Please. Presenter might check one two. Presenter might check one two. you you you you you you you I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the Ms. Moise, we have lost your camera, your video view. Is that something you could take a look at? You are muted. We get the signal from Matt and Michael be Council to order. And the city council will now go into closed session at 12 p.m. on April the 14th 2020 and accordance with the following sections of BTCA government code chapter 551. 0.071 and 551.072 and 551.087. Thank you. you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you I will now call the city council meeting to order and ask Mr. Alex Buskin our city secretary to please call the roll. Thank you Mayor Alex Buskin city secretary I'll now call the roll. Thank you Mayor Alex Buskin, city secretary. I'll now call the roll. Mayor Williams, present, council member Moeys. Present. Council member K. Part. Present. Council member Sutton. Present. Council member Peele. Present. Council member Nunez. Present. Mayor Protem Shepard. Present. Deputy Mayor Protem for our mayors. Present councilmember Nunez President mayor pro tem shepherd Present deputy mayor pro tem for our mires President councilmember odom Wesley Thank you before we begin. Please explain the format we are using. Thank you, Mr. Buskin. Before we begin, please explain the format we are using and layout our housekeeping rules. Thank you, Mayor. Alex Buskin, City Secretary. I will be assisting with some technical aspects of this meeting. I want to mention a few items before we begin. This meeting is being held by video conference so that we can advance the public health goal of minimizing face-to-face meetings, also known as social distancing, to slow the spread of COVID-19. Governor Abbott has suspended some of the requirements of the Texas Open Meetings Act, which is allowing us to meet in this manner. The link to the online location where video of this meeting is available can be found by going to the city's webpage at www.arlingtontx.gov and clicking on agendas. This information, along with the agenda packet containing materials to be discussed during the meeting, is posted on the city's website. This meeting can also be watched on AT&T Uverse Channel 99 Inspectorum Channel 16 and 15.1. It can also be watched by going to the city's website at www.arlingtonTX.gov and clicking on the I Want To button at the top right and selecting Watch City Council meetings. Here are some pieces of basic information we want you to know about this meeting. This meeting is being recorded and the recording will be posted on the city of Arlington's webpage. The city council will not be voting during this meeting. For the members of the council, please ensure that you are in a quiet place where you will not be disturbed during this call. Background noise can be very challenging in a meeting like this. If you can have your own device on mute when you are not talking, that would be helpful. If any member of the council has to leave the meeting for whatever reason, you are requested to identify yourself at the time that you leave the meeting as well as the time that you join back on. When a member of the council wants to make a comment, please hold up your card and wait until you're recognized by the mayor before you begin to speak. Do the members of the council have any questions for me? See no questions. Thank you, Mr. Buskin. We'll now begin the meeting. And for each item that is presented, I will call on the presenter for that item. questions. Thank you, Mr. Buskin. Well, now begin the meeting. And for each item that is presented, I will call on the presenter for that item. Once the presentation is completed, I will ask if each council member has comments by asking you to hold up the red card that was provided to you. I will call on each of you as I see your card. Does anyone have any questions? Please hold up your card if you do have a question. We'll now begin with the agenda. Okay, we'll begin with our COVID-19 update and I'll call upon our fire chief director who's also director of emergency operation center, Mr. Don Krausen, and he will be followed by Mr. J. Warren, the Director of Communication and Legislative Affairs, Chief Krausen. I'm here to provide an update of COVID-19 response. And so let's go right to it. As you see here is a timeline of our series of events regarding the COVID-19 experience. Start off on May 13th, sorry March 13th, when the president, the governor, the county judge, and the Marin Council provided us with direction regarding declarations of disaster regarding the COVID-19 issue. Since then, we've taken another steps through ordinances and the governor's mandates and orders. COVID-19 issue. Since then we've taken another steps through ordinances and governors mandates and orders and all these steps have taken us through a continuum here of experience where we are today. The box on the far right in yellow is a 14-day time frame which is equivalent to the COVID-19 incubation period. If, if you look back 14 days from the day, it tells us where we were at that time, and all the steps we had taken, and will help us determine whether or not we were effective in our efforts here in the city. I will tell you today, in fact, we have been effective. And a lot of that is attributed to the effort of leadership and our community as a whole, who've taken steps to make our community safer and some of the results will provide you today to show that. So, from a preparedness and response perspective, we operate in some fundamental assumptions. These assumptions are, number one, the COVID-19 degree of impact is different throughout the country. So what happens in New York City doesn't necessarily means going to happen here in Arlington. New York City has a population of about 28,000 people per square mile and Arlington were about 4,000. If you were to apply that density of New York to Arlington, our population would be about 2.8 million and you would imagine our issue would be different. However, we don't have that density. So our issue is different. But what is clear from an planning assumption is that COVID-19 is in Arlington, and we know it's here. We can see it. We also know that nursing homes and assisting living facilities are vulnerable, and we have experienced those issues here in Arlington. The first nursing home we experienced with the Masonic Lodge. Here in Arlington and North Arlington, the governor came and assisted us, provided us with testing materials. And we quickly swept down on the Masonic Lodge and we tested every occupant in the facility. Staff members included. We isolated the one primary patient and four other contacts, all turn out to be positive. But from that point on, we were able to isolate those individuals and keep the rest of the occupants safe. We've gone through a 14-day isolation period, and this facility has now been cleared. This has been a very good outcome for the city, even though we had one death, unfortunately, at the location. We were able to isolate the issue very carefully and quickly. Up there in the upper right hand corner, you see our own public health authority, Dr. Cynthia Simmons, as part of the equation, Terrent County Public Health was there. Your Arlington Firefighters and AMR medics were there. All part of a solution that helped the Masonic Lodge get to a place of safety and stabilization. We're very proud of that. However, nursing homes are a factor with COVID-19 because they are a vulnerable population. We've had other locations also hit in Arlington. This location here is in Southwest Arlington. We had to arrive at the facility. Number of positive patients were there. The Arlington Firefighters and AMR Medics and nurses from Tarrant County Public Health came in and did testing. Arlington Firefighters provided an isolation ward by creating a safe area using Viscuean plastic, decond the area, and then we co-located all the positive cases in one wing of the facility while isolating them from the other occupants of the facility. It's been an ongoing effort, and it's been an incredible experience for us because I'm asking firefighters to do things they've never done before, especially in the public health realm, and they've done amazing creative things. Not only have they decon facility, the decon the individuals who are doing the testing, they make sure the testing's being done appropriately, and they who are doing the testing. They make sure the testing's being done appropriately and they've done a fantastic job. But as I said, nursing homes are vulnerable locations and let me drop back here real quick. We've had another one in far south, Orlington. Same things occurring. So these populations are clearly vulnerable to viruses and that's why our response system is now shifted towards dealing with these clusters of materialized regarding COVID-19. Those clusters are typically in nursing homes and if you look at all the cases in Arlington, positive cases, almost 25 to 35% of those are associated with nursing homes. However, again, here in another facility, we had to move in, create an isolation wing, decond the facility, test all the occupants, and then isolate the positive cases from the rest of them. These situations are in control. They are stable, and we have a system in place that is taking care of all these facilities. In fact, Arlington firefighters have visited all the nursing homes and assisted living facilities in Arlington. They've helped reeducate staff on proper infectious disease control methods. We've provided them with some resources from a PPE perspective. And we feel that the nursing homes and assisted living facilities in Arlington right now are in stable environment. Very thankful to the leadership of Tarrant County Public Health, our own public health authority, our firefighters, our AMR medics. They've been amazing, and we've developed a strike team response. So when we see in firefighter terms, when we see a spot fire, we jump on it, we put it out, we isolate it, contain it, and we control it. And we feel like this method is working in Arlington. Another picture of the facility down south. So you can see firefighters in, you know, level B suits we call them, hazmat suits. Actually working in the facility, creating an isolation wing, and then you see firefighters and AMR medics, working with the staff, testing staffs that are driving through to make sure they've been cleared and whether or not they're positive or not. All this have been done very orderly and we've tested over 400 individuals through these nursing homes that we've tested over 400 individuals through these nursing homes that we've been and feel very good that we have the situations currently under control. Now from a planning assumption perspective again, we know this, we know that social distancing does work. It has been effective. Citizens of Arlington have proven that. They've endured these new standards and they've made our situation less problematic for us and it's a real tribute to the collaboration of our community and helping us take care of each other. We also knew that PPE would be in high demand. So 10 years ago, H1N1 taught us how to be prepared for a pandemic. We are prepared. We have substantial resources that will carry us through a protracted situation, not only from an N95 mass perspective, but for gloves and other materials were prepared for these types of emergencies. We also understand this that virus models are widely variable and not always perfect in their projections. So as you see here, this is a model that is widely used up in Washington, D.C., the president will even refer to this model. This model is from the University of Washington. And this one in particular projects an experience for Texas. This one was done on April 10th, and you can see in the lower right-hand corner that Texas has more than enough beds for projected demand in Texas. That there are enough ventilators, there are enough ICU beds, that we are in very good position. However, three days later, I went to the same site, and you can see that those numbers change. They're saying now that our demand will even be less, that we have more than enough beds, more than enough ventilators, more than ICU beds. We are in very good position from a Texas perspective. However, these are models and models are a little bit wide-ranging. So even in this case, when we project there's a need of 2,800 beds at a peak date here in Texas in a couple of weeks, that the model does not count for everything. In fact, while the model is about 2,800 beds, we needed the ranges from 600 to 800, 800 beds. And the reality is, it's a best-guessed estimate. From a death perspective, the model tells us that our peak on April 30th, we'll see 71 deaths on that day, potentially. If you look at the model, the low end of the range could be 20. So there's nothing perfectly accurate about that is an estimation. And we're paying attention to this model and several other models across the country as we try to manage the Arlington experience. From a total COVID death experience, we're currently projecting about 2700 deaths sometime in August. Now, that number could be much lower. It could be on track. It could be a little bit higher. None of these things are absolute is from a perspective. But that's what modeling is. It gives you a direction. it gives you an estimation. We work with those models in our estimations, but we also understand they're not always perfectly accurate. Sorry, I'm advancing the slide. Okay. So we're back to the assumption portion of our program here. the assumption portion of our program here. We know this from a preparedness perspective, the new standards and social distancing we're going to be needed, and they will be after we come out of this still. We know that modified methods of customer service will have to be created, and they are, and the entrepreneurial spirit of the business community has been substantial and business is still occurring, but things could change as we move forward. And we know that all the decisions we make, that the economy is a major factor in our decision making, that there is an end game here and there's a reality for the community and the economy coming back is key to all of us. So details matter and the main source of this effort has been focused on one thing and that's been protecting the hospital system. So the whole effort is designed to protect the hospitals for an uncontrollable surge of patients that could overwhelm the system. That has not occurred here in Ar been watching the hospital bed counts. And the Arlington Hospital's Arlington Memorial THR and MCA Arlington have been outstanding community partners. We went in very early. We asked them for definitive information on their actual maximum surge capacity, asked them for information on their COVID patients, on their ventilators. They provided all those things to us in a very transparent and cooperative manner. So we've always known since we started monitoring how many COVID patients have been in Orlington, how many ventilators have been used. We know what the PPE levels are of the hospitals, and we work within those numbers to help our community partners provide the services they do in a very safe and careful manner. From a response perspective, we've had to be adaptive. Your fire department, your first responders have had been creative. In genius and many respects, they've been heroic. They've been coming to work every day. They know what's calling it sick. They're showing up. They're rising to the occasion. It's a true, for me, as a chief of the organization, it's been a truly rewarding experience to see our team, a public servants, step up and do this for our community. They've been amazing. I know our community appreciates them and the work they've been doing is incredible. So have our affiliated partners at AMR, the hospitals, Terry County Public Health. Our county judge has been amazing and helping Arlington. I can't believe how much he has stepped forward and helped Arlington out, working with the mayor, city manager of council. It's been a wonderful professional experience to see how governments can work together and can make things happen in a way that serves the interest of all the citizens that we work for. We've had to adopt our procedures. One day it'd be a certain way, the next day it'd be another way, because the dynamic of this COVID-19 experience has been such that we've had to adjust our procedures and our methodologies and our delivery systems all along the way and our people have adapted amazingly. Arlington's always had an ability particularly in the fire department and it's been a very a very good outcome for us. We focus from the very beginning about protecting our out-risk populations. That's why we've visited all the nursing homes and assisted living facilities and are maintaining a constant contact with them as we're working through them. We're also watching them closely. So as the demand materializes and we can see reoccurrence of the EMS system being activated by these facilities. We'll show up and investigate what's going on. If it's necessary to determine if there's a positive case there, we'll find a positive case. We'll immediately swoop in and isolate the issue and try to keep the issue and check and stable. We're doing that. And from a council perspective, this council has passed the number of ordinances and policies that have enabled your fire department, your public safety team in general, your city government, to respond to this thing with great ease, skill, latitude, and it's been a wonderful outcome for our community. I'll show that to you in the numbers in a minute. But I want to remind you again, it's the community effort to participate in the stay home work safe effort that has really paid the dividend for us too. So you hear a lot in the media about positive tests. And for me, this has been somewhat frustrating because positive tests don't tell you too much other than COVID-19 is here. So a positive test tells you if an individual is positive tests don't tell you too much, other than COVID-19 is here. So a positive test tells you if an individual is positive, it's tested positive for COVID-19. But there is not a large enough sampling to define the actual level of spread in our community. Some testing estimates that Dallas has done about 10, Dallas County has done about 10,000 tests. Taren County has done about 6,700 tests. Still not a large enough sampling for between the two counties, about 5 million people, to really definitively tell you about the spread of COVID in North Texas. One thing we do assume and know that it is here, and it is prevalent, and it is affecting nursing homes in particular. Another thing is that most tests are given that are available at this time, are done either at the hospital or doctor offices. The drive-through test facilities are really geared towards those over to the age of 65 who are symptomatic or for first responders or health care workers. These are the groups that we are testing. Now, there are other positive cases that we know of that I'm not been tested definitively, but they are mild cases who are not positive, who don't wind up at their doctor's office or the hospital. But clearly, those cases do exist and we know that COVID-19 is throughout our community. These numbers also do not include negative test results. The numbers also are only the testing, the reality about testing is testing is only valid for that day. So that day if you're tested negative, that doesn't mean you won't be negative two weeks from now. So it's a snapshot in time, a snapshot in time of testing that tells you what your current condition is at the moment the test was done. And then lastly, these positive test numbers do not tell you or predict for you what your hospitalization is going to be, which our system, all the things we're trying to do is trying to protect the hospital system from being overrun. In Arlington, as of yesterday, we had 145 positive tests. Now I can tell you of that 145, a good percentage of them are from nursing homes. Otherwise I can't tell you what this means other than COVID-19 is here in our community. So we have to ask the right questions. Asking the right questions means this in inner respects and these are just generalized questions. What if everyone was tested in our community, not just not the 65 and older and the first responders and the symptomatic? Should we be testing for antibodies? Should we do more positive testing throughout the community, through dry-throughs and other methods? These are all next step considerations that will be guided by our public health authorities and the public health community telling us where to go and we'll adjust accordingly whatever those directions are but as a response even agency we need to be thinking about these things what is the right level of community response are the current policies that we're exercising now in Arlington are the appropriate for the current COVID-19 experience in Arlington. Should our policies be based on positive tests or hospitalizations or what else? What should they be based on? Should the number of COVID, what is the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations in Arlington? Is it growing? Is it stable? Is it shrinking? How do we get the community back to a state of normalcy? These are all things we should be asking ourselves right now. And we are from a planning perspective. So what are the true indicators of COVID-19 in Arlington? The number of patients that are in the hospital is a true indicator. The number of patients who are ventilators are a true indicator, and the number of actual COVID deaths are a true indicator. These are factual points of data that we could operationalize from and plan from. So I can tell you today in Arlington, there are 41 patients that are either COVID positive or COVID suspected in hospital rooms in Arlington. Six of them are on ventilators. We've had three deaths in Arlington since the COVID experience began. These are real numbers for us. This, this here is the Tarrant County website and the statistics that they provide on a daily basis. This is from a day or two ago. This is right yesterday. And you see in the upper right hand corner of all the hospitals in Tarant County, you can see there's a large number of beds available right now today. And that there's only 113 positive COVID patients in Tarant County. So you can see that the hospital system in Tarant County has more than enough capacity to deal with the current COVID issue as we do here in Arlington. Firefighters in the field are seeing a little bit different. This is a timeline of what the field responders are seeing and we've gotten a little busier. And as the media talks about pending peak times, our numbers go up. There's a lot of worried well in our numbers, not all the individuals we see out in the public, are actual COVID positive patients, but they are people who are concerned. And they are ill, but they are not COVID patients. Some of them are, okay. But the reality is our experience and our demand has grown as this issue is progressed and the community is a little worried. And so we show up on a lot of calls where COVID is not actually the problem, but we do with the problem. From an actual perspective of Arlington hospitals, this is one of the better slides for the council to consume. You can see this is our actual trend line regarding COVID patients and the yellow line indicates the patient, the blue line indicates ventilators being used by these patients. You can see that our numbers are relatively low and they have stayed relatively stable. And in fact, we are trending down. And if we did have a peak, and not saying we're, we've had a peak or we're going to have a peak, but the current peak on this chart is April 4th. We have trended down since April 4th. So these are the numbers that we rely on. We rely on the actual hospitalizations. The actual number of ventilators are being used. And we have more than sufficient capacity to deal with our current experience. Hospitals are not full. They are, in fact, their senses are down, and the community as a whole has impacted the hospital system too. We're staying home, we're not out there active, and accidents and other things that occur on a daily basis are not occurring at the level they were. In fact, the 911 system as a whole is down about about 10 to 15 percent from a call volume perspective and our entire experience to the COVID experience for us has been relatively stable and manageable. And in fact, the way we measure, we've been measuring for 19 days now, Dallas. City of Dallas has been using our same measurement tool for about two weeks. And last week, the entire region is shifted to the same measurement tools because these are the numbers that matter for the community. The hospital system is not being overwhelmed. It is clear to us here in Arlington. Again, another way to look at it is when the COVID experience started, we had a limited ability to test patients for COVID. So you see in the chart the orange represents a positive COVID test patient. The blue represents a suspected as you go through this timeline here, you can see that the orange grows because our testing ability for COVID patients has gone up dramatically, and our suspected patients numbers are actually going down. So today, we're at 41, 27 of those patients are positive COVID patients, 14 of them are suspected. The test results are not back yet, or there's some other issue as to why they're not clearly identified. We count them both. We assume they are both COVIDs from a hospital perspective. Now from a hospital monitoring perspective, I can tell you on a daily basis what the census count are in the hospitals. Are they near their capacity? Are they near their maximum surge capacity? And the answers to both those questions are no. We can tell you how many patients are in ICU beds. We can tell you how busy the emergency departments are. You can see these numbers are all stable. There are no peaks or spikes. The bottom right hand corner is the ventilator chart. We have significant capacity of ventilators in the city of Arlington. Very few of them are actually being used at this time. In fact, the anesthesiology machines are not counted in these numbers, which even increases our count even more. From an Arlington perspective, we have two primary hospitals, Arlington Memorial and MCA. We also have three other facilities or overflow facilities in our planning model and we are well prepared for a maximum surge. That surge is not materialized in our city and in fact, we don't believe it is materialized in Terrent County or North Texas. We do recognize that there are a number of COVID patients in the hospital but they're not turning out in the way that they are in New York. Our issue is different here. So back to a statistical perspective, Tarrant