Now I'd like to call the afternoon work session of the Arlington City Council to order. The City Council will now go into closed session at 12.25 p.m. on April the 9th, 2019, in accordance with the the case of the case of the case of the case of the case of the case of the case of the case of the case of the case of the case of the case of the case of the case of the case of the case of the case of the case of the case of the case of the case of the case of the case of the case of the case of the case of the case of the case of the case of the case of the case of the case you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you So I I'm going to go to the next slide. And I'll just leave these speakers to the top. I need to find you. Can you bring a trick there of which you know as you're going to play the more of the game? Yeah. I'm going to switch between the call of the game. I'm going to just now put the call of the game. And I'm just now putting the call of the game. And I'm just trying to find the call of the game. So I'm I'm going to go to the next floor. I'm going to have to go to the next floor. I'm going to have to go to the next floor. I'm going to have to go to the next floor. I'm going to have to go to the next floor. I'm going to have to go to the next floor. I'm going to have to go to the next floor. I'm going to have to go to the next floor. I'm going to have a little bit more back. back is all stuff. We're getting old. We're getting old. We're getting old. We're getting old. We're getting old. We're getting old. We're getting old. We're getting old. We're getting old. We're getting old. We're getting old. We're getting old. I can definitely relate to being tired. I'm going to go to the other other other other other other other other other other other other other I'm going to go a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to go to the next floor. I'm going to go to the next floor. I'm going to go to the next floor. I'm going to go to the next floor. I'm going to go to the next floor. I'm going to go to the next floor. I'm going to go to the next floor. I'm going to go to the next floor. I'm going to go to the next floor. I'm going to go to the next floor. I'm going to go First item of business is the Fire Annual Report, Chief Don Krausner from the Law and the Fire Department Chief. Thank you, Mayor. I'm Don Krausner from Fire Chief and Director of Emergency Management, and I'm here to do what is an annual fire report for the fiscal year 2018. This is my ninth annual report, Chief, and I think 2018 represented a new and interesting year for us, filled with innovation and a lot of exciting things we'll talk about today. So quite frankly as we move forward as the organization, the Arlington Fire Department is a mission driven organization and we're led by our values that I repeat very often and I will do it again today we we care about being prepared for duty out serving with honor about responding with compassion and we're in the constant pursuit of professional excellence everything we do and you'll see some of that today. So we're a multi-service organization when you when you think about fire departments you think about fire departments, you think about these things. Fire Rescue 911 public safety dispatching medical services, life safety inspections, investigations, public education. We do all those things. We're also a specialized team with all the specialized units you would typically see in a major city. Our dives with water rescue team, our hazmat team, technical rescue team, but does all these other functions. Additionally we're a team that does things that are out of the ordinary. Your fire department, your bomb squad. We're also a wildland firefighting team in supportive state efforts across the state when disaster strikes and we have a natural gas well response team that we formulated about seven years ago and has come into play a few times over the years but that helps keep our community safe and we're very proud of that team. From an administrative perspective we're a business operation. I serve the role as the contract administrator for the Arlington EMS system we have oversight and control the system with a private partner AMR. Our special event model represents a public private partnership where the venue operators pay for the time and labor of our people keeping Keeping those funds off the city ledger in a partnership effort. Large-scale emergency management. If it's a tornado or floods, the fire department is the consequence response element for the city. Police Department Services crisis where the consequence people. And from Homeland Security, I serve as the principal point of contact for the Urban Area Security Initiative grant with the counterpart from Dallas and Fort Worth and the three of us had a team to distribute Homeland Security grants for the region based on threat and risk. Lastly, we call ourselves the fire department. We're really just problem solvers. We take our chaos management model. We bring order to chaos, we structure it, and we resolve issues, and we apply to other business elements in the city supporting community initiatives and other things that typically don't represent a fire department agenda. We are now a civil service organization and we're a good one. I told you we came to civil service department. we'd be a great one, and we are. There are three fundamental components to our Civil Service system. There is the Civil Service Office, which is headed by the Director of Civil Service. That office in 2018 modified personnel policies. They converted files to meet Civil Service Standards. And a lot of legwork, quite frankly, putting together documents for the commission, et cetera. The commission, the second element, is a body that oversees three fundamental things, hiring, promotions, and discipline. And in fiscal 18, there were 13 meetings, 39 decisions rendered by the commission. They adopted local rules, and they heard test appeals, which is a standard thing in most fire departments. When promotional test occur, there will be protest over certain questions and the commission heard those things. They've done their job very well in that area. One moment of notes, recent arbitration hearing, a judge reflected that the Arlington Civil Service Commission local rules were the best rules he's ever seen. Seeing the most modern, the most up-to-date, the most relevant, and that's a reflection of the good work of the Arlington team that put those things together and the commission itself. The last element is the Civil Service Administration team, which is comprised of Civil Service Office, City Attorney's Office, City Manager's Office, Fire Department, sometimes Finance, HR is a day-to-day operation meeting really. We meet weekly but there are so many different facets to Civil Service. So many different elements that they have to be managed in real time and the team comes together on a weekly basis to resolve issues as they occur, because we're still learning. It's a new experience for us, and we're so far doing very well, I think. Our business model, and we are a business, we're a government business, but it's really based on these factors, safety number one, risk, demand, and the city's needs and expectations of whether or fire service