foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] Elizabeth in the room okay Council welcome to your June 6 work session I'll call us to order and turn it over to David Cook thank you good afternoon everybody we're going to jump right to informal reports so the first informal report is the city of Fort Worth Fourth of July operations and Communications and we have Rick Hicks and assistant chief Aldridge if there are any questions I knew that and I'm sure they did too come on up as you're coming I'll remind you in addition to talking to us you're talking to people at home and so keep them in mind in terms of leaving no Stones Unturned good afternoon mayor council Rick Hicks Fire Marshal uh here we have our one of the most celebrated holidays upon us uh also our most challenging in regards to firework enforcement uh we've been giving it continuous effort collaborating with PD attending neighborhood association meetings we're focused on three things messaging how to report fireworks and our response and I'll open it up to questions regards to messaging public information offer tragic's been uh heavily involved in that do you want to speak on kind of what our messaging efforts are I know social media platforms Facebook next door app Twitter those sorts which I believe we reached close to 350 000 citizens last year so that's been our main focus messaging that's what we're the feedback we're getting from our neighborhood associations I guess the the interest I have is more geared towards senior citizens who may not tweet who may not have access to Internet they only know how to dial a number and so you'll keep them in mind too yeah so we also including that uh water bills that are going out are going to have flyers and information people that pay online they're going to be that information online as well so um reporting methods the 44-44 number email we have a website those sorts of things those methods are going to be included as well in the in the reporting in the messaging so response plan we're collaborating with PD this year we're teaming up we're going to have several teams deployed throughout the city to do the best we can to respond to these calls um last year we received about 2500 calls in an eight-hour span just on the fourth alone uh close to five thousand in a four day period between July 1 and July 4. so it really taps our resources we do the best we can we're going to give it continuous effort this year as well so I think Carlos had some questions well first assignment about messaging you also have and I pointed it out to Chief Davis I saw billboard one of the digital changing Billboards on 35 headed Northbound uh just entering Burleson I think there was a you know PSA type message from fire saying fireworks in the city of Fort Worth are illegal you know I think that's positive I don't know how many other Billboards we may have you know deployed like that just a little feedback last year because I know I used that that phone number to call in when I did call in the instances of fireworks that I observed or calls that I received about you know fireworks being set off by people I was told to report it via email are we still going to have that back back to Gina's point I think not just senior citizens but a lot of people have the expectation that if you call you know you're going to get a response not not be told well just get on a computer and report it via email yes sir the one thing I forgot to mention that we're going to have a unified command set up at the jeoc we're going to be monitoring those calls the best we can prioritize on triaging those calls looking at the hot dance areas specifically if there's fires we had over 300 grass fires last year in an eight-hour period injuries as well so we we do our best to triage those calls and get to those areas so thank you Elizabeth um as I appreciate the the water bill and the online and I'm assuming social media that was the one thing the IR would didn't really capture was proactively what we're going to do and I did see that billboard as well and I think that's a great idea my question is are we putting any funding behind digital or TV advertisement because social media doesn't have the saturation that we'd all like to think it does and platforms like Hulu YouTube Netflix are relatively inexpensive to do short 15 second ads on and so have we explored that at all to really kind of saturate particularly in English and in Spanish uh I'm not sure on that Craig do you have any information excuse me so I'm sorry thank you all for letting us come up today and answer any questions you may have from from a messaging standpoint with the social media that has been something that we've kind of really relied on heavily the last couple of years we have also looked into some of these other avenues to get that messaging out as of right now we don't have anything specific to Hulu or YouTube that you're discussing but you know I kind of talk to everybody and say hey if you've got ideas one of the things I was going to look to do possibly if you know this year is to maybe have some of you guys as well uh do those quick uh just couple of seconds with maybe some messaging um in coordination with our our kind of view on that if that would be something you guys may be open to to try out in the future but yes to answer your question right now we don't have that particular uh part of it set up can you explore the costs associated with that to see if um if it's feasible to do this year and if not yeah yes ma'am thank you there are questions Council Michael in in terms of the media the councilwoman back suggestion your council is always ready to assist you when it comes to dealing with our public we do have a pretty skilled ad team here so they could get something together that is ready to air if you want that yes I'll be looking forward to talking with you all after okay thank you thanks for putting together this IR just want to say thanks for all the work that you'll do this is the fire department to keep our people safe Police Department coordinating and everything appreciate that a lot I'll Echo what mayor Pro Tim bivin said about the notification piece um my old Community but uh Como and now is in District Six every year get calls and you'll get them this year about all the fireworks going off because they they have such Tinder Box of homes so they're very scared about everything going on and so I appreciate the action there and and the communication piece to let them know how they can report it what they can do one thing I do want to look at too and I know it looks from this is on page six and I don't know who's the proper person to sort of respond to this is following the international fire code and standards I get all that but they're basically the idea of commercial firework displays in neighborhoods and this happens in some places and we don't need to go into where but it's about a 280 foot setback which I did the numbers about five and a half fire trucks where they can set them up up in places and they're a butt against neighborhoods um it may be great if we have uh the fireworks part of it and preventing the fire and I know there's a person on the side I read all through this but we made a look at the noise part of it if it's right up against someone's home in the neighborhood and what that does for the period of time that those are going off and I don't I don't know that that requires um a comment from y'all I know there was an email that we got Leanne if you want to make a comment a little bit on that about our noise ordinance and what that looks like but I know it's disturbing some people for a period of time when it's a permit that we've issued so the the city's noise ordinance doesn't um directly regulate the noise from fireworks however there is a provision within the noise ordinance that allows a person if they're being aggrieved by a noise to make a complaint it's not a per se if they if the fireworks is happening then it's a noise and it's a nuisance it's something that actually has to be someone to be a witness to if a citation's written and be proven up in front of a judge okay we I just want to put that out there so it's something we can look at it's probably too too late for this year since it's so close but it may be something we need to look at as we issue those permits the proximity to neighborhoods and what that what that is and how the stir ring that is appreciate it go ahead David looks like we're done thank you thank you everybody that was a nice transition to the next informal report which is a summary of the ooby Dooby Festival is it ooby-dooby I'm going with ooby doobie and to speak about ooby Dooby at Panther Island Pavilion back in April is Michael Crum if anybody has any questions well good afternoon everyone I'm Mike Crum uh director of the public events Department the reason I'm up here this afternoon is because public events also manages the city's office of outdoor events so uh we were the collector of information coming out of the Abu Dhabi or ubi-dooby concert uh and are here to answer your questions this afternoon go ahead Carlos okay I'll dive in deep um since 2019 um I've dealt with the ooby dooby-dw whatever you want to call it uh you know concert impacts to uh to Residents right uh over where I live it was uh felt very much right and I use the word felt and as opposed to herd because I think that there is a misunderstanding about low frequency noise which is what you know this EDM type of music you know relies on um I liken it to this just like a meteorologist says reads its temper you know his temperature gauge and says it's so hot but it feels hotter because of the heat index it's the same thing with this type of low frequency noise you can have a decibel reader read it it'll tell your reading that reading does not accurately reflect the full effects of low frequency noise and in fact you need a certain type of decibel reader you know calibrated appropriately to accurately read it and that's something else that I I don't know if I'm going to do an IR but mean to ask PD whether or not we're equipped with such things but that's for another discussion uh one thing that and I've been getting a lot of feedback you know on this is that clarification and maybe this is more of a legal question but um does the city's noise ordinance exempt Panther Island musical events the way it's written because even though they have to comply you know with a noise or decibel limitations as it applies to the Trinity uptown area doesn't it really in effect not give us any sort of legal recourse that is you can have somebody down there with an appropriate decimal reader and read it and say hey you're in violation of it but what can you actually do with it because of the exemption yeah and you know subject to my friends in legal correcting me if I'm wrong my understanding is that yes Panther island is exempt from the noise ordinance okay so now that the specs a question what are we going to do about it for next time because there's already talk about it next time yes sir and so uh you know as as you may be aware the uh the regional water district which manages uh the panther Island Pavilion and licensed uh the use of the Pavilion in this case to a third party promoter of of this show uh met uh and discussed the uh the situation uh their response to that was to change the hours uh that the The Pavilion can be used for events so if you look at page two of your IR uh now with the exception of national holidays uh the uh the operating hours for The Pavilion are restricted to 7 A.M to 10 p.m going to 11 on on holidays and then Thursday through Saturday those hours are 7 A.M to 12 p.m and again uh Melinda correct me if I'm wrong but the the legal curfew for Panther Island events is 2 A.M do I have that right okay yeah so we need to we'll clarify they could have gone to 2 A.M as my understanding but they chose not to Sir my understanding is we were talking about the time they could have gone to 2 A.M but they chose not to that's correct that's my understanding as well so not to cut things off but I wonder if it's maybe helpful if we continue conversations with the water district which I know we already have but Dan and his team before they approve another Festival like this one it wasn't just the time of night it was just the noise and the disruption you know it was surprising to me how far away people complained about the frequency of the noise so if staff can work with Mike and then work with Dan through David's office I think that would be helpful to get and get more awareness around if they approve another permit whether it's ooby doobie or whoever is next um and then also discuss this nose or noise ordinance and how it should pertain to Panther Island as well sure sound good okay okay thank you thank you yes it's my first time using that since we got all of these reminders every time I just want to recognize the fireworks committee which is comprised of citizens they are here if you guys will stand I see James and Judy and people just need okay these are the people who started those talks about four years ago and of course it comes out of District Five with some other gifts but that is my point of order thank you so much thank you Gina thank you for coming Mike next informal report is on firearm thefts and Deputy police chief Mark barthen is available if there are any questions all right the next informal report is on security cameras in the stop six area and deputy chief David carbajal is available if there any questions yes aye deputy chief this question came up because when we started the neighborhood Improvement strategy I knew that I was assigned 36 cameras in stop six yes one was put at a church and they didn't need it so we took it back thank you for that they asked me to thank you for allowing us to move that around well that's the whole idea because people have been able to feel that they could call their NPO and tell them where they saw activity and you guys have made arrests and cases and so were the cameras they have one you may not want to tell us I don't care but do we still have these cameras in stop six uh yes ma'am they're originally 36 installed and then we've added 11 more there's about three in this repair but we're getting those back up so the numbers increased from the 36 to about 47 I believe now I'm going to be reminding councilmember Nettles and I'll tell councilmember crane keep up where your cameras are because if not they'll end up somewhere they don't need to be and if the officers know that you know where your cameras are supposed to be and it's been a real good partnership and you can actually make some cases we had a video that cross used to show around the entire city how these cameras help prove cases so they're not as evil as some people would have you think thank you councilman thank you thank you David and I have a follow-on Madam Pro tem does some of that but in here it says their five-year uh their expected life life expectancies five years are those are those budgeted for replacement after that time how does that work in our budget we're doing about every year we budget for about maybe 125 and about 100 of those we try and do a new in 25 we try and be Replacements so we're constantly budgeting into replacement obviously we can't predict but we certainly uh we do try and be responsible on budgeting for that and uh Chief while you're up there just wanted to mention the north side area you know a certain sector of it is also getting cameras so to you know uh mayor Pro tems point you know just get with me so that I can be aware of where your initial starting points are for those camera locations absolutely sir we'll include you in that conversation thank you thank you next informal report is on the 2023 Transportation Alternatives Federal funding applications and Kelly Porter is available 30 questions yes Kelly come on down it's not Kelly it's not Kelly as many of you knew this is not Kelly I'm filming for Kelly I'm Mike lanvic Transportation Planning manager in tpw and Kelly's group and uh we um this uh resolution went to the council last week or the 23rd and we submitted three Federal funding applications to TxDOT one on Mcpherson Boulevard one Everman Parkway and then phase two of bomber Spirit Trail so any questions yes can you just give a quick summary of the McPherson Summer Creek I know offices received a number of calls over the years about the importance of Transportation safety in these two arterios or two that are important in those conversations so just for public awareness could you share what you applied for and what it would do sure and I'll I'll start by saying that we selected these projects based on a few things one ones that have shown up on the higher Injury Network they're also based on planning previous planning work like our active Transportation plan uh and then also ones where