and its privilege for us to be able to support them in this capacity and whereas the employee network allows the company to continue to build strong relationships in the community Marathon petroleum company El Paso Refinery looks forward to serving the El Paso Community through volunteerism and partnering with local organizations that support veteran causes and whereas in 2019 Marathon petroleum company formally launched the veterans Network along with five other employee network chapters across the company which include Asian African-American Hispanic lgbtq plus and women Network and whereas diversity and inclusion are important to the refinery and they strive to promote a workplace that Champions inclusive behaviors across our entire business and the community as a hoe now therefore be it resolved by the city council of the city of El Paso that the city of El Paso proudly honors and recognizes this November 11th as Marathon petroleum company and the creation of the refinery veterans Network day congratulations and we'll get you assigned a copy soon would you like to share any information okay all right good morning um my name is Kurt Smith um the president of the El Paso Marathon Refinery veterans Network um just to say a couple of things about the group um Marathon refining is um committed to giving back to our community one of the leading things that the refinery um with the pillar that the the network stands on is to is to really get out there support the community to give our time give our effort give our funds to to various organizations I want to take the time to thank um representative Hernandez and also represent representative anello for their support in the in um in kind of guiding us through this process and also to getting this this proclamation to the point where we are now um we we support you know all the the various groups that are part of the um the the veterans Network within the community and and we will continue performing that support going forward and um and like the gentleman earlier said um happy happy Veterans Day to all who support all the veterans um in in the building currently thank you so I moved to approved [Applause] second and for the record representative Salcido has arrived in Council chamber I just want to say a couple of words uh you know Marathon petroleum has been a very big supporter of our community and a lot of the use and and things that we have around the community so I want to thank you all for your involvement in the community thank you there is a motion made by representative Hernandez seconded by mayor po Tim schwarzwein to approve the resolution on that motion call for the vote representative Salcido hi thank you in the voting session and the motion passes unanimously and representative Rodriguez has just arrived the next item is number 18. and this is discussion in action to recognize the founders of La Parada and all the community members that have contributed to more than 12 years of bringing people together to celebrate our local arts and culture and representative Rivera is also present in Chambers good morning representative Rivera thank you again um thank you again uh Miss Prime I don't know if the uh the folks here for the resolution want to come up to the to the diocese um you know this resolution I put together because a lot of times when we talk about how we move our community forward we have a wide variety of groups and institutions non-profits to educational institutions obviously to the city and the county and other governmental institutions that are all dedicated towards making El Paso the best El Paso it can be but oftentimes there's other groups much more smaller groups focus on arts and culture and Grassroots way to support artists and musicians and and grow the culture in an organic and Grassroots way and La Parada is one of those groups this has been a first Friday's party I'm in downtown El Paso that has brought musicians has brought artists into a safe space to share their talents and to communicate and grow their creative class of El Paso and when I first came back to El Paso about 12 years ago it was La Parada that allowed me to explain a lot of my work to show some of my photography and get a greater sense of community and a greater sense of the pulse of what's going on here in El Paso and literally numerous dozens of artists that are now on the roster for our public art projects folks like mitsu Overstreet Tino Ortega and others have gone and shown at La Parada many of the musicians that we've seen on our trolley tracks that we've seen at numerous festivals played at La Parada and so it's just an honor for me to be able to honor these folks on the Grassroots level who have made an impact both large and small on the community and culture in El Paso and so this resolution reads as follows whereas as we are here today to recognize and honor La Parada the founders and all the community members have contributed to more than 12 years of bringing people together to celebrate our local arts and culture and whereas La Parada was founded in 2010 with the inspiration to create a space for El Paso to showcase the talent of our bi-national community has to share and welcome artists and fans from throughout the country and whereas La Parada has since organized over 100 shows featuring more than 400 artists and musicians from El Paso and beyond our borders and shared memories with tens of thousands of local fans and whereas La Parada has showcased not only the talent our city has cultivated but shine light on our great City and the people who make El Paso such a special place for guests who have traveled to be with us and whereas it serves a municipal purpose to recognize the contributions to the community providing art and cultural opportunities to the residents and visitors to the city of El Paso now therefore it be resolved by the state Council the city of El Paso that this November 8 2022 shall be known as La Parada day and Sue [Applause] good morning yeah well we thank you all if you want to state your name for the record mayor likes that yeah we thank you all for your own recognition your hard work and yeah from a long list of artists and musicians that have helped get us to this point you know they thank you as well so thank you all thank you all for your work thank you thank you very much uh I would like to make a motion to approve this if there is a second thank you there's a motion made by mayor Pro tem shortfein secondary by representative lizaragato approve the resolution for item 18 on that motion call for the vote in the voting session and the motion passes unanimously thank you again and congratulations for what you all do the next item that was moved to the Forefront is item 20 and this is discussion in action on a resolution that the city council recognizes the talents of these young athletes in the city of El Paso at cheer Force Athletics hi good morning everybody um coach Esther if you'll come to the front really quick so I apologize for my tardiness I know that um as you all might know actually there was an accident on I-10 and it pretty much made everybody be late um I have my staff is actually also stuck on that traffic jam and so I don't have your actual certificate with me but I am going to read it okay so whereas cheer Force Athletics CFA a local cheerleading team was established in October of 2018 by a local mom Esther Melendez a born and raised Latina in the city of El Paso wanting to give back to the young kids within her community and whereas the city of El Paso Parks and Recreation Department first recognizes natural leadership skills in coach Esther and asked her to volunteer her time to develop a cheerleading City team at Marty Robbins recreation center and whereas at the time of its establishment cheer force was a team of one class with 12 young athletes with the passion to cheer and quickly grew to six classes with over 100 athletes outgrowing the space available at the City Recreation Center and whereas cheer Force quickly grew to a high caliber competitive degree and parents of Team athletes soon began to invest in the team's performance level by accommodating team members with uniforms and competition fees placing the team in a position to compete with local and Regional teams with the same exceptional reputation of performance and whereas in February 2022 tier Force teamed Fierce cheer forces team fears composed of 12 11 to 18 year olds competed at the UTEP cheer competition against 42 other teams from El Paso Texas Las Cruces New Mexico and Albuquerque New Mexico and were asked team fears which includes team members Cassandra Melendez Alexis angelis Alan Gonzalez Ashley payan Alexa Candelaria Cheryl Lynn Hernandez Juvia Marin Kaylee Zapata ebony Ibarra I'm Maris Valdez Olivia Sanchez and Emily smolik won Grand Champions and were invited to represent the city of El Paso in this year's Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City now therefore be it resolved that the city council of the city of El Paso number one recognizes the talents of these young athletes in the city of El Paso and two thanks Community leaders like Esther Melendez for investing her time and giving back to our community by coaching and motivating the Future Leaders of El Paso and three congratulates team fears from CFA and proudly representing the city of El Paso at this year's annual Macy's Thanksgiving Parade in New York City you all have made your city very proud thank you and with that I'd like to make a motion to approve second freaking and also I do want to share with you all that you all come back on November 25th correct for me okay we are lighting the star in your honor so when you arrive the star will be lit for you all you will so thank you again thank you may I approach the bench yes yes um good morning mayor and good morning city council it is an honor to be standing here in front of you all um and it's an honor to be here recognized thank you so much to Jessica sixth representative Rodriguez for the recognition I also want to have this time to thank our parents for making this dream come true most importantly we just want to make our city proud and be able to place you guys in the Limelight in the big city we will be on a nationwide coverage and so we look forward to making our city very proud if at this time can I have the children approach and they can introduce themselves yes please thank you thank you very much before you all come up I want to really congratulate you all and uh it's incredible opportunity to be able to go to New York City and then be on the Macy's day parade and be on national TV incredible great accomplishment and I want to congratulate you all and I look forward to having the TV on and watching you all make like uh representative Rodriguez said making El Paso proud thank you [Applause] hi my name is Ashley payan good morning my name is Emily smell like I'm a seventh grader at Chaparral Middle School and I just want to thank you for your recognition thank you hi my name is Valdez I'm a seventh grader at Walter Creek Middle School thank thank you for letting us be here thank you hi good morning my name is Alan Gonzalez I'm a seventh grader at Parkland pre-engineering Middle School and I thank you for your recognition thank you good morning Marion city council I'm Alexa Candelaria I'm a senior at Montwood high school and I'd like to thank you for your recognition thank you thank you good morning mayor and sitting Council my name is I go to Hanks High School and I like to thank you for your recognition thank you good morning my name is Charlene Hernandez I go I'm a senior in Montwood high school and I'd like to thank you for your recognition thank you good morning my name is Kelly zapanta I'm an 8th grader at Manuel Puentes middle school thank you for your recognition thank you good morning my name is Ebony Ibarra I'm a seventh grader at Clark Middle School and I'd like to thank you for your recognition thank you good morning my name is Alexis Angeles I'm an eighth grader at Puentes middle school and I'd like to thank you for your recognition thank you good morning my name is Cassandra Melendez I am a sophomore at mawood high school and I would like to thank you for your recognition thank you thank you thank you thank you and without we have a motion yes mayor we have a motion made by representative Rodriguez secondary by representative Salcido to approve the resolution on item 20. on that motion call for the vote in the voting session and the motion passes unanimously thank you congratulations motion to recess is it for a second to recess there's a motion and a second to recess the city council meeting all in favor anyone opposed and the meeting is in recess at 9 35 a.m in order to take some photos councilor if we can get you all um behind me and then we're going to start with a Veterans Day Proclamation followed by the Dave's Pawn Shop day and then border Youth Athletic Association after the Border Youth Athletic Association if we could go ahead and move over who huh the marathon followed by La Parada and then lastly the young athletes from the cheer Force Athletics Miss Prine we're ready I got stuck in it too yes sir may we have a motion to reconvene there's a motion in a second to reconvene the council meeting all in favor anyone opposed the meeting is back in session at 9 52 a.m the next item that was moved to the Forefront was is on page 16 this is item 41 and it's presentation and discussion and action on coordination regarding Frontera Road congestion thank you uh um I would like it if we can go at this time to have to see the presentation from Staff first on this item and then open it up to public commenting questions from the council thank you good morning you're on mute sir yes sir it's I there you go we can hear you now okay thank you it do you mind if I share from my screen we've made a few changes to the presentation minor changes okay are you able to see the presentation yes sir great thank you good morning mayor and Council Joaquin Rodriguez with the Capital Improvements Department today we wanted to provide you an update uh based on the direction we received a couple Council meetings ago on our coordination uh regarding congestion issues related to new development within the city of Sunland Park specifically as they relate to front that our road uh we have coordinated a few meetings so far we met with mayor Javier perea from Sunland Park on Monday October 10th his interim city manager Mario Juarez infanta was also there as well as representatives from uh Capital Improvements department and our streets and maintenance department we've also had a call and meeting with the Metropolitan planning organization also during that same week the the meeting that the teams meeting that we had with the mpo included representatives from the city of Sunland Park including mayor perea so just some background for everybody's information the Sun River Estates development contains around 230 single-family homes two parks two ponding acres two ponding areas and a total of 63 Acres of development this is a copy of the subdivision platf or Sunriver subdivision you can see the the two points of access to Girl Scout Lane and one to Frontera but when we think of the transportation Network in the area as a whole all of those points of access ultimately lead to Frontera as it moves towards Donovan so just a bit more on the background piece this is something that we worked to sort of develop an understanding for ourselves of the process to to come to this uh development the process that this development went through um currently does meet all of Sunland Park New Mexico's development regulations um so regarding zoning Sunland Park has what's called a an re zoning district with a minimum lot size of 6 000 square feet similar to our R3 zoning District if you look at areas within the city of El Paso that are directly adjacent to this that zoning tends to be either r2a or R3 R2 has a minimum lot size of 8 000 square feet and some of the other areas within the vicinity that are zoned R3 again have that minimum lot size of uh six thousand square feet so just so that we're all on the same page and clear there are no El Paso city regulations that are applicable here since we we do sometimes have uh you know certain authorities within our extraterritorial jurisdiction but since this is outside of the State of Texas none of those apply in this instance currently Frontera Road it is designated in our MTP as a collector within a rural context area it's currently two lanes provides access to Emory and Donovan there is access directly to Sunland Park from Frontera through San Gabriel or La Adelita the the name of the street actually changes as you go from the city of El Paso to the city of Sunland Park really one of the major constraints in any sort of improvements to Frontera is the railroad crossing at Doniphan that Crossing is very narrow really only provides for those two existing Lanes of of traffic so our legal department has come to determination that there is a legal Avenue to closing Frontera at the state line we would need to do a traffic impact analysis and we would also make sure that we coordinate any emergency access to retain access through that closure through using things like rolled curbs we would have to coordinate that with El Paso PD and fire department as well as the Emergency Services district and the emergency service departments within the city of Sunland Park but there are some practical implications for that closure I know at one point there was a discussion about closing it at Girl Scout Road the state line actually is at San Gabriel and Frontera um so that closure would actually impact residents to live to the north of Frontera in terms of their access to some of the the stable facilities that are still remaining at the south end of Frontera and access to Futurity Road additionally if the intent is to close the road to sort of isolate these areas of New Mexico from Texas we would need to also explore closures to the north of this intersection at Gary and also to uh to the east at Boy Scout Road those are also areas where where roads transition seamlessly from Texas to New Mexico we did want to explore some short-term recommendations these are implementations that we could deploy rather quickly taking into account the fact that this development preliminary plot was barely approved it would be one to two years until that development starts to generate any traffic we explored the the possibility of installing wayfinding and signage to ensure some of that traffic to to access Southern Park through Futurity and then finally there are some intersection treatments that we could use to divert traffic to Futurity specifically what's called a write-in