County, the deaths are tragic, and we are frustrated by them, and we wanna keep those numbers low. Here in Arlington, our current number is three. For the county, it's 25. Our numbers, we're not seeing a doubling or a tripling of deaths. They are sporadic. We've had three and roughly 30 days. And do we expect some more deaths? Certainly do. The reality is we see deaths every day, and the COVID-19 experience is something we're paying very close attention to, so we're acutely aware of the deaths here in Arlington. Two of the deaths are from nursing homes, nursing home facilities. One is not. Again, who's affected by COVID-19? the number two position is those 45 and up. You see that there's relatively no statistics for those in school. The numbers up there in the upper left-hand corner. And then we see a disproportionate impact on the African American population and Hispanic population. Those are factors of concern that we're watching as we're watching as we're seeing the number two position is those 45 and up. You see that there's relatively up there in the upper left-hand corner. And then we see a disproportionate impact on the African-American population and the Hispanic population. Those are factors of concern that we're watching as we're planning for next step efforts here in Arlington. If you look the left-hand corner, you can see that males are impacted two to one, the females from a death perspective. All these are issues of interest as we work on our preparedness for the next step efforts regarding COVID-19. Now, there's a lot of study out there. John Hopkins, Harvard, this one's from Duke University, telling us in the public responder community how to contain COVID-19. Many of these steps are recommending, they're recommending four basic steps, a couple of these we already do. One is to develop capacity for widespread diagnostic testing and sharing to enable rapid case interventions. So we do rapid case interventions as soon as we're aware of it. Systems could be better, can notify a sooner, and we could react to it sooner. So we certainly support that. Duke's also recommending that local syndromic surveillance be rolled into a national syndromic surveillance system. Quite frankly, we have a long way to go with that. And I think COVID-19 is teaching the whole country that we need to be more cutely aware of viruses, and we need to be doing a better job in that area. Serelogical testing is the antibody testing. I think that's good for the understanding of what COVID-19 is and how the medical community will deal with the issue. But from a response perspective, the last bullet matters to me the most is that we should have a rep of response, a capacity for isolating and quarantining these individuals, once we know about them. If we can sweep down, surround them, isolate it, control it, keep them from arrest the population. We can go on about our daily business in a more normal like manner, and that's what we're really trying to get to. So getting back to normalcy is a key thing, but I think the key thing we have to do before we can do that is aggressively protect our vulnerable populations. I think we are in position to do that now. We have a response team that is set ready to go, has been activated three or four times already. But we certainly would support the public health community and more broad spread testing and we will work with our county judge and the county public health to do that. We'll continue to track our own COVID-19 patients in Arlington and the deaths. And we'll use our strike team to isolate clusters as they materialize in Arlington. I think we also will have to increase our direct oversight of the nursing home facilities and assisted living facilities and affiliated facilities that are typically regulated by the state. I think the city will have to do a little more in this area because we're closest to the issue and these locations represent vulnerability and risk regarding COVID-19. the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of efforts have resulted in positive outcomes. And again, it's not just the city's efforts, it's the citizen's efforts that made the outcome positive. But now it's time to move forward and we should be considering a second next step planning issues like, should we consider rescinding some of the current standards on social distancing as our situation improves. If we do that, that's good, but we should also be ready to reinforce those standards if things get worse. And I think we have a system for that. I know that as we move forward, the businesses and the community and governmental community should understand that there is a new way to do things and they should be adapted through that. In fact, if we start to roll out new procedures that there will be incremental and systematic and we'll need partnership from the business community to do these things so we can all be safe together. And then we need to understand that we're going to do business a little bit differently, certainly for the short term, until there's a vaccine, until we're back in position, our regular reporting of our COVID experience will be a routine business thing for us to do. So the community can make appropriate decisions based on our actual experience, not on, you know, numbers that we can, can or cannot validate. We'll provide you with the data that helps you make the best decisions you can. But at the end of the day I can tell you right now that our current situation is very stable. We will see more nursing homes and other issues materialized but we have a procedure in place for it. But the hospitals have not been impacted to the degree that was expected or to the degree that we've planned for. We have done substantial crisis planning and preparedness efforts. Unfortunately, none of those things have been had to be implemented because of the good things that have happened in our community. So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Jay Warren to talk about communication and education strategies regarding COVID-19, and then we'll move into questions. Okay. Okay. Well, wait for Jay. Mayor, we can certainly. Okay. Chief, I'd love for you to answer one question here before Jay comes up. And that is, and you mentioned in your report, but I think it's worth emphasizing, is social distancing of our citizens working? It has. Yes, sir. We believe it clearly has. And has. Yes, sir. We believe it clearly has. And our numbers prove that out. Mr. Peale brought that up here earlier and I thought it was worth mentioning there because you know our citizens are working hard, staying at home and trying to take care of themselves and we get that question all the time. The council members and is it working? And it is. And you just showed us evidence of that. There are numbers were supposed to be much larger and they're not. So thank you for the direction and leadership you're providing. So with that we'll call upon Mr. J. Warren, director of communications and legislative affairs. Thank you Mayor J. Warren as introduced, the director of legislative and communications and legislative affairs for the you, Mayor Jay Warren. As introduced, the director of Legislative, Communication and Legislative Affairs for the city of Arlington. I want to talk to you a little bit about how we've been communicating the coronavirus response here in Arlington. Much of the information backing up, what you've just heard from Chief Prousen. And we've been very aggressive in how we've communicated this. About a month ago or a little more than a month ago, we set up a website on the city's webpage that was dedicated to this. And our real goal here was not just to throw up information, but to put it in a user-friendly way that people really could go to it, access it, understand what's happening locally. You could get the news from a national level if you wanted from the networks or some of the larger newspaper is nationwide, but what we found was people really wanted to know what was happening here in our community. And that's what this website enabled us to do is that kind of localized information on the virus. You can see there, our overall website views from just the entire website are up almost double what they were about six months ago. So the thirst for information, that local information certainly did exist within our community. The as I mentioned we really wanted to be hyper local so you can see all the different types of content that we were putting on the website. Certain latest news was there, but also assistance resources. List of what was still open and what we had had to close as a result of the social distancing rules that were put in place through the stay safe work, where from home kind of orders. Water safety was a question that came up when we wanted to tell people that our water supply was still safe. So all those types of different data points were listed within our website and as you can see the news value of that what was happening on our actual news page was also increasing almost 296 percent again that thirst for information really did exist out there. Now, wasn't just the latest news that we were putting out there, I think that was what you saw the first week or two as we were going through almost hour by hour changes as this was a developing or evolving situation. But then we started to move more toward other types of news related to the virus. And what we really wanted to do is things that could be of help to our residents and to our users. A small business support certainly being one of those. Some of this is federal assistance that was coming down through the CARES Act, which we'll talk about a little later during the meeting, but those are complicated guidelines. Perhaps things that some of our small businesses have never been through. So providing them with resources and guides for how to access some of those small business loans as an example is the type of thing that we were putting on our small business support page. In addition to also support for our local restaurants and reminding folks continually that our local businesses that you could order online from and our local restaurants where you could do take out a delivery We're also still available in telling folks which ones were available in what their hours were. We as an example of this at our support of that partnering with Mayor Williams. We did a program called Meals for Emission. The goal was to have everyone over the course of a weekend put a picture up of the food that they ordered or picked up. In showcase the support that they had for our local restaurants. Now in return Mayor Williams volunteered to donate $100 up to $2,500 total to Mission Arlington. But the cool thing was that we got a lot more pictures than that, which is one thing to show that the community was certainly very much involved in it. But additionally, other people started jumping in on that, and we got upwards of $750, $7,500 rather raised for this drive. And all of that money went directly to Mission Arlington to help those that might not be able to go and get delivery or take out, because we do have certainly that need also existing in our community as we go through this pandemic. Just an example of some of the kindness and compassion that you saw out there with people participating in that. But we want to make sure that more of those types of stories were also shared with our users and with our residents. So a lot of that content is also on our website, whether it's the nonprofit assistance that exists out there. The community love, by the way, that bottom one is one of my favorite stories that we just posted last week. You did a chance to see it. It's a local pastor whose wife just completed the treatment she had for breast cancer. And our church wanted to celebrate that, but not in the traditional way that you be able to do that, obviously, with the social distancing. So they hosted a dry by parade. And everyone was able to drive by and show their support for this person, which was really cool. And we were able to use some of their video that they took from their own cell phones to put together a story. They did very well. A lot of people interacted and engaged with that. And they did an example of how we've adapted to these new social distancing rules, but still can show love and compassion along the way. And then finally, we want to make sure that the news is helpful to folks. And you're maybe working from home, you're educating your kids from home as the schools are closed during this time. What do you do with them the entire time if you're cooped up in the house now for, let's say, four weeks or so? So our library department and our parks and recreation departments were all putting out programming that would be helpful to our do. We have to do that. We have to do that. We have to do that. We have to do that. We have to do that. We have to do that. We have to do that. We have to do that. We have to do that. We have to do that. We have to do that. We have to do that. than 130 stories just to kind of show you some of the thumbnail images of it that we've posted in about a month, all 130 of those related solely to how our community is responding to the Kauranoires pandemic here. Of course, all that also gets shared on social media. So, we've had upwards of 400, the bottom number is probably most important of everything you see here, post that we have put up on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, next door or LinkedIn all related is to make sure that we're informing our residents. The Fire Chief will, it tells us all the time the most important message we can get out there. In addition, everything else you've seen there is just to keep reinforcing in different ways. And in all of our communication, how do you stop the spread of this through social distancing, through washing your hands, all those types of pieces of advice that we've been giving in lots of different ways and you'll see that many of those 400 different posts. But again, as I would emphasize to you the thirst is certainly there. We've had 3.3 million impressions over a month's time on the content that we posted. A 94% increase in new followers on Facebook from the previous week, that's just week to week numbers there. So it really is making a big difference, I think, in trying to communicate and help the message that you just heard from our fire chief. Video content's always important to us, about 50, actually, a total of exactly 50 as of today. Videos that we have posted since March 9th reaching more than 159,000 and views there. You can see the hours watched at more than 4,000. A lot of the video content that we have posted. The most recent video we just posted yesterday is a PSA that we did with the Dallas Cowboys. They had one of their players that was able to put forth the message that's him sitting at his house. And showcasing the need for that social distancing. The Dallas Cowboys actually just shared that with on their pages from our Facebook and Twitter pages. And already in less than 24 hours is reached more than 119,000 with impressions. There's been 27,000 views of that PSA. The Cowboys have a total of 12.4 million followers both on Twitter and Facebook. So the potential for that to reach even more folks certainly exists as we go through this. Going out this week will be a mailer to every water customer in the city of Arlington. It's a full-size mailer that will again reinforce all of the messaging that you just heard about the importance of the social distancing, the important importance rather of cleaning and disinfecting of washing your hands, of covering either with the mask, or covering your cough or sneeze. All of those things to help get reinforced to all of our residents. How do we reach everybody? That's our constant challenge. Will this going to every household, certainly going to help us as we continue with that effort? But there's more. We've done PSA billboards throughout town. We partnered with the Champions Park and with the Rangers and the Cowboys and with six flags to make sure that their video message boards that might not being normally used at this time or being utilized with this important messaging about social distancing and how to stop the spread of the virus. We've been including all this information in our eNewsLiter that goes out to our subscribers for that, as well as in our dream team, our digital ambassadors out there who are sharing some of that content for us. We've gotten strong media relations as an example. The meals for a mission received widespread coverage here locally. So we're trying to get that message out through our media partners. I should list on this as well. We've already done one telethtown hall meeting related to this. We will be doing another one on Thursday with Mayor and the Fire Chief and with Dr. Simmons to talk and answer residents questions that they might have about this process that we're going through. And certainly internal communications are important as well. All of our employees are really ambassadors for the community, making sure that they are informed, not only about how the organization is managing this, but how we are managing it for the community, so that they can answer questions when they're out and about or talking with their friends or neighbors is important as well. Now, that's just how we've been handling that from a communication standpoint, and the kind of the totality of what we've been doing. But this is an organization-wide effort as we've transitioned into uncharted territories. Certainly things we've never dealt with in the past. So we want to share with you a little bit about how the organization has adapted. So as you'll see here is these next few slides. Some examples of that municipal courts has gone to a virtual Court program for some of their court cases citations in particular where they can hold those cases through Zoom using Technology similar to this and to make sure that we're still Continuing the court process to the extent that we can. The action center as you know is an important function that we Have in the city making sure that we're answering resident questions in there. Certainly, our plenty. As again, we're in these uncharted waters and folks have questions and some uncertainty. And making sure that it's fully staffed is important. Shifting as many of our agents to be able to answer calls from home was one component of that, but still staffing was, it can be at times, a little bit of an issue as folks deal with child care and other issues and we were able to use some part time staff at the parks department that might not otherwise have had anything to do as a result of some of the parks facilities being closed during the stay home work smart and safe campaign to come over and help answer questions so we could make sure our abandonment rate stayed low that we were getting people's calls answered answered as quickly as we could and their questions answered. Speaking of Parks and Rec they again had that staff that shifted to the action center in some cases but they also got out there and helped deliver meals to folks who were in need during this time who might not be able to get out as they normally would or and have their food delivered instead and parks are really helping with that. The housing department has also worked to shift to technology. I think you'll see a constant theme in some of these adaptations of the law of the departments have gone through in that they're putting technology to work whatever your council priorities. In this case, using FaceTime to inspect occupied units is one of the ways they have done that. They have certainly continued to pay their landlords on time, and they've shifted some of their processes to the extent that they can to online, again, using that technology. And water utilities, increasing their communication, particularly with emergency allergies, has been important, again, shifting to as much online payment as they can, not doing the face-to-face interaction has been important. We've been educating folks again. We've, this is a perpetual campaign, but we've really stepped it up here recently about the need to be careful just to use toilet paper when you're flushing, not to flush anything else in particular the non-flushable wipes, even though they say flushable on them, they truly are not, and those wipes can cause a lot of problem with our wastewater system. So we, and getting encouraging folks not to utilize those, or at least not to flush them. And then finally, they have promised there will be a temporary suspension for all water cutoffs during this time. Again, just to kindness and compassion have to be a component of what we're dealing with here as folks are also struggling through this process and that they enacted that during this time. As we look at the police department, I think what you're seeing here is they are really just trying to be helpful as we go through this process. And some of their examples here, taking selfies with different restaurants to promote them as we, again, try to work with our small businesses that so many of them are doing, particularly our restaurants doing delivery and take out and giving them some publicity. But also out there educating folks on what social distancing means and how do you achieve it? And how far do you need to be from one another? And then also recording acts of kindness. You see there in the bottom corner, the low hotel with the big heart and getting that out there and showcasing it to the community. Planning and development services also, shifting as much as they can to an online system, doing virtual building inspections to the extent that they can as well, and then much like you're doing in this meeting, having their planning and zoning meetings virtually as well. And then the community is also adapting and I could have pages and pages of how our different businesses are doing this. But we want to highlight a few just so you can see how truly we all are changing to meet the demand and to meet the crisis. As you look at River Legacy, they have and if you haven't seen some other programming as worth going on, they're doing daily programming. Some really cool, educated stuff that is great for the parents at home. They are homeschooling essentially at the time being. The River Legacy's got some fantastic programs to take advantage of. Joanne's fabrics start donating fabric for those who are making masks at home. Vander Graf Honda said, we'll go out and we'll clean city vehicles. We understand you guys are under a lot of stress and need and we can help in that regard. Vanguard Kia said, let's run local errands for folks who aren't able to get out, who are homebound in some capacity. Just a few of the examples, her thought of RRQ was doing meals today for first responders. Potter's house came out this last week to do meals for first responders as well. We're seeing our community just as we're seeing the organization adapt as we go through this process. And that is the conclusion of my presentation, Mayor. Any questions for Mr. Warren? Okay, I see Mr. Warren. Okay, I see you, Mr. Sutton. Thank you, Mayor. And Jay, that was a wonderful presentation. I love the fact that we do have an capability to communicate into our citizens. You and I had a conversation yesterday about some of the information I've had a couple calls from citizens who were looking for data about Arlington positive cases as well as the deaths and understand that that information is available on tarant county site but be nice to see it on Arlington site to keep our folks updated as what's going on in Arlington. Is there a way of doing that working with our Farge Chief and either having it posted on our website with the data from Tarrant County Public Health website? Is that a possibility? I would be happy to work with the fire chief and with the EOC and I should point out that all of our communication when the emergency center is activated is all coordinated. And I think it's an important part of what we do to make sure that our messaging is consistent and where we work with them and the partnership has been a hand and hand throughout this entire process. So happy to work with them to see the possibility of that. We would point out that we are linked to the Tarant County page off of the city's page. So there is a direct connection to that information from our webpage. Okay. Yes, Dr. Odom Wesley. Thank you, Jay, and chief for those those presentations. One question for Jay in all of our communication efforts. Are we presenting anything in his in Spanish and Vietnamese? We are in fact, we had a Vietnamese firefighter and a Hispanic firefighter who Take messages for us that we were able to share with those communities. We're actually doing is more outreach there than we have in the past, because I think it's really important that we try to reach all of those communities. Easter is an example. We had messaging that was in both Spanish as well as in English. Mayor Williams did a message to the Muslim community just last week prior to the holiday. So we've been doing consistent messaging to all of our different populations as we try to reach them. Thank you. That's great. I have one question for the chief if that's okay, Mayor. Yes, absolutely. Looking at the data and hearing the national news, it seems that this virus is having a disproportionate impact on the African-American community. And going forward, what do you think we can put in place to mitigate that impact? What's our message? What's our method? Do you have any thoughts on that? Yes, ma'am. I do. I think we're working with the county judge right now trying to identify a location for testing. And one of these, one of the locations in Arlington should be sent to the fact that it will serve the populations who need to be tested and looked over. So that's a factor we're paying attention to. The fact that we're, as a county, we are impacted, our statistics are reflective of what the nation reflects is key to our preparedness efforts and certainly protecting those populations are a major concern for us. Okay, one other question. You gave the data on the impact by ethnicity, those statistics, what about zip code data? Do we know where the COVID patients are coming from other than the nursing homes? We do, but we're really not prepared to share that information at this time, but I will do it in the near future. Okay, thank you. Miss Cape Art. Thank you, Mayor. And Chief, while you're there at the mic, so there's been some confusion with regard to the virus and pets. And so I know our animal services staff has had to put some guidelines in place and I wanna get with Jay to see if we're covering that as well. But is there any information that you can share with us with regard to whether or not that really is a potential passage of the virus between humans and animals. Ms. Capehart, Council Member Capehart, I have adult-dotal information, not