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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 We'll now call the Arlington City Council to order for afternoon session and the City Council will now go into close session at 208 PM on November the 12th, 2019. In accordance with the following sections of ETCA government code chapter 551.071 consultation with attorney 0.072 deliberation regarding real property and 0.087 deliberation regarding economic development negotiations. 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'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. 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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 slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. Now, I'd like to call the afternoon work session to order. And our first order of business is a presentation on sustainability environmental policy and direction. And I'll call upon Miss Nora Coronado. I said management so I typically don't print a lot of paper and since I'm presenting on some stateability today I didn't print it at all so wish we luck with this technology So you recently had requested some information about our environmental stewardship. I know I'm presenting on that topic today. The following slides contain information about some of the areas that I oversee, such as solid waste, recycling, buildings, et cetera. But I also wanted to include information about what our practices are city-wide. There are various other departments that have operations that impact our environment and are also part of our environmental stewardship efforts So I've included that information here as well So generally speaking there are predominantly five categories that local governments focus on when it comes to the environment we have Air energy Environmental quality environmental infrastructure, waste management, and water quality use and conservation. So before we begin to talk about our practices and approaches in these five areas, it might be helpful to think about what we do fitting into through very general broad categories. The top is our compliance with federal and state regulations. The middle is our local government, so over the years may encounter have adopted master plan, ordinances, et cetera, that govern how we operate. So we are work aligns with those. Then there's this third category where I have some examples there that includes sort of these optional options that we sometimes pursue that go above and beyond the first two categories. So we check boxes in all three of these areas. In the third categories where we have some discretion. And so over time the city has selected to pursue certain certification or programs or projects on an individual basis in this third category. If there's an opportunity, if any costs were reasonable and within budget, if there was a cost benefit, if we had a partner to provide resources, generally we have acted on that opportunity. And you'll see a few of those examples in the following slides. So we'll start with air quality. So the EPA set standards for air quality and TCQ regulation monitors air quality across the state. In North Texas, there are 10 counties including ourselves, Tarent, which fall under non-entainment for the pollutant ozone, otherwise known as smog. So we have to meet certain mission standards. So ground level ozone can cause decreased lung function and it aggravate asthma symptoms when people breathe high concentrations in a short span of time. So it's a city, what are we doing this area? So the use of vehicles accounts for nearly one half of all the ozone causing pollution. So our efforts are concentrating and facilitating and promoting alternatives, methods of transportation, and then reducing idling and facilitating efficient travel from a point A to a point B. So in Arlington, some of our alternative methods of transportation include the construction of new sidewalks, on street bike lanes, and our offering of on-demand rideshare services. So as I mentioned, you know, what do we do in the area of getting folks to and from their destinations and as quick as time and as efficient as possible. The planning for the Allingtons Intelligent Transportation System began in the late 1990s with federal funding dedicated to traffic management, congestion, and mitigation. Implementation started in 2000s. So currently our ITS has over 200 miles of fiber optic cable. 345 connected traffic signal controllers, a computer rice system, vehicle detection system, of course digital messaging boards. And all of these systems are connected to our traffic management center. So when there's an accident, city staff is able to adjust traffic lighting timing and in managing special events in the entertainment district, cities staff are able to provide signal timing adjustments as the needs should occur. So this area continues to develop. The city has several partnerships in pilot programs as well. Cities working with the vendor on a pilot project to evaluate traveler information system which provides motorists real-time traffic signal status and red light weight time information. Cities also partnering with another vendor on a pilot project to deploy traffic accounting and performance measurement. And also, of course, we have our Ways program, which is of a huge benefit and trying to get efficiently to 0.8% B, provides an overall look at real time road activity. I also want to talk a little bit about fuel. This is an infographic from the EPA website on the left. So on the far left column, you have conventional fuel types which is gasoline diesel. Diesel fuel is burning a lot cleaner than in past years. On the right are some price points taken from the website as well. This shows you for bio diesel, electricity, ethanol, natural gas, et cetera. Now, our fleet inventory is about a thousand plus assets and we have 23 alternative fuel vehicles between CNG and hybrid. As far as our trash collection services provided by Republic Services, 100% of their trucks for recycling are 100% CNG and actually have a CNG fueling station at their offices here in downtown Arlington. There's currently grant funding available for alternative fuel fleet from the Wokeswagon settlement. The priority categories for this funding includes school buses, transit buses, shuttle buses, and refuse vehicles. So we're looking at hand possible funding for handi-tran and Republic has already submitted their application for six vehicles in Arlington for about $186,000. For alternative fuel vehicles, there's more funding available through COG in the form of tax credits and rebates. And as we look towards replacement of our vehicles like especially our sedans, we look at these alternative fuel and do some cost comparison. So as I mentioned before, TCQ monitors air quality. They have monitoring stations across the state. This is just a snapshot of one from the airport. And as you can see, well the national air quality standard for ozone is based on eight hour averages. So this one shows you that, and I think you could tell here, it says one exceeding state, where it was at exceeding the standard 71 parts per billion for ozone. This is just sort of a report card, if you will, of other areas in the state when it comes to meeting ozone emission standards. of other areas in the state when it comes to meeting ozone emission standards. So talk about LED street lights. So LED street lights, as you know, are longer lasting. They don't contain toxic chemicals like mercury and lead. They're highly energy efficient. And also they can serve as the backbone for smart city elements like monitoring systems capable of detecting crowds, car crashes, gun shots, etc. The city was able to purchase and install LED lights by using projected cost savings in the next few years as a result of using these to pay back for the investment. Talking about, we at that time we also did some managing improvements which I'll talk about at buildings which I'll talk about here momentarily. So again we're using the savings projected and they have materialized to pay back our investment. Park's department has various facilities with lighting needs 75 plus parks, athletic fields, athletic complexes. They have a centralized schylogic system that manages lighting gates and restrooms remotely. They can be programmed to seasonally adjust. And for athletic field rentals, lighting can be programmed but require the resident to have a pin to actually turn on the lighting. So we just use the lighting that is necessary. And then of course the system also monitors for faulty components. So here is this table kind of summarizes the investment that I spoke to just a moment ago. We first started back in 0809 where we did sort of kind of a pilot where we did upgrade the City Hall, the Central Library, Parks Administration and Bob Duncon Center. And then fast forward 2015, 2016, we completed close to $14 million of energy efficiency improvements for buildings including the LED street lights that I spoke to earlier. Again, no cost just using the savings to pay back for our investment. I like this picture. We're very grateful for the City Council's approval of funding, capital funding to replace major building components. We've done a little bit over the past few years and we were very grateful for the Council support when we had the measure on the ballot and we now have 8 million more to keep sort of upgrading. The ones on the left are boilers here at City Hall from construction. They have energy efficiency about 80%. The ones on the right, we installed maybe a couple of years ago, 18 months ago, and that have 92 efficiency rating or better. But it just kind of shows you, just very visually how far the technology has come. It kind of shows you we got very good life out of those original components, but it was definitely time for a upgrade. So whenever we have new construction, especially including major remodels, some of the elements that we include to save energy, of course, includes LED lighting, building automation systems where you have different zones for temperature that you can manage better and isolate. Of course, energy efficient conditioning systems, low flow plumbing fixtures and systems. With the exterior, we have drought tolerant plant and landscaping. And, of course, automated irrigation systems with rain cutoffs, which is. So new buildings, new construction must meet the 2017 energy code. And typically, and I'll talk a little bit more in detail here, that would achieve a lead certified or leads silver certified level. So what is that? So it's a global designation. So what is that? So it's a global designation. You get certain points for incorporating certain elements that I mentioned earlier, plus more in the designing construction. You have a third party, authenticating the design, authenticating the ASPIL construction, et cetera. And these are the levels that you can achieve. Now there is a cost for this process, typically 2 to 3% of the project total. So for example, for the facilities that were currently under construction in East Arlington and South East Arlington, now those will meet the 2017 energy code. So we're already talking about lead certified or lead silver as the end result, if you will. But if we would have gone through the formal process, the sort of that engagement, that would have cost us between half a million to $700,000 more for each of those facilities. So here, just wanted to include this graphic. This is an aerial taken by Byburn construction as the library was being built. You can see our solar panels which are funded. Those were designed and installed with grant funding. Other lead facilities are fire station 9 which we rebuilt as well as 5 and the orange municipal airport. And also I'm sorry, new downtown library. Just last year we received notification that we obtained silver certification and leave. So state law mandates that we submit electrical consumption, especially if you're in a non-attainment area as I spoke to earlier. We have to show that we are reducing our energy consumption. I really, really like this table because it shows you over time with the improvements, with the energy efficiency measures we have been in place, how you can see the top line is buildings and how that has steadily declined as far as energy consumption. The one just below it in that sort of green, lime green is street lights. You can see Presidious fall there between 14 15 and 16 and we continue on So when it comes to the environment Stormwater course runoff causes pollution erosion and flooding And so we have our short-water management plan that is compliant with EPA and TCKU standards. It sets out various measurable outcomes, and we meet those outcomes. Some of those outcomes include inspections of city-owned concrete channels and flumes, spill and prevent your response. And also just our capital improvement projects that fall into this category. You know, make us complain in adherence to our plan. So when you talk about environmental infrastructure, you talk about your tree canopy and where I would say very rich in that area. We have 99 parks, close to 5,000 acres of Parkland and about close to 2,000 linear park acres. We do have some of that inventory. This is an interactive map that's available on our website. We, and this is mostly for the downtown area. It's very interactive. You can see there on the left. You'll have the different types of tree species you'll have their information also the estimated value that monetary value to the city is available on this on this map about 14,500 city trees are in our map system only the the downtown one is sort of depicted in this way that can be made available for review. So continuing to talk about trees. City has been a city, a city USA city designated by the National Arbor Foundation for about 20 years. Also currently, Parks Department is focusing on the greening of the oak initiative with the placement of 200 trees and medians. And since 2012, I learned that 24,000 sapling trees have been planted in parks, city sites, medians are given away. planted in parks, city sites, medians, or given away. So the MLK complex became the first sports facility in the US to achieve the Audubon Signature designation in October of 2000, and closely thereafter started the terroverted golf club. Recycle materials were used in their construction, and no hazardous chemicals are used to maintain either facility Okay So now we talk about to waste management. This is an aerial view of the southeast Corner of the city's landfill which is about in total about 800 acres About half of it is permitted for waste and the other half is wetlands So Half of it is permitted for waste and the other half is wetlands. So at the landfill, we also have a multimillion dollar facility which was built by a third party energy developer. The agreement that we have with the developer is to access the gas to cell that is processed into RNG, renewable natural gas and pipeline doubt. We receive proceeds from those transactions, but we also are able to capture and reprocess, like I said, the methane. So this was an investment by a third party on our landfill. And recently I do want to point out that this project earned a national award for innovative use of technology from the biogasc council. I'm sorry, I also wanted to mention, in addition to the royalties received from the sale of the gas, the vendor also is responsible for expanding our well-filt, so that's multi-million dollars into the future of cost of woodens. So I show this slide because I want to show that when things are taken to the landfill, not everything ends up being landfilled. The landfill has a concrete recycler, yard waste recycler, we also recycle scrap metal. So as you can see here, this shows from 2014 to 2018. Most material diversity has been construction demolition and waste. So again, not everything in the landfill, going to the landfill actually ends up at the landfill. So we continue to work upon your direction to engage our public about the many opportunities they have to recycle and divert waste from our landfill. We do have single-stream residential curbside recycling. We offer our multifamily recycling on new properties. That was