right out at fronteran San Gabriel essentially eastbound traffic on Frontera would be for South towards Futurity and Sunland Park so this is sort of a rendering of what a write-in Rideout looks like this one retains access for bicycles again this is just conceptual from the nacto Urban Street design guide this isn't necessarily the the implementation that we would look to install but just to give you an idea essentially traffic going from the bottom of the screen to the top of the screen that would be essentially on Frontera towards the development that traffic would be diverted right any traffic coming from the development would be diverted towards Futurity Road and towards Sunderland Park Drive we also looked at some of our adopted plans the tech stock Jonathan Drive corridor plan which was adopted by txtdot in 2018 does show the need for improvements in by way of a dedicated right turn lane at front that on Doniphan um this portion of Donovan is actually a city street but it was examined in the tech stop plan because it does provide connectivity to their state highway system and then the Upper Valley traffic study which was adopted in 2008 by both the city of El Paso and the City of Sunland Park shows a similar treatment for a dedicated right turn lane at Frontera and Donovan so in terms of other long-term recommendations we feel it's really necessary to update traffic counts and conduct a traffic analysis for the area our conversations with the mpo did include that level of coordination we're hoping that they can do some of that analysis for US based on their uh their transportation model um and finally really examine the intersection at Futurity in Sunland Park to see what sort of impact we would have on on that connectivity and if there are any recommended improvements for that intersection again in our conversations with the city of Sunland Park um they are looking at getting us some data regarding traffic volumes at that intersection as well so our next steps really is to continue coordinating with the mpo on that preliminary modeling to quantify the expected impact of this development but more importantly really work with the mpo and other Regional Partners to update that 2008 Upper Valley traffic study we know that you know with the development of this parcel there may be more Development coming down the pipeline we all also learned recently through the media that city of Sunland Park has done a I guess a feasibility study to explore the feasibility of some sort of entertainment facility in the direct vicinity of these developments as well so really examining all of that holistically looking at front that I wrote and all the other Upper Valley developments to to see what the impact on the city of El Paso and Texas roadways is going to be additionally we need to start looking at cost estimates and identify funding for for those future improvements whether it be the short-term improvements or the long-term improvements all of that's going to require some sort of funding source and we'll continue to coordinate with the city of Sunland Park as we move forward with this so that's all I have in my presentation as far as the update I'm open to questions on sort of where we stand and what our next steps are happy to address any of those questions now uh thank you mayor Pro tem yes thank you um so we have a number of people that signed up to speak I just had a a couple questions that I just wanted to sort of clarify um and after that we'll go ahead and take call uh public absolutely thank you so um one thing is we're looking at doing a sort of overall Regional traffic study with the mpo relating towards sort of Upper Valley Sunland Park uh traffic is that correct correct that's something that we had conversations around um I think it's it's a bigger project than something that we can turn around in a council update in a few weeks so it's something that we would need to really identify a scope of work and and see what that would entail and that's I mean that's including the art craft sort of corridor to San Geronimo and Sanchez the Port of Entry The Proposal of Saint Francis extension uh McNutt possible future Sunland Park Port of Entry there as well in addition to the increasing of the entertainment amenities in Sunland Park so it's a larger sort of traffic study absolutely um you know we've started uh some conversations regarding the Saint Francis extension and a lot of that additional traffic will end up on El Paso roadways as well so developing a sort of more holistic Regional understanding of what these New Mexico Transportation projects are going to do to our transportation Network and potential to accommodate that or mitigate those impacts is going to be important for us moving forward okay um curious about it because it seems like there's a couple options that it's not necessarily one or the other but a both in an and um you know obviously one option is to look at that right right in right out which actually with with where San Gabrielle and Frontera would be a sort of left in sort of left in right out kind of process just because if you're heading down Frontera towards New Mexico you're heading west so you'd make a left onto San Gabriel and then if you're leaving Frontera heading uh East in the morning or afternoon or whenever you'd be making a right onto San Gabriel correct so if you're heading towards the development you'd actually still be making a right on to stay within the city onto Girl Scout Lane correct okay all right so can you can you walk through and I don't know this is your question or legal the sort of steps that would be required to look at a closure of Frontera as well as possibly Gary Lane or others that would be identified in terms of this public safety hazard not Girl Scout so the intersection at Frontera and Girl Scout is entirely within the state of New Mexico the the state line is really at the the intersection of La Adelita and San Gabriel and Frontera I don't know if La delita actually goes into the rest of into that into that area it does not it's a it's a loop essentially goes from La Adelita to siete leguas but that is the the state line so we wouldn't be able to close Frontera at Girl Scout because that is entirely within the state of New Mexico so you'd be doing it at La delita so the traffic would essentially just circle itself in in Infinity if it was trying to go down Red Road I mean Frontera Road correct okay um so can you just talk a little bit about it before we open it up to public comment the um the sort of process for closure obviously the the traffic impact analysis has to be done at Tia um to start that process but can you just so for the edification of the public and the council kind of what what these steps would be to to look at these closures at Frontera and possibly Gary Lane so our steps as far as the the transportation side would really be that traffic impact study um as far as the the legal procedures I think I'd defer those questions to Legal okay so what steps need to be done to close down Frontera can and possibly Gary Lane Russell eblin is on the line or Russell are you on yes can you all hear me yes we can so um under the Texas Transportation code um the city El Paso has the ability to um to close streets uh one of the the you know potential reasons could be uh you know quality of life health and safety issues like that um we we really just need the logistical information and um kind of the the traffic impact and once we get that information um that becomes potentially an option okay so we'd have to come up with like a justification and then what would happen after that yes um once we we have the justification um under the Texas Transportation code uh the municipality uh the city of El Paso has complete Authority um over uh the use of the streets so um we would uh just close the street and that would be you know an operational issue how streets and maintenance um and planning in any departments that would need to um review that and see where the um the best place would be to do that closure okay so seems like there could be a justification for it seems that we could cover a traffic impact analysis to impact that and then um what kind of barricade or closure would occur in these areas if it went through that and the other what other coordination needs to be done um I would recommend um just the coordination that's going on right now um you know I think this is a legal option but um probably one um that we want to uh Russell if I can so go ahead thank you so we would defer the rest of the questions to operations in terms what would have to happen for closure okay is there someone from operations that can speak to that I think representative schwarzen after uh the traffic impact analysis and after we've come up with sort of that justification and rationale for the closure we'd have to look really closely at design of how we do that closure to ensure that you know we're not driving people into dead ends that we do have some sort of turnaround provisions and then we'd have to coordinate closely with our emergency services to ensure that they've got the access that they feel is necessary safe and appropriate you know for the for the areas that they serve um so we really have to look closely at what sort of design interventions we have to to sort of effectuate a closure while at the same time uh ensuring that we're doing so responsibly and Greg went from wrong but these 230 units um the police and fires of Sunland Park would be responsible but also because they're in the etj this city of El Paso's First Responders would have some responsibility as well in terms of responding to any disturbances or emergencies I I'm not entirely sure on that I'd defer that to any of our Public Safety folks if they're online I know that they they do tend to coordinate um across state lines and with the esds um you know when there's an opportunity to do so but but I'm not entirely sure on that if this is a council action and Council takes action in order to close the street we would then come up with a cost summary and and figure out the the budget and then what it all it would entail to actually physically close the street yeah I want to I want to hear from the public on this but I do think that there's two options the sort of write in right out that would curtail traffic into this area and then also looking at the complete closure I don't know if anybody from City staff has had an opportunity to reach out to the developer at this time is we have not we limited our our coordination to City of Sunland Park staff and our mpo staff we have not reached out to the developer at this point okay so I I think that there's two options right option A would be looking at um identifying next steps for complete closure and and uh cost impact right um option b would be looking at those Street improvements that would sort of do that right in right out forcing traffic through San Gabriel and Sunland Park and Futurity into this proposal but I think that um if those those further studies are there I think it's important that part of what I would be making as emotion is also to send a letter to a letter or notarized letter or Communications both to the to Don Anna County the city of Sunland Park as well as the developer and each of the Commissioners and mayors of Sunland Park that the city is moving forward with getting these costs and that we are open to communicating to them towards coming up with a solution that is is a more responsible opportunity for our region and our both of our communities so that's something that I'm thinking about doing I think it's important not just to to come back with the costs but also to send a clear message to those responsible in Sunland Park including the developer that the city is intending on making closures unless there's a a real conversation about a compromise that can again look out for the health benefit and safety of both of our communities um with that marriage I want to be respect for everybody and I think there's you know a few options I know the city's worked really hard and Joaquin thank you that to continue to look at all the options and I think we need to leave all options available as we continue to work with our neighboring cities so thank you for that and uh Miss Prine can we call yeah so we have four members of the public that signed up to speak on this side and the first person is Danny pivarnik followed by Barbara ducho kit Fernando Gomez and Susan Martinez okay we'll move on to Barbara doucher kit good morning um I want to say thank you to Peter for all the hard work and all the meetings that he attended with our committee um and I want to wish all of you who have been on city council that are not returning uh thank you for your service and um if you're running I wish you luck anyway I'm here to represent Boy Scout Gary Lane and Frontera we're presenting some facts recommendations talking about Sunland Park and conclusions El Paso was ranked the 20th most dangerous city for pedestrians with 215 pedestrians killed between 2010 and 2019. I did not get an update from Mr Reyes as of yet on where we are today Sunland Park New Mexico proposes to build 224 houses and used Frontera for Access and egress about 100 more houses are already being built on streets that intercept Frontera Frontera is officially designated by the city of El Paso as an East-West local residential collector providing one lane of travel in each direction from Donovan Drive to Allah delete a distance of less than one mile the speed limit is 30. railroad track intersects with Frontier Road at Donovan adjoining The Willows neighborhood a gated Sunland Park residential area exists with only one way in and one way out and only a Texas Road if all the land was in El Paso Texas and El Paso City Department would reject 224 house proposal because it's in violation of zoning Traffic Safety police and fire Sunland Park does not have adequate elementary middle or high schools to support the student population of these homes they would probably use some way to use our Public Schools three new venues will generate thousands more vehicles to Sunland Park I'm losing my boys new owner of Western Playland in Sunland Park plans to bring in more attractions port of entry for Sunland Park has been approved and will bring more traffic to Sunland Park propose new entertainment center will bring more traffic our recommendations Fernie uh we'll continue those three minutes thank you very much thank you very much thank you the next speaker is Fernando Gomez good morning sir you'll have three minutes good morning again good morning good morning mayor Peter thank you uh thank you for the presentation it was uh very encouraging I want to thank everyone uh for your support and and the information that's been provided it certainly gives us uh hope that there is a positive resolution to this you know um bottom line Sunland Park is building a house next to ours but they're telling us that they're going to use our driveway and uh in in dealing with them they really haven't shown any kind of uh consideration to uh giving us an opportunity to offer solutions to them uh to help in in eliminating this situation so as far as Frontera in in some of the road closures are concerned really should consider the the complete streets ordinance for front especially one of the things that we're not considering here is the the pedestrian traffic on fontera because of the walking and biking trail on Riverbend so often especially in the evenings people will park on the other side of Riverbend and even Frontera to take advantage of of the trail that's there which is wonderful but uh considering the amount of traffic especially in the evenings with people coming home from work we really need to consider shutting Frontera down making it a cul-de-sac shutting Gary laying down Gary Lane is only 16 feet wide so and I live on Gary Lane and every time I have a neighbor that's coming the opposite direction one of us has to move aside to let the other through and so um we really need to consider shutting Gary laying down the other consideration is is shutting off uh Boy Scout on on the south side of Frontera because it's going to give um the development or Sunland Park access to coming back through and getting back on Frontera so that also needs to be looked at as far as shut down and so I don't want to overlap a lot of the things that were discussed in the presentation but please if it'll just give that more consideration you know in our research and and we we have a lot of people in the background that that are not able to be here that are really done a good job of doing research and looking into what options Sunland Park has uh you know they they can connect Appaloosa and uh give access to Sunland Park uh there's also a charity it's plenty wide it just needs to be repaved um and so you know those are things that they need to consider I understand that you know when it comes to Sunland Park and what they're doing we have no jurisdiction there but of course we can make recommendations and I hope that in working through this so we've reached the three-minute limit okay so anyways thank you for your uh time thank you Mr Gomez the final speaker is Susan Martinez Miss Martinez star sixth place to unmute your telephone Susan Martinez star six can you hear me yes ma'am go ahead you have three minutes yes this is Susan Martinez um I was just wanting to thank our city staff and our city council because your presentation today was very very very uh heartening I can breathe a lot easier but um just real quickly I'm going to go over a couple of points that I think have already been mentioned but I think they're important to mention again Frontera Road in less than a mile long City plannings traffic study defines it as a two-lane road with a speed limit of 30 miles an hour city council approved this in the traffic study we have two Montessori schools on Frontera Road and Zach bites school kids cross Frontier road to go to and from school the school bus stops at Emory in Frontera for junior high students the Texas neighborhoods adjoining Fontana Road are fully built uh all of us neighbors have worked very very hard to maintain a peaceful and safe neighborhood um so we understand and we appreciate that El Paso has embraced safe Street Concepts through the complete streets ordinance through the neighborhood Improvement program for neighborhood associations through the love your block initiative from Civic empowerment and through the establishment neighborhood associations we have over 85 neighborhood associations across the city and everybody recognizes in healthy neighborhoods are the backbone of a healthy community and we have over a thousand signatures from people from across the city