give me one second okay baby good morning everyone i'd like to uh start by um thanking everybody for being here you know this is a day that uh we can never forget it's a day that will be in the minds of all the citizens of el paso but also in the minds of all the families so it's important that we continue to remember how the members of our community on august 3rd 2019 law enforcement agencies were responding to an active shooter at the walmart at sila vista mall you know and and i think that uh we all heard the news we all heard the news flash from all the news agencies of uh an active shooter but we didn't really know the magnitude of it the gunman traveled 10 hours and i still think about that someone had that much hatred that they would travel 10 hours to take the lives of 23 members of our beautiful community you know we have to remember that the lost the lives that were lost the pain in our hearts and in our minds we have to remember the families and continue to remember the families we ask you to join us right now in a moment of silence to remember our 23 loved ones and remember the families and always keep the family members and your thoughts and prayers thank you i would like to bring your attention to the carriage bell you know the bell is rang for funerals for memorial services and today we want to thank represent molinar for bringing the bell as we did last year today our city cleric ms prine will read the names of the 23 and we save victims they were innocent people having a beautiful saturday so people from el paso people from our neighboring city that were here and join our community members of city council general from mexico mauricio ibrazi ponce de leon thank you for joining us as we know that our sister city and juarez had the same impact that we did lost some of their members some of their loved ones from their community each soul will be read off by miss prine everybody will ring the bell as miss pine will read the names so miss prine thank you good morning i'll read the name of each victim as the mayor said and then each individual person will ring the bell for each name we'll begin with jordan anchandle [Music] andre pablo ancondo [Music] arturo venavides leonard sipeda campos [Music] raul flores [Music] maria flores [Music] maribel hernandez loya [Music] jorge calvillo garcia alexander gerhart hoffman david alva johnson luis alfonso juarez [Music] gloria irma marquez [Music] margie record javier rodriguez [Music] teresa sanchez de fritas [Music] angelina silva eglesby [Music] juan de los velasquez [Music] fuentes [Music] [Music] mendoza marquez adolfo cerros hernandez [Music] sara ester regalado monreal [Music] ivan filiberto manzano [Music] thank you mr pringle again i do um there'll be a lot of things going on with on our community today and tomorrow to honor the lives are the victims and again i keep saying victims because they were victims there were innocent people being with their family on a sun on a beautiful saturday morning so again i want to take this opportunity to let's all help heal the families and i'd like to again for a minute i want us all to kind of hold hands people the media police everybody pulled hands in unison because we want to let them know that we'll all remember them together as a community and they will never be forgotten thank you and may god bless every one of them their families in this beautiful city of el paso thank you hmm [Music] foreign [Music] my [Music] my [Music] [Applause] is foreign [Music] oh [Music] is [Music] is [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] bye [Music] ah [Music] oh [Music] me [Music] me [Music] me [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] good morning mayor yes good morning everyone um good morning this is a meeting of the el paso city council for tuesday august 2nd 2022 present and presiding in council chambers is mayor lisa along with mayor pro tem shortline representative vanello representative hernandez representative molinar representative salcido representative rivera and representative lisa rega it is 9 11 a.m and now will everyone please silence their electronic devices so as not to disturb the meeting and rise for the invocation delivered by police chaplain joe morata good morning good morning sir if you care to pray with us this morning i would ask that we bow our heads together in reverence and let's pray heavenly father we call upon you today to look down upon these proceedings and bless our elected and appointed officials with the wisdom to discern the true heart of the issues that are before them today give them clarity and finding meaningful and workable solutions solutions that will do the most good for the greatest number of people god we ask on this difficult eve of the anniversary of a tragic day in our community when many suddenly lost their lives and and individual lives were changed forever let healing and comfort flow from you into this community continue to touch those families and loved ones who are still grieving and those that are recovering from that day be with them in comfort strength and peace let there be peace in our city in our neighborhoods and between neighbors give those who are mourning today comfort to the weary rest to the sick healing to the hopeless that they would have hope we also ask heavenly father that you bless our educators our administrators our school and college staff and every student at every level of education that you bless them as they return to the work of learning finally let your hand be on all of our first responders bless them and their families and in your name we pray amen amen dr bernard will you lead us in the pledge sir please thank you thank you and um his chaplain talked about that tomorrow will be three years that someone drove 10 hours to the beautiful city of el paso we lost 23 lives but there's a lot of people that will continue to suffer so i'd like to have a moment of silence for the 23 lives but also the people that were wounded that have to live with this and also the families that we will continue to be together we remember it's three years tomorrow but i know that we remember every day of the year high el paso was victimized by a senseless act of violence and will continue to unite and be together and remember every day of the year and have prayers to remember the families and the victims and know that you will never be forgotten thank you and i know there'll be a lot of memorial services started today and tomorrow the city will have numerous ones there'll be one at ponder park county judge will have the healing gardens consul general tomorrow we'll have it at his at the consulate so um let's keep everybody in our thoughts thank you miss prine thank you that brings us to the mayor's proclamations the first proclamation is el paso strong day thank you mayor proclamation city of el paso texas whereas el paso was forever changed on august 3rd 2019 when a gunman traveled over 650 miles to our beautiful city and went on a racially motivated shooting rampage that claimed the lives of 23 men women and children and whereas courageously risking their own lives a number of individuals attempt to usher shoppers employees to safety and protect others in line in the line of fire and whereas in the aftermath of that tragic day el paso has demonstrated the spirit of their community was far too resilient to be broken by one disgraceful act of hate alongside stories of heroism during the massacre were reports of everyday people lining up at the hospitals to donate blood offering profound compassion support and comfort to the surviving families and rallying behind the mantra el paso strong and whereas the incident was a devastating shock to the city that is so renowned for its welcoming hospitality and close-knit sense of community three years have passed since that terrible event made headlines across all across the world but the passage of time has not diminished diminished a tremendous sense of grief felt over the loss of 23 innocent lives nor has it lessened the resolve of the people of el paso to stand together against the insidious forces of hatred prejudice and violence and whereas the city of el paso pays tribute to the victims of the mass shooting that took place on august 3rd 2019 and offers heartfelt condolences to the families and friends who carry their memories now therefore therefore be proclaimed at the mayor and council of the city of el paso that august 3rd shall be known as el paso strong day thank you mayor thank you representative the next proclamation is blood donors appreciation day proclamation for the city of el paso texas whereas in our community there's 175 units of blood per day for the protection of patients and we have approximately eighteen thousand blood donors in our community who are heroes by giving of themselves to save the lives of others and whereas our region's only blood bank violent formerly known as united blood services is overwhelmed by a constant shortage of blood and whereas shortly after the august 3rd 2019 mass shooting at walmart our community pulled together and donated more than one thousand units of blood within the first weekend and whereas blood has a limited shelf life and the need for repeated blood donations and is constant in order to keep the blood supply above critical levels and citizens who are in good health and capable of donating blood continue to step forward and donate regularly and whereas all civic and service organizations and businesses are urged to donate blood if they have not already done so to form blood donor groups to provide blood for ourselves and for others and whereas one of the best ways to remember the 23 lives lost on august 3rd 2019 this week and at every opportunity is to donate blood and respond in the same volume as our community did in early august of 2019 and whereas we appreciate and give thanks to all the blood donors in our community who continue to provide this simple and life-saving donation now therefore be proclaimed by the mayor and council of the city of el paso that august 2nd 202 shall be known as blood donors appreciation day thank you mayor brookton good morning good morning members members of the community my name is thiago silva i work for vitalent formerly known as united blood services your only our only blood bank in town first i would like to thank you for making today blood donors appreciation day and to thank you for welcoming us to have this blood drive today from 10 to 2 p.m right here in your home in your house at the breezy way i would like to invite you and the whole community of el paso to come and give blood with one blood donation you're helping to save three lives right here in el paso it's the blood in the shelves that saves lives and it's because of you because of your blood donation that this community our community becomes stronger thank you very much thank you thank you and the final proclamation is professional engineers day good morning proclamation of the city of el paso whereas licensed professional engineers are dedicated to applying scientific knowledge mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical societal and commercial problems while holding paramount the public health safety and welfare and whereas in the city of el paso licensed professional engineers have made significant contributions on a local and national scale and whereas the city of el paso's economy has grown in part because its licensed professional engineers are instrumental to our community and whereas the texas society of professional engineers is an organization founded in nineteen thirty four that represents the interest of more than thirty one thousand licensed professional engineers and those on the path to licensure and whereas august third twenty twenty two has been declared professional engineers day by the texas society of professional engineers in conjunction with the national society of professional engineers who show the highest level of dedication to their profession in all 50 states and u.s territories and now therefore be a proclaimed by the mayor and the council of the city of el paso that august 3rd 2022 shall be known as professional engineer engineers day signed by honorable mayor oscar lisa with the group like to say a few words or engineers shy who's got who's got the short straw good morning mayor good morning members community i'd like to thank you on behalf of the texas society professional engineers in the engineering community of el paso for the proclamation as the proclamation states we're 31 000 plus and we're glad to be here in the community and help the community grow thank you thank you and you know with um all the engineers uh the city of el paso has some wonderful engineers and without their capabilities and their studies and their degree and and their ability it would be really tough to do what we do today so uh thank you for all the engineers i know we have a couple of them standing behind you and um miss mike good morning mayor council thank you for this recognition and yeah the engineers typically are introverts standing way back there i'm like okay could at least stand up so thank you for this recognition and we're proud to work for the city of el paso and thank you for what you all do thank you very much [Applause] i'm going to do um best prank yes sir then next we have the mayor's recognition and this this morning the honoree is miss wally scheck ms check god bless every one of you we make god safe america what a surprise please autograph it for everyone down the line i want to give this to my publisher mr mrs fenton who offered me the column by the first name and i say i want to earn it and i want to earn it today i am a official yellow rose of texas made 1971 by governor schmidt and when i had the advertisement the first time i wanted to put down the yellow rules of texas from el paso and they couldn't do it so please i want to give i'm going to present with you to you the star on the mountain and on the star in the mountain award presented to wally sheck in recognition of her accomplishments as a published author and her dedication unwavering commitment to the city of el paso community through her advocacy and the love for the county and the city god bless america signed oscar lisa and the city council of el paso i love you from all my heart i brought you a special mask for the agenda when they gave you a hard time wearing it i did not give trouble because i don't give up a mask meshech i wear it because i'm better looking when i have it on i'm shaking like a leaf in honor of my journey oh my god i love you [Applause] i've been known now as the yellow rules of texas from el paso and i'm gonna make you money like you never have seen before move to recess i moved to recess there's a motion and the second teresa is a city council meeting all in favor yes anyone opposed the meeting is captioning not over here near the available where you got it all right miss brian i think we are ready okay i'm not sure is there 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 37 a.m that brings us to the consent agenda all matters listed under the consent agenda will be considered by city council to be routine and will be enacted by one motion unless separate discussion is requested by council members prior to the vote members of the audience may ask questions regarding items on the consent agenda when the vote has been taken if an item has not been called out for separate discussion the item has been approved council may however reconsider any item at any time during the meeting and mayor potem we don't have any revisions this morning all right um is there a motion to appreciate proof second there's a motion made by representative rivera seconded by representative salcido to approve the consent agenda on that motion call for the vote end the voting session and the motion passes unanimously that brings us to page number six to item number 20. and this is discussion in action that the city council declares the expenditure of district 8 discretionary funds and an amount not to exceed 2500 for the children's camp program at the el paso museum of history serves a municipal purpose of enhancing quality of life representative thank you mayor i was very happy to sponsor this item for the history museum they were able to call in half students this summer at the beginning of the summer this event already happened and it we had a wonderful turnout i was able to attend the last performance they had a performance for the parents and it was very well received they're excited and eager to do the same program next year so it's my pleasure thank you thank you do you have a motion motion to approve second there is a motion made by representative lizard seconded by representative anilo to approve item number 20 on that motion call for the vote you'd rather do 23 okay all right in the voting session and the motion passes with seven affirmative votes representative hernandez not present miss frank um we want to do uh item 23 before 22 please yes sir thank you item 23 is an update from the el paso county's planning and development department and camino real regional mobility authority regarding the pelicano widening project good morning mayor and council ivette hernandez with the capital improvement department i'm here to introduce salt would it be engineer ever hernandez yes sir city engineer i'm here to introduce sal alonso he is the associate director of the planning and development department with the county and we'll be providing a brief update on the pelicano project thank you thank you good morning mayor city council sal alonso associate director of planning development i want to thank you for having us here this morning on this presentation the county uh as we move forward would like to provide updates on their major transportation projects as you know when there's a major transportation project under construction it does affect the public and other agencies the budding municipalities this project before you is the pelicanal drive winding project located in the far east side as we move forward the county will be providing updates on their construction projects such as the john hayes extension and darrington in the near future but this item for you is the polygon drive whitening project a located in the party side with me today is uh our partners from the crma mr raymond davis and our group from the jec uh mr edgar pino and referral donaius uh we'll be happy to answer any questions uh the council may have uh throughout the project or if you would like to take your questions to the very end uh next slide please okay thank you just to give you a quick overview of the project uh uh as mentioned the the project management is through the communal real uh mobility uh the design for this project was the cea design group construction management atkins global and the construction contractor for this project is drug construction or i'm sorry dark concrete and the contract amount was a little under 22 million the scope of work uh is from the luke 275 all the way to darington road it's a three mile stretch at the end of the day we will be providing a six lane divided roadway uh with bike lanes and hiking bike trails sidewalks illumination landscaping and storm water management within this corridor in previous years with any small rainy bag peligano would be underwater so we would have to utilize our own horses to pump water out or attack that so once these improvements are completed we'll be able to mitigate those uh concerns um just to give you another uh point uh during the construction when we started this um we we did run into some some uh some delays some of those being uh obviously the kobe 19 uh the crew and materials availability and unforeseen control um utility complex for this corridor possible future delays maybe cement availability the utility unforeseen on areas that we haven't started trenching and then the materials availability as of today right now the possible future delays there's no nothing major uh to provide i think right now we're we're in a good position as far as cement and the material availability but obviously if things change that would be something that we would provide and update to the public and also to our commissioners court and through city council as we move forward next likely uh this gives you an overall um limits of the project the different colors are identified for different uh segments of the road uh the yellow portion is a portion that we complete it uh with the uh coffee praying and it's open to the public uh the next milestone that we're working on is milestone in the in the red we're targeting uh september 22 followed by the purple segment which is the westbound to airport to darington and then the last segment would be the baby blue the county is pushing the contractor to be able to get both segments in red and yellow completed this is the corridor that we have heavy traffic on a day-to-day basis so with the school the neighborhoods and the amount of traffic that is is in this area that's what we put those two as a topical priorities to get those open to the public and have both lanes open on both sides of the direction exactly again the one of the goals that the county wanted to do is provide a public outreach and public notice to the municipalities and and to the public as of today we presented our first presentation this one before you back in june we just finished presenting uh this presentation um just yesterday to commission sport on on a follow up but we also have presented to the community mobility crm may board back in june 8 the transportation policy board at the mpo on june 17th and horizon city on earlier last month at july 12th today we're presenting this presentation to city council and we're looking to present this again to tpack tomorrow afternoon uh the last partners that we we do want to present this and just to give an update because they are affected by this project is the sisd of the neighboring school uh that that data has yet to be determined uh we're still working on them to get us in that in their next available board meeting next slide please uh just to show some activities that have been completed as of today is the main segment between joel battle and sunfire i'm currently working on the flex base installation of about 75 percent complete we prime code portions of that runway from gunfire to the textile driveway uh we have relocated some utilities that have been uh within our right-of-way and we've also demoed the uh median right at the intersection of perigano only 375. that one is a key in this project is because right now we have bottled bottleneck at intersection and we're trying to get that open back up uh to alleviate some of that uh ingestion at that intersection um other items that we work on uh between sunfire and air coop and that would be setting the rebar we're about 25 complete uh and then eric group uh to uh darrington uh we're finishing installing the flight space uh there were some water loops that we had to also install for our classical water utility and uh we're also setting rebar for concrete pavement and that's at about 50 next site please here are just some some pictures identified uh this is we're looking um westbound from sunfire to luther this is one of the segments that we just finished uh placing oil and the next step after this is providing the bomb breaker or hvac and then rebar and then concrete be ready for coffee next slide please uh this this this picture is looking still heading west on pelicano and this is taken just roughly for the alamo drafthouses looking to nuclear 75 there's a portion where we're finishing the base uh once we get the base completed we'll be attacking the oil and then uh at hmac rebar and then for the segment again this is the one of the critical uh segments that we want to get completed uh that way we'll be able to alleviate a lot of traffic on this area uh next cycles uh this is the median that we had uh and i mentioned earlier uh this is the one that where we have narrowed down the intersection uh this is has been completed and we're trying to get that uh forward and back an operation that where we could um open up the intersections to what the bottleneck that is uh we're looking here eastbound on peligano this is a portion where we have already attacked it we have already provided the bond breaker or hmac and we're now placing rebar the next step after this would be concrete so we're getting ready to for uh good sections of concrete here in the near future uh next slide uh this is just like a forecast on what we're targeting to get completed by the end of this month uh and that's uh one of the items is against to penalize the installation of the base uh again this is looking from sunfire to luke 375 install a hot mix and get the rebar installed between soundfire and airpoop we would be vandalizing the rebar installation and then from air coop to darington again it would be insulation and rebar concrete pavement some installation of the hmac where we installed the water loops and start the excavation of our one of our last pawns that are is needed for this project uh next slide picture um that concludes this update that i have for the city council in regards to the pelican whitening i'll be happy to answer any questions may have for me but i i do want to thank you again for allowing me to present this morning i want to thank mr san rodriguez and yvette hernandez for uh helping me place this item up before you so hope you haven't answered any questions representative i'll just say uh i want to thank you for the update i think it's really important that you know our partners are letting us know what they're doing i really appreciate you taking the time to inform us um i do apologize i'm not very familiar with where the county line and the city line ends and stops in this area if you could clarify that for me is 375 that dividing line right here sure so so this area um right at the intersection of blue 375 and peligano there is a small portion that i think is just up to the perfect turn uh i don't know if they could bring up the uh the exhibit i think um i guess if you could bring up the right there that median i think that probably oh you're a mute sorry sorry thank you um so just looking at this picture this is probably the best one because i don't believe i have an aerial to show the city limits my apologies for that but we're looking at roughly where the orange barrels are at that's where the city limit is pretty close to and then um we're budding texas right away of the loop but that's roughly where the city limits is roughly it might be a few hundred feet roughly where these uh uh orange barricades are and then the remain remaining portion of the legano project is within the county limits okay well um i'm sure you're covering a little bit of city ground and i do appreciate it i know something times with funding things can be tense um so i really appreciate you you know taking this whole project on um and coming to update us again it doesn't happen a lot that we're speaking with our partners and so we really appreciate it when you take the time yeah you're awesome and and we we do do uh um we do work with other agencies especially apostle water utilities um we have been uh entas on every project that we have where there's railway project to to get them involved uh early enough because the last thing we want is have a brand new road and then you typically come come back in uh six months later and then start studying pavement so we've been working with el paso water utilities our partners as well on coordination if they need to extend water or sewer lines and all that but uh declined to share that with you as well thank you representative rodriguez good morning and thank you mr ascano am i pronouncing that correctly yeah alonso sorry yeah i could barely see it's really far away but anyway um thank you so much for coming for this update actually these streets that you're mentioning are right on the border of um district six so like for example this picture that you're showing on the other side of the intersection that is the city that is um district six so i really appreciate you coming and updating me because this street has been a headache for my constituents um to the north where john is that's that's district six again um uh i would just ask if you could please email me this presentation and then also on your july completed list would you be do you have a map of all those streets because i'm trying to visualize sunfire to joe battle and i know they run parallel to each other so i'm not seeing that in my mind how you're wha what that is um i'll be happy to send this presentation to you and if if i could have somebody uh going to that slide uh i think it's the third slide in the presentation uh i'll be happy to provide a more detailed map that way you could exactly know where these streets are at but in this presentation i mean this slide in front of you um you see 375 um then towards i guess uh almost three parts of the of the yellow line and the red line you see a north and south roadway that that would be mission ridge uh halfway between that you see the school charts in the middle again i'm talking about within the segment uh within the red and the yellow and the mission ridge corridor uh that the school right there and that's where sun fire sits so i apologize for not enabling all these side streets but uh i'll be happy to mail this presentation and i'll add a more of a detailed map showing where all these the sunfire street is the air coop and downtown and so forth okay yeah i would appreciate just to have that for reference um if we have any questions we're able to to reference back to this um and then since i have you here i have a question on um vista north of this there is an intersection there we're trying to figure out how we can get a street light there we've been told as it's county county saying it city but there's great need for a street light on vista sol in paseo grande right by tire club okay let me look into that because that that area is one of those um it could be seen in cookie county i i need to verify that i know portions of uh charington uh and the intersection of peace of the soul that's that's county uh but where you're representing grande i think that is that is the county it is in the county and that's at the inner city okay now i know where i'm talking about sorry i said that is the portion within the county and that is at the intersection of grande and uh vista uh vista villa so i believe we have done a traffic impact uh analysis to see if the traffic signal light was warranted uh a while back um let me verify what the outcome was on that one but we'll definitely take a look into that and on that same intersection there's a lot of signs like construction signs real estate signs and those signs are also obscuring the view and so there is actually a lot of accidents there i don't know if there need if a traffic light is warranted maybe stop signs i don't know i'm not a traffic engineer but if you can help me with that that's something that again that you know we need to do something in that intersection because there is a lot of safety concerns there i am making a note about that one but no we have received calls about those uh billboards and all that um within as long as they're winning right away we have a right to remove them once they place those signs within private property and then that's where our authority ends but uh we'll be happy to reach out to the property owners to see if they could assist us on either setting those billboards back or removing them completely okay let me let me look into that and i'll provide another thing okay so yeah i'll just look forward to getting this presentation and hopefully having your contact info on there and my office will reach out to you to further talk about that intersection you thank you thank you no no other questions mayor sam rodriguez um chief operations officer sorry vet um i just want to clarify a couple things and and sal thank you for doing the presentation today um i'd like to maybe see if we can do a joint presentation in the future to discuss the north-south corridors that you're all working on the extension of john hayes um and some of those critical infrastructures as as uh city council has uh authorizes to uh we'll be presenting a bond ordinance that's going to include the mont wood extension i understand you all have started the design on that project as well as well so it's a really good collaboration that's happening between the city and the county uh further on this particular road you know the city didn't have any any right-of-way along this because you tie right into text out right away on on this particular project but definitely in a future presentation uh do a full collaboration on a presentation that will cover all the transportation improvements that you all are planning as well as the funding sources um as well that you all are using on those projects because there's a lot of coordination that happened that's happening through the mpo as well thanks al sorry vet thank you sam i really appreciate it again this is very this is on the border of district six in district five so any information or any collaboration that we can get we would really appreciate it thank you are there any more questions counsel no no miss prime representative lisa would counsel like to recess for mass transit it's 10 o'clock yes motion to recess second there's a motion and a second to recess the city council meeting all in favor anyone opposed the meeting is in recess at 10 o'clock a.m morning this is the mass transit department board meeting for august 2nd 2022 in chambers and present and presiding is um he's not here so the board members present in council chambers are board member anello hernandez molinar salcido rodriguez rivera and lisa there are there's no public comment and it is 1001 am all matters listed under the consent agenda will be considered by mass transit department board to be routine and will be enacted by one motion unless separate act separate discussion is requested by board members prior to the vote members of the audience may ask questions regarding items on the consent agenda when the vote has been taken if an item has not been called out for separate discussion the item has been approved the mass transit department board may however reconsider any item at any time during the meeting is there a motion to approve the consent agenda motion made by board member rivera seconded by board member molinar and the pulling is open um rodriguez yes i can get you thank you the consent agenda has been approved not present as board member schwartzbind and board shared lisa next item on the agenda is item three and that is in management updates sun metro state of the system presentation from nelson nygard miss might good morning council today ellen smythe chief transit officer today i have with me james gomez he's with a consulting firm nelson nygard nelson nygard is an expertise is in the transit field and mr gomez is a principal with the agency you may recall and we are working on a city-wide um routing plan and so it's broken into several phases phase one is the state of the system so his report today is going to let you know where we are today as a benchmark and then later this year or in january his next phase will be recommendations on that for improvements to the system so i'd like to introduce james gomez thank you mr smith good morning council members thank you for having me you know my name is james gomez i'm with nelson eight we're a sustainable transportation planning firm and i am excited to provide to you our first of several updates for sun metro rising it's a comprehensive operational analysis of the sun metro system next slide please right so the first thing we're going to do is provide an overview of the study and go over the timeline which is about 14 months and then we'll provide an update on some of the key findings from the first phase of the study followed by some of the next steps next slide please all right so i'll go over some of the key objectives some of these were defined with the request for proposal and then we refined them a bit during the project kickoff meeting the first of which is to gain a comprehensive understanding of the existing system also looking at some of the the past patterns of how ridership has been evolving how the travel patterns as well as the demographics within the city have been changing this study has a comprehensive outreach process so we're going to begin going out to the community over the next couple of months and we'll do that at multiple points within the study and in addition to talking to riders as well as stakeholders in the community we've also been in conversation with different members of sun metro staff including bus operators there are some very strong elements of the sun metro system that we're looking to to build upon and try and improve the overall system around these services and those include the brio network which is growing and they'll be in a fourth line later this year as well as the streetcar ultimately some of our recommendations are going to focus on making the service easier to understand for riders more convenience and more accessible to the community next slide please and here's a larger look at the overall project timeline right now we're just wrapped up the first phase of the project so that is the existing conditions analysis we kicked off the the project with a meeting that included the executive team for sun metro as well as the planning staff members of the mpo and other departments and the purpose of that was to refine those goals which i just shared over the past several months we've been examining the system going out and driving every single corridor looking at uh historical patterns um as well as those different demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the city and we also conducted a rider survey on board buses back in may so that helped us understand a lot about the existing riders some of their different characteristics all of that information is is detailed within the state of the system report report which was just wrapped up a couple of weeks ago and and that should be available for your reading it's a pretty lengthy document but it also has a a very concise executive summary over the past month or so we've been collaborating with members of the sun metro team to develop initial service concepts so we're taking all the information that we learned over the past several months and developing some initial ideas from these ideas we're going to refine them and take them out to the community over the next couple of months the second deliverable for this project will be a peer review and best practices report so that's going to be looking at several different cities that are comparable as well as aspirational transit systems to see what are some lessons learned from other places within within the country all right next slide please all right so before getting into some of the key findings over the the past couple of months through the analysis that we've conducted i want to just talk about some of the major investments that symmetra the city of el paso has made over the past several years and most of these either are major capital projects or significant service investments including the brio network which currently stands at three different lines which cover most of the city the fourth line the montana