we could leverage opportunities with funding partners and then maybe some additional uh funding we're already needing to do like on on overlays and restriping that sort of thing are we striping at least in interferson case um so this project is going to be looking at multimodal safety benefits a lot of it is looking at the um buy things out there in the current striping and so essentially what this project is going to do is it's going to do a five foot bike lane with the addition of a one foot buffer raised buffer uh along all my fears in between basically Chisholm Parkway over to Hulen and it's going to do additional bike Lanes um from like down to the middle school there on Summer Creek up to Risinger and then some additional safety benefits like crosswalks some specific pedestrian signals and some other safety improvements it's kind of in the preliminary stage we've done some preliminary scoping and estimating work but it'll be obviously developed to the Future design process if funded thank you I'm glad you brought the pedestrian to um just appreciate all the work that y'all have done on that especially as we coordinate with parks and open space to develop systems of trails that are actually in the work so thank you for that as well looking forward to that hopefully fingers crossed we get the award great thank you any other questions thank you thank you next 10 promo report is on architectural services for the remodel of this building right here current city hall and new parking structure and Steve Cook is available if there are any questions all right and we talked about this yesterday but I just want to put it on the record for today um and this IR it talks about um evaluating also PD Communications coming over here but we are also in this scope able to evaluate um retrofit of some facilities to permanently put a new downtown library here yes okay yes all right the next informal report is on automated external defibrillators deployed a Parker Recreation facilities yeah it's just a really quick summary okay I know we had this day last time and Dave while you're coming up thank you for briefing us on this there he comes Monica McBride dabs is a constituent that lives in District six um I mentioned it last time but she lost her son at football practice and the AED wasn't in arm's length and so she started a foundation and they engage our office a number of times I'm on initiatives that they're doing regards to having aeds available for Youth Sports so I appreciated the briefing you gave me I'm glad you came back that way we can share it broad broadly yeah thank you good afternoon Dave Lewis interim director of Park and Recreation I think the information that's most important for you is that we do have 10 field monitors that we employ at all the fields when they're rented and they each have a mobile unit that they carry with them and so when they're on site they are able to go ahead and take care of any incidents that arise that's all I needed thank you thank you the next informal report is on budget and tax note requirements and Mark McDaniel is available if there any questions all right roll into the next one which is the fiscal year 2024 budget public engagement budget and property tax setting calendar and schedule of meetings of course Mark is available if there any questions the biggest concern I've had Mark before you arrive with the city is how we notify and where we hold these public meetings uh in the past we had them in each Council district there was pushback from that from staff and it's important to me that the public knows exactly where they can get this information so that's the reason why I wanted you to talk yes yes we are aware of that and so we're working on the plan now some of you have already talked to me about places you'd like to have your meetings and so we'll reach out to the rest of you if we have not heard from you but working with Renee's group to put those together all right thank you the next informal report is on Code Enforcement calls for service and Brandon Bennett is available if there any questions none from me I do have one day been Brandon Brandon hey hurry up go make it quick I'm looking at District three there's been a really large increase in in res and officer initiated calls and it looks like to multi-family and property maintenance if you look at the second page of this uh is that due to we now have a code officer yeah so what what happens it's it's a lot like when you put extra police officers in a certain part of town it looks like the crime rate went up when in fact you just have more officers that are addressing some of the crime that wasn't being addressed before so that drives some of the numbers but I think those are really good questions that I want to confirm the answers for and so we'll get back with with your your office and one of the things we are going to do um also we didn't include in the IR we missed it is we have new council members on board and this is a really good time to really go back and either meet with you all or your aides and really find out based on right here and now today what are your priorities for for code complaints like what are the things you really want us to focus on moving forward so we'll be doing that as part of our orientation with the new council members and we'll make sure we reach out to the existing council members also yeah I appreciate that I'm sure my colleagues do too um one question I do have just because we have the new cut officer dedicated Las Vegas Trail area and I'm getting a lot of great feedback from the neighborhoods there um so that's probably where that multi-family's gone up and I would like that information what does property maintenance mean though yeah so people split out weeds and other things Property Maintenance is a generic term that there's an international property maintenance code that's where it comes from and so that's where you have um properties where they have collected like junk and um it's not it's not really garbage but it's like hoarders right you know uh sometimes that fits with some of our zoning codes like a couple weeks ago council member Beck uh raised a concern about uh people storing stuff on their on their front porches um that's a very low priority and we need to be careful about that um but we also need to make sure we don't turn a blind eye at the same time to when somebody has a lot of like appliances and freezers that kids can get into and stuff like that on their front porch okay you may go look at my dad's property I'm just saying yeah we're trying to get them remove it but thank you you can call us anonymously okay the next informal report is on environmental collection center amendments in a proposed fee increase for other municipalities and government entities and again Brandon Bennett is available if there any questions moving on next informal report is on Community Center security and Sonya Singleton and Kelly Picard are available if there any questions sure Kelly Sonia good afternoon good afternoon hey y'all I personally said sure just to give an update for the Public's awareness and for our own well I'll begin I think we are hyper aware of important value of who we work with your children our seniors and others who visit our community centers so we um made sure that we set up training for all of our staff the training was tied entitled avoid deny defend active shooting training so all of our community center staff have a 10 have attended that um we have Panic buttons at all have installed at all of our community centers and we will be doing soft lockdown for our summer day camps Kelly would you like to continue just to continue with that we started the soft lockdowns last summer after the incident that happened at another Community summer day camp on the first day and so like Sonia said said we're just trying to make sure we take every precaution not just to protect the people attending our programs but also our staff because we understand that sometimes these type of programs can be a Target and so we just want to ensure the safety I really appreciate y'all thank y'all for the work y'all do in the proactive approach with the panic button just for folks who don't know what that is that's basically you can push that button and it would get a priority one response from a number one is that correct yes okay great thank you Michael I just do have one in this I'm glad we had the meeting this morning that we did but I noticed the four that six the late night program ccpd funded is not at lvt rise rise Community Center so I'd like to explore that as part of future funding I mean we're talking about underserved communities that we seem to hit a lot of them but we missed that one for sure I think your request is very timely yeah whoever's taking that whomever's taken notes yeah awesome thank you don't leave yet okay the next informal report is on out of school food programs and they're here to answer any questions you might have we also share a lot of emails thanks we had a lot of email thanks for going back and forth I'm glad we had that meeting this morning too but I'll point out um that the closest to uh Las Vegas Trail is Artie Evans I know there's another program in there and it seemed to be confusion and I think that's just general what I said earlier today is get this on the record that when we're thinking about programming in our community centers and other things we can't forget that rise is a community center it's not City run it's it's privately or through the non-profit but I want to make sure we don't forget that as we're going through all of our programs at the city to make sure that we're recognizing that they're still part of the community center Network I think that you're certainly correct in in that advising us of doing that one of the things I did after our meeting I called City Square just to check on whether or not there was a site in the Boys and Girls Club runs a site at that facility at the rise Community Center but I believe that most of our sites are open sites so if a child that's not enrolled in their program wants to come eat we are supposed to serve them so I'm working with City square with Paige the executive director of Rise Community Center for us to establish the right amount of number of meals that should be delivered and perhaps do some retraining also I appreciate that I mean obviously we want to make sure there's no kid going hungry over there absolutely so thank you for looking into that absolutely [Music] Kelly before you leave just put a bug in your ear since you're going to be looking at Community facilities and this is a timely you know request I think you have a facility that's owned by the city of Fort Worth or at rose marine theater that houses out to seller Rosa they have for example artist Academy right which caters to Children you know young children you know through the Arts it gives them uh you know programming you know through the Fine Arts they don't have any kind of Provisions that building is in need of of some you know upgrades and maintenance one of the things they don't have is panic button and yet it houses children right and then he and it has children that come from different parts of the city you know participate in this program so my request would be that you look at that as well all right then we will look at that and I'll call upon my friend Steve Cook I'll tell you I was looking at that yeah Mike all right thank you my early you know Christmas in July asked I keep trying to think so thank you for all this uh this is this is critical you know to make sure that we have access to food especially our underprivileged as I was going through the list one thing I noticed is that there's nothing in District 10 between our list and uh Fort Worth isd's after school program we've got 95 000 residents and and uh I know Northwest Keller ISD and EMS that serve do programs but they weren't listed here and so my question is if someone needs help and they text food or call the line do they get referred to those programs how do we get people informed yeah outside of this immediate area 2-1-1 has the most current list of sites that offer them the summer meal program offer breakfast lunch and afternoon snack and simply Dowling two one one or texting to the number that's uh in the IR which is uh uh trying to for the benefits thank you text food to 304 304. I have a couple questions um so I see that we have City square is that the only operating entity nonprofit is feeding all of these sites for right now yes it is at one time the city of Fort Worth for about 50 years we ran a program and we had perhaps up to 60 sites that we served but it's a very difficult program to run in that the reimbursement rate is so slim and so the to break even let alone try to make a profit and so City square has been one of the most successful programs the food bank has run the program for a short while um who else Kelly do you those are the only two yeah and and it's just it's very taxing and it helps that they do food as a business right I'm very familiar with the uh cacfp program and the sfsp program as well and I know with the fourth ISD uh for the after school programs because it's so many schools that they do they normally do an RFP or they normally do a different organizations coming in instead of just one providing all these meals to these sites and so did we explore other entities within for work to provide meals as well we have not okay I think that would be something to look for in next summer is because you it's a non-profit but it's also a business and an organization and we don't want to just choose one individual or one group uh within the city of Fort Worth to provide all these meals for all our children the second question is um these meals should be open sites and I think you mentioned that and um Square I mean City Square should be able to tell us that right off because when you apply for the SFP you have to apply for open or closed sites and if they are closed we need to make sure the next summer that they are open because students or kids may not always go and get that meal and what I have learned in participating in this program is that they get it on the days that they need it and so which means that they might not be enrolled because they can't get to that program every single day for that timeline for the days that they can get there we want to make sure that those sites are open so I'm very interested to know each one of these sites if they're open or closed all of the city of Fort Worth community centers are open sites okay through the ca through the summer programs when you mentioned earlier you said I think that they're open but we were I was specifically speaking about the site that's at rise okay like this community center okay what does open mean it's something code no so um when you apply for these programs you either have an open site open site means that anybody any child off the street can come even if they're not in the program a closed site is where you list uh I have 50 kids and these are the 50 kids that's going to eat here every single day and no one else can participate in that program okay thank you all right thanks Chris thank you questions thank you ladies thank you the next informal report is on Market pay adjustments for hard to fill positions in Diana Giordano's available if there any questions I just have one question thank you um with the pay increases that are projected because it was a 2.5 percent across the board for these positions that you listed does that 2.5 put us at Market or competitive rate for all of these positions or was it just a budgetary decision to to tap that at 2.5 yeah this was a budgetary decision and we had a couple of efforts going on this is very specific to hard to fill positions and so we've identified we've been continuously monitoring the attraction and retention efforts of the city and these are positions that have been identified as hard to fill or have high turnover where there's um duplicate efforts to recruit the reason these positions were targeted was for that purpose but the reason the 2.5 percent set aside was added to their base pay was to allow us to retain those individuals to demonstrate our value to those employees that helped the city run every day a lot of these positions are front line positions and it was also as a retention strategy but also as an attraction strategy as well so if we can increase their base pay and be more Market competitive we could attract individuals with that same level of Market competitiveness as well so it was very specific to that to those groups of positions that we identified and and so within those groups with that 2.5 five percent in comparison to have we done the analysis of what like what that market is for other cities and where does that 2.5 put us because if my concern is 2.5 is great and I'm sure that