because they all recognize that this is in violation What New Mexico is proposing is in violation of city ordinances so we do recommend that cul-de-sacs be placed at the end of Frontera at Gary Lane at Hacienda Roja at Boy Scout and uh prevent the assault and the destruction of our neighborhoods you must not allow New Mexico to assault our neighborhoods um Sunland Park New Mexico already has Appaloosa Futurity racetrack McNutt and Sunland Park Streets as well as Acres of vacant land now is the time for them to develop a well-designed street infrastructure so the five years from now 10 years from now 20 years from now we can all be proud that we made the right decision today thank you very much and thank you city council and thank you all staff you have all been professional with your responses to our neighborhood and we thank you and we continue to collaborate with you and we want to be part of the decision making process and we will support you because we know you guys believe in El Paso thank you so very much thank you Miss Martinez you're welcome mayor that concludes public comment on this item thank you we have representative lisarga thank you mayor I just want to thank Joaquin and all the city staff for the presentation and also the people that came out today for public comment and uh most especially Susan Martinez who had the pleasure of working with for many years um I hope that we can continue this conversation especially with as representative schwartzwein mentioned the developers I think that's important to bring them also to the table and I just wanted Mike I had I did have a question on the slide seven but representative Schwartz minority already asked that so I appreciate legal all your hard work and your input in this process and I just continue to hope and that as Susan Martinez says it's the heart of our our city our healthy neighborhood so that I that we can continue the people that live in this area can continue not to worry about the safety of their children walking to school and not to worry about the quality of life in these neighborhoods so thank you represents representative schwartzbein for this item thank you mayor thank you representative Sargon uh mayor Pro Tem I don't know if anybody has and as you can see Council and colleagues there's a lot of concern about this and and it's not just about this one development there's another close to 60 Acres on the other side of Frontera as well and as Sunland Park continues to evolve and develop like a lot of our community is it's important to set a precedent here for the south for the safety uh Health and Welfare not just of all passwinds but Sunland Park residents as well you know their code is that is is in a different place and ours is their concerns are at a different place but we can find common ground in this I believe that taking uh appropriate Common Sense actions again on on behalf of the health safety and Welfare of residents of El Paso the right thing to do as well so what I would like to do is I I have a motion for um for staff to to return back in two weeks um with identifying the costs and process for closure of Frontera Road and other roads identified to restrict access from Sunland Park New Mexico to El Paso Texas along Frontera and collecting streets and then as part of this motion also to identify costs for a second option relating to a write in and right out at the Texas New Mexico border at La delita and Frontera as well and part of that motion too is also for um is so that we can also send a notarized letter to the developer the city manager and mayor and individual city council members of the city in Sunland Park and other relevant other relevant New Mexico Sunland Park departments notifying them that the city of El Paso is moving forward in the process of identifying costs related to closure of Frontera surrounding streets and encouraging them to come to a conversation with the city of El Paso relating to the public safety Health and Welfare of our communities thank you yes mayor the motion was made and read into the record by mayor Pro Tim schwartzbein seconded by alternate mayor Pro Tem lexaraga I also would like to say also the for the letter to be to be sent to um to the I guess this is in Donna Anna County correct for the County Commissioners and County judge of Don Anna County as well relating to these concerns until our last day to follow up with the written Motion in its entirety to my office please so we can note it appropriately in the minutes okay thank you on that motion call for the vote in the voting session and the motion passes unanimously thank you Council thank you with that thank you everyone who came in here motion the research there's a motion and a second to read recess a city council meeting in order to convene the mass transit Department board meeting all in favor anyone opposed the regular city council meeting is in recess at 10 27 a.m thank you all again for being here and we'll continue to work and I think City staff Mr Gonzalez y'all did a really nice job thank you good morning everyone this is a meeting of the mass transit Department board for Tuesday November 8 2022 president art board chair Lisa and board members Peter schwartzbein Alessandro nello Cassandra Hernandez is Claudia Rodriguez Henry Rivera and cecili sarga board member molinar has requested to be excused from today's meeting it is 10 28 A.M board chair Lisa we have no public comment today is it okay to move on to the consent agenda all matters listed in the consent agenda including those on the addition to the agenda will be considered by the 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 do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved um the there's one item number four on the safety plan yeah right after right after consent agenda yeah so moved have a motion by board member Hernandez seconded by board member Salcido to approve the consent agenda and on that motion call for the vote and in the vote voting session the motion passes unanimously seven to no would you like to retake it you need uh do you have a motion to reconsider again I have a motion by board member lisar got seconded by representative Hernandez to reconsider the item all in favor all right anyone opposed the motion passes we're back on the consent agenda second I have a motion by Miss Hernandez seconded by Mr schwartzbein to approve the consent agenda on that motion call for the vote cancel and in the voting session motion passes unanimously eight to zero that brings us to item number four discussion in action that the Sun Metro agency safety plan is approved and adopted good morning Miss Smythe good morning mayor city council Ellen smack Chief transit officer for the record um this item in front of you this morning is the Sun Metro safety plan it's renewed annually and also as needed but thus far annually and it's basically an up required by the ftn update to make sure that everything is current and applicable so the last revisions here were in November I'm sorry November 2020 um one so a year ago um and additional revisions were just finished a couple of months ago and so your approval is sought to ratify these changes so we updated the headers and Footers the signatory table the revision history table which is also requirement more definitions on acronyms that we use we added the Upper East Side Transit Center we had our ribbon cutting last Tuesday and we officially opened Sunday and thank you representative Salcedo it was a lovely event and then we've added with the performance measures we moved projected on the Brio so now that it's completed and launched and then we also updated our organizational chart um we also added uh the job duties associated with the safety manager duties and the streetcar safety manager updated titles and added the new fixed route positions of the key staff we have hired some additional key management as positions to assist my operations manager Robert Dominguez he never had an assistant before and he was running all 600 of The Operators by himself so we added two assistant managers under the actual day-to-day operations um we updated the safety bulletin it added a QR code for hazard reporting previously we had a phone number and an email but now we actually have a QR link for those who have their smartphones available I'm keeping up with the technology we added the new bipartisan infrastructure law requirements um and those included a risk Reduction Program we recently purchased software to track any safety training safety incidents along with our risk exposure so we've launched that new software um exposure to infectious disease which we have very little of that um you know but we do still have a category in the event there's any exposure to diseases on the units Assault Awareness and awareness and prevention training for all the operators and that's the the updates and I request your approval is there a motion second there's a motion by board member Rodriguez seconded by a board member Adam on this to approve no hold on it was uh the other word Fernandez and Salcido um motion made by rep a board member salsido seconded by by board member Hernandez to approve the item and the voting session is open Mr swartzwein and in the voting session the motion passes unanimously eight to zero that brings us to the end of the agenda do we have a motion to approve second if I could add one Public Service Announcement we are conducting the hearing sessions at all of our Transit terminals this week by our outside consultant to get input from our writers on what they would like to see when and if we modify our route structure so if you're in the neighborhood stop by thank you have a good day thank you and I have a motion to adjourn by board member Rivera seconded by board member Salcido all in favor any opposed and the mass transit Department board meeting is adjourned at 10 35 a.m thank you Council thank you do you have a motion to reconvene there's a motion in a second to reconvene the regular city council meeting all in favor anyone opposed nay there's I'd hear one name is there any one else opposed I cannot I can be opposed thank you if not the motion does pass I love it and the motion is back in the meeting is back in session at 10 35 A.M thank you so we're on page eight can we do motion item 29 first please yes sir thank you we'll go to item number 29 which is on page number 11. item 29 is discussion in action that the city manager be authorized to use a to sign a used construction and donation agreement with Western refining company LLC for used construction and donation of improvements at marinarios Park move to approved representative Canelo hi Miss Prime can we go to I think there's public comment on this item yes we do have one speaker we have Mr Fred Borrego that signed up to speak good morning sir you'll have three minutes good morning again good morning Mr Mayor members of city council I'm Fred Borrego I'm the president of the San Juan neighborhood Improvement Association we're the oldest active Association in the whole city of El Paso I'm here to speak about I'm here to speak about Marina Rios pocket park it's uh it used to be um owned by the Water Works Department used to be a well there and uh for many many years ever since I was a young kid it was abandoned and for the last 20 some years we've been asking for the Water Works Department to release it to us so that we could have um pocket park so a few years ago they finally did that and we got a hold of it but we didn't have any funding to build the pocket park lo and behold the representative from District 3 had some cdbg funds that she couldn't use she she let us have that under the leadership of our I don't want to say old District representative our former District representative the four of the lines were changed Cassandra Hernandez we got half the park built and it was there it's there it looks okay but then uh representative um Hernandez got into an agreement with marathon and Marathon decided that they could build the rest that's why two weeks ago I asked representative anello to postpone that till today so that I could take it back to my Association and we could talk about it and we did and it was unanimous so wow I'm here today very happy asking all of you to please approve it and lastly I won I want to thank representative Hernandez representative Salcido thank you very much representative vanillo and Marathon Oil Mr B.J Smith our new um general manager there Mr Travis and a gentleman by the name of John Moore I don't know him so thank you all we're very happy thanks again thank you thank you now I want to give you a little trivia back in the early 70s I used to play basketball at San Juan Center huh oh no we played in the leash up there it was great thank you do we have a second on this I would like to uh I would like to uh mayor first of all thank you again um and I'm sure that your sky hook and other moves at the basketball Parks were uh pretty ferocious at that time when you were playing there sir um the other I would like to remove my first at this time I'd like to remove my motion second I moved to approve second foreign yes sir there is a motion made by representative Hernandez seconded by representative anello to approve item number 29 on that motion call for the vote and I'm sorry mayor I I thought there would be more I did want to to thank um the San Juan and the sobrano Corbin neighborhood associations um for really having the vision to bring a little pocket park there we were so disappointed when it was partially funded but we recognize that there are partners and and corporate Partners who are very interested in entering into public and private agreements with the city of El Paso so we're really grateful for the continued philanthropy from Marathon petroleum this is you know almost two hundred thousand dollars of private dollars that are being redeverted from homeowners to our businesses they do have a corporate responsibility to provide support open space and amenities to communities and and I think this is just a demonstration and how one Corporation for this South Side area who have historically have been avoided no no true investment in the community no real planning for Parks and Recreation and so this is this is such a wonderful um contribution and and they do have a commitment to have over a million dollars of philanthropy throughout the community annually and so we just wanted to reiterate my support and thanks to the neighborhood association because without that initial Vision we wouldn't be here today approving this agreement so thank you all to the parties involved most importantly to our legal department who Mrs Neiman is not present and to Mr uh demero like when you think about these things you never think could we do it because there's so many obstacles so much bureaucracy and so much red tape and they were able to get it done and so I'm very grateful for thinking Innovative innovatively thinking outside the box because without your willingness to allow for this private partnership we wouldn't be here again today so thank you for all the parties who are involved [Music] thank you representative Hernandez and with that Miss Prine and to approve the voting session is open Council in the voting session and the motion passes unanimously we now return to page number eight item number 19. item 19. is discussion in action to direct staff to return with strategies for implementation of sustainable development goals within performing and resilience framework and this item was submitted by mayor Pro tem short time uh thank you very much uh City Clerk and colleagues and fellow council members um this is an important item that I think aligns a lot with a lot of the hard work that we've had through our resiliency initiatives uh under Miss farini as well as our commitment with our own strategic plan towards identifying strategies policies and processes that can make our community more resilient and also more responsive towards our residents I don't know if we can go to the backup with it but would like to just bring up I guess it would be slide uh four of five of that if I T can bring up the the backup it's it's the backup on the agenda it's if you just go onto the website and click on the agenda item it's it's on there um so basically while we wait for that um sustainability to say to Mobility development goals is an infrastructure that was created with the UN that is used utilized with cities across the world um basically you know where we're seeing the most growth in our community in the 21st Centuries with the cities across the world and so these are 17 goals that cities have adopted to look at creating a better quality of life and more resilient communities if this sounds familiar it's because a lot of what we're already doing with our strategic plan as well as strategic goals directly aligns with this and so the idea with this motion would be to have our resilience office as well as our performance office work to utilize um to sdg goals as part and part work of our performance and resilience framework so that when items are presented to council not only do they have the goals listed to them but they also would have this is the sdg goals as well and um I don't know if we have if Miss farini is on the on the line as well um as well we've you know I've sort of been talking to her about this for a while now and I don't know if she had anything she'd like to add about the importance of this and it's slide number five yep right there Miss farini on the line I don't think so okay so you can see there that those are a number of of the goals that are again have been identified and so communities across the world are utilizing these again to be able to track and create data and metrics for improvement in areas that again are Central to what we provide as municipalities as we're here in El Paso good up good morning representative this is assistant director with Community Development for the record how are you doing today sir I'm doing well sir so absolutely we can we can work with the performance office to to to develop that plan and and bring this back to the city council sir okay yeah is there questions from Council representative uh panillo thank you um not so much as a question I think this is really great I know we've touched on this a little bit with our own resiliency study but this is a really in-depth um something that's not really outlined here that I do think is really important um and and there's an action I can bring up in the future but I thought just a conversation maybe we can start now um is the policies we have uh for I guess uh low impact water right I know this city at one point was moving towards more low impact water policies for itself we've moved away from that but