line will be open later on this year as well as the very recent operations center seven years old still seems brand new and then the city also has a very strong network of transit centers located throughout the system that act as the endpoints for the breels but also with connection points with other routes and of course the streetcar which operates three days a week is a a pretty strong investment that we think the city could also look to expand in the future next slide please all right so back in march of 2020 uh every transit system within the country had an unprecedented decline in ridership and some metro was was no different but since then we've seen a very healthy increase in ridership that has been growing and now we stand at just around 63 percent of the pre-pandemic levels and this goes for weekday and saturday service sunday service was discontinued in december of 2020 due to very low ridership but it has since been restored about a month ago so we're going to be monitoring the ridership on sunday service as well next slide please all right i mentioned earlier how the the brio network is is a really strong foundation for this system currently consists of three different lines and what we've seen over the past couple years is that many riders are shifting from some of the local routes to the brio routes as they start to understand those more and they see some of the advantages that the brio routes offer in terms of better frequency better amenities faster service and currently we're seeing that within the the brio routes three barrel lines as well as the 59 eastside connector which is an express route from the downtown transit center to the east side transit center or sierra vista area those four routes constitute about 60 percent of the total ridership so they make up the a high percentage of the overall ridership and we think that'll only increase in the future as the brio montana line comes online one thing to note is that many of the other existing local routes don't operate nearly as frequently as these brio services which operate about 15 minutes throughout the day on weekdays about 40 percent of the the routes throughout the system operate hourly which is which is not really a convenient level of service next slide please the transit centers that are situated throughout the city provide a good connection point for for different bus routes both brio and non-brio they are comfortable locations for passengers provide shade air conditioning as well as restrooms and they're also very important for bus operators to be able to to use those facilities at as they take breaks throughout the day next slide please i want to also talk about system ridership and then we'll go into a little more more detail on specific locations but as a whole a lot of the system ridership is located in and around some of these major connection points the transit centers but there are also several other destinations that generate a lot of usage including the el paso community college via verde campus of course utep the port of entries have a lot of foot traffic and people are connecting from to bus routes at those locations the medical center during the week has strong ridership and then many of the shopping destinations throughout the city as well have high ridership and this map just shows some of the darker colors indicate where you have the highest concentration of ridership and those tend to be focused on many of the brio corridors slide please all right the next graphic shows service intensity in comparison with ridership so we mapped out in addition to where the ridership is at we also looked at the level of service for every bus stop across the system and with by comparing those two we're able to see where there are instances of high ridership but low service so where there is a perhaps a need to increase service levels and some of those corridors are shown in orange and each one of those dots represent a bus stop some of those corridors include george dieter pebble hills edgemere zaragoza most of these are on the east side of the the city they have anywhere from 60 to 75 to 90 minutes service and based on the ridership that we're seeing in those areas they likely warrant a higher level of service some of the bus stops in blue indicate where there's a high level of service but not necessarily high ridership and that should be okay because in most of these cases you have other stops along those corridors that do generate high ridership next slide please i mentioned earlier in the presentation that back in may we conducted a survey on board buses and we heard from a lot of different writers different ages different purposes about why they use the system as well as just some of their their individual characteristics we found out that about one quarter of the riders uh live in siddharth this is during the school year it that percentage drops off a little bit during the summer time but there's a strong number of students as well as employees who are coming over and taking the sun metro system to get to their various destinations whether it's workplaces shopping or school we do find that employment and shopping are two of the the biggest trip purposes that concert about half of the total trips and many of the sun metro riders have been using the service for a long time and use it very frequently throughout the week anywhere from five to six days a week we have seen an increase also and the number or the percentage of writers who are using the passes so that's a really good thing because that speeds up service by them using a day pass or a weekly pass rather than dropping in cash every trip and uh the pers about one out of six riders are uh senior citizens which is higher a bit higher than the uh population uh share uh for this city as well as the county and um the next slide shows this satisfaction levels based on different characteristics of this service so we asked writers if they were how they felt about these these different characteristics and some of the things that they're most happy about are the safety on buses the fare structure as well as the pricing the frequency and the overall amenities that are provided by the brio system on the the lower end of of this chart we have hours of service as well as on-time performance are some of the things that writers would would like to see improved next slide please all right so to conclude the presentation i'd like to touch upon some of the key challenges and opportunities and this is really going to help set the stage for some of the concepts that we're working on right now the first of which is the development patterns the city has some major challenges and barriers not only the mountain ranges the highways fort bliss but but many barriers that the city has to navigate and work around and and these are not unique to transit just transportation in general but it makes it a bit challenging to design a overall transit system around these things uh so it requires some creative solutions in terms of route design many of the routes are are very intuitive direct easy to understand such as the brios but some routes particularly those on on the far east side have larger loops so they're less direct for riders and a little bit harder to understand for for a first time user and those are some of the routes that we're looking to to modify in the future next slide please the bus stop amenities along the brio corridors the stations are are very comfortable provide information good lighting and ticket vending machines but many of the many of the regular bus stops don't have a high level of amenities currently there are shelters are about 20 of the overall bus stops but but that's a something that we'll be also looking at closely where there are opportunities to install more shelters where it's warranted based on ridership levels currently downtown the car does not operate from monday through wednesday but there is route 4 which is a regular bus route that that meanders through downtown it provides connectivity but but it operates in a less direct manner it's in approximately every 30 minutes so we're also going to be looking at ways to enhance the mobility downtown looking at at all options not just bus but but also street cars as a possibility there next slide please service frequency and i hinted upon this earlier that the brio lines are very frequent uh you don't even have to refer to a schedule you can just walk out to a station and know that it's going to be there the same goes for for some of the other routes but but the vast majority of the routes in the system uh you would have to look at a schedule they run hourly or or less frequent than that and that's something where by looking at to consolidate different routes we can improve the frequency level across the system there are there are very few gaps across the system but there are some redundancies where we have overlap on on certain corridors and that's something else we'll be examining next slide please so sunday service as i mentioned earlier was suspended back in december of 2020 due to low ridership but it came back in june on a slight number of routes and as more operators become available that service will also be increased and we'll keep a close eye on that and then the funding options are something that we'll be looking at through the peer review process which is the the next phase in the of the project next slide all right so the peer review and best practices analysis we're going to look at three different sets of cities some of those are comparable and these are cities that the city frequently uses when comparing themselves with others albuquerque tucson san antonio but then also some aspirational systems those that have uh more frequent uh different modes of of transit including phoenix salt lake and denver to see what we can can gather from them and many of these places i've i've worked in already and then we're also looking at several transit agencies in the state of texas to identify potential funding new funding opportunities and we'll be back in a couple of months to provide an update on the initial network concepts and then we'll be going out to the community so i'm happy to answer any questions you might have about either the presentation or uh the timeline or next steps thank you thank you um rep hernandez you have a question thank you uh mr gomez thank you for that presentation um very exciting for me transit conversation um so as part of this study um i i just wanted to share with you some of the challenges that i've heard of and may help you as you're developing your objectives and the outcomes of this study i'm happy he recognizes bus shelters are limited um it's something that is becoming more and more of a pressing issue given the extreme heat that we have in our community and so often when i'm i'm driving through through the district i i see a lot of folks in the scorching sun and it makes me feel awful and so i would really like to understand what could be the proposed funding mechanisms and how we can reach a go benchmarking to get 50 75 and what how to quantify what the total amount would be to reach that so that's that's one of my first concerns the second concern i have [Music] is how do we um expand the streetcar um first make it fully uh you know operational um monday through monday through sunday more hours and then like how do we grow that um so that it becomes sustainable without any subsidies any subsidies from the city general fund and then what could the potential expansion of the streetcar look like i'm gonna throw out the street texas um and i'm going to throw out the whole hospital district near the medical center of americas because you know we've already seen some progress with txdot and the expansion of alameda and the improvements there and they are incorporating the streetcar as part of a potential future expansion and so when they're looking at multimodal use and and how we can make it more professionally pedestrian friendly one of the things we heard from the community clearly along texas to alameda is can we expand the streetcar to get from the medical center um the the paw foster school of medicine and then back to downtown uh where there's more housing and so those are things that the community would like to see i know i don't know if that is something that the scope of the project would would take place but i know you mentioned the streetcar so i'm just know that this that's something that's very important to my constituents in the area and then lastly i wanted to bring up my concern just a moment here related to what you're seeing in other nations so we're happy that sunday service is back i'm seeing that more ridership is during the week and and while i'm seeing the data i'm not really understanding how do we improve ridership to increase ridership so i feel like a lot of our reaction has been due to the current state of our existing ridership and i feel like the conversation needs to move towards well how do we increase ridership not just react to what's here but in but motivated and encourage more ridership and then one other thing i didn't see on on the study is um navigation systems i am getting a lot of complaints and and i don't i didn't hear anything about the lift is the lift excluded from this is included it's included okay um for example this past week we're at an elementary school i have a constituent who lives approximately maybe a quarter mile from the elementary school and the i guess the navigation systems that are being used will take you up and around school's right here she lives right here it'll take you here here here here all the way around all the way around just to get here and so it doesn't make sense that we have and no one else is being picked up there's just one person it doesn't make sense in how we are using our navigation system to get to something that is right next door and it's incredibly it's incredibly frustrating for me to hear these complaints about what navigation system are they using is it is it outdated does it need to be updated is it is it a training issue lots of little simple complaints that i'm getting that i just feel you know in the 21st century as a 20th largest city in this community they deserve better from our transit system there's there's much more room for opportunity and growth i've seen so much improvement um now with with our new leader in that role mrs smythe and so i'm very excited to see the outcomes of this but i wanted to share those concerns and sentiments because it's becoming more frequent that we're hearing about complaints about better system and so um the the amount of money we're expending on this we got to do it right so mr gomez thank you for listening to my concerns if you have any feedback i just wanted to share that with you absolutely i can comment on each one of those things so so bus stops absolutely we'll be taking a close look at that seeing opportunities again for where new shelters can be installed and different funding mechanisms to help with those those capital investments for the the sunday service that's something that we identified very early on that is is a huge need even though ridership was low in the past um it tends to be low across the the country uh comp compared to weekday and saturday levels of service so through our peer review we'll also examine how some of the the other cities uh what what the percentage of sunday they see over uh versus the rest of the days of the week and um we agreed that it's something that is very important and we understand that sun metro is looking to expand that as more operators become available for the the lyft service that's something that so far we've only looked at travel patterns but we can also take a look into some of the technologies for that as well and then the street car is one that we aren't really scoped to look at expansion of the system but we are looking at uh how to expand the schedule and and different variations of that route it currently consists of a uptown and downtown loot and then we're in conversation with the consultant team as well as city staff who are managing the uptown downtown study to seeing how it fits into that those possibilities as well i i did also want to mention we talked about this during our budget cycle yesterday i'm not sure we're prepared for that but um as part of the surveys uh were there any conversations about veterans or that may need support or services to get to hospitals for the onboard survey yes that was not a question that we asked about okay no the answer is my question i'm just trying to to get more data around how do we get how do we spread the word and then how do we get veterans um feedback on what their need is to get to the new multi-million billion dollar va hospital that's in the far east side i will say that uh for our upcoming stakeholder engagement they will be included in those discussions so we'll have them at the table we appreciate that thank you mr gomez for your time thank you thank you so much nella thank you mr gomez um i found this it's a really interesting survey but i want to kind of just understand right how how you see slide 10 right like when you see that when you look at that data what does that mean to you and like what were the outcomes that you think that you would propose from from data like that slide 10 was that the summary graphic of the different survey findings uh yes sir service intensity if you will oh service intensity okay i'd love to hear about the other one too i feel like you have like a real opinion about it i yeah i have opinions on all the slides so yeah definitely you know this was one that that was was um very interesting because uh we expected ridership to be very high at the transfer points and along the brio corridors and some of the other major ridership generators across the city um just based on the first glance of the east side and the land use there uh it could be characterized as mostly single-family homes uh not as much density with the exception of really the montwood corridor that's one that's healthy and has a good mix of land use there there are some multi-multiple multimodal options on the east side but didn't expect it to be that underserved i didn't expect ridership to be that and it's not really that high along the quarters that we identify on this slide but in comparison with the level of service that's being provided it did stand out and i should also mention that i think i touched on this earlier about 40 of the routes today operate 60 minutes or worse so that's 60 75 or 90. that's not something that is considered a convenient level of service and that's where you tend to see those types of frequency levels are on the periphery of the system so on the far east side north of northgate other areas that that feed into to the transit centers so that that's partly why those corridors stand out as well is because they operate at such a low level of service but through some some creative modifications of routes looking at consolidating services where there's duplication reducing that i think we can can do a better job of upgrading the service levels on the east side where we see some of these deficiencies sure um yeah because right right and i know you're talking specifically about the east side but there are like words that kind of trigger we write where like uh reduction of services or like removing duplications right because specifically talking about downtown right you're saying we need more services even there we need the trolley to run more even though it runs along the same brio line um i would love to learn more about uh kind of an in-depth survey or and i think you said route four um because i know it was a previous council to this one that decided to actually change that route kind of away from the shopping of downtown and i know a lot of businesses in that area have made complaints about it but that's all we have right and so if you're identifying that there is that that is not servicing the area well i'd love to know more about that and and what the outcomes of those route changes were and how that can be you know uh mediated i guess um but i guess you know and i see no i'm not surprised at all that the east side is underserved just understanding the community i understand from a transit it's probably uh different but i i you know and then i see you kind of we have over service in the central area but what i'm also just understanding is as a city rep is like the different demographics from those areas right and the different needs um and and something may be over serviced but is it still a need for that community right and it's so interesting to me because i'm seeing i guess there's this orange kind of uh little gap i guess i'm assuming that's where the hospital is um is that correct i don't have the this oh you don't have it in front of you okay well we i i can send those emails later but that would be interesting to me because you're seeing a lot of um what y'all are saying like there's too much too many services low ridership but then right in smack in the middle of it there's like a little orange triangle which again i'm assuming is the hospital so um what what are we doing wrong that we have all these services to that area but are not not enough in that area um is interest it would be really interesting to me yeah i think that's actually going to be north of the medical center and and west of the community college um but but yeah some of these these stops um shown in in blue have to do with just the there's not a lot of of options moving east to west uh because you have barriers like you know the border the rail line so a lot of the routes have to funnel through these very few corridors so i'm less concerned about some of the areas that showed up as over served going back to your comment about route 4 that is a unique line uh it serves all the downtown but it does so in a very slow indirect manner it's it's seven miles and it's it takes an hour to do that wow a lot of people do use it because they connect from the transit center to different destinations but there there are some opportunities to streamline that a bit uh whether it's it's bus or or with the southern loop of the streetcar so we'll be looking at that closely um and yes you made a good point about the the demographics and the social economic characters how that varies and and the transit demand uh differs throughout the city the report this is really just a high level summary but we have a 300 page report which details the the market conditions throughout the city as well as route by route profiles so you can see in a lot more detail all about route 4 how it how it's what what are some of our our initial thoughts on it as well as the different travel patterns and then distribution patterns throughout the community for for things like households without a vehicle seniors persons with disabilities travel patterns for for people who work or attend school at different locations throughout the city so encourage you definitely take a look at that if you're interested definitely um yeah i would love to read that it's something that it's right up my alley actually um but i guess i'll close with this i think my colleagues said it really well um for a long time and i think uh many cities are probably doing this post-pandemic as we've been trying to downsize and and make a more efficient system by cutting routes and using smaller modes of transportation but we should we've never had the conversation and we really need to start looking at how we can be increasing our ridership right um those things should be going hand in hand together and i think it's time that we start pushing the increased ridership um and and i'm all about efficiency i'm not going to say that there aren't going to be routes that need to be changed or removed but we don't want to start seeing large gaps of service in communities that that may be small ridership but in the most need so i appreciate all the data and i really appreciate this presentation thank you so much thank you thank you represent molinard thank you very much mayor mr gomez thank you very much for your presentation i know a lot of hard work and time went into it um a couple of things number one i recently had the honor or the privilege to be a uh writer on de brio and i took it from metro 31 down here to downtown and i came to work and i did the same thing for several days and i got to say several things that are happening but first let's talk about the timeliness of the routes they were on time i was very pleased very happy i didn't have to wait very long and so i'm not really sure of all you know how often they do come but i was very impressed number two i like to speak to the drivers the chauffeurs that are coach operators i'm not sure correct word um very pleasant very nice uh didn't really engage them in conversation that's not their purpose or function but they were very friendly you know good morning come on in whatever and uh number three i'd like to talk to you about the cleanliness of the buses uh didn't see them you know dirty they weren't uh bad the windows were clean at least the interiors windows were clean and the service was really really nice something different and people did ask me joe what are you doing you know why are you taking the brio and i specifically said you know what as a city representative i need to find out different things and you know how what are the best way to do it is to take a ride on the brio and so i was very pleased very happy with that overall experience okay so now a couple of other things i'd like to mention to you and i'd like to hopefully maybe be part of your conversation there in your study uh i did notice back in june when i had the occasion to go to metro 31 um there was a lot of weeds okay and i'm not just talking about a few weeks i'm talking about tall weeds that were been there for a couple of weeks okay and then also when i did connect at the five points it's you do see custodial services there you do see security services there but also at five points there was some trash accumulation and some weeds there growing so my point is this this is somebody's whether they're the first time customer first time rider or they've been this is what they ride on a daily basis this is what they see and their first experience their first pla view is not necessarily the best because they see probably the same trash that was there a couple of days before hasn't been picked up they see the same weeds that they have not been pulled or trimmed or cut back at all and so that sets the tone for the ride that sets the tone for the rider on what they may experience and what they may not experience now what i said earlier that they were on time the drivers were courteous very professional the buses were being cleaned inside at least for sure and the exterior to a point yes definitely but you know there's the the road that happens on the on the buses itself but overall my experience was very well i'd like to say that i also like to encourage my colleagues to join us and different brio that they can write to work or you know take a saturday afternoon ride and just to see how it goes and so i will continue right in the brio and so i thank you very much for your time thank you molinari with that thank you very much for the presentation thank you thank you mayor if i may address a couple of the concerns that came up um so for the technology on the left we've recognized that it's an issue and we're actually have another company on board that will be transitioning to in the next six to eight weeks so we're completely changing firms so we should see a considerable difference of improvement in that area on the downtown ideas we are of course looking at um the circulator replacing it with the smaller easier to access vehicles that go more frequently you don't have to need have to have a commercial driver's license so that we can possibly purchase three or four smaller vehicles for the same price of one very large bus and so and then of course the drivers right now is the pinch point just hiring the drivers on the on the landscaping and the janitor the things it's so interesting that what you complimented us is everything that i have control over and the other things are contractors and when i call the contractors the landscapers and the janitors they tell me they have a very difficult time hiring staff right now and so they're kind of in the same position i am with the drivers and so we are trying to get a handle on that environmental services is assisting the transit centers with the like we clean up the vacant lots and the illegal dumping we i have put them on rotation to assist with the transit centers as well we did talk about bringing back additional hours for sunday service and streetcar so just to be really clear on my priorities my priority is the montana brio it's launching november 6. the ribbon cutting you can mark your calendar hold the date will be november 1st is the date that we've we've selected right now but the montana brio is of course an fta funded project and we have to meet the as james commented the brios have very frequent service 15 or 20 minutes so you don't have to look at a schedule we just show up and so to do that any driver that i'm hiring right now is being dedicated to the brio my back if you go backwards you know we brought back the streetcar last summer and then we brought back sunday service and so now it's the brio's turn and as soon as brio is launched then i'll go back to the streetcar and then sunday and then brio so it we're all taking turns streetcar was first sunday was second now it's the brio's turn and i have to balance the resources because they're all fta requirements and um so that's what i'm working on right now as soon as we get brio launched then it goes back to additional hours for the streetcar additional hours for sunday and then additional hours for the brio so the demand is there right and so um and then the the uh the last thing on the funding ideas we have a lot of revenue opportunities that we haven't taken advantage of we have real estate we have commercial front retail space at north gate at glory road at mission valley that we need to capitalize at union plaza transit terminal capitalize on our real estate and we also have park and rides and we have parking garages that we we're taking a really hard look at the charges or fees that we apply to those resources and then of course metro 31 we have 31 beautiful acres in the northeast that we were hoping to partner with the developer and we had it lined up to go in 2019 and when covet hit in 2020 it kind of unraveled so we're in a process right now trying to find a new developer to work with us on that property as well and that should bring in additional revenue all of these things not related to the fair because actually you notice one of my top scores was on they really liked the fair because it is very affordable so i just wanted to address some of those concerns that we are we're aware we're working on it and we're looking at all options thank you representative um rivera followed by representative schwartzbein thank you mayor thank you so much i know you and i had that meeting with the with the so-called council on that uh and and that route that leads into socorro was was that analyzed as well by by the firm that we did one going to socorro yes um sal alonso that you spoke with earlier in the county he is our contact for the routes going to socorro and we will be working with him as well okay you know the rcpo terminal that's going to be opening in the far east that's going to benefit the county greatly because rather than coming all the way into town to sila vista they'll be able to bring their passengers there to be able to catch the brios and take off to wherever they need to go so is mr gomez and his team going to look at for maybe other routes that could be beneficial for the both cities both communities um this particular study is in the city limits but there is another study going on by texas transit institute tti where they received a federal grant last year that is to look at a seamless transit system so all the way from new mexico to the county and their project which they'll be presenting as soon as they're you know at the at their uh benchmark points it but the pr the ultimate goal of that study is to determine a a fair that would be equitable that you could get on in the county and go all the way through the city and all the way to las cruces if that's where you wanted to go and so that you don't have to buy three different sets of tickets with south central regional transit and with the county in the city it'll be one ticket and then we would have it divided between the agencies and the customer experience would improve so that is uh ongoing as well do you have a timeline as to when this might be presented back to the council when is the timeline the hope grant not yet six months six months okay thank you ma'am thank you mayor thank you sir mayor pro tem followed by representative molinar thank you again appreciate um appreciate the uh the updates as well um really excited with the strides obviously that we're making with the streetcar you know we have these great uh pamphlets coming up that we're we're doing um really great great way to again celebrate our city and our history as well as providing a great opportunity for visitors as well as el paso of all age to come experience downtown uptown and our history come alive so a lot of great strides that are going on um i know that we're looking at having expanded hours we do have the the requirements with the fta with the montana brio but we do have state and federal funds that were part and parcel of the the the uh creation of the streetcar line two that i think is important to honor so i'm happy to see the extended hours i do think as we get closer towards better staffing the streetcar look at ways to to look at the data and look at ways to engage it you know the streetcar line does run up to to utep we have that great glory road transfer center that again was federally funded wonderful opportunity for park and ride situations into downtown for all kinds of activities and events and also a great opportunity for our students at utep to utilize the streetcar to get from downtown up to the campus as well so just when we think about those expanded hours we think about how to best align that with utep and the student riders that we have an opportunity to capture as well i did have a couple questions i know that we have uh been been really pushing a lot of the heritage and historic uh tours on the streetcar it makes sense that somebody that would be in love with the murals of sigil the barrio or the trust architecture in downtown would appreciate being able to take a tour on a historic streetcar the same streetcar used to go between el paso and juarez hundreds of times a day and utilize that so i think that the tour that's on this friday i think which was one of the ghost tours is already sold out yes i think it's been open for less than a half hour and it's already sold out the tickets there so i think it'd be really important to work with the vendors and the other partners for these tours whether it's the paranormal society the truth society destination el paso to look at creating an opportunity to to look at having a second car available with a host if possible you know anytime we can have a packed streetcar and utilize these tours you know heritage tourism is one of our strategic goals and initiatives identified in our strategic plan it's also one that we see being supported by our regional partners in the county as well and the streetcar is i think a big key to unlocking that heritage tourism further for our community so i don't know if you've had any discussions with some of the tour guides or anything about identifying a second uh second host that could be on the second streetcar during these tournaments i'm going to defer to tracy you know some metro partners with the cultural affairs and they really do more of the programming side of it good morning uh tracy jerome senior deputy city manager for the record um yes representative or mayor pro tem schwarzman thank you again for your kind words for your support um staff is very excited about not only the work that they're doing but the results that we're seeing um they are working with suppliers we want to make sure that we're maintaining you know a high quality product that's being offered for programming and so we are looking at alternatives of expansion where that's possible and we'll keep you posted on that again thank you for all your support though because again we do see we are seeing great results um and again we want to make sure that we continue to maintain a quality product it's great to be in demand but we want to make sure that we're also meeting that demand and so we will we will continue to communicate with you and all members of council as we as we move forward uh to continue to expand the programming but thank you for your support and i think a big partner is also the hotel motel association we've seen five new hotels built since the streetcars opened up throughout downtown and all within a thousand feet of a streetcar stop and we have currently 10 hotels that are along the line as well tremendous opportunity for our visitors to come and experience our community and also it's part of an attraction to get these conventions coming in we have again in 24 the texas democratic state convention 10 000 people coming in through downtown and el paso and then this october we have the aia convention bringing urban planners and architects from across the state over 3000 people streetcar is part of that story and part of that opportunity for our community so um just maybe make sure we get these this information out there and i know we are if i may mayor pretend thank you for bringing that up and thank you for the opportunity again to share the information so the team that is working on the programming leading that effort which is out of our strategic initiatives program and core team they're working very closely on all of these items and more with destination el paso who oversees all of our convention our convention center and all that programming there they're meeting regularly with the hotel motel association they've gone and visited spent time with them as well as our economic development team and we're going to continue those to keep the dialogue open and continue to develop those relationships in a much more active fashion it's it's great to see everybody rowing in the right direction and the same direction together um to really not only expand you know ridership on the streetcar but we we see all of this as a much bigger um approach to the continued economic recovery and development for our community so again thank you for for mentioning that so that we could share that information with you absolutely um and then the last point that i have here and this is just more of an fyi than anything you know for the last years of winterfest since the streetcar has been open we have seen people utilize the glory road transfer center to park and take the streetcar downtown during those years there my office has received reports of complaints about traffic controls specifically on yen dell wyoming and missouri relating to traffic coming off of i-10 vehicular traffic and then co-mingling with the streetcar without a traffic presence of officer code compliance helping to get the