these employees greatly appreciate that um but if that's not enough to make us competitive then then what is and if it's 2.5 it's 2.5 yeah it's 2.5 we had a second component that was coupled with us where we did do Market competitiveness surveys and looked at how we pay um in in comparison to how other cities pay an even private sector and so we have additional information and changes that we're recommending in the FY 24 budget this was just there was an opportunity for us to make an immediate budget impact particularly for these hard to fill positions so we made that more immediate and in fiscal year 24 we have additional efforts that we're proposing thank you for doing that I look forward to seeing that in the budget Chris I have I have a question um I recently been going back and forth to the backs the back Center and I know we have I don't know what that position is called but the position that's in the front is is that the security guard or I'm sorry facilities coordinator okay I'm not sure if this if it's on this list or not um and I know that I think we change the back Center used to be open till 11 o'clock and now let's move to seven I don't know when that change took place but I'm asking that question because um I wonder what that um that we consider that position to as a uh for the pay increase uh because I'm not sure what that payment is but I know some some staffers that do that position not just the backs in the other locations are working two jobs to kind of make ends meet and so I'm not not on this list are we is there something you want to add just touch briefly on on the back in particular so uh the the hours were changed about a couple of years ago and that was really more a relation of our security guard contract so the facilities coordinator not only kind of handles some of the on-site maintenance but he's also the security guard but the the 40 hours that he works there's also supplement hours that we have a security contract out of the city that they come in and do that so that's why those hours are kind of shortened just to make sure that we stayed under our costs on the security on the overall City security contract yeah it was a part of the study that that Dion's been undertaking all right so do we we Outsource that uh that position we outsourced sort of the evening hours so from from five to seven that's an off that's an outsourced security guard that's there okay I have more questions that I asked you offline thank you uh next informal report is on proposed Strategic investment plan and capital projects mapping and Eric flatiger is available certain questions all right next informal reports on requirements and costs to open a small business in Fort Worth and DJ Harrell and Robert Stearns are available if there any questions TJ Robert uh thanks y'all for putting this together that I requested with all the other work that we're doing um and I really based on the question we say we're a business friendly City but are we and so that's the reason we created a small business task force to sort of work through these things um just really quickly I want you to tell everybody all the you know the things in here that we've done already to help small businesses uh as part of this sure I'll uh kind of start and DJ can hop in on the development side so just to give us some some background on this The Institute for justice is a kind of national advocacy group that really kind of goes out to cities and looks a lot of different issues so back in 2022 they conducted a study of about 20 large to mid-sized companies and real large cities and we're looking really at the challenges that small businesses were facing as they were trying to get open trying to get established um and this this time it actually coincided very well with some work councilmember crane was already doing as it related to the small business task force so when we saw the results of that study we asked the ibj to come in Fort Worth and take a look at our processes so Fort was not part of that original study IJ came in and looked at Fort Worth and really gave us an analysis so in the IR they kind of focused on five business types restaurants retail bookstores food trucks barber shops and home-based tutoring so that were kind of the five business categories that they looked at so they did a review of Fort Worth processes and you'll notice in the report there are a few things that they looked at kind of in the other 20 cities that were really not necessarily applicable to Fort Worth and so DJ worked with the code Department to review what they had put together uh did some additional analysis and so in the IR you've got the chart basically the overall cost of what a 1 000 square foot restaurant would look like and you say Fort Worth is pretty much in line with the other cities that were viewed under the study one thing that that we are kind of looking at the charts in the IR challenged are so our costs are are pretty much in line but the number of permits the number of processes that are required for small businesses kind of relating the pack and so part of what we've been working with and What DJ has been working on is one leading the pack not in a good way leading the pack not a good way yeah so so how do we kind of look at the processes we have in place are there permits that can be eliminated are there things that can be streamlined and so that's really the work that DJ's been working on so I'll let him kind of address the appear to development stuff so you know in addition to a lot of the process Improvement things that we're looking into uh you know what we found is also uh you know applicants were saying that they're uninformed about the process and what process they need to enter into to get a certain thing done in the city of Fort Worth so what we've done is we've published a number of guides so we uh We've published a commercial development guide a restaurant development guide we also posted informational videos uh walking folks step by step through the application process online right which are narrated by one of our our staff members to help them you know you know apply for the different permit types that they have we also hosted our first but not the last development 101 Series where we we just took the show on the road uh to the you know uh potential entrepreneurs and developers and you know citizens seeking a permit we want to meet them where they are and just walk them through what is plotting what is zoning what is you know a mechanical permit when do you need it right back flow and all those things so so we're we're really uh you know focusing on education as well as streamlining in order to kind of um you know respond to some of the concerns that were um posed and in response that too there was one of the things that uh they pointed out is a One-Stop shop correct yeah can you talk about that yeah yeah so again one thing that they mentioned in looking at some of the other cities is that Fort Worth didn't really have a Consolidated you know one link to a website where they could go for the small business to go and find information so we had lots of different resources on lots of different websites some of that was on economic development some of that was development services some of it were outside agencies and so we worked with development services in I.T to really try to collapse all of that into kind of a single landing page that walks you from basic questions of how to start a business you know how to put together a business plan to how you can access some funding opportunities to more the detailed stuff about accessing the seller and permits and things like that so it really does provide a much more streamlined process we're still getting feedback from the small business community on you know is it meeting your needs are there more things that we need to add to that side so it's still going to be a little bit of a work in progress but I think it's it's a big step from where we were prior to this study uh as opposed to where we are today that's great and there's actually a dedicated person within development services that focuses on small businesses other others can do it but there's a dedicated person now to help right so in both the economic development and development services we've hired a small business Liaisons you know so on the economic development side um they have a person at a system there but if it's a small business that needs to get a CO or or go through the remodel process to get started up and running we have an individual now that's in our fertilitation program that will walk them through and act as their concierge on the city side yeah something I just want to say I'm proud of y'all's work and proud of what you're doing and if my colleagues have any questions for you but all that work you're doing is really adding to making this more accessible I've often said that people are dreaming around their dining room table and this gives them something to go to to look and and maybe um execute on that small business anybody that's ever opened a small business in the city can tell you um that it is a process to get through that you don't have the resources that large companies do to maneuver through that process so anything we can do to make it easier would be great and I do want to say that I looked at a lot of these actual permits that we have to do they're not all city of Fort Worth Summer State some are County or through the county process but I do want to continue to work on maybe some of the costs here that it costs to open a small business and we'll I'll continue to work with you on that thanks Michael I think mayor pretend Bivens and then Carlos yeah I'll just add something that I think Robert you were probably in Arlington then but but this is not the first time we've done this we opened up a One-Stop shop probably back in 19 99 if my memory could serves me properly because I was at Fox four but I don't know what happened that we lost it but it's good that we can keep good ideas and not have to keep recreating the wheel and the other comment I have involves efficiencies and this is your shop DJ I think it's important that when people come you really want to know that they're ready to come because and you know we've had this conversation before there should be a checklist as to what an applicant has to have in place before they get a chance to sit down for that first PDC if not they're wasting your time and theirs and so I hope the tools that you guys have created you'll have that checklist it's like don't come here if you don't have this plan because they'll come on sympathy and a smile but you've wasted time and so that's what I offer to this discussion Carlos just clarification Robert and DJ and Michael I think we've we may have had a related conversation before you know within the context of the committee but support what you're you know proposing to do here and since it's in-house my question is this how much of Annie do we have input from the chambers specific to to me is this if this is a One-Stop shop kind of approach what are we doing for the small business entrepreneurs entrepreneurs that are Spanish speaking only for instance you know are we also capturing their needs as well with this yeah I think uh from from Economic Development standpoint again obviously we work very closely with the net in the Hispanic chamber on the initiatives that they're doing again she's just got a a grant that she's working on to support small businesses we've supported their pitch competition so there's a number of activities that we've engaged with them and on just advancing and being able to scale small businesses I I think from our standpoint our challenge is some of this material that we put together we just want to make sure that it's advanced in different languages so people can be able to access those uh those sites and understand what's going on there and then try to get that information out and work with the chambers to help us spread the spread the word on it uh same here all right we work really closely within that she in fact she holds a seat on our uh development advisory committee and she also uh was a partner both all three chambers were partners with us on the development 101 training that we provided we also have staff translators you know for uh Spanish only speaking customers as they come in good that's good to hear thank you both thank you thanks the next Senate formal report is on Tarrant County 9-1-1 district and a number of issues in Valerie Washington is available if there any questions all right the final informal report is on zoning notifications and Stephen Murray and Michelle Goot are available if there any questions yes good afternoon everyone how are y'all doing tonight um thanks Steven and I know we went through this previously with a zoning case on Hemphill about whether or not the sign needs to be located and we know that legally speaking there doesn't have to be a physical sign on the location property um can you walk me through uh if I'm if I want a zoning change request how does that sign get up on that piece of property if you could kind of lay that out sure our tpw department are the ones that actually put the signs out so what we do is we send them a notification list monthly on signs that need to be placed so we'll send them a map uh with kind of a x marks the spot type thing that shows them where they need to put them they go out and they and they place them out on the property for that zoning change so that's a that's a monthly thing and then whenever the sign is a is needs to be removed we do the same we send them a list of signs that need to be removed and they are removed okay and so I guess the placement and removal of that sign is incorporated as part of the fee required for requesting a zoning change that's correct okay and so if we're doing it on a monthly basis uh because we have the 10 days and the 15-day outlined in the IR if we're doing that on a monthly basis does that create a situation where a sign might not be put up within say 15 days or do they typically get 30 days that that's my only concern is if we're doing it once a month or we keeping up with it we try to get those out as quickly as possible so for example you may see the courtesy notifications and standard notifications go out later than the signs the signs go up pretty quickly as soon as we kind of have a map the map the the zoning case is mapped that's to ensure that tbw has enough time to put them out because they're going around to the different sites so they're one of the earliest forms of notification that we try to get out okay and so I want to be clear it's not a legal requirement but it is a service that the city provides as part of our zoning um it's in our ordinance but it doesn't preclude a case to move forward like let's say there wasn't a sign that was placed out we could still act on that case we legally could still act on that that's correct um and so is there any mechanism for us to know when when a sign doesn't go out and the reason let me kind of back up and tell you why I'm asking all these questions so I mean I think we all remember that particular zoning case that it didn't go up um and I one let me say I really appreciate that you're adding that capability for people to sign up for zoning notifications so they don't um you know they can be outside of a neighborhood organization or maybe they don't have a very organized neighborhood association but they can still be informed via email about zoning changes so thank you for that I think that's going to go a long way to to inform people about zoning changes but there are some folks if you're like me I don't want another email in my inbox but if I'm driving down the street and I see a zoning change sign it's probably going to pique my interest and then I'm going to go check it out and so I think those signs are really important because they help the broader Community understand that there's a zoning change going there and so to what it I want to make sure that every zoning request to have one of those up so that our neighbors know that and so what can we do to ensure that that happens and if it doesn't happen what can you do to communicate to us because my preference would be I would continue that case or you know work with the neighborhood or the community to make sure that that they have been properly notified sure and that's a good question so um typically once the signs are installed we get a confirmation from tbw that they're installed the second thing is in order to kind of provide us backup for us we've created a online map that shows where all the zoning cases are and that way we're kind of backing ourselves up to say hey we've put signs out but in addition to that if you go online you can go to our storyboard and see where all the zoning cases are for that month and we do that really early in the process so