we're really not seeing any low impact water policies city-wide for development so at a lot of the times uh you know we see communities uh agreeing to new businesses in their area by way of using Landscaping as a barrier but that uses water right we're not requiring these developments to use natural landscapes to create Water Management within that Landscaping right we're encouraging by way of many of our policies and overuse of water and we've seen High alerts from the water company or El Paso water I'm sorry utility saying that we're really low on water and it should be a real concern so I I really think that we should look at ourselves as well as implementing policies to development to help deal with that and it's not just you know that doesn't mean we're not planting trees that doesn't mean we're not irrigating it means that we're looking at ways to do that that are more resilient um and so I I do see that it says water access and quality and water efficiency but I just uh four staff that I know will be doing a lot of this work and research and really highlighting that is as a concern and I do believe that's something that our planning department has been looking at for a little while um but just just want to Echo some support for that and an awareness of counsel that it's a real issue that we have a responsibility to looking at so thank you for bringing this up representative Schwartzman I don't know if you made a motion already no I would like to make a motion again I think it's it's uh you had asked for Miss farini she's on the lineup good luck that's my filter my apologies mayor and Council uh can you all hear me yes ma'am all right my apologies I stepped away for two seconds and y'all y'all called me um Nicole free to Chief resilience officers on the record I just also want to thank uh representative uh mayor proton's uh sword spine for bringing this item forward um representative anello briefly referenced the resilience strategy and really what's so exciting about the introduction of the sustainable development goals is that it really is the connecting tissue between our climate action efforts and our resilience efforts I've said for a very long time that resilience and sustainability are not the same thing but they are very very closely tied together and the sdgs are really what are going to help us do that we've already had some preliminary conversations with the performance office looking at how we can crosswalk not only the sustainable development goals but also the resilience strategy to the city strategic plan and ultimately guiding our climate action work however that plays out in the next year and so um staff is very very excited this is very much aligned with what can community and human development has been trying to do connecting our climate work with our efforts to address the vulnerable populations to representative anello's Point you're talking about water energy these are issues that are really important in terms of Natural Resources but they are also serious poverty issues energy poverty water poverty and so these are the kinds of conversations that need to occur and we're real excited to be able to bring back some information to you all great so I I'm really excited about this this item and was hoping um to have that sort of uh further conversation about strategies to implement you know would would the December 12th meeting for Council be enough time for for the performance and resilience uh departments or or staff to come back with with a strategy for implementation I don't know I definitely want to get with our team internally I think that we could come back by the 12th with some additional information about how that alignment would prefer and what the next steps could be but I would not want to over commit and say we would have a final strategy but we can come back with some more information okay that would be great I know that also too that you know this is something that again aligns with what we're doing you know we're a high performing organization that is really data driven and these sdgs are something that many many communities across the world are utilizing to inform their Smart City approach to resilience and sustainability approach um and again providing metrics and data for cities and so really an interesting and important space to be involved in and so with that I would like to make a motion um would like to make a motion to direct staff to return with strategies for implementation of sustainability development goals within the performance and resilience framework of the city of El Paso Texas to report back in the December 12th community meeting there's a motion made by mayor Pro Tim schwarzbein seconded by representative anello to direct staff to return with strategies for implementation of sustainable development goals within performing and resilience framework for the state of El Paso in return to the council meeting on December 12th it's the work session on December 12th with an update okay and this would also be listed as an action item as well when it would return yeah okay yes sir thank you on that motion call for the vote uh question uh it would be listed as no later than December 12th to return okay so was any updates before then so you're asking that staff come back no later yeah yeah okay thanks is everyone okay with it yes okay and the voting session and the motion passes unanimously the next item is number 21 and this is discussion in action to establish a land bank strategy and infill's incentive program for affordable housing and this item was submitted by mayor Pro tem schwartzmann thank you um so this item council is here listed uh basically to continue a lot of the the work that we've been working on within the infill cross-functional team looking at ways again to provide more housing more density within the core of our city basically looking at strategies such as land banking as well as looking at creating an incentive policy for affordable housing you know we've seen a lot of great success with affordable housing both within the public and private sector but with a high performing organization such as the city of El Paso there's always other ways to look at creative and bleeding edge Solutions towards giving the best quality of life for our residents here and so this would again be an opportunity to come back um to look at formalizing some of these discussions that we've been having within the cross-functional infill team and others and so I don't know if there's any comment from City staff about the sort of housing plan and how we can go and push it forward in another Direction but that is sort of the the meat and potatoes of this item um Miss Farina I think I see you on your your cell phone yes sir thank you again um this is another item that's very very well embedded in the work that community and human development has been doing for some time now not only hearkening back to the regional housing plan that we did in 2017 and 2018 but if you recall the resilient strategy called out housing as infrastructure and as we move through sort of the recovery period from covid-19 and we returned to a semblance of normal what we're really seeing is that affordability challenges are Paramount amongst our people um uh We've not yet come forward with the final results of our community needs assessment but what I can tell you all as a preview is that affordability and livability is absolutely at the top of that list and housing is the foundation for that our team has been working very very closely with other teams across the city that are working on very specific area plans in terms of housing we have been having conversations um regarding the types of policy changes that are required to allow for the kind of development that that we know is supportive of the community's needs and in addition to that um you know again harkening back to the regional housing plan looking at things like land banking the establishment of a Housing Trust Fund these are the tools and the the vehicles that other cities across the state of Texas have used to varying levels of success so we're excited to move forward and again thank you for bringing forward an item uh like this thank you anyone anyone have any questions okay I haven't made a motion but I will make a motion at this time um will you uh if you need to speak will you please sir I'd like to make it go ahead sir request to speak thank you sir um would like to make a motion at this time uh for the city of El Paso to direct staff to establish a land bank strategy and info incentive program affordable affordable housing I would say that that part of this as well is to reach out to the to the public in the private sector uh and other related stakeholders to better understand how an infill incentive uh policy for affordable housing could could be implemented and have the best impact for our community okay the motion was made by mayor mayor po shorts my second if I alternate mayor Pro tem lisarga and this is that the two direct the city of El Paso to establish a land back strategy and infill incentive program affordable affordable housing and to reach out to private and public sectors and stakeholders is that correct Maybe yeah and I don't know when when staff would want to would need the time to return to this I'm not sure if the the 12th of December would be too early at this time I'm going to give you all the opportunity way and when you think would be an appropriate time to to return with your findings or establishment probably not yes on this one store I would imagine that we need a little bit more time to coordinate I very much want to get with my counterparts in the capital Improvement Department planning department that are working concurrently on these strategies I think that could take a little bit longer than the 12th yeah um I would I would also yeah okay well I would also suggest to Economic Development probably a good a good conversation as well as well as some of the other relevant building stakeholders as well both in the public and private world of affordable housing yes sir thanks thank you there's a motion and a second on item number 21 on that motion call for the vote in the voting session and the motion passes unanimously that brings us to the operational Focus Updates this is item number 22 and it's an update on median maintenance good morning um today I'm gonna provide a weeds mitigation action plan and implementation operations update um what we'll cover today is the weed meeting mitigation operations enhanced incentives for staff response actions with staff and outside contracts uh complete median maintenance and community and volunteer engagement so um meetings in El Paso represent more than two uh 20.8 million square feet which includes 7.4 million square feet located along the tech stock right away as you can see per the map we provided the blue lines represent the city of El Paso medians and the red lines represent the tech stat right away that we manage and take care of also and our in-house crews are responsible for maintaining medians which include irrigation herbicide applications leaf removal litter pickup mowing trimming edging pruning and plant blade maintenance to keep up with the maintenance needs the city has activated outside contracts to assist with the herbicide application and the median cleaning currently our staff our maintenance a media maintenance program has 28 employees and the program is currently at about a 40 vacancy rate and on average each employee Works about 16 hours of overtime per week two hours Monday through Thursday and then they come in on Saturdays also to assist with medians we've done some enhanced accepting plans for for the staff over T overtime pay adjusted to compensate staff for the media work staff is now earning a double time pay instead of time and a half for each overtime hour employees are earning anywhere from 22 to 44 hours 44 per hour for overtime and the pay varies based off the job title with the the majority of the employees being general service workers in the 22 uh dollar per hour pay rate the media maintenance crews are cleaning meetings and continue to spray herbicide we've activated emergency contract in late September using a non-competitive procurement process which we hired meanclean to assist us and the media maintenance so we've assigned them certain areas throughout the city and we've continued working with the mg Evergreen display over site on the public right-of-ways and they're currently assisting us additional outside contracts with our media maintenance Crews that we've uh today it should be approved of part of council to award exceeds uh if so resources for median cleanup and herbicide spraying after we've done two unsuccessful procurements so we just awarded it to exceeds because we've sent it out two times and we were unable to get anybody to bid on the the meeting and cleanup because in talking to different companies they currently don't have enough staff either to help with the maintenance but luckily exceeds is willing to help us now as part of the contract that's on the council agenda today since July our crews have cleaned uh more than 100 Millions along streets and eight districts in all eight districts the crews have concentrated on the top 50 most traveled arterials that's not saying that we aren't cleaning some of the smaller streets we do have staff that we send out to other streets throughout the city but our main focus has been the top 50. example of the meetings that we've done are Alabama Alameda Airways Edgemere Dyer Hawkins Montwood North Loop Pebble Hills railroad wrestler in west wind and um the next couple of pages are this list of all the the meetings that we've taken care of since uh since July and as you can see they vary throughout all districts they go all the way you know Brown Northeast West Side so it covers all parts of the city bless you in addition to what our staff is doing we've had seven several community cleanup events and a volunteer engagement we've had seven cleanup events that have brought in more than 1100 volunteers and more than 30 schools and non-profits we're working currently to formalize the development of a volunteer program to support uh residents with disabilities and senior citizens to help clean up their Parkways properties and Alley cleanups so we're working to formalize that right now with our staff um everybody that's come to our our community cleanups we've surveyed each uh volunteer and we have a 9.4 approval rating average rating for the the cleanup events there we've had everybody's really enjoyed them there's been very engaged with the process and we've appreciated all the the council members that have come out and help out also it's been very good having everybody out there and I believe they've been great for the community and then we have a video nope usually pass through nights and I used to see all the sweets and now finally we're doing something thank you all for coming again appreciate you so much positivity that they wish they could they want to continue this program they they hope the city does so that we can uh that can keep their Community can benefit from it it looks nice so we want El Paso to look nice and help each other in the community I'm just really inspired by the people who came out to give up their time to then be able to give back to their Charities and so that's what this program is about it's it's something that we can engage the community with and also clean up our community way we're gonna I'm just gonna go straight to scholarships for our kids it's hard I have to sit I actually have fronts with my back but if I sit and I pull I can still do it oh this is actually awesome to see them actually come out and volunteer I was shocked I didn't think nobody was going to show up but there was plenty of people I I in our city I feel that this was such an incredible solution to the problem it checked all the boxes it benefited organizations it benefited our city it was a creative and great way to solve this problem this is such a great idea that the city came up with and I see so many representatives even from the city like such as yourself so thank you all for doing what you're doing for your charities thank you [Applause] [Music] and if there's any questions from Council representative Hernandez thank you for that update um the the weed issue has been um a real thorn in my side um but so I just really wanted to thank everyone for all your efforts um and really really proud that even city manager and his wife came out um it's just really exciting to see so much support from the community regarding the exceeds contract can you give me a little bit more information when will it start do you understand rollout of which medians will begin are they going to take care of all of the medians to include State roadways and residential if you could just share a little bit more feedback because all my constituents want to do and talk about is weeds yes um so the contract is on the agenda today for approval we've already met with them this week to get them ready to go as soon as it approves they're we're ready to get them started they will be focusing on the top 50 arterials with the city and our crews will be moving to the the smaller streets and working on those so they their complete Focus it's a one-year contract and they'll be completely focused on the top 50 materials do they have the capacity to do other other contracts and this contract yes okay um you're giving them a year to help clean up the I guess what the backlog is well no the reason it's a your contract because since we weren't able to get anybody to bid on the previous procurements we could only award it to them for one year and we'll be going out again for procurement I believe within the next couple of months to get that started again and we we are getting more interest now people are starting to be able to hire some folks so we're going back for procurement this was just an assistance to help our staff right now get a little bit more ahead on the medians and continue going where we're at okay so you say the 50 most arterial roads I want to confirm um what about State medians they'll be working on those also the state medians and the the majority of the top 50 artery roads are State median so that's why they're included together and then they'll also be helping out um we do maintain right there Alpha Airways and I-10 where the what we call them the egg beaters are so that they do maintain that area also as part of the contract also oh okay wonderful and um so those they'll do the state meetings they'll do the fit the arterial roads and residential roads can you explain if you're able to I'm not sure if this is your department what about Trails walking