traffic moving so what we've what we have experienced and have reports of is that streetcar basically gets stuck right at right at the i-10 bridge because there's so much traffic waiting to to turn into into downtown so i think looking forward into winterfest again to work with code compliance and work with pd to make sure that there's uh appropriate amount of sort of traffic control in that area to make sure that the cars that are coming off of i-10 are coming from mesa or oregon from from uptown into downtown um are able to work with the streetcar because i know that that was something that we heard of that people you know were left blocks away because traffic was just backed up the winterfest committee is actually meeting now we've already had two or three meetings and so i'll bring that up at the next one to make sure in pd and code we're all on on the committee so um we'll we'll discuss it and come up with the solution sounds good just wanted to put to put that out there so good news and bad news right yeah yeah no absolutely thinking lots of traffic congestion i mean we've you know we've seen more and more uh people utilizing it and it's been a really great success story for our community right thank you thank you mayor thank you rob sean milner thank you mayor um ellen thank you very much for responding to my uh comments and questions just as a recap once again um the schedule i'm going to talk about brio the dire brio it was on time and everything went very well i was very happy and very pleased the coach operators being very professional very courteous you know saying good morning and things like that and once again the cleanliness of the inside of the buses really means it makes a difference there i'm glad you also mentioned metro 31 and yes uh we the people in district four do would love to have something i know before it was touted as something similar to uh montessio but that whatever happened or didn't happen we can talk about that all day long but we have to start something we need a new developer to come in good positive things to happen for us and and for the entire community and for all of el paso that's for sure and i'll close with this if there's ever a chance or an opportunity to bring back uh route 42 or line 42 please that was a huge plus way before kovitt i used to take that like just for example right now we have the season with the plaza classic film festival great opportunity to go from let's just say my house all the way downtown take the 42 eat down here watch them or eat lunch uh you know watch a couple of movies and ride the bus back it was a great joy so as james gomez was mentioning before he has identified several redundancies in the city that compete with the brios and 42 was actually one of those before he did his study but we we recognized that one right off and i think the reality that a city council is going to see when we come back the next time is that service will have to be modified and so some of these redundant rounds will need to be moved to the far east which is an underserved area based on the data and you guys have already committed to support the database decision making and of course we have developed a program for transit dependent riders who may have get stranded if we take their route away and so we're not we we've made a promise we will not leave anyone behind and so if there's some when we present the modifications i know some people will be not happy with some of them but others will be very happy with the new services but still my promise is we won't leave people behind and we put a policy in place where when they call and they're dependent on the bus that we will work with them we will work with them and get them to the nearest bus stop or wherever you know is convenient for them to take off like they would normally do well when you mention data just go back and pre cover check the data on route 42 especially now that school is in session there's a lot of students from urban high school in that community area that are or we're taking that 42 but thank you very much for your time now thank you thank you thank you again thank you i just don't want to put him yeah i just had one comment i just want to say that i want to thank you for uh keeping root 11 active um that's one of the you know one of the most utilized ones it terminuses at a series of both apartment complexes and condos um at the terminus of stanton and also serves um you know three different communities are all very close to downtown and actively used by a wide variety of people so thank you so much for bringing that back as well i hear oftentimes even though even though i no longer represent that part of town i hear from all the time how excited people are and see the buses there so thank you you're welcome thank you mr mike thank you have a good day thank you mr prime there's no action on that item a motion to adjourn motion made by representative vanello and seconded by representatives i'll see all those in favor although suppose not present is board member hernandez and board member rivera oh there he is do we have a motion to reconvene the regular city council meeting there's a motion in a second to reconvene the regular city council meeting all in favor anyone opposed the meeting is back in session at 10 54 a.m may or may we go to item 21 please and 22 is related would you like to take them together you ready um thank you mate would you like to take them together yes okay let me read them into the record item 21 is update discussion action by city clerk and city manager on city staff progress in reviewing and certifying the climate charter petition submitted by ground game texas item 22 is discussion in action on city readiness to consider an ordinance on august 16 2022 to place a climate charter initiative on the november 8 2022 general election ballot in the event that the petition is certified by the city clerk these two items were submitted by representative vanello remember senator thank you mayor um i first want to take a second to acknowledge and congratulate the residents of el paso who were able to collect almost 40 000 signatures we should be very [Applause] they should be very proud of themselves we should also be proud of them engaging your government through petition is a right by state law it is not an easy feat and i'm here to say that we should be following state law and doing everything that we can to make sure that this moves forward on the ballot i'm to respect the voice of 40 000 constituents of the city of el paso and so i put these items up for multiple reasons i know there's some conversation about the timeline in regards to getting items on the agenda having read the charter over and over i have it here outlined somewhere i do believe that there is enough time to do so i do not believe that we need two meetings but even if we do we can call a first hearing at a special meeting or an emergency for the exception of the ordinance but really the the largest intent of this these agenda items is to understand what the city clerk needs from council to make sure that we get to where we are these petitions were turned in two weeks ago my understanding is or last friday i apologize or no two fridays ago correct well i put the agenda up on wednesday so it was before that so monday was the official day the first part of the signatures returned in friday um which our clerk does not work on friday so we will say monday but that's still almost a week now over a week we we really do need to get these signatures counted i know that resources can be an issue and so i want to understand from the clerk themselves what they need from this council to make sure that we can get through this so that is why i put on item 21 and would love an update from our city clerk and city manager who does oversee that department on what is needed from this council to move forward mr gonzalez so we've had a lot of consultation with the city attorney's office as well as um conversation with ms prine and the the background that we have found that's helpful to this process is that even though there's 38 000 signatures that were submitted we're trying to find a way of how we could get to counting those and the allotted time that we have as an example the lost dog took 21 days to count 1700 signatures and in the process of working to select or or to obtain services from a statistician in order to help through that process and learning what other cities have done that that number is uh over 9 000 that we'd have to have to count and so uh the other question that we had of ourselves was you know we're probably going to ask be asked a question in terms of staffing and the amount of staff that the city clerk's office has uh is the amount needed to to do their work obviously they complied with the work that they had to do with regard to the last petition that i can speak to and so in terms of having additional personnel um again the legal department did very good work uh to advise us that another city had tried that to get other personnel like that was the first thing on our mind how can we get other people to help start the accounting process and that city was sued when they did that and those those that verification process uh was not validated as a result as is my understanding so um that's the extent of what i know and the work that we've done up to this point i'll turn over to miss prine to see laura if you've got any additional commentary uh to add to that question before we do that i think it's important you know there's over thirty eight thousand forty thousand signatures and we were able to find a way to be able to do a sampling and the number to try to make sure you know we'd do the best we could to get them done and i think that number you said was 9 000. i believe so and again legal did a lot of that work um they did they did all that research and and did all that uh benchmarking with all the other cities and really helped us through that process so yes sir i believe that's that nine thousand is approximation it's a little bit over nine thousand um but again we have a uh a base uh to compare it to in terms of how long it took with the with the other set with the other um petition in terms of taking you know that amount of time 21 days to count 1700 or to verify 1700 and so that that's a that's a process that city clerk's office undertakes and and one in which you know is is a meticulous process and one in which they they have to be able to verify so again um turn it to laura and see if she has any additional comments mayor i haven't seen a question to speak i just want to know that i'm i'm home as well i still have the floor no you don't we have transferred it over to the city manager we'll let representative none this time we'll go to you thank you mayor um no i just wanted to ask really quickly i do i want to ask members of council i would like to consult with their attorney on the on the matter um but i do recognize there's a lot of speakers mayor so i don't know how you want to if you want to take speakers first um but i would like an opportunity to retire into executive um to address our outside counsel and you want to go ahead and speak miss piney and then we can take that question i'd add some questions before we go to executive okay yes sir ms prine yes sir so as mr once stated he is correct we did receive the petition july 25th it was a week ago yesterday we received the petition we immediately began the verification process and in the petitioner suggested that we do a statistical sampling method for this petition to verify it and we've been in the meantime we've been coming up with a process to use the statistical sampling method of the 25 of the signatures received so we began that process a lot of it is manual we have we received over 5000 pages we have to timestamp number each individual page we developed a standard for counting the signatures and then we then began counting the signatures per page we need to count the number of signatures to identify the population that will be used to obtain the 25 percent and so that's what my office has been doing we've also sought a statistician to help us in developing that sampling list and we were able to get someone so now we're in the process of identifying the population that'll be used for the statistical sampling method and um mr gonzalez is right based on previous previous petitions and if it will bring up that slide we went back and looked at how long it took us to verify the last two petitions related to the lost dog and in the first petition we had we it took us 18 working days to verify 1834 signatures the second petition we had 20 working days according to the charter to verify 1977 signatures we have not finished counting the signatures but if we go by the number that the group says are submitted that would be 39 000 signatures with 25 percent of that would equal to 97 9750 signatures that we we would need to verify based on previous experience we're estimating that it'll take up to 100 working days to verify this petition and again part of part of this the process is developing a process for statistical sampling we haven't used that process before so it is taking us a few days to implement to that process this time around and and if we were if we were to verify every single signature we would need to get to 18 188 signatures so using the statistical sampling method it would be considerably lower number of signatures that we would have to verify okay thank you for that representaniello followed by mayor potem thank you um so i guess there's there's some confusion here um you know first of all i want to thank everybody that's taken the time to go through and exercise their civic right to petition their government it's a central part of of our government on a national level and it's a large part of of our texas state constitution as well so i want to thank all those who took the time to exercise their constitutional right to petition their government and to go and collect these signatures and to to give a damn about the future of this world in this community so i want to thank everybody who took the time to do that um i do have some questions uh about what about this because there there seems to be some confusion about this pre-verification um that's there um for the for the the lost dog signatures that were there um what was what was the the process that was utilized by the city clerk's office to verify those signatures for the lost dog petition we used we didn't use statistical sampling what we did is we verified every single signature that was submitted we needed to arrive at 1666 signatures so the number was considerably lower for the lost dog for an initiative petition it's five percent of the total of of voters that voted in the last election for a charter amendment petition it requires five percent of the total registered voters which is a higher number that's why it requires a larger number to be verified i will say that the group said they submitted 39 000 signatures of those the group said that only 23 425 were valid according to their certification process and i'm not sure how their certification process was handled so an ordinance would need five percent of an election a charter amendment would need five percent of the total population the total number of registered voters or charter amendment petition so this this was pursue okay so that was not an ordinance that's what that's what lost dog proposed this is a charter which is a considerably higher ceiling in terms of signatures i don't know if there's anybody here who was who led the petition initiative for this climate charter amendment if there's anybody that's in the audience that that led that i just have some questions about this pre-verification process enough anybody good morning good morning i'm the company manager you're what the campaign manager anna fuentes will you um state your name please anna fuentes thank you very much ma'am okay and so the the the process for pre-verification that y'all had started so help us understand kind of what what you all did to pre-verify this and and why you decided to do that um okay so we would uh look at the sheets uh first i would like to say that we did number and enter how many signatures per sheet we had in a matter of days not um not a week and then during that time we would um during the verification process we'll look at the signatures look at the sheets look at van which is a database of registered voters and um compare uh whether or not that try to find that individual on the database based on their name address or birthday and once we found a match we enter that voter registration number into a list which is what has been provided to the clerk okay do is there a way that we can see that pre-verification list miss prime i don't know if it can be brought out while we're here or whatever um does does the city there's the city clerk's office acknowledge or recognize these pre-verification signatures not the pre-cert verification list that just contains a list of the voters and their voter id however the signature pages do not have the voter id number all they they were collecting was date of birth so because we are required to um we can get either a birthday or the voter registration number we don't have to do both that is correct she is correct they either have to get the voter id or the date of birth the pre-certification process identifies the voter id the signature pages has the date of birth so it's different and in order for your office to to verify uh that one of these signatures for the petition is is in fact valid what again are those that data that y'all are are looking for so we we get the database from the county of el paso on that one we go by the list once we get our sample list we'll identify the the person's name on the sample and then we have to verify that and i'm going through the secretary of state's procedure for a petition signature to be valid a petition must contain the signer's name the signer's printed name the signer's residence address and date of birth or voter registration number so we have to go into the database run a query to see if we can locate that that person on the database okay and how many people do we currently have in the city clerk's office that's working on on verifying these these uh signatures in these these uh petitioners the city clerk's office has eight staff members okay and all all eight are working on it at this time no sir because some of us are hearing in in the meetings we've been in the meetings for a couple of days we're also um adhering to our other obligations for example uh we're posting the regular agendas on thursday we posted four agendas we're also processing ballot applications from candidates some of those may also contain petitions in lieu of paying the filing fees so so that's what we did last week also is we processed ballot applications for those running in the november election do we do do you have like a a number of how many people out of those eight that are just focusing on this on getting these verified at this point i would say about half okay it's about four people about three to four people depending we've also had someone out six so you know it hasn't been everyone here in the office every day okay um and so state law doesn't state law is very clear about the verification process right and so even though these might have been pre-verified you saw it to follow i still have to and and i'm not sure that you know i'm not sure which ones they were able out of the 39 thousand they said they they verified twenty three thousand four twenty five i'm not certain that those all of the ones that they verified are going to appear on my sample list one uh once i obtain that sample list okay um and so did you were you were you all aware about the sort of pre-verification process as it related toward the state verification process and the city clerk yes um we did as a measure to make sure that um all the valid signatures would be counted okay because i know that there i think some of the issues is just a question of time that it takes to just verify verify the the numbers because i guess the city clerk you can't take you can't take their pre-verification as you have to double check i have to run a query myself sir on the voter registration database to certify that that individual is that i do have that individual's signature do you have can you show up what the pre-verification lists look like i t can you bring up the elmo please and again i'm not sure what database the miss what this used van it's the voter activation network okay we that that'll bring up every single person that's registered is that in the county uh we make sure that it was um within the in the county line inside el paso okay it has to be the city and the city as well the it only had you know the the people that sign need to be able to vote in the cities we make sure that it's at el paso but el paso county is different from the city city of el paso i misspoke we made sure it's that city of el paso so what what are these numbers that we're looking at here from from left to right the okay so it's the page number line number um so this is um and the line number is in reference to the system that we generated uh to keep track of how many signatures we had page number the number of the sheets the line numbers uh our sheets had eight slots per each sheet had eight slots for eight signatures so refer to which line that signature is so yeah and are y'all able to and i guess this is a question for miss prine but based upon this list you can't look up those page numbers and line numbers to see and then go through your verification process to see if their their line up it'll help once we have the sample list but again once we have the sample list that all identified what what page number that signer is i can go to this list and say okay yes they're there or not but i also have to run a query through the database just to confirm the information good right yeah i don't believe it would once you from my understanding your your own list would have a different numbering scheme so it would they wouldn't line up anymore that's that's why we're preparing that information we have to number each page we have to number each page ourselves you're saying this would be useful to you after you do that process right i mean give or take a couple of pages i mean it'll be helpful i'm not saying it it'll certify what you said you have so i mean it'll be helpful but it won't help us confirm 100 because as you say some pages were out of sequence you said uh that we got we should have 5236 pages we were short about 200 of those pages we don't have all those pages when we did our numbering there was some sequence of some out of order some of them we didn't get that page number they weren't all accounted for so that's that's the manual process that we we've done is we have to time auto number every single page i just um i guess i don't understand why we can't start uh verifying based on that list and once we reach the 20 20 000 signatures required continue looking through the rest of the list just since we are in this cons constrained timeline wouldn't we want to make sure that we get those look at those 20 000 signatures as quickly as possible and if you have a list of reference to reference those why wouldn't you follow that the the letter we received from ground game texas was asking us to do statistical sampling and that's one of your options and that's what's one of the process we've been exploring because as mentioned before if we were to verify every single list we would need 18 188 signatures versus if we were able to use statistical sampling based on the estimated signatures that that ground game says were submitted that would almost be half of those numbers and so it would be quicker so i think what she's asking is we have this we have this list that could be used either to prevent to either verify the 9 000 for statistical analysis or to go through the norm the regular process i have to submit the whole population i can't just say i'm going to use the 23 000 as my population i have to use the entire population that was submitted to me every single signature that was submitted to me has to be part of the population that's valid every every every legible so you're you're you're trying to verify the first 9 000 however that's arranged correct no so we're trying to identify our population at this point to do that we have to count the signatures that were submitted because those that will determine our population size and then from there we can determine what 25 percent of that is going to be and mayor pro tem i mean you're trying to deduce to get to a area to get the answer that you're looking for but she's constrained by parameters that are aligned aligned out uh through just different rules and procedures that are in place that the state requires yeah i anna thank you again and and probably close to my 10 minutes of time at this point i just want to be clear that it not about trying to get an answer it's about trying to honor the the will of the voters and the citizens who have spent a lot of time that's why that's why that's why [Applause] that's why we looked at every possible option to include a statistician which reduces the amount of signatures that have to be verified so i think that demonstrates that we're doing the same thing in that anybody that submits something we want to get to the end as fast as possible and provide a solution and so by getting a statistician we don't have to go through and count the 38 000 plus signatures and verify all of those we just need to get a statistical sampling of it i think the opposite would have demonstrated that we're not trying to get to a solution i think that this uh the fact that we did this extra step uh gets us down the path faster and do you have an idea this last question mayor thank you uh miss brian to get to the 9000 do you have an estimate based upon the current staff that's being committed to this um how many days that might be to get to the nine thousand i gave you that on that on that slide okay i estimated up to 100 working days to verify it how many 100 working days to verify to get to 9 000. based based on previous and the last dog was 1600 verified signatures 1600 versus you put up that slide 1600 i figured thanks okay yeah this is okay we'll go to representative at the end and we'll come back to mayor potem thank you mark um thank you mayor uh thank you very much i did also want to thank the everybody that's here that has participated in this very i think long process to petition your government i know that staffing is an issue and i did want to lend my staff if you all need any assistance with this moving forward so just wanted to make sure i let you know that and uh thank you well as we as we stipulated earlier when the mayor asked me the question we did look into that about getting other staff to assist with the counting but as we found out in doing the legal research another city did that and the whole process was null and void because you cannot do that you can't just add other people you got to use the city clerk's office if trained to do this they do this and that's how the court or the how that court case was was ruled upon and it was another city i believe in the state of texas who did that and again that that process was considered null and void okay then well thank you so much tommy um i just wasn't sure i just didn't want to offer them up if that was yes it's not it's not a staffing issue it's a timing issue okay in terms of the process thank you thank you from hernandez that you have a motion i moved to return to executives mayor can we do public comments since there are over 46 members of the public signed up i don't have a preference whatever council once again you can hear now or later we'll go ahead absolutely i think it's important to hear before we can deliberate so i think it's important to hear from the public so ms prime yes sir the first person that signed up is miguel escoto followed by rachel ortega vanessa hassell each speaker will have three minutes you'll be able to see the timer on the screen once it once you have 30 seconds it'll turn yellow once you have five seconds left it'll turn red good morning sir hi hello good morning my name is miguel escoto i'm one of the co-founders of sunrise el paso i had one of the well i had a speech prepared for you all today um had some statements ready but um after listening hearing uh from the city clerk from um the city manager and seeing a slide in which it says that my government has given up on trying that's what i saw in that that's what i saw in that slide they did a false equivalency a false comparison between two entirely separate actions one is a petition for an ordinance which is lost dog you cannot compare that with what is happening here what i want to the most important word that i want you city counselors to understand throughout this process is excuses all that we are hearing is excuses we i want to jolt all of you out of your normal operating standards your normal operating situation it's every day you hear people come complain about this or that or whatever but it's not every day it's unprecedented for there to be four the almost 40 000 el pasoans come to you with a very clear ask put this on the ballot that's it you could hate you could absolutely hate the climate charter with all of your soul but you have to let us vote for it and that going back to the word excuse all that's all i heard from from our city rep from our um unelected power brokers we so so the question is what are you going to do about it because these are constituents of your districts these are your representatives these are your constituencies so what are you going to do to overcome this attitude of excuses that is my question to you all when you go into executive session um if the current if if we are being told that the current rate of signature gathering is not going to cut it then change the rate that's it change the path that you are on so also i want to ask that um so many many members of the public are very interested in making sure you do the right thing uh so a lot of community members are not able to be here on a tuesday morning and on a weekday so they did email you their their um comments and ask for for you all to read them so if you all please look into your inbox if you see a written comment from one of your constituents please read them out loud no more excuses thank you thank you mister thank you the next speaker is rachel ortega followed by vanessa hustle telephone rachel ortega star six please two unmute your telephone good morning you have three minutes hello good morning good morning um i'm the constituent of representative and i would like to say thank you at first for being one of the nearly 40 000 members of this community to have signed that charter and i would like to ask for you to bring the rest of the members of council and those of the city management office that are on the fence or in opposition to this charter to bring them on board because i will say it again as some before me have and many after me will that nearly forty thousand el paso and sign this climate petition this is more signatures than many of your fellow council members have received votes in their respective elections and it is also more signatures than the city manager city attorney and city clerk have ever received in votes and for this reason their efforts or lack thereof should not thwart the will of 40 000 people that have spoken in just a few short months and to hear that it would take a hundred working days 100 working days to count 9 000 signatures we would have had to submit all of these signatures initially the day that we launched this campaign that's that's unimaginable and it's thwarting all of the work that we put into this all the people that we spoke to more than a hundred thousand people we would have spoken to to get to the amount of signatures that we have gotten so i'm asking council to provide the clerk with all of the resources we cannot give you time we have given you more than enough time to complete what we are asking you to do we have met the threshold and we have given you more than enough time to review this we continue to read through comments from state staff that they are unprepared and understaffed that we need two council meetings and the goal posts keeping moved for what is already stated in state law in city law that we are able to meet the timeline that we need to get on the november ballot and i'll end with the reminder to say that many el paso and have just gotten their el paso electric energy pills and we're paying more for energy than we ever have when we have cheap and abundant solar energy available to us these costs are not manageable for people in the city and council is tasked with addressing those issues not to be an earpiece for a passive electorate and to give excuses from the city management office thank you thank you the next speaker is vanessa hassell followed by andy tiscarino sebastian herreria drew segura vanessa hustle good morning andy tiscarino good morning you have three minutes good morning um as everyone else said as as i will say this charter was supported by over 40 000 of our citizens your citizens um we the comments we've been hearing uh this morning about whether or not these um signatures can be verified within the amount of time that they would need to be in order to be on the november ballot they just sound like excuses they sound like they're willing to give up before they even try and to hear that that that the ability to be able to count count these signatures the idea of being understaffed of not having the resources that just sounds like being irresponsible like that like this was never a plan that anything anything like this was going to happen that any time frame for anything to come up with any amount of signatures can be counted because it sounds like it's too much but it it wasn't too much for the 40 000 el paso wins who signed this petition who signed for this charter to be created and it's important to realize that that these are your citizens the citizens you that all of you claim to represent especially our city manager our city clerk they are responsible for getting these things done and it's it is realistic for these for these numbers to be counted it is and we refuse to we refuse to take any excuses we want to see action we don't want to hear excuses we don't want to hear comments on why it can't be done we don't want to have the idea that outside forces are being influenced to say that this campaign can't happen it can happen and we want to see that because that's what we're going to see that's what el paso is going to see your citizens are going to see that inaction and we we won't stand for that thank you thank you the next speaker is sebastian herreria followed by joe segura mike siegel juan jose martinez sebastian erreda drew segura followed by mike siegel juan jose martinez david j garcia ida garcia good morning you have three minutes good morning uh good afternoon my name is andrew and i am a student and activist and a proud member of sunrise el paso while i do not live in el paso i grew up in the city and will always love el paso for making me who i am today my community is affected by the policies and the lack of accountability for the utility companies in this city whether it is a pollution from the rio grande power plant or the dumping of over 1 billion gallons of sewage into the rio grande river by the el paso water company it seems the people that aren't able to speak up are the ones most affected by the negligence of giant corporations today i am here to ask for one simple thing and that is for you guys to listen to the city of el paso and the citizens and to make sure that this campaign and then make sure that this charter is placed on the ballot in november during this campaign one thing has been clear and that is that the people of el paso are ready for change and a way to fight back and hold these corporations accountable nobody here is asking for the impossible we simply want you to do your jobs and make sure the will of the people is put over the interests of the utility companies in this city during this campaign we talked to over 100 000 people and participated in a form of direct democracy we were forced to do this because the people we put in power have fabled have failed to hold utility companies accountable whether through the approval of the newman six plan or the sale of el paso electric to j.p morgan the people have been ignored and been told their voices don't matter but not anymore we did the hard work for you we were in the community we were knocking doors in the neighborhoods we grew up in and being around different events all around the city we worked in a hundred degree heat and even worked until three am to make sure that the signatures were verified do your jobs and put this on the ballot thank you in solidarity with my conrads thank you the next speaker is mike siegel mr siegel star six please two and meet your telephone mike siegel good morning sir you have three minutes good morning hello good good morning sir this is michael siegel i am the general counsel for brown game texas and one of the designers of this program i'm also a civil rights lawyer and a former assistant city attorney for the city of austin with direct experience in petition campaigns and i wanted to address a couple points first of all for background the city of austin city clerk miranda rios who is in touch with clerk prine and i want to thank the clerk for speaking with with clerk rios has been able to process similar petitions in eight to ten working days so the same number of fixtures for charter chains 40 000 from signatures that have been pre-verified we know that that a city clerk uh with not a whole lot more staff was able to verify these signatures in eight to ten days time and if the city clerk is able to do this in even 15 working days there is plenty of time to put this on the ballot i want to address something set by the city manager um in relation to some lawsuit about who can work and help the city clerk this is actually misinformation that was shared at the meeting by the city manager i spoke directly with the el paso city attorney who explained the situation in the city of austin at one point in time the auditor's office was asked to collect or to review signatures that was a very different situation he got because the auditor has a statutory role in the in the austin city charter so that yes if there was an el paso on here that that staff could not help with this but that does not stop the city clerk from hiring temporary staff or borrowing staff that for example that was so generously offered by the city councilwoman other staff can be brought in to do this and that is something that that misinformation needs to be really clearly uh addressed because that was not a statement made by the city manager i want to be clear about what we're talking about here if you take 25 of the signatures let's round up to 40 000 we're saying that city staff need to review 10 000. the pre-verification list of 23 000 plus pre-verified signees that is a shortcut as the other the councilman uh made clear that is a shortcut to help the city staff uh make sure that this process can go quickly uh once the the sampled set is agreed upon that is a way for staff to like to go straight to one they're probably good and yes the city