an ordinance change a while back. Leaf recycling is coming up. We offer this annually Christmas tree recycling as well. Household hazardous waste which is not accepted by our landfill. Computer Roundup also coming up. And then we also encourage composting. So we offer backyard compost classes, which is actually a state award-winning program. So I wanted to offer the slide to provide some context to the following slide, because as you know, we've been talking for about 18 months of various changes in the recycling market. You know, the stream has changed, material has become a lot more lightweight, but the most significant and profound change in the recycling market has been a new policy by China that decreased the contamination rate of recyclables that were imported. Other, some of the countries have followed suit, and so this has made the commodity pricing just fall. So it's costing a little more border recycle. However, if you look at this slide, which shows data, monthly recycling, data, curbside recycling from May of 14 and May of 19, you can still just see despite that market disruption, that we're still holding steady, that we're still engaged, very much engaged in recycling. The bottom is recycling and the top line, as you can see, they kind of follow each other seasonally, as refuse is trash. Dr. Nadia, that's a question. Oh, yes. So, why don't we really looking at, when you look at the tons here, that's a question. Oh, yes. So, why don't we really looking at when you look at the tons here? That's the tons that they're picking up. Yes, sir. But what's happening to those tons? Some of it used to go to China. But now it's going into the landfill. No. So the trash course is going to the To the landfill. That's the blue line. The bottom line, the green, is the recyclables. Those are still getting our cards. The content from our cards are still taken to what's called the Merf, which is nicknamed the Merf. It's a recycling facility in Fort Worth, owned by Republic, and it's taken there and processed. There are other markets that have emerged, not just China. I mean, I know the contamination rate has been decreased, but domestic markets have also started pop up They're still being sold but at much They have much less value if you will so but they're still being recycled and finding markets for them So is republic making money or losing money when they recycle? Losing money, okay, that's the bottom line for me. They're losing money So at some point in time What's gonna what do you predict is going to happen to recycling here in Arlington? In Arlington, if we follow state national trends, we're kind of lucky in the middle of the country. Folks on the east and the west have stock recycling programs. Here we just have better access to markets. And also, generally speaking, on the national level domestic markets. Like domestic meals that used to be shut down are being reported, being reopening and open back up for processing. That's what we're saying. Now, where is that going to take us? So you have to be seen. But it's looking like it's going to rebound. We just don't know what ultimate shape or form. Frankly, you often know us to add a little too. Yeah, like it's going to rebound we just don't know what ultimate shape or form. Thank you. You also know what to add, Luke. Just augment that a little bit. There's a fundamental shift that's occurring given the Chinese lead and other countries following. And Republic and other hollers like waste management and such are struggling to adjust, and it can lead to a combination of things from some cities ceasing their recycling program to some cities materially reducing their recycling program only to a key number of better commodities where they can make a profit as opposed to the broad single stream. where they can make a profit as opposed to the broad single stream. To fundamentally shifting costs differently, which has been what's been going on here the last two years, we've had to increase our peace on recycling because of the increased net difference because they can't make a profit on the proceeds and there's just a higher cost to place with other locations that aren't China. To fundamental contractual provisions being changed that shift risk away from republic and back to cities. You know, you want a recycle? That's great. We'll pick it up for you, but the value back to you might be and how much the commodities Make and it's our risk as opposed to their risk. So there's fundamental discussions occurring that can end up in a number of boxes in the future I'd like to add to that. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, we have another yes, we're set So trade if that's the case if we see our profitability in the re-socking market, does our citizen get a reduced cost of services? Well, we haven't made any decisions about anything, but if you change the recycling program, it necessarily involves what's the value proposition and cost and expenditure. If you eliminate a recycling program, my recollection is on the utility bill. It's about $1.10 or so that's specifically tied to recycling. So without a recycling program, there's a dollar plus savings back to ratepayers per month. If we shrink the program and can align cost to that, then you can lower it differently. Or conversely, what's happening right now is we have an increasing cost because of the out placement premiums of placing these products to where they're not going to the landfill. And so that's one of the questions we're going to have to, you know, kind of wrestle with here in the months ahead or years ahead about as this market resets itself and recalibrates where do we want to be on that continuum. And then we'll do the expenditures and the revenue correlating to what our expectations are. I want to touch a moment here on for the future. As we look at the market and what it's doing and what it we anticipated to do, we'll be exploring that as part of our solid waste management plan. The last one was completed 2010, 2011. So, fortunate enough to get funding allocated for higher consultants sort of in this area to help us that we'll be working with the citizens environmental committee etc so we can look at the trends look at the needs here in Arlington look at the technology and come up with the plan for say the next 10 to 15 years. I also want to touch on the now per year direction. We continue to build robust program in the last few months to engage our citizenry. We've been very active with COG in the Regional Recycling Campaign, both Republic Services and City of Allington staff for part of that core group that kind of developed the campaign. I think you all know that we have, we are updating our decals on our recycling cart lids to omit plastic bags and pizza boxes. It's our highest rates of contamination. So we're doing what we can to sort of educate our citizens' history to reduce contamination and reduce consumption in general. And also speaking of commodities, metals are highly valuable, but a lot of them end up in the trash because they're not rents. You just sort of get the use out of it and you throw it away. But if clean properly, they can be recycled. It brings in good value. All for people throwing away November 14th. I'm sorry, hold on a second. November? It was ordered by Councilor. Yeah, it's very interesting. It's very seasonal. You would expect it to be sort of the reverse. You see trash was down and so was recycling. I can't, I don't have an explanation for that, I'm sorry. Yeah, maybe it's December. Get my Christmas time. It might be, yeah, given the space for the slide on the graph, it could be, but it does look like that. Yeah. It's also going to be the first time we did it to get around it. Ben. I was saying that one. And it was that snow event. OK, we round out with water quality. So again, governed by TCQ. So Texas Surface Water Quality Standards are written and enforced by TCQ and are compliant with EPA standards. So our compliance results are reported as part of the annual Arlington White Utilities Confidence Report. And the following three, the backflow assembly, the sampling for lighting coppers are all in compliance and we do annual basis for compliance with TCEQ purposes. and compliance and we do annual basis for compliance with TCQ purposes. So when it comes to water use and conservation practices, there are some best practices. Our conservation rate is structured so that it incentivizes slower use. We do have a leak detection program. We have the remote read meters. We do use reclaimed water. We do at the landfill. And I think we do at one-golf course. Residential, we provide residential irrigation system audits and then we have a partnership where water utility says a partnership with the library to install bottle filler type water fountains and we have something throughout this building as well. On the park side, again, vast amount of assets there. They've been using grain sensors, not sure for how long, very, very, very long time. They've also expanded, they also continue to just expand their use of technology, to continue to build upon them like measured water flows protect against leaks and fault equipment And then again seasonal volume adjustments all done with their technology So these are just some of the outcomes that I kind of wanted to highlight from the Our water conservation plan is something that we do I believe every five years The plan details various measurement outcomes and includes goals as well. The table on the left is residential gallons per capita per day, which is the average amount of water used by one person each day. And while our population has increased, we've kind of held steady there. The one on the table on the right, I find very informative. That's our water loss data. As you can see, it's come down significantly since 2014. So as we wrap it up, I just kind of wanted to just provide this information for reference, see if there are any questions. But if you were to think about all of our efforts on this continuum, at the very far left of this continuum, if you look at this graphical representation, we have compliance, we meet that box, we check that box. And then there's different graduated levels after that. And again, historically, in what I have researched, our selections are on individual basis, again, when it makes sense, when we have a partner, when we get a cost benefit, that's when we pursue sort of the above and beyond sort of efforts. So as we move forward, we need your help, we need your guidance to determine how far along this continuum, if you will, Arlington should really be. So with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. Dr. Mars. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Ms. Cordanado. I really appreciate you putting together all this information into one neat package for us. You know, in light of our recent retreat that we just had and our city manager's discussion in particular about sort of this restructuring or kind of thinking through different ways to pay for things. You used a phrase a number of times in this presentation saying using savings to pay for investment. And I kind of want to think through if there's other ways for us to use savings to pay for investment. For example, you talked about a thousand vehicles in the city and only 23 of them at this point. Or even thinking about what we're doing the buildings and lead standard. I understand that sometimes things cost more in the upfront. But how do we monetize or amateurize the amount of money Moe might save over a period of time. I would like for us to maybe think through that. Perhaps that's a bigger question than you want to take on. But an out of the city manager for making me think through what this really means to have, how do we restructure going forward in a budget process that's gonna require us to think about a 3.5% cap and where are we going to find those cost savings in various areas. And it strikes me that this is an area where we may be able to find some cost savings by investing in different ways or doing a different approach. So, at less of a question and probably more of a comment, but if you have any thoughts about anything I just said, I would love to hear it. Just what I've already mentioned, but very briefly, a small example on sort of that return on investment, sort of framework. I was looking at our fleet and you're like, wow, 2%. Okay, well, historically, the pricing for these alternative fuel vehicles have been significantly more than your conventional type of vehicle. So where sedan is in their $20,000 range and electric might be in the $30,000. So as technology gets more affordable as we're able to kind of recoup that more upfront cost, I think we'll see the trend change. That's just a minor example of kind of what you're asking us to look at. May I try me? I just want to follow up. Thank you for at least taking a shot, swing at what I just said. One last thing I just want to, I love to think about is, as we move forward in construction and or purchasing a vehicle's our others, it would be helpful. I think myself, I don't know if others would be, but it would be helpful to know what could potentially be the cost savings as those costs come down. It would be nice to be able to see that and be able to make an informed decision about whether or not an investment here may be a long-term savings across time. So thank you very much. Thank you. Ms. Moeys and then Dr. Munoz. No, our first of all, I want to thank you for a really excellent presentation. You know, I come from the same field you're in. And you're in what we call the facility side, and I was in the property management and asset side. You're really risen to the level of being an asset manager. But when I look at this, sometimes people ask me, what do you do? Because in their minds, I'm hiring the genitorial contractor. That's what they see as the suite gets cleaned every night. But this is what our field does, and you're doing an excellent job at it. And I just want to compliment you and your staff, because it does take a staff to work on all these things, to address all these different issues that are so important to this field today. The one I wanted to talk about for just a minute was back to the LEED certification, because you know, leadership and energy and environmental design have been around for about 15 years and we started out saying it costs 10 to 15% to to certify a building of the total construction costs and I see now you're saying 2 to 3% so that cost to certify a building has come down. What I see here is that it looks like the new downtown library has leads silver and actually has the plaque for the wall. So just for those that may not understand, part of what the certification project involves is hiring a consultant to actually walk you through the process and to certify all of it. So when I see here that we aren't doing that in the new library buildings, I'm not sure I follow why we wouldn't have. Could you elaborate on that a little bit? Because it looks like we're doing the energy portion of it, but not all the other pieces. And I know sometimes, especially with medical or ran into, it was very hard because they require, so they require you to set aside so many vehicle spaces for energy reasons or compact cars, and you just didn't have that. I mean, we need every parking space for every patient. Can you help us understand, because maybe somewhere in the future, there are ways to impact this program. And if we're not doing it for a reason that's really simple, maybe we need to talk to the lead organization and talk to them about why we're not doing it. Because 2% or 3%, You're already getting the cost savings because you're doing it on the energy side is what I see here. But can you just talk to us about that a little bit? And sure. What points could we not get that caused us to step away? Because actually, that's not a lot of dollars. Right. So in those particular two facilities, we are building, as I said, to the 2017 and Geneseo Energy Code. So we are, if you take as a whole, what it takes to meet that standard, you're equivilating to, it's equivalent to lead certified or lead silver. So there was cost savings and not pursuing that third party