we're kind of getting the signs out and we're getting anybody who wants to go look as far as that's concerned um regarding the confirmation the confirmation is is just that that I described earlier with tpw they send a sign they send us a list back saying that that it's complete and then you know every once in a while somebody may take a sign off of the property or something along those lines so we do our best to and make sure that the signs are put out thank you I think that's really helpful to to know I didn't realize that we had that type of documentation so in the event someone says well there wasn't a sign that also helps us navigate we can say well there was but you know something happened or whatever so as far as the notification we're also working with our tpw partners to have photographs taken as they're placed and then they'll go into our permitting system so we'll have we'll have it documented thanks TJ and before you all walk away and before y'all get too excited I've heard all that before what I have the is there anything that precludes you from putting it in the application process putting the onus on the applicant because one thing Bob Willoughby is right about is that our zoning notification dependency on signs is not what it should be and you know for for me I've never denied a case or delay one because it wasn't there but I can tell you there are signs that are up all around this city it's been up for about four or five years I can prove it and so the dependency on tpw does not give you that 100 percent compliance and so have you all talked about thought about having the applicant be responsible for his or her own signage sure we've looked into that and a couple of things on that number one when we put it on them we would have to store a large number of signs or they would or the applicant would have to go and pick up a sign from a signed company so that just seemed kind of a wonky for lack of a better term in our opinion we can trust tpw for the most part and they're a great part Lachey there a little shy there okay I mean they they've been working with us for a long time on this and they're doing their best but yeah we've looked at all the other options and we've just think tpw is the best option at this point Stephen what I did for you was save you so that when these folk around this table realize that a sign's not up because maybe we had a five-day rain or something or something happened and tpw couldn't own up to their part of that deal at least these folk won't beat up on you but don't don't think it's going to be perfect people yeah and and we understand that like the sign thing can can be a little bit frustrating that's why we've gone to other forms of um other forms I.E putting our zoning notifications up as early as possible on that thing so if anybody wants to go in and find out where zoning case is happening you can just go online right now and look at a map and see all around the city in district 6 and District five district eight where are all those zoning cases at so we don't have to rely solely on signs to let people know in addition to that we'll have that email list so we're trying to cover our bases here with councilwoman Beck's approval I'll probably be asking for this again because Sandy just gave me a wonderful idea so I won't delay today mayor but let's talk about it some more there's got to be a better way to do it thanks Sandy was there any sarcasm in that or no no no genuine okay signature Carlos go ahead okay Carlos and the Jared well if I don't take this opportunity to go ahead and re-emphasize what's been said I would be remiss because even before I served on this Council and was on the zoning commission you'll remember this we have this discussion Dana you'll remember it too because at the time we were considering you know going to tpw hoping that that would provide us more timely you know uh installation of signage because that was an issue then it's still an issue now uh you know I'll I'll give I guess some some leeway to tpw maybe there has been Improvement I don't know I I don't understand we're a big city we got a lot of zoning cases I'm not trying to make excuses but you know if we have Provisions for notification we should Endeavor to make those notifications uh timely and you know we need to abide you know by our own rules uh that's just my feeling on it but I do tend to agree we can't solely rely on one form of notification but at the same time we shouldn't be too LAX about it as well if we say we're going to notify this way we must notify that way and make every reasonable you know effort to do so because I had similar cases where uh in fact when I became a council member there wasn't a sign up there and you know I went out to the site you know I called the city and said where's the sign they said should you know should be there and I said I agree it should be there but it's not here and I'm here and I'm looking and so it came to pass that yes you know it was in the process right that it came to finally be installed but but I know that you know different people rely on different methods to get notified and all that we should continue to improve it so just wanted to you know add that for good measure I know you're aware Stephen and again Dana I know you're aware I've heard this before but I think it Bears repeating yes sir thank you and and like DJ had mentioned I think taking pictures of the signs and will really help ensure that there's no like nothing missing and to that end Jared awesome thank you mayor thank you Stephen I'd like to call Renee up if that's okay um I was particularly um well I particularly appreciated the proposed notification um as far as establishing a list serve for residents to subscribe to District specific zoning alerts um can you describe kind of for the audience what that would do and then also what's the timeline in implementing that so what this does is just add another layer of the ways that we can communicate zoning notifications so of course we do the mandatory paper mailing to those within the required footage we would do the signage what this would allow for is as that um zoning case is posted and becomes public within each of the districts on our website you can actually subscribe if you have an interest in certain areas of news if you're really interested in Parks news or Library news there's now going to be a zoning news section and you can sign up by District so um what when we received the request from you to look at how we could do this and we met with Dana and DJ in the group what what we determined is for now that's going to have to be a manual process but we'll receive the zoning notifications to our staff and then we'll put them and tag them and the email would go out automatically for residents that had signed up for zoning notifications so again a layer of transparency a layer of a different way that we can communicate it and we had talked with DJ about the fact that as we progress we could look to improving the software so that becomes a more automated process and so when folks are interested now there will be a zoning section they can pick their District that they're interested in and then they'll receive the notifications as those become public thank you and then as far as timeline and then I'm going to add one more question on to that it'll also include the link back to the zoning website in those emails if they want to go back to that dashboard as well is that correct to be able to yes and in our email template we can include anything that we want that that notifies the residents of that and we are looking to have that up in a matter of weeks it'll it'll have all the information that the neighborhoods get it'll have the application that's perfect um map and location proposed zoning and then contact information that's great thank y'all for that and David is Staff still working on that Geographic tool I asked for so that when you sign up we on the council will know exactly how far away you are from the applicant address I believe so I'll follow up on that do you all know what I'm talking about yeah okay for the for the knower it's important that when we're up there looking at these cases you may have people who live in Dallas or and they're speaking on your case not saying that they can't but it just pays to know where people live and so I've asked staff to develop some type of tool or mechanism so that it's automatically calculated and we see that and we know how far they are approach him if it's okay I asked DJ to explain it I love that I would love to have that information we'll keep on bugging until they get it done yes ma'am so yes ma'am Jeanette and Kevin and I are we we've met a couple of times to discuss you know ways that we can accomplish that um we're looking at a a few different softwares to see if we can make it automated where we don't have to have a staff you know at the last minute trying to map it during the meeting um but uh in the meantime the plan is to provide that map by you just traditional means having a staff member just provide that information uh we don't have a start date but we plan to come back with an IR to let you know our progress yes ma'am just Renee real quick I just wanted to tag on I really like the proposal for communication of zoning cases going forward and the the the the higher touch element of it uh the one other area the community engagement office and the zoning 101 presentations you're reworking that when can I start offering that to my constituents um there is a catalog of things neighborhood association 101 how to come to speak and so as we are developing those I am the understanding that those that are posted and I'll have to double check and came back get back with you zoning 101 has posted those that are posted are ready to go and the next iteration of what be able to be presented I should say in the next iteration of that would be we currently have a video production manager that will manage our television station and do a variety of um videos quality videos that we could use and we'll be recording those so that maybe if you don't have the opportunity to go to your neighborhood association or you're not affiliated with them you'd have these um kind of library of presentations available to watch at your leisure I appreciate if you could get back with me specifically on those only one and one I'd appreciate it thank you very much if you'd like to uh we have uh currently we have a PowerPoint presentation I can send it over to you and we can place it on our website for neighborhoods in the meantime okay all right thank you mayor that concludes my report okay council do we have any questions on zoning cases coming up on June 13th okay what you got Gina on zc23055 that's going to be problematic I remanded that to the zoning commission I think there has been tree clear cutting already so just get ready for some controversy and they're already operating on things that they're not supposed to be so I'm very concerned five five this one is a different one from the one you're referring to this one's an existing site that has industrial buildings already on it and back in the day uh it was Council initiated rezoning to G intensive commercial so they wanted to allow additional type of uses outside of G intensive commercial in order to fill their buildings that are already kind of industrial in nature that's why they go into PD so this is this one's kind of a different one I know which one you're talking about but this one's a different one and if we want to talk on offline on that one we can especially those porta potties since they don't have any running water yeah that one's going to zoning commission the day after the 14th and then it'll come to you on the 27th okay okay thank you either Carlos Stephen you know about this already I corresponded with you zz23-056 I think you're going to get me some questions of whether or not they've actually communicated the applicants with the registered neighborhood association right and then there's two other concerns that I mentioned you know you know parking being the other so okay and we can talk offline on that one that one's on Azle Avenue so it's a pretty commercial it is it's the property itself the characteristics of it yes okay thank you no others and anything on the MNC log that was problematic for anyone no okay then I will turn it over first to Fernando Costa and we have lots of guests you don't need to come up here at all come on Fernando I also know that we have Lily Biggins and Leonard Firestone on remotely thank you both for taking the time and we have several special guests including Glenn Lewis task for task force Vice chair and Dr John Barnett as well and former councilwoman and Zeta thank you all for joining us and I think if you don't mind Fernando have everybody stand up that's here today that's taking the time to to be with us members of the 1300 gunny Task Force if you would please stand to be recognized [Applause] foreign you'll recall that the city council back in February adopted a resolution to appoint this 16-member task force for the purpose of studying future uses of the property most popularly known as the Community Arts Center in the cultural district and you appointed then council member Leonard Firestone to chair that task force Leonard is online and Madam mayor would like to ask Mr Firestone if he would say a word of greeting Leonard so much Fernando uh it's nice to see everybody you all look well um but I do apologize for not being with you today because uh I'm very proud of the work that the task force has done uh since February when the mayor asked us to address the issues at the building and you know I think you're going to find that what we have through that process what we discovered was a number of things that started principally with addressing the issues of the building which is in real disrepair and in need of a sizable investment to get it back in shape but in considering that what uh this the task force and really all the stakeholders involved locally with the Arts engaged in was not only to fix the building but also try to reimagine uh what it could be and how it could simply be better and I think that's where we ended up uh but we do did want to share um the process which was very important of how we got to that point so again I'm very proud of the work of the task force and thankful for everyone being there today thank you Mr Firestone and uh not only has Mr Farson sir dably as chair of the task force but uh equally important uh we've had a enable Vice chair of former state representative Glenn Lewis who is juggling multiple responsibilities among which is the search for a new president that Texas Wesley University for which he serves as chair of their Board of Trustees Mr Lewis has stepped in ably on multiple occasions to lead the task force and he's here to present the task Force's final report along with Dr John Burnett and former council member Ann Zeta Mr Lewis thank you very much Fernando and first of all I'd like to extend our thanks to our chairman Leonard Firestone I know he would like to be here today because he has led us very ably through this process and I want to express my appreciation to him for that I'm here to sort of open up the the the discussion and then I'm going to pass it off to greater minds than mine and and let them get into the details of it but I'm gonna open and I'm gonna close those of you who are trial lawyers on this Council you understand what that means I'm going to open and close and first of all I'm going to talk about the responsibilities that the task force has we were we were charged with uh reviewing the building condition the 2022 building condition assessment and assess the existing and potential uses of the building excess uh assess potential funding sources for necessary repairs Renovations and ongoing maintenance conduct one or more public hearings and otherwise receive public comments recommend future uses of the building and recommend funding sources for necessary repairs Renovations and ongoing month maintenance and to present our final report to the city council no later than June the 6th 2023 so you can tell we made it just under the wire here today uh you've already seen our task force members that are here if I may I just wanted there are not very many but I want to make sure everybody gets recognized even those that are not here we were chaired by councilman Leonard Firestone um I Glenn Lewis who's the vice chair we had Lily Biggins who's also with us remotely today Lily Biggins we had Johnny Campbell Matt Carter William to wrong Matt Holman Mike Hyatt Wally Jones Estella Martinez Stewart Patrick Newman Pat Riley Don Taft Scott Wilcox and former councilwoman and Zeta we've also assisted by the city manager staff very ably we were assisted by the city manager's office Communications and public engagement Department