clerk has to independently verify each one but that process should take about two to three minutes per signature we know this because we went through the same exact process for our pre-verification so if you take a number like let's just say three minutes per signature which is the high end from our experience 20 signatures per hour 10 000 signatures we are talking about 500 hours of staff time at the very moment that is a number of staff hours that can be found if there is the will within the city to do so and then we go back as the councilman noted that this is something that's rooted in the texas constitution the texas constitution gives the people thank you mr c you've reached the three minutes sir thank you thank you thank you thank you is juan jose martinez and mr martinez has asked that representative read his his statement into the record good morning i respectfully request that my city representative representative saucillo of district 5 read the following regarding item 21. my name is j.j martinez and i am a constituent of representative salcedo in district 5. once again el paso comes to this council to ensure that will of the people will be respected and acted upon something which this council don't seem to be able to do as of late the bottom line is this forty thousand of el paso and signed the petition to include the climate charter on the ballot in november the city clerk must must do her job and certify the results by the deadline and this council must ensure the clerk's ability to do so to do otherwise is anti-democratic and slap in the face to any ideals and rules of the people city council if you don't agree with the premise of the charter then in november vote against it but today do not ignore the will of the people do not re disrespect the thousands of el pasons that are doing what they can to ensure the future of the city of the planet ensure this charter is in the ballot representative celsius i signed the petition and i asked you now as your constituent if you truly believe in the same democratic which elected you to the seat now you hold that you do everything in your power to ensure the opacity ones once again participate in the democracy thank you the next speaker is david garcia followed by ida garcia fernanda lugo anna fuentes george simmons good morning you have three minutes greetings city council my name is dr david garcia a neighbor to the northeast el paso in the community of chaparral i was previously a donna and a commissioner and i have worked with mayor leaser and i know a lot of you are the representatives on the bench i wanted to to make the public comment on climate change chapter charter i support the climate charter with the nearly 400 signatures of support in the petition as were submitted to the city clerk what i can't phantom is 100 working days to verify that amount of signatures also as important is this is for this city council and mayor to vote in the affirmative to have said petition be placed on the ballot for the next election that is very important we may ask ourselves why you're aware that we are behind in making a true difference in climate change climate change is winning and we're falling behind every single day that we delight delay in finding solutions climate disruptions are the embodiment of the greatest there the unknown and the uncontrollable this duality has become increasingly manifested in climate discourse in recent years we see it all on the nightly news you have been witness to that forest fires in different state in the state of new mexico in california the others the floods in tennessee and kentucky killing several young children extreme heat across our country it is obvious to me that your constituents want your support and are ready to work together to accomplish this critical need from the white house to every single state in the nation with as many city councils across the nation to act now not further down the line it is time to stop playing political footsies for yourselves have seen thee and observe the daily devastation that climate change is taking in a country and a community the climate charter has become a keystone of hope that will limit the damage if we don't act now a par part a powerful part of the solution sooner or later the city will realize that nature always wins let's be on the winning side for once but you decide thank you for your time thank you thank you the next speaker is ida garcia followed by fernanda lugo anna fuentes josh simmons morning you have three minutes uh good morning mayor city council my name is ida garcia and i'm a member of the chaparral community coalition for health and environment my husband and i live about one and a half miles from the newman power plant and i really want to add my voice for the climate charter we know that nearly 40 000 el paso and signed this and i i am not a resident of el paso but i live right next door in new mexico and our community is is being affected by the pollutants that are contaminating our environment and they're causing serious health problems such as asthma heart attacks and lung cancer the climate charter is what we is needed to protect our communities from this dirty energy i know that you know we're asking that this charter be placed on the ballot and it's so important that it is and i i ask you council that you are not positioned to make a difference your constituents have spoken you must vote in favor of the city ordinance to ensure the petition is placed on the november elections please support this very important initiative it is in your hands thank you thank you the next speaker is fernanda lugo fernanda lugo star six please two and meet your telephone fernanda lugo good morning you have three minutes good morning good morning i want to say that i'm very proud of the sunrise movement people down in el paso i'm very impressed with all of their work and getting 40 000 signatures i really want to help this cause as much as i can because i am a proud el pasolin as well despite being far away um i wish that the council can vote to put this on the ballot it's really simple we already have 40 000 signatures of people that really want some form of climate action it's pretty obvious from the news that we need action now we can't keep playing these political games of saints it's too hard it's not too hard 100 days is not acceptable we need some change now as another fellow mentioned it would take you three minutes per signature to review that these are valid signatures and that people have spoken and they really want some climate action right now so please just put it on the ballot it's really simple if you believe in democracy you'll let us all vote for it because the petition is harder than going to vote so we did that work just let us let us continue the work and please just do your job and put this on the ballot thank you speaker is anna fuentes followed by josh simmons becco salas boras kathleen stout good morning again good morning good morning my name is anna fuentes i'm the climate charter campaign manager as well as a member of sunrise el paso and i'm here today to urge the council to instruct ms prine to use all the tools at her disposal to ensure speedy certification process of the climate charter petition failing to do so would be an active rejection of the people's will to vote on this petition in the november ballot my generation has witnessed the increasingly more evident collapse of our climate while paradoxically having to convince older generations that of the mere existence of climate change living with these contradiction contradictions has often made me as well as my peers hopeless and fearful of our future these fears and frustrations are so widely present present amongst my generation that the media and social scientists have now coined the term climate anxiety we have internalized that not only that our environment is changing beyond recognition recognition but that previous generations failure to address the climate crisis sent a clear message of disregard for my donation as well as future generations and our health and our well-being the profits generating by relying on oil are seem to be worth more than our futures i decided to push back and conform to hope to not conform to hopelessness is what led me and many others to to join sunrise to join the sunrise movement i'm sorry we harness the fear of uncertainty and feelings of powerless powerlessness and chose to fight fight for ourselves the frontline community members who disproportionately bear the brand of direct exposure to pollution and most importantly fight for those who will come after us as a movement we have painful losses um for example uh some member council uh allowed the selling the selling of our electric utility to the biggest financier of the climate crisis j.p morgan in 2021 despite heart-wrenching testimony from frontline community members vividly describing the everyday violence they experienced as a result of living a frat gas generator the ironically named texas commission on environmental quality allowed el paso electric to essentially purchase a license to pollute through pollution offsets though the outcomes outcomes were disappointing these campaigns taught us meaning meaning the meaning of community and then we must rely on each other and that's what has guided the the climate charter policy and which is that's also why we're here today with the support of nearly nearly 40 000 community members standing behind us failing to place initiative on the ballot would suggest a complete disregard for direct democracy and the name of bureaucracy i ask that the council and more specifically my representative peter schwarzen look beyond political and financial pressures and do what they are elected to do and implement the will of the people please support item 21 and 22 on today's agenda thank you thank you the next speaker is josh simmons followed by becca salas portas good morning you have three minutes good morning good morning greetings city council and distinguished uh city staff my name is josh simmons i'm a resident of district five born bred and terminal here in el paso texas i'm also a board member with eco el paso and also an organizer with sunrise el paso and i also am president and many others from this municipality must reflect forward thinking and methodology that is applicable to the future adaptions for modifying internal practices to enable implementation of renewable energy and energy efficiency climate action is not a token for an election cycle or any empty promise from any candidate at any time in this democracy this charter amendment is an all hands-on approach to sustainability for the conditions observed now and build with resiliency to boot for the future this is prime and center of the el paso climate charter the el paso climate charter is an amendment upon the city charter and not an ordinance so i just want to make sure that viewing public that may or may not be familiar with this understand that truth this amendment will ensure accountability and can deliver and can be delivered to the public from this governing body and to point and to point develop policy with environmental health at the forefront this reposition will ensure improved conditions that will directly benefit the public's health this charter amendment reinforces the goal that this city has outlined in a strategic plan and will enable a climate action plan which is coming soon to fundamentally shift el paso to be a leader in renewable energy and take aggressive action in improving environmental quality being the 12th city in the nation with the most harmful air quality is not acceptable and it cannot continue forty thousand residents of this city have voiced their demand and just from district 5 alone nearly 2 900 residents support such an undertaking from what the el paso climate charter has outlined this motion from grassroots organizing is unprecedented from a post-pandemic standpoint and not the last so be prepared i urge this governing body to ensure swift processing of the el paso climate charter and take this action from the public with a greater magnitude over the capitalist entities that lobby this governing body such as our profit driven electric utility and the related energy source suppliers that continue to commit violence upon our communities the el paso climate charter must be on the 2022 november 8th elections ballot thank you very much thank you the next speaker is becco salas porras followed by kathleen stout at siri reyes jesus reyes and adan signs good morning you have three minutes good morning i'm a third generation el pasoin and i'm here because like many we're tired of the oppression that the state government's putting on not only el paso but the whole state we're trying to change the control the grip that big oil has on our state legislature and the only way we could do this is by bypassing them and getting this petition signed the problem now we have is to get it verified as we see austin's been able to do it in eight to ten days their their city attorney and mr siegel seems to say there's no problem on hiring other people to help the city clerk there's a way around that too if you hire extra people that do the regular duties of the city clerk and have the city clerk employees verify this petition would be around that it sounds like mr siegel is more informed on the legal and how to verify this petition more rapidly and maybe working with him will help things help matters speed along the the other thing is i don't know if any of you know but if if and when this amendment passes it'll be the first time a city charter has adopted environmental policy in the united states el paso will be the first city to do this which would be a great incredible thing for el paso the the other problem is if uh we can't verify these signatures then that is going to come out saying el paso had a chance to change things and couldn't verify the signatures in time what is what is this going to what kind of light is this going to shine on el paso it's going to say that we're following right in line with austin we're doing everything they want and that's what we're trying to stop i don't know about you but i'm sick and tired of being ashamed to tell people i'm from texas the reason the reason is the greed and graft in austin with lobby and big oil is affecting not only el paso but the whole state we should be generating over 90 percent in solar for our electric company but we're hamstrung by the state regulators to generate what five percent is all we have this is uh incredible our electric rates could go down more than half it's a renewable clean energy that no one wants to embrace that's why we're embracing it we're forcing the city to vote thank you the next statement was submitted by kathleen stout ms stout has requested that representative lizard read her comment that will be followed by adsiri reyes jesus reyes and adan science thank you miss prang please assure that the city clerk counts signatures for the climate charter submitted on july 25th in time for council to place the item on the november ballot the youth-led organization sunrise el paso collected nearly 40 000 signatures from el pasolins an effort involving a tremendous amount of civic engagement to strengthen sun city action on the climate crisis of heat fires pollution infrastructure water and costly fossil fuel energy wastage my two perspectives include first as founder and tenure director of utep's center for civic engagement 1998-2008 and second as veteran 40-year professor of political science and public administration most of my professional life has been devoted to strengthening democracy and good government as well as enhancing civic engagement so that more inclusive voices inform governance on civic engagement the youth-led sunrise el paso organization is part of national sunrise and probably the largest chapter in texas many younger people both volunteers and paid canvassers poured their hearts and minds into talking to el pasoans about the climate charter if council and the city clerk do not act in a timely way to verify signatures they will be sending a discouraging non-democratic message to the young leaders who took this initiative and to el pasoans who expect to be able to vote on climate action this november not two years from now needless to say such foot dragging would only strengthen cynicism among voters about our city with deca decades of teaching in political science and the mpa program i reviewed and offered suggestions for the two near final drafts of the lengthy climate charter i also bring experience in bureaucracies having served in five higher education administrative appointments and on loan from utep to the u.s state department under the intergovernmental personal act i understand how cross-cutting issues like the environment and climate can get stuck in bureaucracies and believe that what sunrise offers us by way of leadership incentives accountability and guidance in a climate charter can quicken the movement toward environmental sustainability please support timely action on the signatures other cities like austin can count signatures quickly so why not el paso many of us would be proud if el paso became the first city in texas to take definite action on the climate kathleen stout phd professor emirata of political science thank you the next speaker is atsiri reyes followed by jesus reyes alan science vanessa medrano sito negron good morning you have three minutes good morning good morning my name is a district one citizen of el paso texas represented by mr peter swartzman and today i will be representing the citizens and residents in favor of the climate charter petition and demanding it be placed on the ballot this november on may 25th 2022 i began working as a field organizer for the climate charter petition by the end of the campaign i was able to collect over 2 000 signatures this experience has allowed me to talk to around 100 el pasoans every single workday for the past two months with this experience i can tell you with confidence that the citizens of el paso want a climate department i've spoken to parents concerned about the well-being of their children as ozone levels rise and our city expands passionate and informed young adult adults and teenagers who believe that the time to act in favor of climate justice is now i've talked to influential citizens who plant trees and try the best they can to decrease el paso's carbon footprint climate activists who have advocated for years and either sign the petition with confidence or with a fading glimpse of hope because they've tried far too long but i speak not only about the registered voters who signed the petition i speak to about those who couldn't are passionate el pasoans who were eager to sign but were unable to because they were either not registered out of districts or residents they too are el pasoans and they too deserve to have their opinions heard and so let this be the evidence that there are more of us more than thirty nine thousand hundred 156 passionate and raged and hopeful el pasoans who want to see the climate charter on the ballot this november this means a decision by august 9th an ordinance by august 16th and once again the climate charter on the ballot this november the people of el paso have spoken and i have witnessed their demands let us respect their will and become exemplary leaders of hope and climate relief through the climate charter thank you the next week thank you is jesus reyes followed by alan science jesus reyes followed by adam science medrano sito negron sharon wilson rick bonard carmen rodriguez wesley lawrence good morning you have three minutes okay hello council um i'm here today with sunrise el paso because the issues that the climate charter has stated and what this movement has been trying to push for the past few months speaks to me as a concerned citizen and as a biologist i have traveled a fair amount across the united states and across the globe and i'm fortunate i'm seeing the same troubling patterns that i see here in my hometown when i was in east texas i was there during the cold snap of 2020 when the electrical grid that is powered mainly by gas and oil failed the citizens of texas and out people were out of power for many for many weeks and lots of people had to suffer because of how on unreliable and how how the evolved the infrastructure the electrical infrastructure was i see how mismanaged our water sources are especially when i've heard recently about el paso water just dumping sewage into our river right here at the border i'm also concerned about the lack of re of investments in our infrastructure infrastructure especially considering considering how um how anthropogenic climate change is here now and we need to make smart investments now to weatherize and to strengthen our infrastructure which will bring jobs to this community that we desperately need as a community now i'm not the only citizen who has these concerns all the hard working people here today have worked to get those 40 over close to 40 000 signatures to get the climate charter on november ballot now i don't know what your personal opinions are on the climate charter i could imagine that some of you might not have pleasant opinions about it but it is your duty as a representatives of these people here to have the climate charter on the november ballot let us as citizens vote on this climate charter and determine our destiny as a people please let us decide whether el paso can be the shining city on the hill for green energy for unionized high-paying jobs for building up our infrastructure let us decide let us lead the rest of texas and how we get done here in the 915. thank you the next speaker is adan signs followed by vanessa medrano good morning you have three minutes good afternoon good afternoon i'm adan signs i'm a resident of district 7 and honestly i just want to say wow wow we came in here with a lot of expectations but 100 working days that takes a particular kind of math skill you know and i really wonder did our city manager and our city clerk have the time to sit down and come up with that matt themselves or did they hire aesthetician to do it for them because if that's the case then why can't we hire enough employees to come in and count all these signatures everyone here suarez been told us that petitions are essential to our democracy but what is the purpose of a democracy if there is no infrastructure to support it we came here with a lot of expectations but one of the biggest expectations was no excuses there are no more excuses climate change is coming for us for everyone on this planet a town in north texas gunter texas has already run out of water supplies and are declaring an emergency this is a crisis that affects us here in texas the drought is continuing we are in a desert we draw our water from groundwater the rio grande is drying up there are already people in new mexico who have had to cut off their infrastructure or their water supplies for their uh agriculture the rio grande is drying up we're running out of water and we're still sitting here with excuses like 100 working days to keep this off the ballot of november 2022. we want it this year not next year not in 2024 this year and that is the expectation that we came here to get thank you thank you the next speaker is vanessa medrano followed by sito negron sharon wilson rick boner carmen rodriguez good morning you have three minutes good morning good afternoon oh yeah good afternoon i was born and raised in el paso texas i am also a volunteer with a good number of organizations here and i'm very proud to be a volunteer with sunrise el paso me and my brothers have all been diagnosed as asthmatics as children and it has been well established that el paso children have higher rates of childhood asthma a 2014 study found that 17 of children here were diagnosed in their lifetime and an additional seven percent are expected to be undiagnosed uh it has been also well established that the air quality of our county has violated pollution standards as set by the epa our city government needs to address this as they would be expected to with any other health issue city-led and corporate-led efforts to address it have consistently fallen short and even increase pollutants in this region i'm from the east side very proud of that but i have to close my events whenever i go to the cielo vista mall or even when i pass it a lot of mornings i can't even see the mountains because of the haze of pollution brought to us by el paso electric and marathon oil the city chart the climate charter represents the hope that change is possible it represents the possibility of breathing air that is healthy instead of breathing air that is gross and like causes thing health issues like asthma and allergies the climate charter is bold ambitious and proactive why because we must transform the status quo boldly ambitiously and proactively this is your this is a huge opportunity for city-wide change proposed and signed by your voters if 40 000 el paso and speak in favor of this ballot initiative our city government must act on it i've been reading in the news excuse after excuse presented by the city clerk and the city attorney i'm done with these vague excuses we need results from the city government to certify the signatures in time for november of 2022 i was one of the over 2 000 people who signed the petition for this charter amendment in mr henry henry rivera's district seven just as your representatives have taken the time to meet with and listen to el paso electric behind closed doors we are asking no we are demanding that you please listen to the public and we demand that you listen to us please do the right thing and do everything in your power to get this position petition on the ballot this november thank you thank you the next statement was submitted by sito negron and he's asking representative lizard to read his comments thank you miss prine mayor and members of city council the city of el paso has a process for citizen initiatives to be brought for a vote you have before you an effort to do just that climate change is no longer a matter of debate as other southwest cities we are affected by heat and drought we have a community driven opportunity to take significant actions to prepare for this reality advocates collected more than 40 000 signatures the public knows we need strong action the city clerk now has the responsibility of verifying these signatures and the city council of placing the question on the ballot i am concerned about my children's future in this city el paso was a leading southwest city 100 years ago and can be a 21st century leader in the global transition to a more sustainable future there should be and there will be vigorous debate regarding this proposal your leadership and commitment to honoring the process will ensure that the city clerk has the clear direction and the necessary resources to review these forty thousand plus signatures quickly and that this item is placed on the november ballot therefore i join with those present to respectfully urge you to ensure validation of the signatures and to place this question to a vote of the public thank you sito negron thank you the next speaker is sharon wilson sharon wilson star six please to unmute your telephone good afternoon you have three minutes hello good afternoon wilson from dallas texas i have prepared comments but i hardly know what to say now that i've heard all the excuses that would essentially sport democracy i read a headline this morning where scientists are warning that humans should prepare for extinction in the face of that news i cannot fathom these excuses if it is true that only the clerks can verify the signatures and i do not believe that is true but in that case put all eight clerks on the verification process and have other staff our temporary staff pick up the slack on their other duties i do not live in el paso but i am frequently there for my work i am senior field advocate and optical gas imaging photographer for earthworks that means i use technology that makes normally invisible oil and gas solution visible earthworks has constituents in el paso and i work with many people there on ways to improve air quality every day i receive a notice from tceq on air quality in texas city every day for weeks and for months on end el paso has had an air alert this morning i was notified that el paso air is again an orange alert meaning it is hazardous for sensitive groups i have monitored air pollution from several oil and gas facilities in el paso those include the marathon refinery the newman methane gas fired power plant and the montana vista methane gas-fired power plant all these facilities create intense impacts to the air el paso and breeze and all the oil and gas that goes through these facilities is some of the dirtiest on the planet the gas used in el paso was rejected by france as too dirty for their citizens what an exciting demonstration of democracy from el paso young people these same young people may have no future can you hear the emotion in their voices the sh the city should do whatever it takes to verify the signatures and be a proud beacon of democracy otherwise it seems like el paso doesn't actually provide a viable way for citizens to petition their government my documentation of your poor air quality and the accepted climate science proves that it is essential that the city do everything in its power to place the climate charter on the november ballot thank you the next speaker is rick boner followed by carmen rodriguez wesley lawrence kristen baudry morning council or afternoon as you know there's more than one way to add a charter amendment to a ballot and you can count and verify all these signatures as per state law or you can simply add it by council action today under item number 24 as another thing that could be considered and then you could amend the final language on august the 16th yeah and so you know i think that in my gut and i think that you can see this as well that these numbers are probably more than adequate and i it's it would be a shame to not allow this to move forward by simply delaying it past the date then that means it could not be reconsidered for another two years which seems like a real travesty so again if you look at item number 24 you're already thinking about adding various things to allow voters to vote on the items and i understand there's some question as to how well the ballot language is crafted in their presentation but it could also be amended on the 16th so there's a very simple way to get this done you can skip all the drama of having to go through all the counting and just allow this to move forward by your very action if you believe that your constituents 40 000 in numbers have asked you to do something and i think they have then i think it seems only fair to allow those total population to vote on it whether or not it it's successful is ultimately up to the voters and that's all you're trying to do here is trying to be fair and reasonable so thank you thank you the next speaker is carmen rodriguez and she submitted a statement to be read by representative lisa good day mayor and city council my name is carmen rodriguez i'm a lawyer and long time community activist and member of community first coalition i offer this statement of support for the prompt and effective processing of the climate change petition so that the voters can voice their preference in the november election while most of us are wringing our hands and stressing about neighborhoods on fire and others underwater dying wildfire and damaged ecosystems here in our city our young people made a bold decision and took affirmative action to begin to address climate change they have spent many many hours laboring to inform the public and advocating for the issues that will prepare this city to meet the challenges that confront us the members and supporters of sunrise el paso and ground game texas now expect that elected officials and leaders will also do their part and ensure that this democratic and constitutionally protected exercise and petitioning our government will be met with the respect it deserves our city is fortunate to have such caring concerned and action-oriented citizens to show us the way to confront the single most dangerous event in earth's his earth's history now that the issue is being addressed at the national level our community will be the best in the best position to take advantage of the resources that will be made available if the measure is passed the climate change petition that has been submitted to the city clerk deserves to be treated seriously professionally and expeditiously there's no reason to try to suppress delay or thwart this noble and most compelling cause please support the process and let el paso voters decide whether they want to launch progressive initiatives to help address climate change or whether they want to do nothing and continue wringing their hands and worrying about the future while all while our earth crumbles thank you for your attention to our pleas carmen rodriguez thank you the next speaker is wesley lawrence followed by christian audrey charlene hill chris sodie husby josephi good afternoon you have three minutes good afternoon sir good afternoon mayor and council my name is wesley lawrence and i'm the president of the el paso young democrats your democratic committee man for sd-29 but most importantly i'm a proud member of the northeast um and who supported and endorsed the climate charter i want to start by thanking sunrise el paso ground game texas and every single el pasoin who worked tirelessly to collect the 39 156 signatures needed for this very important and crucial el paso climate charter amendment on july 25th sunrise el paso and ground game texas turned in their required signatures and i want to let you all know that this is exactly what direct democracy looks like it is an example of the youth of our community grabbing the fossil fuel industry by the horns and demanding real and honest change i'm asking council today to ensure that the people's voices are heard it's important i'm begging you to ensure that el pasoins have access to clean air and clean water as it is a basic and fundamental human right and i want you to be brave clear and forthcoming and admitting that climate change is a real threat to our community and its people by declaring a climate state of emergency here in the city of el paso this is the potentially the coldest summer that el pasoans are going to ever receive and we need to be honest about that i want you to restore trust in our government right now it is at an all-time low uh we need to show young el pasons that we are fighting for a better el paso and that we are listening to them they are our future and we need them to understand that we owe it to future generations to fight for climate justice to protect our people from future health problems that are caused by dirty energy and we need to ensure that the status quo and this city will not continue we need progressive policies and we need them now lastly i ask that the signatures be counted by no later than august 12th in order to ensure this vital amendment can be put on the november ballot i know that there are lots of el pasoans who did plan to come out today but due to this meeting being early in the morning on a tuesday a lot of them cannot make it i ask you to have community meetings while these signatures are being counted to listen to every el paso and throughout the city of el paso so we can have a clear consensus climate change is real it is happening it is a threat to our community and once again thank you sunrise el paso ground game texas and every single el paso and who signed this important climate charter i i do want to be clear that the worst is yet to come if this does not get put on the ballot we're still going to experience climate change we're still going to experience people dying from uninverse health issues caused by dirty energy so let's get to work let's show these young people that are here today that we actually care thank you and let's do this guys thank you the next statement was submitted by kristin audrey and it reads our city government has a duty to respect the will of nearly forty thousand el pasolens who signed on to the climate charter and must direct the city clerk to ensure the petition gets on the ballot this petition included two thousand nine hundred ninety six constituents in my district district eight el paso is the tenth sunniest city in the world yet our privatized monopoly electric grid only uses five percent renewable energy additionally el paso is the 12th worst polluted city in the united states when it comes to ozone a pollutant which harms respiratory health and worsens asthma this is why the climate charter is so important and while el paso must transition away from fossil fuels thank you for your support of items 21 and 22 sincerely christian audrey the next speaker is charlene hill followed by cryo sodium good morning you have three minutes okay good afternoon good afternoon i used to read a lot of fiction books as a kid a lot of books like jane patherson's maximum ride series which that were about dystopian futures futures that were where the world was the wasteland and democracy was dead some of those horrible futures i read about were directly caused by climate change i'm now an adult and no longer asking my mom about the likelihood of the world ending although now maybe i should be i know that climate change is a serious issue not to be ignored i know that our city trying to do something about climate change is important i know that taking a chance on this charter might be scary i know that the idea of unintended side effects harming people is scary but i also know the fear of the road to hell being paved with good intentions is also real and scary but i also know that the people of el paso should be allowed to make a choice they should be allowed to take a risk they should be allowed to vote for what they want the people of el paso have a say having a say in how their city is run matters it's important to me and should be important to you too this is your city and your people who you represent they are saying that putting the climate charter on the ballot is important we live in a democracy where the voice of the people the voice of the voters matters so please i beg you listen to what the people are saying listen to what they're saying and do what you must to put the climate charter on the ballot thank you for your time thank you the next statement was submitted by chris saudi hussein to be read by representative lisada thank you miss prime i apologize that i was unable to take time off of work to attend this meeting in person i feel very strongly about this issue nearly three thousand people in my district alone signed on to the el paso climate charter petition lisa's constituents overwhelmingly support this initiative and we are counting on our representative to ensure that the petition is placed on the ballot this november i work as a nursery and farm propagator and grower i am sharing this because i would like to emphasize that the people in your community that are responsible for growing your food believe the climate crisis to be an immediate emergency we are already experiencing workplace hazards and difficulty growing several staple crops due to severe weather events caused by climate change including essential