trails uh walking trails uh we work with um streets and maintenance because through their their park division we we work with them to help take care of those I do not know the schedule of that or when those are maintained but sometimes even ESD will help maintain that with our beautification program if we see a need or a request from different city departments we do go out there at system also and if I'm a representative we did have a discussion yesterday with senior staff about how to be more attentive to the different routes that we have with the corridors that we have to make it a priority to do from from one end to the other I know that some of them there's questions on the property belongs to the property owner or to the city and we had a discussion yesterday about how to address that so we're going to be more aggressive there whether it's education or whether it's the the work that we do on our end and how we take care and maintain those properties so there'll be more to come on that on that subject thank you the only thing I want to mention about the trails is I don't know it's kind of been like the red-headed stepchild of the the maintenance so I have a lot of constituents that that often give advice and recommendations and I'll share those with you today on their behalf um if we're going to be going out to Trails that have those Bollard lighting where they have um the solar panel because there's some of that too if those can be wiped off as well as part of the cleanup okay to ensure the longevity of the illumination of the lighting because once they get there's like like a scum if you will that gets yeah the film um they don't operate to its full capacity so they they're asking in tandem with the cleanup can the can the wiping happen and so that's something I'll leave for you to share and then also with the plier drain Trail um it was kind of one of those public private Partnerships that I think um maybe it there just needs to be a reevaluation because now that it's in the city's possession of the park because they built it health Foundation we took Assumption of it but we just I just need to understand with the trail cleanup maintenance program looks like how often what the frequency is because I am getting several complaints about making sure that it's it's up to up to par and so the same strategy that we use for medians My Hope Is that we can replicate that for our walking trails because we do have a lot of walking trails in the interior of the city but other than that I see I'm I'm really excited motivated that we have a contract finally and my hope is that we can take this this weed problem above and beyond not only with the community engagement which I think is great and maybe we start to allocate you know some days out of the year whether it's the American grade cleanup events that we do in tandem with weed Patrol cleanups and so I think we got something special here and I would just love to see continue thank you for the report thank you thank you thank you sir Mr Price thank you Mr Smite great job everyone that brings us to item number 23 and this is a presentation and discussion on El Paso animal services medical operations good morning Chief good good morning Terry capsule Animal Services director for the record this presentation is just to go over and update everybody on our medical operations what we do at the shelter with our medical operations there all right good morning again so a brief overview is going to go over our medical operation introduction some of the challenges we have during covid what makes our medical operations team a little bit of our vet science students and our medical program development so our medical operations we provide Compassionate Care for most uh Compassionate Care for Animals that come into our care for most this is the first time they've ever received Medical Care our major focus is on Disease Control spay and neuters we also provide Wellness services to community-owned pets in our calendar year of 2022 we provided over 82 000 health and wellness services to community-owned pets that's vaccinations and spay neuters for our TNR pets so some of the covet effects uh coveted when it hit it affected Veterinary Services Across the Nation El Paso animal services and the again the entire community of veterinary services so vaccinations spay neuters health and wellness of our pets dropped tremendously all the Across the Nation Medical Supplies were rerouted to Hospitals and Clinics so that put a big damper and put a setback on the Animal Welfare across the country at animal services are part of our response was we that's when we started up our our vaccination clinics our Mega clinics this wasn't done uh just on happenstance either we utilized best practices learn from our covet Mass vaccination clinics that we have here that we provided for the community so we just replicated that for our pets um our vet techs we embedded them with our resource Rovers which allowed them to go out mobile to provide care to our Fosters pets instead of having to come to the shelter also provided curbside vaccinations for much of the community and we also started utilizing more relief and visiting vets for our spay neuters we relaunched our TNR services in September of 2020 as well so an overview of our medical team the makeup of it is we have our veterinarians up on top and then we have two senior vet techs that's a new those are new positions we have 12 Veterinary technicians and part of our we include part of our medical team is we have a high school veterinary science students we have also vet tech internships from local uh vet tech colleges and also Veterinary students from Across the Nation they come and do some of their clinicals with us as well so our veterinarian that's the highest trained person that we have within the animal shelter they're able to diagnose prescribe treat develop our protocols provide surgeries and also just as important as our rabies control our Veterinary technicians they're an expansion of the veterinarian they operate under the direct orders of the veterinarian through protocols these vet techs are also the eyes ears and hand extra pairs of hands for the veterinarian to help treat the thousands of animals that come into our care annually and then we have again the vet science students they assist our vet techs where appropriate helping them with care of our animals as well so we have medical training we have our of course our veterinarian is board certified in the state of Texas our vet techs get different trainings through conferences through online training and Hands-On training as well they're able to provide and administer treatments and and vaccinations and different medicines to our to our pets this year we're we have at our shelter many of our vet techs are actually veterinarians in Juarez so starting this month we have six of our vet techs will be going on Saturdays to a to class and the the classes to help them pass the it's a test for English for for as a foreign language exam which is one of the first steps they have to do to become a board-certified veterinarian here in the states so that program will be running from this month from the 12th all the way to April 1st of 2023 and they'll be utilizing the tap program to help them out with that so that's their for again their first steps to becoming veterinarians to help with that Veterinary shortage across our city so management of Disease Control is one of our primary goals so we have in that all starts with our intake so every dog and cat that comes into our facility we that we provide them with vaccinations and and then also we provide them with daily treatments rabies vaccination checks are required to be done by our veterinarian so that's one of those things that we cannot just do our veterinarians has to provide and authorize a rabies vaccine our vet techs cannot do that on their own and that's a state law so that's another important part of us having that veterinarian here on staff that we're happy to have so animal arrives typically with no medical history or anyone to provide that information to us Animal Services we do have limited diagnostic capabilities many of people think that we're an emergency room which we're not we're not set up for that whatsoever but we do utilize our strategic Partners which is our clinics here in in the city so we've we've set up those Partnerships and they can provide things like x-rays for us and some other blood work and things like that as well um common medical needs that uh of the animals that come into our care are to provide care for distemper parvo upper respiratory infections parasites and injuries so again our number one surgery is spay and neuters that we provide at the shelter these are required by law before we can adopt them out um and that's also part of the requirement for our TNR program that we have for our cats in our in our care and we do provide some specialty surgeries if that picture there that's a dog there that has a pro we provided an entropion surgery and what that is is it's eyelids are folding the wrong way so it's going under irritating the eye which can damage the eye so we can provide surgeries like that I took little corrective surgeries so that we can have an adoptable pet so these are some of the stats that we've had on our surgeries so that the one on the left there shows our surgeries and comparison to the number of vets we have on staff uh back in 2018 we had for the four vets and that's that purple line and you can see as that drops down we also drop down on our surgeries on the right side shows again we started utilizing those strategic Partners more often as our Veterinary Services in-house were dropping down we utilize them in September 19th of this year it's when we hired our new veterinarian and you can see September our surgeries climb substantially during that month and for the month of October we've started a spathon for that month so through October 1st all the way through yesterday was the last day of our spath-on that we had and we were able to provide over 1 700 surgeries for the pets in our care and again uh back on that that was utilizing our veterinarian uh visiting vets from Bissell Foundation which is one of our strategic Partners Petco love and a an outfit out of Dallas called Operation Kindness so that was all their their veterinarians our veterinarians and our staff our vet tech staff just coming together and being able to provide that those types of numbers again this is our vet science students these are we're investing in the future of our of Animal Welfare here in our community right now we have four high schools that participate in this program the students they have training at their school hundreds of hours that they they get at the school then they also have to do clinical hours at the shelter and they go around helping treat the animals helping with surgeries prepping the animals for surgeries things of that nature and we're also working on adding a fifth school from the Isleta School District um so again this is this whole program uh the students that do participate in that uh they have the opportunity to graduate with a professional certification when they do graduate high school so our medical program development uh one of the Strategic things that we that we worked on this year was that that pay for the veterinarian so now our pay for vets is in line and competitive with the local industry uh we've created those two senior vet tech positions this provides proper spending control and supervision of the vet techs previous to those it was just flat they were all Veterinary technicians so this gives that supervisory and also it gives them a way to move up in into the in the animal shelter itself we also have put into place our strategic Partnerships one of the ones we did earlier this year was that epvma where we provide up to 1.5 million dollars to pay local clinics for services so after this spanathon we just had we're still going and with one vet we still need to utilize all the resources we can to keep up with those surgeries and health care for the animals in our care and also continue with our relief vets our contracted vets non-profits and they also provide not only the surgeries but they provide us with Education and Training as well and I think we have a small video I'd like to show right now that shows some of our staff working including some of the students [Music] [Music] I don't know [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] was a so this this uh item was a postponed from last month and I but I wanted to leave this last slide on here um last month was a veterinary technician appreciation week it was from October 17 to 23rd um uh we made sure each day that we highlighted a different Veterinary vet tech provided backgrounds on them why they like to be a vet techs and again I just wanted to leave the side in here as an appreciation uh to our Veterinary technicians [Music] again I'd like to recognize them and say thank you for their compassion and dedication to the animals in our care they see and treat animals suffering from illness injury and neglect every day and their efforts have saved countless lives animal lives who in turn have been adopted to loving families they truly make a difference and again I would like to thank them and if you all have any questions thank you chief for um for that presentation and I know that we talked to this the other day and I know your goal is uh 90 percent uh release so you know and I think this is a good step moving forward I know that cobit kind of slowed us down a little bit and kind of moved us a little bit in the wrong direction but uh I thank you and uh the team for you know working hard and and actually seeing a big Improvement uh as we move forward so thank you for that sir thank you representative thank you for the presentation very informative um I've been doing a little bit of research on that as well um and I wanted to ask a question regarding the credentialing of of high school students and their programs you said they get a certified industry recognized certification what can they do with that like what occupations can they get from that certification so the veterinary technician they are so in the Veterinary Medical Care for Animals you have unlike uh for humans you have doctors and then nurses you have with the veterinary side you have the veterinarian and they're the only ones that can do surgeries by state law then next level below that are your Veterinary technicians so there's different types in different clinics throughout the the state and that's that's the type of care that they look for so whether it's in a clinical setting or they could specialize in things like farm animals in rural areas horses different things of that nature as well and then they can also specialize in small other types of animals such as reptiles and birds work at zoos and that type of thing so the opportunities are Grand many of them then take that that uh knowledge with them and they decide that they want to even do more so then they go down the veterinarian path okay I understand I understand that but they're getting that credential upon graduation they get that certification yes for that oh that's wonderful um and the reason why I'm asking is um I have two little doggies and I haven't been able to get them spayed not because I'm a a bad owner it's because I my veterinarian appointments keep getting canceled for a lack of veterinarians in the community and I and it's been over a year and so I really wish I I participated in your spathon but there's like a real issue community-wide that it's difficult to get Spain and neuter services so I'm really appreciative that we're we're thinking about how we're going to grow our future veterinarians and I really think that this is part of the solution if we want to limit the number of unwanted pets limit um you know just lots of puppies and kittens and so um so I also wanted to say the the folks who are partnering with you all um what are what are the names to do these events you said Bissell Petco this this recent one it was a bit the Bissell Foundation yes okay and Operation Kindness okay Operation Kindness um there have been other um parties who have sponsored and done these city-wide events and I think those are really successful I hope we can continue that but along with that I really I really think it's important that we honor um and recognize those organizations who are bringing those private dollars and investments into our community and so would love an opportunity for for us to to recognize and bring them either to a council meeting whether it be virtually or to them because without you know that continued encouragement and support um in kind we really need that extra support so I think they should be honored I just wanted to share that with you but thank you for all your work we have more to do with our no kill rate but I I think that we're on the right trajectory and given all the challenges um know that there's a lot of passionate members of the community out there they call you they call us so I think you're the right person for the job I just would love to see um a lot more emphasis on spay and neutering and then more efforts and I know you're doing that I'm just I'm just reitering what I'm hearing for constituents who feel that it's just it hasn't gone far enough our efforts and there's always opportunities for improvements but are no kill rates we really got to improve those I know that's not the presentation today but I just wanted to share those comments on behalf of my constituents and thank you for all your hard work thank you thank you representative hadn't done this and again Chief thank you I know that the community would like to see it faster but I think you're doing a really good job and making sure that we continue to grow and and I appreciate that and uh it's a great presentation thank you for that okay Mr Price that brings us move to approved these are items 26 and 27. there's a motion made by representative anello seconded by representative Rivera to approve the items on that motion call for the vote in the voting session and the motion passes unanimously the next item is number 28. and this is discussion in action that the director of purchasing and strategic sourcing Department be authorized to issue a purchase order to Texas commission on Fire Protection tcfp there's a motion made by representative Rivera seconded by Representatives on Silo to approve item 28. on that motion call for the vote in the voting session the motion passes unanimously representative Hernandez not present the next item is number 30. and this is discussion in action on the award of solicitation 2022-0403 by the s Street reconstruction