development services Economic Development finance Fort Worth lab law property management and public events all of those staff people assisted us the next thing you'll see on your screen here is the schedule of all the hearings now I've already been told um that all of you already got these and have already read them and so I'm not going to go down each date and see each date they're on the screen you can see them those were the dates that we did had our respective hearings after and did our functions next we're going to get into our task force findings and as I said they get greater minds than mine to get into this kind of detail and to do that I have my lifelong friend Dr John L Barnett thank you thank you very much I like to thank this group for allowing me as a representative of this task force to come before you and would like to commend our task force for its diligent work in undertaking the tasks that was set before us I am to present the task force findings we first started with the building known as 13 at located at 1300 Gandy and this building has represented today was constructed in three phases the first phase was in 1954. and then there was a second phase in 1966 and then the Final Phase was 1976 and it represents the building as we know it today as we look at the floor space the growth floor space of that building is 83 064 square feet but of that growth space only 63 473 square feet is what we would term usable floor space leaving nineteen thousand five hundred ninety one square feet that could be indicated as unusable in its present configuration the source for this data was Bennett partners and it was presented May 18 2023 we got an estimated repair cost for the Deferred maintenance on that building and there were eight components which were used to evaluate what we categorized in in two uh columns one was required uh repairs and the other was recommend it and we included a total as we go down those eight components the final figure at the bottom was that there was an estimated 26 million uh point one dollars of deferred maintenance now this figure represented two thousand twenty two dollars there was some banter or rough estimations that in today's dollars uh 2023 that could near 30 million dollars that was not officially assessed but just with the inflation not necessarily representing an inflationary rate that was a rough estimation that today we may be looking at 30 million uh roughly 30 million dollars in deferred maintenance to bring that building out of disrepair including both the required and the recommended it maintenance to get an idea of where we started we looked at the management and lease agreement with the Fort Worth Community Arts Center initially that agreement was signed consummated November 1st 2005 and it was in two five-year renewals there was an amendment after the first renewal which was March 9 2011 where there was an agreement that the city would pay a management fee of two hundred thousand dollars per year plus electricity costs up to one thousand dollars per year one hundred thousand dollars per year uh the second renewal took effect in 2015 and then there was a Second Amendment to the agreement on November 1st 2020 which increased the renewal terms from 2 to 4. we are presently in the third renewal of this agreement with the city and it will go through October 31st 2005. we looked at this lease to get an idea or this agreement to get an idea of where we started from in this agreement also we looked and highlighted three sections which we deemed excerpts from the Management lease also to get some insight into where we started from with the agreement the first section we paid attention to was section 2.1 in the condition of the building and it states just briefly roughly on November 1st 2005 the lessee accepted that the lease premises in accepted the lease premises in its present condition and finds them suitable and in good condition for the purposes intended we also looked at section 2-1 reference to the edition of part C which says the Lisi agrees to use its Granite writing and fundraising abilities in conjunction with the Lisa to secure funding to enhance the condition of the building and then the last I'll just read an excerpt of the last section that we considered was our maintenance and section four one uh 4.1 under maintenance says the least C covets and agrees that will add its sole expense perform all upkeep maintenance and repair necessary to keep the least premises and its operating systems in good condition and in compliance with all acceptable codes and requirements we then looked at the activity in this building and we used fiscal year 2019 which was pre-pandemic the Community Arts Center welcomed 89 238 visitors the Scott and Sanders theaters hosted 54 clients for a total of 330 days the galleries within the building serve 917 visual artists and they are listed their their performances within that facility presently as far as current residents there are 14 there are nine non-profit sub-tenants and then there are five Studio artists for a total of 14 current residents of the building we looked at potential funding sources for repairs and Renovations and we outlined six that we felt would be appropriate and maybe inclusive and they are the 2026 General obligation Bond program another option was certificates of obligation a third option was tax notes another was Hotel occupancy tax another was historic preservation tax credits and then lastly private capital and these were potential sources of funds for repairs and renovation we also then looked at potential funding sources for ongoing maintenance and we came up with three options one was that the tenants as a condition of their lease would provide funds that would be dedicated to ongoing maintenance and then the second option was what we call paygo funds in the annual budget that would be provided by the city to maintain the condition and stability of that building the third option was some combination of the above two we had representatives from other public private uh models on our task force committee and we discussed how they manage their relationships we have representatives from the Fort Worth Zoo the Fort Worth botanical garden and Dickies Arena and they provided insights into how their private public relationships functioned and we tried to gather insight as to how that might be applied to thirteen hundred Gandhi in increasing its self-sustaining ability the potential uses of the building were identified one was the Fort Worth Community Arts Center as a potential use kids who care both of these entities are presently occupying the building Fort Worth Community Arts Center and kids who care the conducting Institute the Fort Worth African-American Museum and Cultural Center and then we looked at models from other cities such as Lubbock Texas Tulsa kitchen Idaho Berlin Germany and many others to see how a cultural institution of this nature was maintained and funded and so we took these uh findings to mow them over and there was very vigorous uh discussion uh that brought us to some conclusions based on our findings and so thank you very much so good afternoon um I'm Ann Zeta and it's very interesting to be on this side of things today um I was tasked with bringing you the part of the presentation where the public engagement came into play we had an opinion survey and we're going to talk a little bit about the results of that opinion survey and we had a public meeting where there were some public comments right are you advancing or I can do it okay so the public survey that went out started on March 8th and went through April 17th and had a thousand three hundred and eleven survey responses to that survey um we asked how often people visited the Fort Worth Community Arts Center located at 1300 guindy in the last 12 months and 55 percent of those respondents indicated that they had been there three times or more so those who do visit seem to visit pretty frequently we asked if they visited the community art center during the past 12 months what was the main purpose for their visit and 66 percent visited the galleries while 57 percent visited the theater and you can see a breakdown of other things that occur in the Community Arts Center as it presently stands um performing arts classes and workshops catering events and meetings um and other activities that go on in the center but those were the top reasons for folks visiting the Community Arts Center if you visited the community art center during the past 12 months how would you assess your overall satisfaction with the experience which I think everybody who provides services in the art center right now can be really proud of this number I think 88 satisfaction or very satisfied in their visits to the Community Arts Center is a pretty good response from those who participate in the activities that happen there if you have not visited the Community Arts Center as often as you would like what was the reason that have kept you from doing so it pains me greatly to share with you that 48 were deterred by the lack of free parking this is something that comes up over and over again when we discuss places all over the city of Fort Worth so that's definitely not a surprise I think in responses um 44 also expressed that there was a lack of awareness of what was going on in the center um I will add just as commentary I've seen in the last couple of years that the folks doing work in the Community Arts Center have gone to a great effort to increase knowledge and understanding about the things that are being offered in the Community Arts Center also talked about the location not being convenient for some public transit being inconvenient I'm happy to share with folks how to get there by by public transportation because I think it is pretty easy to do so so that's probably another lack of not knowledge about how to do that living far away covid busy schedules Etc were also items that were brought up in the survey what do you like most about the Community Arts Center this is one of those word clouds where the more often that word was used in the survey respondents the bigger the word is on the screen so you can just get an overall impression of what some people are thinking about when they think about the Community Arts Center and what they like most about it by looking at this word bubble and if we CH what would you change about the Community Arts Center again parking's up at the top um there's also some references to some of the conditions of the buildings the restrooms the building itself accessibility that sort of thing so Ada accessibility um construction that is older and those kind of things that need to be addressed and some other items I don't I can't read all those tiny tiny little things but I'm sure the survey results are available so people can see everything if they wanted to there was a pretty even distribution of the ages of the respondents that answered this survey so I think that's a nice response to have that people from the very young to the older all enjoy the activities that they have in the Community Arts Center presently the race of respondents was predominantly white with 79 percent of those responding indicating that um that they are of white background the gender identity of respondents 69 women and um so evenish but probably more women enjoying the Community Arts Center at the present time foreign place of residence 32 percent live in districts nine seven and three twelve percent live in all the other districts 27 don't know what district they live in also pains me greatly there's a handy dandy little thing on the city's website where you can put your address in and find out who your council member is I encourage everyone to do that so in addition to the survey on March 30th we had a public meeting with more than 200 persons in attendance and 52 speakers who signed up to speak and share with us and these images you can see in the Sanders Theater the task force there to listen to the comments from the the public and the people that were in that room as well as the Overflow room that was available for all of the folks that were coming to share their thoughts with us see these are some of the representative comments from those public meetings um I as was stated before you all received this packet so I don't feel I should stand up here and read these but these were really impactful statements so I encourage you to read the ones that are provided on this screen and in addition I would encourage you I know you had the task force do this work so that we could bring you recommendations but this meeting was recorded and is available and so I would encourage you to go and listen to some of the things that were shared at that meeting because I think most of us can relate to the things that were shared there those of us who have experienced the Community Arts Center over the years so I encourage you to read these as well as go back and look at and here's some additional um representative comments from the public meetings a lot of folks that have visited their folks that have had the opportunity to share their work there have brought their children there for the various things I have Recollections of bringing my own child there when he was probably three years old when it was still the Modern Museum of Art so this these buildings have a long-storied history in Fort Worth and that was heard through many of these comments and you'll recognize many of the names of the folks on these representative comments as well so I will hand it over to Fernando Costa on the evaluation and development strategies that we need thank you Mr despite the difficulty and complexity of these issues associated with 1300 Gandhi the task force was successful in reaching consensus by following a logical process that involved research public engagement and data-driven discussion you've just heard from Dr Burnett about the fact-finding activities of the task force and you've heard from Miss Zeta about the Outreach to the community yet my task is to describe for you the process by which the task force identified and evaluated various possible development strategies and after selecting a preferred option used compromise to accommodate a variety of competing interests and I think the task force can accept a great deal of credit for airing uh various viewpoints But ultimately coming together to present a unified set of findings and recommendations to you today they began by identifying three basic options for what could happen with the property of 1300 Gundy the first is closest to the status quo that's basically to make on the Siri repairs and retain the existing uses of the building we refer to that option as restoration the second option known as renovation also involve making the necessary repairs but renovating the building incrementally remodeling the building if you will to accommodate new and complementary uses as well as possibly retaining some existing uses and finally the most open-ended option is what we called Redevelopment which as uh Mr Firestone described earlier involves reimagining 1300 Gandhi as a world-class cultural Hub and redeveloping the property accordingly we would emphasize that all three options recognize the need for a new management model to be sustainable the current model is not working to everyone's satisfaction and therefore a new management model would be warranted irrespective of which of these three options the city uh would select we then describe the three options with respect to Future uses repair costs renovation costs maintenance costs weather requests for proposals would be appropriate the status of the lease agreement and whether or not to seek historic designation for the building in simplest terms two basic factors tended to distinguish these three development strategies from each other and those are the extent to which we would be preserving the existing building and the extent to which we would be preserving the existing uses of the building and so the restoration option would preserve both the building and the uses the renovation option would preserve the building but not necessarily uh the uses those will be subject to a request for proposals and finally under the Redevelopment option both the existing building and the existing uses would be subject to reconsideration pursuant to a request for proposals process the task force wanted to address the selection of a preferred option in a systematic Manner and began therefore with the healthy discussion about the criteria that they should use to make that selection and they selected a total of seven criteria which were defined in Greater detail and they include everything from health and safety preservation architectural impact cultural impact social economic and Financial those are the seven factors that the task force used to evaluate the different development strategies and