really information that I could provide you from an informed, accurate perspective, but I will get that information to you as soon as possible. Mr. Sutton. Thank you. As soon as possible. Mr. Sutton. Thank you, Mayor. Chief Krausen, Marvin Sutton. The hot spots in your presentation and the soft west and the south. Do we know the calls of transmission? No, I think that is something we're working with the epidemiologist to try to figure out. I think concern we do have is that these facilities share work forces and these individuals will travel from facility to facility and that's something we're looking at right now from a tracing perspective. Mayor, my next question is your belief is that if we look at indicators such as ventilator used, suits hospital bed uses that would give us a real feel before we're at on this at pandemic. So the line I'm thinking what's earlier was the number of positive cases and based on those cases 80% would get better and 20% may have the U.L. medical services. Does that still hold true today? I think that's a reasonable generalized assumption. I think the reality is though we really need to pay attention to what's actually happening and we know what we're seeing in the hospitals is fairly minimal compared to what we were expecting. So I would say that if that is the case that that assumption is correct, that the spread of the COVID virus in Arlington is not as widespread as once once assumed. And that would be based on testing or based on what we have in the hospital as far as utilization of beds. That would be based on what we have in the hospital. So as utilization of beds. That would be based on what we have in the hospital. So the actual cases, the whole system is built around protecting the hospitals from a surge capacity issue. That surge capacity issue is not materialized. Our patient load is relatively low to what we were expecting. And that is all good news for us. So the fact is that our localized cases in Arlington are predominantly in nursing homes. We do have positive cases outside of it, but not everyone who's testing positive is winding up in the hospital. So you could assume that the majority of people who do have COVID are not winding up in the hospital and the percentage that we are seeing in the hospital are relatively low, that is good news for us. That's very good news for our item. So it would be safe to say that social distance is working and that we do have capacity, is that correct? That is correct. I would say that the social distancing issue has dramatically impacted the general population. I think the nursing home population is still vulnerable. They're not as mobile and there's communal activities in these facilities that allow for the spread of the virus and therefore we're engaging these facilities to stop the spread of the virus there. Assuming that we're going to be successful there, I think we're putting down the virus where we see it and I think the issue so far is controllable and manageable. Thank you. Mr. Peel. I'll pick you back on the comment at that we need to take the data from the county's website and propagate it to Arlington residents, which has that little flash widget, Jay, you know what I'm talking about. When you go to that page, it kind of has a thing we have to slide from left to right to get all the data. And I have sent that link to numerous people and on their phones and on their iPads and especially amongst some of my relatives who are older, they can't get it to work. It's like a really inadequate way to disseminate information because it requires that that flash applet somehow upload into people's phones. When we put that information on our webpage, can we just make it really easy, simple, not have to have that little applet propagate on the computer because I have lots of people who are complaining they can't get the county's website to provide them the info. They don't understand how it works. So that's one thing I wanted to provide. And then secondly, the piggyback of my comments from earlier in executive session, there are a lot of people who are coming to me and saying, Andrew, y'all have totally overreacted. All this shutting down of my business that's killing my savings account and forced me to layer everybody off was not worth it. And you need you guys have totally blown this look it was never going to be that big of a deal. I don't agree with that viewpoint, but I would like for there to be some additional messaging that says look I know you've run down your savings account. I know you're hurting financially, but it was all worth it. The positive and manageable outcome we have at this time is directly a result of the sacrifices you made. And I think that somehow as we're getting to a point where people are suffering so bad, they need to be reassured that it was worth it and haven't explained to them how it was worth it. And we need to say that over and over again because we have a very, it's easy for me to ride this out because I've been blessed, but there are a lot of people who are really hurting and need to know that their sacrifice has not been in vain. And when we do our messaging, I want that theme to be really pushed out there. Chief, do you have anything to add to that? No, I think that's absolutely correct. I think the reality is from the very beginning, there was a lot of unknowns. And now we know more. And now the environment is changing, and we can clearly communicate that with the public. And we can adjust to that. I think we can tell a story of how things were in the beginning and how they are now. And tell everyone that it was worth it. I think the social distancing efforts made a difference. I think we're going to get out of this sooner because of that. And I think those types of messages need to be promulgated to the community with a more direct effort and more frequency. Mr. Peele, to add to what you had to say there to hope our citizens realize that we are under presidential order, executive orders from the president of the United States. We also are under executive orders from the governor of the state of Texas and that is what we're functioning under now. And then we have aligned with that through our Tarrant County also. So April 30th is a major date that is coming up. We understand that our governor sometime this week is going to be rolling out plans there so that we can reopen businesses in a very calculated way. Our chief there went over some of that. They're looking at it. You know, a lot of things happened at the beginning there as we were being having people infected with the COVID-19. And here we are moving into hopefully a time in which we'll be transitioning out. But however, there will be rules and restrictions there so that we can avoid any setbacks, although we may have to in the chief warn us that as we move out of this, if our numbers go up of people in the hospitals and so forth, that we may have to back, back down. But we're in uncharted waters, so we're going to be working to follow the lead of our governor here and following in. But Arlington and Tarrant County have done a wonderful job here of fighting this disease, both with our first responders and our medical professionals leading the way. And then with our citizens following suit They're in practicing the social distancing which has actually able to us to have much better results than what the models had predicted there Okay Mr. Peel did you have any other follow-up? Okay, then I'll turn to Dr. Forer Myers I'm not sure if you're going to be able to do that. Mr. Peel did you have any other follow up? Okay, then I'll turn to Doctor for our Myers. Thank you very much. Chief, I just want to say thank you and thank you to all the first responders who have done an amazing job in stepping up into a very unknown area as well to Jay Warren for getting and all his staff for messaging as much as possible. I really do appreciate your your message that you give us today about social distancing and what we can do individually to make sure that we collectively will come out of this better on the other side. I was interested out of all the things you talked about with Nick steps and Mayor, you hinted at the fact that we may be looking at exit strategies. What are the things in your estimation that we should be paying attention to the most as we go as we start to make policy and as we move out of into a transitional period? What should we be paying attention to most chief? Well, I think there's a number of things. Social conducts one, social distancing will still be a factor. I think protective measures. I you can imagine being at a restaurant in your server wearing a mask while serving your food. Maybe the tables are spread a little further apart. All these kinds of things could be implemented in just part of a transitional strategy that there are hygiene stations and other efforts that serve the public's interest as we're transitioning back to a state of normalcy. I think we'll see these non-medical masks out there. I think there are other things that we can encourage regarding how to conduct ourselves in group settings. I mean, clearly the grocery store model works. Okay, we've been all been going to the grocery store in our cases have not increased. We can replicate that effort at other facilities as we transition to a final state, hopefully, when a vaccine is developed or to win our case load is down to zero and we can move back to more normal operations. But I think there has to be a transitional strategy, not only maybe from an occupancy loading perspective, but also a cautionary method in which transactions and services can occur in a less restrictive way, but still acting in public safety or public health mindset. And I think all those things can be done if we just put our collective wisdom together and work on achievable outcomes, we can do that. And many of the things we, many of the steps we took before we moved into this final stage we're in right now, we can reverse engineer back into and work to see if we can be more fluid and adaptive while at the same time watching our numbers and our hotspot vulnerable populations. I think we can do all those things. I know we can. Arlington can do anything, but we certainly have the will and the effort to do that. And I'm sure the community will welcome these steps and will be a part of the solution too. Thank you, Chief. Other questions? Well, let me just reiterate, thank you for what you're doing, the extra time, the resources and using your experience and relative to applying it to keep our citizens safe and very much appreciate it, Chief. And please pass that on to our first responders to Dr. Simmons and our frontline medical professionals there, we very much appreciate it. And then Mr. Warren, your department is phenomenal to the communications department. and I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's information to there with it. And then I would certainly ask our citizens to go to that website and use it because it has great information for you to help you to be productive and also a lot of fun things. They're on it. I've learned about a lot of restaurants. I didn't know about. And even some restaurants I knew about, I'm going to be ordering something different because I saw some great dishes that they serve that I haven't tried there before. And then I've got a compliment our restaurants on the takeout to, they have chief, I appreciate your staff working with them because they are really paying attention to minimize the opportunity for any spread of the virus by the procedures that they are using to distribute the food itself and it's most appreciated. And then Mr. Yolverton, thank you to our staff who is putting in a lot of extra time and even the remote working there. And also our staff being willing to do jobs that they normally don't do to try to help our community. And that's so important for them to be willing to do it and to do it so well. And then again, I think Mr. Peale put it very well. We've got to compliment our citizens. Again, Arlington has that, can do spirit. And we are fighting against an unseen enemy here that can really incapacitate us there. And so we have got to continue fighting against it in social distancing. And as we do move out of the stay home, you heard the chief say it. We still got to work on our social distancing and continue to follow these rules that we have because it's all for not only ourselves but also our families and our friends and they're in everyone's health for us to obey these restrictions. So thank you, thank you Chief, and we'll look forward to the next update. And I can't wait to see what's on the website today, Mr. Warren there and what is being posted. So thank you all very much. Appreciate it. Next we'll move to Mr. Jennifer Wickman there to talk about what's going on in the federal and state governments in relation to COVID-19. Thank you Mayor. Jennifer Wickman, Assistant City Manager. I'm going to have Jay Warren begin this. He's going to talk a little bit about some of the legislation that's been covered. I'll come back to discuss the CARES Act and some of the details about that funding. And then Jay will come back up to wrap up talking about our efforts on the fourth bill that is coming forward. So shifting hats a little bit from the communication side to the legislative side now to talk to you a little bit about, as Jennifer mentioned, what the federal government has done. And as you can see, certainly by congressional standards, this is a fast pace by three major bills, one of them being truly gigantic and scope and nature being passed within about a three week window in the month of March as Congress and the federal government moved to address the coronavirus pandemic as it started to touch the United States more and more. The March 6th appropriation at 8.3, really started to look at how do we beef up or bolster or support the health community across the country as they started to see rise in the number of cases. And also how do we help our small businesses out there understanding from kind of that very initial stages of when we started some of our social distancing, the impact that it might have on those small businesses. As you went to the next week of action from Congress, this is when they started to look at maybe unemployment benefits and how do they extend those for those that might lose their job as a result of this. And then they also passed an extension or addition to FMLA allowing folks who may have child care issues related to this or might have a need to not be at work in order to take care of family members who might be impacted by the coronavirus to be covered as a part of the traditional FMLA that we are familiar with. That culminates to what was the third, so far, third bill that Congress has passed, which has been dubbed the CARES Act. This was substantial. One of the largest pieces of legislation that Congress has enacted $2.2 trillion. A lot of that money is going to, well, a lot of different plots, frankly. You've got certainly some going to CDBG, those dollars that you can get directly to the agencies that are on the front line of helping our folks that are struggling during these times, organizations like Mission Arlington, homeless shelters, things of that nature. And also emergency solution grants, solutions grants doing the same. This is a portion of the act that had the checks that will be going out to taxpayers and to residents and to citizens to help them through this process, $1,200 for individuals up to that, and up to $2,400 for couples. Additional funding for transportation, some other things that are related to coronavirus, all of these things, how do we start to help folks as they cope with this? And some of that certainly has been allocated for the city of Arlington. So Ms. Wickman's gonna come back up and discuss how we implement some of those things and what those dollar amounts are, and then I'll come back. Thank you you Jay. So what I'd like to do is talk about some of the specific aspects of the CARES Act and give both the council and the community a sense of where it gives some context to some of that funding. So the first element I want to talk about is local government assistance. And this was money allocated to cities and counties that are over 500,000 in population. And important to know that this is reimbursable costs. These are not funds that just go into these folks' general coffers. These are for expenses that are directly related to their COVID-19 response. Things that are not currently budgeted in their recently passed operating budget, and also that were incurred between March 1st and the end of December of this year. So, as I said, this does not cover any stabilization aid, which is the lost revenues that Arlington and no other cities are anticipating due to this economic downturn. It covered all the states, about 100 counties, and 37 cities at this point, because we just heard that Atlanta has been added. So Arlington was not included here. However, we are in some good company, other cities that also were not included include Miami, Kansas City, Minneapolis, New Orleans, and Raleigh. So that's as Jake comes back up to talk about the fourth bill that's really something that not only Arlington but other cities and other folks are beginning to work on addressing. So there has been a push among several of the CFOs for these cities that have received some of this funding for additional flexibility for them. So that dialogue is really already push among several of the CFOs for these cities that have received some of this funding, for additional flexibility for them. So that dialogue is really already starting, which is helpful for us. So as you look at the bar chart on the right, I just wanted to put this here so everyone can understand how much money is available for reimbursement in this area and from some of our neighbors. There's a slight error on this because we just found out some information yesterday. You can see, second to the bottom, it looks that Tarant County has about $359 million, which it could seek in reimbursement for COVID response. And then at the top of the chart, you can see that Fort Worth has up to $156 million for reimbursement. Those actually are, the Fort Worth money is contained within the Tarant County money. So a Fort Worth Seeks, it's funding, which we expected to do, then Tarant County would have about $202 million available for reimbursement. So we did ask our lobbyists at Capital Edge to see how much Arlington would have received or been able to be reimburseed for if if they were if we had been included in this and it would have been about 68 million. Now that's again not just money that would have been sent to the city but that would have been potentially reimbursable. But we have been working closely with the Tarant County and with the state. The state is receiving about $6.7 billion. And the Treasury is still working to come out with these rules, so we're not exactly sure if we could seek some of our reimbursement from either the county or the state, because we're clearly contained in both. But that's something we're working on. And additionally, we were essential in helping the county recognize that the funding and getting in the needed communications that they had to do in order to be eligible for this. So a little more context here. Arlington has received some direct funding in some formula, some other areas of the CARES Act. So I'm going to talk about those right now and put them in context with some of the regular funding that we get every year. So one is the CDBG funding. You can see that in a normal year, we get about the blue bars here are normal funding. So we get about $3.4 million every year in CDBG. And this year under the CARES Act, we're getting just over $2 million. That's a very flexible money. We're very pleased with that, but that's CDBG money to be used in response to the COVID-19. Similarly, that homeless ESG money, which is the emergency shelter grant, really looking towards working with the homeless and working on housing solutions. We typically receive about $287,000, and we have just under a million, so $991,000 that we're getting to spend on that related to the COVID-19 response. There's also burn justice assistance grants, which our police department receives every year. They have gotten a significant increase in this CARES Act. Normally they get right around $150,000. That was this last year, but they're eligible for $479,000. So they're working on writing that grant and getting that in. The big bar charts to the right, this is our federal transportation authority money. So this money that normally goes both to handy train and to via. So we normally get about 3.7 million there. And as we've been talking with the folks at the Council of Governments, we are estimating that will be over 12 million at this point, but we are still working with them on the formula there. So that will additionally be money that can be used for both operating and lost operations due to the COVID-19 situation. There are some additional areas of funding that the city is either receiving has received or is eligible for and I want to talk about a few of those right here. The first one that HHSP that is homeless, housing and services program, this comes from the state. And in program year 2020, so the year we're in now, we've gotten about $200,000 from the state that we used to help with homeless programs and helping the homeless. They had some additional money there that they wanted to allocate to the cities that normally get that funding. So we're getting just under $10,000 there and that's something that we're working on right now and we'll certainly be, we're appreciative of and we'll be useful in our response effort. The next pot of money is emergency housing assistance corporation money and this actually dates back to a different disaster that came to our area. So the city received a great deal of money from HUD during the responses to hurricanes Rita and Katrina and there was some additional funding which was always tagged to be used for emergency housing related to disaster response. That's certainly something that we have happening right now. So it's just under $600,000. And so that's a part of money that has federal roots but has been kept at the city and kept safe for a situation like this. There's also some money possibly coming to our airport. Nationally, the airport improvement program is getting about $100 million. That's going to come to the state of Texas. And then some of that will then be sent down to general aviation airports like ours, but we don't know what that formula is going to be yet. Some additional federal programs that we can possibly apply for money, sort of the grants, so apply for some of that funding, would be economic development assistance administration grants. They have 1.5 billion. We have assistance to firefighter grants at about 100 million. FEMA itself has 45 billion for reimbursable expenses. There's an additional 1 billion to states that are going for CDBG uses, which is that community development block grant uses for both entitlement cities, which is what Arlington is and non entitlement cities. So cities that aren't large enough to get that money by formula. And then finally, there's about $3 billion that HUD is going to allocate. And this is going to come through a new formula they're creating. We don't know what it looks like yet, but we are keeping in touch with that agency to find out as soon as we can what that will be. They have about 90 days to allocate that. Finally, we're also getting some money for our existing housing program. So these would be things like our Section 8 tenant-based assistance. A lot of this is related to the fact that if people, if some of the clients were currently working with lose their jobs, they won't be able to pay as much of their rent as they have been paying. So we are anticipating a need to pay more for their rents to keep those people in homes and keep those landlords paid. So leaving the meeting, this is Robert Schifrin. So the next slide we have here is we want to talk about connecting to some the funding we have to the needs we know that exist in the community. So you can see we've tried to draw a roadmap here between the different types of money. You can see ESG is going to homeless and housing services. CDBG we're really looking to support, this is all the way on the left, our traditional non-profits that we've helped in the past that help with housing and helps with food and helps with shelter and other essential needs. As you're working across, obviously that burned jack money that specifically slotted at law enforcement. So our police department is the group that will get that funding. The FAA, clearly that money goes to our airport. As I mentioned, the HHSP money from the state that will come down to our housing response efforts. There is a large amount of money at the small business administration that I'll talk more in detail about, but that is a really very large amount of money at the small business administration that I'll talk more in detail about, but that is a really very large amount of money and total it's $377 billion. And you'll see when I add up the rest of it, that's that transportation money that clearly has a path through via and handy train. And then the E-Hack money, which is that housing money from the hurricanes that I mentioned earlier, that clearly is going to be dedicated to housing. So when you look at all these sources of funding that are not connected, that are not either the airport money and aren't the small business administration money, the money that we know is coming to Arlington, that's about $17 million. And we are very appreciative of that and that has some specific guidelines for how we can spend each portion of that. But you can also see that with the small business Administration, they have $377 billion. So we really are encouraging our eligible small businesses and our eligible nonprofits to also take advantage of that because that's a huge resource that could really assist the City of Arlington as it moves through this. And I also wanted to mention that there is some money coming through the National Endowment for the Arts, $75 million. And we've gotten that out to our Arts nonprofits. I also wanted to mention that there is some money coming through the National Endowment for the Arts, $75 million. We've gotten that out to our Arts non-profits. So really for almost every entity in the city that needs some assistance, there's going to be a path towards some sort of federal funding. We see it as our job to try to help make those connections. So we've been really working with our different entities to do that. So the next slide. There we go. So just some upcoming actions we have to take on these different, for these different funding sources and how maybe the community might see