to ztec Construction Inc second Ed by representative Rodriguez to approve item number 30. on that motion call for the vote Council I'll remind you please null side conversations the voting session is open in the voting session the motion passes unanimously representative Hernandez not present the next item is number 31 and this is discussion in action that the city manager be authorized to sign a two-year on-call Professional Services agreement to perform Environmental Services on a test by test basis between the city of El Paso and three Consultants arcadius USA Inc Soder Miller and Associates Inc and wsp USA environment and infrastructure Inc I'll move to approve there's a motion made by mayor Pro tem shorts fine secondary by representative lizaraga to approve item 31. on that motion call for the vote go ahead hi I don't know if there's a staff member online to can answer some questions Yvette possibly do you already mirror with capital Improvement is online hey Jerry how are you Jerry is this a contract that we normally utilize or is this a completely new one uh this is basically a renewal of an existing on-call for Environmental Services we typically use them to do asbestos uh sampling maybe some phase one environmental assessments and things like that um it's used by all departments across the board all right great thank you for that information I appreciate it Jerry Mr Prime thank you there is a motion in a second to approve the voting session is open in the voting session the motion passes unanimously representative Hernandez not present the next item is 32. and this is discussion in action on the award of solicitation 2022-0850 Veterinary Medical Supplies rebates the third DBA El Paso veterinary supply and stairs Corporation DBA Hugh Friday Manufacturing Company LLC motion to approve there's a motion made by representative Rivera seconded by representative lizarga to approve item 32 on that motion call for the vote in the voting session and the motion passes unanimously the next item is 33 and this is a public hearing on an ordinance changing the zoning at 8 15 Tay street from A3 apartment and C1 commercial to SD special development and approving a detailed site development plan there's a motion made by alternate mayor Pro temli sargo seconded by representative Rodriguez to approve item 33 there's no public comment call for the vote and the voting session the motion passes unanimously item 34 is a public hearing on a Norman is granting a special permit at 5020 Country Club Place murder move there's a motion made by representative mayor Pro tem shorts Mine seconded by representative Rodriguez to approve item 34 there's no public comment on that motion call for the vote and the voting session the motion passes unanimously items 35 and 36 are related mayor would you like to take them together please thank you item 35 is a public hearing on an ordinance changing the zoning from R5 residential to AO apartment office and imposing a condition at 1837 Grandview Avenue item 36 and is an ordinance releasing conditions two and three placed on the same property at 1837 Grandview Avenue there's a motion made by an alternative secondary by representative Rivera to approve 35 and 36 there's no public comment on that motion call for the vote in the voting session and the motion passes unanimously item 37 was postponed for 14 weeks that brings us to item 38 and this is a public hearing on an ordinance vacating a portion of threadgill Avenue there's a motion made by representative Rodriguez seconded by representative Salcido to approve item 38 there's no public comment on that motion call for the vote in the voting session the motion passes with six affirmative votes mayor Pro tem shorts fine voting nay the motion does pass that brings us to item number 39 and this is discussion in action on a resolution that the city manager be authorized to sign a chapter 380 economic development program agreement between the city of El Paso and ligate Company Texas LLC second there's a motion made by alternate mayor Pro Tim is seconded by representative Rivera to approve item 39 on that motion call for the vote in the voting session and the motion passes unanimously that brings us to item 40. this is a presentation discussion in action on the FY 2021 2022 fourth quarter financial report and to authorize the city manager or designee to allocate year in Surplus to the operating operating and debt stabilization fund good morning Mr cortinas good morning members of council so bringing really good news this morning the Target and goal that we set several years ago we finally achieved it with this presentation I'm going to show you where we stand as the close of our fiscal year of August 31st 2022. so this presentation again these are preliminary numbers our external Auditors currently here on site actually in person this year going through the process of actually doing the external audit and so these numbers are not finalized yet they won't be finalizing probably late January or in February so I'll go through these again alignment to the Strategic plan again continuing our sound financial stability and accountability reporting through budgeting and Reporting again one of the big things that you all pointed out as well is creating implementing a plan that addresses our long-term liabilities and also that last piece there to sustain our bond rating again with what this budget focused on again continuing a very similar trend of what this council's focused on over the last several years addressing the Decades of neglect invested in those core priorities please fire streets in our public health and safety departments uh increase in our fund balance I have a comparison slide that'll show you how the city of El Paso compares to some of the other cities throughout the state of Texas and then finally that last bullet point there at the bottom the pay go this is something that I've seen comments in the media lately of people making comments about well those costs should be in the general fund and uh sort of puzzling as this is what this Council has been doing and approving with that pay goal allocation for streets or Police and Fire Equipment replacement utilizing those Pago annual funding sources so that we're not having to finance a lot of those key items that we've been doing in the past it's overall a picture of Revenue and expenses for the general fund you'll see there are in the far right hand column Revenue at 520.9 million expenses at 582.7 FY 2022 remaining Surplus 10.2 million dollars and I will show you the breakdown of both the expenditures and the revenue by category here this is the breakdown of the expenditures you see the bottom line there total expenditure is finished under budget by just over 10 million dollars of savings more than half of that coming through personal services which is the salaries benefits and taxes for our city employees no surprise to you all we've talked a lot about this over the last year plus with the number of vacancies and filling those positions we did do again those lump sum payments back in December of 2021 you also approved increasing the minimum wage in May in order to address that issue we did the thousand dollar sign up bonus to address the issue and we did an additional increase to the minimum wage this year to begin to address those issues with the vacancies throughout the organization I'll point out a couple of other things here on the materials and supplies some of this just due to the timing of departments receiving goods and services various controls and supplies streets of maintenance for example some of their materials that they utilize weren't received by August 31st and so those won't be expended until the current fiscal year Police Department had a couple of things as well that they did not receive in the prior year and they'll receive those in the current year you'll see the outbreak in there over budget on the operating 2.3 million that's on utilities you'll see whenever I go through the revenue by category you'll see that there's actually an increase in our franchise fees as well again that's all based on the uses throughout the city and then also the rates that the past the Water Pass electric charge the city of El Paso something that we talked about in part of this budget process of seeing a pretty large increase in our utility cost as well looking at it by a strategic goal on this slide here at UC Public Safety they're under budget by 4.3 million again a large majority of that's due to Staffing and both the place into fire departments and also due to the transfer the moving of those funds that were eligible to be used by Europe as part of the response to covid were moved over into the ARP allocation for those that were signed on those tasks you'll see the quality of life that are under budget by seven million a majority of that came from the Parks and Recreation Department again no surprise we talked about this due to the number of vacancies on sound governance there have a bullet point at the bottom that highlights with that overage of three million dollars is you all recall back on August 1st when we were finalizing the budget for the current year right which began on September one one of the things that we did was we actually utilized savings from the prior year for the election that we have coming up today and also if additional potential runoff so that originally was going to cost about 1.6 million I believe was the estimate that we received until we utilized a million dollars from the prior year to help offset the impact in the current year in order to help minimize the impact on the tax rate and lower that with the current budget so looking at the revenue by category here again we've talked a lot about this you see overall the bottom line there are 145 000 but you'll recall you've done taking some action during the year of moving funds to the stabilization funds you see the top three their property tax sales tax of franchise fees make up about 80 percent of our Revenue you'll see sales taxes at 22.9 million dollars higher than budget and have a couple of slides that'll show you not only how we performed in the career here compared to some prior years but also comparisons throughout the state some larger Texas cities and then you'll see on the third line from the top there the franchise fees that I talked about coming in at 11 million dollars higher than what we had originally budgeted again being very conservative with what we were projecting in the prior year and again that's all based on the sales from the utilities from Apostle electric water and gas and then also due to the increase in the rates that the city of El Paso pays as well on this slide City sales tax collections if you just focus on the bottom box there those couple of rows you'll see it provides you what we collected for the full fiscal years but that also shows you the dollar amount of the increase and then the very bottom line shows the percentage increase and so you'll see prior to code but we're averaging around four and a half to five percent increase year to year in sales tax which would generate four and a half million dollars roughly of new Revenue every year from sales tax you'll see in the last two fiscal years of FY 2021 last year we finished at 14 million dollars higher than the prior year of 14 14.4 percent and then with the budget that just finished on August 31st we finished at 15.2 million dollars higher than the prior year or an increase of 13.7 percent so um continuing to see historic increases in sales tax we received our August sales tax a couple of weeks ago came in at 17 compared to August of 2021 we've talked about the delay in the lag and real-time information from the state so that August is the most recent sales tax amount we received you will receive a September allocation hopefully this Friday if not on Monday due to the holiday so something that we continue to monitor particularly with what is going on in the economy right now with inflation and projected economic slowdown so this slide I put together because it's a really really good comparison slide on not only how El Paso is doing but comparison to some other Texas cities as well and it really highlights the growth through covet and how the city of El Paso really managed to perform well whereas a lot of these other cities actually saw declines in 2020 and 2021 so you see from 2019 to 2022 El Paso ranked second only behind Austin Austin's at 38.2 percent growth in their sales tax El pasos at 35.2 percent uh over the last three years so again really encouraging really positive news that the city of El Paso even through the bad times the recovery continue to perform and have continued to exceed those levels over the last two years as I mentioned over 14 increase so now the good news so uh you all well bad news on that left-hand slide back in 2014 and good news on that right hand side now where we're at today so we've talked about this where we were nine operating days of fund balance and with what this Council has proved to be an aggressive ensuring that we're being fiscally responsible that we continue to sustain our bond rating really continue to push to achieve that Bond rating to lower our interest rates on our bonds and the debt that we have to sell in the future in order to continue to save our taxpayers and also to have access to these reserves if we ever needed them in an emergency and so we've talked a lot about how the federal government provided a lot of financial assistance over the last several years however we should not expect to anticipate that to continue if we were to encounter any type of future emergency again we need to ensure that city of El Paso is in a position financially to be able to respond to emergency if it ever roasted that occasion so here's the comparison slide that I was talking about so you see the different cities there the blue bars are what those City's operating days the fund balance was back in 2014. so the blue bars is back in 2014 it's a comparison you see El Paso the far right hand column there we were at nine days Houston was at 33 Fort Worth at 48 dollars at 50 San Antonio 74. Austin at 78. the orange bars for all the cities except El Paso as of August 2021 so those cities have not finished their fiscal year or in the process I don't have their final fund balance amounts of what they're going to increase by so it says of 2021 just for comparison purposes El Paso is as of August 31st 2022 since we know what our amount is going to be and you can see that each of those cities has continued to increase their operating days San Antonio is at 98 days Dallas is at 90 Fort Worth's at 98. Houston at 45 and then El Paso is at 91 now so that 90-day Target yes is the gold standard but it doesn't mean that that should be the stopping point it means could continue to increase that level and what that level is is something that we'll continue to work on city managers asked us to work on the fund balance policy not only for the general fund but several other funds as well so that's something that we're bringing fullback in the near future to identify what we want those levels to be to ensure that we maintain this level at a certain requirement whether it's the 90 days or whether it's 120 days whatever that amount is but it's something we'll bring back to full act for for your approval and then bring that to the council in the near future as well and so again we talked about this and you're all very familiar with this about the end funded needs yes we've made tremendous progress but there's a lot of progress that still needs to occur whether it's in the form of additional tax relief the street projects which we need to continue to invest in our pitch and stabilization fund again to address those long-term liabilities we've created that we have 22 million dollars in that fund now as of today but something that we need to continue to fund into the future and then just the day-to-day operating costs that we need to continue to increase our annual paygo funds to begin to address a lot of those big issues you saw the presentation recently on the facility needs particularly with the number of facilities that the city of El Paso has and the Aging infrastructure that we have need to continue to invest in and so again a lot of need in the future years but again we've made tremendous progress over the last several years so the action that I'm asking you all to take is two reasons so one if we take no action it all just falls to the unassigned fund balance as part of the budget policies that you all approved when we created the operating in debt stabilization fund and the potential stabilization fund the city manager myself brings forth the recommendation as to how we want that allocation to be posted so we're recommending to put 25 of that into the operating and death stabilization and the remaining into the unassigned as I mentioned if no action is taken all that happens is that it goes all to the unassigned category what this does is this basically keeps the pension of the operating debt stabilization fund and the unassigned around the same level they'll both be around 53 million each and so that's the requested action for the council to take today another thing I would add Robert had asked me if I want to make some comments prior to him presenting and I wanted to make some comments at the end and y'all have invested subsequent to the Strategic plan and was put in place in January of 15 in the streets police fire made those a priority we showed you a presentation where we have a lot of needs in our facilities across the city I think we've had conversations offline with each of you with respect to in your districts what that looks like as far as what that need looks like and we still have more needs for streets as you know there's a an election for 237 million dollars more for streets that's a very high priority but it was neglected for for decades and just the investment was not put in to the streets just like the investment wasn't put into police that was woefully understaffed we barely just got to where we were 20 years ago in Staffing and that's because we put in a plan five years ago six years ago now where we were adding more police officers and we have a net of 150 but that that number as you know through attrition vacillate to grow it fluctuates rather it goes up and down just based on how many people we're able to hire in those given years but it's also important to note that we've been looking and working on outside Revenue as an example over 60 million dollars for the hotels that have been developed in downtown that's one example the 40 million dollar Grant we just received from the Eda Ada grant that we just received of which 25 million would