I'm sorry. Now call the meeting to order of the Arlington City Council afternoon work session. The City Council will now go into close session on 140 p.m. on May the 7th, 2019, in accordance with the following sections of VTCA government code chapter 551.071, consultation with attorney, 0.072, deliberation regarding real property, 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 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 turn to our city manager, Trey Yeilverton. Good afternoon, Mayor and members of the council. We wanted to start this afternoon with a follow-up item that I believe Miss Cape Heart asked about regarding our animal services update. So I want to introduce to you one of the hardest women, hardest working women in the city of Arlington. Our animal services manager Chris Huff has got an update for you all regarding some of the things that over the last number of years that are really generational changes and how we manage animal services in Arlington through the council's leadership and particularly Miss Cape parts. But on a day-to-day basis I want everybody to know who's doing it down there and it's Chris Huff and her staff and all her dedicated volunteers but it starts with the leadership of Miss Huff so I want to let y'all know how special she is. Thank you. Good afternoon to the mayor and council. Again, my name is Chris Huff. And I'm glad to be here today to talk about the animal shelter and the things that are going on there. But before I get started, I brought two of our team with me and I want to introduce them there are operations administrators, one for the field, Ray Rinchler. Ray. And then one for the shelter of Dianne Tawater. They're my right hands. Okay. Like Trace said, we wouldn't be able to do this without our team and I'm going to go ahead and get started. We're going to talk about celebrating the 10 years of progressive animal sheltering practices in our shelter, statistical data, the grant funding that we've received over the years, the volunteer program of course and community opportunities and challenges that we've had at the shelter. The old shelter was really different from the shelter we have now. A lot of people called it the dog pound. And when we're working with kids now, I don't allow them to say that is our internal services, we're not the doubt pound anymore. We had limited staff in the veterinary clinic instead of the animals going home already spayed and neutered, we issued vouchers where they had to take a coupon to get spayed and neutered done. And I'll talk about that more when I talk about the new shelter. It was unattractive as far as the location, the police department had the gun range right next door. And it was scary the animals sometimes. And people would also think that we were doing horrible things to the animals because of the sound, unfortunately. There was no HVAC system. So we had fans all around. and the dogs you'll be able to see pictures of that later. We're out in the elements. Disease control was a problem, especially with the cats and the catarie. There was not a lot of circulation going on in that area. It is institutional style architecture that indoor outdoor area for the dogs. And then again, the cats with no HVAC system. The inability to support our educational programs, the animal control officers have to be certified. They have to have 30 hours of CE hours every three years. They have to have those 30 hours every three. And then so now in the new shelter, I'll talk about it more. We're able to do that ourselves. We're at the old shelter. We didn't have the area to do that. So we had to go outside and it cost the city extra funding and extra money. So we don't have to do that anymore. Animal behavior modifications was a problem because we didn't have an area to do that. We had 10 active volunteers at that time. And they had their duties and that's what they did. And they went home. And so that's changed. And we'll talk about that more. Low adoption rate. Once we started putting this presentation together, I wanted to look back and just see the year that we moved out of the shelter, the adoption rate was 43%. And so you'll see how that's changed over the years. And the things that we've gone through to make that happen. There were five buildings back then. We had the administrative office and we had the cats in one area. We had the three kennels in the back for the dogs. So communication was only through radio and that's changed. So that's a good thing. It was real noisy back then because we didn't have the substantial walling that would allow the noise to stay in one area. It was all around. So when you walked into a kennel area, you couldn't even hear yourself talk. And once you talk to the customers, they had problems hearing you. so we'll get past that. That's a look at the old shelter and that was the category area over to the left of you and then here was the category area where the cats were and again there was no age back system. So, you know, we there were fans all around on the top of those kennels. There were fans going. So that was the dog area. We had indoor outdoor dog area. This fence and area was next to a creek and people would try to cross that fence and come steal the dogs. And I was big as those dogs are, you wonder how they would do it. But every once in a while they would get away with it. And we don't have those issues anymore. So our new shelter, we moved into our new shelter in January of 2009. We recently celebrated our birthday, our anniversary and the area where the shelter is is amazing, because we have the library next door, and we have the dog park behind us, and of course the airports across the street, and I remember when we moved into the shelter, our Debbie Wood was the manager of the library at the time, and she brought over flowers, and it was like welcome to our new neighbors. I fell at home every since, but that was great. The green, we have the skylights, and we have the beautiful artwork in the adoption mall, and other shelters like grapevine have come in, and they're excited when they walk into the shelter because it doesn't look like a dog pound And it doesn't look like what the shelter used to look like and so they just light up when they walk in and it really makes our staff and our team feel good We have a full Service veterinary service clinic now the Merritts wellness clinic and the nervous clinic now, the Merritts Wellness Clinic, and we have all the surgical equipment that we need, a lot of it's been donated, as well as the sonogram machine was donated, a digital X-ray machine was donated, so it makes it a lot easier on the staff when animals come in and they're injured, or they need vaccinations or spaying neuter or whatever their needs are, we have the equipment to get those things done. And now we're all in one building which makes it easier to communicate. It makes it much easier for staff to communicate. We have the radio still, but if we need to talk to each other, we don't have to go outside of a building. If it's raining or icy outside, we don't have to go outside of a building. We're all in the same building together. The HVAC system, the flooring, really helps us with disease. The animals, especially the cats. The cats are in one area where they're on one ventilation system. So if something happens in that area, it doesn't go all over the catarie. It's secluded to that one area. And the same with the dog. So it really helps us to not have a lot of disease in the shelter. Now some animals are going to come in sick, and we have to deal with that. But we don't have animals getting sick in the shelter. Now some animals are going to come in sick and we have to deal with that, but we don't have animals getting sick in the shelter. It was really a blessing for us. Now, the outdoor play area, we're going to talk about that more, but now we have an opportunity to train the animals. Some animals come in and they don't know any commands. They have no manners whatsoever. And so they get to learn, sit and stay and all that. And we have the area to do that. And we have the volunteers to allow us to do that. We have the animal training room. Now we can provide classes for ourselves. I introduced you to Ray earlier. He does a great job with other staff teaching our classes for us. So it's saving the city money because we're educating our staff and they're doing it the Arlington Way. They're doing it the way Arlington wants it done versus someone else teaching us and then we have to change it and incorporate it into what we wanted to be. The meeting greet rooms, they are going over really, really well. When people want to meet with an animal, they can now take their family into a room and interact with animals and decide if it's going to be a good fit for their family. They have the privacy they need and they get to enjoy that time with the animals. We also have T-CAP Texas Coalition for Animal Protection. They come to our shelter three times a month, twice for vaccinations, three times for vaccinations, twice for a spaying neuter. And the last time we did a survey with them, 80% of the people who were coming to those low-cost clinics were from our area. So that's great. They're coming from Arlington to get those services done. And these are people who would not go to a vet clinic. So at least we know that they're being responsible pet owners. Those animals are vaccinated, microchipped, and they're getting the services that they need. Over 300 volunteers, we've come a long way. 10 volunteers to over 300 volunteers, and they do amazing work. We're gonna talk about them, but we have the adoption mall, and the adoption mall and the adoption mall, it looks exactly like a mall. And this morning just walking to open the front doors, we were able to say, welcome to the Arlington Animal Services, this is the adoption mall. Everything in the mall is available for adoption. So that's really nice. Now when you put all those windows up, I don't think we thought so much about the cleaning because the kids coming, they lick the windows and they rub their fingers up there, but amazing Girl Scouts and other young volunteers, they come in and they want to volunteer and they want to help the animals. And that's something we can have them do is clean the windows and they're looking at the animals while they're doing it. So it's hard to be really really great. Again the architecture is wonderful. When we want to take a picture of groups we can go outside and there's actually flowers outside and roses outside. So that's really nice. High adoption rate. We're gonna talk about that a little more and I have to say when I go to conferences sometimes and we have the little networking things going on it makes me so proud to be able to say we have a mayor and a city council and our city manager who really support our shelter because I thought that was normal I mean I came from the hotel industry and not city government and so Working in the animal shelter and then meeting other animal shelter staff and them not having the support that they need It really makes their jobs even harder than it then it has to be and so while we while I'm taking this time I want to say thank you for everything that you guys have done to support us. Because without you, this wouldn't be possible. The older, the walking the shelter, it doesn't smell like an animal shelter, which is really, really nice. Now, if you're coming at 8 o'clock in the morning when they're cleaning and you go to the back area where the animals are, you may not be so lucky. But when you run in the front door and we're open to the public, it smells wonderful. And the staff do a great job of trying to keep it that way. And it's quieter. The animals have music that they can listen to. They have it better than some people. I mean, that's our new shelter. We have tons of educational programs for our youth, our youth are our future. And we try to keep that in mind and try to keep our youth informed and make them responsible pet on the ships, especially in the city of Arlington. Again, the meeting greet rooms are amazing. The kids get to have a good time while they're meeting their new forever friend. And then our volunteers help us for every single event, all the events that we have, they help us with those. We not only have them, those guys came from General Motors to come and help us. I mean, we have groups come in from General Motors, from Cheesecake Factory. They don't bring us any cake, but they come in and volunteer and we have a lot of different but they come in and volunteer, and we have a lot of different groups that come in and help us. The stray pets, social media, we have our Facebook page, which allows people to find out exactly what's going on at the shelter when our events are, but you can look on your website now and see what stray animals came into the shelter. So if you're looking for your lost pet, then you don't have to. We want you to come into the shelter. If you even see an animal who looks like yours, we want them to be able to look at it, get the animal ID number, come into the shelter and know that their animal is safe. They're very close. They can know they can come the next morning and know that their animal is safe. Adoption page. we have interns from AISD. They're doing a great job taking really good pictures of the animals. When the animals come in, our officers are taking pictures of them as well as the Kennel staff. And the animals look scared sometimes, but now we're getting better and better at getting volunteers to do photography so that people can see the true personality of the pets and what their true personality is. Lost and found if someone's lost their pet they can visit the site if they found a pet and they don't want to bring it into the shelter they can post it as found and people can access it and look for their pet as well as post the lost pet. Staff and the IT Department have done an amazing job creating this urban wildlife. Even other shelters are using this page and it's so nice that they did such a great job with it because you can click on alligator and find out all you need wanna know about how to how to deal with an alligator if you see one you know what their normal urban area should be and then anything you want to know about them bats bees they also added the mapping system where you can put your city address in and you can eat post an animal that you've seen in your area or you can look and see exactly what wildlife have been in your area. Also, we have the dangerous animal website so dangerous dogs are posted there. Any dangerous animal in our city that's been deemed dangerous. We don't allow dangerous animals to come into our city But if an animal has been deemed dangerous, we posted on the website So you can look and see if you have a dangerous animal in your neighborhood You can look and and you can see what it did when it did it what it looks like Exactly where it lives anything you want to see about a dangerous animal, it's on the website. This year we're focusing Happy Ten-Year anniversary. We're focused on responsible pet ownership and we're trying to celebrate something different each month. Responsible pet ownership month is in August. It's a national celebration, but we're going to have an Arlington celebration. the next year. We have a partnership. Month is in August. It's a national celebration. But we're going to have a Arlington celebration. We'll have vendors. We'll have $25 adoption fees. We'll have low cost vaccinations. We'll have golden paws. We'll be there. And it'll be a nice event. and the community. The community community. The community. The community. The community. The community. The community. The community. The community. The community. The community. The community. The community. The community. The community. what they've been doing. They donated $25,000 to help us with equipment such as traps, whatever deterrence, anything we need for TNR as well as surgeries. They pay for a spade neuter surgeries. So our only to residents can come and get their animals spayed in neutered and it costs them absolutely nothing. The trap Newterd return program, the animals have to be spade or Newterd, ear tipped and then vaccinated. So they also gave us a full time staff member to cover the salary for a year. And we received an anonymous donation of $26,000 to help us to purchase a TNR van so that we didn't have to care the cats around in our city cars and then they didn't have to be in the trucks where all the dogs smells are so they had their own van. Before trap new to return