equipment being damaged by a severe ice storm in late april this year as well as the heat waves throughout the summer the idea of delaying this election makes me scared for the future of my community i rely on our land's ability to produce our food and that has grown noticeably more difficult just within the past few years i care deeply about the health of my family and neighbors and the health of our ecosystem the city has been given plenty of time to certify the signatures on this campaign and there and there is absolutely no legitimate reason to push this charter amendment to a future election any effort to do so is tacit support for the severe environmental degradation that will result el paso shouldn't be playing catch up with renewable resources as one of the sunniest cities in the world we should be leaders in green energy we have a chance to be trailblazers with a policy that will help not only our community but the rest of the world as well we just have to ensure that corruption won't rob us of the opportunity thank you for your time thank you the next speaker is erica latines followed by abi perez crystal moran carla palacios sapphire ortega michael gutierrez veronica carbajal good afternoon you have three minutes good afternoon hello my name is erica with the k my pronouns are she her i am a proud queer latina citizen of el paso and a constituent of representative salcido in regard to item 21 and 22 on the agenda i have this to share climate change we call it and yet i invite you to ask yourselves is it really climate change or is it really climate disruption climate change others the issue at hand climate disruption requires accountability by our own hand it is we the humans inhabiting the earth responsible for the fires ravaging the bees dying an extinction of animals disappearing water fossil fuel follies greenhouse gas carbon dioxide multiplying melting glaciers floods people dying we can't be denying this is by our own hand it is up to us you to take a stand action now before it's too far gone don't sit and follow the steps of those before you gone careless irresponsible letting greed and profit rule look at what it has gotten us depleted i invite you to please listen to your constituents the people we have spoken direct the city clerk to verify the ink of signatures collected by august 9 to ensure y'all can vote on it 816 to order an election on the climate charter november ballot yes bringing about a climate director climate jobs reducing the city's contribution to climate disruption investing in a sustainable future that makes us stewards of nature caretakers no longer defiling bringing about climate justice our border land is sacred our people desert warriors our survival depends on our environment let us restore the balance let us change the narrative the children are watching they are rising this generation is not crying they are fierce advocates they are trying to undo the mistakes made all the lying they will hold us you accountable what will you say when they ask how did you toe the line to the council people supporting thank you to the council people hesitating breathe feel that that's air in your lungs sponsored by nature that could soon be gone please protect it because it feels good to breathe all day long thank you thank you the next speaker is evie pereira abe perea followed by crystal moran carla palacios good afternoon you have three minutes good afternoon uh hello my name is abe pereia i am 24 years old i am a local artist i am a teacher and a proud member of sunrise el paso thank you for giving me the chance to speak and to highlight the incredible accomplishment that this community has pulled off to celebrate the organizers who were throughout all the city collecting signatures sometimes in extremely hot weather asking el pasoans to sign the petition the organizers who helped pre-verify signatures organized volunteers shared information put the charter together and also just as important that thousands of people 40 000 to be exact who we had conversations with who listened who asked questions folks who recognized how we forgotten our oneness with the water that we drink the air we breathe and the land we live on by polluting and exploiting it and now there's an opportunity in this region to follow the calling of our ancestors to make living here better in ways that heal our relationship with the earth and with each other and we can help promote that healing process tremendously with the robust and sophisticated policy that is the climate charter and having achieved the ambitious goal of collecting 40 000 signatures all you have to do as council is to make the call to prioritize the verification process and direct the resources that are necessary for the city clerk to finish it is possible as mike siegel said the city of austin has been able to do it in eight to ten business days with other initiatives we start now we'll be good to have it on the ballot for this november and it has to be this november not after a couple of years of missed opportunities for action in a world even more on fire and with that i want to ask you to take this feedback that i'm about to give you with an open heart with an and a willingness to actively listen which all it is really is a reminder that you all as a council have previously already made decisions that have put our communities in very vulnerable positions and with 40 000 people listening now people who are saying hey look city council we've spoken we need this now please ensure this happens i think it would be in your best interest to make sure that it absolutely does because the act of democracy practiced by this campaign over the past several months was loud and clear and i'm sure it can be loud and clear again if the fair process of this climate charter is not insured because again thousands are watching and listening now wanting to make sure that this happens so do not sabotage yourselves but more importantly do not sabotage us because that's what this council is about right your people not business decisions in the name of economic development that continue to marginalize people i mean i i think it would be epic if we left today's meeting with the full council support of ensuring this process like think how wonderful that would be to for thousands of people to see this council be like yup we we got you though of course with all due respect would be the bare minimum minimum so um please vote in favor of items 21 and 22 and let's ensure the vote for this november thank you so much thank you the next speaker is crystal moran followed by carla palacios sapphire ortega crystal moran star sixth place to unmute your telephone good afternoon good afternoon you have three minutes thank you so much um i just uh wanted to mention and uh that i noticed and wondering why why the city manager and city attorney are not in the room right now during these public comments it feels important that they should be there but anyhow i wanted to mention that forty thousand city voters have spoken forty thousand city voters who supported the climate charter want to see this charter on the ballot in november our city government is supposed to be a democratic one not an oligarchy and in the democratic process that people are listened to that is literally the job of the city council in our city government to listen to the people the city government should be acting as a neutral facilitator in this democratic process your job is to provide the resources to any barriers that may be presented from doing your job on time we as sunrise members have followed the state and local laws to meet the deadlines and have gone over and beyond in order to for our petition to be placed on the ballot in november this petition is the first of its kind in the state so why wouldn't you want to be a model city in this case for the people for the environment the texas constitution gives the people of the of el paso the right to self-government this is what our charter is state law lets us amend the chartered by initiative this is our constitutional right what the city staff is saying uh what the city staff said earlier is that we don't care about the texas constitution about we don't care about what the voice of the people have to say this is a travesty this is an at this is an injustice and the city council should not allow this to stand thank you very much the next speaker is carla palacios followed by sapphire ortega michael gutierrez veronica carvajal angel loyola good afternoon you have three minutes good afternoon good afternoon my name is carla palacios and i am a constituent of district seven i urge you all to vote in support of item 21 and 22 to ensure that the climate charter is placed on the ballot for election day in november i have seen firsthand the tireless efforts of my colleagues and peers that they have made to get these 40 000 signatures together they canvassed every single day no matter if it was raining or if they were in the blistering heat they never fail to physically show up and speak to everyone in the community communicating the urgency of this issue in both english and spanish out there on campuses at farmers markets at parks stores classrooms they were meeting the people where they were at and informing them of the importance of the climate charter and 40 000 people agreed that this is important and they want it on their ballots i cannot express or underline enough the urgency behind this matter and it would be a disgrace if the climate charter is not on this ballot because this is what our el paso communities want and they already did the work for you representative rivera as your constituent this is what i want this is what my family wants and this is what my neighbors want as constituents of your district do not underestimate the power behind community do not underestimate the power behind this generation that organized and mobilize accordingly we are 40 000 strong holding you all accountable today to represent your community not corporate interests these are your neighbors your community and your people no excuses we want this charter on the ballot and i don't know what y'all gotta do to get this counted on time but i'm hearing a lot of excuses y'all better figure it out because it needs to get done and y'all better provide the resources and uphold the democratic right we have to petition so i demand you to vote accordingly thank you thank you the next speaker is sapphire sapphire ortega followed by michael gutierrez veronica carvajal angel uyoa dan burkhart good afternoon you have three minutes good afternoon good afternoon i am here today to request that my city representative lesarga take action to make sure the climate charter will be on the november ballot more than 39 000 el pasoans have signed this petition and agree that we need to take action to diminish the impacts of climate change more than 39 000 people need to be heard climate change affects those who are at economic disadvantage and this will lead to climate injustice it is the city's council duty to listen to the people and the people have spoken i am here today to ask that our city clerk of el paso laura prine count the signatures and get the climate charter on the ballot in november the reason i care about this is because i have a family that are at an economic disadvantage and already facing the effects of climate change the air pollution in el paso has been making it hard to breathe back in 2016 in my biology course i looked into the levels of el paso air pollution and the numbers were not as high as they are today this is extremely concerning because air pollution leads to asthma and some days i wake up and i struggle to breathe we need to do something about climate change now while we still have a chance we can still take care of our community and that is a choice that should be respected regardless of not agreeing with this i have only voted one time in my life and i am now 25 25 years of feeling helpless over being economically disadvantaged and even when i was able to vote i did not see hope so i did not vote here i am today as a young adult speaking about how this is my future i am worried about my future and what will happen if we do not take environmental action now our temperatures are rising and when it gets hot it becomes extremely difficult to think i am fortunate to have air conditioner but what about those who cannot afford air conditioner what happens to them so please listen to the people and let's take the first step to climate justice let's get the climate charter on the ballot it's 2022 it's time to listen to the people thank you the next statement was submitted by michael gutierrez mr gutierrez would like representative annello to read this statement thank you ms pride oh is this one hello council my name is michael a gutierrez a constituent of district 2. unfortunately i was unable to attend in person with my colleagues but i still want to express my solidarity to the el paso citizens who have signed the climate charter nearly 40 000 residents of el paso signed the climate charter and our city government is obligated to recognize their voices the city must do every effort to guarantee that this petition appears on the ballot for the november election the city clerk must process the signatures and issue a certificate decision by august 9 2022 for city council decide on august 16 2022 to call for a vote on the climate charter is the clerk's deadline of august 9th feasible for the signature count yes similar quantities of signatures have been evaluated in 8 to 10 business days by the city officials and other places such as the city of austin there are at least 15 business days for el paso city clerk to complete this you as our elected officials must take action to make sure that the city clerk laura prine completes this task if the city if the clerk requires extra personnel or resources to guarantee they meet the deadline you must do so you swore an oath to execute their responsibility therefore carry it out excusing the voice of almost 40 000 el paso citizens is disrespectful and demonstrates the lack of respect for our community there shouldn't be any excuses and there are none for not putting this immensely popular petition up for a vote the climate charter compiled with the guidelines and processes established and el paso residents should make the final decision on this matter you must vote in favor of the city's ordinances to ensure the petition is placed on the november elections if not what use does democracy serve if those are meant to safeguard it are ignored thank you the next statement was submitted by veronica karbaha and it reads dear mayor representative angelo and city clerk my name is veronica carbajal please ensure that the city clerk has enough resources to validate the signatures in support of the climate charter that have been submitted by sunrise el paso in ground game texas it is my understanding that twenty thousand valid signatures were required and sunrise el paso has submitted over thirty nine thousand five hundred signatures nearly twice the required amount sunrise el paso went a step further and provided voter unique identifiers or viuds for over 23 000 signatures which should make it easier for the city clerk to validate the requisite signatures or to take a representative sample and extrapolate as is done routinely in such matters how often do we criticize young people for not getting involved in local politics how often do we blame them for our low voter turnout please do not tell them that their conviction and hard work has been for naught please provide the resources necessary for the city clerk to validate the signatures in time to place the item on the city council meeting schedule for august 16th and ultimately place the item on the november 2022 ballot i graduated from brown university with honors in environmental studies in 1998 let me do the math for you this was 22 years ago and we knew that then that the earth was warming and yet our earth is in peril because our elected leaders have done so little to actually heat the warnings with every missed opportunity young people have lost trust in our electoral system the truth is they shouldn't have to try to put the climate climate charter on the ballot they are only doing so because our elected leaders have failed to protect their planet and their health please help restore their faith in our system and honor the commitment to making this world better thank you veronica thank you the next speaker is angel uh followed by dan burkharth alyssa garza kim schulte richard henera daisy marcus good afternoon you have three minutes hello good afternoon good afternoon hi i'm angel yoa i live in district one representative by mr schwartzbein and i am asking you today council to support the climate charter ballot initiative the city required we submit 20 000 valid signatures and we gave them almost double that last monday we submitted about 39 1556 signatures to the city clerk's office yesterday we completed final validation of these signatures on our end include concluded that of those thirty nine thousand one hundred and fifty six twenty one thousand sixty five are indeed valid that's a thousand and sixty five over the required number to get us on the ballot so my question here today is why are we yet again being faced with resistance when what we're asking for is for you to stand with the people in an increasingly hostile state that does not listen to or represent its constituents mr gonzalez this is what your contract was extended for i want to once again thank representative vanello for putting this item on the agenda today but personally i am tired of standing up here and fighting for my life to get one basic human right out of this council to ignore the almost 40 000 in support of a climate charter would be baffling we are calling on you once again council to listen to the people not the oligarchs had there not been limitations on who can sign the petition being as they had to be registered voters within el paso city lines or over the age of 18 we damn well could have surpassed that required twenty thousand four times over we do not get paid to do this we voluntarily spent our time drafting up a charter ensuring it's within the legal realms of our city secured funding and went out to gather these signatures and to hear that the city does not have staff capacity to get this on this year's ballot a job you get paid to do is infuriating [Music] a little before submitting our petitions a group of about five or so of us each verified about 240 signatures in only two days that's about a thousand two hundred signatures and maybe more in two days council it is not impossible to do so we've shown you that all you have to lose from not supporting our initiative is a portion of our past electric's profits which absolutely boggles my mind that you would choose that over the purity of your city's air being as you also live here nonetheless like always we will take note of who votes against the people today but keep in mind you are voting against almost 40 000 for the last three years that i have been with sunrise we have never had council on the people's side we're hoping today is different but if not that's okay the resistance you gives us makes the resistance you give us makes us want to fight harder we'll come back stronger next time because we always do the next speaker is dan burkhardt followed by alyssa garza kim schulte richard henera daisy marquez dan burkhart alyssa garza submitted a statement to be read by representative rivera thank you we can no longer wait to take action on this climate crisis and texas cities like denton river red river have committed themselves 100 percent clean energy el paso is the 10th sunniest city in the world yet our privatized monopoly electric grid only uses 5 renewable energy el paso can lead this can be the leading city in texas and the country to demonstrate the power of community and what action looks like on the local level to combat climate crisis city council must respect the will of nearly forty thousand of past ones and direct the city clerk to ensure the petition gets on the ballot uh district seven has two thousand one hundred sixty four residents who support the climate charter while i collected signatures in my district many residents voiced their concern about el paso's pollution lack of influx infrastructure and the area of the preventing flood the dominant presence of alky and how some of the their children have asthma city council as our elected officials must direct the city clerk to ensure the petition reaches the ballot this november climate charter officials have already provided a list of over 20 000 verified signatures it is clear what the residents of el paso want i along with hundreds of others will not accept any excuses if the city prevents us from being on the ballot it demonstrates a social injustice creates barriers and harms of community members no excuses it is time we transition away from our fossil fuels it is time we listen to indigenous communities frontline communities grassroot routes organizations and scientists who say the time is now to transition away from the fossil fuels i am asking you to place the climate charter on ballot if anyone prevents this from happening they will have robbed the community from something great thank you alyssa garcia next speaker kim schulte submitted a statement to be read into the record and it says as a citizen of el paso i want to know that our local government is listening to the people of el paso and representing our interests the climate change petition circulated by sunrise el paso was met with overwhelming support all over the city the volume of signatures collected clearly sends a message that el pason's want to take this important step to protect our environment please direct the city clerk to ensure the petition reaches the ballot this november thank you kim schulte thank you the next statement was submitted by richard hanetta to be read into the record and it reads honorable mayor and city council climate change as an is an existential threat to our planet it concerns me that the idea that we would have a professional dedicated to ensuring el paso is doing its part in curbing our contribution to the issue and developing our solutions what seems so radical to the body as to require forty thousand of your constituents to band together and demand it of you but here we are a youth-led organization that collects tens of thousands of signatures has earned these constituents the right to have this item voted on and to see if the elected officials who represent their interests are indeed doing that i stand with the 2 900 constituents of district 5 in full support of this amendment i stand with the 40 000 constituents who demanded their voice be heard if the force of will and dedication to collect 40 000 signatures in such a short amount of time isn't impressive enough i encourage you to imagine just how dedicated that force will be when directed towards your political prospects should you deny them i support the charter amendment and any action that will ensure that this is properly brought to a vote as sunrise el paso desires and implore each of you to do the same respectfully richard haneda the next statement was submitted by daisy marcus to be read by representative lisa thank you miss prine my name is daisy marcus and i am a constituent of district 8. i request that my city representative cecilia sarga read the following into the public record of august 2 city city council meeting for comments on items 21 and 22. it is feasible and it is necessary for the city clerk to process the signatures and provide a certification decision by august 9 2022 to allow the city council to vote on august 16 2022 to order an election on the climate charter is it realistic for the clerk to count the signatures by august 9. yes other cities such as the city of austin city staff have reviewed similar numbers of signatures in 8 to 10 business days the el paso city clerk has at least 15 days to get this done there are no excuses for a failure to place this overwhelmingly popular petition on the ballot to be voted on if the city clerk laura prime needs more resources or staff to ensure that they make the deadline you as my elected official must take action to ensure the clerk completes this task you must vote in favor of city ordinances to ensure the petition is placed on the november elections here is why it is important to me that you take action my sister father and i grew up with terrible asthma and allergies my asthma prevented me from partaking in athletic sports throughout my entire childhood and even standard pe time whenever i would get a small cold my asthma would take over and it would be a bigger issue because of my already overworked lungs not only that i'm disgusted seeing the sky in an ugly smog due to how unregulated our air is i always wondered what could be done to prevent prevent for further smog to be created and this is one of the ways this is just one of the million reasons why i am in support of this climate charter i want to be able to breathe comfortably in my hometown i want to have an ounce of hope that my home will be breathable for my niece and nephew this climate crisis has me thinking if it's even moral to bring in a child into this world why why air i am unsure if we'll have drinkable water or clean air to breathe you see this is an opportunity for the many that are reconsidering having a child wouldn't it be wonderful if you were to be part of a group of people that want to take care of the earth they live on and ensure their beautiful city of el paso texas is a healthy healthy and happy place to thrive in i expect you to do the right thing and listen to the voices of almost 40 000 el pasoans thank you the next statement was submitted by graciela blandon to be read by representative schwartzman thanks i want to also thank my constituent for saying my last name correctly schwartzbind so thank you for that i know it's a hard one um dear representative schwartzbind please read out the following comment in support of items 21 and 22 on today's agenda as a constituent of your district i'm writing in support of items 21 and 22 on today's agenda on behalf of the fort thought four thousand i think she met forty thousand constituents who signed the climate charter ballot measures submitted last month by sunrise el paso in ground game texas i expect you to do everything in your power to ensure the city clerk validate the signatures by august ninth a very feasible deadline according to state precedents this petition has more than enough signatures to get on the ballot and sunrise el paso has already provided viuds for over 23 000 of them any attempt to block the signatures from doubt from validation will be considered not only an indirect act of climate devastation but a direct infringement on democracy and state law your constituency constituency will not accept excuses for obstructing their will i hope the gravity of your vote is clear i trust that we in the additional near 40 000 signatories of this petition can count on your advocacy on our behalf much like you advocated for the preservation and lost dog in d1 please redeem city council and do what you know to do to be the right thing i also kindly request to respond to your office on your vote's rationale i look forward to hearing back respectfully raciella blandon thank you the next speaker is luis miranda followed by hilda villegas guillermo glenn sabrina bustillos good afternoon you have three minutes good afternoon good afternoon my name is luis enrique miranda i am a constituent from district 8. i am a member of sunrise el paso and i was the previous campaign manager for this ballot initiative and as i say 100 days really that is a third of a year like that is not a reasonable timeline for them to put forward it is not at all under any circumstance as someone who's worked and managed all with these petitions and has had multiple locations and having to uh number these petitions as such and such uh it does not take that long it really does not it um it just you know looking at everything people have been saying looking at the constituents looking at the numbers of people who have showed up and who have spoken you guys really have a public mandate to see this through to ensure that this is passed to ensure that this goes on the ballot and i again um you know like there have been previous instances in other council meetings where the the city staff has placed bogus political arguments or bogus legal arguments at best or misinformed at best and um it really calls into question you know other people have given their own poli their own legal opinion on what's possible here and it's just the bureaucratic process you know this is is more of a a process right just ensuring what people have already said ensuring that people's voices are heard and ensuring that the city can actually do its job when it's presented to it this this uh initiative you know it's not um it is uncommon but it is the city's position and it is the city's job to ensure that every single thing that's possible under our laws can be done in a reasonable manner and that is what we're asking that is what we're telling you to do your job in a reasonable manner to do your job in a reasonable process to listen to the constituents and to put it forward the the resources that are needed to get this done because those resources exist we know that those resources exist we know that the processes exist we they might try to obfuscate what the syst what the process is and what the what the issue is for them but we know that that that's not really you know true that that they don't have the time they do have the time they do have the time to do this and please you know listen to the constituents listen to people there's a reason why el pasoans are are so cynical and have been tuned out by city council is because of the history because every time that people try to put forth and be engaged in their civic duties you know this things like this show up and they try to obfuscate what's possible and and so you know consider that consider the consequences of not getting this on the ballot consider the consequences in the message of telling people that when they engage in democracy that the city will deny it due to technicalities thank you the next speaker is hilda villegas hilda villegas i don't see miss villegas coming forward and i don't see her phone number in the queue we'll move to guillermo glen followed by sabrina bustillos i don't see mr glenn in the queue either sabrina bustillos yes hi um good afternoon my name is sabrina gustious and i'm here to urge council to take immediate action to ensure that the el paso climate charter can be on the ballot this november in a matter of months sunrise and ground game mobilized to a historic degree the amount of signatures needed nearly doubles the amount required in response the city seems to say that that's too much work for them to verify for many on the council the amount of constituents that sign this petition in their district nearly triples the amount that voted for them in their primary the plain truth is members of this council benefit from a lack of civic engagement in el paso now that we've shown you what we can do to mobilize we're meant with we are met with excuses that are meant to keep it that way let's be honest because if this was at the interest of developers in the city you would have these signatures verified in a week i really took time out of my work day to come listen to my local government tell me that this would be too much work for them to do when in reality this is verifying work that other community members already did for you for that all i can say is i really hope and wish that you all can figure this out do your job and listen to the nearly 40 000 people who want this because if not we've shown what our mobilization can do and those are the same people who are going to unseat you if you don't thank you for your time today thank you the next speaker is carmen rodriguez carmen rodriguez i don't see her phone number in the queue miss brian is there a statement from senator rodriguez yes the the next statement was submitted by senator jose rodriguez and it reads dear mayor lisa and city council representatives today you are presented with the opportunity to support an unparalleled initiative that will sustain life in the el paso region state nation and indeed the earth we live in i urge you to take a bold step and do your part to become the first municipality in the country to adopt a climate charter a climate change charter as we know el paso has led the way in changing harmful policies and practices that hurt people and diminished society as a whole we were the first city in texas do to desegregate our public schools and public housing to protect voting rights and to ban smoking and public establishments we ne we now can be the first to adopt a climate change charter the urgency in doing so is obvious daily we witness a destruction to life and property caused by extreme temperatures raging fires flooding more powerful and frequent hurricanes and other natural disasters that science tells us are largely caused by climate change these changes in the earth's climate pose an existential threat that we can no longer ignore the time to act is now the climate change charter petition represents citizens participation in direct democracy the commitment of the young people and organizations that spearheaded the petition and the thousands of citizens who signed it deserve a quick expeditious process to ensure that the measure is placed on the ballot for november's election the people have done their part now it is time to do yours respectfully jose rodriguez former state senator thank you the next speaker is ivan diaz and she submitted a statement to be read by representative salcido thank you laura my name is yvonne diaz unfortunately i was unable to attend in person due to having covet 19 but i still want to express my solidarity to the el paso citizen citizens who have signed the climate charter it is imperative that the city clerk proceeds to the signatures and issues a certification of decision by august the 9th 2022 for the city council to decide on august 16 2022 to call for the vote on the climate charter we understand clerk's deadline of august 9 in the feasible for the signatures count as similar quantities of signatures have been evaluated in 8 to 10 business days by the city officials and other places such as city of austin there are at least 15 business days for el paso city clerk to complete this you as our elected official must take action to make sure that the city clerk laura prine completes this task if the city clerk requires extra personnel or resources to guarantee they meet the deadline you must do so you swore an oath to execute this responsibility therefore it must be carried out as i write this from my bed struggling to breathe i think about the importance of having clean air in el paso which is ranked the sep the 12th worst polluted city in the us asthma allergies and respiratory problems in the city are not a coincidence it is up to you to ensure better air quality not only for constituents like me but for the future generations please show us that you care about your children your grandchildren's future and listen to the voice of almost 40 000 el paso citizens that stand behind the needs of clean air the climate charter compiled with the guidelines and procedures establishes and el paso residents should make the final decision on this matter you must vote in favor of city ordinances to ensure the petition is placed on november's elections in solitary yvonne diaz thank you the next speaker is marlo olguin marlo olgin star six please two and major telephone good afternoon mario olguin star six please mario olguin star six to unmute your telephone while mr holguin is coming forward i'll read a statement from kenneth bell that reads my name is kenneth bell and i'm a resident of district 3. the climate charter is the will of the people this is not a matter of opinion personal feelings or political ideology this is a matter of fact the city clerk has an obligation to certify the signatures in a timely manner so that the citizens can vote on the charter amendment in the november election a petition to place charter amendment on the ballot requires 20 000 signatures from registered voters over 39 000 el paso and signed the climate charter because they know our city has failed to prepare itself for the adverse effects of climate change in any significant way in district 3 where i live 2421 of my neighbors have signed the petition city council representatives the people are not asking this is a direct order from the citizens you serve to place this on the ballot to be voted on vote in favor of placing the ordinance on the ballot thank you yes mario olguin star six i don't see him unmuting the telephone we'll go with christian marcus which submitted a statement to be read by representative lee zarga thank you miss prine city council and members of the public thank you for the opportunity to share these written words expressing steadfast support for the el paso climate charter it is my understanding that there are individuals within city government who are opposed to verifying the signatures for this petition though it was submitted in a timely manner to the city clerk's office my ask of you is this consider what these 40 000 signatures mean for the city of el paso in many instances this number is higher than the voter turnout we see in local elections this is a people-led grassroots campaign these are the voices of your constituents those who can vote and those who can't out of forty thousand signatures at least half have been verified to come from registered voters the other half are twenty 000 people who support this change in our community and either can't vote or aren't registered yet and despite this each signature should count to each of you personally as a city representatives forty thousand el paso and envision a sustainable present and future for the city of el paso the el paso climate charter is a critical piece of policy that advocates for anti-racist environmental action it advocates for the preservation and cleanliness of our water the quality of our air the quality of our health the lives of our labor workers and their families i ask you to give the other 20 000 people a chance to vote on the climate charter by supporting it and moving it towards the ballot i ask you to give the city of el paso the opportunity to vote on it to hold a truly democratic process in this decision-making we have the opportunity as a city as a community to model what democracy and action should and could look like listen to the forty thousand each signature should count and though not every signature will these are still your constituents these are the people of el paso this is our community's voice in action thank you thank you mayor that i've called everyone that signed up to speak and if i may clarify thank you very much and i want to first of all thank everyone that um showed up to uh to speak um and also i want to congratulate you all on uh you know almost 40 000 signatures and the hard work you did to bring it forward so i want to thank you all for for being here and um giving us your time we do i really do appreciate that so thank you all may or may i clarify some statements we've heard may i clarify some