they recognize that not all factors are equally important and so they wanted to weight those factors await those criteria with as either somewhat important in assigning one point highly important two points or exceptionally important with three points they had a discussion among the task force they decided to take a survey of each individual Task Force member and the aggregate of their responses indicated that the two most important criteria in the minds of the task force members collectively were the cultural and economic uh impacts of the proposed strategy and so you can see they got scores of 2.13 for cultural and 2.13 for economic those are the average weights that were assigned by the task force members the lowest uh ranking criteria were preservation and Architectural impact they both got less than one and a half uh points on the average and so we rounded those numbers off and five of the seven criteria got two points the other two got one point and those weights were assigned uh to the different uh scores uh given by task force members to the three development strategies we asked the the task force members to rate the three strategies with respect to the seven criteria by assigning points uh zero points for unfavorable or no impact one point for someone favorable two for highly favorable and three for exceptionally favorable impact with respect to that Criterion and here without assigning names to to the scores we see how the different task force members rated uh the different uh development strategies you can see that the Redevelopment option got the highest average score by a significant margin almost 26 points a renovation was second at 24 and then restoration was third at 18 points we also see that uh eight of the 15 task force members who responded a slight majority favored the Redevelopment option as well so both with respect to average score and with respect to the number of number one ratings The Redevelopment option uh came out on top we can describe that Redevelopment option uh as we say uh being to reimagine 1300 again is a world-class cultural Hub and redeveloping the property uh accordingly issuing a request for proposals to redevelop the property going Nationwide even globally to get the best ideas about what should happen with the property of 1300 Gundy entering into a long-term ground lease with a selected developer in 2024 or 2025 uh we anticipate that the Groundlings could run approximately 40 years without legally representing a conveyance of the property uh to the developer but as part of the process of uh compromising uh among various uh competing interests the task force made several significant recommendations first expressing a preference that the selected developer incorporate the history and architecture of the existing building into the Redevelopment proposal the task force recognizes that the building is historically and architecturally significant and worthy of appropriate measures to preserve that history and architecture second the task force expressed a preference that the selected developer include an incubator for emerging artists and arts organizations and include a theater subject to economic feasibility and finally the task force decided that it would prefer the selected developer to include existing tenants of the building to the degree that it would be economically feasible to do so task force then discussed the criteria that the city should use in evaluating different development proposals and these criteria are run parallel to the criteria that the task force itself use to evaluate the three development strategies and so in rating the development proposals that we received later this year should the council decide to proceed with the request for proposals processed we would assign 45 out of 100 points to each proposal based on the development concept that it represents and within those 45 points we would use the seven criteria to to allocate the point so that cultural and economic impact would each get 10 points the other five criteria would get Five Points each for a total of 45 points another 45 percent of the rating for the development proposals will be associated with the quality of the development team the professional qualifications relevant experience and ability to develop deliver the project on time and within budget uh so 15 points each for a total of 45 percent uh public engagement uh is another important factor and the task force wanted to assign 10 points for public engagement uh how well uh does the uh development team propose to engage the public in making decisions about what should happen at 1300 Gandhi so that's a total of 100 points and then uh business Equity uh the extent to which uh the proposal meets the city's 15 goal of minority uh woman and minority business participation would not be assigned a a score as such it would be uh pass fail so if a proposal fails to meet the 15 goal then it would not qualify for further consideration it would be disqualified at that stage the task force is recommending a five-person evaluation committee to be comprised of three department heads uh Robert Stearns from Economic Development Mike Crum from public events and Steve Cook from Property Management along with two Community stakeholders who are members of the task force Leonard Firestone and Lily Biggins we appreciate uh Mr Firestone Miss Biggins uh being willing to to serve in that capacity uh and uh madamera council members we'd like to ask Mr Lewis to step back uh to the lectern and share with us a summary of conclusions recommendations and next steps Mr Lewis thank you Fernando I want to emphasize to the mayor and the council that we did all we gave all of this very serious consideration you know obviously this is a building that has some significance uh to our city but it's an old building the first phase was born in this city the same year I was born in this city and so it it's an old building and it's showing its age as you've seen we're talking a 30 million dollar investment just to do the Deferred maintenance on the building and that's before you start retrofitting it for a new purpose um some of you may be wondering well did y'all consider that the city should just sell the building yes we did the very first day and we all I think unanimously decided on the first day that we were not going to recommend that this building be sold we thought this building was important to the city of Fort Worth and it is worth making the effort uh uh to redevelop it but we recognize that the Redevelopment must make Financial sense also and we did not have developers around the table with us on this committee but we know that there are developers out there who have done these kind of public-private Partnerships and have figured out how to make it work and so that's why we decided we would put out for RFP and allow some of them to come forward with proposals for this building uh it's it's long-standing use is important and we realize when we say public-private partnership we do we do think that there will be some cost to the city but we think it's worth the city to have a world-class Cultural Center to be the kind of city that we love and want to be in Fort Worth we have to be willing to make some investment in those kinds of cultural Endeavors we have to be willing to do that uh but again it needs to make Financial sense though and we think people who have developed these kind of public-private Partnerships and are in the business of doing that and have done that in the past are better equipped to understand or know how that can be done than we are and so that's why we recommended that you go to an RFP process for this and I I think everything else I have on my cheat sheets here I have already mentioned I just mentioned them in my own way I'm not into custom I'm not in the habit of getting up and reading my remarks I look at what I want to cover and then I make my remarks um so that's what we've come up with we hope we commend that to the to the council and the mayor and the city manager and we hope it you give it careful consideration thank you I'm prepared to answer any questions anybody may have thank you Glenn questions from Council Members Carlos Glenn thank you very much for the presentation and um I guess my question really kind of falls under the uh the approach category you know what is what is most suitable um this would I guess fall under renovation renovation or um yeah Redevelopment and when it goes to um the specifics of how many people can you accommodate in the theater and I'm trying to think of the economics right uh with the current theater space per your average visitation I mean is it uh adequate uh do you you know need for more theater space uh because if you're going to uh you know say that as far as waiting of your evaluation criteria social ranks second in Social reads impact upon the size and diversity of the building's visitor base so if you want to you know I read in that that you want to grow you know your visitor base which is you know which makes sense to me but but physically as it is right now you know can the theater accommodate enough people if you have a live performance say can it accommodate enough people there well and and that's why we want to go to the RFP because none of us on that on that task force are experts in that area and you know I like to stay in my Lane I don't I don't like to I don't like to start making comments about things that I have no expertise in and that's why we wanted to go to RFP and that's why most of the people wanted to go reimagining or Redevelopment rather than simply renovation because we didn't want to tie a developer's hands we wanted to make this as broad as possible so that they could come in and have the opportunity to propose something that would serve the best interests of the city okay understood thank you Macy well first I wanted to commend the task force and all the hard work that y'all done I know this was difficult and from Fernando you alluded to it but you had a lot of competing interest in the room and I think you'll have some really difficult conversations um and I really do applaud the RFP where you've ended um I think it addresses the needs but keeps it pretty wide and and open to have a developer come in and give us some really great ideas to not only provide some great space for the artists because we do need to develop the artist community and that's part of the fabric of district 7 in Fort Worth frankly um but also to make sure that we can sustain whatever building is there there needs to be a revenue stream and I think that the developers that respond to this RFP are going to speak to the community they're going to talk to the artist community and understand what their needs are and you spoke just a minute ago I think I'm anxious to see what they're going to come back with so thank you for everything any other questions counsel Michael uh thanks again for all of y'all put together and you talked about the people on the task force but you've got a lot of other supporters in here in the room as well so thanks for y'all sitting through our craziness today and giving the presentation and one of the things I want to say um thank you uh former councilman Leonard Firestone for being the smartest man in the room and not being in this room appreciate your service uh for all that you you did to lead this through I know it was a a lot of community engagement a lot of people passionate about this about what happens with that building and one of the things I don't want to see and I see happen is that Community engagement fall apart I want it still be the community engaged as this process goes through and there's a lot of good folks um that have been out there um uh as far as the we need a space for the for artists and I want to make sure that Arts Fort Worth is still part of part of that conversation and they're doing a lot of good work in there as well as you named out kids who care Deborah's in the room and my girls went through that program and had a lot of great memories myself in there with the theater and everything else so I want to thank them but I think we also have something on the table too good public private Partnerships the zoo Dickies Botanic Gardens working now that we we can figure this out and it makes sense to sort of move forward in that path and figuring out a good public-private partnership um as this Redevelopment happens that's inclusive of everybody and gives an artist a space to collaborate and everything here in Fort Worth so I just want to put that on the table and say thanks for all his hard work thank you any other questions from council members no it's already been stated I think this was why we did the task force option rather than just arriving at a decision when Leonard and I first started having these meetings with Fernando that we knew we needed to do something to move forward on the Community Arts Center this was the right decision because this council could have come to a conclusion by ourselves but I think this way to Michael's point the entire Community was engaged and more to come do we have any questions or comments related to the the timeline here Council that you see before you that's also in your in your Dropbox Chris no problem we're all good with the timeline it looks it looks um aggressive in a good way like we're going to move forward as quickly as possible maybe I'll just alert staff that if we feel for any reason any of these dates aren't going to work let's make sure we well publicize those especially through councilmember Hill's office and also through Leonard and Lily who are going to keep shepherding us through this process yes Gina I didn't know this was my chair so that's why I just got here I was texting Chris asking where are you are you late why aren't you here sorry old lady but uh he's here I was you're listening to the presentation it just kept it was compelling for me to realize just how you know Point by point on point this presentation was and it dawned on me the makeup of the committee is what gives the strength you know if you're coming to City Hall it helps to have a former city council member on your team and when you get the immediate pass council member you know there's no way that they can go wrong I like the idea of the incubator that is so necessary people will stop having to go to Dallas for stuff like that but it's just a great presentation with no questions for me and just so you know Dr John Barnett's dad was my Elementary School principal and my goal before I finished being impressive any words to get that school renamed after his dad so I'm putting that out here right now so but let me just perfect presentation and I sent all of you all pictures of yourselves and so for my my friends who hounded me saying why aren't you paying attention I was getting the right shot for each one so great presentation that's great Gina okay Glenn thank you very much for providing over our meeting today comment mayor since Gina brought it up that elementary school where Dr Barnett's father was the principal I attended at the same time she did so I love it that's wonderful thank you all very much for coming and for those of you in the audience thank you okay Council we have one additional presentation an update on streamlining commercial development Dana bergdoff is going to kick things off um Dana go ahead thank you mayor and council members I appreciate the opportunity to update you on our continuing efforts to streamline commercial development we know how important this is to Mayor and Council uh it's one of the most important items on David Cook's work plan not just this year but in other years as well and I do want to recognize the support that we've had from Marion Council and continuing to do this this group this good work but also support from the management team and all the Departments uh that touch the development process you heard you heard a taste of that earlier with DJ and Robert Stearns talking about their work with the small business task force but there's a lot of good things happening and so we're excited to to bring this to you but of course we know we have a lot more to come so we want to provide a brief overview for you of commercial development we'd like to review with you the 10 recommendations that came to Mayor and Council early this year from the Real Estate Council of greater Fort Worth they actually mirror some of the recommendations we also received from the Chamber of Commerce through interviews they conducted with developers particularly conducted by Jay Choppa our former deputy city manager so we had a lot of insight into our development process but want to review the city actions that we've taken to date and give a heads up with things to come so you all provided your city council strategic priorities and I know I'll be working through your goals specific to these to these priorities