authentication designation to be able to use those dollars towards the infrastructure itself, towards just a little bit more square footage, towards certain, you know, finishes or et cetera. So just putting it back into the building. That's just for those two facilities I can speak to. This is actually a classic question of what we're trying to get some direction on because our past direction on this lead certification has been to cost avoid that cost, but do things that would be an equivalent certification. That's what we've historically done. Need to check on the library. It might have been because of some grant funding that we got from some some energy green energy kind of folks who really wanted us to do that and part of the grant funding actually inspired that that specific lead certification for that building as opposed to others, but it is not an adopted policy of the city to go after the lead plaque. And that's part of what we're trying to understand where you want to be along some of these situations because given to our own devices, we're going to save the dollars and do the best business case as opposed to thinking it might be worth that 2% to do X, Y, or Z. And with the energy code is not pointed out, we are already by default lead silver. That's the equivalent of that. So we know we can't put a plaque up, but we know we're at least equivalent to lead silver in all of our new buildings. So if we want to start to specifically say that's what we want to do, then great. This whole effort was actually I had to think a conversation with Dr. F. M. a while back about some inconsistencies that we have and we have these various chapter discussions and how we're this way on one thing and this way on another. And I'm really trying to align where we're headed collectively so that we always know exactly where you guys are trying to head us. Well, and I would bring up one more thing and that's Energy Star and I'm sure Jeff that you know what I'm talking about when I say Energy Star, but Energy Star is an annual program that you participate in with the base and then you generate data that shows your savings year over year. And to me that has one of the biggest long-term impacts because your staff has to be trained to address the issue every year and you actually reward them if they achieve their energy star year because what energy star does, it puts you in a category. And then, I can't remember if it's the top 15 or 25% of it away from it for a while, but you have to earn your position in that ranking every year, which means that you've got to stay on top of energy savings for your entire building. So, but just trying to achieve it oftentimes makes people working in your facilities aware that it's an option and what they can do and just seeing progress toward it. Like I'm a 78 this year and I'm 76 next year, you're making progress and it's just an educational tool. So I just would really like to spend some time looking at energy programs and lead programs and really Be a leader in this area if you know if the dollars allow it I am willing to concede that sometimes the dollars don't allow it Mr. Pill Oh wait, the Darninia's you're sorry. He was for a minute. He's been waiting patiently here and then Excuse me. Thank you, Mayor. I want to echo what Dr. Farmer's was saying a little while ago. I imagine that if I had been here six years ago, we had asked for cost benefit analysis on replacing our vehicle fleet that it would have made about the analysis six years ago what it said. You know what it's not, it doesn't make any sense to do that. And I heard your comment about how the process of electric vehicles are coming down and I'm sure every year it's going to get better. I really would like to see a cost benefit analysis if one hasn't been done recently. To show what exactly are the potential savings of slowly converting our fleet to electric? Because not only are we going to save, we may not save on the front end, but we're not going to be paying for gas. And we're not necessarily going to be paying for a lot of the maintenance. It's going to be done because there aren't any pestins or gaskets or belts like that because there's no internal combustion engine. And we're going to improve the environment. And so I really would like to see that going forward. If, again, as you said, Helen, if it makes financial sense for our citizens, then we ought to pursue it. Otherwise, it's not worth it. It may be we have to wait a year or two. But when is the last time that study was actually done? And I'd like to see it. And then in regards to lead certification, and I get asked by a lot of people, if it's Arlington lead certified in its construction. And I did not realize, Tray, until just now that you told us that, you know, we're the equivalent of lead silver. And that kind of squares with what I see in my practice. Lead certification has become something that landlords want to show social awareness to attract tenants many times. And so that's a sunk cost that they see as a marketing tool, not as much as a, they're building already is that way, but they want that label to get all the socially aware tenants in. But I wish there was some sort of alternative governmental certification of energy, sufficiency that we could talk about because I would like to publicize the fact that we are equivalent of lead silver certification to people because I get asked it all the time and I didn't know that. And I think that's great, but it seems like we ought to be able to brag about our energy efficiency and intelligent environmental stewardship without having to pay a consultant 100 grand to come out and give us a stamp. You know, the other thing is there might be opportunities in regards to some of these initiatives for more public-private partnerships. And, you know, I'm always interested in hearing from you. If you hear something in your field that other cities are trying or that a vendor of a unique process or product is out there with Love to hear about it Sud and Nora thank you for the presentation. I really appreciate it Would you maybe tell me corporate settings of our energy used from our buildings or from renewable resources and how do we get to a Robo robots use of those resources? Not any that I know about this time with the exception of the solar panels at the library. We take that energy, put it back into the grid and get certain credit if you will. But that's the only one that I'm aware of at this time. Nora, I think I can help with this just a little bit. that this time. Nora, I think I can help with this just a little bit. A while back, I reviewed some of the city contract. And I can't, Nora, do you know what's top of your head who provides our electricity, which company we're with? I think it's a very long-term contract. It takes you. It takes you. So over time, like when I used to buy energy, I was buying for three million feet at a time. So we would spec, you know, be told right now we're 7% renewable. By the time we get to the end of contract, they'd be 20% renewable because we're seeing so much renewable brought into Texas through the wind farms of been North Texas, that it's very likely, and I don't know how we would find out, you know, a close number, but we could probably call TXU and say, if you buy a contract from you right now, what percent? Because they could tell us. But it's not written into our contract that we're requiring a certain percent. And that's the difference. I believe, and I will double check this, but I believe that our TXU contract has zero renewable requirements. And it's another classic question about why we're asking this because we entered into a nine year contract just two years ago. And since then, through feedback, through council members, I've had probably at least half a dozen inquiries about how we do more green energy when we entered into a long-term contract without the green component by decision. So I'm trying to get clarity on what we want to achieve. Well, I think we need to add some other history of this. We saved our taxpayers a ton of money when we went into this contract. And at that time money when we went into this contract and at that time when we went into major renewable energy it cost us considerably more when we entered into that contract. And as Dr. Nunez pointed out, technology is changing and so forth. Well, so are these electric companies because solar energy is getting cheaper to be able to do as our other renewable energy. So we're getting approached a lot. Well, we have a contract right now on to do that, but there will be that opportunity. And so we're trying to balance a lot of different things. I mean, we heard a question from Mr. Sutton around the bat. How can we get the money back to our user? You know, we're on, well, the recyclability costs money. Well, lead certifications cost money and lead certification. Doesn't matter who say that's the least of the cost of the hundred thousand. When you start going from lead silver to lead gold and lead platinum in his astronomical cost and then probably the grant for the solar panels is what separated I would bet that put us to lead silver on the library is probably the breaking point and why we were able to do it on that. This is a very complicated topic here with it and it's it is very indicative of what is happening in our world right now, because technology is coming on board that is allowing things that were more expensive to become cheaper and isn't an LED lights or a great example of that. We couldn't afford LED lights for years, and suddenly the cost came down to where the consumption paid for it. So just like we're monitoring transportation technology, we're gonna need to monitor this. Ms. K. Part has been talking about this very topic. She's probably about to suggest creating a task force. I think I may be not a committee, but a task force here from the from the council. This is too complicated for this group. I think we're on the right path right now where we're at. for this group. I think we're on the right path right now where we're at. But yet, you know, I think that if we take a little dive in this, there too, I think we'll see that. But then I can tell you when we were talking trash collection here, we've gone through some really tough things, such as when we tried to go to containers versus the street. Well, it was a firestorm, you know, and it really created disunity in our city when we were, when we went through that. And then now also collecting trash twice a day, or twice a week is a very favorite thing. It's something neat for our city that not every city does. Now, as Mr. Yolverton pointed out to us, as money gets tied, we may have to do some of those things. But here, I think it may be worth it. I'm going to turn it over to Miss K-Part here to talk a little bit about her idea here on this environmental stewardship. A couple of things. And I'll get to that too, Mayor. But I. A couple of things and I'll get to that too mayor but I have a couple of comments and questions. Try several years ago we entered into a contract with a consultant to come and do an analysis on city buildings. As a result of that we replaced the windows on the mat and there were other things that we did. I don't remember all that we did. I think separate from that we started converting to more efficient vehicles for some of the city vehicles. Clearly we couldn't do it on police cars or fire trucks and that kind of thing. But do we have data somewhere about what we have done in the last however many years since we hired that consultant that we could demonstrate to the council what those savings were and what they were? Yeah. that we could demonstrate to the council what those savings were and what they were? Yeah, if you go back to your chart that you like Nora and what we can do is detail out the specific things that were done. But the proof is in one key chart that Nora pointed out and it's the validation of all those investments that show those lines going down. That blue line going down is all those building innovations that we've done. The boilers, the lights, the windows, and as a result, our KWH, this isn't money, this is actually kilowatts used. So not only kilowatts used has gone down, but our energy price per kilowatt via the new contract has also gone down. So that blue line, that's a pretty steep decline. Over 2013 to 18 to five year window, it's about a 20% reduction in kilowatt hours used. And then the LEDs on that lime green line gone from what about 17 million kilowatts down to maybe five. That's significant energy savings that you all have specifically authorized and gotten those specific results. That's real results with real return back. The problem that we have is that those consultants do what they mostly do. They go for the low hanging fruit. So they've got the things that were most out of compliance. The things that we're going to give us the biggest bang. So to get the same result going forward, it's a thinner, it's a tighter squeal. So that was low hanging. Now we still need to do about half our street lights. As Nora pointed out, we've really only done the arterials. We still owe I-20 and I-30 and all the residential. So that green line I think will actually get down to virtually almost nil once we do that, because we'll be able to get it flat line. But the buildings are gonna have to look at some other things there, continue to innovate and actually the better way in that, my mind, is to minimize the square footage. We need to be, maybe, out of some buildings that we're currently in to continue to lower our consumption. Well, I don't want to create a lot of busy work for you guys, but if you have a way to just list the things that we've done, and I realize it was low-hanging fruit, but still, because when we did that consultant contract, it was highly controversial. It was not an easy vote. And I don't remember if it was unanimous or not, try. But even though it was low-hanging fruit, it was low-hanging fruit we didn't obviously see. And so the city benefited, therefore, our constituents benefited. So if you could get that for us so we can demonstrate for those particularly who weren't here when we did it, show what that was like a lot of people don't know those are new windows on the mat for instance. So does that was one and then the other things so we used to talk a lot about green cement okay do we still do that tray? A recollection is we still bid that as an alternate you can either do green or non green cement And it's turned out to be a non-issue. It's not an ad or a delete It's that everybody's bidding green cement and it's no cost if that's that Mindy's nodding yes Yeah, so again that's something that's probably not known to a lot of our constituents and we need to be talking about that because we did that maybe eight, nine years ago, it's been a while. And then the other thing, Nora, on your initial slide, where you were showing the three different categories, probably slide number one or two, where you were talking about like the Audubon certification and all of that and some of the things that we've gone above and beyond and done. Do we also roll into that the newest things like our B city and our monarch certification? Does that go into there? I would say so yes, ma'am. So we can update that and include those in there as well. Okay. And then the other one is we used, when we did Christmas tree recycling, we actually picked it up from the curb. Can we go back to that? I get that request every year. Every year. I don't know. And I don't think they sent a special truck for it. I think it was on your recycle day that they picked them up. I'll have to go back and look at my records since it precedes me, but I believe there wasn't associated costs and maybe Drake is weak to it but there was a cost an additional cost on what we are providing. So once a year costs and less is exorbitant I mean. It was a it was a special route for Christmas trees only my recollection it was probably 20 to 20 to 30 thousand dollars for that one time. Wow that's more than I would have thought. So can they not pick it up, but just your recycled day and don't have to do a special... I don't think the recycled trucks... Yeah, I