statements that were made from canelo you want to go first or okay go ahead ma'am thank you sir so i wanted to say we are working as fast as we can to verify the petition i said it could take us up to 20 to 100 days i didn't say it would take us 100 days i said up to based on previous experience with validating petitions i did reach out as soon as i heard that the petition was coming i did reach out to my counterpart in austin texas miss rios and she told me that the average days to verify a petition in her office is 30 working days she said 30 working days when i read the articles in the local articles that said that the city of austin takes 12 to 15 days i reached out to her again and this was her reply and i quote hello the magic word is typically as i mentioned in our conversation it all depends on the condition of the petition when submitted to our office what other time sensitive projects we have going on i.e ballot applications budget meetings regular city council meetings one very important detail is that we have over 20 full-time employees and a lot of experience with validating petitions i will say end quote i will say that they also have developed their own petition verification software system in-house and and knowing that uh i reached out to our it folks to see if they could talk to the city of austin's uh software developers to see if they can come up with something similar that would also help us verify the petition in a quicker manner and so they are working on it mayor so i just wanted to say we are working as fast as we can we do want to certify the petition in a timely manner we only have 20 we only have 10 working days from the date the petition was filed to put it on the agenda thank you miss print and honestly to believe that um you're about the most honest person i've ever met the hardest working person i've ever met and if there's a way of doing it you're going to figure out a way to do it and i think this is a perfect example of trying to look for a way of trying to get it done and miss um manila thank you mayor um i also i do want to still mention that this agenda item was asking what was needed and we still have not received an answer on that and so one of the people i would like to ask mike siegel a question if he's still on the line is mr siegel there miss prime mr seagull if you're in the q star six please to and meet your telephone hello this is michael siegel hi mr seagull hey could you clarify a few things you made some comments in your public comment so first um you mentioned that you are a former city attorney out of austin yes ma'am i worked as an assistant city attorney for the city of austin okay so you have municipal experience and everything that all of the opinions that you're giving today are based on that experience yes that's right and also i serve as the general counsel for ground game texas and we are currently running ballot measure campaigns in 10 cities so i'm very familiar with city charters as well as uh state election code and state constitutional law that regulates these campaigns okay thank you and so something you mentioned and there seems to be a little bit of a um or we're hearing two different statements one by our city manager and and then you um countered that a little bit and so it's a conversation i would like to to have a little bit more um in regards to hiring uh outside individuals to do the count and or bringing in um the auditor or other individuals from the city to do that count and so could you speak a little bit more about how that is a valid process or a valid option that we have yes ma'am um on monday after sunrise movement el paso and grand camp texas submitted the physical petition to the city clerk i later that day met with the city attorney for the city of el paso and she mentioned to me that this problem had occurred when the city of austin asked the auditor to directly help count the signatures and that was a legal problem because the auditor has a different statutory role in the city of austin government but that i think the inference that the manager made is it completely incorrect that you can't get help i think the the takeaway from the situation in austin with the auditor's office is that the staff needs to be under the control of the city clerk herself and so that doesn't prevent the city clerk from hiring temporary staff or from receiving uh transfers from other city departments mayor if i may oops yes ma'am i have a question i'll have a comment to make while i i appreciate that mr siegel is the lawyer for ground game texas i would remind council that mr siegel is not your lawyer the city appoints me and we have other lawyers that are available to answer these questions thank you miss power i am aware i i still have the floor however he is not he is not please excuse me the attorney's lawyer i would strongly urge you to allow us to come into executive session and provide you with legal advice in regards to this issue we have heard from the public and i would just remind council that mr siegel is not your lawyer he doesn't have an ethical obligation to this body and he's not here to represent the city of el paso he is here to represent ground game texas thank you excuse me we need to maintain decorum and the council chambers please no we we allow you all to speak and we didn't interrupt you and we'll continue to have the same type of courtesy and i do appreciate it and again i do thank you all for being here and giving us your opinion and your voice and we will take that into very serious consideration okay thank you mayor and i i have one more question for miss pryne if that's okay miss brian you said the signatures needed to be verified by august 9th was that what you said did i miss here the deadline to place the item on on the august 16th agenda is august 10th okay so um if you had the signatures verified by august 10th they could go forward for one hearing for the august 16th meeting yes if i could place it on the agenda by by the august 10th deadline it would be on the august 16th i appreciate that clarification because there's been a lot of back and forth about what that date was and i just wanted to understand from your perspective what that was i mean i had a follow-up question but it has completely slipped my mind i have absolutely no idea what i was going to ask you um yeah okay uh if i think of it i'll let you know upstairs but i apologize thank you for that clarification yes ma'am mr siegel thank you for for being on on the line and answering some questions um thank you very much sir and um i do have a question dr bernard didn't mean to startle you there sir can you kind of explain what you were trying to because i know there was some questions being asked of what you were trying to explain well i i think that you know obviously you can take this route with this proposition and go through all the pain of tallying the signatures etc but i think also a member of council today could just as easily make a motion to allow this to be on the ballot along with the other propositions that you're considering i don't think that you have to do that and that would solve the whole problem i think the other thing that it appears that it's really in my gut and i think you all have the same feeling they actually have the number that's required and it would be a shame to just have this not happen because of this technicality and it just doesn't make any sense then what all today you could add it to the other items that you're considering in the form that it is today and that gives you the two weeks in between to go ahead and tweak the language for the 16th because that's what's being proposed for these other items as well this is the introduction today and the ad hoc committee had made several other additions that they wanted to consider and staff and legal has constantly said that okay on the 16th you'll still be allowed to tweet those so if the concern is some of the language that's in the proposition you have that time but i i think that you can just make a motion to get this done thank you sir today thank you i would encourage one person to do it thank you with that um representative i mean um hernandez i'm sorry thank you mayor um and and thank you to all of the folks who are organizing on this effort today i do agree with you mayor lisa that our city clerk has the ability and is working hard to address this issue but i do have um several questions that i'd like to um ask and and so i would ask council to bear with me um since you know we're already we're already in full swing of discussion um and then if if council wants to to go into executive later i'm open to that but mrs prine um do you i have heard and seen um from the public there there may be other petitions to be considered have you received any intent for any other petitions for an initiative yes ma'am i was notified on friday evening that another group has uh has an intent to file a petition in my office on thursday okay it's an initiative petition for for a charter amendment or ordinances okay so you have an ordinance what is the what is your duty per the city charter on the initiative process for an ordinance for an ordinance i would have 30 days to authenticate the petition signatures and to place it on the city council agenda so i would have less than 30 days to verify because it would need to be placed on the city council agenda within 30 working days okay that's that's concerning so my assumption here is that takes precedence over this other initiative that's correct man because on that one i'm on a strict timeline to complete it okay so that's assuming it's it's submitted um but i have heard from the public that there was another petition coming coming so i just wanted to be clear to the public that we're up against a city charter requirement which is 30 days for a city clerk to certify that petition now i i just also want to share with council they're at no point in my advocating to to not places on the ballot i think that the voters should decide we've gone through these processes before with same-sex marriage benefits for those folks we've gone through the process as well with the lost dog trail and so it's vitally important that we respect the process and that we allow for the voters to educate themselves on how they want their government to function city charter amendments have gone through rigorous vetting in the public before and i'm concerned about the amount of time that we are providing for the public to understand what and how your government can change which is why we in the past have called for city charter advisory committee so that we can fully vet the process but i also respect the the intent of the petition and in no way am i trying to become an obstacle or barrier for the process so with having said that and understanding the time constraints that you have uh city clerk prime is there an idea of how many signatures for that petition you may have to certify did they disclose that for that initiative petition it would be five percent of those who voted in the last general election so we're looking at about close to 12 000 signatures okay so you have another 12 000 signatures um and if you if you use the sampling method it'd be a quarter of that correct okay so you have at least several thousand signatures that you and eight staff on top of your other obligations have to certify that's correct i recognize that you're not a robot i recognize that you have limitations but i also want the public to understand that we at no point should encourage violating state law we want to be on your side we want to respect the process and we want to call for the election so i'm going to shift over to to you mrs nieman city attorney neiman i know how you feel about executive session but i would i would ask if you could share just material facts on the issue this this november there's a city charter election can you just explain to council what is our ministerial duty once we receive an initiative petition what steps we have to take as soon as that petition is submitted to the clerk right so the initiative petition to amend the charter council has a ministerial duty to call the election once once the the signatures are verified so once uh miss prime is finished verifying all the signatures and they get to the required number of signatures she will notify council and then council has what we call a ministerial function which means you all have no discretion but you have to call the election at the next um uniform election date okay and if we don't call the election do you are you prepared to disclose what could be the potential risk so so the only way you don't call the election if is if they don't reach the required number of signatures so if ms prime returns and says the petition did not have the required number of signatures then council is under no obligation to put the item on the ballot in november okay i understand of the content of the petition whether it's this upcoming petition that ms miss princess talked about or the one that was submitted what would be the city's obligation to vet the petition language is that our obligation right so the council does have an obligation under state law to ensure that any language on a ballot is proper and legal so that is something that is placed on the government entity let's say the election is called an items pass but there are concerns about state law violations or that it preempts state law what would be recourse for members of the public or city council so council would have to wait until after the election to decide whether we were going to file sue or a member of the public could potentially bring in action saying that the language on the petition was not valid or appropriate so if the election's called the item is passed hey maybe it's in violation of the state law there is recourse for the public to either sue the city or the city can take a position and go into litigation correct there's a recourse either way to fix those issues okay that answers my question now the the pending timeline for this november i've heard the august 22nd deadline i'm concerned that our city clerk will not have the required time to properly certify and authenticate the signatures per the state law on item 24 this is a city charter election if this election is called without this petition when would be the earliest date that a next city charter election can be called so under state law you can only amend the charter um no more often than every two years so if you call the election for this november november 8th the next uniform election date that is available to the council to call for a charter amendment would be may of 2025. okay so it's either this november or may 2025 if there's an election called this november correct now i would could we i know there's an introduction today item 24 to call for a charter a charter election for an amendment of the charter this november can this election be postponed to a next future date and if so what date would that be the council can postpone that election to may of 2023 so we can take this election that we're already planning on having give some time to mrs prine to validate both of the petitions and then call an election of may of 2023. that's that's an option on the floor today correct members members of council i think here is the solution you've given the opportunity to our clerk to to follow state law you've given the opportunity for your advocates and organizers here to have an opportunity to have an election but then you've also given the opportunity for the city to educate along with any other stakeholders and collaborators so that we can properly educate matters of a functioning government city charter election should be taken taken um seriously um it it reforms your government and that should and that should be respected as well for um the the over six hundred thousand residents in the city of el paso so i i don't want to um delete the item i don't want to add the item today i think that what's most appropriate would be to direct your city attorney and city manager to prepare to postpone this upcoming election november and delay it to may of 2023 what kind of action would you need to make that happen so based on the conversation that the council has had today miss pine is obligated under state law to continuing to count the petition and the signatures she doesn't need direction from council it's her obligation under state law so she will continue to do that you have the ordinance um posted on the agenda to introduce the amendment for the charter in november of this year you could introduce that and leave it in place ms pryne could come back on the 15th or the 16th and brief counsel on where she is on the signatures and then at that point you are scheduled to have the public hearing on item number 24 and then council can make the decision if she's already reached the magic number for the number of signatures or not to then uh vote on item 24 or move to delete the item so that we could complete the signature and then we can come back and draft the appropriate ordinance with this language that's already introduced and then the potential language of the proposed petition that sunrise el paso has circulated so if i'm understanding correctly city council can take action today to vote on approving the ordinance because it's the first step of the process because there's two votes that have to take place on the ordinance and in the event that mrs prine can certify and authenticate the signatures by august 16th then council can make a decision to add it this november in the event that she's unable to certify the signatures by the next council meeting then we can make a decision at that point to postpone the election to may of 2023 right i just want to be clear that the only ordinance that is posted for introduction today is the proposed charter amendments that were vetted through the commission so there is currently no ordinance introducing the language for the charter amendments on the climate initiative okay so we can't call it in november without correct without doing the two-prong process you need to still introduce the language as proposed by the petitioners which is the charter amendments we'd still need to introduce that and then call the public hearing so there could be potentially an opportunity to post in november so long as there's a special counsel meeting held this november excuse me and maybe before august 22nd so we would recommend against you all calling a special meeting of council under the charter ordinances can be introduced at any council meeting but they can only be approved at a public meeting it's a regular scheduled meeting so i mean but that's under the assumption that mrs pryne can certify which i don't feel comfortable correct putting her in that corner when she needs to adequately vet the signatures with this other petition coming forward but also to give her the appropriate tools and resources so that you can do that i think it's unfair to ask her that and i would also ask the organizers today you know was is there a reason why we waited three weeks before the election to submit is it because you didn't have the signatures or uh was this was this on purpose to wait till the last minute because i'm not you're welcome to answer mrs fuentes but i'm just curious will you please come up to the microphone we please come up to the microphone please i mean it depends on every community i think your question was how long does it take point of order uh we're past the 10-minute rule right now so okay i'll respect that i'm sorry i've i've gone over my executive session i'll go ahead and ask the question no because i think it's important to go ahead and give you the up but you are out of time but i'll ask the question it takes a lot of effort lots of boots on the ground lots of organizing um lots of moving parts to gather 39 000 signatures so that's i'm i'm feeling a little offended as if i feel like you're suggesting that we did it on purpose that no that's why i'm asking the question i'm not implying here i'm being very respectful what you all have accomplished is unprecedented i'm trying to find a solution here within the confines of our state law and so i apologize if i offended you my question is is there is there a reason why we waited three weeks before the last date to call the election we just wanted to ensure that we had although our numbers overall were um really high they're in the 30 30 thousands um due to the demographics of our city as someone mentioned earlier there's lots of residents it's lots of people here who are not registered to vote so our verification rate was lower than we had anticipated because again the specific demographics of the city so we needed to take the time to make sure that we did meet those 20 000 required ballot signatures which is why we needed to gather this so many more so okay so it's a time constraint issue right and that's no different than the time constraint issues she has as well we're gonna we're gonna go so i'll i will nonetheless i will forego myself no go ahead no go ahead i'll i'll ask a question you can answer me mayor i'd like to make emotions suspend the rules because a number of us have already have already spoken twice and so this is an important item and i think we should be able to have this dialogue we'll continue we'll continue in that way go we'll go to you next right now representative um we have a motion second to spend the rules go ahead just go ahead and speak sure i can go ahead and and allow you to go ahead and show them here's a precising officer and he can allow okay counsel right so go ahead grant the floor i'd like to hear represent fernandez continue with the questions so i'd like to see the floor to represent hernandez at this time thank you thank you thank you could you repeat the question um i i think you've answered my question i was just curious as to like well your your you had time constraints and and i just wanted to convey that the city also will have time constraints yeah our time constraint was 180 days we are well below that um so we did more than our part oh you mean 180 days from the time that you've notified the first signature until the time we could turn in yeah so there's the rule that you have to allow for 180 days and allow for maximum amount yeah to the city clerk and so you're well below the timeline is that what you just said um i can can you also when can you um yeah can you repeat your name also please for the for the public in your internet my name is anna fuentes thank you thank you um i don't know where you stand on the 180 days but you have 180 days right so for for charter change there's no timeline but for an ordinance adoption there's a 30-day timeline so that's kind of the the concern here we're not this is not an ordinance change this is a climate charter no i recognize that i'm talking about two different issues here because we are expecting another ordinance petition to come forward okay so i thank you for for that mayor i want to respect you as a presiding officer i've gone over my 10 minutes i'm happy to come back around thank you thank you very much uh go ahead sir come on up i just also want to add to um one point that representative hernandez brought up um this oh the miguel scotto with sunrise um so the way that the petition was written um was done with the eyes and the expertise of of legal experts of policy of experienced policy makers it wasn't it wasn't just these kids it wasn't just us youth right so um in the event that um as as mr bonart suggested the the petition be directly added into into the agenda for you all it is of utmost importance to the 40 000 people that that signed on to this that it not be messed with it not be meddled with why because the for the 40 000 people that signed on to this signed on to what they read they signed on to what they saw and did they read the petition was that exactly was the charter attached to the petition yes okay because just so you're aware um that's not what i experienced at my community meetings it was a little card passed out the petition wasn't there so i want to bring that to your attention the the cards the entire language of the petition yes every single card every single time we've seen that it does we oh it's a qr code yes yes is that what you're referring to that is that as well as does that mean through requirements right so so when they signed they signed on to onto what we wrote with experts with policy makers with lawyers um with phds it's not just us kids doing this right i recognize it yeah right so here's the and i again i want to reiterate this point that um it would be amazing as mr bonar mentioned just to go directly to to put this on the ballot directly you all have that power and you can take that power no and and it and i understand that right now so yeah but thank you for for your comments but just to go back to my original point i i do not feel comfortable doing that we need to follow the process and allow mrs prine to certify and again thank you for coming up and addressing the council we appreciate your all's time and and uh and now um mayor potem thanks um so first i have a couple questions thanks mayor again and first of all i you know you all talk about us kids us kids have changed the world before so don't think that your energy and your spirit um is one that needs to be extinguished as you get older so you know we we all start off idealistic and we continue with that and so the work that you all are doing here again is unprecedented so um whether or not what age you are when you become active and become engaged in your community each and every one of us has an opportunity to make this world a little bit better no matter how we can whether that's through serving whether that's your petitions whether that's through volunteering at our church or synagogue so the work that you all are doing is important work um i had a couple questions relating to trying to understand why is it that i'm just kind of curious you you mentioned that you were working with other sort of folks that are engaged in municipal law and that sort of thing why the why the charter men as opposed to say introducing an ordinance similar to lost dog who's the question for sir um tell us yes uh go ahead and repeat your name to us when you uh miguel escoto with sunrise well we know that the scale of the solution needs to match the scale of the problem so that is why this program was designed to go at the very source of what guides this city government which is our charter more than an ordinance so that that because this problem is so fundamental and transcends very different a lot of various departments that's why it's important that it's a charter and that's what gave so many people hope to sign on to it in the first place so many people have this disillusion in this city government and in this body and and in the city hall and our proposal to them was yes but we can change that it's it's possible to change that and that's what a lot of of uh signatories signed on to this idea that it can be a deep transformational change um thank you sir so i think thank you mr escoda i you know i think that representative hernandez you know brings up a point that if we were not to postpone the current sort of charter amendments that we're discussing right now we had the ad hoc charter committee it would force this whenever the signatures are verified and completed as per state law under the guidance of our city clerk who i believe is trying to do her best so i think it's important that we may not maybe frustrate the situation we're all in for whatever reason not it's important not to be disrespectful to each other because at the end of the day we're all humans on this earth that we're all trying to make better so um with that being said um so if i'm to understand our city attorney if we were to postpone the charter charter amendments that were currently been discussing and we had the adult charter we could look at at verifying these signatures and send them all together for a may election yes that's correct okay is that something that this council can take action for whenever these are verified to say that we're gonna send it up for a may election um and this that will happen regardless of future councils correct so so under the process under state law after the city clerk is done certifying the number of signatures she notifies council and then council has to call the election on a uniform election date so you don't have to take action to call the election today for a future date you simply allow the process to continue which is for the clerk to certify the the number of signatures required and so when these would be verified say in x amount of days we would then have this as well as the charter the charter amendments that the ad hoc committee had discussed and say we want to put all of these together for the most recent election a may 23 election correct okay i mean i think that that's i mean i think that that's that's something to to consider and look at because again it follows state law and it also gives the ability to to make sure that this gets to the voters which i think is the most important thing um i am kind of curious to hear from our our city attorney and executive about some of these discussions as well because i would want to understand if there's any other any other options that we have in terms of in terms of getting this to the ballot or bringing this kind of legislation there so but i want to be respectful we do have a number of people that that do want to speak on this council so i want to thank everybody again for coming and speaking today i'm going to go to representative then i'll come back to you yeah i was just going to say if there's others i want to speak i can hold off yeah representative thank you mayor and and i'm going to reiterate some questions that have already been answered but i want to be very clear uh mrs nieman when when and if the signatures are verified um this council the staff have no authority to stop this process once signatures are verified it goes on to the ballot your question was whether staff has the authority to staff or council well our bi-state law under a charter amendment the only thing we can do is verify the signature is correct so under state law the clerk has to verify a specific number of signatures and then once the specific number of signatures is reached then council calls the election okay so but i just want to because i think there's some concern out there that um if we wait until may that gives the council the opportunity to change the language but i just want to be clear for the public that once those signatures are verified by state law that election is called and we are not touching that we cannot touch that language correct so under state law we would not be permitted to change the language of the petition as circulated okay and so i would like to ask sunrise what their opinion about the may election is i imagine you maybe need a minute to think about it because you've done a lot of work and you came here with a lot of passion and now this is a very different conversation that's being had so i would actually i'm going to pause that question mayor until we get back from executives so they have a chance to kind of put their heads together and give us an opinion because i imagine it's a lot for them um to just comprehend well i think that you guys see that uh we're really trying and we're respecting your process and that's really important uh and i think that uh you know the miss prine city council here city attorney has come up with some options to respect what you all have done and make sure that your time you know you don't feel you wasted your time and your voice and the voice of the public is hurt so i hope you all see that because it's really important that um that the process is heard and done properly and and we want to make sure that you guys do understand and see that uh this council and the city staff is really trying to work a solution to make sure that uh your your voice is hurt go ahead sir um yeah like like um representative anil mentioned this is a huge decision which should uh we should talk amongst ourselves as a group so if we can have like a delay on this uh to to get back to you but no that it's very appreciative uh that you all are working ways to get around this right this is exactly what is needed is expected from from you all is to get to our solutions uh and listen to these 40 000 so if we could uh yeah we'll go into executive and have our own conversation i just i want you to know i was going to ask that question but i could tell by your face that like you like i need some time so when we come back from executive i'd love to have an opinion from the group yeah and and i think that we're not trying to get around it we're trying to figure out a way to get it done and i think that's really important to see so and we thank you all for working with us so do you want to make a motion to go an executive oh representative molinar thank you very much mayor um i would like to give a heartfelt thank you to mr oscar miss fuentes thank you very much for leading the pact doing what you're doing and i know you mentioned youth and young people and that's always great okay i do believe that there is climate change the polar caps are melting there's drought there's wildflowers a wildfire excuse me and i i am a proponent of climate change i will tell you that right now but i'm also a proponent of the process okay and i took a note to do the right things the legal things okay that was state law or city charter ordinances and things like that okay and i respect everybody that's here i respect everybody that came here everybody that called in everybody that signed your petitions i do respect that okay i want you to know that i'm on your side okay but there's things that happen here as you can see this body here we have different questions that need to be answered uh mr bernard did propose a possible solution but i think that's other things that we need to consider before we make that change the fact that you file the complaint or excuse me you file the petition already and now you want to possibly have a timeout and say hey we need to talk about that i salute you on that but i'm not sure that's a legal process that we can do because we are a governmental body okay and i will say this for miss prine thank you very much for all your hard work your dedication i have told you this many times before your staff and you could do a tremendous job but here's the other thing too is that we still have a motion i believe for to suspending the rules or not but i'd like to take a vote on that as well but i also like to call to go to executive session i personally have a lot of questions that need to be addressed and mr niemann was absolutely correct the gentleman mr siegel you know i don't know him i'm sure he's a competent city attorney municipal experience but he's not our city attorney so i would like to get direction from our city attorney so i would call for a uh to go to executive session got a motion second motion in a second to retire in the executive session there's a motion in a second to return to executive session all in favor yes anyone opposed the motion carries again thank you all for your hard work and we'll continue to work with you thank you and the city council of the city of el paso may return to executive session pursuant to section 3.58 of the el paso city charter in the texas government code chapter 551 sub chapter d to discuss any of the following agenda item 21 update discussion action by city clerk and city manager on city staff progress in reviewing and certifying the climate charter petition submitted by ground game texas item 22 discussion in action on city readiness to consider an ordinance on august 16 2022 to place a climate charter initiative on the november 8 2022 general election ballot in the event that the petition is certified by the city clerk and executive session item one consultation with attorney regarding a petition for charter amendments matter number 22-1065-153 under 551.071 all these matters are taken into executive session under 551.071 consultation with attorney it is 1 48 pm there's a motion and a second to come out of executive session all in favor all right anyone opposed the meeting is back in session at four o'clock p.m we're on items 21 and 22. yes um trump said nanilo thank you mayor um i first want to say i think this is the longest time we've spent on one item since i've been on council we started this item at 11 a.m um and so i want to thank again uh my colleagues and everyone who came and spoke today and has been a part of this petition process i think the council has been comfortable with the conversation we had moving this and the rest of our charter amendments to a may election um i so the only motion that i am going to make for items 21 and 22 is to direct the city manager to designate a staff member that he sees fit to communicate with the sunrise group monthly on a status update i also i want to be very clear we are moving our charter election at this moment and the next item until until may that is under the idea that if all of the signatures are verified for this petition it will be placed on the may election that still needs to happen um before we can guarantee this item on an election in may so i just wanted to be make very clear so going back to my motion i motion uh to direct the city manager to designate an appropriate staff member to communicate with the sunrise group monthly on the status and progress of their petition verification second second now that's i've been in council six years that's the most seconds i've ever had too so that was me miss prime uh so um no um thank you representative ronello thank you council uh mayor potem thank you first mayor want to again thank thank uh everybody who took the time the 40 000 people that signed these uh petitions uh members of council mayor again for i think coming up with the appropriate response as well as our city staff as well as particularly our city manager our city attorney and most important our city clerk as well who has been doing a human's job in working to get this there her entire office deserves a round of applause for the hard work that they are doing here make no mistake that this item is going to be going on the ballot if and when the signatures are verified so i think it's really important that when these signatures are verified right that is going through a process driven by state law this item is going onto the ballot for voters to vote on so that is important for people to understand um we will be looking at other items as well to make sure that we can do that to make sure that it's there but this this goal here and the actions as this council are taken are there to guarantee and ensure that this goes up to the val for the voters to decide in may of 2023. and so i again want to thank everybody for the hard work they're doing and where we are today in dealing with this global climate emergency thank you and i think it's important that uh i you know we were there for two hours and the guidance of the city attorney city manager you know in the apartments to try to make this happen it uh it was really important and and we understood the signatures we understood your voice and we understood what was going on but also the council really was very vocal and verbal on wanting to make sure that um your voice was heard so it's important that um that