as as the new council members come are onboarded we believe that improving the commercial development process and our customer service and that customer experience really touches on all of your strategic priorities Economic Development Community safety of course of course responsible growth which all which all supports overall quality of life as I mentioned this is a high priority with the city manager's work plan especially improving customer service and then continuing to improve our development review process and then touching on the values of accountability exceptional customer experience and continuous Improvement so um uh we've received a lot of Kudos from the development Community about the development 101 Workshop that DJ his team and other departments participated in um a few weeks ago and I stole one of the slides that that they created and and modified it a little bit but I thought it would be helpful for you all to see that development is not necessarily a simple process depending on what you need to do in order to to do the your project uh you need to look at the land uh you need to understand if there's Land Development that's required entitlements that are required uh then you need to understand the infrastructure both on-site infrastructure and what's required for public infrastructure water Wastewater streets and storm water and then you can get to the buildings right so um in some cases if you're dealing with a small business they generally are just in that right hand column right trying to work through remodel permits and certificates of occupancy um but a lot of the the heavy lifting and and where some of the conflicts come up is when you're working on that Land Development getting the entitlements and then working through infrastructure so we're fortunate that we've got experts in all of these areas to work through this but you can understand where complexities arise and and where it's a continuous process to make sure that we're we're providing that that excellent customer service so I did want to talk about the word excella uh the folks touched on that earlier in terms of improvements to our website and linking that to excela so that's the enterprise software that we use for all things development and all the Departments that touch development use that Software System I'm happy to report that we had a really successful upgrade of that system from our servers internal servers to cloud-based in March Valiant effort with development and Our IT solutions department so as far as I understand no no real glitches with that the reason that's important is that a hundred percent of our commercial development customers use excela so it's it's important that that be reliable for our for our customers and also for our staff to do their jobs I understand that with the upgrade it's a little bit faster just waiting you know when you have to click a few times and you're waiting on the system to process that as that's gotten faster that's been good for us and as well as for our customers so the other piece in terms of an overview is just as a reminder there's a lot of permits that we deal with so almost 20 000 in in the year 2022 but drilling down to commercials specifically of that about 2700 are commercial permits 1300 for new construction so again as you're thinking about those things that can become more complex as we're drilling down uh the 487 commercial lots that we planted and then the 67 Community facility agreements that we executed for those projects that needed to provide public infrastructure as you kind of make your way down your list that's where you get into the more complex uh the complex work and and the uh the emphasis that we need to provide so uh briefly this is an overview of the multi-page memo we received there was a lot of great insights from the Real Estate Council early this year number one expanding the positive improvements that we've made in development services to other departments and I'm pleased to report that we've had great buy-in from all the Departments that that touch development whether that's fire code water tpw parks law and so on instilling that culture of problem solving across departments resolving internal conflicts for customers so that they're not getting a comment from from one team and then a comment from another team and they've they've got to resolve that conflict that the the staff need to help step in and resolve that finally creating that One-Stop shop putting all the pertinent staff together on the same floor in our future city hall can uh continuing our regular business process Improvement meetings investing in customer service training hosting an annual semi uh excuse me a semi-annual Forum that the city manager would host with staff and developers uh investing in employee retention and internal promotion and we'll talk more about that and then investing resources in our legal department since they support all of the all of the agreements and many of the all the entitlement processes that we work through so I've circled here going back to that original slide that infrastructure column because that's where we have challenges that's where we're seeing a lot of turnover and and hiring challenges particularly for engineers and so that's not specific just as the development services department that's affecting others as well and and you heard Diana Giordano talk about some of our hard to fill positions and and that affects this team especially but not just this team so uh City approach for 2023 so we've got some specifics that we'll get into but just in the way of an overview uh providing that training and skill development in all of our departments that touch development uh something that's that's really important and so um I'm excited that we have a wonderful program that HR has put together with development services and others and we'll have Diana Giordano come up in just a moment to talk about that in addition we'll have Diana talk about the uh how they're addressing pay Equity both internal and external uh with our Market competitiveness and addressing those hard to fill positions and then lastly I'll come back up and talk about the One-Stop shop both organizationally how are we addressing that uh this year as as well as changes that may come in the future but also what what can we do in terms of the virtual One-Stop shop because again all of our customers are going through that that excellent interface so at this point I'll go ahead and turn it over to Diana thank you so Diana Giordano HR director and I'm going to start off with what we're doing as it relates to the customer service or exceptional customer service experience and so customer experience is one of our core values here at the city of Fort Worth and one of the things that you saw in the summary report that was provided by The Real Estate Council and the other entity was some just basic customer service requirements that weren't being achieved and so the HR team has spent a lot of time developing course content and course curriculum and I really want to describe it as skill development because as I explained to you kind of the amount of time and energy that individuals will be required to go through it really does build upon a skill and around customer service and the exceptional customer experience and it's really creating that wow factor so the same factor that you have when you engage with an entity where you have a great a customer service experience that's what we want our customers to walk away with we want them to our employees to go go above and beyond to help individuals kind of navigate the waters that may be unknown to them we also want them to show a sense of urgency because to the developers in that Community it is an urgent item that they want attention with also just adhering to deadlines being responsive giving customers options where options may exist and then also a consistent a customer experience so that no one customer has a different experience but they all have the same experience when they engage with employees that are part of this process and ultimately it really addresses that problem-solving culture so every employee is acting in that capacity where they're owning that experience with the individual that they may be dealing with so here's what it looks like and when I talk about skill development it's pretty intense it's a four-week program where individuals from all nine City departments to touch the development process will spend 28 hours of Blended learning and part of that is they're going to have instructor-led course content about 24 hours we and then also some self-paced continuous learning things that they can do at their own speed in their own time in addition to that we'll also have peer-to-peer sessions and then we'll also create a checklist and tools for supervisors to follow up to make sure that what we're teaching and what we're communicating is actually being done in the actual work environment so it's a pretty pretty intense skill development program around exceptional customer experience we launched the program on May 17th and as I noted it's a four-week program so we're actually in week four of that program now part of it includes a self-assessment that they did at the onset of the training and during week four they have another assessment so we can gauge are they actually retaining the information that's being taught um we have close to 400 employees that will be participating in the curriculum that's been designed and we've had about 50 employees that participated during the first kind of cohort of the exceptional customer experience training I'm going to speak to some of the retention efforts that have been made as it relates to pay and hard to film positions and so we've had a lot of pay related activities that have been implemented just this fiscal year alone and so in October of 2022 um at the request of this of this Council and this body the minimum entry rate was raised raised to 15 an hour that did affect individuals that touched the development services program and so they that minimum entry was raised and in addition we adjusted the salary structure and so all of our minimum entry rates and our maximum entry rates were adjusted uh four percent and so that made us a little more competitive in attracting individuals to the organization in November of 2022 we implemented the pay for performance so it's based on the prior year prior fiscal years evaluation of employees and their contributions to the organization in this particular year we allowed the department directors to exercise awarding individuals based on on their performance evaluations up to a seven percent increase in pay in December of 2022 we had additional monies that were set aside and part of it was because Fort Worth was dealing with the same issues that every other company is dealing with turnover we have more jobs than people we want to retain the individuals and it was some of the feedback that we received from the Real Estate Council there was high turnover so it created more learning opportunities that were necessary for people to have to be able to provide that service and so for development services specifically we looked at their jobs in comparison to other city jobs and we made recommendations anywhere between a three percent to a seven percent pay adjustment for development services employees for those employees that did not receive a three or up to seven percent increase we had an additional a set aside of monies that resulted in a two percent or three percent pay for adjustment Market competitiveness adjustment based on performance and so every employee just about every employee and development services received some additional compensation as it related to Market competitiveness and then you just heard me speak earlier today June of 2023 so June the third just this past Saturday we had an additional 2.5 percent added for hard to build positions and it affected just under 50 percent of employees in the development services department so what's the effect of that um you'll see it here 89 employees that reside in positions that are either considered high turnover or there's some professional license requirement you heard Dana mentioned Engineers that's a great example some of the combination inspectors or the inspectors and development services receive this 2.5 percent there's a number of positions that employees join the city through some of the entry-level positions and then there's internal movement well they'll promote into other positions which is great but we also want to recognize that it creates that competitive market so we added a 2.5 for those positions as well and then positions with just limited applicant pools so that's where we advertise the role it'll be two weeks in in advertisement and we'll have as as little as 10 applicants or less and so again 45 percent of development services employees occupy hearts of Phil positions those individuals received a 2.3 pay increase effective Saturday what is the effect on turnover so as you heard me say we had a lot of pay changes that were affected this fiscal year and so just this gives you just the turnover for development services and you'll see that it spiked in Cal end of calendar year 2022 where we're sitting at about a 19 turnover rate for both voluntary and involuntary at the end as of May end of May for this calendar year 2023 we're sitting at um eight percent so we're seeing that we're making improvements and we we attribute that to a lot of the pay adjustments that have occurred as well as just other decisions and cultural uh engagements that development services department has been involved with to make sure that we can retain and attract individuals to these jobs those pay decisions were applied Citywide and so here's just kind of the city-wide effect of what we're seeing as it relates to uh turnover and so we're sitting just about 11 percent end of calendar year 2022 and now we're sitting just below four percent for calendar year 2023. so again we're attributing that to some of the pay decisions as well as some of the other Investments that we're making in the workforce and so with that I'll turn it back over to data all right thank you Deanna that was great all right so let me jump into the One-Stop shop element and so I'll start with the organization side um uh you may have seen the t-shirts uh that I work for DJ and David works for DJ and now we all work for DJ um but we did have a serious message that we wanted to send to all the Departments uh that touched the development process uh which is if you're if there's an issue or a challenge that you're not able to resolve elevate it pick it up um you know let's get get development engaged to help resolve that and and give those staff that authority to to make to solve those problems and so just to to lay it out for you um there are basically three assistant directors or assistant director equivalents uh in in development services that would have that role of as needed either they or their managers to step in and help solve problems that that involve other departments so for example with fire that that would get elevated so that the building official within development services would be able to step in work with the fire team and get that issue resolved and so then you'll see beyond the other examples so code whether it's a health permit or something else that the building official would be able to step in water for backflow and grease traps then as we step down to infrastructure tpw say it's if it's a floodplain permit or they oversee the infrastructure inspections for developer and city-led infrastructure with water applications Taps and others their studies and then lastly the the assistant director who works in Project facilitation and planning the parks department where they interact with Park dedication and easements through Parks those are so that's sort of the org chart if you will of how those issues and challenges can get can get bumped up so that they can they can get resolved Timely in addition um we're just as Diana mentioned part of our training and continual messaging is that we want the staff to work across teams to resolve conflicts and not be stuck in whatever team or Silo that they're in but to know that they can they can cross those boundaries and and work to resolve conflicts and that they need to see themselves as development Partners not just as reactors to what's coming through the door but to begin to have some ownership over the projects that are coming in and help to get those projects on the ground and then of course Elevate issues as needed and then we'll be holding folks accountable with pay for Performance Based on their ability to to demonstrate those skills um we are considering adding positions for commercial development in this fiscal year as DJ mentioned he's got his small business facilitator