don't think that it would, no. They wouldn't recycle the trees into that stream. We can check with them to see what kind of ideas they might have. Because I know we take yard refuge, and I don't see how it would be any different. So when we take yard refuge, like heavy leaf season, and if the truck, if you have your designated service day and your trash gets selected and your bags of leaves gets selected, goes into one truck and all goes into the landfill. So that's why we offer the leaf recycling drop off locations. Yeah, I get that. Yeah. So that's one way that that goes straight That's why we offer the leaf recycling drop off locations. Yeah, I get that. Yeah. So that's one way that that goes straight to the mulching operation at the Wendell Phil. Same thing with Christmas tree. You can drop them off during a two week window. And I think we have, I believe we still have a location down south where people can also drop off Christmas tree. So it's the landfill and then one south. Well, you know, it's a psychological thing. So when you go to buy your fresh cut tree, everybody wants to help. When Christmas is over and you need to get to a recycle place, then you have a hard time finding somebody with a pickup that will take it for you if you don't have such a vehicle. So anyway, just check for me if you will and see what that potential cost might be. Absolutely. And let's see if we can kind of incorporate back into that service for the people, because it's always a question. Why don't you just pick it up at the curb? Well, I don't know. So, and then the last thing, I was noticing last night on the news that there was quite a bit of talk about Fort War finally getting a new library. And there was comparison, and they didn't specifically say Arlington, but there was comparison about other cities having taken the lead on putting together a new, and I think somebody else probably heard that same broadcast, and I think they were really focusing on the downtown library, weren't they? And I was really proud of the fact that I think that lead was us, although they didn't say us, and about how popular downtown libraries are now coming back into their own. And again, when we did that downtown library, there was a lot of pushback about libraries are outdated. You don't need a downtown central library. You put them out in the neighborhoods. They're not needed. They're not needed. They're not needed. But with the leadership, particularly Carrie Seagfried before Yoko and with Yoko as her assistant at the time, they envisioned a very different downtown library. And it has really, really, really kind of become another crown jewel for us. So I just wanted to put that out there that I think we took the lead when nobody else was willing to take the risk that we did. I think the mayor wanted me to talk about Marmelso. Real quickly, I think this is a topic that needs to be revisited. We've put some things in place. Some of them may be outdated. There may be some things that we haven't considered before. So with the mayor's concurrence, I would like us to form a task force and let us kind of dive into that and a committee, council committee task force of, you know, a typical four-member thing, but we'll get into more of the details on the mayor using more direction. But I think if the, there's other consensus here that it's time for us to go back and take that deep dive so we can kind of spend more quality time on viewing and taking a better look at some things we might want to improve, or at least change. Maybe improve's not the right word. So those are my comments. Oh. Councilor Tim, are you in agreement with Miss K-Barts? Question. Yes, Miss Odom, Wesley. Question in, I guess comment before I come back to that. I guess because I'm so focused on transportation. I think I heard you say Nora that cars account for about 50% of the ozone problem that we have with our air quality. Was that correct? Yes, ma'am. have with our air quality? Was that correct? Yes ma'am. And only 2% of our fleet is moving toward electric vehicles? Currently our 2% of our fleet alternative fuel vehicles, hybrid and CNG. Currently. Do we know what VIA is doing when it comes to moving to electric vehicles? I do not know ma'am. I don't know if anyone is present to be able to answer that question. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I'm thinking our biggest bang for the book is to look at our fleet, our cars on the road, and move toward electric powered vehicles. For our fleet as well as for all of our citizens. I know you can't mandate that. But there are some incentives out there for private citizens as well as for our fleets to purchase electric vehicles. And that is, well, I always say it's transportation for the future. I was told it's transportation for today. And we need to move in that direction in order to have the biggest bang for the buck because the cars create the biggest problem, the biggest usage in the highest emission rate and all of that. So as we look at this task force, I think we need to focus not just on buildings and the other things we've been talking about, but electric vehicles. And about the task force, I'm wondering, we already have an environmental, what's the name of the group? The citizens environmental? That's a citizen. That's a citizen. I'm talking about a council committee. Okay. In addition to what they do, right? Okay. And they take direction from staff and from council. Council usually gives direction to staff, ask the environmental committee to delve into this. I'm just talking about at the elected body level, what do we want the focus to be on? I don't think we can continually delve into this topic with any full meaning until we have a concentrated effort as to what that is. And to your point, it may not be about building efficiency. It may be more about vehicle efficiency. It may be, but all of the above. But we don't even know what all the above is yet. It sounds like I'm hearing and I'm not seeing any negatives. Is the will of the council to go ahead and we'll explore Miss K. Parts idea of creating a task force off the council and then we'll move forward with a deeper discussion on that to be determined. So we're going to come to with that. Sure. All right. Seeing consensus by the council, I want to thank Ms. Coronado for a very detailed and well done report and as you can see it's for a lot of conversations and a lot of conversation to come. Thank you. Appreciate it. To our next, we're moving on to master plan audit, Ms. Lindsay Mitchell, Planning Manager and Strategic Initiatives. Ms. Mitchell? Good afternoon. Lindsay Mitchell Strategic Planning Manager with the Office of Strategic Initiatives. As you all are aware, the city develops and adopts many plans to guide our work. We consistently review those plans to determine our progress toward achieving the goals that we've outlaid in those plans. Today I have an overview of that progress made on many of our plans adopted within the last decade. To provide some background to ensure we're all in the same page, I wanted to go over exactly what master plans are and what they are not. In general, master plan documents and overarching vision for a given area or topic and is adopted by City Council. Typically, it outlines policy suggestions and implementation steps to achieve the vision in the plan. And there are many different types of plans, including our comprehensive plan, corridor and area plans, neighborhood and strategic plans, capital infrastructure, many others. Plans can focus on anything from transportation and economic development issues to community capacity building and organizational strategy. And depending on the type of plan, the process is typically led by a trained planning professional who is often part of a consultant team hired to develop the plan. And sometimes there are some misconceptions about what master plans can and cannot achieve. In general, master plans are intended to establish a common vision with policy suggestions and strategies to achieve that vision. A fair amount of flexibility is intentionally built into plan so that they may adapt to changes over time. Plan horizons are generally anywhere from five to ten years so that flexibility is a very important component. Master plans are not intended to codify all of the policies necessary to achieve every aspect of the plan's vision or have specificity of every aspect of the plan itself or address every issue or concern that a community may be facing in detail. A little bit about planning in Arlington, our first comprehensive plan was adopted in 1952. Those are pictures of the 52 and 59 comprehensive plans. We have them in our library downstairs. In the past decade, we've typically completed approximately one major corridor area plan per year. Currently, the average cost for a major planning effort like a comprehensive plan or others that utilize a consultant range from about a hundred thousand dollars for a small area plan to over two hundred thousand dollars for a large or complex area plan and in general large scale planning efforts take about a year to eighteen months to complete and now I want to take you through some of our major plans and call out a few implementation highlights from each. This is a very high level overview. There's much more to each of these plans than we have time to get into today, of course. Our current comprehensive plan, which is titled 99 square miles, was completed in 2015. Along with providing general guidance for development, the plan had several catalyst projects that were included. Of those, we've already revamped our neighborhood matching grant program and have rebuilt the downtown library and finished 101 center. We're still working toward implementing our corridor beautification strategy and further development of our destination hotel and convention spaces. Our high-comb bike plan was adopted in 2011. Since that time we have completed 13 miles of on-street facilities and 56 miles of off-street facilities mostly linear trails through parks. We have several construction projects in process and in the coming years we will make a connection to Fort Worth through River Legacy Park. Discovered Division which was our quarter plan adopted in 2012, outlined a redevelopment strategy for the area between Cooper and Collins along the division. Since that time, we've partnered with utilities to reduce unnecessary poles in the corridor and are making progress toward implementation of sidewalks. And of course, the Urban Union Development has achieved many of the plan's land use and redevelopment goals and continues to grow. The park recreation and open space master plan guides investment in our park system. Recent implementation items include the Lake House at Richard Simpson Park, Rush Creek Dog Park, and several neighborhood parks. And of course, we have two recreation centers under development, as well as the Texas Rangers Golf Club rental facility. The New York Avenue corridor strategy was adopted in 2013, and was the impetus for reinvestment in that corridor. Since that time, we've completed street scape and sidewalk infrastructure updates in the corridor, and AISD has implemented the Dan Dipperts Center. Replacement of the Hughes-Mith Recreation Center and East Libraries underway. However, one of the key redevelopment sites in that plan, the old Lohoi Appropriety still remains undeveloped at this time. One example of a strategic plan is our Economic Development Strategic Plan, which was adopted in 2014. We've achieved many of the items that achieved the goals of this plan including projects such as DR Horton, the GM expansion, Texas Live and of course Globalife Field. We are of course still working toward all the strategic elements of the economic development plan. Items in progress include working on a city landbaking program and collaboration with UT Arlington on research and business incubation. There are a few things still on the horizon including the full establishment of the Economic Development Corporation. Our most recent airport development plan was adopted in 2014. Since then, we've completed an airport maintenance facility and have made progress toward the airport perimeter fence replacement among many other items, and constructing a west side connection from center street remains a priority item to achieve in the near future. Master planning is also part of our Federal Grants Administration process as well. The consolidated plan addresses how we plan to use our block grants over a five-year period. We're currently in the process of developing the next five-year consolidated plan. In the current plan, we've completed infrastructure in East Arlington and 11 new owner occupied homes in the NSRA. We are in the process of completing the housing needs assessment and analysis of impediments to fur housing. We have just begun a micro enterprise program very recently. In 2016, we completed the Focus 287 plan. Since that time, we've made improvements to Russell Curry and have implemented regional gateway signage in the corridor. A major item in process is text.s design to reconstruct the 287, I-20, and 820 interchange. One of our more recent plans is the Collins and Pioneer design design guidelines, which is an example of a small area plan with a very narrow focus. Since adoption of that plan, we've created a TERS number seven along the international corridor on Pioneer Parkway and have begun implementation of honorary sign toppers to highlight diversity in the corridor. And lastly, our most recent major planning effort was of course the Downtown Master Plan, which was adopted almost exactly a year ago. Since then, we've included funding for a pedestrian crossing of the rail line in our bond program and we have renewed TERS number one. We are currently working on the West Street Underpass mural and a townhome development is underway at Maine, Cooper and Abram. And items on the horizon include further study of Mesquite and Center, as well as collaboration with UTA on the eventual redevelopment of these schools, social work site at Cooper and Abram. And with that, I am happy to answer any questions. Councilor, are there any questions? Mr. Sutton. Yes, I think they want to recreate, retreat we talk a little about the 360 quarter. I don't know if you have any information on it, if it was ever studied or an employment code that borders the Grand Brouperry and Mansfield boundaries. There's a huge opportunity for growth and tax revenue, which we hadn't seized. Is there any future going forward studies or opportunities to look at that? That would be up to the direction of the council. We haven't done anything recently, at least within the past 10, 15, 20 years. That is specific to the 360 corridor in the southeast. That would be an opportunity. Other questions, council? Not seeing any adjish- oh Dr. So I'll go ahead my rookie study council had a lot and ask the for me what for me is my obvious question when does the city staff recommend that we do another long-term or master plan initiative, are there any recommendations from Trier from you about what we should be doing next as a council? We do as a part of the financial forecast, which is a rolling five year forecast. We include updates to our existing plans, like the conference of plan, the thoroughfare development plan, high-can-bike plan and others. So we know that those are all ongoing major plans that need to be refreshed from time to time. plans like the comprehensive plan, the thoroughfare development plan, high-can-bike plan and others. So we know that those are all ongoing major plans that need to be refreshed from time to time. Some of the other specific area plans or special corridor plans aren't necessarily updated on the same horizon that comes with a little bit more direction from you all typically, but we do have a rolling schedule for the more major updates. Ms. K. Part. Thank you Deputy Mayor Prattam. Mr. City Manager with regard to Mr. Sutton's request. Can you have ED kind of take a look at that corridor and see if at this particular point and juncture that we need to kind another look and create kind of an opportunity or if it's premature. I don't think it's going to be premature, but let AD take a look