we were youthing eyes and We were euthanasian quite a few cats and that was not working. And so we've turned to travel, new to return and 77% decrease in euthanasia since from 2012 to 2018. I looked at the numbers before we moved into the new shelter just because I was curious while I was working on this and it was almost 4,000 cats that we were euthanasian at the shelter. And the numbers are steady decreasing because we have programs in place and we compare last year to this year as far as where we are now, as far as stray cats being euthanized. And right now, we're only euthanizing cats that come in injured, or if they're unwinged, and one of our adoption placement partners are unable to take them. We have the Metroplex Managers Group. This is a group of animal shelter managers who meet once a quarter, we exchange we share information positive things that are going on in each city things that we're doing that's a success we share anything that another that could help another shelter out we meet they like to meet in Arlington it's kind of a central location between Dallas and Fort Worth. We have an amazing community room and so the May 16th meeting is in Arlington and there's about 30 managers who try to meet. There's anywhere from 10 to 30 who's guaranteed to be there to get information we need. Follow the same trends. See what state law is saying, and we kind of feed off each other. It's a great group of people. So, intake. There's a look at intake. Intake as you can see is going down. I would have to say that it's probably because of microchipping. We're spaying in neutering animals in our city. Animals that are adopted are spayed in neutered. The officers are doing a great job. They've started a program basically themselves where if an animal has a microchip or a city tag and it's the first time it's been out, then they will scan that microchip and write a warning versus bringing them into the shelter where the shelter becomes overpopulated and crowded. So things that we're doing in the grant funding that we've received help us to reduce those numbers greatly. We started the Honor Surrender of Pets program and As you can see that's the what individuals are paid the fee is $25 and then that's what's unpaid and when you look at the unpaid We look at each case as a case by case basis and if someone brings in a That's a brand of cat and then a whole litter of kittens, we're not gonna charge them for every individual kitten. And so we work with each one on an individual basis. Some people are excited to pay the fee. They understand that it costs to take care of these animals once they come into the shelter. So they'll not only pay their fee, they'll give a donation as well to help with the care of those animals. Our live release rate, as you can see from 2015 to 2019, but this is year-to-date 2019, but through 2018, it's steady going up and we're excited about that and it's from the hard work of the volunteers, the staff, our community partners, and our advisory board is doing an amazing job. We really appreciate all the hard work that they do, but it really makes a difference. This is the month to month basis. A lot of people are concerned about the no-kill movement. We have to remember that Arlington Shelter is a municipal shelter, which means it's open intake. We have to take any animal that comes through our doors. We can't turn animals away. And no-kill shelters can say that animals not a good fit for our adoption program, and we're not going to take it. We're a municipal shelter. If you live in the city of Arlington, we have to take those. We're a municipal shelter. If you live in the city of Arlington, we have to take those animals in. Grant funding. Over the years since 2012, we've got over $477,000 or the grant funding and Arlington tomorrow foundation played a huge role in that. That mobile adoption unit that people are requesting all over the city, that you see all over in that. That mobile adoption unit that people are requesting all over the city, that you see all over the city. That was made possible by Orange and Tamarra Foundation, the play yard, the shade structure, the photography studio, all made possible by Orange and Tamarra Foundation. Best friends, animal society. They helped with TNR. They, again, surgeries. They helped us with heartworm positive animals. Heartworm positive dogs are some of the hardest animals to get out because people can't afford the services to get those heartworm treatments done. So they helped us to pay for that as well as free rabies vaccinations for our community. More grant funding best friends animal society of Pesmark charities donated funds for microchips and rabies vaccinations. They covered zip code 76010 and 76014. We were excited about that and then they came along and they helped, you know, you didn't have to be in those zip codes. So we appreciate that. Maddie's fun donated they helped, you know, you didn't have to be in those zip codes. So we appreciate that. Maddie's fun donated $5,000 to help us with our bottle babies. Again, the unwing kittens really, really needed help. And Arlington cats alive came forward to help us with unwing kittens. So we gave them over 50 packets of bottle baby kids to help them get started since they were helping us and we didn't have to use the night of those kittens. And then the American pets alive, they gave us scholarship money for conferences. And while I'm on Maddie's Fund, let me just say, as a Friday, Maddie's Fund donated an additional $5,000 to our own ten animal services and additional $5,000 to Arlington Animal Services and that $5,000 will help us to spend new to trapped new to return cats, TNR cats for citizens at our Farrow Cat clinic. So they can bring the cats in and have them spayed and new to an invaccinate in the year tip at no charge. So that was a totally new grant that we received. We're part of service enterprise, a upgrade for our volunteer program. And also, this book is the Humane Animal Control Book. It's the new manual for animal control officers. So animal control officers and shelters nationally. We're using this book made by best friends animal society and Arlington and Austin are the only Texas cities in this Manual and we have volunteers so we have the chapter on volunteers and we're excited about that and then with the Service enterprise those are the three Texas cities. Volunteer program. Again, we talked about that and I'll just say with 15,000 hours last year, it was equivalent to at least seven full time employees. So think about that if we had that seven full time employees. So think about that if we had to add seven full time employees to the shelter. The volunteer program, we have all different types of opportunities for volunteers. And what I will say, the newest program that's coming to our volunteer program is junior paws. And junior paws will be an extension of golden paws. When I was young we had the the sewing classes and all that well golden paws is going to help our youth learn how to sew and make pet toys and pet beds and do the same thing they're doing. We have community opportunities, the animal essay contest. This is the 18th year for the animal essay contest. This is the 18th year for the animal essay contest. It's like a huge deal for our youth, all of our AISD schools and MISD and KISD and private schools and all of them participate in it. And it's a huge, huge deal because they get so many prizes it will take forever to name everything that they get. But it's a boost for the kids and we love it. We started giving birthday parties because the kids were donating their items that instead of gifts, they were receiving stuff for the animals. So if they were gonna have to bring it all the way to the shelter, we said, why not have your parties here? So they're doing that. We've got the foster program, Golden Pods, Artisan Cats Alive. Again, a lot of these we've already mentioned, but all of these programs are what help to make our shelter a success. Dan Diper, we started a program with them. They're interns or doing a great job with photography. Their interns are doing a great job learning about sheltering. So maybe one day we'll be able to get a vet from that program. The coffee with the manager, I try to do that every quarter with staff. We get together with our management team and Starbucks provides the coffee. So we go into the community room. So anybody is welcome to come. So if you guys ever want to come, the next one will be the first Saturday in August. Thank you to Starbucks for that. Okay. And then the challenge, many of you know, we've been looking for a shelter veterinarian for over a year now. There is a shortage and we've really, really been looking for a shelter veterinarian for over a year now. There is a shortage and we've really, really been looking hard. We've been doing a lot of recruiting. Dr. Carter is from Texas A&M, so she recruits anytime she's there. I'm from Baton Rouge, so I always visit LSU when I'm there. They have a great vet program. But in the meantime, Dr. White is there every Friday and every other Tuesday. We have a professional services contract on the agenda this evening for your approval. So hopefully you help us with that. And then we have three volunteers, Dr. Richter from Richter Animal Services, Animal Hospital. He's on our advisory board and he is truly stepped up to help us. He's there every Monday. He takes his lunch there. He gives vaccinations, does wellness checks. And then Dr. Heather is there. She's there every Wednesday and she does the same thing. And then Dr. Catherine, she comes in and assists with surgeries with the other vets when possible. These are the awards that we've received, the Finder Woman Award from Zeta Fibata Sorority. The best friends animal society gave us the 2016 there's no place like home award and then Ben Barbers their FFA we work with them for a few years and they made us honorary chapter members gave us honorary chapter degree 2014 Outstanding Achievement Award For the mayors 82nd annual meeting here in Dallas, we received a war for that. The 2012 Dr. Martin Luther King award sharing the dream and the 2011 Texas Animal Control Association gave us the Educator Award. And that's it. So thank you. Any questions? Any questions? All right. Thank you so much. Chris, excellent job. And I'm sure there'd probably be other comments. And then I'll tell you what your open house was just so delightful to be there. And the thing, the animals were happy. But so were all of the volunteers and everybody that came. There was just such excitement there in the building and thank you for what you do. And as we know, our pets are very valuable members of the community. And then yes, it looks like our friend there does have a question. It's kind of questioning there. And then Miss K. Part, I'm sure you probably have some comments, but I just want to thank you for special their involvement in that. And then the numbers were incredible there too of just how many of our animals are getting adopted, our pets are getting adopted. That's just such a great number there to see that they're finding homes. Because we all know that in addition to helping the animals, it helps us extend our life when we have a pet. And that means you're helping someone here in our city be a little happier there along the way. So it's K-PAR, I'll let you, oh, Mr. Glass-PSM say, you can close it after. Thank you, ma'am. I was first elected. One of the things I was asked early on was what did I find the most challenging being a member of the council? And I said, well, I never thought I'd be worried about cats and dogs. And one of the first major things I was involved in this pet neuter release program. Would you elaborate a little more on how effective that's been? Yes, sir. That full-time employee that we have involved in that program, she is doing an amazing job because we're not only able to trap, neuter, and return those cats. We're able to educate the public on why it's so important and how to do it themselves so that we'll never have the staff to be able to do all of that on our own but having that one full time employee who can educate one who can educate one who can educate one is tremendous and it saved morale in the shelter from having it. You saw the numbers on what we were euthanizing before the program started. It has made a huge tremendous difference with, when you go into the Farrell Cat area, there's not cats there. And it's made a difference in the cats that are coming into the adoption area. We have cats at Petsmart and we can hardly keep cats at Petsmart because the cats in the shelter are so few, and I believe all of that is attributed to the T&R program. Ms. K. Parts, you want to wrap us up? Certainly. Number one, Chris, she did a great job. I know Mayor, she was a little life-rehensive, but I told her we're all animal lovers, so it's okay. So anyway, you did a great job. You really did. And the numbers are outstanding. And Mayor, and we face this, it's this council on a fairly frequent basis. You'll hear we need public investment before the private sector will step up. And that's exactly what we did with this animal shelter. We put the public investment in place and then you started getting the grants, you started getting the volunteers, you started getting staff where you didn't have the turnover because we made that investment. We didn't do it just for the animals. We did it for the staff who worked there because it's kind of a graphic description, but only the animal services staff do we hire them and part of their job is to use the mice. We don't do that anywhere else in this city. So turnover in morale at the old shelter was awful. I mean, back in the day, and I know, because I adopted my cat, they used to have boxes, and you would drop your cat in the box outside box at night. And it would just be dumped in there with all the other cats. And so can you imagine what the staff had to face the next morning? And sometimes they'd drop a dog in with the cat box. So that was barbaric. We have come a long way, baby. And I thank you, Chris, your leadership, the way you smile every day and go out there. I don't know how you do it. I mean, I could not do your job. And one of the awards that was up was Womanhood. That was for Chris. She didn't put her name next to it, but that was Chris' award. She has exemplified what it means to have not only a really great warning shelter, but what it means to have a staff that is devoted to the cause. And you see it in customer service. Now, like any public service, it's not perfect, but it comes awfully close. And I couldn't be more proud of what our shelter does. And I couldn't be more proud that we have become an example for so many other shelters, not only in Texas, mayor, but across the United States. Chris gets a lot of attention when she goes to conferences because this council has had the wherewithal, the vision, and put the money behind it to make sure that those animals and that staff is cared for. And I don't know the exact quote from Gandhi but he said you can judge a society by the way it treats its animals. And so that's why we have the animal essay contest. Abuse Jalmas always starts with animals. And when you put basically a no abuse policy in place in a city and you put the staff and the money and the resources behind it and you stand behind it as an elected body, it makes a difference and I think it's reflected in those numbers. So I'm a little passionate about this but nobody on this horse use surprised about that right. But anyway thank you Chris thank you staff more importantly thank you council for having the political will to make this difference. Thank you Chris. Okay next we'll go to beautification initiatives update and call upon Mr. Scott Farman assistant director of Parks and Recreation Department. Thank you Mayor. Good afternoon Mayor and Council. I'm going to sit here and hold you before the following that but I'm not going to pass it. some initiatives that have occurred, are occurring and will occur related to beautification in our community. First, we need to kind of discuss why beautification matters. The physical environment can really have a profound impact on one's experience. And research suggests that there's a direct relationship between the physical environment and long-term socioeconomic health of the community, excuse me. Also, compared to other complex issues that you guys face, this one's relatively straightforward. You guys have a lot of control in this issue in the city, and it also has a high return on investment. In 2015, excuse