assigned uh but he also reclassified a position to add a senior facilitator because again development can be complex regardless of where it's housed and so having that facilitator that hand holder can be very helpful and so as we go through this budget year we'll we'll look at requests for additional facilitators uh Engineers plan reviewers attorneys and so on for the fiscal year 24 budget so just know that those requests have have come in and we'll we'll be evaluating those in the coming months so then switching to future city hall the One-Stop shop I think you've heard you've heard tanyan with the Athenian group talk about our plans for future city hall so that first full office floor above the lobby is the fifth floor and that would be the customer service floor in today's Uh current city hall where we have today we have development services we have fire uh and we have um uh water and all on that lower level along with Finance but these other departments are on different floors or even in different buildings and so this will be our first time to bring everybody together uh on the same floor uh we'll also have touchdown space you know the law department will be on a different floor of course um but we have lots of meeting space whether it's a in-person or virtual meeting this floor will house the X team meeting room again which can be also be virtual for folks who are getting those Express permits we'll have our commercial walk-in Center so a lot of great Services here and then in addition to development we'll also have other customer facing Services here as well whether you want to pay a water bill in person or get certain utility assistance or or affordable housing assistance some of those services will be here as well so now switching from organizational to online so we mentioned excela so having all of those processes in excela has been our priority and so that's generally generally in place we mentioned the One-Stop Business website I encourage you to take a look at it see if you have any thoughts or questions about that if you just go to our Fort Worth website and just type in business it's the it's the the website that will come up for you DJ mentioned the commercial development guy that's been created we've got the restaurant guide and another small business guide that's on its way uh so a lot of great work there for the online experience uh but what's what's in the works now is integrating excela with other software that we use you may recall that a couple of years ago we rolled out a permit assist tool to help folks who are maybe wanting to get a commercial building permit or find out what their zoning is um you enter in some data you answer a number of questions and it gives you a list of permits and the costs for those so you're ready to go but unfortunately today once you've entered in all that data you then turn around to go apply for the permit you've got to re-enter all that data into excela so now we're trying to integrate those two software platforms so that it's one and done so one touch one set of data entry so we're excited about that similarly integrating our plan review software with excela so that if you're looking at building plans or infrastructure plans those comments and revisions are going back and forth seamlessly uh for the customers to be able to see that transparently we've added we're adding infrastructure studies and then the timelines associated with them into excellus that was one of the the items that we heard from the Real Estate Council that they had had some challenges with again someone related to vacancies but also just not knowing what to expect and so now we'll have standardized timelines Communications workflows uh that'll be that'll be a great Improvement and then lastly we're excited about some of the automated notices for status changes so not just when you apply for something but if you're submitting a revision or if or if there's some comments that have come back whatever that status change is everyone's immediately notified so that should help speed things up so uh for the for really for the rest of this year as Diana mentioned we hope to complete that customer service training for about 400 employees we want to complete those Integrations in the other streamlining that's in process the Real Estate Council is recently wrapping up their uh their spring survey for for developers and have included City staff in that conversation so we want to have a our first semi-annual Forum that I mentioned uh that will schedule with them to hear that new feedback as well as report out what um the the results that we've that we've made but to see what needs to come next and then of course consider those those staff resources during the the budget process so let me stop there and see what questions or or suggestions or concerns that you might have for us hey Dana I was told that it and the neighborhood team are looking at some issues as to why the gis information pulled to do our notifications isn't always happening the way it's intended uh I know that there was an in-house script that was written to address you know that and that it's working hard on it but I'm trying to put together in my mind how this ties into what you know you're presenting here so what is what is the issue with pulling the gis data is it the fact that a seller is not a GIS based software suite that you need a script you know to to make that translation and what does that have to do with the bluebeam software integration sure so I may need DJ to help me with that but when we first purchased excela you're correct it did not integrate with our geographic information system which is through esri software and so and so now that I think excella has with these up with the upgraded excela that we have we've now got some functionality that'll be coming so if you can describe that for me please exactly um so with the upgrade that's what we get support with the gis function so it's always been there but we hadn't purchased that that portion of the software so from now on we'll be able to um to to go into a seller and you could select a location it'll tell you all the permits all the plats all the zoning cases all the history of development you know permitting Types on that particular track of land uh you asked about bluebeam so the the blue beam we're going to utilize that for plan review So currently we use what's called an EDR electronic document review and basically we put in we review plant sets we type up comments in the text right and place it onto the record um what we what we think um we would like to do is put the comments directly on the plan set you know with with uh with uh with all those comments on the directly on the plan set that applicant can see exactly what location needs to change right um it's it's widely used in the engineering community and we think we can either use it for building permits and all of our infrastructure permit types as well yeah well it makes sense that you know when Dana said that most of our customers use that software you know understood I was just wondering what was the uh you know the issues with the functionality right didn't know if all our data especially historical data had any kind of GIS information and that was problem with it translating but what you're saying is now we have saw if you call it a software upgrade a patch a module whatever that that is being purchased or that is purchased already it is it is purchased it's being um uh implemented now all right so what's this script that's being written I mean what is that then what does that do are you talking about zoning notifications yes specific to Notifications okay so I think that may be a different process where they determine the 300 foot and the Half Mile uh notification process so I think that's so that's specific to that particular that's specific to that particular function for yeah for zoning cases okay so I'll look into that yeah kind of an in-house solution to that right yes okay and in the meantime I guess we have to have extra set of eyes to make sure that we do capture the correct notifications the the correct notifications do go out well it'll be a lot easier once we can use this software to to to do this automatically right but for right now we I think we for notifications in the 300 foot buffer we just create a buffer in the gis system and then we pull an attribute table out that gives us a list of name and addresses and then we mail to those names and addresses sometimes those name and addresses are outdated you know it pulls the data the parcel data comes from uh from Tarrant County and so sometimes people buy or sell or rent or lease right and it's you know it doesn't get to the right person and I don't know that this will solve that issue sure but we'll continue to to work on you know yeah but let's dig into that make sure we understand the issue that you're that you're raising yeah and again specific to the notification yes yes as I as I started out my comments I I was wanting connect in my mind if that's only specific to that or is there a larger you know matter going on okay but I think I'm clear you know enough on that okay thanks Gina uh kudos to staff Dana time you said uh plug-in business and you'll see things pop up and believe it or not I was actually smiling while you were talking because I weren't seeing it just come up that's a real good deal uh on the topic of training I I hear a lot about staff training but I encourage you all to think about ways that we on the council get in your way and I know we do you don't have to be polite but that too is an opportunity for training because I think there's a way to back door the com the complaints that we may bring to your staff and the ones that you hear more frequently present an opportunity for Council training sure and so you know keep keep that in mind and I would like to have the opportunity to audit some of the training just to you know Sandy is going to be with me part-time now but I can't depend on her for everything now but just know that we I know staff gets a Council gets in the way and I think this is a perfect time for you all to identify ways that we do so that as we are advocating for our constituents who may often not have a real good grasp on reality you can use those as training opportunities as well certainly well thank you for that and and you know we can share the development 101 link for that for that training and upcoming training since those come along as well that'd be great Jared thank you mayor mayor brought him to your point sometimes we get pulled in it away as well and one of the ways we do is I mean this is Mayor protein's Point earlier is sometimes developers especially non-profit developers when they're going through this process may not know all of the scope of fees that impact their project and then they get to a point where they're stuck because they have to do a certain um you know make a certain Improvement that cost a lot that they didn't know about I don't know how that fits within your plan going forward but I know we spend a lot of time on helping developers get unstuck from that um can you speak to like how to how do we as council members help you in that process especially in the One-Stop shop sure so so you're right so there's um and obviously again DJ will have some great examples of this but we've got um that we rely on pre-development meetings as well as pre-plat meetings for developers and their Engineers to come in and learn about you know what what the red flags might be in some cases um they you know they they may submit plans and show us the public infrastructure and until we see what they're doing on the private infrastructure we don't realize that there's a conflict and sometimes it's just a matter of peeling the onion of going oh now we've you know we realized that you're probably you know we just had this example recently your private storm water is gonna you know conflict with our with our drain line or our sewer line and we're you know we've got to work we got to work through that um so sometimes it's uncovered as we as we work through those processes with them but um we we do think that having um the in some cases making sure that the mindset of our Engineers is one of being facilitators right uh the mindset of whether it's a plans examiner or a planner or an engineer that they all have that that same mindset that they are facilitators themselves but then in addition that we identify those complex projects where uh or small business projects where having a facilitator would really be helpful just that we know we're going to run into issues and so having someone who can bring folks together quickly will be will be helpful so that that's part of what we're what we're working through is identifying what is that what do we facilitate today and what is the gap in what we facilitate and what what could you know what could we do about that that's huge and I know y'all are thinking a whole lot about that I just wanted to share it as well no but thank you and um also I just want to thank you know your team DJ the other departments as well as David I know we've been talking about this as a council individually and collectively um you know consistently and so thank you all for getting us to this point and I look forward to you know the requests for the staff resources especially that facilitation piece I really appreciate it I think it's a good plan and I'm happy to see it thank you yeah thank you I just want to say thank you don't want to believe it it's been a long day already but thank you there's been a lot of time and effort put into this and David I think you thank you for your leadership Dana your leadership DJ across the board everybody because I know this is a big step for us and continue to do this Diana with the customer service piece which we've talked about for sure seeing some great things put on the the board here just want to say thank you sure how Tom Galbraith is in the audience and apologize representing the Real Estate Council and former chair of our development advisory committee so thank you Tom for for being here appreciate it yeah any other questions from Council very encouraging lots of teamwork thank you and Diana I think kudos to you too for stepping in to be of assistance development services and the Real Estate Council so thank you yes thanks Dana okay Council that's lost to our presentations future agenda items Gina this is if I can read my own writing okay I'd like a report from legal and police detailing the nuisance case process you know what does it take to get a nuisance removed from your neighborhood in addition with that overall knowledge I'd also like to have them give us you know choose from 2021 to date how many cases have we filed how many have we won how many are in play and just overall because surely throughout this entire city there are business establishments creating problems and unless citizens really know that it's important that they turn that information in so that we can make a nuisance case then we don't have people on the same page and I know that this won't be immediate but this is let's say a couple of months Leanne you think we can do that after the break sure okay okay thank you [Music] I like to make a request for an IR to um I think this is feasible uh we'll let staff make that determination provide notification for zoning cases when there is a continuance that is a separate continuance to notify interested parties that a zoning case has been continued you a little bit Chris do you want to ask you so I'd like an IR on the process um the guidelines for uh door-to-door salesmen to register in the city and specifically um what we do for repeat offenders or violators of that particular ordinance um I'd also like to see I know it's been a while since we've done we've looked at that um ordinance and so I'd like to also have a review of what other cities are doing because I've gotten some complaints from constituents about specifically security company coming very late in the evening and so they seem very exasperated by it and I think nine o'clock is a little late and so I want to make sure they're safe the people to go on door-to-door are safe and that we have best practices in the city I actually had a question I don't know if it's offline or not but I looked at the 90-day calendar I know we're supposed to be closed on the 20th a week having a special call meeting for the okay yeah that's what I'm saying we I know bank and I won't be here so I don't know if we're gonna make sure if it's gonna be a quorum issue um it's it's only uh the special called on the 20th is for canvassing and swearing in of d11. um so fortunately um we only need two for Quorum for canvassing the more that can be there the back it won't be here we won't be here okay all right okay anybody else I missed if not okay meeting adjourned thank you