at it and make a recommendation back to us. Okay. Do you want to add to that? Yeah, we'll definitely take a look at that as far as the history. Seems like there was a study done some time ago many many years ago We'll try to locate that and but it will I'm sure it'd be way outdated, but specifically it connected back to Dr. Nunez's question And I'm certainly not a Professional planner like some of these folks. I have a little bit more of a bias to the smaller area, neighborhood plans and the corridor plans. As a mature city, the land use pattern has largely been defined. And so we're gonna have the most, in my mind, the most impact on these corridors and in these small areas where we have a targeted focus and certain neighborhood action plan, which is kind of grassroots forward. That said, we need a comprehensive plan. And one of the things that we've done is create that umbrella framework. And then one of the reasons that I like this kind of holistic view here is every plan that we do, whether it's the comprehensive plan, the airport plan, the New York area plan, they are all part of our comprehensive plan. So we're kind of creating a federation of plans to be that comprehensive plan. And to me, it's where much more nimble and agile if we go into the area of attention such as South 360 is an area of attention now that this body has so we can get more focused and more progress on that. So that's my belief, but it, but I'm not a professional planner. So, Jinsy and those guys may have a different perspective. Ms. Mitchell, any other comments? Any other questions by Council? Mr. Peale. You know, I go back to many years to when I-20 was supposed to be a tech corridor, which is what we really wanted. And unfortunately, the market had a different intent, but it's kind of worked out. And I just want to make sure that when we do these planning documents that we do bear in mind that the city can't wave a magic wand and make happen what it wants to have happens, it has to take to account market forces, because I'll never forget that. And, you know, I wanted to want to make that mistake again. I think that's the next one point, Mr. Peel. I mean, it's always helpful for us to see, it's nice to see the benchmarking that you've provided us here. So we know that we're making progress toward the vision that we set for, and for our audience here as well as an audience at home. It's always nice to tell our constituents that we do have plans out there that we are benchmarking against them and we are providing a goal set for ourselves. And certainly I encourage anyone who is watching today to look at them and help us understand other areas of opportunity and I appreciate Council and Mr. Sutton bringing up the idea and Miss K. Part discussing the 360. So with that, thank you very much. Thank you. Mr. Chul, again, thank you very much and thank you to all the planning. I know there's a lot of plans behind the plans you just summarized, so thank you very much to you and the staff, especially who every day have to work with this and make sure that we keep ourselves held accountable. So thank you very much. Moving on to our next item on the agenda of deferred discussion work sessions. Moving on to tree regulations. Ms. Jinsy-Thopel, Director of Planning and Development Department. Ms. Thopel. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Jinsy-Thopel, you're planning and development services director. During the October 29th work session, Council Member K. Pot expressed an interest in revisiting the tree ordinance. So the last time we updated our tree regulations was in August of 2005. With that, we had added the residential tree preservation standards. Prior to that, in 1994, we had established a tree replacement fund and that showed that the fee would be $100 per inch of protected tree replacement. And then in 1997, we set regulations for what accounted towards the calculation of tree loss points for non-residential developments. So to start off the discussion, I will present to you today what we currently have in our codes, specifically the Unified Development Code related to tree preservation and mitigation. So we'll start with tree preservation standards for residential developments. Whenever a residential property greater than one acre in size is proposed to be developed or redeveloped, that's the time this will come into place. The developer or the property owner is required to preserve a minimum of 35% of existing total protected caliper inches. And the development should be designed in such a way that it can preserve contiguous stands of established mature trees. If the designer is not able to preserve those clusters of trees, maybe due to the site constraints or the way the design itself fits in, then individual tree preservation may be approved and would need to be included in a landscape easement or open space lots maintained by homeowners association. So that's what we have today in the ordinance for tree preservation in residential developments. At that time in 2005, then these standards were also had actually come about. Council had also allowed for an administrative approval process to create some flexibility and that was the substitute landscape plan, if you all recall. That was to create that flexibility for two or fewer lots because this says properties greater than one acre in size. So there could be developments which just had one lot or two lots. So for those kind of developments, there could be some kind of a substitute landscape plan which would be approved administratively by the zoning administrator. After the UDC came into effect in 2014. The Substitute Landscape Plan, that process was just replaced by alternative equivalent compliance process, which is the AEC process. So it does the same, it does allow for that same administrative approval that we allowed previously. For the larger residential subdivisions with more number of lots, that does not have that administrative process. It would have to go through a plan development rezoning process to ask for those kind of deviations. Now, remember, plan development rezoning has a set of criteria that we look for whenever anybody applies for a plan development rezoning has a set of criteria that we look for. Whenever anybody applies for a plan development, it is not just to ask for deviations. They're asking for a plan development because their proposed design addresses a unique situation. It is a creative site design that they have come up with, which does not adhere to our strict regulations of the standards, but it is doing something much better to create an improvement in quality. So it confers substantial benefit to the city or represents an improvement in quality over what is possible through strict application of otherwise applicable development standards. So that improvement in quality may include all those things about open space provision. If they are designing around a tree cluster, those are all different unique ways that they are trying to come up with that plan development. In the plan development process whenever they have not been able to meet that 35% tree preservation, City may have required them to do more new tree planting in addition to whatever is required through the standards, that totals or exceeds that protected caliper inches lost. And that new tree plantings have to be greater than 3 inches or greater in a caliper inches. So now that does not account to the lost tree canopy because those are mature trees. So it does take time to establish, but the loss of points is at least counted towards the gain of points with the new plantings. So that was all about residential tree standards that we have. With the non-residential multi-family or mixed-use developments, we currently do not have a tree preservation requirement, but in a way we do incentivize that because we do have a tree mitigation requirement. So the tree mitigation and inventory and mitigation plan has to be submitted whenever anybody applies for commercial site plan application. And the way the tree loss is calculated is anything under the building footprint and 10 feet as a on-mullup around the building footprint. Those trees, the loss of those trees are not accounted for unless those trees are a protected species and greater than or equal to 30 inches in size. Only then those are calculated towards the tree mitigation. Everything outside of that, which is greater than six inches in caliper, those are all accounted towards tree loss. In 1997, when these calculations had come about, was adopted at that time, that six inches was considered as eight inches in size. So in 2005, when we did the residential, three preservation standards standards council also asked for one more change with a non-residential. And that was the protected trees that were greater than six inches in caliper work accounted towards the tree loss. Now mitigation of these can be achieved by adding new trees, replacement trees on the other side, which equals the same number of caliper inches that they are removing. And the last resource that they would look at would be pay into the city's Revoar Station Fund or the Tree Replacement Fund, which is $100 per caliber inch. So with that I am available to have any further discussion. Mr. Piel? I remember back in 2005 when they tore down that tree, the trees at the intersection of Bowen and 20 in the southwest corner. I think that's what gave rise to this statute. And I was skeptical when it was implemented, but I want to say I was wrong. Because as I was going door to door during my campaign for this office and knocking on doors, I'd meet a young family. And I'd ask them why they moved to Arlington. And a lot of the time, they said there's so many beautiful trees here. So I think that this was a good decision. I think it increases the value of homes and makes it likely here that our people's homes will be bought by new families and people will move here. But I do have a question. When you go to compare our tree ordinance to other cities, are there any best practices elsewhere that are being utilized on tree ordinances that maybe we need to look at here? Do we have we made that comparison lately? I think the last time we looked at tree comparison with other cities related to these standards were in 2005. So we haven't done that any time recently. I'm just kind of curious if there's been any developments in the entire Arbor study area and because some developers have mentioned to me that there are other ways that other cities are handling this that might be useful here and I haven't had the band with the process specifically what those things are. But I'd kind of be interested in knowing if there's something after that can make our process even better. Sure. Dr. Roenwesley? Thank you for that information. I know we just agreed to establish a task force to look at environmental quality and sustainability. And I think having trees in our climate, in our environment, is certainly an effort toward improving the quality of our air. So I'm wondering, are you asking about update on the tree regulations? If we can combine the sustainability task force, whatever we're going to call it, with the tree regulations, and look at environmental quality together if that would answer the questions. Ms. Capehart. Thank you, Deputy Mayor Prattam. And an answer to your question, Ms. Odom Westley, I'm sure we could do that. I had asked for an update on the tree mitigation because recently we had a zoning case, it was a PD and I specifically asked the applicant if he would save some of the trees in the interior not just on the perimeter. And he said he would make every effort. They bulldozed every one of them. I don't think that's much of an effort. And to Mr. Peel's point, exactly right, that was a David Weekly development. We had been talking about tree mitigation, tree preservation, but we really hadn't delved into it. In the day I drove by and so every one of those trees, I called City Hall and said, I want another item on the agenda which we couldn't do obviously but I did ask to be reminded to bring it up as a future agenda item so hence we got this but it's long overdue that we took another look at it I don't I think it's fine if we put it in an environmental sustainability but I think I'd rather keep it separate and tackle it head on right now and get it done. Whatever we do, if we don't change it, if we change it, but I think this is kind of a standalone more critical issue than all the other things that we're going to do. And to Mr. Ignacio's point, it's not just about air quality and the tree canopy. It's about erosion and stormwater management and flood control, and I think we all agree. Those are issues that we need to be tackling right now, and I'd rather us do that. One of the things I would like to ask if the Council's in agreement, I hear a lot and have over the years, and I think we all have about the cross-timbers forest, and that we have a part of the cross-timbers forest. I'd like to know maybe we need to get a speaker to come in and talk to the council about it but how much of that do we have left and where is it and what do we need to try to do to preserve it within recent. You know those kinds of things I would find, that data, I would find very helpful before we just try to amend a tree ordinance. And I've had a couple of people say to me, even a colleague here around the Dias, who said, we need to get a ray from tree mitigation and more into tree preservation, you know, some 14 years later. And I don't disagree with that, but by the same token, you have to be mindful of development has needs too. So if we could have a future agenda item, Mr. City Manager, where we have a little bit more data about to Mr. Peel's point, what are other cities doing? Somebody who can come in and give us real firm data with throughout this cross-timbered forest is, where it is. Someone to give us data with regard to what do those tree canopies really do. How long does it take for a mitigation to really do any mitigation? And I'm told it's 25 years. If it's 25 years, guys, and we're in non-attainment, that's too long. We need to do more about preservation. So if the council's okay with that, that's my recommendation that we kind of keep this one separate and tackle it right now while it's before us because that recent zoning case, the very disappointing, extremely disappointing. So that's my recommendation, Deputy Mayor Pratton. Thank you, Miss Capehart. And before I call on the rest, I just want to say I highly agree with you to keep these two things separate. I think we do need to take a really hard look at this. And that particular case completely disturbed me as well. And I think that would be really helpful for us to take that deep dive in. So I would just echo that I'll call on the upon the rest my other hat. Miss Moise. I agree the sooner we address it the better and I guess one question I would have is if this developer cleared the entire site does he have any mitigation liability that we haven't addressed with him for the trees that he did take out? So it was approved through a plan development process and the development plan, the trees that were shown to be preserved through the development plan, what preserved, it was an addition to those that Councilmember had asked for during the hearing. And then this last one is a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but one of the biggest issues that I have in the north where we have a large tree scapes is when on-core, and we seem to be able to do nothing about, comes through and completely deforeuse an entire area that is nowhere near their power lines because they have an easement. I would like to see what other cities are doing to address this. I agree on-core. We don't want to be some other states we won't mention, but I agree they have to remove branches and trees, but I would like to address trees and what kind of impact we can have or what we can talk about relative to on core. Dr. Nunez. Let me recommend a staff that they approach UTA and the life sciences, college of science. There are professors that are, I believe, intimately aware with the topography of this region. I actually studied this in UTA when I was in undergrad