me, the Arlington Beatification Guide outlined approaches to beautification for our community. And a lot of the beautification really occurs through either development standards, code compliance, programs like Urban Forestry, Pollinator, beautification. Initially, it was like volunteerism, urban forestry and landscaping, and then also development of new capital assets. Volunteers are important part of this. There's primarily two ways of volunteers do this for our community. The first is engagement, you know like friends of parks groups that I have listed here that serve in those those kinds of capacities and even the code ranger groups that that really serve by reporting issues in code that that might be beautification related. These groups provide service by hosting events and classes. They they do work. They remove invasives. They plant. They maintain trails. They're moving bases, they plant, they maintain trails, and they also provide insight to city staff on specialized items like wildfire maintenance and mowing practices for critical areas like that. Really a host of knowledge, a wealth of knowledge in that group. The second way is really through these voluntary events. We've had some recent ones like the Fish Creek Clean Up that really got a lot of press and accolades. It was great. So these litter clean ups, tree plantings, landscape maintenance, the different types of things that these groups get involved with. It's really critical because it just brings awareness to beautification and how important it is. Gateway monuments are also a part of the beautification program here at Arlington. They don't, they not only contribute to the physical environment that we appreciate, but it also instills community pride and a brand for Arlington that's critical and important. These are the entertainment district and the Eastbound I-30 Gateway Monument. Currently there's a second monument under construction on Northbound 287. It's a $600,000 project that's scheduled to be complete this June. There's also a third Gateway Monument that's been funded through the Arlington Tomorrow Foundation in the amount of $650,000. The location is still pending text.apprubal. And I'll show you the locations that we've suggested to them. There's a gateway monument sign master plan that has up to seven signs. If we can get there, those locations are northbound and southbound 360, westbound 20. I'm sorry, westbound 30, eastbound and westbound 20 as well. Here are the locations that we've presented to text out so far for this third sign. So it's at 20 in New York, headed west or 20 and Bowman Springs headed to the east. Public arts and other aspect of beautification our community. Recent initiatives like the Stars of Texas Project where we have 20 of these stars spread throughout the community. Of course, the Unity Arch, the sculpture trail, and the recent going to the show statue that's located in the Texas Live Plaza. A new art piece is currently being installed between City Hall and the downtown library. It's called Your Way. It's an interactive stainless steel sculpture provided by the Gene and Jerry Jones Foundation through the Friends and Foundation of Arlington Public Library. With $280,000 donation to the city. There's also an upcoming art project called Seeds Byer. It's going to be located at Richard Greenland Airport along the sculpture trail, just adjacent to the Lowes Hotel. It's got a budget of $120,000. We commissioned it last fall. The neat part about this project is a partnership that we have with Texas Live where they're actually providing the infrastructure and the installation of the piece. So the city just bought the piece and they're going to provide all of that, including the electrical foundation and lighting and the utilities to continue to provide that. Street and road projects are another opportunity for a beautification in our community. Some recent projects you can see here. They include things like landscaping, decorative paving, pedestrian lighting, benches, trees, etc. Some additional projects have recently been completed along New York, both in the north side of town and south side of town, traffic circle and the calendar road traffic circle. This is a list of upcoming street projects that will incorporate at some level some beautification elements as well. You know, a lot of times there's considerations of how appropriate that can be. They'll include similar things to what I just described except interstate 3036 to exchange will be heavily tree beautification effort. Individual landscaping projects are also an effective tool for beautification. This happens through grants, capital projects, and also recurring operating funds. Recent examples is Pioneer Parkway, where we had a text.grant for $400,000. So Pioneer Parkway from east side of town to west side of town is got landscaping and beautification elements. The corridor pilot program, which we'll talk a little bit more about here was an opportunity for that. That was funded through the Arlington Tomorrow Foundation. And then city buildings like Ockcribs or along Main Street, there's been a beautification effort supported through general fund operating dollars. The corridor beautification program that's shown here some before and after pictures of the pilot program. Two areas, Northeast Green Oaks and Northeast Arlington, there on the left and then Sublet Road in Southeast Arlington there on the right. So you can see the effect that that had. Again, the pilot program was funded through the Arlington Tomorrow Foundation for $250,000. That was to through the Orlington Tomorrow Foundation for $250,000. That was to include the installation and some ongoing maintenance for three years. And again, it was developed to install native landscaping, to screen dilapidate offenses, utility boxes, et cetera. And then in January of 17, Staff Received Direction began implementing this concept where we can on future roadway projects. And then this year there's two sites selected. There was funding set aside in the budget to do two additional sites. I'll show you those here in a second. So we're going to continue to seek funding to do this and continue this application. These are the two locations, South Collins. Let's see, it goes from Grants Parkway South to Custer, and it's on the east side of the road. And then also Mansfield Web from the future Eden Road right away east to New York on the north side of, it's along the Western Trail's neighborhood. These sections together equal about a mile of application of this program. New development and redevelopment is another opportunity. Both Private and City Capital projects include beautification elements and this is required by the Unified Development Code. So 101 Center Central Library examples of that as well as the other projects listed here and then Arlington Commons which is a unique project because it was a partnership with the developer of Arlington Commons the Lamar Medium part and it's now complete It's now complete. Mowing. Simple but effective, and especially on the interstates and high-travel roads, just because of the volume of citizens that is impacted by that. The city now provides four supplemental moans of interstates, 360, 287, at an annual budget of $200,000. The city also provides monthly right away moan along 180 and three locations, and monthly right away moan along railroad right away at 23 crossings across the city. In FY 16, there was initial funding for this interstate mowing. And then in 17, we added some, the railroad locations in 180. And then this past year, we received additional funding to make four cycles. And that's in conjunction with TechStock Cycles as well. and the staff members of the staff members of the staff members of the staff members of the staff members of the staff members of the staff members of the staff members of the staff members of the staff members of the staff members of the staff members of the staff members of the staff members of the staff members of the staff members of the staff members of the staff members of the staff members of the staff members of the staff members of the staff members of the staff members of the staff members of the staff members of the and the city is assisting this effort through the Arlington Property Renewal Program. This program was created for the purpose of rehabilitating and repairing private properties in Arlington in 2015. Those that meet eligibility requirements may receive project management and financial assistance. An example is here are a fence or an garage door that were funded replacement through this program. And lastly, nuisance abatement. It's critical for a community's attractive physical environment that these conditions do not exist. And you can see here the impact that cleaning this up really has. The city contracts this out with both general contractors and hazmat contractors and it's just funded through the general fund. With that I'd take any questions or not have. Miss Moise. I have a quick one. Sure. And it has to do with the Lamar median park. Just for you. I drive by that fairly frequently so I've washed it through its development construction. It's fairly heavily landscaped. Is the developer, I know at one point the developer said they were working on a PID for that. Maybe with in conjunction, if they could get it carried all the way through to Collins that they might be able to really do something special along that whole section there. Do you know how that's coming and how are we maintaining that as the city or are they maintaining it? The developers maintaining it. Okay. Yes ma'am and I understand that they are seeking a pit to continue that. I don't know the status of that currently. Okay. That's good to hear. Bruce, Ms. Moise, we have an agreement with the developer on that and he is maintaining that for the for the near-term while he develops all of it. And then at some point in the future, we'll have to settle down with him and determine how much of it the city would maintain or at what level we would maintain and what level he would maintain. But yes, and to your other point, he is working on developing a PID that will supplement the funding and essentially manage the maintenance of all the improvements that he's making. I think that's a great idea because, you know, we all know how landscape contracts work. You know, your mow and bow, your mow and blow guys, not the one that should take care of what they're putting in there. That was said multiple times. So that's good. I'm glad he's following through on that, because we talked about that. Also in the Property Renewal Program, the photos you showed us for a fencing was redone and some other exterior work, where does the funding come from for that kind of program? Because I have one or two houses I want to talk to you about. That's through the Code Compliance Group. Okay. And it's through General code compliance group. Okay. It's a it's and it's three general fund from what I understand Okay, so the the resident needs to apply Goes mr. Parallels. Yeah, yes, sir. Good afternoon It actually comes from from fines that that are Through municipal court and it's a part of the of the fine that's attached to each one of the citations Okay, so you find them and then you go use that money to Yes, ma'am. It's set aside for that for that particular problem That's that's and the eligibility is determined by the same eligibility that housing has for Low income families, right? You qualify for it to your income. It's income-based. Yes, ma'am. Excellent. Thank you. Just to clarify a little bit, it's part of that. Civilianization process that went through a lot of code compliance used to be a criminal citation. We decriminalized that, went to a civil citation, and with that, there was a piece of the fine that went to your mark for property renewal. And then to add a little bit to what Gobert said too, we still also have significant resources in our home and CDBG dollars that you'll be voting on tonight that does housing rehabilitation programs that are also means tested and come based. So it doesn't have to be through the program. You just asked about it could be either or and if you have properties that are in need we can get you with our housing folks and try to work through what's the best program for them. Excellent because I do have residents ask me from time to time where they could get some assistance particularly where we have aging seniors and I'm talking about people in their 80s. Thank you. Thank you. Schlesby. Thank you, Ben. It's a bad habit I have, but I do a lot of driving. I'm going to DC for those movies I drive, drove the LA. So I get a chance to pass to a lot of cities. And then when I get home, I'm just really proud of being a tenor. And always go back to the first conversation we had in the orientation to see not only how beautiful our city is now, but the process that you've gone through to bring about a relief. I have very appreciative of one question. So, do we have any plans to do like, a long, you know, say 20 to the way we've done, in to say 30 in terms of landscaping you know? Yeah. I don't think there's any plans for improved landscaping right now. I think the mowing has been the simple but effective increased level of service in that area. I think you have going on I-30 for example, those two is the side walls and you don't really, you don't have the adjacency in the I-20 quarter that creates that same kind of vertical palette. Maybe as improvements are done kind of that 820 I-20, there might be some opportunities there to work with the designers to incorporate some public beautification to that project. I would also expect, actually in the near term, I would expect us to take a look at when the Interstate I-3360 interchange is done. There's not particularly a robust landscape package in that plan as I understand it. So I would think what their plan is to have a lot of grass and mowing. And so we may want to try to come back with some kind of tree program or planting program so that that area and in around that area doesn't look so barren but something that we need to take a look at. Yeah there's Miss Walman. Well I think Mayor just what I'd like to say is that it's so good to see it's something like this where you've gone all over the city you've told us about all the different projects because I don't drive all over the city and I don't so I don't know this and you drive in certain areas and you kind of see a little bit and you wonder you know is it going on all over the city yes it is it is a priority and I think we're doing a really good job you know know, we will never have enough, so we'll never stop, but that's the point. We are doing it, and I'm glad that everybody could see that and see some of the things that we've done with public art, with some of the other things that we've done, just the plantings, and where we're really going. We're in Old City, we're not new, so we have to keep it up and we are doing that And so I really thank you for what you're doing and thank you mr. City manager For allotting the time and get it in the budget and that we got it so thank you very much. You're all you're doing Miss I'll wrap it up. Okay. Yes, Miss Wolfe. I just want to say thank you so much But I would like to see it included as you take this program throughout because I failed to catch the Arlington sculpture garden That was included in this and that's Metabrit Park and they put in three major pieces just this year and have a very strong support system and It's all volunteer and there's a 501C3 but they do work with the parks department and hoping to keep that maintained and expanded. So I'd like to see that included in this as you move forward. We'll do. Thank you. She over to just in combination to Ms. Walman and Mr. Glassby's comments. We always, it's the political will to make investments and in a way that's hopefully sustainable. So you all give us the permission to work on the things. You give us the expectations to establish these kinds of initiatives. And fortunately, it can't be on every thoroughfare 100% day one. It has to be incremental so that we can do it in a way that's affordable and kind of in a way that's sustainable long-term. So I really appreciate kind of a lot of the before and after kind of perspectives because we have improved a lot of spots, a lot of locations in the community and we'll just continue to build the system as we augment it with our bond program and any other grant opportunities that come along and to the degree that we can incrementally with our budget as far as reprooritization