some of this begin to roll out. Some steps have been taken already. The Housing Board, Authority Board, already has authorized the use of that emergency housing money. We have the Council of Governments, the RTC, took action last week on the efforts to start bringing that additional transportation money to the area. We are working on that HHSP money from the state. We're working on the contract already to bring that $10,000 in. Related to CDBG, we are ready to reprogram about $150,000. We're really gonna try to get that out by, but the end of this month. So April 28th, we've been talking with our nonprofits about that and we feel like that needs to get out right away because we have some folks who have needs right now. So we're going to work through that. Additionally, there's about $260,000 that we had been doing some housing remodels with through our housing authority. We don't think that's the best use of that money right now, so that's going to be taken off of that program and reprogrammed into some emergency rental assistance because that's one area we really know there's a need with people losing their jobs. And then finally, the $2 million that's coming through the CARES Act, we're going to work to do a mini RFP to get that money out by June. So the nonprofits in the community who are interested in that can please look to the city's website and to our grants department for more information on that. The emergency shelter grant money will also have a similar mini RFP process. We're really trying to cut down on the paperwork that our nonprofits have to go through right now. They have a lot to do. There are responses essential and we want that attention where it needs to be. So we're gonna try to cut back through waivers to try to, with the federal government, to cut back on the sort of paperwork they have to do, but also what paperwork they have to submit to us in order to get this funding. That burned jag money, our police department is currently working on that application. For the FEMA money, all of our departments who are making the spending who are spending in those areas are tracking that. They're working closely with the fire department and the Office of Emergency Management to get that tracked. And then we're waiting to see what happens with that second group of the second part of money from the HUD and also from the FAA. So I wanted to go through a few slides that talk about some resources for specific areas of our community. First, residents, we have had a lot of both on the telephone town hall and people who have just called and emailed in and perhaps our council has heard this as well. There's a lot of frustration over unemployment claims. We've had a lot of unemployment just in general, and I can tell you that we've had over 8,000 folks in Arlington filed for unemployment last month. We don't have the numbers yet for April, but we fear it's going to be similarly concerning. This is the additional money that was put into the CARES Act. There's additional 13 weeks of unemployment, plus there's $600 a month that individuals can get for who are on those benefits between April 4th and the end of July. So that is additional money will hopefully help people by groceries, pay the rent, do those essential things that they need to do. And I want to make sure that people understand that the Texas Workforce Commission that is working on unemployment are local Tarrant County Workforce Solutions Board. They, that's a place to go where you need to get, when you want to get a job. But when you're applying for unemployment, it's with the Texas Workforce Commission. And I know that they've had a lot of concerns with their telephone number, that a lot of people have been receiving a busy signal. In fact, I heard I read an article that a week ago today, they got three and a half million calls, and 3.1 million of those people got a busy signal. So that is a ban in the right. I would not want. But to give them their credit, this is unprecedented. There are so many folks out there. So they've done a few things. They're certainly hiring more people. Their call centers are now open seven days a week, seven to seven. And they're suggesting that people with certain area codes call on certain days. So the 817 area code, they're suggesting Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday in the morning. So basically seven to noon. That's your time if you got an 817 number. If you got an area code which is six eight two, that's Monday Wednesday Friday the afternoon. So one to seven, that's when that group can call that numbers. I'm sure anyone who's been calling it a number of times knows much better than I. It's eight hundred nine three nine six six three one. I did also hear that they that people can apply online. And this is a tip if you're a night owl, I suppose, but between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m., they have a lot less traffic on that website. So if you have the opportunity to stay up to that point, that might be an easier way if you're trying to get through online. But that agency is working hard to try to ensure that people can get through and can get these, get their benefits filed and they have stated on their website in a numerous places. There's no penalty if you can't get through due to high call volume. So I would encourage people to keep trying and I know what is frustrating and we appreciate your pain on that one. I did also want to- I also wanted to add that unemployment claims can be filed by people who have been self-employed or contractors. It's a new type of broadening of that. So if you aren't sure if you are eligible, it might be good to try. Okay, so that's unemployment claims. If people are looking to get jobs, certainly the workforce solutions for Tarant County website is a great place to go. They're posting new jobs every day. There are those $1,200 economic stimulus checks, which folks can look for as well. Those are coming to everyone with an income of below 75,000 or for a couple below 150,000. And then if any children who were on the last last filed income tax return, it's a $500 credit for each of them or check for each of them. Additionally, there's some additional paid sick leave for folks who have the COVID-19 themselves or in some ways are caring for someone because they're out of school or work because of that. And then finally I wanted to mention on housing our Arlington Housing Authority is going to be our center point for information about housing and a place where people can go and call and get information. So I'm going to ask that folks either visit their website which is www.arlingtonhousing.us or give them a call at 817-253351. Both of those places you can go if you have concerns. If you're struggling with your housing, please let us know. We don't know what all the federal programs look like at this time, but as that money becomes available, we will try to use it in the most efficient way possible and to meet the greatest need that we can. Quick note on evictions. There are certain, the federal government has put certain restrictions on evictions for properties that were financed in part with federal money. In addition, our county has stopped proceedings for evictions at our local, at our sub-court house here. But it is still, those papers can still get served. But if you do have a question about that, I would just request that folks call our housing authority and they can certainly answer questions there. Next, the next one we wanted to cover was resources for small businesses and as I mentioned before nonprofits, these can go to anyone who has 500 or less employees. And I got a really encouraging piece of news from Jim Paragion, one of our deputy city managers here right before we started this presentation is that our three local banks here in Arlington are reporting that over 1100 completed applications have been received for the paycheck protection program from local businesses and there's 700 that are pending. So we do have local folks trying to take advantage of this. We would encourage more to do so. There is a lot of money there now, and Congress seems to want to give more to this program. So for our local businesses or small businesses and nonprofits, please work to apply for this money. As Jay mentioned before, our website is a wealth of resources for this information, so please do visit there. This summarizes some of the programs. There's an economic injury loan and grant program, the Paycheck Protection Program, and the debt relief program. They all have details that are specific to each of them, but I'd encourage you to check the website for more details on that. And those can be applied through certified lenders. So if a nonprofit or business has a bank, I would encourage them to go there. And so now I'm gonna ask Jay to come back up and speak about the fourth stimulus bill. As you see, Congress and quickly enacting those first three pieces of legislation through March, that last one, that $2.2 trillion of the CARES Act happened very fast as well. And as those things occur, you can imagine that there are things that need to be ironed out. So Congress is already recognizing some of that. One of those things being the population threshold of $500,000 for reimbursable expenses related to the coronavirus pandemic for different cities. And so there's already a bill a foot that would allow that to be a much wider scope of communities that would have access to that. But perhaps just as importantly for us is that that would also be a little bit more flexible in the definition of it. The CARES Act definition for those funds that might be reimbursable is fairly strict. And this bill has kind of, as already been introduced in the House, would put $250 billion out there for communities with a little bit more flexibility in how they are reimbursed for their coronavirus response. But that's a small bill in comparison to what has really been a foot through the conversations that you're hearing really on both sides in the Senate and in the House. And you've also heard President Trump talk about what would be a fourth larger stimulus bill. It would likely include, and the parameters keep shifting and changing here, but the potential of more dollar set aside for small business assistance, certainly, again, more effort to support our states and localities as they face widening gaps in sales tax revenue as we go through this process. And some other items that they might include in there. Again, it keeps changing infrastructure sometimes mentioned. The key here for the city of Arlington and what we're reinforcing in our conversations is that we need the flexibility in how that knows dollars are spent and that it does come directly. If we can hit those two things in the fourth stimulus bill, it certainly will be to our benefit and to communities really across the country, not just Arlington. And our efforts are strong in this area. In fact, later today, spearheaded from the city of Arlington will be sending a letter to every member of the House and our two senators signed by more than 100 mayors across the entire state, again, emphasizing the plight of local communities as we face these reduced sales tax dollars and the need for direct and for flexible assistance from the federal government. We're making calls to our legislators certainly on a consistent basis. We're coordinating with the National League of Cities on a regular basis. This are coordinating with the National League of Cities on a regular basis. This is a constant for us as we work to really have an impact with this fourth stimulus bill to help our community and communities across the country. We expect that the Congress will continue working on this throughout the month of April and we'll see how it kind of moves in what directions it go and will be nimble to address that as it does change and no doubt it will. And it'll take lots of different twists and turns before we get to the end result with hopefully some type of passage, perhaps in May. Questions for Mr. Warner, Ms. Wickman? Mr. Sutton? Thank you, Mayor. The question is for Jay. Jay with the $150 billion cares that benefits certain cities, obviously, probably did not make the cut in that, but we do get some funds through the county. It appears that they took the 40 largest cities in their calculations, but with the stimulus checks that are coming through with our population, what kind of impact, as far as sales revenue generated from spending, the stimulus check with the city benefit from, and how would it impact the loss of funding that we won't re-rece receive through the $150 billion that was allocated after all 50 states? So it's an excellent question. I don't know how we can calculate exactly how that money will be spent, but I can tell you that's the intent of it. The intent is for those stimulus checks to be used by folks that need the money to pump it back into the economy so that it helps the economic growth and can hopefully have a fast recovery. But to the extent that the dollar amount that we, our residents will receive and how that will be impacting our sales tax revenue, I do not have an estimate for that. Mr. Yeilverton. And Mr. Fallup, Jay, is can we put out I guess, on our website, ways of spending $1,200 to impact our community? Mr. Yeilverton, then we'll come back to Mr. Warren. Yeah, so Mr. Sutton, I think one of the things that we expect to have happen, and you'll hear from us here a few minutes, we've not made any estimated projections of fiscal impact from those stimulus checks. I do think there's going to lift in the community economy, but the fiscal impact to the city's treasury, I think is gonna be minimal. To your second question, Mr. Sutton, without question, as again, as I mentioned, we kind of transitioned in our communication from what was that, I would call the initial emergency communication, where it's really about education. Elaine folks know what's closing those types of things, transitioning more to useful information and our categorize certainly what you're discussing there as useful information. But with the understanding that as Mr. Yelfordon points out for every family that $1200 may mean something different. And for some it may mean I get to pay my rent this month for others it may mean more flexibility in how that money has been and hopefully spend here locally. Other questions? Well as you can see here that the current stimulus bills that are out are certainly going to help. But however, as far as our city government, they're because of our lost revenue. We haven't had anything really significant to come in. It's helping to offset the cost of us addressing the coronavirus. This four stimulus bill, it's very critical there that cities be included in that because of the loss of ourselves tax there predominantly. There is no shopping, there's no tourism going on right now. Our budget is impacted. Well, we still need to provide public safety. We need to continue to be able to pick up the trash and take care of our parks and the many things that we have to do. So right now it is all hands on deck working here on this four stimulus bill and I really appreciate the leadership of Miss Wickman and Mr. Warren and their staffs there with it. But we have been there on the phone and doing teleconferences there with our congressman and our United States senators and I'm very much appreciative of them. They are working hard here for us. And then in addition to that, we also, as Mr. Warren said, we have been calling upon our fellow cities there to be able to work together, to be able to move out because many of our citizens have no idea of the impact that is happening here. As viruses hit, everyone in many different ways. And of course, the economy is definitely one of them and our city government is not void of also being affected with that. And in fact, that's our next topic there that we have coming. So one last call for any questions from Mr. Warner, Ms. Whitman. Okay, seeing none, then I will thank you for your work with our legislature. There in our fellow cities there as we move forward. And I'd like to take a 15-minute break here before we move on to our next topic. Thank you. you you I think we're missing. We have everyone except for Dr. Nunez mayor. Okay. Then we'll call on the founding doors. Anywhere. I'm back. Dr. Nunez. Okay, then we'll call them. I think found indoors. Yes. Any while I'm back. Good. Dr. Nanny. Yes. Thank you. We have all we have all of our council members back. So we'll resume our work session and our next presentation is on the second quarter budget and business plan. But Mr. Trae over to our city manager. Thank you, Mayor. Members of the council, and I just want to start by thanking all of you all for all of your leadership and adjustment and your adaptability during all this time in the last month or so. It's been a challenge for the whole team and your ability to kind of move with the flow and be patient with us and how we're moving through all these steps is appreciative. I also want to thank all of our employees as was alluded to earlier that are out there on the front lines kind of continuing services both from our police and fire and our front line folks collecting permits and dealing with water bill payments and action center calls, all the folks are still showing up each day to provide services to our residents. On behalf of all of them, I want to say thanks to your employees. And then lastly, as was alluded to earlier, I want to say thanks to all of our small business and all of our residents. Because the kind of the thing, the machine keeps rolling because of all the work that they're doing, and the patients that they are exercising in helping us flatten the curve, and the results are directly related that we're achieving today are directly related to all of their efforts. And I know it's significant, I know it's tough, but unfortunately it's something that's necessary. And as we deal with these unique and challenging times, we're kind of all, as we, as overused, perhaps we're all in this together. But I also want to make sure everyone knows, at least from a local government perspective, Mayor Council and to our residents, we've got this. We've got the plan to be able to move our way through this. And I want to share with you some of those thoughts. We are in a unique and challenging time, but I'm optimistic that based on everybody's efforts, that particularly in this case of Mike Finley and our budget staff, that we will be able to manage through both these health crises and the connected fiscal challenges that we're presented with. But to manage all that, we've got a little bit of work to do. And so that's what I want to talk to you about today is the work that we're laying out there. Also want to make sure that as we go through this discussion, I want you knowing that right now my focus is on completing this fiscal year. Between now and September 30th, we have a obligation, in fact I think a constitutional mandate to have a balanced budget and to be in the black. And so the things that have happened to us here mid-year are going to cause mid-year adjustments and that is our acute focus right now as the plans for this fiscal year. And then later in the spring and summer we'll turn our attention to fiscal 21 and kind of there's the steps that are going to be required. And I'm gonna try to there we go. So a little bit of background on how things are moving along. As you all know, this is our budget and business planets, what we do every quarter. a little bit of background on how things are moving along. As you all know, this is our budget and business planets, what we do every quarter. We talk about the progress on work items, we talk about the financial challenges that we have, et cetera. And so just thinking back just a little while back to our first quarter, things were going pretty well. We had positive budget variants, sales tax receipts were going right along with what we projected and many things were very much on track. The challenge for us in the time like this for local governments though is that the fiscal impact of what we know is going on in our community is not financially visible yet in our city's treasury. Because of the way that certain payments are made, for example, sales tax payments that we are receiving in April that we got just this past week, those were from sales in February when the situation had not impacted us. So the check that we will receive in May is gonna have a partially good month for the early part of May And it's really the latter part of May where things became a challenge or March when it became a challenge But we won't see that in our treasury until May So we're having to make some anticipatory moves in order to be ahead of those situations and And do the best we can based on history to project where we're headed. And Mr. Finley and his team have been really, really good at doing projections. We're going to really test their capabilities during all this time. But we're looking back in history through the great recession, the great recession. We're looking back to 9-11. And some of the impacts that were felt and our overall budget during those financial challenges. And so those ground a lot of our assumptions moving forward, they may be optimistic, they may be pessimistic. I don't really know, they're educated and we'll track this now in a monthly basis and we'll keep you advised as things move along. But in that first quarter, just to add a little more color to things, sales tax as I indicated was doing really well. in the right hand corner. But in that first quarter, just to add a little more color to things, sales tax as I indicated was doing really well. You can see the right hand corner graph where things are rocking right along, consistent with what we would have expected the budget process to be. On the left hand side, you see a couple of negative adjustments and, candidly, those are a little bit of outliers because what you know from time to time we receive a negative audit adjustment from the state. That occurs when someone pays their sales tax in the wrong jurisdiction and the comptroller every month, settles it back up. So we were fortunate to maybe receive someone's tax last year. This year that adjustment was made and it makes the numbers look a little more different than they are. At the end of the first quarter, as I said, we were in the black, everything tracking really well and we were comfortably optimistic moving forward. However, as things were starting to move and in for us in March, things happened. And the data started to become very clear. And so just a handful of charts to demonstrate the significance of what's going on, the dislocation in our economy that's occurring. This first chart is initial jobless claims for the last three weeks to put it in context. The previous record was set back in 1982 when it was 680,000 filed in any period of time. And here we've had two weeks with back-to-back $6 million claims. Another way to take a look at it from Yahoo Finance. And you start to sit on the very far right of both of these charts, where you see the big negative right of both of these charts, where you see the big negative adjustment of non-farm payrolls across the country of 701,000, and that's ever so slight tick up in the unemployment rate, which we know next month will be even more so. Some information from the Dallas Fed, as you take a look at how the economy was doing and then the rather crisp adjustment that has occurred. This first chart is the service sector revenue as you all know we're very much service sector oriented economy in Arlington restaurants hospitality. So that number is something that is very important for us as we watch So that number is something that is very important for us as we watch. Comparably, the manufacturing production index that affects things like L3 and General Motors and some of our other manufacturing type companies also took very significant hit hitting the lowest levels back since the Great Recession in 2009. Specifically in the state of Texas, some of the corporate outlooks, as you would expect, changed rather boldly, where things were moving pretty smoothly. You started to see a little softening in the early part of the year, but then in March, very notably different. And then the last one of these types of charts, the unemployment claims in Texas specific. And you can see how it's compared to a couple of spikes both back during Hurricane Harvey in 2017. And again, back to the great recession, just putting the scale, the magnitude of this particular emergency compared to some of the other fiscal challenges that the city has faced. Some Arlington specific data, this is from the month of March, as it relates to unemployment claims and you can expect, as you would expect here, food preparation and serving related occupations is one of the highest areas hit 23% of the employment claims filed in those areas and you move down into some of the production and sales and service, etc. This was almost 8,300 claims and by contrast a normal comparison for this same period of time would be a few hundred claims. So very much different. Some other things that we take a look at outside of the Dallas Fed. There was a St. Louis Fed report that on the one hand had some shocking information that projected perhaps unemployment could reach 32% back at the peak of the depression. It was 24% but a completely different dynamic, which is then how the St. Louis Fed represents it towards the tail end of this that did not believe that the economy was in a free fall, but rather it was a sharp area that hopefully we could quickly rebound from and the economy could boom once again once the pandemic abates. So the debates about V-shaped recovery versus U-shaped recoveries and how quick U-shaped rebound, et cetera, are all a challenge for all cities. And we'll be learning that data and tracking it closely, because you know we're a pretty data-centric organization, and we'll continue to track all this and make sure that our assessments are still in line. Also, one of the other areas that we pay attention to is our bond rating companies and S&P this past week put out a report talking about how at the beginning of the year and the financial positions of many local governments were generally healthy. But as of March the 17th, all US public finance are now a negative credit watch based on the exigent challenges and the sharp decline that we're all collectively facing in the economy. While there's no immediate credit impacts for any of this, it's something that they're telling you they'll be watching and then again getting into that V-shaped discussion, U-shaped discussion, but they close by saying that there needs to be swift budget action in order to take the necessary steps, including using reserves and providing flexibility to address imbalances. And that's exactly what we're