and just give you a brief answer millennia ago when this area was covered by oceans the way that the deposit's sedimentary deposits laid out you can actually fly across this north central section of Texas and you can see where there's Black Gumbo Clay in East Arlington. And as you move eastward, you can see where you have more of a sandy soil in certain sections of this city. There are top of, there are maps that you can, if you Google cross-tembers and look for a map, you'll see how cross-tembers and look for a map. You'll see how cross-tembers runs from Oklahoma down through here, and it comes through mostly Central and Western Arlington. When you look out of this building and look at all these post-oat trees out here, this is cross-tembers. When you go towards southeast Arlington where there are no post-oatrees, unless they've been planted, and those houses over there, their foundations are on this black clay that just cracks during our drought. And so trees don't like to grow there. You can go, I had to map out cross-timbers on Cooper before there was much south of Cooper, and draw lines of where the cross-tempers forest ended and where the black prairie began. And so it's soil type that determines what kind of trees will grow in the cross-tempers region. And so there are some of our citizens obviously that have tremendous concerns about us cutting down all these post-docs that are fragile and take forever to grow. But I also know that there are a lot of people that are in favor of planning trees and don't understand that trees are not going to grow in certain sections of our city. But we could have a real expert come and give us a presentation. I'm sure that would take about 10 minutes or less to show us what's going on. If I just might add to Dr. Nunez's point, I believe also the Conservation Council has been assisting one of our forestry staff members in trying to complete a topography map of all the trees in our city. And I know they were working with UT Arlington and I was helping them work with UT Arlington to try to identify an intern. I was told that an intern could do work with approximately a month with a topography maps and have that completed for the city. So I'd encourage staff also to make sure that we coordinate internally with all our efforts on that point. With that, are there any other questions by the council? Ms. Capehart? Just to comment, I think all these suggestions are great. I think the more data and information we get, the better tree ordinance we can create to the benefit of everyone. So I love that data. So whatever staff can reasonably get their hands on and give a presentation to the full council, I think would be very helpful to us. Thank you. Appreciate the discussion today, council. Appreciate the discussion, Ms. Lopel and thing else. Thank you. Council, if council's an agreement with proceeding, I think we'll move forward. Moving on to our discussion, issue sessions, discussion of informal staff reports. VIA on demand, rideshare contract renewal. Alicia Winkobec, senior strategic initiatives. Ms. Winkobec. Hi, Alicia Winkobec, opposite of strategic initiatives. You have in your packet today a staff report regarding the next annual renewal of the VIA contract. It will allow for a third year of VIA service in the city. VIA continues to do really well. We've crossed over the 275,000 trips marked with VIA and ridership and accounts continue to grow upward and trend in the upward direction. The proposed new contract will add an additional 13 metrosis to our fleet so that will give us 28 metros fans on the roads would increase the service the driver hours from 61,000 to 106,000 driver hours and then expand the service area down into southeast Arlington all the way down to the southeastern border making the new service area cover about 41% of the city. Currently we cover about 26% of the city. So that expanded service area would also include 191,000 people or 49% of the total population and 89,400 jobs, about 65,65% of total jobs in the city. With the new contract cost, the city would be putting in about $2.1 million. The federal transit agency would cover about $1.3 million of the total cost. And the contract is currently scheduled for your December 3rd meeting for your consideration. I'm happy to take any questions. Are there any questions, Council? Dr. Nunez? If you can't answer this, I'll understand. But over time, I imagine the goal is to expand across the city. What happens when we expand into that quarter that holds Dalwarthian Gardens in Pantigo? Will they be paying any share of this burden that we have? I think that would be up to future discussions under our current model. We would serve around Pentigo and Delworthington, but we wouldn't be doing pickups and drop-offs within their city limits. Thank you. Other questions, Council? The swing go back. I personally want to thank you. I know I asked you to please monetize that in terms of population and job number. So I just want to say thank you for that. Appreciate the report. And we look forward to hearing more from you. Thank you. Moving right on to our next agenda item. The summary of real property transactions, third and fourth quarter fiscal year of 2019, Stewart Young, real estate manager. Mr. Young? Mayor Pro Tem, city council, Stewart Young, real estate services. So what you have in front of you today is just a summary of real property transactions that took place in the third and fourth quarter of fiscal year 2019. Those transactions were under $15,000 or dedicated to the city at that time. I'll be happy to answer any questions. Are there any questions, Council? Hearing a question. Oh, Dr. Barbara Odom Wesley, please. Okay, I'm back to being a rookie. Why does the city acquire land? It says we acquired 88 parcels and council approval is not required. Can you elaborate on that? Sure. So these transactions are under the $15,000 or dedicated to the city at that time. There was an ordinance passed in year 2000 that raised the limit from $5,000 to $15,000 to bring for city council. So these transactions that you see are ones where that come through the one-start development center, they're dedicated by developers, or they don't need to come to city council because they're below that threshold of $15,000. In some cases, we don't need to send a bonafide offer. It's just someone may want to dedicate their property rights. And we'll just go ahead and put it on this report and capture it for the fiscal year. Are there any other questions, Council? Seeing none, thank you, Mr. Young. I really appreciate you always give us such good detailed reports. And thank you, Mr. Dr. O you miss Doctor and Wesley for that clarification. I think that's helpful for not only us sitting around the horses you But those at home listening aren't moving on to our next agenda item fiscal year 2020 City Council priority champion great neighborhoods Gilbert Hurralis deputy city manager is for Alice. There you go Good afternoon deputy mayor pro tem council members Before you in your package, you should have a copy of the latest issue of the Champion Great Nebrates newsletter. I want to start off though, by reminding you of all the discussions we've had previously on our work session, which all lead into the first story here, the storyline about the Sinex City certification. All about landscaping, all about the decisions that you've made and investments that you've made. All the regulations that we have, you know, trade mentioned a little bit about focusing on tactical areas, corridors, open spaces, and, you know, be and recognized by CineIC City at the gold level certification. I know that some of you members were at the TML meeting in San Antonio when we were awarded the certification. So all that work that we've done and I know that we've talked a little bit about tree regulations and all that but all the work that we've done is being recognized and I know that we've talked a little bit about tree regulations and all that, but all the work that we've done is being recognized. And I know that there are some offs because we do have issues in some areas, but a lot of the work that we've done, a lot of the work that you've done, a lot of the decisions you've made and the investments have paid off because we're being recognized by some of the work that we're doing in our quarters, the signage ordinances, signage regulations, and how good the city looks in those areas. So that's our first sore line. If you go into the next, into the insight of the newsletter, we have a, the continuous success of National Night Out that we do on a yearly basis, obviously. This is a police department led effort, but it includes every department. And it's building relationships with our neighborhoods, having not just the city with the neighborhoods, but citizens, residents, neighbors getting out of their homes and meeting their neighbors. How many here are guilty of not knowing who lives next to them or behind them? And it's simply because we don't try, we're too busy, but this gives us an opportunity now to be able to do that. Oh, sorry, we... I know that we've talked a little bit about some of the investments that we've made in the neighborhoods, the program with the neighborhood enhancement team, which is a new effort. We've done two neighborhoods and basically what we do is we partner with a specific neighborhood in this case the neighborhood is sorry I lost my place here. The neighborhood in partnering with with Hanna and the great community, missionary Baptist Church, the neighborhood is in Phillips Park and we had a weekend where we worked with the neighborhoods and we helped with the cleanup. The team is made up of police department, code enforcement, strategic initiatives and we went out and we worked that weekend to help clean out some of the properties. One of the things that the success of that program is that 60% of the properties of 264 properties had code violations. To date, there's only about 28% that are left and we continue to work with that neighborhood to continue to bring success and improve the quality of life in that neighborhood. And then of course in the back page, you will find some of the statistics that are real important to us. If you notice, in the police department, we had one month where we were transitioning our technology. So these three months reflect an off-quarter. But we wanted to give you that information just so that you would have it at your hands. Now, there's any questions that would be more than happy to answer. Any questions, Council? Mr. Piel. Briefly, on code compliance, is there any way you can generate for me like one PowerPoint slide that breaks down what kind of calls or what kind of nuisance code compliance has Is there any way you can generate for me like one PowerPoint slide that breaks down what kind of calls or what kind of nuisance code compliance has been working with? Because you have this great thing here that says 11138 inspections complete. But I'd like to be able to put something up on my Facebook page that breaks out the work of code compliance and what they're actually working on. Because I get asked a lot, what is code compliance doing? And I want to kind of disseminate some information in a simple manner that's laid out, easy to understand to get that question answered. That's all. We can do that. Dr. Odom Wesley. Yes, I'm not sure if you're the right person to ask or not, but just out of curiosity. What happened to the Adoptistreet Program? I'm not certain. Anybody know that, answer. Our recollection on that's dated some time back, and we used to put signs out and what we would, and this was pretty much for litter pickup. And what we found, a member of the parks department, found very much an inconsistency and attention to detail of volunteers who put a sign out there. And I keep members number of years ago, but they came back and talked to the council about the challenges that they were having and decided to suspend the program at that time. There's a couple different models though that are out there, one which was that old model of have volunteers pick up this mile or this stretch. One that might be another one, which I'm not sure if it works from the civic engagement perspective, but you could also look at it from a perspective where there's a fee where they're helping us offset the cost so that we're ensuring it's being done, but it's more or less sponsored by a person. So there's different ways to take a look at that that we could re-envision, but it was suspended, I'd say eight or ten years ago. Spend a long time. Yep. PJ Mason was the Parks Director when it happened, I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know what happened to it. We would find candidly is a name would be on the street, and then be litter. Not your street, but you see where I'm going is that the city would still get complaints about why is it not being taken care of? And then when you would contact the entity, they couldn't get to it or there were challenges. But it's been a long time, that didn't mean that we couldn't revisit. Mr. Sutton. Thank you, Deputy Mayor Pro Tem. Gilbert on this fire, when we're looking at the number of fire calls for service, do we have the number of calls for medical service or is that just fired in general? And what is the response time for medical? No, I'm pretty sure that this includes both fire and medical. Okay, thank you. Other questions, Council? I just wanted to also say, Ms. Farahs, as well to co-compliance who are here today, that neighborhood advanced team effort, the pilot project that we started this year. I'm really excited to see more out of that. I heard a lot of really great feedback from the neighborhood that was involved in the original pilot project. And it's nice to see neighbors working together with neighbors to solve their own issues within their own community and with own neighborhoods. And I know a number of the neighbors said it was nice to feel like they own their neighborhood again. So I just want to give you and the staff all involved because I know co-compliance gets a lot. Here's a lot of negativity and I'd like them to hear some positivity today of good job and thank you very much for making our communities feel like they have a say in the future of our city. So thank you Mr. Peralis. We did have the block party trainer out there. So I heard you had a barbeque as well. So we did. We did. It was a good opportunity. Thank you very much. Sherry, I'm sorry, Miss Cape Art, please. Thank you, Deputy Mayor Pro Tem. Two questions. When will we get the results of the National Nide Out? I'd have to ask the chief, but I know that there was a lot of water. I don't know. Today we're still number one from last year. So. And we're going to hold on to that. And we'll see that until we get the results. And we're going to hold on to that. And to miss Dr. Odom Westley's comment about the doptist street and the city manager explained it quite well. The other thing I recall is that it became offsite advertising for that entity. And so a lot of other people complained. And then even though maybe they didn't maintain the corridor or the street that they adopted, they were still getting offsite advertising. And we got the complaints for not keeping it clean. So we did away with it. I'm Ms. K. Partagis, found out there were number one to about February or March of next year. Great, she, I knew you could do it. Ms. Karpner, thank you very much for the historical information. Really do appreciate that. And Mr. Peralis, don't go very far because our next agenda item is fiscal year 2020 city council priority support our youth and families. Mr and I'm sure that the first time we've been in the past, we've been in the past, we've been in the past, we've been in the past, we've been in the past, we've been in the past, we've been in the past, we've been in the past, we've been in the past, we've been in the past, we've been in the past, we've been in the past, we've been in the past, bridge the digitally wide and ensure that Arlington is a place where people of all ages and backgrounds can achieve their American dream. Thanks to a $750,000 library innovation's zone grant from the Texas Library and