we we thank miss prine i know that uh you had a lot to do with it while we're all in an executive session and i wish you all could have been in there because it was really a very inclusive of everybody in here working together and like i said miss newman mr gonzalez uh every member of city council really had a lot of input in it to make sure that you know the signatures are there that we can move forward and to really take a deep breath and slow the process down to be able to do it right and and i know that you guys are shaking your head yes because you agree on that because it's important that uh if you rush something we're gonna we're not gonna do it right so uh mr gonzalez is your team miss neiman city council i want to congratulate every one of you all for an incredible great job that really get the process right and to take a deep breath and allow the voice of the voters to be heard so thank you again you guys for being here and i appreciate the the efforts that the council this city and of course most of all you all so thank you and with that i have miss hernandez thank you mayor i do want to reiterate again um as mentioned earlier that this council has deliberated on the issue and on the matter specifically as it relates to the process my position today is not an endorsement of any of the language or is not in opposition of any of the language of the petition clearly we have an obligation and a duty to call the election as per the state code i'm we're not trying to get in the way of that but i do want to recognize our city attorney and city manager and this body for working together this we have demonstrated today this is a government that works for the public um regardless of where we're at on the issue and so i'm very proud of council's ability to to deliver it on the matter be respectful and to ensure that the public has an opportunity to get educated on the matter any stakeholders can bring forward any concerns and then the public will need to do some fact finding on what this means for the way their government is going to operate and so i wanted to be clear that my position today isn't an endorsement of any of the language there's got to be a lot more vetting to do but we do have an obligation to call the election and then folks will make their own decision so so thank you all for for agreeing to that recommendation to to push forward uh to may i think this is um the best solution for everybody and it gives everyone opportunity to to understand what the vote and and what the matter is um in the may election and then mrs pryon i did want to ask on the introduction for the election for november um i'll be making a motion on the next time if we can hear that next if you can prepare the date 12 weeks from today so that i can incorporate that into the motion thank you thank you mayor and so i just want to reiterate what everybody else is saying you know i took an oath to protect our to uphold our constitution this is proof that democracy is still working this is proof that you know when when people get together they're able to make change happen this for me is also not an endorsement of of the of the language of this petition this for me is just simply saying that i absolutely will not stand in the way of democracy working this is democracy and voters can make their own decision on how they feel about this that is it thank you thank you representative sal followed by representative molinar then representative rivera thank you mayor just want to say thank you again for all the public speakers that came today and also i'm very proud of you all and all the signatures you all collected but i also wanted to commend the staff and this council to really uh discuss everything and just really look at things um not with emotion and just for what the process was and i really kind of saw that i saw us all working together so i definitely think that we're looking for the best solution and i think that's the best way we could always um get great solutions so we're looking forward for this to to proceed for this process and enough for us to continue to work together thank you thank you very much representative molinard followed by representative rivera thank you very much mayor um i do also just like to thank everyone that signed that petition all of you that from sunrise that worked hard whether it was in the heat early morning whatever rain doesn't really matter you went out there knocking on doors whatever event you may have been collecting signatures at a mall at a school whatever you did your job you did your work you're you're seeing the dividends today okay but couple of things that i would like to just provide advice to you and so i'm going to talk to dr bonard and dr bonard here so if you recall way back when we first met for the very first meeting for lost dog we met at the podium there was people there that i did not know those people did not know me first time really meeting the bone arts and everyone was enthusiastic and they were all fired up and everything was going great however when it came to my turn my two cents was this how many people here are registered voters probably probably less than five at that meeting that very first meeting for lost dog myself and the bonards and maybe two or three others were the only registered voters maybe out of 30 35 people that is sad absolutely sad okay we live in america we have a democracy you are starting the petition you are doing the work okay but when you're not registered vote what good is it and even if you are registered to vote and you don't vote that's different so as a result of dr bonar and dr bonar and a core group of other people they led the way in making things happen for lost dog they were a catalyst that could not be stopped and they proved that the power of the people is there okay so i would offer you some advice i'm glad you got the signatures they're registered voters that's fantastic but now some of the more work is that you have to encourage these people to vote and that's probably going to be a little bit harder to do but you're smart you're intelligent i'm sure you can handle that very well and once again to the city manager's office mr gonzalez to our city attorney miss neiman and everyone that's on your staff to miss laura prine and everyone at the city clerk's office i thank you very much to my colleagues on this body of city council thank you very much and we appreciate everything that you do and yes this is democracy in action i'm very proud of that and uh i look forward to to may of 2022 or correction may of 2023 thank you thank you and you know and i think you've heard everyone talk about democracy and how democracy works and stuff and i'll be real honest with you i know what you guys wanted was to go in the november election if we would have tried to push for that because you all were very adamant about doing that the outs and we talked about this in the meeting the odds of that happening was zero to none so instead of us not you know doing that and not making it happen we found a way to make it happen for you because what you wanted wouldn't have worked and we didn't want that we wanted to respect your work and your hard work and everything you did and the 40 000 people that signed that petition so like i said what you wanted would have been zero to none but this is very doable now so again thank you representative rivera thank you mayor again i want to thank you all for coming out here your hard work and you know definitely it's not over meeting each other for updates or whatever it is um you guys have really shown your determination your tenacity and so uh i'm proud to to say the fact that you had uh also covered at city-wide you had numbers for the districts that was great i'm proud to hear that two you had over 2000 in my district alone and you had more than that so everybody should be proud of what they did those boots were pretty worn out trying to get some new ones for like representative knight said go out and vote now it's that now that's the biggest task i thank you i thank you again for being here having the numbers uh your voices were heard and said he's not making excuses we're going to work with you and thanks staff city manager gonzalez miss miss neem and miss prime all the staff that we have here they work hard just as hard as you do and getting those signatures so i thank everybody and i thank my colleagues for working as well uh to to resolve this issue thank you thank you thank you representative representative lisa almost went in order one two three thank you mayor lisa um i just want to really commend you all you know you are the youth you are the future of our city and i want to thank you for caring about our community because we do live in a wonderful vibrant community and i am very proud to call el paso my home and i want to thank you for your hard work and your efforts and we as representative rivera said we did listen and now you're going to be able to see the fruits of your labor and i also want to echo all the sentiments of all my colleagues and thank especially all our city staff ms prine for your professionalism always on this diocese i thank you for that mayor thank you for your leadership and to all my colleagues and especially to carla nieman our city attorney who works so tirelessly for us and our city manager and all of your staff i want to thank you for being such a a good leader and a good example and a good role model for our community as well so thank you everyone and i wish you a great evening thank you thank you for sending this again thank you for your work here um thank you yeah i just wanted to say that again it's so important to have this here coming in that we are looking at having to go and change some of the the ad hoc charter sort of votes that we were looking at to have in november because making sure that we are following state law and bringing this to the ballot is of the utmost importance so again i want to thank everybody for being here want to thank again all my colleagues be able to to come up with a resolution um that is a compromise and that again encourages and helps us strengthen our democracy here in el paso at the capitol of the border thank you thank you um one last question i know that on the on the motion representative anillo made is that we need somebody that uh y'all would designate so we do continue to communicate and the city manager's office will communicate with you all so after all this is uh approved if y'all could designate somebody it would be very important for us thank you for that miss prine we have a motion in a second yes mayor and just to be clear this is for items 21 and 22 together thank you so the motion was made by representative angelo seconded by representative rivera and this is to direct the city manager to designate an appropriate staff member to communicate with a representative from the sunrise group on a monthly basis to provide an update on the [Music] climate charter petition to provide a status update on the climate charter petition yes okay thank you on that motion call for the vote and the voting session and the motion passes unanimously item 24 is a first reading of an ordinance this is for item 24 for the introduction um representation the next available in 12 weeks the next council meeting would be october 25th 25th so it would be the council meeting after this november election and so i moved to postpone the introduction of ordinances to call for a city charter election um to november 25th of 2022 october i'm sorry you said october excuse me can it be before an election so should it be after an election mrs nieman do we have to postpone until after the november election the ordinance do we have enough time or we have to do it before no you don't have to postpone it till after the election i mean the deadline to call the election is august 16th so this is already passed it's just a matter of notifying the public when it will be come up coming up again understood so i i moved to postponed to october 25th second thank you there is a motion yes sir go ahead thank you um so i just have one question in terms of the language of the ad hoc charter committee items that's currently being proposed um is there still an ability to amend the language that's going to be sent to the voters miss neiman yes on on which item are you referring to item number 24 that you're exponing yes yes because it's not being introduced okay we could make amendments to that ordinance okay and then bring it back on october 24th well we wouldn't have ended until after you instructed us to amend it on october 25th got it yeah because i know that some of the languages some some items are particularly contentious and i think um working with counselors probably an ability to look at some sort of compromise with some of that language so the ordinance is introduced today will appear the same way in october however not until after you direct us will we amend it okay but we saw the ability to amend right on october we would be able to amend it afterwards and so again by us by our actions here today if we go postpone this until october 25th this would set these ad hoc charter committee um ad hoc charter amendments to be voted on in may of 2023 that's correct if council chooses to call that election yes okay great thank you mrs prine we have a motion in a second yes mayor there is a motion made by representative hernandez seconded by mayor pro tem shortstein to postpone item 24 for 12 weeks until the october 25th 2022 city council meeting on that motion call for the vote in the voting session and the motion passes unanimously thank you and with that miss pryne i think it's new can we go to call to the public yes mayor not sure who's still here but i will call each person that signed up to speak so the el paso city council is a local government body charged with serving all of the citizens of the 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 in attendance are expected to display civility and decorum that is respectful to other persons without the use of insulting profane threatening or abusive language public comment will not be used for personal attacks against a person or group's character or integrity which are not pertinent to city business or may any member of the public use this forum for political statements or campaigning please note that during call to the public the city council may not deliberate or decide any subject that is not on the agenda however council may propose that a topic brought forward be posted on a future agenda this morning we had 20 people signed up for a call to the public i'll check to see who's still in chambers the first person is miss wally sheck fernando garcia they're all gone ronnie banks enrique chavarria cantu perry and who's here enriquez thank you thank you for your patience sir good afternoon you'll have three minutes thank you again for for being here sir noon um my name is enriquez and this morning we were here with the border network for human rights and we distributed to your staffers a legislative package for the municipal id um like i said my name is enriquez and i'm the supervising paralegal of the el paso office at kids in need of defense we submitted in our statement that kind respectfully requests that the city of el paso establish and implement a community id card that is accessible by all el paso residents which will greatly benefit our community since 2008 kind has been dedicated to providing free legal and social services for unaccompanied immigrant children who arrive to the united states alone and many of the children's so the children that i've worked with have reported being robbed of all their possessions or losing them including official documents that they're unable to replace many of those children face barriers in obtaining government issues they issued ids because they may not have easily accessible accepted forms of other documentations such as a birth certificate or consular card kind clients have struggled to access services that they are eligible for due to not having an accepted form of identification they have been turned away from low-income housing and food assistance programs our clients have been denied access to medical exams background checks and entry into certain government buildings for legal appointments that are essential for successful outcomes in their immigration cases that these challenges exist for kind clients who are represented by attorneys and have access to social service advocacy is extremely problematic given the fact that most unaccompanied children in the united states are not represented by attorneys and don't have advocates unaccompanied children have often experienced high levels of trauma due to exposure to violence including gender-based violence and trafficking although many are eligible for various services and benefits they're often denied these vital resources because they lack a valid form of identification other than their federal office of refugee and resettlement verification of release form which is often not accepted no child should ever have to go hungry be unable to attend school or suffer in pain from lack of medical treatment or be without housing simply because they do not have an official id especially when they or their caregivers are legally eligible for all these services kind knows from experience and working in many other localities that have similar community id initiatives that these programs are successful and help everyone in the community thank you for allowing el paso to be a leader in supporting the health safety and success of all of its residents and children thank you thank you thank you the next speaker is perica margo irma cruz alicia martinez rosa avila berry tercero rocio esteban beatrice lozano susana herrera dulce carlos carmen rodriguez she submitted a statement to be read into the record by representative li zaraga thank you miss prine good day mayor and city council my name is carmen rodriguez i am a lawyer and long-time community activist and member of community first coalition i offer this statement of support for the proposal to establish a city issued id card put forth by the border network for human rights the most vulnerable populations in our city suffer from many challenges that cannot be easily addressed however there is one challenge that this body can and should address because it is not only vital to this population and their families it also contributes to the general welfare of all the city's residents the border network for human rights has been petitioning this body for some time to establish a procedure by which residents who don't otherwise have access to a personal government issued identification card can apply to the city for such documentation other cities have devised various ways in which they have addressed their residents lack of identification documentation el paso always known for his humanitarian nature needs to develop such a system sooner rather than later let us be at the forefront of solving the challenges that so many face by implementing a policy to provide city issued identification city government is and should be closer to the people than the state and federal branches of government it should be the entity that steps forward to provide a simple document that can make life easier for so many when the state and the federal governments are not in a position to do so these are the kind of initiatives that we would like the city to undertake to alleviate the strife and everyday struggles of many members of our community thank you for your kind attention to this request carmen rodriguez thank you the next speaker that signed up was hilda villegas guillermo glenn efrain saucedo sylvia carrion ron como mr como's topic is animal services good afternoon sir thank you for your patience you have three minutes i appreciate what city clerk's office does can you call the very professional very helpful thank you good afternoon how are you sir i'm always here always okay let's start out with adoptions and rescues adoption polls and rescue polls as you can see by the calendar broke down by years if we keep going at the same rate that we're going we'll be adopting and rescuing out 17 000 less strays out the front door of el paso animal services we have a problem we need to get the community back and we're not going to get the community back as long as we keep following the haas program as long as we keep leaving a thousand strays a month on our streets we're not going to be able to adopt our way out of it if we're adopting five or six hundred a month and we're leaving a thousand on the streets to make more i i want to bring your attention to the audit that was done in 2015 by the city of el paso they had an independent audit done they were told in 2015 that the shelter was too small and needed to grow with the the the same rate as the city's population was growing um from what i can find online it's looking like we increased the population by 278 thousand people since the shelter was built and we're we're not ready we're not prepared we've fallen behind we have not paid attention to the issues are you aware that bissell corporation is no longer dealing with el paso animal services are you aware why we got an email when we asked and they said and i quote el paso animal services is in violation of texas state law it's in violation of city um codes chapter title vii um there in michigan and they said the same thing about their codes in in michigan they're we are in violation we're in violation with the state for a violation of our own city ordinances and we're not doing anything do you know that best friends has requested to do three inspections or three different times they've requested to inspect our facility all three times they were denied access to our shelter to do an inspection are we that afraid of having somebody come in and look at the disaster that we're in the other thing bissell said was is the barn was inhumane the way they were stacking up the pets strays they said it was unsafe for employees we actually have employees out right now because kennels fell on their feet we you know we guys please i i've given you an answer we have empty buildings we need to do temporary housing like we did in 2019 why can't we do that again we need to convert a school i explained to you what i was told about converting it as far as the waste it's an easy process but we got to get off our butts and do it it's time folks come on we're burying ourselves with strays because nobody's listening thank you mr coleman thank you sir thank you the next speaker is julia krampe julia krem oh thank you sir karen washington thank you sir mayor that concludes call to the public for today thank you miss brian thank you for for your patience with that we'll go to item 25. yes sir item 25 is discussion and action on the award of solicitation 2022-0271 isleta middle school rapid transit system rts to allen concrete llc motion to approve there's a motion made by representative rivera seconded by representative molinar to approve on that motion call for the vote in the voting session the motion passes unanimously representative rodriguez not present the next item is number 26 26 is a public hearing on an ordinance authorizing the issuance of city of el paso texas water and sewer revenue bonds in one or more series in an aggregate amount not to exceed 441 million dollars for system improvements and to refund certain obligations issued for system improvements we do have public comment when council is ready thank you bless you good afternoon mayor council marcela navarrete with el paso water for the record um we have a presentation if uh it could get pulled up please okay so as discussed with all of you in previous meetings um we are coming to you with a parameters resolution for 441 million dollars of water and sewer bonds that are paid through the water bills they are not tax backed they are paid through the revenues through the system that we collect through your water bills if you could go to the next slide please so we are asking for a nine-month parameter resolution which is longer than we usually ask for and the reason being we are accelerating our capital improvement program to address avian aging infrastructure and rehabilitation that is needed through the system so we are going through our commercial paper 80 million dollar authorization quicker we're drawing those notes down quicker so we do anticipate having to do three bond issues to take out commercial paper notes over the next nine months we also if you could go to the next slide please we are also asking for a component of new money what we call new money for capital improvement projects that were approved in this year's budget we are looking at 105 million of water projects next slide please and about 87 million of wastewater projects with the largest being the expansion of the bustamante plant that serves the lower valley and east side which we all know has grown uh very quick fast over the over the years and it is time for us to expand that project that project alone is going to cost us over 300 million dollars so the new money portion that we still have outstanding to issue for bonds this year is 193 million next slide please so breaking it down by category you can see here rehabilitation 83 million reliability 65 million replacement 10 million and growth of 33 million um again i want to emphasize these are uh already been approved in the budget that was effective march 1. they are the the money to pay for this debt is already incorporated in the rates and the water bills that were effective march one so it is incorporated this debt is incorporated into our budget and with that i'm going to turn it over to maria urbina to go over a few numbers thank you good afternoon council members mayor uh mr gonzalez my name is maria arvina with hilltop securities and financial advisor to the utility and so i'm with you this afternoon to talk a little bit about the financial impact of issuing uh the 441 million dollars to the utility so if um let me see if i can do this myself here we go um okay so what i have in front of you is a slide that obviously has a lot of numbers but it's an important slide because it gives you a snapshot of what the existing debt is for the utility plus the impact of issuing 441 million dollars so what we have done in this particular slide is presented to you the proposed issuance of the 441 million dollars and as you will see under columns b through d this is where we have the proposed debt in the issuance of about three bond issues so that's one of the things that that miss navarrete was mentioning that the proposal is to actually issue these bonds in a series versus one-time basis so you will see under column b the first bond issue that is being proposed is a refunding of commercial paper notes and that is in an about an amount issue of 80 million dollars this and and that would be funded and issued sometime at the end of august so that is the first bond issue that's being looked at for funding the second bond issue would be another uh refunding of commercial paper notes in in around 80 million dollars at the end of the calendar year of 2022 and again that is the anticipated time as for the third bond issue this would be the new money component component that ms navaretta mentioned which would be about 193 million plus another round of commercial paper notes so again we're anticipating issuing these over the next nine months what i wanted to show you is that we are projecting all of these bond issues to go out 25 years we didn't we did illustrate different interest rates so i'll tell you that for the the first bond issue which we're trying to price here in the next month or so we're anticipating an interest rate of about an illustrated of 485 now i will tell you that right now if we had priced the bonds at today's market those bonds would be pricing around 4 percent so 485 is definitely very conservative as for the two other bond issues that we are showing you on the slide we're projecting those to be closer to six percent and the reason being um because the interest rate environment that we're in right now is definitely trending higher everybody's been aware if you know if you've been reading the papers inflation interest rate hikes all of that is gotten us to the point where we need to be very conservative for over the next nine months in our illustration for you so with that i'm going to go ahead and move on to the next slide which is basically the utilities requesting that the city authorized the issuance of these bonds through a parameters authorization and i know you're very familiar with this and so what the parameter authorization basically does it allows for flexibility to issue these bonds over the next nine months and so the utility has has basically provided the pricing officer authorities to the individuals listed on the slide and as for the actual parameters for these transactions as a whole what we're recommending is not to exceed maximum true interest cost of six and a half percent so remember i showed you numbers up going up to six percent we don't anticipate going up to six and a half percent that is just a maximum amount but we're wanting to be very conservative in in our request to the city as for the aggregate not to exceed principal amount of all of these bond issues uh is not to exceed 441 million dollars which would allow the issuance of the new money bonds in the amount of 193 million plus three refundings of the commercial paper notes which is roughly about 240 million plus any cost of issuance associated with that so that would that amount basically allows for all of that to happen as for the final maturity date uh we're recommending not to go beyond december 31st of 2049 which is 25 years from now and the expiration of this delegated authority to go up to nine months now typically the utility requests anywhere from three to six months for their authorizations because of where we are in the market what we're wanting to do is to propose a nine-month authorization that would allow the the utility and the financing team to execute on one or or two or three of these bonds until uh the end of their fiscal year of course if we can't meet these parameters these bonds will not be sold and let me go ahead and just uh in terms of purposes of issuance um in terms of bond issuing we need to hire underwriters underwriters are crucial to help us find those boss bond investors and so in front of you is a list of the underwriters that have worked with the city and the utility and have both either been underwriters in the past or have been soliciting the the city and the utility over the years so what will happen is at the time of issuance at each one of those bonds the utility will pick a team and they will rotate to make sure that you know that they are well uh represented on each one of those bond transactions and in terms of final um schedule of event kind of things that we're working on here what we're doing is obviously requesting the authorization to move forward with the issuance of these bonds through the parameters that we just went over again the first bond issue to be uh considered for pricing would be sometime at the end of august and that would be the 80 million dollars roughly for the commercial paper refunding and closing in september of this year as for the remainder remainder issuances of all the other bonds that is yet to be determined by the utility as they see fit until the expiration of this authority so with that i'm going to conclude this presentation and open it up for any questions that oh and there is one slide i'm sorry i apologize and i'm going to go ahead and ask marcella to come to talk about it and then we'll we'll open it up for some questions so in conclusion again we need these this money for our aging infrastructure um as you all know uh infrastructure ages this uh city really was built mostly after the 1950s so a lot of our plants our pipes are coming to the end of their useful life so we need to be able to replace them and to rehabilitate them and even as we as the needs are great you can still see by this slide that our rates are still very competitive throughout the this state only dallas and laredo have slightly lower average bill than el paso even though we're in a desert environment where water supply is a very important thing to us that we're always having to spend a lot of money to ensure that we can supply the water to this community and again as i stated before there's no tax revenues involved in these bond issues these revenues were adopted this debt was adopted in the budget march one and it is in the current rates so there is no effect beyond the rates that were uh increased in on march 1. so with that i'll open it up for any questions thank you very much for the presentation um so a lot of this money that we're talking about 240 million dollars has already been moved forward into rehabbing the system the refinance of commercial paper the 80 million that we want to proceed with in august has been spent we are close to our max of the 80 million that we have um the rest of the uh the two other 160 million is committed throughout the budgets and it's our now so we're talking about 240 million but the whole amount that's already into the current rate that's being paid by the ratepayer today correct okay and mr bina yes sir what is the current rate today if i was able to finance this money today which i know i can't but if i was able to do that what would that be today so last week as you know the fomc raised their interest rate uh 75 basis points so i did receive a new scale from our underwriters and if we priced the 80 million dollar deal we would be at the 25-year debt it would be around four percent um so that's where we are right now and if we don't do it today and we went to five percent or higher which is the new you know i don't think the three-quarters is impacted into it today or maybe um what what would be the difference in dollars and cents on the 80 million that's a great question so i'm going to show you real quick um so about 100 basis points would be about four hundred thousand dollars okay i'm going to show you real quick i know it's maybe hard to see hopefully you can see this better in your computer but you'll see that i have in the column b right there we i ran these numbers at 485 um the ones on column c you can see that it's about 200 200 bases i mean 200 000 for 50 basis points so that's that's what the difference would be over 25 years right right that's right okay thank you uh represent uh hernandez followed by mayor pro tem so there's two actions on this are we hearing both items right now no no i haven't presented the drainage utility yet it hasn't been right into the record here so um so the total amount is 400 million so i have finance questions and then i have operations question um the the four the 80 million is a refund but the other ones are issuance of debt correct so the 80 million is the refunding on the commercial paper notes um so let me let me back up so the 441 million 193 is for new money projects for their capital improvement program and then 240 million of those are for refunding of their commercial paper program so this is these are projects you've already completed you're just you're you're paying yourself back right okay so which is the commercial paper program okay why can you explain why the utility or psb is not considering issuing all the new money debt all together at once because i'm concerned about and i'll tell you where i'm going with this the administrative administrative cost and the cost of issuance as relates to multiple issuances those costs are significant and is there any way to save money by doing one issuance we issued the new money debt last time we were here back a few months ago based on the engineers cash flow estimates so we just felt like we didn't want to over issue at the beginning as as maria pointed out we're looking at issuing the new money portion towards the end of the year a december january time frame so we didn't feel that we needed to issue the 193 million extra dollars back when we came a few months ago i i understand but is there a cost savings to the rate payer by doing one debt issuance versus multiple strictly from the cost of issuance correct the administrative costs i'll let maria answer and i'm gonna say yes because i've seen it before generally yes you know obviously if you issue one time there are going to be some cost savings to that but issuing two to three times is not a material in terms of the expense so i wouldn't necessarily you know see that as a big issue right now i think also to your point and i'll answer to your question in terms of whether why not issue it all at once kind of thing we have been having a lot of these conversations even since the last time that utility issued these bonds there's certain things that we need to contend to prior to issuing bonds so the market is definitely one of them because we are in a rising interest rate environment the conversations can be well should we issue more at this point and there's a lot of reasons why maybe that would be great to do but then there's other things that we need to contend to which have to do with credit implications so we want to make sure you issue enough but not too much and then there's other tax implication things so it's um it it's kind of complicated to just say let's go ahead and issue everything at once what we're trying to do at this point right now is look at the most cost effective way to go out and issue bonds when the utility needs it and so i i think for right now the plan that that's being proposed today is to go ahead and have the parameter to go out there and issue the money as needed and so i hope that answers your question no it does but it raises some concerns about the the utilities ability to save money number one number two if there is an excess of debt issuance does the utility have the option to um capitalize on interest if you were to invest those dollars while you wait for the for your construction and your operation side of the house that's what we do mr gonzalez can you explain when we have an overage of debt issuances instead of just sitting in the bank are we capitalizing on interest can the utility do that as well yes we we we invest our monies the the 350 million that we issued recently is invested so we invest in we invest any monies that we have that aren't needed immediately okay well and that's great to hear i'm just trying to understand then why wouldn't you just issue it under the environment we understand now and the feds have already signaled that they're going to increase by more basis points to try to slow down spending i'm not going to pretend i understand the market but i am concerned about the parameters of 6.5 and going all the way to 6.5 percent i'm very concerned about that and i'm having a lot of heartache and i think those are the discussions that we're having right now in terms of um getting the parameters authorization to have the ability to issue the debt um at the right time whether it is a month from now or four or five months from now i think that's the discussion to be had um as i mentioned and i think it's a little more complicated um to to describe some of the credit issues that are involved can you please mute yourself so if you're in teams sorry about that i'm sorry miss would have been no it's okay um there's credit implications so we're definitely making sure that there's we