go to the airport 32 million dollars for the bridges in terms of that development so we have to work on that outside money as well and it's not just all about the local money that we invest and and put into the priorities that are priorities for our community lastly when we talk about the budget and we've we've talked about it in the macro sense to the council and that the overall budget for All funds is at 1.2 billion well we need to emphasize is 512 million is just for the general fund and then we need to emphasize even further that the tax taxes that people pay the property taxes is 237 million of that 512. the rest of it is sales tax like Robert pointed out permits and fees and things of that nature so that 30 percent that they pay on their dollar in taxes equals 237 million which doesn't equal the 512 million that's needed for the entire general fund so there's other sources of revenue that we're work working on constantly and the fact that the sales tax is increased has given us the ability to do more in these high priority areas so I wanted to point that out because oftentimes a lot of things get twisted I wanted y'all to just hear that from me the overall budget is 1.2 billion but that includes departments like the airport of which none of its property taxes includes things like Sun Metro which comes from the sales tax the half a penny that's dedicated for that purpose so I wanted to point those things out and kick it back to you Robert thank you Mr Gonzalez and uh Mr Karina thank you for the presentation we have uh representative renello followed by representative written on this um yeah so Robert on slide 10 and I kind of asked this every time we see this but have not been able to get that information um kind of distinguished so with the sales tax growth from 2019 how much of that was from online sales because I really feel like the only way to understand the actual growth is to subtract that amount of money right because we knew those sales were happening before but we weren't allocated those funds until 2019-2020 yeah 2020 yeah it's not as much as you think it is it's roughly about 130 000 a month so we're looking at just under two million roughly a year but so you've got 35 percent what is 35 like how much does 35 um represent oh of the total one yeah just because seriously when you say 2 million I'm like I don't know how much 35 is so I'm good at math but I don't want to do it on the spot yeah that's fair it's not much of the overall growth there's not as much as you would think so for example if you look at in the Square 2022 I'll go back to the slider the far right hand column and the very bottom there you'll see overall 15.2 million that growth from 21 to 22 and online sales is not very much it's probably 200 000 at the most foreign from 21 to 22. oh get that information yeah if you can get that for me just because you know my brain works really strangely but I would just like to understand how that is totally broken down um to understand because I also think it would be interesting for us to see um I know that we weren't allocated those funds until 2020 but to see how even online sales tax has grown in this community post covert and I think those are um just things that I find really interesting and I think would help us understand kind of the community and how they're spending right um thanks and then my only other question is I know that the council this was my item and I am going to like really do a poor job at representing it but I know that Council approved um directing y'all to do a wage study again that's not the correct terminology and it's my own agenda item so I should know what I'm talking about but you do know what I'm referencing and we asked you all to have that uh you know to do that by quarter one but I just wanted to know if we could expect to see that before the end of the year or if we would see that in the new year I need to follow so we have Nicole Cody and her team from the budget office work without a silly from Workforce relations I haven't seen the final on that so okay I don't know December but okay I haven't seen the final yet yeah because I mean just when we're talking about spending These funds you know again it's something that I would love to see there's that comparison and understand yeah and it's something that hasn't mentioned and I'm went through the site pretty quickly but if you think back to where we were last year so in December we did utilize some of the savings to do the lump sum payments that we did for all of our employees back in December we realized in the middle of the year if you remember we did the pay increases for all of our city employees as well and so we utilized that savings throughout the year to help provide and increase the wages for our employees and then also as we moved into the new year continuing to increase those wages for our employees utilizing some of the savings as well yeah and that's that's why I asked I remember that first time we wanted to get it done before the holidays we're starting later now already anyways with the study but um just want to be able to have that conversation and and let our employees well we're not promising anything but if that's a conversation would we be having it before after the holidays it was the only reason I was asking so I appreciate the presentation Robert thank you thank you representative representative but none is followed by mayor Pro Tem I want to reiterate that our strategic plan is working all of the efforts to increase the fund balance have been just really tremendous and and I think a really incredible accomplishment for this Council including the two members of council who won't be coming back at the end of the year I think you you all need to be very proud of the the Legacy and the the position that we have come together to increase our fund balance which I thought would never be achievable and instead of putting dollars to pet projects we translated that to real opportunities for savings long term for taxpayers and and I think that's just a wonderful accomplishment and so I hope that you you all will remember this day and hopefully the council will approve this action just some follow-up questions for you the unassigned uh contribution to the 75 percent of the variants that you have listed here you said unassigned but then I heard pension can you clarify where it would go unassigned so we have four different categories so we have the restricted the unassigned our operating in debt stabilization fund and then the pension stabilization fund Okay so going to the uninside reserves 75 and then 25 would go into the operating in that stabilization fund okay so we have four different funds one is an unassigned reserves is this the same reserves that that we're required to keep under the city Charter no that's the restricted okay so that one's restricted and why choose the unassigned reserves as opposed to the other to keep them balanced like I mentioned they will both be around 53 million dollars as far as the balance and the unassigned and the pension or the operating debt stabilization fund okay so all right that's fine that's fine I'm just trying to understand what the the methodology is here now I liked what you said earlier but I want to push back a little bit about hey we've we've achieved the gold standard shouldn't stop but I also feel like we have been I feel like I'm asking permission for my mom to spend money like that's what it feels like right now um I feel like we've been just so um aggressive with savings that I think now it's the time to start thinking about maybe some unfunded capital projects or things that we can get the ball rolling with with some projects um and and I'm only saying that because I feel like we just we spent so much time trying to reach that goal let's have a strategy to start spending some of those dollars whether that could be translated for support for for families who need improvements to their homes whether it could be a way that we could put a package together so that we can bring relief to homeowners whether that's improvements facade improvements I think we really have an opportunity here to to start focusing some of these dollars so that we can show our loyal and faithful constituents who have been patiently waiting to see some of those improvements and depending on the on the actions of today's election results most importantly what I care about is prop B which is for our quality of life and you know just wanted to throw that out there because I think this community really deserves to see some of the fruits of their expenses and their tax bill and and I know that would be really welcoming what that project is what what that Economic Development Surplus could be for coming me I don't know what that is but I just wanted to say that I think it's time to to reconsider some of these Savings in the future just so that we can give back to the community because they deserve it yeah and because of the action that the council has taken of putting us in this position of you know going with the recommendations that we bring forward now we're in a position to be able to do that going forward you making a motion no I'm not today I'm just expecting more sales taxes you mentioned a couple of things another thing that you all need to be aware of and something that we've been working on is future Grant match opportunities and so for example our MPL matching taking advantage of federal funding but there's a City match that's required in that as well and so past practice has been to utilize certificates of obligation to put up to cities 20 percent we have a lot of big grants that are in the pipeline we have with you know the number of federal grants that are in the queue as well a lot of opportunity what do we have as far as Financial tools to be able to access if we needed to put up a grant match or we have an economic development project now we're getting to a position where we can have access to these if we needed them in the future however the fund balance policy is going to be critical because you want to have a process you want to have what those criteria are anytime you're going to utilize your reserves it needs to be very clear and very spot up because this is what again the bond Raiders are going to look at do you have a process in place do you have systems in place that determines and dictates how you're going to go about utilizing reserves otherwise you could quickly go down the rabbit hole of what 10 15 years ago councils did in the past spending it all and so again the council's been very proactive we're getting to this level now it's a matter of having the right policies and procedures in place to ensure that we don't follow below and go back and there's also other Pockets where there's been agreements that have been made in the past that aren't good business decisions whether they're dollar year leases whether they're different programs like that where we're not getting 100 of what we're supposed to be getting in terms of Revenue that could be dedicated towards streets could be dedicated towards facility improvements could be dedicated towards a Litany of things so the fact that we're where we are today improves our financial portfolio we still have more work to do across the board but I think that what we don't lose sight of is the Strategic plan being in place and what your priorities are and then what your vision is and how we accomplish that and I do believe that the council this community can look back and see that the whole city is different today and that there's more being done throughout the entire city not just in downtown that was an issue we're leveraging outside dollars that's another thing that's to take into consideration and Robert's right the fact that we're where we are today when we do have Savings in the future we will be able to divvy those up a little bit differently so that you can see more bang for your buck in the very near future future also to miss and on this point we've been working as a senior staff I've been meeting with our folks in the last several days about uh the little things matter program and those would be things that are happening in your own backyard whether it's a senior center whether it's a Rec Center a lot of little things that we could be doing that whether it's through volunteer programs or whether it's through just our maintenance folks doing it themselves whether it's painting a Rec Center a senior center whether it's replacing a fence I know there's a lot of little things like that but if you add them all up they add up to millions of dollars but I do believe that there's some things that are critical to the high priority areas seniors is a high priority for us where we could really do uh have a big impact and we will be able to see that so we're working on that we appreciate the patience and we do appreciate the fact that y'all stuck to a plan and executed that plan and you can see there's a lot of big results but there's a lot of little things too we need to be paying attention to as well thank you sir I agree and I just wanted to share one more comment with you as we are thinking about how to make the greatest impact in our community and something that I know this body has considered in the past and we've been hearing a new wave of energy and support from stakeholders to look for economic development tools because of this the Nationwide Staffing shortage that we're seeing that's no different here in our community there are many people in our community that are unable to work because they don't have identification there are many people in our community who are unable to cash checks because they don't have identification and so my hope is that we can reignite the conversation for Community IDs and be a be a solution to the economic development challenges that we're seeing in our community but Nationwide because we need to put people to work and they need to have their respective IDs and so a community ID program could be a solution but I wanted to share that now because it's going to take a bold decision from this his body to put action into policy and then that policy will result in many people being able to get to work and so we hope that as we plan for future sessions and strategies that we can reconsider Community IDs I'm taking advantage of this platform because it is going to help Drive our sales taxes is going to help drive all of the issues we're seeing with our community which is encampments homelessness so we need to be part of the solution with policies and so thank you again for these wonderful news I'm certainly endorsing this and I'm happy to support the decision today thanks Mr nunders I would like to just make one point to the comments you made we do have a task force a cross-functional team working on Municipal ID issue I know that's come up in the past and to the points that you've made I think those are excellent points and one of which we we have to look at closer because we do see a lot of pockets where the people are being missed and we need to look at it with a different lens and so we're working on that right now we'll we'll come back and give it any updates that we have in the future to the city council thank you sir thank you representative thank you mayor um yeah I mean this is really good news um obviously the the suggestion here to go about to get to the gold standard is is a correct one um a couple questions so based upon the tax the sort of Taxi that has El Paso seen a Slowdown in our economy so as I mentioned unless sales tax amount we received from the state was for the month of August so the state process is all sales tax Collections and they provide remittance to the cities counties the most recent one we have is for August but as I mention we'll get to September one hopefully by Friday okay it's not by Monday but we have not as of August seen a Slowdown we've seen a continued pattern as I mentioned August was 17 higher than August of 2021. so we're we're almost 20 percent higher in terms of people spending money in El Paso Texas in 2022 than in 2021. yes and that and that was mayor Pro tem speaks to the fact that we're a region so just just want to make this fine point the sales tax isn't just from people in our community people visiting our community so obviously we work as a region as a Metroplex and we have people that that travel from the south also from New Mexico so we we have and then we also have visitors so the sales tax comes from all different uh angles not not just the people who live here no that's and the conferences also I mean the conference we had last week of the week before with the architects in town I mean that's going to bring again not only Hotel activity Tech but it impacts sales tax just the overall we had three separate planning Urban right architect uh groups that were here last week and the week before so it's that's tremendous but regardless of that the fact that again August to August were already almost 20 percent higher than where we are we were I just think it's important to point that out because um you know there are these conversations people have seen inflation go and hit it but people are still in this economy which again is composed of three states two countries and and one economy people are still choosing to spend money and invest in El Paso and the sales tax is really the proof in the pudding if you will so that's reassuring and I hope that people understand that as well that our economy is a resilient and and consistent one um one of the questions that I had is again the the idea of these reserves here is not necessarily to put away funds for potential projects in the future really it's it's a rainy day fund there's emergency issues we all have seen what's happening with our climate in two Monsoon seasons and one summer um from last year but the big thrust of this is to improve our economic situation as their late swords are Bond rating so what are the steps necessary now that we've hit this 90-day threshold what are the next steps from your office and from City management where we can and where we can I don't know if it's an application process or how can we how can we Shore up that bond that Bond rating now that we've we've reached the the gold standard so the reserves is just one piece of the overall review that they do one of the things that we need to continue to make progress on we created the pension stabilization fund that's something that we're working right now on myself with the Contours office working to get an Actuarial company to come in and help us put some scenarios together so that we can begin to put together a plan to begin to address our pension in the future the unfunded pension liability is something that Bond Raiders over the last five years