Archives Commission, the vision should become a reality. I know that we're working with UTA on some of the technology pods that will be installed outside. One of the things that I was talking about is that when we went to GE Financial, they had some pods inside that they were using. And maybe we can reach out to them and maybe that same company can, does have the ability to provide those pods on the outside. But we also, the support of our state representative, went a long way in helping us get that grant. So if you don't have any questions on that, that will move on to the next story. Ms. Kepart? It's not a question, and Gilbert, just a comment, as, because this is significant. This has been a priority of the ITC Committee of NLC for the last decade, maybe 12 years, and a priority of NLC across the organization, certainly for the last six or eight years. And so it's for us to be able to really invest because the digital divide is really real and it impacts particularly young people and their ability to learn and oftentimes they're given assignments they need to do online but at home they don't have that opportunity. So for us to make this investment anywhere in the city is significant and I can't applaud the leadership enough for giving these children, these students, an equal opportunity to succeed in excel in school. So this is really, really very well thought out and being in this beautiful new building makes it even better. Thank you for the leadership on all that. Our next story is, you know, we talked a little bit about water and the efforts that they do out in the community. They partnered with the school districts and had a program that assisted 700 students. And those students will provide it some equipment that they could take home. And it's all our effort to continue our conservation efforts on the water side. And it was very, very successful. We will continue to expand this program and hopefully include more schools. The next article is, it highlights the partnership with the school district, all the student and the school district. This is based on some of the incidents who were happening nationwide in the schools, the shootings in particular. And the, I guess the federal government felt it was necessary to have some, some proactive work done with the schools through through the cities. We were able to achieve a successful application and get a grant to do some to work with the with the school district. I know it's a collaboration with with the mental health providers in particular, the MHA-MAR. And basically, what we will be doing is working with the school districts, identifying any troubled youth and working to help them through their issues, so that we don't have an incident in any one of our schools. schools. Some other efforts that we have is we have some programming in the library that includes inclusion as part of their mission. And that's just to provide different services to everybody in the community. We also working with Mission Arlington, the Parks Department, offered an opportunity for you to go to a pool and instead of paying the full fee to enter, you could bring a school supply. And then that's a plight that they collected with them given to Mission Arlington and those who provided some of the students in the school district. to mission all the ten and those who provided some of the students in the school district. This is a great story. Many kids that are in foster care sometimes they'll have the opportunities as most as most other children do. So what this program does is provides an internship and for students and us working with this organization, we're able to provide an internship to students to work in the water utility department and provide them the skills necessary for them to then be able to get some of the necessary certifications for them then to apply for jobs either here or anywhere else in the water industry business. And in this particular story, one young man, Ryan Kaufman, who is our first participant is currently in the program and he says it's hard work. He basically right now he's reading meters. But he's being provided an opportunity that he otherwise would not have. And what we're hoping is to grow this program so that we can include more children that are in the same. What happens is that they age out of foster care. And so then at that point they have to, we're providing them that opportunity to be successful adults. And if you have any questions, I'd be more than happy to answer those. Council, any questions? Mr. Peralis? Mr. Peralis, thank you very much for highlighting, especially the aging out of foster children. I think that's an extraordinary opportunity to provide them. I really appreciate you and all the staff on working on all these initiatives. All right, moving right along. Our next, this morning's discussion of miscellaneous items. Appointments to boards and commission, Mr. Baskin. Do we have any appointments? Yes, ma'am. We have three appointments to boards and commissions this evening. Thank you Mr. Buskin I really much appreciate it. Moving on to evening agenda items council. Any evening agenda items. Yes. The Sully's. I know it's unusual for me to speak at this point but there is a memo in front of you at your place about item 8.6 on the evening agenda. There is an error in one of the items and so staff is asking that if you wish to approve this item that the vendor be corrected, which would require a motion. So this would need to be taken off consent agenda and voted separately tonight and so if someone is willing to make that motion this evening if you'll see me during the break I'll help you craft the language to accomplish that result if you so desire. Item 8.6. six. There should be a memo at your desk as well. Miss Lisa, thank you very much appreciate that. Any other evening agenda items for the evening? Hearing none, moving on to issuesWBE efforts? Questions? Dr. Barbara Odomoesley? Thank you, Deputy Mayor Protin. I asked for this item to be put on the agenda for discussion. Recently, I attended the black chamber meeting and I also attended a regional black contractors event where I was able to have some conversations with these business owners. The word on the street is that Arlington is not very friendly to minority owned businesses. I want us to address that perception and then identify, I hope, some recommendations that we could implement to improve, I guess, our reputation with the, especially the Black contractors and the other minority-owned businesses. And then for my own observation, I've been here about six months now. I think we've approved over 30 contracts. And out of that, 30 only three have been awarded to MWBE contractors. So then that serves to affirm the reputation that we have in the the contractors community. And then on top of that, we heard presentations from Texas Live, from the ballpark, and they are achieving 25% participation by MWBE firms. And the City of Arlington, we're falling short of that. And I would like for us to discuss what we can do. How do we heighten awareness? And I know that we did implement the new reporting form because I kept asking questions about MWBE participation. And now we at least see where it was advertised to vendors, how many MWBE firms responded, and then whether or not the selected contractor was the MWBE owner. And as I said, that's only been the case three times. So my question is, what more can we do? What have we done? What's working? What are other cities doing? And I still ask, why is it so successful with Texas Live, with the ballpark construction project, and yet the city continues to fall short? So, Dr. Odomizli, I hear that that's a future agenda item that you're requesting so we can hold that for the next. I'm Mr. Yalvaton would like to say a few words on this. Okay. So we do have our purchasing folks who can answer some of the specific questions, but I want to make sure to be clear about one thing. As it relates to the ballpark and to Texas live, there are different statutory requirements that allow them to specifically select who may or they'd like to hire to do certain work. They have ultimate flexibility to pick their vendors. Cities do not. So we have various structured statutes and processes where we have to go and low bid or do various things. So that's a legal constriction that's a specific difference between those two and we've kind of fully taken that. That said there's been progress there needs to be more progress on the city side don't don't disagree with that at all and either will or red can talk a little bit about some of those opportunities or constraints but I would also say just around the corner, there's two things that I think can help move the needle that are transactional in nature. We're currently on the street right now for engineering firms for next year's public works, water and parks projects. We went through a very significant outreach with the Regional Black Contractors Association this year that has evidenced itself in the packages that have been submitted. So when we come forward with various recommendations there, I think we'll be able to make some progress. And then the other area that I'd point you guys to in the near future at least as it relates to the senior center to take a look at that as we as we are going to be soon to select an architect for that probably in the next for the end of the year early next and right after that we'll have an opportunity to be into a CMAR process to work with firms and I know there are very qualified minority vendors in that area to help us with that. So, transactually, there's a handful of things that are coming, but there's also a lot of constrictions that are there in front of us every day that these guys can address. And then I don't want the public to also forget that we're also involved in a very significant availability and disparity study process right now. Significant investment of $300,000 to $400,000 at this council elected to make as part of last year's budget. And we'll see results from that later this next summer. And that will provide structural flexibility for us to adjust our requirements to align specifically. So those are a handful of things that I know are coming but will your red please elaborate. Just call upon our MWB coordinator, Reginald Curie Blinner, will have last cast a purchasing manager to kind of fill out some more details and then I will recognize for more questions. Do you want to say anything? Madam, I just have a brief comment before they get started. Yes, Dr. Nunez. My brief comment is that I am a member of the Chamber of Commerce's Latino Business Group. And one of the things that became apparent during the conversation of the Greater Arlington Chamber's branch was that there's a lot of ignorance in the part of a lot of minority business owners of how in the world do you even participate or again involved in city government contracting, especially if you're a minority or a woman or any other group that could participate. So I hope when you, as you give your answer, and after you get done before this evening is out, I need to get a phone number from you guys because they want a presentation to come to the Chamber of Commerce and say, this is how it works. So thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Will Velasco, procurement manager, to answer some of your questions, we're looking at ways to increase our competition. We're looking at ways to increase our competition. We're looking at ways to increase our MWB spin. So we're looking at some of those artificial barriers that currently exist in the procurement process right now. Some of those having to have city of Arlington experience, possibly the pre-qual process. Also looking at contracts that lend itself to subcontracting and seen if we can get MWB vendors through that way. We've recently taken two contracts to counsel recently that had. They were professional services and the prime was not MWB but we've had a 10% 15% MWB goal kind of tied to those as subcontracting wise. So we're looking at different ways that we can increase that spend and look into to get more competition. We're trying to standardize the process across the board for the vendor community. So ways we're doing that is kind of standardizing our informal quote process. This is what we call those low hanging fruit for those smaller companies that are trying to up and coming and $30,000, $40,000 contracts. Those type of contracts that you know they could keep a smaller company in business for a little while. We're trying to standardize that process for the vendor community to give them a better opportunity to find these quotes that are out there from whether the public works or parks or all the relative departments that are releasing these quotes. So we're standardizing that process. So working progress, we're still working at doing that. And I'll let Reginald talk about some of the outreach efforts that he's doing on his end and that will be kind of going on to your question Dr. Nunez about the training and all that information. After the original Cleveland MW coordinator, based on what Will mentioned, one of the biggest things for the city is outreach and we have I think done a yeoman's job in terms of making sure that our minority business community are fully aware of what we have going on. In turn with this city, we host every second Friday a monthly supplier meeting and we invite to not only the greater orange and chamber but we also invite all the various minority chambers, business advocacy groups to have their members or their clients to attend. Obviously we also invite all of various minority chambers, business advocacy groups to have their members or their clients to attend. Obviously, we also invite registered suppliers who are not necessarily familiar with Tony C. Rowanton, but also Arnton ISD as well as UT-Artonton, so they can get a broad opportunity to doing business with public entities in this area. We also host a supplier Meet and greet and to wheels mentioning about the low hanging fruit, those quote opportunities. That's a great opportunity for a lot of those companies to be able to meet one on one. We've seen departments on being able to find out about those quote opportunities be familiar with that company. So when that chance comes up, then they can be at least be notified and given the opportunity to submit a quote on that. We also make certain, when it comes to our solicitations, obviously we use ION WAVE, that's our way of notifying companies about opportunities. It's supposed to end the F4 star telegram, but we also go above and beyond. We also send that information to those same organizations to the Regional Black Contracts Association, to the Greater Audit and Chamber of Commerce, to the Audit and Black Chamber, and make certain that they share that information with their membership and again to their clients. And in a number of cases, we'll also go to utilizing the hub director from the state and we'll even email it out to those individuals, companies that we're aware of that are not registered. So we try to make sure we send it out to a broad spectrum of companies and individuals so they are aware of the projects and opportunities. Now be aware that when it comes to the CEO of Orange and we are different from a Dallas Fort Worth DFW airport because they do have established programs. There's is an MWB program. We ourselves are utilizing an MWB initiative where we at this time are encouraging our primes to utilize MWB firms. And in some areas, we are successful. Some areas we are not. So that's one of the reasons why with the A&D study that that is imperative to seeing what not only from a data standpoint but also from a community standpoint where are the areas that you are doing well that in some areas that we are having deficiencies to ensure that we are able to not only meet that 25% if based on upon a study they recommend an overall 25% but what we can do to be able to exceed that amount. Other questions, Council? Mr. Sutton. Regional, you said Dallas has, Dallas and Fort Worth and the airport has the MWB program and we have initiative. Correct. But there are, there are comes a little bit better than ours because of the