don't go out and issue too much debt that it will have some implications and i get that but this ordinance is giving broad authority to el paso water to with the intent to issue that debt so there's already credit implications on making this request so i mean that's again not understanding the market and and your the credit um i guess sustainability i am very concerned that there's going to be added cost administrative cost cost of issuance and then on top of that increased basis points increase interest rates at 6.5 percent i'm sharing that with you because i think the utility should not have brought authority at 6.5 percent and that it should be tell me what you want to issue and then go ahead and issue it within the parameters within a timeline i'm very concerned giving that open-ended authority and then on top of that my concerns about operations and so you've answered my questions and i'll just share my opinion on that and i'll move on is there anybody here today to prepare to talk about what the rollout of the capital will be what the oversight of capital will be and then in addition um with the outreach on these type of capital projects and the reason why and and some of your staff can can talk about this i'm very concerned with stormwater projects in my district the cost the delays the the projects that have been had not not to have you know be controversial about it i've gone to psb to complain and to beg for support a project in my district on sam snead didn't take once to complete didn't take twice to complete took three times to complete and so i'm having real concerns about a 400 or 400 million dollar project ballooning into it failed if the construction has failed and the design has failed and there's no appropriate oversight that this these projects can be done two or three times that is my concern about the oversight of how this capital projects are going to be issued out i do understand that there's a need there's storm water needs there's infrastructure needs i'm all for that you look at my history of that supporting that i'm concerned about the the the parameters abroad parameters and then i'm concerned about the lack of oversight that has been demonstrated to this body and and i know there's several projects throughout the city um but i'm concerned about that mr blue isn't here i don't know if there's an engineer here today to address my concerns about what is the messaging what is the outrage what is the oversight of stormwater infrastructure so i i can speak to that um so as far as the oversight based on mrs marshall i'm sorry i'm i i'm so respectful i'm going to say this i really would love to hear from one of your engineers or from mr blue who's who oversees operations okay okay and then so if you if there's no one here prepare to talk about that thank you i i appreciate that so here are my other concerns so folks or i don't know whoever's listening um my concern about differential rates where mr blue has stood here and committed that differential rates would be implemented by this time frame i understand there's been hiccups with your customer service rollout i still haven't had a response on how we're going to save rate payers about differential rates on new um development areas far east far west northeast where are the differential rates that are going to save ratepayer dollars today and this is in lieu of impact fees um and then finally um uh like you know with our capital projects before we do capital projects there's like three step processes we vote on the on the project that's going to be issued our capital team is activated our outreach team is activated public meetings are activated project managers are activated oversight inspections are activated i don't see any process from the utility and it's giving me concern about issuing so much debt with no process in place for oversight and outreach to the public this has been the fundamental concern for me and my constituents where multiple years of my vacations i could not enjoy because i have constituents calling myself calling my cell phone because raw sewage is in the street raw sewage is in their house i'm very concerned about that and i wanted to share that with you because i do want to be in the spirit of unity i do we all need to work together but it gives me a lot of concern to prove this under these parameters under this hostile environment and the market being so volatile on top of my concerns about operations differential rates impact fees and lack of outreach so i'm gonna i'm just gonna share all that right now because and that is why initially i said i'm not i'm not in support of this because the utility has not demonstrated to me what their plans and plans are to issue all this new debt and how they're going to protect the ratepayer from any future increase costs those are my opinions and i don't have i don't expect for you to have a response but thank you marcella okay but do you have a response for me if you have a response please well i know that since the sams need project um there has been extra effort on doubling up our oversight of those projects um and and that is a commitment that mr blue has made um so i think that uh also with the expanded uh cip program that we are undertaking this year we have augmented our staff we have hired an engineering consulting firm to program manage the large cip that we have so that is not something we've ever done before so we are bringing outside resources to help our project managers manage the cip and so far it's worked very well arcadis is the firm that we we've hired to help us program manage this large cip so as far as the differential rates again we've come to this council asking for impact fees to be raised that has not happened since the inception of impact fees so in lieu of that we are looking at differential rates and yes we have uh held back on implementing that until we could stabilize our cis system that we went live with march one so we do anticipate coming to our board very soon with that discussion and that item to have the discussion with the board and i would say within the next few months and we can certainly let you know when that that discussion is going to be had with the board so that you can attend that meeting if you'd like thank you and let me ask you a question so if this debt is not issued what ends up happening well the 80 million for the commercial paper um we are up to our capacity on that 80 million um so we would not be able to issue any more commercial commercial paper notes and so those projects that are intended to be funded with the commercial paper would be uh stalled they would be halted um 160 million that's committed for improvement projects projects and and honestly there's projects that are the way the commercial paper program uh works is that you have that 80 million capacity 80 million capacity um but you've already obligated projects using commercial paper as a funding source so if you're in the middle of that project and we've hit the 80 million and you still have 5 million left on that project and we cannot roll the 80 million and take it long then either we have to come up with 80 million dollars cash to pay off those notes to free up the 80 million again or we have to go against our line of credit that backs the commercial paper program and we would be paying interest to draw on that line that backs the commercial paper so you're saying it would stop the yeah it would definitely slow it down okay thank you mayor pro tem thanks um i think representative hernandez kind of spoke a lot about sort of you know the sort of frustrations that we're here that we're hearing quite frankly um what i'm trying to wrap my head around is this is over 400 million that y'all are looking are asking permission for today why so much right now because we've seen millions of gallons of raw sewage in our river being poured for months because of catastrophic multiple catastrophic failures on infrastructure and so it's really hard to go and be in a position to approve this 400 million where we've seen environmental degradation i mean straight-up environmental catastrophe with what seems to be no accountability from the water utility we don't we don't control it we don't you know that's not our department but it seems that what has happened from it is a great pr campaign um removing some of the dirt that is costing ratepayers money to do so um and the hope of of of a less amount of a fine from either the state from both states of new mexico and texas so it's really it's really hard to to look at this and say that this is needed now when where was the oversight 5 10 15 20 years ago that would have that would have avoided these kind of catastrophic failures we're seeing throughout our stormwater why weren't those investments done then and why should we believe that this 400 million dollars is needed now the frontera force main breaks uh were being repaired at the time when that catastrophe happened and so we were aware and we were working on fixing that system the fact that you have a duel which means two force mains right next to each other break at the same time is really a catastrophic event that in all honesty we wouldn't anticipate that's why exactly why you put in a dual force main system so i can't speak to what's happened 10 20 30 years ago what we do know is what the needs are today and in order to prevent something like that happening again we need to move forward with these capital projects as i as i said before bustamate plant expansion is one of the biggest projects that we have we have indirect potable reuse that we need to to also engage in in order to have continue to have water supply during drought years those types of projects are very very important for this community we can't serve the growth in the east side and the lower valley if we don't expand the busta bustamante we will be in violation of our regulations and then what will we do so we're asking for this money to continue to do the things that we need to do to expand the system to rehabilitate rehabilitate the system and replace the aging infrastructure i and and i just think to echo what representative hernandez says i mean i i understand the need for this we've seen the kind of catastrophic failures that we've seen but there's also larger issues too in terms of what we're hearing from our residents and our residents our constituents are your ratepayers it's all the same population and i love renee absolutely loving he looks impeccable today as as always but i shouldn't have to i shouldn't have to message renee directly because i hear that from some of my neighbors from some of my constituents my neighbors my neighbors no longer live they're no longer my constituents anymore but um i shouldn't have to hear from from my constituents that yeah two months ago we had this issue of we had this issue going on with the great was was was full or this was was messed up or there's all kinds of of uh debris um on the fence on a great on on a on a on a canal and i shouldn't have to call renee to get that fixed you know there should be some some some sort of accountability with 301 or with whatever system you all are using for customer service because we hear from it again there's other people can talk about it as well we hear that you know they call the number nothing happens they email no response and and again this and and this is even on top of two the fact that that there was 14 million dollars plus expended on on land that is a dual that has a dual purpose use that never should have been never should have been purchased for 14 million dollars with the martin luther king land so again you know it's it's very very frustrating to to to sort of be sort of held hostage in this position where there's all these needs now and we can talk about what what wasn't being done back then and we're trying to focus on now but you know had we not had the sort of catastrophic failures last year to the monsoon season i i don't know what it would have taken to to get to this point um and you know i i really wish that mr baloo was here because there's still a lot of unanswered questions we asked mr ballou to present to the open space advisory board hasn't happened you know we have this this incredible amount of of of requests for funds with this 400 million today and we're still seeing the same issues of customer service um we're still seeing issues of of you know these kind of failures of projects with without sort of what feels like any accountability and and as you know at the end of the day most constituents most residents don't care if it's the state that's fixing something if it's the the city that's fixing something if it's the county that's fixing something if it's the water utility at the end of the day they're like this is our government in one way or another and we want to see it working well and it's it's it's hard to to go and say that that we're not seeing these problems time and time again thank you thank you mayor pro time representative ronello i'm sorry i got it i mean you know i'm not going to get into the specifics of it but i think that i definitely feel the frustrations of my colleagues i also hearing them i wonder how renee is one person in that job because i know we call him all day every day too uh so yeah he might need a counterpart or a very large raise uh yeah but i mean but that is like an overarching problem right like i know the central areas the east side this city was not planned well we know that that's a fact and you all are dealing with the repercussions of that we all are but there has not been a moment in the last couple years that i felt comfortable with is it going to rain today in my entire district in a flood is there going to be some sewage leak right and i think there are some amazing projects that we're doing right i think the mca project is incredible like i'm really excited about that but also i've been pushing for something like that in the northeast forever and just been kind of told we don't have the money for it's not going to happen um and so i think you know representative hernandez bringing up the way we also go about bonds is a really important thing and i think we had this conversation very briefly when we met kind of what is the process for the water utility to issue bonds because we're seeing the public responding very negatively to bonds from organizations from governmental agencies and so we need to be cognizant of that and there needs to be an entirely new way that we're looking at approaching these kind of things because it cannot just fall on us 100 of the time right to have a short briefing be able to explain this there is uh one more thing that i will say um i'm still equally as upset of you as you are um with the why can't i think of what they're called right now the impact fees that never came to this council for a vote it should have we've some of us have been asking for it for three years i don't know what needs to happen i don't know if the city manager here is here to hear us like that needs to happen i don't know if the water utility needs to bring that back up but that's a conversation we need to be having again because it is becoming extremely detrimental to my district and to this community um if you need help getting that on the agenda let us know right that is you should be upset about that i'm upset about it it was very unfair what happened um to the water utility and to our constituents in regards to the impact fees but that doesn't necessarily change any of the other concerns that i have and so i think moving forward we need to be in a lot more communication there has been a very uncomfortable uh air i think between the city council and the water utility i'm not happy about it i really enjoy working with you all um i really have a lot of respect for everybody at the water utility but there does need to be some kind of collaboration right i think talking about the open space advisory and the concerns that we had about that land i still have not come to any resolution i don't understand what's happening and i'm sorry that this is coming at you i appreciate you listening because i know it is not your um your deal but i just want to kind of echo those sentiments that um you all work really hard renee is doing an amazing job i don't know how much more i can praise him for taking eight city council members phone calls all hours of the day but i think that there are some executives and there is some relationship building and communication and collaboration that needs to be worked on on the city water utility level so thank you all mayor if i could just say one thing that i neglected to say earlier you know utilities are very capital intensive so very different from city governments so any utility that you go to at any part of the country they're going to have large capital programs and they're going to have a lot of debt debt is very much a part of the way utilities fund their infrastructure so it is different than a city government or a county government because we do have such large capital programs and debt has always been a part of our funding portfolio and it will it will continue to be there's just no way that we could ever generate enough cash through rates to fund the kind of large projects that we have thank you uh hernandez so um or so i did because you mentioned something after i spoke the the entity that you all hired like a vendor what are they called arcadis oh and arcade is engineering so they're responsible to do what they're helping us to program manage the the capital improvement program okay so they're um you could think of them as um helped they're helping our program managers adding their program managers to our project managers to help us manage projects help us manage the process of you know design bidding awarding then doing construction and going through all those phases so they're helping us they're pretty much augmenting our staff okay i think that's absolutely critical i think that is what's going to help alleviate a lot of our concerns um can will the can the utility commit today that ensuring that every single project there will be oversight and a process for public outreach yes um can the utility commit that um they're gonna do their best within the parameters of this issuance um that that um if i don't i personally don't wanna see six point five percent is there any ability to bring that down to six i think what we can do is um and we have been discussing it you know the timing of the the new money portion um it doesn't have to be at the end of the year like we've projected when we would need the money we could accelerate that and we could do it sooner in fact if you adopt this if you approve this item we could do it with the 80 million that's going to be sold in august and that i'll already do is to make a data-driven um uh decision based on what's going to save the tax or the rate payer excuse me i get confused with all the taxing entities the ratepayer the most because if you can demonstrate that there is a savings from doing one balloon issuance then then do that and and i get why you're looking for that greater parameters it just it gives me so much concern to to do that and then be responsible for that like i'm just saying hey you go do it and then my decision is my decision is that it's going to be ultimately uh as the regulators of the utility we're going to have to respond for your decisions and so my biggest critical concern is the oversight and the process so if you can demonstrate that at future meetings when you do your briefings to council and then have a clear process in place then i am going to endorse this i will support this today because i am concerned about the volatility of the market i don't want to be responsible for increased rates if you can try to secure that faster but please send a clear message to mr ballou there has to be more support in the engineering department because i have seen firsthand the lack of oversight and i'm very concerned about that i also understand that there is a crisis in our community and we need this infrastructure soon so i don't want to be a bit of a barrier to that so with a lot of hesitation i'm going to support this today and i do think mr bellew is coming within about a month to present quarterly like he has been quarterly to the council so we'll certainly uh take that back to him so he can um have that in his uh his presentation to you about the program and and the oversight thank you and ms wina you said that if i got a rate of five percent instead of four percent it'd be four hundred thousand dollars i don't think that's anywhere near a year a year or so okay now that's what i said over 25 years some a little cause i calculated about 10 million dollars so i'm about right but yes it's 400 000 a year right in here a year that's what worried me because it's about a 10 million difference if we hesitate that they would cost so i used my iphone to figure that out so i want to make sure we knew that okay thank you and with that do we have a motion second motion in a second mayor we do have public comment on this item we have sharon bonard followed by rick bonard i don't like to correct you uh miss prank because you and i have had this conversation but it's dr bernard doctor and i had my hair and i had that conversation this morning you're too kind for the record i'm sharon miles bonart a native el pasoan and a member of the open space advisory board i'm not here to speak for the board but to speak for myself and others who love our city and appreciate the work city departments and units do on a daily basis thank you to staff for their very thorough presentations of the financial needs of our city's water utilities the best indicator of future performance is past performance the water utilities are government units they have shown that there is significant need for more money for capital improvement projects maintenance of facilities and services which have not been effectively addressed in prior and current budgets it would appear that the city utility is looking for funds to cover these projects in viewing the water utilities asks their aggressive financial actions in the negotiations of the northeast property there is concern that water utilities are in a state of financial insecurity supportive of concern for the financial well-being being of the water utilities are their actions in the northeast negotiations and the fact that the water utilities are seeking additional bond approval as to managing funds they are they have proceeded with northeast land cells negotiation with the city they've been using methodologies contrary to those previously used in agreements with the nav land and the police and fire departments academies when it comes to purchasing open space oh the water utilities have been withholding the current appraisal report of that land from the city council when the city council had asked for it the effective date on that appraisal is january 4 2022. they have unilaterally placed weak restrictions to development on the land when a stronger restriction had been requested by city council they've dredged up a defunct action to potentially name a third party in negotiations these bizarre maneuvers contributed to the taking of 14 million dollars from the storm water 10 dual purpose funds for an unnecessary movement of property from one city unit ledger to another city water unit ledger the issues of current and pending financial problems may be coincidental for the water utilities or there may be a common causality of financial peril for the water utilities of el paso may i have one second one second that's not very long whatever is the reason for asking for more money through using bonds bizarre sales practices and inflating the unit to unit sale price the water utilities of el paso have historically provided efficient and honorable service to the ratepayers thank you council thank you that was four seconds by the way the next speaker is dr rick bohnert good afternoon sir you have three minutes good afternoon mayor and council uh i felt a little bit weird bringing this up but uh i i would like to echo a lot of representative hernandez's concerns and uh as to one thing that you mentioned is like are they investing the money before using it yes but the arbitrage is so horrible it's almost negligible and um another concern why so much money all at once you know we're facing this ever rising interest increases your own cfo mentioned it should peak at 6.5 percent that's his estimate but there's no guarantee of that it's a very volatile market as everybody's brought forward and i'm against borrowing until you actually need it there's no way this number of projects will be done in this time period so you're actually borrowing ahead in anticipation that that interest rates will continue to rise which may or may not happen so um i i think that it's it's also if you look at slide 10 it's a little bit disingenuous to show and say that the rates are already baked in that's for a one year budget that's not for year 5 10 or 15 as they increasingly borrow this money so i think that that's not fair to the rate payers but basically i'm conflating issues it's a it's a dissatisfaction on my part that i'm even up here talking about this because eventually this does need to get done and how economically you can do it is what's ultimately important but there's some bigger issues as to how the utility is behaving towards its customers and specifically the ratepayers into the stormwater utility to waste 25 million dollars of ratepayer money on needless land transfers when that money needs to go to genuine stormwater projects is egregious and you your job the reason you're here today the reason they're here today is they're not totally autonomous they rely on you for permission to sell these bonds that's your duty that's your oversight so as part of your oversight my ask is that you instruct them to do the right thing and that's to refund that 10 percent storm water money so it can be used for legitimate dual-purpose projects thank you thank you and dr monard that the rate is figured in for the next 25 years if no additional debt is issued and no dis so i mean i understand what you're saying but the debt is figured in for these 25 years for this program if additional programs additional things are done to the system just like all utilities then they come back but other than that because i've seen it it is figured in for the next 25 years we just hope there's no additional debt moving forward but i mean i'm not but you understand the rate the utility will come purely no no i get that but that's what it is though and this will drive that right no i get that but i want to make sure and you know and mr meena i don't want to see six and a half percent because that's a 25 to 30 million dollar increase to what you're bringing to us today so to representative hernandez's point i think we really need to look into not waiting to see if it goes to six and a half percent where your limit is because that would cost us roughly 30 million dollars mayor potem yeah thank you um you know the what what dr bonard's um have brought up is again something that's particularly concerning i still haven't heard he really had a satisfactory answer into understanding um how it is that the water utility paid themselves 14 million dollars at market value for land that was did not have a third party and was for a clear municipal use and i'm curious if you can respond about refunding the the 14 million that was used for this or is that is that above y'all's pay grade i didn't mean i didn't mean i'm not prepared to respond to that and i don't think it's really relevant to the item that's on the agenda no i i hear what you're saying um may it may not be relevant i mean i think it's a larger issue about i think the concerns that we've heard from the council have been about how things are being managed and funds are being utilized at the water utility at this time so while not directly related it there is questions from the public about that thank you sir with that miss prime we have a motion in a second yes mayor the motion was made by representative lizarraga seconded by representative molinar to approve item number 26 on that motion call for the vote in the voting session and the motion passes with five affirmative votes representatives schwarzwein salcido voting representative rodriguez not present the next item is number 27. and this is a public hearing on an ordinance authorizing the issuance of city of el paso texas municipal drainage utility system revenue refunding bonds series 2023 and an amount now to exceed 25 million 330 thousand dollars if i could have the presentation thank you um so we are also asking for a nine-month parameters resolution for drainage utility issuance of about 25 million next slide please um very similar to the commercial paper program that we have in the water sewer utility we also have a revolving note program uh that we utilize for interim financing for the drainage utility that program has a limit of 25 million versus the 80 million for the commercial paper program again we have accelerated the capital improvement program for the drainage utility to try to get more projects done in a in a shorter time frame so we are exhausting that 25 million a little quicker than usual we're not ready to pull a trigger on a 25 million dollar takeout at this point in time but we we do see it happening in the next few months so again we just want the authorization to uh be able to refund those notes when it's needed i'll turn it over to maria for uh going through the numbers well she's coming up and you don't need to come up but i'd like to see mr blue address the issue it seems to come up every time we we have anything with the water with the lost dog and the 14 million and i'd like to see a presentation in front of this board while he's up here because i think it's important because we keep having the same conversation and we have no answers so i'd like to have some answers and some and i'd like to have a a resolution on on this matter so if we can please do that i really would appreciate it thank you mayor council members for the record maria alvina with hilltop securities financial advisor to the utility and i will be going over a very short presentation um in terms of the issuance of revolving note refunding bonds as ms navarrete was mentioning the utility does have a a short-term funding program very similar to their commercial paper program which has a capacity of 25 million dollars so what i'm going to be showing you right now is the impact of issuing 25 million dollars to their existing debt currently the drainage utility has roughly about 12 million dollars of debt per year that they pay currently in so with the issuance of another 25 million dollars would add roughly about 2 million dollars more to their outstanding debt obligations for a total of about 14.5 million the numbers that we are presenting to you very similar to the presentation that we just gave you uh these numbers are um assuming a six percent interest rate which i believe is more than conservative is as we move forward however we are wanting to make sure that we give you a conservative picture as to where we could be um because these bonds as different as the other ones are there the utility is not ready to issue these bonds until probably later this year however we did run these numbers at 20 years versus 25. so the utility um i'm having problems oh there we go um and so the utility will be requesting a parameters authorization as well um to issue these bonds with the delegated pricing officers as provided in the slide as for the recommended uh parameters very similar to the last presentation our maximum true interest cost not to exceed six and a half percent um that is very conservative uh we don't expect to be that at the time of pricing of the principal amount of this issue not to exceed 25 million 330 000 which would allow for the uh refunding of 25 million dollars of revolving notes plus about 330 000 for cost of issuance for the final maturity not to exceed december 31 i mean 31st of 2043 which is like i mentioned 20 20 years out in the expiration of the authority not to exceed nine months and so we if we can't meet these parameters we will not execute on these bonds as for the underwriters we've got the same list that we showed on our last presentation so at the time that the utility decides to move forward with the issuance of these bonds they will refer to this particular slide and look for the appropriate list of underwriters to help them sell the debt and last but not least if approved today the utility uh will have this authorization and will utilize it when needed and we're looking at potentially issuing these bonds sometime either at the end of this calendar year or at the beginning of 2023 and so with that i will open it up for any questions that you may have for for us at this point there is no questions is there a motion and we also have public comment on this item mayor we have dr sharon miles boner no dr rick boner i think i think that the concern remains the same and that you addressed it it would be nice to have mr blue come and explain transfer thank you for putting that in i guess the only thing with with the stormwater utility that's more critical is the annual debt service you know and how you begin to approach that limit because with stormwater it's so volatile one accident could really stress the system out so i i i hope that you're not borrowing to the max thank you right and i think you're right and it's hard to gauge based on you know what's happening today so with that we have a motion in a second yes sir the motion was made by representative molinar seconded by representative lizard to approve item number 27 on that motion call for the vote in the voting session and the motion passes with four affirmative votes representatives short fine salcido rivera voting the remainder of council voting i and representative rodriguez not present that brings us to item number 28 on the agenda and this is a public hearing on an ordinance changing the zoning from r5c residential conditions to c2c commercial conditions and from r5sp residential special permit to see to commercial and imposing conditions this is at the property generally north of trans mountain road and east of interstate 10. do we have a motion there is a motion made by representative lizard seconded by representative molinar to approve item number 28 on that motion call for the vote mayor pro tem this is item 28 thank you sir in the voting session the motion passes unanimously representative rodriguez not present the next item is number 29 item 29 is a public hearing on an ordinance changing the zoning of a portion of the east 300 feet of north 100 feet of the south 165 feet of track 9d from r4 residential to ao apartment office in imposing conditions and this is north of wardrobe being trans mountain drive and east of beaumark street there is a motion made by representative anello seconded by representative molinar to approve on that motion call for the vote in the voting session the motion passes unanimously representative rodriguez not present the next item is number 30. this is a public hearing on an ordinance granting a special privileged license to 1031 firestone llc at the property at 1025 texas there's a motion made by representative mayor pro-tem schwarzwein seconded by representative anello to approve on that motion call for the vote in the voting session the motion passes unanimously representative rodriguez not present the next item is number 31 and this is a public hearing on an ordinance amending title 12 vehicles in traffic speed limits of pershing drive and dyer street there's a motion made by representative molinar seconded by representative anello to approve on that motion call for the vote in the voting session the motion passes unanimously representative rodriguez not present the next item is number 32 and this is discussion and action on the approval of a resolution to authorize a director of aviation to sign and submit a grant application and related documentation to the federal aviation administration faa in connection with the application process for the airport improvement program project number 3-48-0 second there's a motion made by representative rivera seconded by representative molinar to approve item number 32 on that motion call for the vote in the voting session the motion passes unanimously representative rodriguez not present that brings us to the end of the regular agenda mayor yes i just wanted to ask and i'm not sure if you're prepared to answer if there are any pressing issues in executive or could there be a request to postpone these issues to the next council meeting give me a few minutes just to check we can't hear you he said he's gonna check he's representative representative this is carla demon i'm upstairs we're just checking on one item whether we have to get a decision from council if you can just give us like five minutes you know willing to wait five minutes to see if we can get hurt look i might not have to do it let's just wait for a second i'm a representative of atlantis we have one item that we're on a deadline for um for august 15th so if council wants to we can just take that one item and we can postpone the rest of them which item is that executive session with so let's read that one item into the and then post upon the other station so we can postpone the utility items laura it is um art rubio versus the city of el paso can you read that one miss point into the record and that's the one we'll take his second is motion thank you representative there's a motion and a second to return to executive session all in favor yes anyone opposed the city council of city of el paso my return to executive session pursuant to section 3.58 of the el paso city charter and the texas government code chapter 551 sub chapter d to discuss executive session item two rubio arturo versus city of el paso cause number 2021 dcv 2074 matter number 21-1036-3478-551-071 consultation with attorney it is 5 38 p.m um high tea we have a motion and a second to [Music] there's a motion and a second to come out of executive session all in favor anyone opposed the meeting is back in session at 5 53 p.m mayor pro-tem ex-1 ex1 no action thank you sir ex2 ex2 motion august 2nd 2022 motion made second and carry the city attorney's office in consultation with the city manager be authorized certain authority negotiated settlement of arturo rubio versus city of el paso pending in the county court at law seven under case number 2021 dc v074 in matter number 21-1036-3478 and to take all steps necessary including the execution of any required documents in order to effectuate this authority approved this 22nd day of august 2022. there is a motion made by mayor pro tem schwarzwein and read into the record seconded by representative rivera on ex2 on that motion call for the vote [Music] representative angelo aye thank you representative hernandez yes thank you in the voting session the motion passes unanimously second ex3 oh extra no action ex4 no action thank you ex5 uh no action thank you is there a motion to adjourn second there's a motion and a second to adjourn the regular city council meeting all in favor aye godspeed represent rivera anyone opposed and the regular shot speed representative tuesday august 2nd 2022 is adjourned godspeed you handsome you handsome man godspeed represent rivera godspeed thank you