of things. It just is setting the expectation, the desire that that's what we want and then I've always said to you all, if you give us the permission, if you say we can we do and then you see the results, if you say we can, we do. And then you see the results. And it just got to deepen. It's got to get the breath and continued sustained effort of that will get you there over time. It's for our Mars. Thank you, Mayor. I have more comment than a question. But I just, the court or pilot project is one of the things that I've heard a lot from constituents about. Very excited about seeing that happening along the corridors. And I know I just want to just add to the council, I think that's been a great initiative. And I think that's helped a lot aesthetically with the fence lines in a lot of our areas. And I'd love to see us continue to look for ways for us to do that because I know a lot of constituents have really taken a bit of pride in the fact that you know at first they were a little skeptical about what we were doing but I just wanted to say thank you to the innovation that this council has taken as well as to staff and us for us to think in different innovative ways to do that further throughout the city. Mr. Farramire, that's what I couldn't agree more. I think this corridor that we have is one of the most important things, I think, because back years ago, we had a lot of wooden fences that were built there that you just can't maintain. And in fact, you know, we've stopped that practice now. And sometimes that's painful for me. Their developers are residents wanting to put wood fences up, but we see how they decay. They turn different colors. It just, it really runs the look as you're going through our major thoroughfares. This is a very effective way to where the citizens can still take care of their fences, but yet the public is seeing beautiful plants that are there, and it is a very cost effective way to do it. The sublet pictures were striking, weren't they? I mean, that's sublet corridor pictures. We're just phenomenal. And of course, I'm excited. We have two more projects coming on this year, but I think that's one of those here in future years Hopefully we can advance even more and then mr. Fairman could you go back to your first slide here too because I love the way you started out this presentation because It is a a great testimony to why we do It is a great testimony to why we do beautification, well, it may be the next slide. There we go. Why beautification matters here? And when you see those four reasons here, that is such an important part of any community in helping the health of the community. And then building that community pride there along the way but there's so many and you hit them there as four major benefits that are coming in the beautification because many times we're here well we don't want to do any beautification well you can't afford not to do some beautification because your city will suffer from that if you don't. It is called investing in your community there and building your community, but appreciate that, Mr. Farman, and look forward to that as we move along. And then Mr. Yeoverton, that was a great comments on, you got to do it, as we can afford it. And that reminds me to, there too, probably another reminder, how do we come out with a credit rating agency? There we came. We came out excellent with the credit rating agencies. I think at the last meeting you all approved our parameters to move forward. But AAA ratings were affirmed by Fitch and S&P for our general obligation. AAA's in every area, stormwater and water were all reaffirmed. And then in Moody's we're not just below at AA1, but also reaffirmed. Everything very steady. And they look at strong stable management, good financial indicators, good solid, strong economy, all filtered by some of the things that we just got through talking about. And then y'all know, but for our TV audience and our citizens watching, that is very hard to achieve here and in future years, it is going to be very hard to achieve here and in future years, it is gonna be very hard to maintain and we'll for a number of factors. But I just wanna affirm what we're doing now really shows our fiscal conservative nature of our city and being very careful and how, where we put our money and what we do. So with that, we'll move on to the next one and it is Retaining College Graduates and I'll call upon Mr. Jennifer Whitman, Assistant City Manager. Thank you, Mayor. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Today I'm going to talk to you a bit about a topic that you all have tracked for a number of years on your evidence of success. You always ask us to look at how many of the UTA alums have an Arlington address, which we shared with you at your retreat last week. And over the past two years, staff has been focusing on this in a light way, I would say. We did some, staff did some research at UTA with some soon to be graduates back in the fall of 2017. And then we also worked with the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative and got some folks from that entity to do some research. So I'm going to go over both groups, both areas with you. So first, just talk about why it's important, perhaps might be important to pay attention to this. And there are really four areas that you can look at. One, we're looking at the benefits of having college graduates here. And there could be more, but these are four, we'll list today. So one is a workforce pool relocating and expanding companies that want to make Arlington their home or make a bigger investment here. It's helpful for them to have a good labor pool here that's close and ready and ready to come to work for them to have a good labor pool here that's close and ready and ready to come to work for them. Additionally, a lot of these folks can create start-up businesses so they can become employers and build that jobs base here in Arlington as well. There's really a spending factor. There have been research that shows that households that are headed by someone who has a four-year college degree spend about 13,000 more have about a $13,000 increased impact on the local economy than other households. And then there's also a potential civic contribution that folks could make through volunteering or doing other things that could help the community grow. So looking at our current retention rate as we reviewed with you last week, we're right at about 16%. That's about 37,000 alumni who are currently having Arlington address on file with UTA. We do check, we have check with Tarrant County College and they do not track this for their graduates. But we know that those graduates are also important to encourage to stay in Arlington because that associates degree that they have is also an important factor. One other piece of data we have is when we look at the census, they also track individuals who are over 25 years of age and have a college degree so that's been hovering right around 30% for Arlington. For you know if you can look back to 2010 it's gone down a bit bit in 2000, down a bit in 2010, and then edging back up in 2016. So that's holding fairly steady. This is really a question. It's very much like economic development. Do you recruit or retain? We could recruit new people who have not seen Arlington before to come here, who have those degrees and would want to come work and live here. But the other opportunity option is to just retain. UTA creates about 11,000 of these college graduates every year and that's increasing every year. So figuring out a way to help those students or those graduates stay here might be another strategy to look at. And that's really what this, the measure that you have focuses on and what some of the things we'll talk to you today focus on. So as we look at the research, we've completed, I mentioned a little bit the research that city staff did over at UT. And this really consisted of a focus group that we did and also a survey that we put out there just through survey monkey. So certainly not scientific, but did yield some interesting results. And then our work with the Bloomberg Harvard Leadership Institute, our initiative, excuse me. We had three folks that we worked to who were all in Cambridge, that Bulbulk Hall, who's the program manager, Zeba Adula, who's an MPA student at the Harvard Kennedy School, and then Ryan Brillenthin. And he's getting a dual master's at the Harvard Kennedy School, and then Ryan Brillenthin, and he's getting a dual master's at the Harvard Kennedy School, and also the business school there at Harvard. And we had several conversations. We did some video chats. We traded emails and drafts back and forth. And what they were doing is a research scan for not only Arlington, but there were a lot of cities involved in that leadership initiative who had interest in this. There are a lot of folks looking to retain or recruit talented individuals to come to their cities. And what they've given us is really a self-assessment tool that we can use in any number of ways, and I'll have a summary for you of some of the findings. So I'm going to talk about the research we did at UTA first. So in the survey that we put out, you can look at the little hard to read, but you can see that these soon to be graduates are very practical. They want a job. That's their primary interest in when they go somewhere and follow closely our cost of living and also proximity to the job. So those are all very practical concerns that they have, certainly understandable. 40% of the participants did also say that they would like to or they plan to remain in Arlington after graduation. So you've got about four to five thousand of those graduates every year who have an interest in staying here. But are we creating the space and the jobs and the housing that they will be able to do that? Because you see, they understand they need to find a place to live and a place to work. So we also ask them what are some things that could make them stay? And we got four of the highest responses were downtown growth and developments. So this is on the left hand, and then also city beautification and a more vibrant nightlife. Those seemed to be on the fun side of the category, sort of things to do. When you look on the right side of this chart, job opportunities certainly were something that was important there, and also affordable housing. So very much in line, when we looked at the data from different directions, this was what we saw. So there were really some recurrent themes around employment and jobs, location, and how they can have some fun and enjoyment. So what's gonna follow is a few slides we've got from when we did the focus group. We had about probably 15 or 20 students that they helped us gather together over at the Career Development Center. And we just sat down and chatted for, I think it was over an extended lunch and asked them about a bunch of different topics. And they were pretty, it was a great group to talk with. So when we look at employment here, this is a student who was going to be graduating and really didn't know where they were going to be locating. But if you can look at those last sentences there, it says, it depends on the job opportunity I get. If I do get a job opportunity here, then I will be here. It's important to live and work in the same area. That was something that came up again and again. And as you see this next slide, talking about location, we have three quotes here, and they all really center around that proximity. I would love to live in the middle of a big city. I would like for everything to be close. I think that most of us are really into minimalism. We did a lot of talking about them as millennials and what their thoughts were, how they might be different from other generations. This person liked to conserve their time and energy and had the impression that Arlington was very spread out. And then another answer that says wants to live and work close in the same area, not time is an important resource and not enjoying commuting. So I think if I remember correctly, this was a student who had been commuting to school at UTA and really wanted to end that when she got her job. So we talked a bit about a concept that we were loosely calling pod living, so where people live and work and find enjoyment and friends and places to hang out after hours in the same area. It could be within a larger city, but it is within the same, a smaller geographic area. So finally, when we looked at fun and what sort of feedback they had for us here, we had the first, the first quote here talks about some of the spaces in Fort Worth and some of the spaces in Fort Worth and some of the spaces in Dallas. And we're sort of looking for something here and mentioned that this wasn't, they didn't really see the highlands as that answer. But they have, talking about physical appearance and murals and outer activities, places to walk and do things. I do want to point out since this was the fall of 2017, this was before Urban Union and a lot of the other downtown changes have happened. So I would be really interested to see if we could recapture either this student or someone who's in a similar situation if they would have the same impression because I do think there's some of those changes that has happened since we met with these folks. And then the second quote talks about how this person was in Fort Worth and sort of walking and stopping at different places to visit and really gave Kudos to the city for the levitt being free because if they can go to something free then they're more willing to spend money on something else on the way, getting ice cream, getting something else. We did a sort of a round robin asking them what sort of things they liked to do for in German and got a wide variety of answers, some of which were educational. But I'll just read a few of them that talked about ultimate frisbee, eating ice cream, hammaking, which I had not heard of. But as best I can understand, it's just being in a hammock, lying in a hammock. Outer activities, shopping, eating, brunch, sightseeing, food, hiking, music, reading, coffee shops, arcade games, dance clubs, music festivals, again, hammocking, another mention of brunch. There was a lot of focus on brunch. I wasn't sure if the students had had a lot of experiences having brunch or anticipated having a lot of experiences having brunch when they didn't have to study, I guess, on Saturday or Sunday morning. But, but it was interesting to hear what they were interested in. So, next I'll move to the information that we got from the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative. This group, as I mentioned before, the students who work with are really terrific. They did most of the work, and Bobo helped guide things. You'll see some similar Bloomberg themes in here. There's a lot of information about data, analyzing that data, and also finding collaborative solutions where it's not the city or the government being the lone problem solver, but it's working with others, working with stakeholders, connecting to find a solution that the community can support, and it's not on any one entity's shoulders. So it was divided into three main areas, assessment, understanding the problem, you know, gathering the data, resolution, which is that they, their case studies included in here, but they did not, they were careful to tell me these weren't best practices. Best practices, they seem to be steering away from because what may be a best practice in city A may not fit the context of city B. So they encourage us to look closely at the case studies that they've offered, see what might fit in the Arlington context and choose from among them what strategies we might want to employ. And then monitoring, as always with, as you would expect with this group, making sure you're setting some goals and are you working towards them. So as we look at assessment, we really want to figure out clarifying that goal and purpose they recommend. Who are the stakeholders? Do all the stakeholders have a similar understanding of what, not only the challenges, but the place where you want to go and setting short and long-term goals. Looking and identifying and analyzing relevant data. I've mentioned the two data points we look at, the census of how many people over the age of 25 have the degree and the second one is the information we get from UTA on their alumni database. They found this other piece of information which we thought was very interesting and you can see so this is this is groups of so these are ages like what