here today to talk about is the swift actions that we have already taken and to tell you about the subsequent steps that we would suggest we need to take. I'd also suggest to you that the thing that we've been really proud of in recent years is our triple A bond rating and through no fault of our own. I would not be shocked if over the next number of months or year two based on the challenges that are global in the municipal sector that that's gonna be something that we may not continue to see for some time. But we're gonna do our best to hold the line there. But again, what the cards are being dealt here are nothing to do with our fiscal management or how we're dealing it. We're just going to respond to the economic impact and do it as best we can. So that leads me to kind of where we're at and some of the assumptions that we're making going forward. Sales tax in Arlington has always been a very strong indicator of our economy. We're very dependent on a highly elastic tax form. So it's great when sales are going gangbusters. It's less great when they're not. And as you can imagine, we're dealing with significant pressure in the sales tax area right now. But it also affects some of our other revenues. Both interest revenues as the Fed is lowered rates. We expect there to be less court revenue and other impacts across many other forms of fee collection from liquor taxes to development related revenues to franchise fees to hotel occupancy tax, et cetera. Overall, we're projecting right now about an $18.3 million revenue loss to the city. And what was discussed earlier, our financial challenge right now is not so much expenditure as it is the red revenue loss. So the bills that have been passed by Congress are helpful for unexpected expenditures. We don't have a ton of expenditures to reimburse ourselves for there are some but there is not an ability to reimburse yourself for revenue loss that is COVID related. And And so until we see some light at the end of the tunnel, relative to how these types of programs at the federal and state level potentially could assist us, we're planning on working this out on our own. And if it turns out that we received some assistance elsewhere, then that will be welcome. And it will let us restore some of the actions that we're talking about taking. But until such time, that's clear. We need to take some of these actions so that we can meet our constitutional obligation to have a balanced budget about the end of September. Going back to the sales tax slide, though, on bullet one, I want to highlight the assumptions that we've made. Again, going back to 9.11 and the Great Recession kind of look like this. It's very much an educated guess, but we're looking at about a 20% reduction in the month of March. We would expect a 70% reduction in the month of April and depending on how quickly things are able to be turned back on, we're projecting 50% in May, 35% in June, 15 in August and July, and then 10% in September. Overall, it's generally around a 40% decline between now and the end of the year that we're looking at as it relates to sales tax. And in a six month period of time, that's a significant hurdle for us to come over. So in a broader scale beyond sales tax, some of the other assessments that we have that build to that revenue loss, and again, our best guess is based on our past performance. From interest to the liquor taxes to building permits to inspections, I might mention the SRO program, ASDSRO program, I'm expecting the school district to talk to us about wanting to end the contract early because of the lack of school activity and those officers don't have a lot of activity in that area and we pull them back into the general patrol but that's nonetheless a financial reimbursement that won't potentially come. Various franchise fees, court revenues, et cetera. So a little over $18 million nonetheless a financial reimbursement that won't potentially come, various franchise fees, court revenues, etc. So a little over $18 million that we're looking at in the general fund area right now. How that looks on our sales tax chart that I started with where we're usually pretty much right on top of the lines. As you start to see a gap created in the month of March, and then it widens in April and May and June starts to stabilize a bit in the summertime. But ends up leaving us about $13.1 million short in sales tax. And while that gap doesn't look like a lot on this chart, I can tell you it's significant in our ability to maintain services and pay for the services that our residents expect. How we come to this is a couple of things. I want to make sure you have a perspective of how our sales tax base is built. Following kind of generally the 80-20 rule, you know, there's a lot of people that are big and pay a lot of the tax upfront And then there's all many many many thousands of accounts that pay a Smaller amount over time, but collectively or a huge amount So here are our top sales tax payers. I've alphabetized these not indicate who pays the most sales tax or anything like that That's all proprietary information that were Prevented by law to disclose. But these are the guys who are at the top of the list. Additionally, the things that were really good at hospitality hotels are significant in this list. Restaurants represent almost 14% of our sales tax. And they're not also on this list, but as a class of business significant to the city. And then other things that we rely on routinely are things like the university, which has been closed since spring break. The activity from faculty and students that are in our city is much diminished. But if you'll take a look at this top sales tax parer list and just kind of go with me to a comparable slide next to it, some things have disappeared. And those are accounts that we all know pay significant revenue to the city in particular our hospitality industry and our vent industry, Dallas Cowboys, and their associated food provider, legends, six flags, and rangers, not paying any tax during this pretty time because the venues are closed. Additionally, places like Summit Racing, and General Motors are at risk based on some other things that are going on in the state as it relates to sales tax allocations. So when you take a look at our top accounts pair which any good businessmen would know what to do who's paying the taxes, there are significant accounts that for the rest of the foreseeable future are budgeted at zero. And it's really indicative of an economy in Arlington that is dependent in many ways on our hospitality industry. And the stadiums and six flags in Hurricane Harbor and the university and such that bring a lot of the economic activity to our community. So we've kind of hypothetically in the past talked about what it would look like without those big guys helping pay the bills for services in Arlington. Unfortunately, we're kind of learning the lesson pretty specifically now in reality. What does it look like without some of those big accounts, not paying the sales tax that we've come accustomed to? And it looks like looks like you know 13 plus million dollars right now that we're projecting less in our sales tax area. That all said as we look towards moving forward going from a $48,000 year-end balance or projected your imbalance in the first quarter to the second quarter our new assumption now is a negative $18.3 million by September 30th that we need to solve. That said, it's important to talk out here about a couple of things, the various levels of government that you've heard some of the information earlier today about. The level of response from the federal government, the response from the state government and the response from the state government, and the response from the local government. What we've seen is aggressive and robust efforts at the federal level to provide assistance to our small businesses, stimulus checks to our families and individuals, various efforts to help nonprofits and homeless providers and social service providers and such. What we've seen from our state government is help with the emergency testing capabilities. Guidance on how to handle and triage various certain types of things as we move through this emergency response. So their energy and support on the emergency levels with examples like what happened at the Masonic Lodge here in Arlington are much much appreciated. And at the local level, what we're focused on doing is providing the services that our residents need to expect to have an orderly community that we continue to live in. Public safety, we want to make sure the 911 calls are answered. But that we have a police officer and a firefighter there when we need them, that the garbage still gets picked up water and sewer services are provided and our roads and parks continue to be provided in a way that people expect. That said, we also know that we have to act just like everybody else is acting. Just like our residents and our small businesses are approaching their needs The city is doing the same thing. We are looking to reduce our current expenditures We are looking at using some of our savings. We are looking at suspending planned purchases We are pushing innovation and creativity into our staff, looking to find alternatives, and we are having to make difficult decisions in order to balance our budget the same way that everyone else out there is doing so. And so we've developed a high level strategy that at least currently has about six or five different phases to it that I'm gonna go through. I think of it like a kind of a layered approach. One that is balanced and feathers in, as you all know, I like that phrase. It feathers in multiple objectives and multiple strategies. It tries also not to over-react, although being swift and decisive in many things that we need to do. While we buy time to see what the data will actually result in and what kind of support and assistance the state or the federal government may be able to provide local governments in our own assistance. I also want to make the point here that as we move through this and local government and you have heard me say this before, that sources and uses of dollars matter. Not every dollar is the same because when you collect it for an impact fee, it goes to a road. When you collect it for a park fee, it goes to parks. When you collect it for hotel tax, it goes to support convention activity. When you collect it for sales tax or ad valorem tax, it goes to provide core services in the city and so there are areas in our city right now that I'm very comfortable with our financial position on and I'm going to be talking about those here in a minute. There's also some areas that I'm concerned in and we're going to be talking about that as well and in fact let me just go ahead and jump ahead. The areas that we need to pay particular attention to now, given the specific concerns, our areas related to our convention event services fund because of the impact on the tourism and our hotel businesses. We also need to pay attention to our part performance fund and our general fund. Those are areas that my, that by necessity, we're having to pay attention to now. Most of the other areas, I'm much more comfortable with and have not nearly as much concerned and I'll talk about that here in a few moments. So let me start going through the first phase of actions that we've already taken. As things became clear and the challenges that we're presenting themselves back on March the 13th, little little more than a month ago With our teams help department heads help and Mike and his team We started to put together some measures that were going to limit our financial exposure between now and September 30th We we froze all vacant positions between now and the end of the year. They require my specific approval to fill a vacant position. We expect that to save about a million dollars. We also suspended our planned employee raise that was to take effect almost as we speak. I was scheduled for April, but we've suspended that. It was for across the board, 2% for all employees, and so we've suspended that as well as all council appointee raises that have been scheduled, $1.7 million. We have frozen all IT projects from a service enhancement perspective or an evolution of capability. It doesn't mean that we're not going to keep people's software working and do the break fixes and keep Wi-Fi connected but some of the evolution of projects 1.1 million. We have frozen our vehicle purchases and lowered our fuel estimates. Based on it's the pricing that we've been seeing. We've suspended library book purchases. We've also delayed police and fire academies that were supposed to start the summer that will now at the earliest start October 1st and that will be reevaluated as part of the budgetary process. We've also suspended our employee sick leave or cell back program, which may need to be reevaluated in the context of everything right now because we certainly at this point don't want to incentivize people to come to work and kind of just work their way through the sniffles or the sinus or whatever they might have given our environment we're going to want people to stay home. And so we'll probably look at a permanent modification of that program. In addition, we've been fortunate that some other areas have performed well for us. Our health insurance the last couple of years has been really stable. The wellness efforts that we have undertaken have been good. And so we believe that between now and into the year we'll probably be able to avoid what we call a true up of our health fund where the charge backs that go to departments will be able to be avoided because our health fund, at least as we sit here today is doing relatively well. That's $2.2 million. We are also going to make sure that the gas fund for parks is paying back some expenditures that the city has undertaken on behalf of the park system. $2 million. Going to eliminate the journal fund transfer that we had planned for the park performance fund, which puts challenge there, as you can imagine. But it's also one of the areas that's one of our non-essential areas, and we've had rec centers in such limited, and we're going to need to continue to have that. So shrinking that investment between now and the end of the year is going to be something we have to really take a look at. We're moving some available fund balance from our 911 communication radio system of about 928,000. And we've been working hard to identify eligible, reimburseable expenses for our gas pipeline program as the various gas wells and things have been put in place. There's a gas line fee that is paid. We hold an escrow for costs that are relative to the directly relative to the management and protection of folks in that area. And so we've got our staff working on a detailed analysis there, but we believe that there's about $1.1 million that's able to be reimbursed from our prior efforts. So in general, all that effort that we started a month ago, we believe, it helps us solve about $13 million of the the 18.3 million dollar challenge So you can put that kind of in a little bit of more of a spreadsheet fashion Starting with about a $50,000 ending balance that was projected before to now the the loss the various measures that we have already put in place And then we've got now a new projected ending balance what still leaves us some work to do of $6.3 million of shortfall that we need to figure out a way to assist. So that moves me into phase two of our approach. Those first measures were actually pretty predictable, pretty normal, the kinds of things that you'll see a lot of cities doing of kind of position freezes and such. So now we're moving to the same things that are I going to need to be looking at some financial restructuring. And so this is hastened some of that evaluation and we brought Ford for you today two things one that we need you to formally consider and one that will have you preliminary consider in a presentation right after this. But the first is a modification that's on your agenda tonight to our park fee program. This is a program that's been in place for many years that collects fees for new development, keeps it in a certain zone for future park expansion and development. For as long as I've been city manager, that account has had a balance that's been pretty similar around the low over $5 million. We use it occasionally here and there and then we add a little bit more to it. But given the concerns that I have, particularly about the Parks Performance Fund and this resource that's available that was collected for the purposes of parks, what we've asked for you to do is consider a modification to consolidate all the zones into one zone, which will let us use the money citywide, and also allow for investment in maintenance and operation costs, not just the capital cost for our park system. So park fees would be collected and they would be spent on the park system, but in a operating cost perspective as opposed to capital cost. We propose a $3.9 million adjustment there. The fund has about $5.7 million in it currently, so we would leave the remaining balance for future projects or for future considerations should data indicate that for later this year. We also need to give some consideration to our capital budget and how we will handle with that moving forward. You all approved the capital budget back in I think March maybe into February beginning of March. What we have done is we have proceeded with part of the program and we have deferred part of the program. The things that we're proceeding on right now are three issuances for our refunding, which is basically taking existing funds and refinancing them. Much the same way someone would refinance a mortgage to get a lower interest rate. We're gonna do the same thing. We're gonna refinanceance a mortgage. To get a lower interest rate we're going to do the same thing. We're going to refinance part of our mortgage to get a lower interest rate. That's something that we do constantly and an ongoing way. We have three of those that are eligible this year to be refinanced. We also have in our stormwater program where we're cash position is solid and we need to continue to make investments in erosion and storm water management. We're suggesting that we continue with our capital program there as well as the certificates of obligation that we're planned to handle things such as new fire apparatus and a couple of other items for IT infrastructure that we need to kind of keep things moving. And then a couple of cash funded, they're not dead issuance, but they're part of our budget for the approval is the finishing out the Rangers golf course and our aviation airport program. What we would suggest is that we suspend our water and our general obligation program for about 60 days while we get additional data from the appraisal district. Course the general obligation debt is backed by advalorem tax. So it's very important for us to know what the advalorem tax rates are going to look like from a debt service perspective. And of course, our water program is usually rate based from the revenues that are collected there. But we want to slow that down just a little bit and evaluate what we're gonna do there. And then we may consider a couple of options. We may go forward completely as we planned. If things are much more challenging than we project, we may suggest don't go forward like we planned. Or we've got a couple of alternatives that will suggest based on future data that's available, we'll consider a commercial paper lending program, which for lack of a better phrase, is kind of like an interim construction loan. We're instead of paying for the debt upfront, and then spending it down, we would actually, through the construction loan, fund the project, and then fix out the bonds when the project is complete. That would be one option for us to consider. And then the second option is for us to consider just a less aggressive debt structure. We have a very aggressive debt structure where we pay level, principle, and interest over a 20-year period of time. Constitutional requirements in Texas are much, not nearly that strict. We'd like to hold the line on that, but we also know that we need to continue to build the city. And it's part of the stimulus to keep people employed and to keep things moving in a capital way in our community. So that'll be one of the things that we evaluate over the next 30 to 60 days and we'll come back with you. So we also have a little bit of a conversation here and a little bit about a modification and restructuring of our landfill, particularly as it relates to our closure and post closure fund, which we think, depending on y'all's support, may bring to us not quite six million dollars of cash availability, but it's also something we want to talk a little bit about. We've been working on for some time. It's not coming up just now because of the challenges that we're dealing with, but it's actually fortunate perhaps that should we need those dollars that this is ripe and then we'll continue to work on additional restructuring ideas. I'm various other funds that I think have some merit for y'all's consideration. So some fund restructuring concepts are really part of phase two. Phase three actually moves us then into some of the departmental reductions. We have asked all of our departments mid-year to start looking at things that we could do to reduce our cost. Again, just like families and small businesses are doing right now, how can we eliminate some cost and get us to where we need to be? We asked departments for what we called voluntary reductions, things that made sense to them, things that we weren't just kind of in a blunt force way trying to remove, but something that they could manage between now and the end of the year. We also asked for some pretty bold reductions in my time at the city we've never asked for cuts this deep, but we've asked that departments to identify between 10 and 25% expenditure reductions. and we have some preliminary data on that. As you can imagine, many of those ideas are not very good ideas. So we're trying to bridge the gap for a little bit, see what additional information comes forth. And as we prepare the budget for FY21, some of those 10% and 25% ideas may need to be actualized based on our experience. But right now I'm optimistic that we don't have to go that far. So I want to tap the brakes on on that just yet. But to give you a perspective on how that looks, these are all the various kind of key department areas. And you can see across the board, we have departments identifying 2, 3, 4, 5, 6% reductions. I do want to point out a couple of areas though that are worthy of mention, particularly our public safety areas, police and fire. Those are our largest expenditure areas. You all have heard me present before in the budget. By and large, our property tax and our sales tax pretty much pays for those two departments. In a situation like we're dealing with now, we cannot not ask for savings from those departments. So I have asked them to be a little less aggressive at least currently than some of the other departments, but nonetheless have given them a target to hit a 2% reduction between now and the end of the year, pending additional feedback. That will largely be done through sour nutrition, and through us not filling in the academies that I talked about earlier. So it will mean fewer bodies here, but we have continued a growth of additions in both areas. So if you were to look back two or three years, we're still above where we were from a staffing perspective just two and three years ago, but we may let it float back down. The other one that draws attention here in the public safety area is the dispatch area we're below 1%. That's a constant staffed organization that is the lifeline between our residents and our first responders in the field and they have a constant flow of phone calls need to run at 24 7 365. So we've taken a few modest reductions here, but we have kept their staffing full so that we can keep things refreshed and current and manageable in that situation. The other one that jumps out at Chip Perhaps is OSI, which is our Office of Strategic Initiatives, 15%. This is largely a reduction as it relates to our via program and Interesting, it's kind of a positive side side note if you if you let me say Our via service is a contracted service. It's an hourly service So when you need more you scale up when you need less you scale down you avoid fixed costs, fixed debt cost, fixed staffing cost are all avoided. And so what we've seen, we've tracked a lot of things, but with everyone staying home as you can imagine, there's a lot fewer people utilizing the service. The fact that's about, we've experienced about a two-thirds reduction, about a 70% reduction in via while everyone honors the request to stay at home. So because of the flexibility of our contract and without it with having to avoid the fixed cost of service, we've dialed down the man hours, the vehicle use hours and put savings back to the general fund in a time when we need it. And so that's what that number represents. represents. So in general in level phase three of the kind of the strategy through phases one and two we identified around $6.3 million the reductions based on kind of how we look at it portfolio wise between neighborhoods economic development and shared services. Our neighborhood area takes the highest dollar amount, but it's the lowest percentage, because that's where again, where our police and firefighters are. So we wanna make sure to try to not impact negatively, this the neighborhood services, but in our back of office and our shared services and in our economic development area, when we can save a little more money, we've hit those areas a little harder. In order to produce what we project right now is about a $1.4 million settlement to the positive. So that gives us a little bit of wiggle room as we track this data between now and the end of the year or month to month. We may go through that really pretty quickly, or if we find that we've been too assertive here, it may be a way that we can come back and turn some of the things on that we've turned off. And so to be a little more specific about some of the things that we've turned off, I wanna make sure you all understand. Citywide, we have held all positions vacant for the remaining year requiring city manager approval. Just to give you an order of magnitude, we have 94 general fund positions that are either current or projected to be vacant this fiscal year and another 51 and other funds between water and storm water and grant funds, etc. So a total of 154 positions are subject to this freeze. That will have some service impact. We're going to work hard to minimize that, but when you have 154 positions that you can't fill, asking others to step up and