have really focused on they want to see even though we're at 80 funded they want to see what are you doing to get to 100 funded on your pension and your oped we have a plan in place however they want to see what's your policy what actions are you taking this council's approved back in May creating that picture stabilization fund we haven't utilized those funds yet as I mentioned we're going to work with this company that's going to come in and help provide some scenarios of things that we can do to leverage those dollars to begin to address the pension on funded liability that we have that's going to be key that's going to be a key piece because if when you read our bond reading reports yes the management is very strong policies are very strong reserves the performance is very strong the one area they're looking at is your long-term liabilities what are you doing to address those we've already started taking action now it's just going to be a matter of having that long-term plan in place so that we can actually show them and document that we prepared here's going to be the plan going forward here's how we're going to begin to address and pay down the infundit so until we have that in place and when are we looking to have that in place we're pushing for spring to have it at least drafted and typically you don't go through the boundary unless you're going to issue debt as you all have heard me say over and over we're not in a position where we need to issue debt because of what we've done over the last 12 months Bond ratings are not cheap they're 50 to 100 000 just depending upon when you do them so we obviously want to make sure that we have everything in in line before we go out and do a bond rating so that we're making sure if we're going to do it that we're going to achieve the upgrade that we're seeking and and and and then just to to I think it's important because we have a lot of outstand I mean we do have a a we do have outstanding debt that we have in our in our in our our coffers right like there is death in the city of El Paso um unfortunately a lot of misinformed people think that we have an unsustainable amount of debt uh mostly these are are sort of armchair economists um who think that be who don't really understand Municipal Finance Municipal debt on a professional level they might understand um other sort of other sort of uh activities and interests in Academia but they don't actually understand how Municipal Finance functions right they don't necessarily have Masters or phds within um accounting or within Finance or within Municipal governance right so you know I think it's important to understand that there's good debt and bad debt right and what what we have here is is something that again is no different than other communities as well but I do think it's it's important to look at that next step whether that's looking at refinancing or or what it is but to to look at how we strategically look to improve that Bond rating that we've been going for and if if I may also when there's a lot of discussion about the debt people need to remember that the debt go had gone towards the pension for the police and fire uh it went towards streets it's gone towards Transit improvements I mean these are these are some big you know needs in the community and yes it's gone for for parks in terms of the facility upgrades or new facilities libraries and and some museums so that's where the debt's gone towards it's been ought towards things that people have asked for people have wanted in this community so we need to point towards that and then also the finer point to your question mayor Pro tem the the other thing that is somewhat counterintuitive because 20 years ago you wanted a cap on your pensions and things of that nature and today they want us to remove the cap that's something that we brought forward to the council several years ago it got pushed back because of covid they got pushed back again because of the the other issues that had to be contemplated with the climate action plan the list of of signatures that were put on there but that's something that got pushed back for a vote as part of the charter so that is something that also would help the bond rating situation yeah and then final to representative Hernandez's plan I don't think it makes sense since they have a free-for-all in terms of this but looking um at obviously creating a process a policy a sort of strategic Vision towards some of these funds to use Forge of important projects you know one thing that that sticks in my head is that when I I came back to El Paso about 11 years ago there was free Wi-Fi throughout downtown El Paso throughout down I mean whether you're at San Jacinto whether you're at the the Camino Real Hotel and outside there was free Wi-Fi throughout there I don't know what has happened since that point I know that there are some places where digital El Paso does exist but there's large parts that don't right so I think of what is a project that could that could be a benefit right looking at Wi-Fi that encompasses all of downtown El Paso including Sugo Navarro would be a tremendous asset for this community would be something that think we I ideally are looking at with arba funds or not but that's just one example of a project that's there I mean we'll see what happens with the climate action plan I would have rather seen that project be funded without necessarily having to go to the voters because I think it's so important that's another conversation as well um and then obviously we're seeing you know serious and significant issues relating to the public health safety and Welfare of residents dealing with traffic and other issues not just within New Mexico and El Paso but other parts of our city as well um but I would like to make a motion to approve this item at this time I don't know if there is a second I just have a quick question um I would like to see the total all reserves um balance including I'm I'm going to assume it's 157 based on the data I had from the earlier action we took um but do you happen to have that 154.7 is the total 154 . you knew he had it 154. right I gave you an additional three three million okay so 157 million is all of the savings we have in all of our Reserve accounts including unassigned budget stabilization pension and the restricted that's everything and it actually includes the non-spendable so which we shouldn't count that because that's just inventory and it's not actual Reserve so the total excluded not Dependable is 150 million 560 000. with this action yes okay 150 million dollars it's a that's a good that's a good amount of reserves thank you you're welcome thank you for that Mr Pine yes mayor there was a motion made by mayor Pro tem short spine seconded by representative Rivera and this is to approve the recommended action to allocate the FY 2022 general fund surplus of 10 million one hundred ninety eight thousand six hundred and seventy seven dollars as follows two million five hundred and forty nine thousand six hundred 2 million 400 549 669 or 25 percent of the Surplus to operating in debt stabilization fund and seven million six hundred and forty nine thousand eight dollars or seventy five percent of surplus to unassigned reserves and Miss prime before you continue and ask for the vote just wanted to just make uh one more fine point or I don't know if it's a fine point if it's just a clarification and that is that that amount I don't want anyone to think well that's savings we can go spend it's the amount of money that's set aside now now we're at what we've deemed the gold standard we want to stay above the 90 days so we will in the future be recommending you know staying above that that means if our budget grows that number has to grow and you also could get where you're better than the other cities so that could be another argument to help us with lowering the bond rating but when Robert says and whenever I say that now you have the ability to spend more on things that you want at the end of the year let's say we had next year 10 million dollars left over and our budget has grown some and we have to we have to recommend that maybe half of it go into the fund balance well the other half now you could look at well perhaps we could use four or five million towards the little things things that matter program and some of the things that I listed that might be areas that we can fund now so I just want to be clear so there's no confusion on what we mean about now going forward we could use some of this money you can use some of the savings at the end of the year going forward not what's in this what we're calling a savings account it's a fund balance and again that helps your overall rating and it's something that an organization this size has to have not something that you want to have you have to have it it's ridiculous that we didn't have it it's uh like just again it's it's beyond comprehension that we were at 99 days in 2014. thank you representative and then we'll take the question thank you sir real quick so does that mean that uh we're seizing on the operating balance or are we going to continue to put in some funding continue to increase as I mentioned so we're working on that fund balance policy to establish what we want that sort of threshold to be if we want to keep it at the 90 days or if we want to make it 120 days whatever that amount is we're working on that so that we have that in place no different than all the other budget policies that we have that outline and specify what or how we go about for example this actually you're taking a day it's spelled out in the budget policy that says anytime we're going to use it or put money into it the council approves it we just want to have that criteria be very clear on what we want that amount to be so that the bond Raiders or whoever's looking at our budget policies sees that oh yes they're staying within what they said they're going to do that they're not going crazy they're not spending not money that they shouldn't be spending and and the reason I ask is because personally I I have to agree with representative Hernandez said this Council took some bold moves to to get to this point so I would I think it would be best if we can continue this and with with exactly with what you said I mean doesn't mean we have to stop here but I mean we can somehow work it where we can well there's a little bit yeah absolutely there's a balance right so you want to continue to save it but you also obviously we have a lot of need in the community and so there are things that we could just in the future bring back as far as recommendations okay thank you thank you very much we'll be in a position to do what you're saying in the future hopefully that's what we were explaining thank you Miss Prine yes mayor there is a motion and a second to approve the staff's recommended action on that motion call for the vote and the voting session and the motion passes unanimously thank you Mr Cortina it's very informative and without the call to the public yes sir that brings us to call to the public the El Paso city council is a local government body charged with serving all of the citizens of this city and the 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 requirement of city council all persons and attendants are expected to display civility into corn 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 May any member of the public use this form 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 three members of the public that signed up to speak the first person is Miss Wally Schick she will be followed by Ron Cuomo good afternoon Michelle you have three minutes good day God bless you God save America and today I choose because of veterans week to make the biggest announcement with the grace of God in our loveful country I announce in the future this building is going to be the place of freedom New York has the liberty statue Philadelphia has the bell and El Paso has the freedom press and everyone that has worked for the city can take something on a trap that is made with love sacrifice I am 94 in April I have to think about it and you will find it in the ink in a two-page advertisement my first thousand book this is a volume of four it's actually a thousand books goes through the fire department because they are safe my husband for four extra hour with their service that I could say malays goodbye I did not say goodbye I said I'll free the scene which means see you again and I see you again with the 4 000 books right here in this city building because it's the people building and it's paid for in 2 or 12 when they're told on the other city and I have a rock to prove it and may God bless you I won't give you more time and every one of you is invited this be the biggest fundraiser because money coming from outer city is real money City donated here it's just a circulation in every every person that wants to make money on it has the choice in our veterans are the first and I'm working on it day and night open until five o'clock in the morning and Mr Mayor in honor of you I accomplish it even if I felt like giving up and if you people take a turn because either your time is up or you fold it out help the new people know what you know so they don't make the same mistakes when you first got here and everyone makes a little mistake God bless you and my heart goes all out thank you and yes and there are prayers for you Mr Mayor you would not believe it and we are gonna have a union put you back to the USA God bless you thank you Michelle the next speaker is Ron Cuomo his topic is poor decisions by city council and city manager before good afternoon sir you'll have three minutes good afternoon Mr kamu good afternoon good afternoon sir I like to start this conversation out with discussing 2020 an ASAC committee meeting I stated at the ASAC committee meeting that the program put in place by demargo Tommy Gonzalez and Paula Powell would cause more Strays and more disease so here we are in 2022. end of month count at the shelter and 2019 was 1988. in September in September of 2022 it was 4092. that was a slight increase I would say wouldn't you and then take into consideration that they intake less live intake oh never mind anyways so for the second part of my conversation this is the box I received so I can start doing blood work and testing sending it to a lab for parvo distemper because El Paso is known across the United States to have an issue with parvo distemper they reached out to a rescue to send them blood samples they're also doing it in Maricopa County the comment was Maricopa County has only had hos for about probably a year so their host their parvo distemper is not as bad as El Paso we're on the global front that's where you guys wanted to be but not in a good way these are El Paso Animal Services shelter reports these are where I get all my information I would strongly suggest you guys actually go look at them you can Google it it's El Paso Animal Services shelter reports I warned you what was going to happen you all ignored me you're all still ignoring you were told in 2015 the shelter was too small we've done nothing we've increased the number of Strays you have 4 000 on the books and you have not put a dent in the Strays in the city of El Paso you know you keep saying you want to do stuff for the city get a shelter and take care of the the the strays and instead of paying best friends sixty three thousand dollars let's get a qualified director so we don't have to pay somebody else to fix our issues we need to go back to your plan Mr Mayor you sat over I sat over there and I heard you say you were an animal Advocate I heard you say you wanted the shelter to be at 90 the shelter's at 63 percent they kill over 300 pets last month that's not what you wanted so what are we going to do to fix it your time is up sir thank you and and call to the public is for topics not on the agenda Animal Services was a topic on the agenda so in the future we'll ask you to be more specific when you sign up so we can make sure we have you on the appropriate items thank you sir thank you the next speaker uh Regina Miller sent in a statement and asked that it'd be read into the record and it says father God thank you for the power and privilege to pay for our great city of El Paso knowing that you inhabit the prayers of your people Jesus El Paso is a city set upon a hill a bright light for all to see the star that shines from the Franklin Mountains testifies to our Beloved Community made up of a proud people who put faith in God and family first whose hearts are filled with brother brotherly love compassion and respect for another we are El Paso strong Jesus you say in your word that life and death is in the power of the tongue Lord right now please let my words not fall upon deaf ears let me speak the words that you want me to say evil flourishes when good men and women stand by and do nothing in the face of atrocities 2.4 million illegals have crossed our border since 2020 last Thursday 700 illegals crossed in one hour 867 illegals have died trying to enter this country fentanyl fentanyl is a leading cause of death among Americans ages 18 to 45 I could go on and on with all the statistics but I'm afraid that you all know this already our president and the mayor of Homeland Security my yard class all claim that the border is secure respectfully that is lie straight from the pit of expletive mayor Lisa please you have the power to ask our president to declare our great City a state of emergency some of your esteemed council members have asked you to do this also you stated to the New York Post that things get worse you will do just that Lord have mercy May release her how much worse can it get a nine-year-old girl had to have emergency surgery to repair her vocal cords because they were so damaged from her screaming while being gang raped by the cartels precious boys and girls mere children are being sold as sex slaves daily I'm here today with my close friend Emma who lost her son Andy toy fentanyl overdose my son Shane was injured while working for Customs at the border during an altercation with a waterman watermelon illegal he is unable to ever work again please Mr Mayor Lawless business enabled does not discriminate it can touch everyone for the love of God don't wait until God forbid one of your love becomes a victim please please please all of El Paso is begging you Mr Mayor do something declare El Paso a state of emergency amen Virginia Miller mayor that concludes call to the public today thank you Miss pride and thank you for everyone that came in and put a letter and with that we have a motion adjourn 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 November 8 2022 is adjourned at 12 35 pm