the population is in different ages stacking up youngest to oldest at the top so Arlington is on the left you've got Dallas and Fort Worth moving to the right you can see where the arrow was pointing which is right here that Arlington has a very significant drop off when we, after the age of 29, and it zips in and then goes straight up, where the other cities have a more gradual working back to those levels. So we were looking at this and interested and they had pointed it out. I was talking with some of the people on my team and Lindsey Mitchell from Strategic Initiatives and I were chatting and she had some really interesting insights on this. Her thought was that since families, we may have all experienced this in people that we know, but people are coupling up and beginning families at a later age. And so the area of the 30s or the mid-30s, you know, we have up to 29 covered between undergraduates and grad school. That's how we have folks here. But after that, it seems that people are more when they're not coupled up and they're not having, if they don't have families yet, they're more likely to live in an urban, a little bit more challenging environment than where as if you had a family. So it's higher rent, it's urban, it's vertical, parking may be challenging, but it's interesting and fun. And there's its higher rent, it's urban, it's vertical, parking may be challenging, but it's interesting and fun. And that's where we see that. But at then, as folks tend to create families, it's just inexpensive and inconvenient to live in those spaces still. So that's when they come back to single family detached housing, which is more, which is what we sort of, that's more of our wheelhouse. That's where we tend to exist. So, but an interesting point, and I think we are, we are certainly working on that, and that there's more of a space in Arlington every time we look that we have more of that urban living space. So when looking at the assessments, they had two different areas where they would, case studies in the assessment area There was an example in Greenville, South Carolina where the Chamber of Commerce worked to gather some information on what some barriers to workforce Participation was and and what could be done to eliminate some of those barriers Philadelphia, Pennsylvania talked about some talent attraction what was effective I did think it was interesting that they published 10 effective ways to appeal to millennials. I just pulled a couple out because I was curious as to what they were, but two examples are celebrate young entrepreneurs and civic contributors, and the other was create opportunities for civic engagement. Those were two of the 10 that they thought would really help attract and retain millennials. So now we're moving to resolution. You figured out what the problem is. Now we're moving to resolution. You figured out what the problem is. Now we're moving to resolution. What can you do? And this is about who do we have really? Who's here? And what can we work on? So we've got the people, obviously the students from K or pre K all the way through their graduate school. We've got local employers. We've got the city. There are certainly our others that could join this list. And then what are the levers? So what are the buttons or dials we can manipulate to see how we can change this. So we've got certainly housing affordability, innovation districts of the business, incubators, I'll talk about each of these in the next slides with some of the case studies. So as we look at housing affordability, there's an example from Grant County, Indiana, where they're actually giving down payment or rental assistance to college graduates to get them to put down some roots in their community. Innovation districts and business incubators, so innovation districts is an idea really identified with Bruce Katz of the Brookings Institute and or institutions, excuse me. And they, it's kind of that pod living I was talking about. So you've got a really interesting space where it's got innovation and people are living and people are enjoying their time after work. And it's a small community, but it's very innovative and forward looking and people can sort of belong there. Lighthouse Labs was an interesting, incubator in Richmond, Virginia in in exchange they will give a group $20,000 and without taking an equity interest in the business and then give 13 weeks of instruction and learning. They are, it's a nonprofit supported heavily by the private sector. Internship programs, San Antonio had a project that was highlighted called the Tri-Sector Partnership. They also have a nonprofit that pulls both government and private sector internships together. They actually start as young as 14 with these internships. So they really work all the way from the beginning of high school through college and graduate school on that. And then career ladders and pipelines, partners healthcare and Boston Massachusetts, a private sector group working to create, work with employees to create career ladders to hopefully help retain them within that company. So finally, we'll look quickly at monitoring capacity. There's a New Orleans uses a scorecard system that is not unlike the scorecard that you see on the new website for the City of Arlington. The state of Massachusetts with all their agencies is using some pretty advanced people analytics to track employees through their agencies to figure out how their efforts to retain them are going. And really that in this area you just determine your success by picking some key performance indicators and then tracking them over time. So the current strategy, we've done a few things. As I said, we've been working since 2017 on this and we took some low-hanging fruit and move forward with those since we did know the council's interest since you all were tracking it. We have had an existing, both internship and service learning effort with UTA and we've continued that and worked on growing it. Service learning is not like an internship. It's actually where a project and a class will take on a particular project or a group of students will take on a project under the supervision of a professor. It's not, so it's like a one-off project. It's not that you're gonna come in to say the mayor and council office and work for whole semester. We also connected the Arlington Chamber of Commerce to the UTA Lockheed Martin Career Development Center to connect Arlington businesses with the Chamber of, excuse me, Arlington businesses with the job fairs that the development center does throughout the year to make sure that we can connect those two. Additionally, we had a few new upscale multi-family developments that were coming online and we connected them with that career fair as well. Our hope was student could walk in, get a place to live, get a job, and they could and then walk out the door and we checked that one off that we've retained that person. So some possible next step we steps we can look at. As I said that what we did work product we got from the folks at the City Leadership Initiative is very dense so we can work through that certainly create more efforts to assess, implement, and monitor our progress. And we also could expand some of our existing programs that I've named. We've got the internship program. We have some housing rehab programs which could be directed more, marketed more towards new graduates that might help them with first time home by or down payment, other things to help them put down roots here. And then additionally as an employer the city has a tuition reimbursement program and we could look at perhaps some assistance. Some entities are working on some student loan assistance, but that's something we'd have to work through our process here. So I'm happy to answer any questions that you all may have or take any direction. Ms. Louise? Very quick, that's an excellent presentation. In fact, I think we've had several excellent presentations today, all very informative. What bothered me the most about this is that with the growth of our university in since 2000, almost doubling in size, we haven't seen even a tiny budge in Arlington residents who have college degrees. It's hovered right around 30%. So it occurred to me, what percentage are other cities like Dallas and Fort Worth at? Are we like way below them? Or is that kind of in a normal range? I don't have that number off the top of my head, but we could certainly get back to you and council. I just think that'd be interesting to compare us because it may be that that's not such a bad place to be. So. Pending Jennifer's data, it's a good number, it's not a great number but it's a good number and you'll find we're positioned well against others. Okay, that's, I think that's kind of, so I'm not, what I'm trying to say if we're positioned well against others, said I'm not too worried about that number. And I noticed that your job location fine is the old live work play combination. And that what we're seeing downtown, what we're seeing in North Arlington, I think helps with that. That's why I'm really excited to see multifamily come through finally, get some approvals on those and get some new projects coming because the young professionals are where this change is going to come from. And getting them to come here and see the value and the third piece is jobs. We just have to find jobs for them. that they feel, you know, because it's one thing to finish with a degree in engineering, but if you can't find a job in engineering in Arlington, you're going to go somewhere else. So, I know the mayor works all the time on bringing companies to Arlington, so I'm going, let's get it done because that's, I think that's the piece of the puzzle that we have to work on next. So, thank you, excellent report. Thank you. Ms. Walman. I guess the piece of the puzzle that we have to work on next. So thank you, excellent report. Thank you. Ms. Walman. Well, Jennifer, I was interested in, I noticed, let's see, it was on one of the slides that you had talked about housing. I mean, you did talk a lot about housing. So, but I don't, I didn't hear anything where this group is looking for ownership, but more of the renting. And so that's what, you know, in Arlington, we've been, we've had this apartment thing going on. And now we're seeing this is really where we're going because this looks like this is what the young people are looking for and And so how does that affect our housing stock and we're trying to move with that? Well, I think it could certainly affect it in a number of ways We do have that larger housing study that's going to be coming up and we certainly more expansive than any any knowledge I would have on it right now, but Students just graduating, probably home ownership may not be the right step for them because they're just the age that they typically are. They may not be ready to do that. I am generally and anecdotally hearing that renting is becoming fairly popular as we saw that the slide on the 30-somethings. So I think we'll certainly have to wait and see. I don't think it means, though, that Arlington is completely not competitive because we don't have the same rental opportunities we have and say uptown or in Magnolia and before us. But I think we can certainly, the housing study will be able to give us a lot more data on that. And that would probably be a better place to start with those answers. Well, I realized when they come out of school, they're not ready. And that was the other thing. We were looking more at the graduation, but not at families. It seemed more graduate students. That's who we talked to. Yeah, that's who we're talking about. That's what it's about. So this probably has a lot more and as you say the housing study will probably bring a lot more to light About how long are they planning to stay here? Is it get the job and stay here? But we also know that young professionals change jobs More readily than they used to it way in the past They're going with you know five six years. They're on to another company So that's something to watch to and make sure that we have those companies that stay here that they can jump to. I guess you might say. Hang on. Mr. Glasspian, then, Ms. K. Part. Thank you, Mayor. Long lines with Ms. Wildman was saying we've got a broader more general question. We can take on consideration to the development that we're doing in downtown. How is that fitting into what this group was expecting? It was really nice to see some of the comments we got back in the fall of 2017 echoed in what we're really seeing downtown down to the murals that that we've been seeing happen. So I do think that definitely the direction that you all are working in, the direction that downtown development is moving in does reflect in a lot of ways. There was an echo there of what they had said. So I think I would say yes to your question that some of that is happening. And it may be something to go back and look at again to see if it's resonating, if they're noticing and they're seeing that. Ms. K. Port. Thank you, Mayor. resonating if they're noticing and they're seeing that but. It's K port. Thank you mayor and following up with Miss Wildman's comment I absolutely agree. I was going to make a similar comment and the other point is that so many people telecom mute now so it's not just about keeping it they can live in Arlington and be working in Omaha and so a lot of that is just about the technology infrastructure, and I know Mr. City Manager served me to say that, is about the technology infrastructure that we've invested in in this community. That's what they look for. What's the bandwidth? Where's the Wi-Fi cafeteria as I can hang out? And we've done a little bit of that downtown, but I think it needs to be more than just downtown, because not everybody wants to live in an urban environment. Some of them want multi-family or whatever, and they don't necessarily want to be where the hustle and bustle is. So it's kind of like we've always done, we have to try to provide for lots of different choices for our community. And I think Mayor that this council has done a pretty good job about that. But I think that that municipal infrastructure is critical, particularly for people coming out of college. And if they've experienced bad municipal infrastructure at UTA, which they have it I don't believe, then they're going to assume that that carries over or fails to carry over into the city. This floor Mars. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to kind of follow up on that too, because I think the really the next piece is that entrepreneurship. A lot of younger students and I'd be interested to see us have an ongoing discussion with UTA students, not just they do an exit survey actually of students that leave the university, but I'd actually like to catch them earlier in their Southmore or junior year where we're looking at what Kittton's sitter job horizons. So when you're looking at the entrepreneurship and developing centers between the university and the city or the city can facilitate that with the chamber. I'd love to see us have either ongoing conversations, maybe once, once a fall or once a year where you have that kind of, it wouldn't take very much for us to do small focus groups. I'd love to catch them in the junior year though because before they're ready because when you catch them in their senior year, they're already out of the city. So we want to get them earlier in that conversation. And then I think also we want to take, I'd love to see us think more about what are the jobs that are just on the horizon. I didn't see anything there and maybe you are doing this and maybe it's in the other reports that we didn't talk about today. But there's a lot of, but I'm not a analysis of different types of jobs like cybersecurity and some other types of jobs that are going to be woefully under-employed because they're under, like we saw with veterinarians earlier, right? Welfly under-employed. So perhaps we can start looking at the types of those and match that with our business strategy and the other strategies that we have in the economic development area. So just some ideas or thoughts, more comments than questions. But I guess the question would be, could we do an ongoing conversation and could we also facilitate an ongoing sort of discussion about an entrepreneurship because the entrepreneurship program under the new business dean at UT Rlington I think is going to expand we have an opportunity there to create some synergies in the next year so I guess look to staff if we could continue. I like that, Ms. Rohmer and I would include there are several colleges right now. I was invited out this last week to the graduate students of the engineering college that had there, all of their interventions displayed. It was an impressive list. All of them are already connected to businesses here, some in Arlington, some not. But I think you're right on and of course at the retreat, we talked a little bit about that. And I think that we have got to work to try to create as best of an environment as we can for those entrepreneurial type companies to stay here in Arlington. And some of that is happening now, and that's pretty exciting to there. And that was, and some of those companies that are here in Orlington were the ones who invited me along with the engineering dean there to be there. And it was very uplifting to see them. And they all loved Orlington. Also, I would dare say it's a problem too. It's amazing. There the students get really busy. There and their studies and so forth and a lot of them don't know what's going on in Darlington here too. So that's a whole nether realm of how to market with them. But I love your focus group, but we need that to be more current than 2017, because it's so different now than what it was in 2017. And you said that and you'll go back and do that and then expand it like this for our Myers talk to bed. I think it would be important. Yes. Just one last thing. The UTA ambassadors, UTR-Olington has an ambassador program and they're trained to be ambassadors for the university, but it would be wonderful to maybe reach out to them or their leadership center on their campus and ask if we could put in a training process so they could be trained to be ambassadors for the city as well. So it might be nice to put in a little caveat there. All right. So it might be nice to put in a little caveat there. Sure. Just my dad, we're also trying to keep remember the professor's name. She works in student development, Ashley. I can't remember. Anyway, we want to start the conversation at the beginning, not just even sophomore, junior, but freshman orientation. Those kind of if we catch them then plant the seeds and then kind of incrementally water it throughout the time that have a program that embraces it all. Well, we could talk about this all day, but going along with that city manager out there's a new group called the freshman leadership group that this actually has started and the idea being that she is ingraining them into our community. In fact, I came to speak to them. They're first stop was Mission Arlington, you know, here at the beginning, but the idea being trying to get them ingrained into the community and into the university right at the beginning. They're, and it makes sense, especially when you're going to a university that is not necessarily known for athletics, there too. That's a good way. Go ahead. Actually the freshman leaders on campus, what you're referring to? Mayor? Yeah. That was created. It actually is a jump star to leadership. I was involved in it when I was there. This was their first year. There's another group though that has a, and I think they are actually into training leaders and it would be interesting to put in a leadership component in training them within the city as well. Awesome. Awesome. Mr. Gillespie. That was it. Okay. All right. Okay. A challenging one here, but very important because we know that keeping young talent and attracting young talent is so important and then taking care of our ones that we already have at UTA has been a key to Arlington success. We'll continue on. Thank you Miss Wheatman. Thank you Mayor. Thank you Council. Okay next will be amended and restated tax increment reinvestment zone number five. I'll call upon Mr. Bruce Payne, Director of Economic Development. Mayor council this evening on your agenda you have two public hearings related to tax increment reinvestment zone number five or TERRS five, which is the TERRS that covers the entertainment district and its environs in Arlington. which is the TERS that covers the entertainment district and its environs in Arlington. Some background on this over the last couple of years, you all have dealt with making updates and major changes to all of the city's TERS district, starting with TERS number six. A few years ago, then you followed up with TERS number four, which was Arlington Highlands, and with the completion of the center street bridge, that TERS had essentially done its purpose and was therefore dissolved afterwards because we no longer needed its services. And then following that was updates to TERS number one, our downtown TERS, and then this is the last one, TERS number one, our downtown tours. And then this is the last one, terms number five, our entertainment district. And so we've gone through a very comprehensive review of this TERS, I've worked with David Pettit, LLC, the consultant who's very experienced in this area to evaluate the opportunities that relate to this TERS. And through that process process we've created a proposed amended project and financing plan and through that showing revenue potential that the TERS might be able to throw off as well as any proposed project costs and steps that go beyond that. To start, I'd like to talk a little bit about how a TERS works. Some people call it a TIFF. TIFF is the method of financing and the TURRS is its physical manifestation on the ground. And essentially what it is is you have an area of a certain valuation on the ground, which is the area that you see in the blue rectangle at the base. And then when you create the turrets, you partner with your fellow taxing jurisdictions in the interest of creating a fund that will help foster new development by providing infrastructure and other necessary elements to develop an area that is struggling or not developing at a pace that you would like to have. And so during a life in term of that Terrors, in this case you see a 30 year example, new value is created by the new development that's fostered by the Terrors, and then ultimately at the end of the term of the Terrors, the Terrors dissolves and all of the value that gets created by that mechanism then goes to the participating jurisdictions. It's value that would not have occurred but for the benefit of having the tours. I like to make the analogy of normally infrastructure and such things are provided by a city through annual appropriation or a quadrenrennial bond election. TERS allows the opportunity to put infrastructure in the ground on a real time basis related to what the developer needs and when they need it so that they can go ahead and move forward with their project, because if they aren't able to do it in a timely way, the project could easily disappear. So TERS number five was originally created in December of 2006. The findings for the need for the tours were made at that time. This proposal is essentially an extension of that tours. This particular tours was created essentially for a single purpose. At the time you all, some of you were on the council at that time. At the time AT&T Stadium was being built, the Glory Park development was being proposed. And essentially part of this TURS included what was called a core area that surrounded the ballpark that essentially included not just advalorem tax revenue but also sales tax revenue. And the reason was the Glory Park development was a mall. It was essentially a retail center similar to what Arlington Highlands was intended to be. I think originally came in here in 05 and the council supported the activity to go around the ballpark at that time. They worked on it for a number of years all the way up through May of 08 and then the recession hit and everything went away with regard to funding for that particular project. Fortunately before they actually got seriously under construction. And so that particular purpose for the tours at that time went with it. We've left the tours in place because the entertainment district is still very vibrant as evidenced by the new ballpark, by the fact that Texas live and live by lozes in there, other opportunities that presented themselves. But we also have known that this TURS was created for a different model. It was created essentially to take advantage of a concentrated retail operation. And now that we are 14 years down the road from that, almost, we recognize that this TURS is useful still, but for other purposes than what was originally envisioned. The current TURS is set to expire in December of 2036. We are proposing to extend this out and more or less reset this TURS and go back and create a new 30 year tool if you will that would terminate in the year 2049. In this that way this 2200 acres approximately would be able to respond a new development pressure as it came in according to the desires of the Terrs board and of the City Council. And so that gives you a good understanding of the turs board and of the city council. And so that gives you a good understanding of the size in the area that's involved. This is the development assumptions associated that we've done associated with the evaluation of the potential of this turs. And working with the consultant, what we did is we analyzed all of the vacant lots that are within the TURS area. We looked at areas that were underdeveloped, that were older developed areas, that were getting close to being ready to be redeveloped. In other words, fully understanding what opportunities existed within this TURS that could be taken into account when evaluating future potential revenue of the TURS district. And so what you see here are a series of charts that show potential development in given years starting in 2019 and going out to 2030. I would tell you that the first several years that you see there were more certain about potential development because we are aware of certain projects that are circling right now and we think I have a very very good chance of landing. The further out you get, the less certainty there is however we do know what we have in the way like I said, a vacant properties, underdeveloped properties and our ability to work with developers and help foster new things to happen on the ground. So we're pretty confident in the development assumptions that happen here. We think it's probably pretty close to what we've seen already happened in the past. The participation assumptions are, we're leaving pretty much as they have always been. We would depend upon Tarrant County, Tarrant County Hospital District, and Tarrant County College to participate in this tours at the same levels of participation that they are currently participating at. Arlington ISD, as a school district, is prohibited from participating in this tours. So those levels of participation are 70% for the city of the county and the county hospital district and 50% of M&O are maintenance operations budget for the county college at their respective tax rates. The personal property tax collections that we get, which you see here, are not included in that. It's simply the ad valour of values that would be created through new development. Okay, so revenue potential, this is something I also spend a lot of time evaluating and given the development potential that I just spoke to you about coming forward, the total tax is generated, we estimate, over the life of the Terrors, would be somewhere in the realm of $1.3 billion. Given that there's no other financial disaster such a recession or something like that. Out of that amount the TIFF would be able to collect almost $418 million. And then the net benefit of the residual properties that is the portions that are not captured by the turs, residual properties that are not captured by the terms of values that are not captured by the tours, the terms of district would be about $891 million. What that means is if a district is participating at 70%, that means 70% of the new revenues created during the life of the tours would be would be captured by the TURS, but the remaining 30% would still go to those jurisdictions. And that's what this column represents. And so the value of the land in the TURS district that is where new value is not being captured by the TURS would still greatly benefit those participating jurisdictions. And to illustrate that further. I took the year 2049, which is what you see here. We just took that one year. We added 2% of value to all the properties that are within the TURRS district and to look at what value might be created without any development, without development, that's fostered by the TURRS. That total valuation came to about $14.8 million and that one given tax year of 2049. With the TURRS district, with the development assumptions that we've made, that same tax value would be about $64 million. And so we thought that's probably pretty good reference to what potential that we think can occur here. reference to what potential that we think can occur here. So the Mended Project and Financing Plan like the Arlington Highlands District where you had one big project that was covered by the TERS and we knew what that was going in. TERS 5 was essentially the similar to that and that the Glory Park Development was one big project and the TERS was created largely to support that. In this particular case we've taken a different tack and that is to really follow the model of TERS number one or downtown TERS where we've created specific project categories that the TERS revenues would be allocated towards and that way as projects came in and we fully understood the needs of those given projects, the turs board and then the council could review and ultimately determine how much of those revenues can go to those given projects. So the project categories include water, sanitary sewer, stormwater facilities and improvements, parking improvements, street and intersection improvements in the area, open space, park and recreation facilities and improvements, public facilities, economic development grants, which I'll speak to in just a moment, an administrative cost, the cost of operating the tours, managing the tours. The economic development grants that you see here is by far the largest number about $200 million over the life of the tours and that's a little less than what the city's direct contribution would be to the tours over the life of the tours. The remaining revenues are largely what would be collected from the other participating jurisdictions. Parking improvements stand out as well at $90 million because out there as you well know there's a lot of parking lots, surface lots, the rangers presently control most of that and that those lots would ultimately be taken down over time by new development and new we have to replace the parking and new parking structures would subsequently be required at that time, which we would hopefully finance through the tours. So again, you know, we use our best judgment on this, best analysis that we could come up with looking at the various development opportunities as to what this was. And then we allocated this funding based on what we thought the needs would be of the given projects as they came through. This of course can always be changed. It could be changed by meeting with the TERS Board and they cannot modify the project and financing plan and then go to the City Council and then ultimately adopted. So these are not set in absolute concrete but it does give you a firm's understanding of what's intended by this particular TURRS district. So with that being said, as I mentioned a moment ago, this is scheduled for your agenda this evening. You have a public hearing to consider the TURRS number five creation ordinance, which is the boundary, if you will, and the term of the district out. district out being extended out from 2036 to 2049 and then you have a public hearing on the project and financing plan which are the elements that I just reviewed with you on the type of projects that would be included within the tours that the tours would be eligible to contribute towards and so with that I can take any questions you might have. Mr. Payne, there we saw your slide there. We're looking at four and a half times a return from that 14 million to 64 million. And actually, we saw those kind of returns down in Terce 4 that has been completed now down at the Highlands there in a great example because one that development may not have ever been there but think about the quality of life for our residents besides the revenue that has come in there and it's still giving there too. It's a very vibrant development that is there and making a big difference. And in fact, it has