make up the difference is a significant ask. We also have identified areas from freezing our Cooper Street corridor study. The savings from VIA that I alluded to earlier, some street light painting, part time, jazz reduction because the court areas are doing less activity. Our health inspection contract, we're going to go an in-source future. We're going to look to eliminate our Bureau of Veritas contract and do it more with in-house staffing. And then based on certain building closures, we've been able to lower in a VIA Esquay, we've dialed down the contract at hours because we don't need to be cleaning libraries and rec centers to the level that they were cleaned before because they've been closed over the last month and depending on what happens here in the future, we'll dictate when they're able to come back online. Reductions and license licenses for software and various computer pieces. We also have some limited rec center hour reductions. Of course, right now all the rec centers are closed, so it's 100% reduction. But if we do get into a situation where we're able to turn this back on, compared to where we would normally be, we've got some hours reduced in the senior center New York of 12 12 hours a week. Dodie Lindwreck Center of six hours a week. Cliff Nelson at 14 hours a week. Houston Smith Senior Center seven hours a week and senior Eunice at six hours a week. Those are mostly the latter afternoon times so that we're able to keep the activities going in the morning and through lunch and then as things kind of peel off in the mid to late afternoon, we're looking to curtail those hours. Additionally, in the phase three reductions, we have identified and I forget the alphabet soup here, but CES is Convention Event Services Fund and don't forget, I told you that's one that I'm worried about. So we've identified some additional reductions there. SWUF is stormwater utility fund. We've have identified some savings there, although I don't think we're gonna need it nearly as aggressively as in some other areas. SMF is street management fund, or street maintenance fund. And that's just because of lower sales tax. Lower sales tax coming in means lower street work and so we have to make some adjustments there and then PPF is the part performance fund. The other one that I told you that I had some specific concerns about that we needed to lower some expenditures in. So what that looks like in some of those departments is lowering our raw water purchases, freezing vehicle maintenance and purchases sidewalk contracts, freezing vehicle maintenance and purchases, sidewalk contracts, reducing street maintenance contracts, reducing rec center hours, reducing pull hours, probably delaying the restaurant opening at the Texas Ranger golf course. I think we'll be in a situation where the clubhouse will be able to open as far as golf transactions and golf carts, but the operational element of the the banquet facility and restaurant we probably want to put on hold till times get better and then some adjustments in the Lake Arlington rental operation as well as light up Arlington and you know this is when we might want to re-evaluate when the time comes I think it was put here because the concern about social distancing and what that might mean for our summertime activities and of course you all know that's a signature program here in Arlington as it relates to light up Arlington and the Fourth of July parade. And we'll just have to watch that as we get closer. It's not a high dollar amount. It is about a $30,000 expenditure and we're not really looking at reducing that because of the expense. It's more so thinking it's just going to be natural because of social distancing requirements should they still be in place. But we'll monitor that and determine later on if we're able to do that. That gets me through some of the phase three levels as we kind of turn this picket down and then moving into phase four and five. There's a couple other areas that we're really looking at. Use of reserves, we have had very strong fiscal management here that we've been able to save dollars specifically, for example, in a business continuity reserve, $4 million. Right now, I mean, what we're doing now is trying to figure out how to provide business continuity. That's exactly what this fund would potentially be needed for. We don't want to start with that fund. We want it to kind of be the next step because what we need to do is make sure that our adjustments are structurally balanced. I can't continue to have expenditures going run to redirection and just throw a bunch of dollars in it and disconnect the structural balance. So I have to bring the recurring dollars and recurring expenditures in the line. But here we have put some cash forward in the forms of the part fee adjustment and some other things with the gas pipeline, et cetera, but should we need more liquidity? The business continuity reserve is one. We also have the reserve dollars that are available and we're going to have to have a lot of money to do with the money. We're going to have to have a lot of money to do with the money. We're going to have to have a lot of money to do with the money. We're going to have to have a lot of money to do with the money. We're going to have to have a lot of money to do with the money. We're going to have to have a lot of money to do with the for potentially a rainy day. Clearly it's a rainy day. But what, again, I want to make sure we're doing is making sure we are structurally sound and that we save these dollars for kind of the last effort that we need to make. We're looking at making a change in our policy for light duty work to equalize that a little bit. That right now we kind of give somebody the whole day for a four hour offset. We want to make sure a whole day equals eight hours and that will provide us long term some financial relief where eight hours equals eight hours. And then in phase five unfortunately we're taking a look at our furlough and layoff policies and what that may need to take a look at again going back to the structural soundness of what we need to do. All that said in phases one through five, we're always on the scan, especially now with the CARES Act and potentially a bill number four and maybe some activity in Austin. I don't know. We will watch all those sources into the degree that we can identify any of those sources to bring them into our city, to offset any of these things that we're having to do to balance our budget. We will do so, and we'll keep you advised in that way. So how does all that look in the big scheme of things? When you put it all together and part of that feathering together, that blended strategy, What we have tried to do is minimize the impact on our existing employees. So about less than $2 million, the blue shaded areas, the employee impact, that's largely the raises that are wage-based right now. Keeping that in mind, I need to tell you that we also need to pay attention to certain expenditures in this area that we're seeing a unique dynamic occur. So as the economy adjusts, we have in our health program what's created, quote, a life event. And so if someone loses their job and they were not on our health program, they are now able to come during mid-year because they've had a life event and add their spouse or add their children to our program. That will be an additional cost that we're going to have to monitor and it may affect some of these dollars. We also have to watch our workers' insurance program. We expect to see some, some click up in claims there because we took a pretty bold action at the very beginning of this, as the federal government put out a program to protect employees from coronavirus and the negative financial impacts of that. We had to make a decision that that wouldn't really fit our first responders, but it wasn't right to not cover our first responders. So since they were not gonna be able to be fit nicely in that program, instead what we said was we're gonna presume that any kind of COVID-related illness that they may have is work related and they're covered under our workers comp program instead. That action may lead to some click up and insurance costs for us, but it was the right thing to do as it relates to the people that were asking to go out front and to be in some of those pictures you saw earlier, going into buildings that we know has COVID all over the place. And so we took those actions to shore up and ploy impact. In the moving with me clockwise, the green area, these represent the quote, city wide reductions that we took, which were some of those initial cuts back on May the 14th. The financial restructuring options there in red, which actually brings some cash to the deal that are not structurally balanced candidly. But it's cash to help blend in this overall strategy. And then the last area in the dark blue to the upper quadrant is the departmental budget reductions of low over $7.7 million altogether identifying right now a little over $20 million worth of reductions. We have a few more things that we can bring to the table as things challenge us more. If they do, going back to the furlough and layoff discussions that we'll bring to the table as things challenges more if they do. Going back to the furlough and layoff discussions that we'll be preparing for additional financial restructuring concepts that we're gonna bring to you potentially later this spring. We'll be watching that federal and state money as well as the reserve dollars that I was talking about. So that's the general fund position and that was our heaviest lifting. That's what we really had to do and we tried to be blended and measured but yet achieve what we needed to achieve. That said we have some other funds and we need to achieve some things there as well. In the water area it's a fund that I feel is in pretty good shape but to let you know how some things are working. From first quarter we had about a $22,000 positive ending balance that was projected to make an adjustment based on the second quarter data we are proposing to not make the transfer in from our Convention of Vent Services Fund. Why? Because I told you our challenge with the Convention of Vent Services Fund earlier. It's one of those areas that I'm concerned about deferring that transfer into water and managing that by lowering our water departments renewal and rehab activities by that same amount is manageable and it also keeps renewal and rehab at almost $17 million this year. Cash fund did renewal and rehab and it maintains all water reserves at their current levels. Convention of Event Services Fund that I was alluding to you earlier about. At the end of the first quarter we were looking at about an $853,000 dollar positive balance. This has been the area that we've hit, been hit the most. So hotels, certain ones close down, certain occupancies dropping from 70 and 80% to 5 and 10% No cowboys no rangers no six flags no hurricane harbor no esports none of those activities so really hard hit fund going from an 800,000 dollar projected balance to a 4.3 million dollar projected negative number how we're adjusting for that? Talked a little bit about the transfer from water. We would also not make a transfer of a large enough amount to the general fund of $1.1 million. I have asked Mr. Price at the CVB to lower his amount that we compensate the CVB for their marketing efforts by $500,000 to his credit. He's already doubling down on that and he's identified that $500,000 and he's working his way towards a million as far as activities because we know we're going to continue to have to really watch this fund. We've asked our Convention Center to lower $400,000 worth of operational expenditures. We've suspended one-time investments in the facility. We've also pulled down the remaining utility reserve maintenance of $200,000 to balance that fund. This will need to continue to be watched as we get data month to month on hotel tax. But for right now, this gives us a place to show the light at the end of the tunnel and how to balance that particular fund. In the street maintenance area, as I alluded to earlier, the only real impact here is less sales tax. Less sales tax simply means less street maintenance. And again, in the way I talked earlier about VIA, we have contracts, we can lower our contracted amounts, less milling overlay, less crack seal, less of those kinds of activity and still be able to manage that fund to the black. And so that one I think is very manageable for us to hit right now looking to reduce our contracted street maintenance fund contracts of a little less than $2 million based on the impacts that we are projecting. In the fleet fund, I alluded to it earlier. We were able to save a little money on fuel. We're also deferring vehicle costs and just like a family that is dealing with issues. Hold on a second. Where did I go? There we go. On the fleet, now it's not the time to go out and buy the new car, right? At least until later in the year when the economy turns around and so we've put all of our new car acquisitions on hold. How that saves us about $680,000 to balance that fund. Fleet is an ongoing challenge with this, particularly with police cruisers. So this is an area that we're gonna need to find a way to come back and revisit at the current time. Otherwise, we've created an imbalance, a structural imbalance in our police cruiser replacement schedule. And those guys, like you know, run those vehicles wheels off and we need to keep them current as best we can. In the part performance area, we were already projecting being under budget in that area by $1.2 million. Things regarding the rec centers, Lake Arlington golf course has been closed because of a, I think a water or sewer pipeline that has to cut across it. So that has impacted those revenues. And we project that it's gonna continue to worsen through the remaining part of the year. So we have estimated through the fund, the Park Fee Fund that we have on your agenda tonight to balance that account out with a $3.9 million transfer from the Park Fee Fund. And we'll continue to refine that in the months coming. So again, just from a ledger sheet perspective, how does that look? And we'll continue to monitor that number. And then starting to wrap up, and I appreciate your patience for a long presentation, but there's a lot going on, as you can imagine. Other funds that required us to pay some attention to are communication services fund. We project to have a positive ending balance, no adjustments necessary, IT fund. We project to have a positive ending balance, no adjustments necessary, IT fund. We've suspended that $1 million in projects that I talked about, so the savings are crude to our general fund, which leaves us with a positive ending balance, no further adjustments expected. Document services has a current positive balance, no adjustments, stormwater has a positive balance, no adjustments expected. And then finally, in the dead area for a debt service, we have positive ending balances, no current adjustments expected, and then also in our debt service for our other funds, as it relates to both the venues, water utilities, and stormwater. All reserves and revenues are good in those funds, all good right now, no adjustments currently projected. So with that, I appreciate your patience and attention to this, and would again like to thank the staff, all of our department heads and key leaders, Mike and his team to help us come up with the various ideas and approaches that hopefully make this manageable and absorbable by you all and our public. And I'm not sure our work is done, but this is a good place to start and we will now monitor very routinely and bring back further adjustments for your consideration depending on what we may need to do. And I'll take whatever questions you all may have. Questions? Mr. Peale. Mr. Peale. I'd like to say thank you for this very detailed presentation and outline of what alternatives, what our situation is. This is the thing that has been keeping me awake at night and worried. Maybe it's also as part of being a new council member and still getting, you know, one's arms around the entire budget process. And whenever we talk about this, I like the phased approach to where we can do triage on what needs to be done. This analysis was done as you stated from the beginning, assuming no financial assistance coming from any of the relief programs out there. So that becomes a different calculation that you'll work with us on. If we do get some financial assistance from external sources, where we start preserving and not cutting versus where we do cut. Right? Yes, sir. We've been looking for smoke signals where we do cut, right? Yes, sir. We've been looking for smoke signals, if you will, from Austin and Washington. We haven't really seen any yet. Until we get some feedback on some direct lifelines, we're going to assume that we need to manage the situation our own. The same way everybody else is managing and we're making these necessary steps. But if that changes, it does change the calculus and we would be back to tell you about what things we would do differently if that's the result. Dr. Nunez. Yes. Can you hear me? Yes. I'll try to talk to me in a little bit more detail about changing our debt service. Right now you mentioned that we were on a 20 year payback schedule. And I remember you talking about this last year sometime, but on average, what do other cities that approximately our size are they on a 30-year schedule or 25-year schedule? Give me a little bit more insight in that. That's mixed. It depends on your financial situation. I would tell you that we're amongst the most conservative as it relates to that, which is kind of that level principal, level interest, payment for 20 years. Then you all know that if you had a mortgage payment, you know how it usually starts with a really small principle, but a lot of interest, and then over time, that comes invert, invert. So here we're level in principle the whole time, which really makes our payment be paid off much sooner. So that's been something this organization has done for as long as I've worked for the city. Very conservative, very sound. The rating agencies love it because what it lets us do is pay off all of our bonded indebtedness in about 12 years, about 11 and a half years. So that said, there are a lot of other cities out there that are not as conservative as we are and some would structure a debt to be a 30-year note instead of a 20-year note. Some might not structure it to be level principal and interest. They might structure it much like the mortgage example that I just alluded to where the principal is more on the back end than on the front end. Some would also look at structuring things more potentially like a balloon note type payment, because the state's constitution, I think, only requires you to retire 2% of your debt in any given year. So you can make much smaller payments in the beginning to have bigger payments in the end. Of course, your total true interest cost over time also then increases. So our strategy that's conservative, it saves us interest costs, which means that we're able to do more on the operating side or maybe do other projects in town. But there are a lot of cities that do different things, and I think it would correlate probably to size of city. You have a lot of cities that like to pay cash for a lot of things. I don't know that from a city of a size of us That makes a lot of sense because it doesn't really preserve what I would call Intergenerational equity. It's not really fair for generations And I let's kind of high for looting, but it makes sense in the sense why should all of us today pay for a center street rebuild when people are going to use that street for 50 years And everybody who uses that street over 50 years should pay for a center street rebuild when people are going to use that street for 50 years. And everybody who uses that street over 50 years should pay for the benefit from that street. So keeping that intergenerational equity is something that's also been part of our challenge. So the idea is that we have, if we go forward with our capital program, which I'm optimistic, we will be able to do so. It just becomes, which is the best model for us? the next year. So, we'll look at the payment strategy of maybe going lower on the front end. And we'll also look at the current year problem. We will solve it this year about what it's going to look like next year. But it does not balance our budget this year. So, we'll look at the payment strategy of maybe going lower on the front end. And we'll also look at the current year problem. We'll look at the current year problem. We will our budget this year. So we'll look at the payment strategy of maybe going lower on the front end. And we'll also look at the commercial paper facility, which is more again like that construction loan. If you're building a project and you borrow money, you'll do interim financing. And then you'll do permanent financing. And it's very similar to what a lot of small businesses do. They'll have an interim construction loan. They'll complete it and then they'll fix out their their debt over time and cities are able to do something like that as well. So I think that would also let us move forward with our capital program and the big issue here for us is how we shift debt service cost on the tax rate to the operating side of the tax rate. You all know that our tax rates made up of two pieces, the operations and maintenance, and then the interest in sinking fund. So to the degree that you can move the interest in sinking fund cost over to the operating side, it helps you solve the operating constraints that we currently have. But it means you do less on the debt service payment side through some type of restructuring. Thank you, Dr. Mr. Sutton. Hi, Troy. I appreciate the presentation is informed with you. My question is moving forward long term. Have we looked at departments and availability to outsource some of those services where we don't incur ongoing expenditures? robust history of privatizing resources where we can and where it makes financial sense. We've got a report that we keep an ongoing track of to show what types of services that we have that are outsourced that are significant. Anything from accounts payable that we used to have accountants in Mike shop that would do accounts payable we found a vendor that could actually do that in an outsourced way. And so we've done that to one of our largest examples is the garbage collection. A lot of cities run their own garbage service. We haven't as far as I know, like forever. So public services provides that contracted garbage service. A lot of cities run their own ambulance service, for example, in the fire department. We do that through a contracted service that provides no general fund impact. So we have a report. I can send that out to you all and kind of let you refresh how we've done some outsourced solutions in the past. That said, outsourced doesn't always work best. So like I just alluded to in the Bureau of Veritas health inspection contract. That was something we did probably about 15 years ago at a different time. It made more sense. Today it doesn't make as much sense as that contractors cost has creeped up and we would be able to do it with better responsiveness and a lower cost. So in that sense it makes sense for us to insource that function. But I'll get you all that report so you can see it but it's something that we're very active in and we keep a historical track of. Thank you. Dr. Wesley. Thank you very much for that thoughtful presentation. And I think I have a newbie kind of question. At any point, could we have access to the funds in the audience and tomorrow foundation? Yes, ma'am. You can. And we have created the program that way for that purpose. We've also made sure that the rating agencies know that that's part of our financial reserves. It's not where we would start. We would start in a layered approach, just like I've alluded to. And I would probably put the Tomorrow Foundation in kind of my phase strategy, more like strategy six or seven. But could we, yes ma'am, the program has created that way. You're able to do so. And part of the reason we have a AAA rating is because we have that. And we've been getting kind of two for one benefit in the sense We're able to put good out in the community, but we're also able to use it as financial reserves for our balance sheet that the rating Interest is really like seeing Thank you very much Okay, Dr. Myers Thank you, Mayor. I'll try to thank you again for that thorough details feathering strategy. I do have one question for you. It correct me if I'm wrong. I thought I heard you say that there was approximately 154 positions that would be deferred. And if that's the case, I'm just curious in terms of obviously we're always wanting to serve our public in the best way possible. Would there be any areas that you would be most concerned about the holding off of positions in? It's probably something I need to put a little additional thought about. Nothing in that area jumps out at me is real lightning rod concerned. It's something where everybody in the organization is going to cinch their belt up and absorb some areas and kind of look out for each other. But I'll need to take a closer look at that position list and give you a different update at a later time. OK, thank you, sir. Mr. Peele. Trey, I've received some questions. I need some help responding to. One is, can you kind of give a brief explanation of why this current situation does not negatively impact our ability to service the debt for the sports facilities we have bonds out for? And then secondly, of having served in the last bond committee, we issue about 200 million worth of bonds every four years or so. Will the potential downgrade through no fault of our own of our bonding rating affect programs that were projects that were in the last bond initiative that was issued and will decrease our ability to issue 200 million every four years as part of our bond program. So stadiums and bond program. Okay. So first on the stadiums, the answer to that question is based on the way our financial program was structured, we have an inclining debt payment stream on those bonds. They're staggered maybe some way that I was alluding to and Dr. Unia's this question earlier, smaller in the beginning and then it climbs up and then it levels out. In the meantime, we've been collecting significant tax payments from hotel tax. The rent on the stadium has now started as well as the sales tax. So we have accrued a large amount of payments that will be able to cover our debt on that stadium for the next couple of years as I sit here today with not another dollar coming in. Now if things don't do well for two or three years then it's a different situation