program and how do we get through the program side of it so we can improve. With their program, what it does is that they place into their contracts that they will recommend based upon, they'll do what they call a project-specific goal. They'll look at the scope of work, they'll see where there are subcontracting opportunities, and then the department will identify a particular goal. So whereas in some cases you'll have specifically construction, maybe 25%, design 20%, going on based on industry. Versus them doing a generic goal because some of the projects may have better subcontract opportunities than others. They'll look at the scope of the work. They'll look at the availability of certified my normal room and businesses, especially based on history and then they'll establish at the availability of certified monotromental businesses, especially based on history, and then they'll establish the goal. And then as part of the evaluation criteria, they can use that to determine which firms that they're going to select on the prime. So through that process, the results are a little bit better. Then what we're doing. In some cases, some a little bit better than other. In many cases that we actually have been relatively close in, let's say for instance in our design side and our procurement, but they have been a little bit stronger in their construction. Also, you'll find that we do a lot of street construction, a lot of the other entities use building construction. So you have a lot more tray contractors that are minority owned that are in the building side of it. So if we were to, if that were to stay in case, I would imagine our numbers would be much higher than that. OK, thank you. And if I might clarify. Yes, Mr. Yoblin. Correct me if I'm wrong, Reddj. But we cannot have a program without the availability and disparity study. That is a precursor to being able to develop a specific program. Correct. Just as you mentioned that, when it comes to procurement, there's a legal limitations with having MW program. That's part of what having this study is. It provides a legal background on why you've established it go. Why did you come up with these numbers? All is hopefully between now and summertime of next year to have that disparity study complete and to form a basis for the development of a program. Thank you, Mr. Yavush, and that was exactly what it was going to ask. Mr. Peale. Just one last thing. I practice construction law. And I find that I spend a lot of time helping my clients, especially the smaller ones, work with the procurement regulations and the bid statutes in the state. And I may have brought this up before, I can't remember. But when you're a small operator and there's all this attractive business out there, do you want to get out five private bids or put in the time to learn the bid statutes and the bid processes of a government entity that are constrained by legal requirements, which takes an investment of time before you can even take the additional length of time to fill out the city bid form and get it in. So a lot of times, you just gotta get people, especially small operators, familiar and comfortable with all the statutes they have to comply with, the bid process. So to me, I really thank, and I can't recall if you've mentioned this before, but it's important that if we're outreach to the MBE community, that we do a bid workshop for these people who have small businesses who are working hard every day to make payroll, to make their budget. A lot of times they don't have the bandwidth, the process, the knowledge necessary to follow the bid laws. And it's kind of intimidating. I mean, I'm a lawyer and sometimes I can't figure it out, you know? So I really think it's important that we advertise to the MWBE community that, hey, we're going to have a workshop, we're going to demystify what appears to be a complex process, but really isn't, and we'll do it a couple of times. Because quite honestly, most of the big major operators, they have one person in the back office who all they do is follow the bid statutes and fill out all the bid forms, and they're so good at it, they get most of that work because at one person, that's all they have to do. Smaller, less advantaged businesses don't have that luxury. So I think that's an important part of being able to develop inroads is demystifying and taking out some of the intimidation of the government contracting process. We need to do that. Ms. K. Part. Thank do that. Miss Cape Art. Thank you, Deputy Mayor Pro Tem. Reginald, so what is our overall percentage for MWBE contracts? Do we have that number? Yes. I think the last quarter we did, and third quarter 2019, we did 15%. How much? 15. 15%? Okay. And before that? I think unfortunately numbers were 13%. Okay, so we made maybe a little bit of progress in one quarter. Yeah, you tend to have the numbers and percentages kind of goes up and down depending upon the number of companies, number of our contractors who are MWBE, not only win projects as prime, but also come in as subcontractors. As you can imagine, construction is where you get the largest dollars from. And so we're been fortunate in our case that two of our projects that we have going on both the Earl as well as the Southeast Rick Center. In the Earl's case, that is a MBE, who is our prime contract, is our construction management risk that's working on that project. And for the Sun construction, they have taken the initiative of doing, I believe they targeted 25% participation on that. So, of that 15% for the third quarter, can you break it down by what it was a woman-owned business? Was it African American? Was Hispanic? Was it Asian? One of those percentages? Yes, if you need to, we can definitely shut that information. Yeah, and it really shouldn't matter, but it might better if you're at the Black Contractors Chamber of Commerce. You know, it might matter there. But if it's MWBE, it's MWBE. And if we're making significant progress, we're making significant progress. And I think we need to acknowledge it. If we're not, we also need to acknowledge that. But Ms. Odom Wilson, do you know the people you spoke with, had they actually applied and been denied any of them? Either they actually had been denied or they knew of their friends in the organization who had been denied or hadn't even gotten through the process, they just weren't selected. And to your point about the statistics, as I recall the last time you presented with that 15%, African American businesses was less than 1%. I don't recall, but I can, like I said, I do know that at your recommendation that you want to moving forward be able to show not only MWE. I think you gave that the last time and it was less than 1% for African American own businesses. It has to have a lot of customers. Yeah. And it may be that they don't have the tools, and it may be something else, who knows. But the other thing is, I know when we were dealing with purchasing issues, that we had a special training program for people who English was not their first language. Do we still do that program? I mean like ES, ELS or something like that. Well some of it was that but it's also for the Asian community. So they were not familiar with how to navigate City Hall to participate in a bit. And so we were holding once a month, I think it was. We held classes for people who were English was not their first language, not necessarily because they couldn't understand English, but they couldn't translate their English into the technicalities of the bid process. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of hosting anything like that. I do know. We did that for a number of years. Two or three years as I recall. And I don't know. The lady that used to be over purchasing, she and I worked on that together. Huh? Debra? Yes, it was her. So I know that happened, and I just don't know if it's still happening. But all of those things can play in to this MWBE process. So if we can go back and check on that, it'd be interesting to know. That's my question. Ms. Moise, I have just a quick question. So are you saying that in a, let's say we're contracting for landscaping or streets driving, I'm not talking about construction contract where they might track their MWBE subcontractors, but sometimes in other contracts we see some contracting. Do they disclose when they subcontract a poor, like it's typical for a landscape company to subcontract tree trimming because something they don't routinely do, but it's in their contract. Right. So do we ask for that right now where if they're using an MWBE contractor for a percentage of the job that they state that when they're bidding it? All of our formal contracts that we have, formal solicitation are bear with me. Sincerely that we go out for, we have documentation where we do request that they identify to us any of their subcontractors on the project. Okay. Dr. Ardogan Wesley. One of the suggestions I would mention really goes along with what Dr. Nunez says. The outreach efforts are good and I'm happy to hear that. But sometimes we have to go to them because they have regularly scheduled meetings and if we could have a presentation at their regularly scheduled meeting as opposed to asking them to come into us at a time that we select. Perhaps we could give a presentation information or something. I don't know if you've done that or not. Yes, I have been conscious. I do that very regularly basis. Any time one of the things I also do is I also share our upcoming six months project forecast with each one of those same organizations and in the email I say I indicate to them let me know when you want me to meet with your clients or members in regards to these opportunities. So I'm fortunate I have not had too many situations where they've asked me to come, but I've always put it out there. They regularly meet. Do you have their meeting schedule? Usually, yes, I do. I can always go to their website. And they also have a tendency to email me or notify me whenever they have meetings that are available. So you could just show up. Yes, I can show up, but not necessarily to the presentation with definitely, that's one of the things I also do is, I also make sure I attend some of their events as well. It makes myself available. And I'm sure they're happy to see you anytime. Absolutely. Any other questions, Council? Mr. Yolves, I just follow up and to be crystal clear if we know of anybody who wants to meet anywhere Will or Reg will go meet with them on location or at a meeting or whatever and we have been doing that But if you all know of people that we haven't done that for will be there Just help us connect the dots and then one other thing that these guys said at the very beginning, I want to make sure it doesn't get missed because I know one of the things Dr. Odom Westley's interested in is making you know making progress before the program can be initiated. And so one of the structural changes that's been recently made and it does lead to some of the customer unfriendliness that you might have when you're looking for small jobs and they're put out. Vinders have always kind of wondered, well, who do I talk to? And it's not really been clear, is that a park department thing, is that a water department thing, is that a police department thing? And so they don't, they know it's the city, but they don't know what city area is procuring it. So for smaller jobs, which are between $3,000 and $50,000? Correct. We've made a recent change that the quotation process for that will not be decentralized, but centralized. So the people who are looking for small job opportunities, they can contact one of these guys and say, hey, I'm trying to find out more about that tree trimming and more about that irrigation and more about whatever jobs have been put out there. And then these guys can manage the communication back to the right department so that we minimize kind of the confusion regarding that. I think that might be one on point issue from what you hear about kind of unfrioliness is because I don't know where to navigate. And so now we're making that clear navigate right here with the purchasing office. Thank you, Mr. Yellerton. Absolutely. As you can hear, if there's other opportunities, council, please make staff aware of those. And anyone who's listening at home, please do as well. Reach out to us and we're happy to reach back out to you or we're happy to be at your meetings Thank you very much both of you appreciate mr. Cleveland mr. Velas When we write along on our agenda Next one is our one of our ongoing topics discussion of flooding in erosion or any questions mr. Peel Just briefly for the people at home. We had an excellent presentation by Mindy Carmichael at the Friday excellent presentation by Mindy Carmichael at the Friday Council retreat. With an excellent slideshow provided an update on the development of our comprehensive drainage and flood plan. And a couple of things. One, I'd like to be able to share Miss Carmichael's very well put together PowerPoint online. If there's any way we can put a link up that I can put on my Facebook page, because a lot of people asked about that did a good job and and also there was discussion about the city's ability to hold accountable people in developments regarding extent flood mitigation structures are installations starting, extent, flood mitigation structures, our installations, I'd like to get a little bit more firmness on that, maybe just a presentation, just on that one thing, because there's possible things we can do and there's limitations. And I just wanna make sure that I'm clear and understand it better. So everyone comfortable with that, being a future agenda item? Okay, any other questions on this? understand it better. So everyone comfortable with that being a future agenda item? Okay. Any other questions on this? And yes, Ms. Carmichael, you did a wonderful job for us and I already shared your slide deck a couple of times so, um, I, yes. So hopefully that's okay. But it's public information. So, um, there's been a lot of questions and issues. So thank you very much. Appreciate it. All right. And last Thing on our agenda for this afternoon is future agenda items Dr. Nunez I would appreciate it if city staff could give us a follow-up report on the status of the sidewalk Project between Center and I think it's a con Park row on park row excuse me on park row I think it's a con. Park row. Park row, excuse me, on park row. Park row. Is everyone having a future agenda item? Yeah. OK, a lot of hands went up at the same time, so I saw a couple of hands on this side. Oh, I guess it. Dr. Odom Westby, then. I have a question. I guess it is future. It's on the agenda for tonight. And I'm not sure if I should wait till tonight to ask the question But it's it's on the agenda tonight. You can just go to discuss it under future agenda items So you can go ahead and talk about it. So it's item 8.6. We're getting ready to buy some more police vehicles and My question is what do we do with the old ones? The chief lead Mr. Finley. Thank you, Mr. Finley. Thank you, Mr. Finley. Thank you, Mr. Finley. Thank you, Mr. Finley. Thank you, Mr. Finley. Thank you. Mike Finley, Chief Financial Officer, we option them. Chief, I thank Mr. Finley. Answer the question. But thank you, Chief, for coming in. I appreciate it. Is there any other future agenda items for this evening? Excuse me, future agenda items for future council agendas? There we go. One last thing. It's Mr. Piel. I would like to follow up on my comment last Friday. I'd like to hear an update on the mental health treatment opportunities and options we provide for our first responders and our staff going forward with regards to the health program. I think that that has new relevance and is important to maintaining effective healthy workforce. And I'd like to know what kind of initiatives we have in that regard and what we found out regarding those issues from going to certain conferences and things. Thank you, Mr. Peale. I strongly endorse that as well. In addition on the one dealing with the flooding, I'd also like to have more information on that as well. Anything else for a future agenda? Hearing none, we stand adjourned.