even spurned the investment of other private investors along with even our school district has chosen to be there. And then we're also seeing senior living being built there and so forth also to be near that. So it is an amazing catalyst, but it is a very conservative tool. Also, there is, as we have seen in Terce 4. And as I recall, the county was sure excited about that, wasn't it, Mr. Yeoverson, tell about that? I think the interesting thing on Terce 4 is it was up, stood up, did a major project, and then actually sunset early. It's kind of similar to the, to the ballpark project originally that financed so quickly. Same thing happened on Terce4. The, it's overperformed so quickly where we're able actually to sunset that Terce years in advance. As a result, our county partners were very appreciative. In fact, Judge Whitley spoke very glowingly about this is how these things are supposed to work. And, and it was very well done. We've got a great spoke very glowingly about this is how these things are supposed to work. And it was very well done. We've got a great development and not only did the neighborhood amenities for the people in the east and southeast and really across the city be achieved but even regional transportation things like the great, the center street bridge, the widening even Matlock Road. I mean there were some significant infrastructure projects that the public benefited from that would not otherwise have been possible. Well, and think about what we're looking at now that center street bridge is making it possible for us to have a parallel road to Matlock that is really gonna help relieve traffic, Mr. Glassby. Thank you, Matt, good help help but think about Congressman Barton when he moved out of the opening. He was just shocked that there was no federal money in Bob and good news. And good news. And that's true. That's right. And just a question, Mr. Manage, you have a feel for what the projections were on how and relative to the performance of it. Yeah, we would have to go back and do an after-action review, but I know they were strong. I can't tell you that numbers I've talked about in over-perform, so I know we were able to end it multiple years in advance of what was scheduled. So that tells me that the numbers were all flowing beyond what we expected. The original budget, based on those projections, could not pay for the center street bridge, was only partially funded. And then subsequent to that, once they saw how well it was performing, it was able to be fully funded. So, this is a very quick question. So, I'm used to dealing with five to 10 year capital plans. So I noticed you have to outline for us where I think you go back one slide. Maybe two, it's a list of possible allocations of where the funds could be spent. We want to the other way. There. So we do have the ability through the 30 year period to trade offs. Yes. So that's and how how would that process work? Well, it'd be just very similar to what has occurred with Terz number one, which was formed up originally in 1998. It had project categories just like this does and that you could use the money for and these projects would come in. Councils have changed. You know, I've seen the membership change over the years and sometimes we go over this what is available to them but the projects are always different the needs of the projects are different and ultimately you determine whether or not that's what you want to see happen and then it goes and then if there are any necessary modifications to the document, those can always be done as you go along. Right, that was kind of the drift of it because we have a lot of changes coming on council. So those good people will know that, you know, this isn't in concrete. I will have chance to revisit these things over the next 30 years. Well, and in private development and opportunities, we'll probably dictate a whole lot of where this money goes. But I think this is an opportunity. You know how we often talk about how we build upon the legacy of those before us. There's a very low number up there and it's the very first one. That water, sanitary, serenstorm, surf facilities, they invested in that back in the early 90s when the ballpark was being done and then a little bit more when the cowboy stadium came in and so consequently so much of the water, sewer, storm water and private utilities are all in out there and so that is saving us and a lot of money and our investment was already there in that because you think about the 30 years and the projects that are around it and that was the vision. Remember way back when the ballpark was built the vision was that we would have dense development going in in the parking lots and we would build structured parking to take the place of the parking lots that we would have dense development going in in the parking lots and we would build structured parking Take the place of the parking lots that we'd have an opportunity there to be building a central business district heavy on entertainment and it is happening and of course That's been the catalyst to really make this happen too because of Texas live and our live by lows We we actually have real projects even besides the stadium that is being built that is going to be and is an economic engine they're out there and so very significant here with it and also very exciting here for our opportunity there for for growth of our community. Any other questions or comments, Mr. Yeoverton? Would tell the council there are a couple of things that assuming this goes forward that I would expect to happen in the one in the near term and one a little later down but we are working with some of the adjacent development to make sure that our Johnson Creek park amenities are appropriate for what it's adjacent to and they've been very helpful in helping us with some plans and some kind of approaches to do that in a way that's really going to be added value of some great public space. And then also in the transportation section, you all have talked to me a lot about grade separations and such, and I believe that what we want to try to do is utilize some of this similar to the center street bridge concept, but use it to leverage, hopefully this time, with some federal money or some state money, to get a grade separation on the southern area of this tiff. And right now the general idea would be to take a look at you know kind of take maybe look at extending the AT&T way area across some land at the city owns if we can get their trajectory right so we'll work with funding sources and such to see if we can't provide a good regional transportation benefit that will help the whole district and the whole city really. So those are some things that we're working on. All right, great. Thank you, Mr. Payne. Thank you, Mayor. Appreciate it. Okay, we'll move to discussion and formal staff reports. And we'll go to 2019 City Council priority and hands for regional mobility, Mr. Jim Parishon. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Jim Parishon, Deputy Seed Manager. and the new and the new and the new and the new and the new and the new and the new and the new and the new and the new and the new and the new and the new and the new and the new and the new and the new and the new and the new and the new and the new and the new and the new and also local improvements as well as transit improvements. And I just want to highlight a few of those. Again, when we think about transportation in our city and regional mobility as the council's priority, the ability for us to have a balanced transportation system that offers choice, offers opportunities for people to move about our city as well as around our city and then into the areas in our region that are so supportive of the types of things that attract people to live here. That's really what a balanced transportation system does and for the past several years the council has directed staff through this priority to develop that balanced approach. Newsletters, just a great example, as I was reading it, I really came across clear examples of where partnerships with the state, partnerships with our regional cities, as well as local commitment really has generated some real improvement. I just want to kind of highlight that. So starting with the state, this is a really important project. It's called the Southeast Connector. This is a major project with I-20, I-28820 and US-287 interchanges. We'll call this in the southern part of the city and this is one of our major congestion areas particularly in the morning. And it's also some difficult movements to make for motorists. That's been a high priority for the region and I'm pleased to say that that project is starting to move forward. Preliminary designs are underway. The project is expected to begin in 2022 and cost about 1.7 billion for design and construction. That is a major, major priority for our region and the state is stepped up to help with that. Also with the state, it's a smaller project, but equally as important in some respects, is that textiles working on about a $6 million pavement improvement on division street from field of road to 360. And then on ports of Collons of division on Collons and Cooper. And that project covers about seven miles and expected to be completed in 2019. So it's a smaller project, but it's an important project. It helps us maintain the current infrastructure that we have and the states helping us do that. On a regional level, you'll see a picture of the mayor along with several other mayors when you get a chance to look at that newsletter. And that's really reflective of a 53 mile trail connection from the Dallas, Arlington, Grand Prairie, Irving and Fort Worth regions. This is part of that Velloweb project that is the cog has put forth and the cities have supported. That is a really important element. So 53 miles of trails connecting our region, that makes for a unique attractor that's different than what you might find in other national metropolitan areas. And then at the local level, we have, again, real heavy emphasis on a residential street rebuild program and sidewalk program. A lot of the work is being done in East Arlington, which is some of our older street areas. And as you look through at your leisure, the newsletter, you'll find improvements to Ray, Mary, Rose, Third, and Hossick. Those are all part of the rebuild projects in their all in East Arlington. And then as well as the block grant program, which we use federal funds to assist us in doing some additional residential street rebuild. Again, our goal is to continue to improve the local streets and maintain our current infrastructure. And then I'd also just give you some numbers. There's 11 projects in designer under construction in 2019 that are really residential local street work. There was 42 streets that were completed in 2017. We have 11, a more in design and construction in 19, as well as 12 street maintenance projects that were under way are completed. So as you can see, there's a lot of work being done if you look at where these are. They're pretty much east, west, north and south. They cover the 100 square miles of the city. And that's intentional. We have needs in lots of our areas, and it's important that we be able to move people around. And then finally on the transit, we continue to see really great progress in the via rideshare service and a hand-to-trend service. But more importantly perhaps than volume numbers is the customer service percentages. Those are 94% and 97%. I mean that represents to me that the service that's being provided is one not just necessary, but it's a quality service that continues to provide our customers with a really good service that they want to use. And that's how you grow ridership. So again, the term I would use for this newsletter is balance and I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have. Mr. Glassby. Thank you. Thank you, Matt. On hand, I'm trying to deny us what typically I have. Mr. Glassby. Thank you. Thank you, Matt. On handy trend, the denial. What would typically the reason that we deny those? I don't know if I was you in a. Mayor and council members, I'm Bob Johnson, I'm your transit manager over handy trend. Typically the denials are when a passenger asks for a trip say during our peak times which is early in the morning between 7 and 9 30 or in the afternoon because we have fixed resources if those seats are currently filled will instruct the passenger that we were not able to take them on that particular trip. But the unique part about it is that our denial rate initially is pretty significant, but because they're able to schedule two weeks out, we have the opportunity for people who are originally denied to call us back. Cancelations may have taken place. People may have moved their trip times. And so the denial rate actually is quite low considering the resources that we have. Great. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. And probably a related question there. Are we seeing via help reduce the strain on the handy trend? Although there are two very unique types of services, the handy trend, the typical handy trend customer doesn't necessarily translate very well. We do have some passengers who have made the move and some of them even use who have made the move. And some of them even use a balance of the two. They find that if they're going to a doctor's appointment, they like to schedule that concrete trip ahead of time. But if they're going to a grocery store or to eat, they'll choose the via option, because of the more flexibility. Awesome. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Other questions? other questions? As a point of clarification, you saw the picture there with me with Dallas mayor, Fort Worth mayor, Grand Prairie mayor, and Irving mayor because the funding for the Trinity trails, trails has been procured to fill in the holes that are there. Well those holes are in Fort Worth, they're in Dallas, they're in Grand Prairie, and they're in Irving, they are not in Arlington. Arlington was the first city to finish their trails, and we've been waiting on them, haven't we Mr. Randall? Very patiently. And of course, it's kind of interesting and too that I did want to point out. And that's again a lot of hard work here by our council and by our citizens here and procuring a River Legacy Foundation has been a huge partner with the Parks Department and making that happen. But think about the experience. Hours is more of a pure park experience with where the Trinity River was untouched. Basically, we have tree canopy and we have parks here. Versus downtown Fort Worth is more of an urban experience there. Grand Prairie is a mix. And then, of course, the opportunity to get into some of the Irving Campion trails and so forth is pretty exciting and then again you get down to Dallas and more the urban experience but what an opportunity when that is completed for our residents to be able to get on a bicycle or to be able to walk and so forth to enter these other areas and go through it's a pretty exciting time, and hopefully within the next few years, we'll see all of that connected, but there will be phases that start getting connected to us. And then one of the neatest things again, it was one American Airlines requested for Earth, that if you want us to stay here in Fort Worth, we want to have a trail connection into Arlington Parks trails along the Trinity River and so they've got that coming up 360 and connecting into our trails. So that just shows you the demand for these trails even from the corporate sector and the importance of quality of life there, which is a little different than some of the other things that we have there on the sheet itself. So thank you, Mr. Perish, I appreciate it greatly. Okay, next we'll move to discussion of committee reports and we'll turn to Ms. Victoria for our Mars. Thank you, Mayor. The Municipal Policy Committee met this morning. All members are present. We continued our conversation on the new facility naming in particular the facilities that are going to be located where the UC Smith Recreation Center and East Library Branch used to be, and the new South East Arlington Recreation Center at Webb Community Park. As a reminder to the council as well as to those who are watching at home. This is a continuation of a conversation. It started with a subcommittee of our parks board and it went to the full parks board where they looked at and came up with a list of top names that they felt were appropriate. That came to our committee and our committee reviewed, and then we asked