right but right now we have a we have a plan we've got adequate reserves and based on how we financially structured, we are sound and we thank Mike and his team for being thoughtful about all of that because that plan has made this much more flexible for us in that way. As it relates to the general debt projects, it's probably a little too early to say on that just yet. What we're talking about right now is a way to continue to move forward on the program that you all just approved in March. How we deal with next year's capital program will depend heavily on how the advalorem tax shows up this summer and fall and how sales tax rebounds. If those shrink or don't rebound in an adequate way it will absolutely shrink our ability on future debt issuances which means you take a program that was maybe four or five years and you make it five or six years you start to spread the projects out a little bit it's early to make that call right now I think we're focusing on a solution for our current program which would let those projects get going and then late summer and fall, we'll be talking about kind of the next cycle. But right now, it's just a little early until we see how the performance of the economy is and the latter half of the year and early next year. And real quick, my mom wants to know if this means that the senior center opening will be delayed. So two pieces to that. We have on all of our projects, we are continuing on anything that we have architectural engineering planning for, those are all continuing. And that is the effort right now in the senior center is in the design, the architecture, and the engineering of the site. That's gonna take us at least 12 months. That work is continuing. The work on downtown Fire Station number one, I think you all got to see some recent images and drawings of that. That planning is continuing. So the senior center, whether or not it has to wait a little longer or if we have to come up with a different financial strategy for that, we'll again be dependent upon how the economy rebounds this fall and early next year will have to assess that situation but we won't be ready to have that conversation till at least next March. Miss Capehart. Thank you, Mayor. Try and thank you for the presentation. Question I have is with regard to canceling both the fire training academy and the police academy and then the natural attrition we get within our uniform personnel, what is your projection of how out of balance we might be there? I feel really good about that. We have at our right now we have our highest employment by numbers, by headcount, in the police department, and in the fire department that I've seen in years. So from a manpower or person power, we're at the height of fulfilling kind of our authorized strength. So what we'll do is we'll just curve that off, we'll flatten that curve, and we'll go a little more sideways to letting it come down a little lower than we would otherwise have let occur. But we are still going to be above say, manpower staffing from say two or three years ago. So it's in that vein where we would look at staffing data that might be comparable to what it was just two years ago as opposed to what it was a decade ago. Thank you, Troy. Other questions? Yes, Mayor, this is Helen. Yes, Ms. Moly. I think I don't know how to ask the question maybe. If you can hold your card up. Oh, okay. Or you can raise your hand. I can see that too. Okay. So this comes back a little bit to what Dr. Nunez was talking about. And then do we have a, you know, Arlington's always been really, really conservative both in its capital funding and in really our overall tax rate because we have about the lowest in the entire Metroplex. And I know that about a third of our tax rate goes toward capital expenditures. Is it, you know, have we, are we, I guess the question is, have we looked at that ratio against other cities and are, do other cities use that full third for capital, or are they using less or a lot more? Because I think that would give us some sense of where we might want to go with this by next year, because I, my gut feel is it could take us a year for this to turn around. The other impact that I know will have is property taxes. I think we'll be all right in the fiscal year that starts October 20 because we'll have tax funds from January 1 and this year. But our assessed values could decrease next year, particularly in some of the commercial sides that have been really damaged like. Multifamily could be affected. Certainly retail will be. And as those values go down, we're gonna see a drop in our property taxes too. So we'll have two offsets, but maybe by then our sales tax will pick back up. But I just wanted to ask the question, do we know where we sit relative to what cities normally do? Do they usually have about a third of their annual total expenditures dedicated to capital? We do. We have tons of benchmarking data relative to that question. And the answer to it is there are people above us and people below us. Some people are much more aggressive on the debt financing strategies than we are. And some cities are much more aggressive on the pay as you go cash-funded strategies than we are. We try to find a balance in there to fund things with cash that need to be because there's shorter term investment, those kinds of things, but we also want to have that intergenerational equity on streets and water lines and stuff that I alluded to earlier. I do know that our ratios as it relates to debt issuances are something that are in our financial policies that you all approve I think every year. And they are part of why bond rating agencies view our credit so favorably, because we have policies that are in their mind in alignment with prudent financial management, and we follow them. And everything that we do is within those parameters. So we don't only benchmark what other cities do, but we have listened over the years to our bond-reading agencies. It used to be, for example, back in the 70s and 80s when this city was really booming. It was like 45% of our tax rate was operating and 55% was dead, because the city was building. We had to build things everywhere. Now as a mature city, it's more like 80-20. It's more 75 80-20. It's more 75-25. Those kinds of things where we need to renew and add certain capacity, but most of our maintenance is to staffing and operating costs. So we've got good data on all that, and I would be comfortable to tell you that we're a good conservative solid player right in the middle of the pack relative to what S&P and Moody's and Fitch would all tell you we need to be at and but you'll find others who who do it on either end a lot more levered or a lot less levered. But what you're also saying is that we we do have just a little bit of flexibility even if it were for a short period of time, say a year or two. We do. And how we looked at our capital overall. We do. And now we're going to be. Now we're going to be. The projects are not spending the capital, which is one option. Yes. Or spending it in a different manner or right now I'm sure the bond markets are like everything else. Our overall interest rate will be lower. Should be. Yes, ma'am. All those points are relevant and they're part of what I'm addressing in kind of the financial restructuring of how we would handle our capital going forward for this bond sale. All those things are very legitimate alternatives. Okay, any other questions? Mr. Yelverton, I appreciate you and the staff looking at the budget here. I want to draw together two presentations that we had. One, you go back to Miss Whitman's and Mr. Warren's presentation there in which they talked about the resources that are now hopefully coming through stimulus packages that have already been passed plus the fourth stimulus package there because that is where we need to find relief therefore not only our city, but our city government but also our businesses and our individuals. The federal government is working hard on that right now. I hope through this presentation you can see that the city doesn't have that money. We're doing everything we can to keep the trash continue to be picked up and to take care of police and fire in our streets. And so that is something that I hope that our citizens can glean from this, that we are going to help. I appreciated what Ms. Wickman said that we're going to be helping our individual citizens and our businesses to find these resources. And then in addition to that, our Arlington Chamber of Commerce has been working very hard there to help and be a good partner in making that happen. Also, this is a very, I think, calculated approach here to take it step by step so that we still have variables that are out there, including what the potential revenue may or may not be that are still yet to be known and what relief we might be able to get through federal stimulus packages there through it. And I appreciate the thoughtfulness. I also appreciate that it was phase five before we got to our employees and our staff, which are our greatest asset that we have here obviously and we're trying to work to save our staff here and they are working to save us there in turn and we're in this together. I think it's a you know we we throughout our city are in this together but the world is in this. This is happening all over the world now and trying to adjust. And we are drawing upon our experiences, but yet there are a lot of uncharted waters. And so we, and by the way, Council, thank you for your very thoughtful questions there. I thought they were very relevant to what we're all hearing from our citizens there. But now we have a responsibility to be ambassadors to share what we're doing. And so our citizens can understand. And also those of you who are either watching or listening to this council meeting, we need you to share the information there that you've heard here throughout. information there that you've heard here throughout. In addition to that, I also thought it was very thoughtful because the Arlington Tomorrow Foundation was established to be able to benefit our community for generations to come. And I think it is one of our last resorts and especially it has been such a valuable tool already in the years of its existence. And so we have that down at the bottom. But the other part of it is that better days are ahead. And there are going to be some things that rebound quickly. There will be others that do not. But I am very grateful to be serving with this council that we have because I think you're very thoughtful and also putting in the time to study, to be informed and all of us are having to do that and studying and learning and drawing upon our experience. But we also have a very skilled staff that not only is drawing from their own experiences, they are also learning and Mr. Yevrton led off there with the fact that we are able to draw from the experiences that are of others and expertise of some of the national and international leaders there to be able to help make these decisions. So we've got to be flexible and nimble, which Arlington always has been. And we will continue to do that. Also, thank you, Mr. Yovarton, for being willing to look at what positions there may be critical, because in addition to a medical recovery, we have an economic recovery and there may be some of these positions there that are frozen that may be key in our economic recovery. And in that awesome to have a city manager that would say after he and Mr. Finley have put in tons of time and a lot of our other staff, but I really appreciated the fact that he was willing to go back and look again there with it and I appreciate your flexibility there and also being patient with us is we try to find the areas that are going to help us the best in both our medical recovery and our economic recovery here of our community. So thank you, Mr. Yolverton and Mr. Finley. We never say thank you enough. Thank you to your staff because there's never a time when you're not on. When we're making money, we're needing you. And then when we're trying to save money and cut expenses, we need you. You're such a valuable part and please pass that on there to your staff there. And while I am so impressed with this presentation here because it is thoughtful and it also is a stepped approach so that we are prepared with whatever comes along. So with that, we'll turn it back over to Mr. Yolford and he has some closing comments. I just appreciate those comments and the support of all the staff's efforts mayor. But would also let you know that we'll be asking for your favorable consideration on the Park Fee adaptation on tonight's agenda to help fulfill a part of this plan. And then I believe Ms able to continue to be able to continue to be able to continue to be able to continue to be able to continue to be able to continue to be able to continue to be able to continue to be able to continue to be able to continue to be able to continue to be able to continue to be able to continue to be able to continue to be able to continue to be able to continue to be able to continue to bring more to the to the to the table for y'all's consideration and we'll ask for favorable approval on both those items. So okay. Thank you and that leads right into the landfill lease modifications and we'll turn to Miss Jennifer Whitman. And actually, Mayor, I have a quick we need to do a quick technical change. You all may remember in the council and perhaps some of our audience that two weeks ago we were unceremoniously dumped out of our meeting when we hit the four hour mark and so we are coming up on that right now. If you all could wait we think Matt can just reset that but I just when we may have to have the council disconnect and reconnect but Matt's gonna try something right now if that doesn't work we'll go ahead and have the council just reconnect. It's not a break it would just be about a minute or so for people to do that. So Matt go ahead. you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you Okay. We're going to come back with our work session of our City Council. There and our next item is the landfill lease modifications and Ms. Nora Coronado. The senior officer of asset management will be making our presentation. Ms. Coronado. Thank you, Mayor. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Before I dive into this presentation, we have a guest with us today that I would like to introduce. This is Richard King. Richard King is the Texas area president for Republic Services. And he's joining us today. Good to have you, Mr. King. Appreciate it. Thank you. Okay. Here we go. So before we get in here, I'm going to go to the other area. Okay. So before we get in here, I wanted to just provide a brief orientation of our landfill. It is one of only two in Taren County and only one of six municipal solid waste landfills in the metro area. Besides Arlington, other cities that use the landfill include Hearst, Ulyss, Bedford, North Luchin Hills, South Lake, Pentego, and Mansfield and some outer communities of Fort Worth. Jennifer, I'm sorry to interrupt. Could you ask Miss Coronado to speak closer to the microphone? I've turned my volume up virtually all the way and can barely hear her. Is this better? Yes, thank you. Sure. So this is an aerial view of the landfill, which is west of Collins and north of Greenoaks. The total permitted area is about 800 acres, but only half of it is for the waste footprint. Okay, thank you. The other half, the other half of 800 acres are wetlands so not the areas. Is that better? Thank you. The landfill does include mulching operations in concrete recycling operations. The landfill does include mulching operations and concrete recycling operations. There's also a waste to energy facility that captures the methane generated at the landfill and processes it into renewable natural gas. Also to you a bit tidbit there is about a two-mile PVC pipe around the northeastern down to the southeastern sector that provides is a geodirizing system. Also, the landfills comprise, as you can see here, of two general areas, what we call the East disposal area and the West disposal area. The blue line that I've drawn there between what seems to be brush and trees, the canopy there, is actually hurricane Creek and that Creek intersects both of these mountains. The landfill is owned and operated by the city. It was once operated by the city but now Republic Services operates it on behalf of the city. The bottom slide helps to kind of depict the evolution of our operations. Back in 2004, we have the employee base and expenditures and revenues for the landfill. After outsourcing to Republic Services, it was a cost-cutting, a cost-of-boyance measure, but also an opportunity to generate funds for the general fund. And as you can see there there now operate in Republic Services. So this slide shows an abbreviated history of the landfill and it has some significant milestones that I'll just want to touch on a little bit. The section between 2004 and 2015. Now in 2005 the city entered into a lease agreement with Republic Services to operate the landfill. As part of that lease agreement, Republic Services agreed to at its own cost to seek an amendment to the state permit to expand the capacity of the landfill. The goal was to expand westward, westward, increase the life of the site. The Republic Service has started that effort in about 2008 with an archeological evaluation. Around 2012 is when the TCQ, the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality, approved the Department of Amendment to expand Westward. So this is a high level overview of the current and the proposed lease modification. This shows the most substantive parts of the lease agreement, not all of the agreements, so we'll just touch on these. The current will start with the current term. The current term is from 2005 to 2045 with a provision allowing an extension. As I mentioned earlier, Republic sought and got approved a permit modification to expand Westward. That was in 2014. That extended the life of the site to about 2060. So there's a disconnect between the end of the lease term and now which is what is now currently the life of the site. So during the past couple of years that we've been talking with Republic Services about the life of sight and continuing operations, they brought forward an idea for our consideration. They have another idea to expand the capacity in the life even further. And the way to accomplish that is with rerouting Hurricane Creek, which is admin changes and helps minimize environmental risk as well. So with successful relocation of Hurricane Creek, Republic Services estimates that the life of the site extend to about 2075. So on this comparison table the left column, Haledir Yellow is the current lease agreement. The middle column they're shaded in gray has the terms and the right is what would transpire with the modified lease. We'll start with the guaranteed minimum tonage. This will still be a part of the modified lease and would increase by 2%, so not much changing there. The max yearly tonage would also increase by about 2%. The maximum elevation is the maximum height that is permitted for the landfill, which would not change. However, the peak or the high point would shift westward. And I'll show that in a couple of slides. Currently, the adjustment factor is a weighted calculation of three indices by the US Department of Labor, which is labor fuel and equipment. The adjustment factor is applied to the usage fee or what you would call a host fee or rent If you will that the city receives as well as a portion of the per ton rate City of city receives as revenue. So now we get a portion of the per ton rate. Ruralty is calculated on a per ton basis over the years, the average of the adjustment factors has been about 2% which is what is being proposed in the modified lease. The annual usage fee that I just mentioned, the host fee slash rent, that also would change in the modified lease. That's where we would apply the 2% adjustment factor. So that would escalate or increase 2% each year. Currently under the existing lease agreement, there are four royalty categories. Over the course of operations from 2005 to current, those royalty categories have averaged to be about 14% of gross revenues of the landfill operations. Under the modified lease agreement, we would, the city would receive 15% of gross revenues. We benchmarked this rate with the help of a consultant and the proposed rate is on par in slightly better, and the proposed rate is on par and slightly better since the city would still receive the host fee, the rent on top of the 15% of gross revenues. As I mentioned earlier, we do have a waste to energy facility at the landfill. That is with a third party energy developer by the name of Renovar. Renovar was president at the landfill in 1999, preceding the Republic Agreement, and over time, operations of the facility have evolved. And so we've modified that agreement, and we want to be able to acknowledge and work with Republic to reflect that in the modified lease. Closure and post closure care. So if you saw on the first, the title slide, that nice aerial view, that's actually the southeastern corner of the landfill. It's closed. It has what is called a final cap. So there will be no more waste on top of that amount. It is landscaped. It's got some nice drainage features, some commercial irrigation. So that is what the closure and post closure fund does to help cover those cost. So the city holds the state permit to the landfill and that would not change. The city is responsible for closing the site and care the facility after closure, which is about 30 years. Under the current agreement, Republic Services is required to set aside funds into a trust fund that the city access has to pay for closure and post closure care costs. Under the modified lease, Republic Services will become responsible for closure and post-closure care and we do away with the trust. In lieu of the trust, we would require Republic Services to provide financial insurance for closure and post-closure costs. The TCQ allows various mechanisms to meet this obligation including a surety bond, a letter of credit, insurance, corporate and a corporate guarantee. Each tool has its own set of criteria and specified required language that is set by TCQ. Under the existing lease agreement, the city also receives an annual allotment of 32,000 tons per year and that is escalated but about 1.3%. That remains unchanged. And in fact, the carryover, there's carryover that from the two proceeding years that would continue as well. For the Arlington rates, under the existing agreement, Arlington residents and businesses are eligible for discounted rates, which will review in a couple of slides in more detail. Finally, one-time payments. When the City and Republic Service assigned the lease in 2005, the company made one-time payments to the city totaling $16.3 million for what was then the anticipated life. 15 million was paid up front. Another 500,000 was paid during the transition period. And then 800,000 was paid to community organizations. With the modified lease, there would be an additional $13.8 million paid for to the city. $6.5 million will be paid up front, which is roughly half of what is available in the trust fund now. An $800,000 balance related to the city's installation and improvements to the gas system in 2017 would be covered. And then another $6.5 million would be paid out to the city by 2045. So I want to talk a little bit more detail about elevation. This is an aerial view of the current design of the landfill, which is approved by the TCEQ. Again, this shows the two very distinct disposal areas. The highest point on the east side or the EDA is 707 feet. On the west side, the peak is 759 feet. The graphic at the bottom is a cross-section detail of this design. The black dotted line that you can see there is the existing topography and the green dotted line is the elevation under the current design. Hurricane Creek on the cross-section that you can see there is identified where that dip is. So on this aerial, we see what is being proposed as the new design, which would need to be approved by TCQ. So the point is still 759 feet. That does not change under the modified lease agreement. Only that the peak has moved over slightly to the west about 800 feet. That is the major difference. I also wanted to show with a photograph of what that kind of looks like. This is at Cascade Sky within Veridian Community, which is to our east, and that is the landfill there with, you can see the southeast corner is nice and green out and as they're filling in and capping the north eastern corner, that is coming in there too. So this view would basically remain the same under the new design. So earlier I mentioned that residents and businesses can use the landfill at a discounted rate. Currently the city has a process that allows residents to use a landfill for free of charge two times a year. The modified lease would formally establish this process as a program under the lease agreement. In January 2020, the city after some work with the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city and the city have matched the year current driver's license to your water bill account. And that is all it takes to redeem the use of the landfill two times a year. The water utility system that it matches to deducts the coupons as you redeem them. From January to March of this year, the number of redeem coupons increased overall by about 43% for the same time period last year. The number of coupons redeemed has been steady the past couple of years, so we attribute the spike to the new paperless process. After a residence redeemed their 22 coupons, they pay a $7 vehicle or per load rate. By comparison, non-Arlington residents currently pay about $85 per vehicle. Residents pay $35 per vehicle or load with a pickup truck with a trailer greater than eight feet in length. Now currently under the lease agreement, the city does not receive revenue from these transactions. the city does not receive revenue from these transactions. So this chart shows what is being proposed under the modified lease. The number of coupons for residents would increase to three a year. Also, the per vehicle or loadway would increase to $8. From the non-Republic Services would submit to a city of rate increase for consideration and approval by City Council. For the $35 per vehicle or load rate, that, which currently does not exist under the existing lease. Commercial businesses in Arlington are required to use the services provided by the public's hauling division under the city's franchise agreement. However, there are some small businesses which cannot be accommodated by the agreement, so they need to be able to use the landfill on their own. so they need to be able to use the landfall on their own. Several years ago, Republic agreed with staff to charge Arlington's businesses the $35 residential rate. The average number, and looking at the historical data, the average number of commercial vehicles that pay this $35 ten rate is about 18 a year. So under the least modification, the public has proposed establishing this as a formal race structure and also increasing it by 2% to $37 approximately. We're working on a way with the public to establish a method to identify businesses that would be eligible for this rate. And just for a point of comparison, businesses outside of Arlington pay about $152 per load. So that's about the tonnage and revenue both actual and projected. The data for actual begins in calendar year 2006. For the purposes of projections, republic is using conservative projections to estimate a half a percent growth in volume increase every year. For revenue, they're using a 1 to 10% conservative growth in price every year. I do want to point out though that in the last year, the pricing in the market has increased by about 5%. That is due to, as you saw in the earlier slide, that there's only two landfills in Taren County and spaces becoming a premium. So the bottom of the slide here shows the sum of actual revenues received to date and that again is a usage host fee the rent as you would call it and then also the royalties. On the right hand side that is the projection based on republics estimates. And with that, I would be happy to take any questions. Any questions from Ms. Coronado? Mr. Peale. A hard time with my computer. One thing I've learned in the past two weeks is whatever you do, don't mess with people's trash service. So whenever we talk about and tell people in our districts what this means with them, this means to get an extra coupon to visit the, the dump every year from two to three. And there'll be a minor increase in their charge for the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the you get there's the $7 charge will go up to $8. If it's a greater load, that's when the $35 kicks in. Okay, thank you. And this is a matter of general course. If Republic has to make changes in trash service in the future like they did a couple of weeks ago, if they could let us all know a little bit quicker next time because I was badly swamped, but with people who were upset. That's just a side comment. Thank you. I wanna say something right here. No one knew that we were gonna have a 40% increase in trash being generated by our residents. And it was pretty amazing to me any business when they have a 40% increase has a tough time keeping up with it as the grocery stores did and still do there with what's going on. I actually want to commend our city and republic for making an adjustment there that actually were able to pick up the brush because I too Mr. Peel was overrun and I was very disappointed by citizens not and I actually appealed to them most of them were businessmen that complained to me and I thought now if you had a 40% increase in your business wouldn't you need a couple of weeks to respond to that and then in addition to that we know too we did not cut down on the two week or twice a week pickup on the trash It was the sticks and brush and then I love the you know the response That quick within a couple weeks. So here's one of those that we need to be going back to our citizens in Chernai This is good news folks. You didn't have to lose two week, or your twice a week pickup, and then yet look at the quick response that we had through this, because we're working all the time to keep to preserve that twice a week, but I'm with you Mr. Bill. It is the trash pickup is the most talked about thing of anything in our city. It seems like there are anything changes in it. Appreciate your question. Yes, now we'll move to Miss Cape Hard. Thank you, Mayor. And your comments, I totally agree. And I also want to give a shout out to Nora. She negotiated with the public incredibly to get the brush pick up happening pretty quickly. But I too was surprised at some of the phone calls I got about people being somewhat impatient I thought. But my question is, and I don't know if it's for Nora or Tray, but with regard to this lease modification, I remember when we did this back in 2005, Bob Bird had a lot of concern about closure and post closure. And he particularly wanted that to be the city's responsibility, mostly after post closure, because he was concerned about what that would mean and maybe while they might pass TCEQs requirements, it might not meet the standard for Arlington. So, Mr. Yeoverton, if you're around, can you speak to that for me so I get a better feel for if that's no longer the concern it was back in05? Yes, ma'am. Trey Yealverton City Manager, and I do think that's something that we'll need to make sure that we address in the least modification to define the standard of care so that it does meet in Arlington Standard and not just a TCEQ standard. I think that's a fair observation, but I also think it's a fair observation in this approach about why we as a city or a republic as a company would have dollars locked away that aren't able to be tapped for 30 or 40 years and it's just not a good, efficient use of treasury management kinds of activities. So the city does still own the landfill. We still ultimately will be responsible for it, but our vendor will have significant contractual obligations in order to maintain the level of care that would meet our definition. I'll ask Nora to make sure that those are properly defined as far as the kind of the care as it relates to neighborhood adjacency and blowing trash and mowing and those kinds of things. I think it's all something able to be contractually managed. So the least modification that's on our agenda for tonight, if we, the council goes forward and approves that, the concern that you and I just spoken about will be addressed. And we could go forward tonight. I don't. We're still working on some language man between the parties. So we're anticipating the last council meeting in April. And just whatever reason I thought it was on tonight. Yeah, the park fee adjustments on tonight. Oh, okay. Lands go would be at a future. All right. So Nora, you've heard my concern. So you've was triused direction. Yeah. Put what language is in there. So it meets more than just TCEQ Yes, ma'am. Okay. Thank you. Thank you miss y'all Yes, if I may I'd like to come back and take another Add it addition to Councilmember Peale's question as to what what would this mean to residents. And as it relates to residential collection, it really shouldn't mean anything to the residents because their garbage is going to the same location in the same manner, but what it will do is long-term ensure that Arlington has a close in haul rate for a longer period of time so that a generation from now 20 30 40 years from now our transportation cost of waste will be one of the lowest of any of the regional cities so it's going to secure long-term affordability for residential collection cost. That is to me the message for residential trash customers. Yes, Dr. Odom Wesley. Just for thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you, Nora, for the presentation for clarity. Now they're relocating the creek. And the only reason to relocate the creek is to increase capacity of the landfill. Is that true? The relocation of the creek would also help to minimize environmental risk, just because you have a body of water that flows into the Trinity Bee on two trash mouths. Now it is of course the landfill business is very highly regulated. There's monitoring wells along that. We have not had no violations, but it's a benefit in that we capture additional air space and capacity extending the life, but we also help to minimize that environmental risk. And that's being very kind to put it as a creek. It actually was relocated here some two decades or three decades ago and it's a ditch that actually functions there through it because I don't want to mislead our residents there that this is anything but a drainage tributary. Pretty accurate. Other questions? Yes, Ms. Moise. I get my speaker on. So one of the citizen groups that may have some questions are all the residents at Baridian who I hear frequently make statements regarding. And I don't think the public, just like those of us who don't work with us every day, understand that this is already a long-term engagement. But I think there's a conception by a lot of people that this goes away at the end of this contract. Can you help clarify what would happen at the end of this contract term should we not do this? I mean, we obviously have to take our trash somewhere and clarify also that it's not going to impact the size of what the residents see. But it's going to really appear to be no different than what it is now. And then we're going to continue to fill us in with grass on the side that faces for RIDI. That is correct. Over the years, the last two or three years with the City and Republic Services have attended some social events, sort of the open type air events at Veridian and we've showed them what the the east sector would look like and they were very excited to know that operations were moving westward. So right now the view that I showed in that slide that's about if we do the new design if that is approved with the modified lease that is about as high as it would go. Now if we didn't and the creek stayed where it was, we would, operations would continue to fill in there about another 70 feet, but from the vantage point of where I took that photograph, it would be a very similar profile. Mr. Yelfton, just as a follow up to that, Ms. Moise, what you would see in the future if this lease was just let to run to 2045 is the contract requires Republic to build a transfer station on site. So all the trucks that are picking up your residential and commercial garbage now would still go to the site. It would be repackaged and put on long haul vehicles to be taken out of the area to another landfill somewhere east west north south of here. And what that means is the truck traffic in that area will still continue and it also means that collection cost and transportation cost of garbage post 2045 will increase directly as a result of not being able to dispose of the garbage in that location. the police directly as a result of not being able to dispose of the garbage in that location. Thank you. That's helpful. Mr. Peale. I just want to clarify. There have been some people have talked to me about some landscaping improvements on the face of the landfill that faces a Viridian that are supposed to be implemented over time. I think some sort of tree covering and I know they already have aerosol sprayers to decrease the smell. Can you kind of just clarify that point for me because I'm not sure if I've gotten accurate information or not. Are they going to landscape the portion of the landfill that faces Viridian? Miss Kornata. Yes, my access to the slide with the landfill that faces Veridian. Miss Kornada? Yes, my exes the slide with the view. Thank you. Matthew, if you're driving, could you thank you? So that's the southeastern sector that views fine too on the title slide. That's a good photograph actually. So as you see that greening in of there, there also be some vegetation, some sturdier vegetation such as small trees that have been approved by TCEQ. That's that all should green in the trees should grow. That is the southeastern section and the northeastern section should look very similar to that. So if we're talking about the landscaping on the slope, similar to that. So if we're talking about the landscaping on the slope, given another 12 months, et cetera, we should be nicely filled in. Is that does that help answer your question? Yes, and that also prevents against erosion causing any sort of collapse of the landfill, right? Yes, of course, there's already, there's already extra measures are to the trees, of course, are helpful and beneficial as well as more aesthetically pleasing. Any other questions? Okay. So seeing no other questions there, appreciate your presentation, Ms. Colorado, Mr. King. Thank you for working with us and looking forward to successful landfill operations, Mr. King. Thank you for working with us and looking forward to successful landfill operations here in the future. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, next we move in to discussion of informal staff reports and we'll turn to Miss Sarah Stubblefield, Senior Planner, Office of Strategic Initiative, to talk to us about the 2020 Census come here in our outreach. They're on yet. Good. Sure. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. And today I have some good news for you in regard to the Census response rates in Arlington. As you know, the Census Complete Count Committee has been a 26-member citizen-based committee that's been working since January of 2019 to ensure a complete count in Arlington. The committee developed an outreach strategy that included 94 outreach activities and to date we have recorded over 110 activities which exceeds our goal. These outreach efforts include a robust social media strategy which has been led by our awesome Office of Communications. We produced four in-house videos that have over 300,000 views as of today. These four videos, one of them is multilanguage, featuring five different languages, and we have one that's entirely in Spanish, and a third that was produced in Vietnamese, and we're able to target these videos to those language speakers through our social media platforms. Obviously, the impact of the coronavirus has had a major impact on the country and the same is true for the census. To thank to the online response options, social distancing has not detracted from the ability for households to respond to the census, but it has impacted our outreach efforts, including our April 1st Census Day celebration that we had planned to host at the Youth Myth Recreation Center. The Census Bureau announced yesterday their plans to further delay field operations and our community outreach efforts, beginning no sooner than June 1st. And so they pushed the response rate deadline back from August 14th to October 31st. This means that we still have five and a half months to collect census responses throughout our community. We do have plans once public spaces are open again to have public computers available for people to respond to the census in all of our city branch library, library branches to complete their census and they can do that for free and without a library card. So we are hopeful that once everything is open up back again, we'll continue our outreach efforts in completeness. We also learned over the weekend that we have been awarded an $8,000 grant from the National League of Cities for Census outreach once we're able to get back out in the community. So thank you to all the council members who sent that opportunity our way. We were successful. We're really excited and grateful for these funds. We're planning to use the grant to purchase a tablet key ask for pop-up response centers and low response areas of the city. The Census Bureau began accepting responses on March 12th, so we're about one month into the response period, which is much longer now than we had originally anticipated. The numbers that I'll be sharing with you in this report out are updated since the version that was put in your packet because we are getting daily updates on our Census response rate. As of today, reporting yesterday's numbers, we have a 49.6% response rate across the city, and we are on track to exceed our response rate from the 2010 Census, which was 66.3%. We continue to perform higher than the national average and the state overall in addition to our regional neighbors for oreth and Dallas. Terrent County response rate is robust as well and has the 8th highest response rate for all of the counties in Texas with 50.9%. thousand are higher, Arlington ranked third in the state behind Plano and Garland and 50th in the country out of 118 cities with populations of 200,000 or higher. Because the census is able to provide this daily response rate data, we have been monitoring these trends by census tract and are developing outreach to target in our under performing areas. To date, nearly half of the 89 census tracks in Arlington have a response rate of 50% or higher, so 50% of the households and all of the individual census tracks have responded to the census. When we compare the 2020 census data to the 2010 data by Census Tract. All of our Census Tract have achieved at least 50% of their 2010 response rate. And about half of our Census Tract have achieved 75% or more of their 2010 self response rate. So that's how we know that we're able to say that we're exceeding our response rate for 2010. Three of our Census Tracks have already exceeded their response rate for 2010, and two of these are in our lowest response estimated areas for this city. The third is for RIDI, in which of course I have no housing units reported in the 2010 Census. I know that was a lot of numbers, but we are continuing to remind residents that there is time to respond to the Census and everyone counts. I know that was a lot of numbers, but we are continuing to remind residents that there's time to respond to the census and everyone counts. The 2020 census will be critical to building and shaping our future for years to come. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Any questions? Well, thank you, Miss. Stubblefield. I really appreciate your work. Dr. Meyers, thank you for your work on this. I know you have been integrally involved. And such an important thing is we see already a formula funding and so forth there. It is just so critical that each and everyone be counted. So let's keep carrying the message and while they're staying home, it's very easy to fill out the census form. So thank you, Ms. Doublefield. Please pass the word on to our citizens committee. Appreciate all the great work. Thank you. Okay, next we'll move to the summary of real property transactions. First and second quarter, fiscal year 2020, and I'll turn to Mr. Stewart Young. Good evening, Mayor City Council. What you have in front of you tonight is just a summary of real property transactions that took place in the first and second quarters of fiscal year 20. Those transactions were $15,000 or less or dedicated to the city at that time. I'm happy to answer any questions. Any questions from Mr. Young? Thank you, Mr. Young. Appreciate your work. Thank you. Okay, next we'll move to the aging will Expo Update and we'll turn to Mr aging will expo update and we'll turn we'll turn to Mr. Lemuel Randall Director of Parks and Recreation Department. Thank you very much mayor and members of City Council. This is Lemuel Randolph, your director of Parks and Recreation. Just wanted to provide you an update of the February 19th aging well expo. This is the fourth year of this event. I just wanted to provide you an update of the February 19th Agingwell Expo. This is the fourth year of this event. The third year with Baylor, Scott and White as our presenting sponsor. The event has improved in its success each year. We started in 2017 with about 1,000 participants and we've grown to up to 1700 attendees at this year's event. So we're really excited about the growth and interest in this event. We had a number of presentations, everything from gardening. We had the census folks there as Miss double field just talked about pickleball demonstration Zumba and a whole host of other activities for the public. This event is completely sponsored by our corporate partners. And in fact, we leave, we're leading to next year with a budget of about $15,000 as seed money. So we're really excited about the continued growth and support of this event. Certainly happy to answer any questions that you may have. Any questions from Council? Yes, Dr. Odom Wesley. Okay, yes. Can you hear me? Yes, yes. Yes. Okay, thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you, Mr. Randolph, for that presentation. And this is a fantastic event. I would be interested to hear a breakdown of your attendees by ethnicity and by zip code, where they're coming from and the racial breakdown. Do you have that data? I know I can provide you data on the geographic breakdown. I'm not certain on the ethnicity, but if we have that, we'll certainly provide that to you. Okay, thank you very much. Well, this event really serves an incredible service to our seniors here in town and then the enthusiasm at the event is great and then both the staff and volunteers Mr. Randolph there they do such a good job there it's it's fun to walk in and see all of the different companies and organizations the excitement, and then there's a lot of people there. Obviously this was done before social distancing there came into effect because we had that convention center there full there of seniors there at that particular day. But please again express our thanks to staff, volunteers, companies here are trying to help our seniors so much useful information. And thank you for your leadership. And then also, I love your gold medal on your lapel. They're again, they're celebrating a great win for the national championship for our Parks and Recreation Department this year. Congratulations once again. Thank you much mayor. Thank you. All right next we'll move to discussion of committee meetings and we'll go to economic development Mr. Shepherd. Mayor thank you very much. Economic Development Committee meant today all members were present all matters were discussed in executive session okay next one move to the environmental task force update Miss K part thank you Mayor the environmental task force met today all members were present we had a presentation by Sam Knisskick and I probably have missed pronounced his name. He's an urban wildlife biologist, works for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Group. Very informative. He had a lot of good information as specifically as it pertains to Arlington about the biodiversity. He showed us a map of several of the green spaces. He showed us a map of the bird migration, and it comes right through almost the heart of Arlington, which I found very interesting. So we would have liked to have had more of a roundtable discussion with him, because I think we have a lot of questions, but it was good that he came to us electronically and we're committed to try to get back with him at some point in the future when we can all meet his one. And to that end, Mayor, we had planned on having our deliverable at our spring retreat. And now that that spring retreat has been deferred, we are going to stretch out our work until June. If that's in agreement with the council, I know staff is really stressing trying to get of other things done. So instead of trying to put this body of work together, we've got another 30, 45 days you're not going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going Thank you mayor and thank you Council. Thank you appreciate the good word. Next we'll move to appointments to boards and commissions and Mr. Busskin. Thank you mayor. We have no appointments to boards and commissions this evening. Okay. We'll move to evening agenda items. Okay, Ms. K. move to evening agenda items. Okay, Ms. K. Port. Thank you, Mayor. If if Ms. Thouple is available on the item that we have on the agenda tonight for calling a public hearing. So that modification, if you will, or I would add the planning and zoning committee minutes, if I remember correctly, they had deferred a couple of times and then they voted on it, but at the end I don't recall what was the vote on that was regard to the denial We're not very Mrs. Topel Yeah, Miss Cape part. I think that's not the right. We're not here. Mrs. Topel. Yeah, Ms. K. Part, I think it was one vote in favor and eight. Against. That's my that's my resolution as well. Okay, so. Okay, only one in support of going forward with it and eight an opposition. Okay, all right. Just going to make make certain. All right. Thank you so much. That was my question. Okay. Anything else on it? Mr. Shepherd. Yes. On that topic, Mr. Sutton, it appeared from the applicant's narrative that they spent that they spent quite a bit of time with you, was there any time spent after the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting with you and the neighbors? And do you know whether or not the neighbors have come to any type of understanding with the applicants? Thank you, Mayor. A councilman Shep Shepherd. There was no interaction with the neighborhood, after the planning and zoning vote on it. There's still a post to it, adequately opposed to it. I do know for a fact that they've tried to work, they developed, they've tried to work through the issues, but it wasn't a good fit and they didn't have an appetite for it. Thank you for that, Mr. Sutton. Okay, Ms. Moise. Well, and and this is Helen. I don't know if you can hear me or not. Yes, we can hear you. Okay, so I spoke with the applicant at links today and he confirmed in that meeting that although he has tried, he still does not have neighborhood support for this, for this. And the other thing I confirm with is that he is, this is spec build out because I thought if I, if he had a tenant and I knew who it was, it might make a difference to me, but it is a spec build out. Okay, anything else on evening agenda items? Okay, all right, we'll move to issues relative to city and tech start projects. Dr. Odom Wesley. Thank you, Sam. I do have one question. I noticed in the minutes for the evening agenda that we included a report about attendance at the mayor's town Hall meeting. And so I brought to mind, should we be reporting when we attend NLC or TML conference calls of various meetings? Should that be reported? Ms. Elise. This is Tara Solis. The when you attend an event such as TML or NLC, there are exceptions for that under the Open Meeting Act because of the type of event it is. So in that case, you don't have to worry about your attendance at those events. If you're attending some other kind of event that a staff member is not there and it about the public function. I'm just going to be thinking about the public function. I'm just going to be thinking about the public function. I'm just going to be thinking about the public function. I'm just going to be thinking about the public function. I'm just going to be thinking about the public function. there and to stay out of trouble with the open meetings law. Okay, so the issue is whether or not a quorum is present, a quorum of our council. That is correct. Okay, thank you. Okay, anything else on issues relative to city and textile projects? Okay, anything else on issues relative to city and textile projects? Okay, seeing none we'll move to future agenda items All right seeing nothing on this item then our business is adjourned for the afternoon works