for some further review by Director Lemuel Randolph, excuse me, as well as his staff to take a look at some other ideas. With that, it's unanimous for recommendation by the municipal policy committee for the following. For the Use Smith Recreation Center in East Branch Library now to be known as the Alpha Center. The reason the Alpha Center was chosen is because to as a reminder, this is the area where we had the first residential area in our city. We had the first retail area in our city. And again, as a reminder, this is the first joint recreation library facility. The committee felt that the Alpha Center was a way to provide and articulate that first in the city. And the second recommendation, again, unanimous recommendation by the committee for the Southeast Arlington Recreation Center at Webb Community Park was Mosaic. Mosaic. And the idea why Mosaic was chosen is again the diversity and inclusivity of this particular area, the lightness and of course the design and the very unique design of that facility. So those are the recommendations by the municipal policy committee to the full council for consideration and council is being asked to consider and provide recommendations to staff on how to proceed. If there's any questions, please let me know. Any questions? Comments? Sounds good. Okay. What do you all think? Ms. Kephurt? I will say we had an extremely entertaining committee meeting. So, and Mr. Glass-V, it was almost as entertaining as your STR. Right? But it was. And we vetted a lot of different names and we agreed and we disagreed and we capitulated and we agreed. And so it was unanimous for the committee which is our chairperson Dr. Myers and Ms. Wolfe and Ms. Talman myself. That's pretty amazing to have you, Nana. Ms. R really. I was surprised I thought any naming that would be a tough deal. Yeah, I went through a lot of a lot of names I guess. Yeah. All right. Any anybody else? I guess another comment I'm sorry, Miss chair. Mr. Randolph thought both of those names were very marketable and the committee was concerned about that and did ask that question. Good, so the marketing department of the parks can use that then. Okay. All right. Okay. Ms. Sheelverson, do you want to weigh in on this? All right. Okay. Is she over to you want to weigh in on this? All right. Okay. Well, I guess we'll move forward with those names and they're along the way and we'll look forward to referencing them. I will say both these facilities are gonna be state of the art. They are really outstanding facilities. And I think there's a lot of excitement there to it too. And Ms. Thalman, I think too in your district, you know, there was a lot of worry about whether this would really be a great facility. Well, it is. Thank you for your work on that too, because it's going to be a first class facility down there. And I think it's in a great location. I think it's a place where everybody's going to be easily get to it, too. There in the mix. And then I've got to say moving the Hussmith Rec Center, excuse me, the Alpha back, they're back toward is, it is a great location. And then of course it's so functional now during the construction so we can keep the other one open and I love setting it back. They're by the elementary school. And then of course the teachers and the students are all excited that it's gonna be right there beside them too. That was really good. Mr. Glass, what are the protection now when one would be up? Construction. Construction estimate? So it was 16 months. Now it's 15 months, right, Mr. Rendo? I'll tell you, well, we'll talk about it in a minute. It's not on this agenda. Most of our projects now, it's been pretty exciting. We've been staying on schedule pretty well. And anyway, push on Mr. Rendo. There's a huge demand for these two facilities aren't there and I know you will All right any other discussion on that Did you have anything else miss for our march? Then we'll move to appointments to boards and commissions mr. Busskin Thank you mayor. We have 12 appointments to boards and commissions. Okay Evening agenda items. Miss K. Part. Thank you, Mayor. We continued PD 18th, DASH 15, the Green Oaks Preserve. And I have had very productive meetings with the applicant. And I think probably by now you've all received an email or should have received an email about the changes he's agreed to. He doesn't have all the design documents done just because of, but I thought it was fine if we go ahead and present this to Council. Council is fine. I'm first reading. That time we get to second reading, he would have all the design documents completed. That's awesome. That's why it's supposed to work, isn't it? That's great. It's good news. Anybody else have anything on evening agenda items? Okay. Issues relative to city and oh, Miss Topel has something on evening agenda. Thank you, Mayor. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Jens E. Topel planning and development services director. I have an update on item number 12.3. The amendments to the health and sanitation chapter related to hotel premise regulations. Today, this morning, we received a few comments, minor comments from the existing hotelier group on the draft ordinance. So we have made those revisions in the ordinance and I have a red line version of the ordinance that I'm going to pass out. But at the evening meeting on your desk will be the final version as well, which is what you will use for your approval. Thank you. Okay. I'm going to go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go the transportation. Last I heard mayor of the schedule is dragging a little bit behind from our original estimate. Now we're looking at moving into 2022, I believe, which is unfortunate. They're trying to make up some schedule timing on some of the future closures. There were originally six closures planned. We still need to do five of those. We've had one closure. So trying to schedule those closures around all the events in the entertainment district has proven a challenge as well as the weather. So as we move forward, we'll look to make up time on the ground, see if we can move that schedule back into 2021. But right now we're sitting in early 2022 I believe. And that has been the directive. TechStyle and their sub consultant TTI is trying to find ways to save time. Absolutely. Is that is really cost in us every month that doesn't get open? Yes sir. There with it. All right. Anybody else? Yes, Mr. Yo. Just on the positive text outside and maybe you could talk a little bit about the type of work that they're doing but Jim had referred to the work that was being done on Collins and Division. And to me it's like new lanes just show up overnight like magic. I mean they've already done between I-30 and Division and now they're starting to do Division Street Lane. I think that's a like a mill and overlay type thing but it's like you don't even see him during the day time and in the morning there's a new lane. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yes, they're working actually it is magic. It's a new technology. We're going to invest in it ourselves. They're working overnight on those projects. So the impact to the citizens is very minimal and you're right, they do try, they pave about a lane of night. So when you come in the next day, you'll see new paving out there. But they are working overnight. And the other thing is, is we will, the city will be starting the milling overlay of the section of Collins between Abram and Division. That will also be over not work. And that's coming next week after next. So you'll be seeing that closure over not as well. The reason I mentioned it because it's been so easy because when that we put out a release to communications on that there was a lot of like oh my goodness what's going to happen. Please not now There's already too much under construction But that has been so smooth so far so that people's worries just I think have not materialized and that's been great Anything else on city and textile projects and of course compliments to our Abrams Street contractor. Absolutely. They're amazing. Yeah. All right. Thank you, Ms. Carmichael. Legislative update. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council, J. Warren, the director of communication and legislative affairs. We are about. We are about two and a half weeks left in this legislative session, so I think it's safe to say we are in crunch time as the, both the House and the Senate, work through the bills that have survived us far. Two that have, I wanted to point out to you, obviously we've been following SB2, which has now passed the House on third reading. They made a few amendments to it. One of which requires that the passage of SB2 has to be tied to the passage of HB3. House Bill 3 is the school finance reform bill, which has now, as you know, on the second point here, passed this Senate. So both of these bills had some changes along the way. So they both now have been referred to conference committee where they'll kind of work out those differences as we round out the session. So we're seeing both of those move forward. The SB2 that did pass both the Senate and the House is at a 3.5% rollback rate. A few other bills that were following and keeping an eye on the building materials bill that we mentioned to you earlier. This would preempt the city's ability to regulate what kind of building materials are used. So long as it's in the international code of building materials, you would be able to use it on structures within the city. That has passed the House, but no senate committee assignment thus far. On the cable right of way bill that we've discussed multiple times, this was basically allow a cable company or a fun company to pay the lesser of the two city fees either the cable franchise fee or the access line fee which would have a impact on our budget and all city budgets. This has advanced in both houses so we're seeing that one move forward. And then finally I would point out the chapter 312. This is a reauthorization of that economic development tool that was set to sunset here in the next year. There are multiple bills moving forward in this area. Some just to let it go forever essentially. Some to have another 10 year period and some that would require some transparency added to a 10 year reset of that. But all of them are moving forward and it does appear that this one is in some format going to be renewed. Happy to answer any questions that any of you have related to these issues or any others. Any questions from Mr. Warren? Thank you, Mr. Warren. Next we'll move to discussion of flooding and erosion. Ms. Carmichael, we are still working on it diligently, right? I mean, not that there's any change, but yet every day there's things going on. Yes, absolutely. We're still implementing our, some of our 2018 projects that are under construction and moving forward with some of our 2019 projects, as well as the watershed studies that will be completing early in 2020 and our localized drainage studies that will be wrapping up at the end of this year. So yes, we're moving forward on all of that. And then our voluntary biodes are moving forward. We have one on the agenda tonight, right So yes, we're moving forward on all of that. And there are voluntary biots are moving forward. We have one on the agenda tonight, right? Yes, we have one tonight. And then there's three or four more in the queue that we're working with citizens to purchase as well. And explain the voluntary biot of homes that you have going on. The voluntary biot program is typically for structures that have flooded, and they are substantially damaged. They're located in the flood plain or the floodway. And substantially damage means that they can't repair them within our current regulations. The damage is too substantial. And if they want to repair them, then they're gonna have to bring them up to current standards. Which typically means they have to raise their structure a number of feet. And that proves cost effective. So the city has a volunteer or cost prohibitive. The city has a voluntary program where we can go in and work with them to purchase their home on a voluntary basis. We do not go in condemn. They are volunteering for us to purchase their home and we remove that home out of the floodplain and floodway once it's purchased. We don't build other structures there then it becomes you know just a virgin land again back to where it was and then I think it's worth stating to you may recall all of this really again because we had two 100-year storms with just a few weeks apart, what in the same month. Yes. And then in the middle of that, we also had a very high intensity storm. And since then, our ground has been really inundated there so we're not getting much of the rain at all soaking into the ground so we get runoff. So we experienced historical storms that took place and historical flooding. But the thing that I wanted to point here too is that again building on what has been done in the past, literally six, 700 homes that already been either protected or taken out of harm's way up to this point, we were a couple hundred shy there in being able to complete that before these storms hit, but also these were bigger than anything because of the close proximity of the storms themselves. So it is historic storms. And I think we need to keep that in mind that this was not any normal situation there with it, but yet we add this item on here every week so that we can again remind our citizens and those affected that we're continuing to work on it and it is a part of Miss Carmichael's life every day. Absolutely. And it also a part of the mayor's and council members' life every day that we are concerned here and trying to take care of it and then it's at again as a complicated issue and then the bigger thing too it takes money and it takes time there through it there and it's unfortunate that we had those biggest storms to hit when they did there. Any other questions from Ms. Carmichael? All right. Thank you, Ms. Carmichael. Next, we'll move to future agenda items. Ms. Fauromars. Thank you, Mayor. This may be a little bit premature, but given the discussion, and obviously, you saw the passion with my thoughts about what to do to engage or retain our college graduates, I kind of was thinking about there's several examples across the country, or called Welcome Home Programs, or Welcome Home Projects, which is really a social media focus, there's a sort of a during orientation, there's a welcoming home video that's produced and some materials that are produced so that the students believe that they own their city as opposed to just being a part of UTA or as someone fondly in the past, he's dearly departed, used to say sometimes students at University's Croger, they go, they go to the university and they go home and they don't necessarily think about the city that they surround. And so I just, it may be premature, but I just, the fact that we have so much information when we've cultivated this, it might be really interesting if we could put together a staff cup of together, either a handout or I was thinking social media wise, having some sort of short film about welcome home and here's the top things that you need to know about Arlington and making the ambassador. So it's just a thought. I don't know where the council sits on it but I thought I'd put it out for discussion. What do you all think? Oh, that's right, this future. Is it all I have to put this on a future agenda, Adam? Thank you. Good so we can have discussion. Sorry I jumped the gun. They're on that. I'm kind of excited. I think that's also missed for our Mars. Yes, Mr. Glaston. Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Yovarton, quite often we're getting up discussing entertainment district and benefit and all you'll allude to the how much it provides for our citizens. In fact, I think in one time you indicated it was like a 14 cents Could we have sort of a review of the real benefit of the entertainment district to our community so they can really begin to see that it's an asset instead of a liability like some people think. That's right. Now there's where a lot of our revenue comes to be able to keep our city going. That's right. In fact, we just talked about two of the economic engines, UTA and the entertainment district. Two big economic engines here in town. So everybody okay with that? Okay. All right. Anybody else have some future agenda items? Like, all right. Then with that, I see no other business and we will stand adjourned and come back at 630. Thank you. Thank you.