should be doing in Arlington. Our business model is data driven. Our decision-making is data driven. We're a performance organization. We're adaptive. We're innovative. We leverage partnerships at every chance we get. And we try to apply a common sense approach to government from a Fire Department perspective. And we do deliver very cost effective services. Demand for our services, significance, it continues to grow. But you've heard me say this before, most of our calls are EMS, 78%. Drop just a little bit over year over year. 46, almost 47,000 calls for service, which translates into about 60,000 unit responses a year. We are very, very busy. Of note though, 2018 was a first year sort of implementation of our light response vehicle program. Of those almost 60,000 calls, 10,925 or 18% of those calls were handled by a light vehicle. Okay? That's more cost effective than a 40,000 or 80,000 pound truck and it keeps the heavy fleet available for the serious incidents and more large scale incidents. It's been a very, very effective program for us. Emergency call to man, this is a map, the one on the, on your left is basically the 47,000 calls in the city. Now, not every dot is there, they're on top of each other. If you get into it, you'll see multiple dots on the street. But that's where our business is. And the map on the right is a heat map. So repetitive business is still in Arlington, center core, it's moving south and east. But you can see other elements of town getting busier and busier. The newer part of town, predominantly south. But overall, there is business all across the city and our team is very effective in responding to those calls. When do emergencies happen? Well, I'd like to say that emergency take the weekends off, but they really don't. Most of our calls happened between the hours of 7 and 11 o'clock, 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. At night, there's less, but the problem is nighttime fires and things like that can get ahead of us because notification is often delayed. And we have to be prepared for those. From a daily perspective, you can see that Friday's still our busiest day. I think I'll just do here. There we go. I'm gonna test this out. But you can see that Sunday's just as busy. And the reality is, is that every day is a busy day from a merchant's perspective in the city of Arlington. Our response times as our as our call to man grows and our unit response grows we are staying consistent we are finding that some of our strategies are keeping us stable that the light response vehicle program is kept our capacity up so that units are available when the next call comes in and we're very proud of our team for how quickly they respond and get to these emergencies. From a facilities and fleet perspective, I'm pretty satisfied with what's going on with our facilities because that's what drives our infrastructure needs. Early in fiscal 18, fire station 12 was completed. It was equipped and prepared for next generation business model. Station 17 is been under construction and I think we're weeks away from opening it but we're very happy to see that. We also in fiscal 18, we implemented a new platform vehicle that is really designed for all these mid-rise structures you see in the city now. Cities evolving, so the department's got to evolve and it's our first aerial platform truck, probably one of two in the future, as the city continues to evolve. Just pending, new station one is about to begin, we're beginning planning, I hope, again construction for that. We'd like for it to tie in with the downtown theme. Look as pretty as the library maybe. Gotta beat them somehow. But the reality is, it's an opportunity for Arlington to be reinvigorated in a theme to be connected with and we're excited about that. This is coming from fiscal 14 bond funds and then also next year we'll be making some additional improvements to our training field. So the investment and the infrastructure is there and supported by the community as shown in our fiscal 18 bond packages, we'll be rebuilding station 8 in the north and station 6 in the east. Both of those stations are, we're not constructed of 50-year standard. They need to be re-tooled for the new generation mission that the fire department has and we're excited that the citizens supported those initiatives because that'll serve the community for a very long time. Oh, quick picture of Station 17 where the only thing that resides there right now are three copperheads and we're trying to get them out of the station. So hopefully in a few weeks we'll be moving in and we'll have a community celebration in about a month. So we're excited about it. I think it's a good reflective station. I think every fire station should have red doors. Okay, and we're trying to make that happen here in Arlington. And it's really a state of the art facility and we're very pleased how it's coming out. We're a training organization and for me, the reality is my generation is about out of here. And we're investing in the next generation group of leaders for the department because we've got to pass the institutional knowledge and history to the next generation hoping that they will not make our mistakes again. So we're trying to send out as many next generation leaders out of the city, to other venues, to understand the service, to understand us, and to bring back the good, and to help us improve. At the same time, we've implemented some internal new training requirements associated with civil service to ensure that the people who are making promotion in the organization are sufficiently trained and aware of their next job responsibility. So, 4,300 hours really represents this number. If you divide that by 365, it's about 11 and a half hours a day. There is a training course going on somewhere that an Arning to Fire Department member is participating because we have to invest in the next generation right now. I've hired, under my watch, a over half the fire department has come to the organization. There are new people, and we've got to make sure they're ready to take over these very big shoes to fill by these people over here who are carrying the organization right now from a leadership perspective. Emergency services, three big things happened in 2018. We've got a new ambulance contract, which is a very good deal. I'll talk about that in a moment. We fully implemented the light vehicle response program when staffing allowed for that. And then lastly, the community paramedic program was honored in Los Angel as some of you may have attended the National League of Cities event for that. But I'll speak to the contract first. The contract first is something we should be very proud of as a community. It is a public-private partnership that works. It is a efficient government model. Our contract is a five-year contract with two, three-year extensions. It is a user-based system. This contract saves the city about $13 million a year. Okay? If we were in the business, we'd have to buy ambulances, start up costs, or start up costs to be about $7 million. We do this all on a user-based system. Our closest comparative is MedStar. A public utility model, where a fell-safe franchise, where the operations are funded by the user fees, and our user fees are about $200 less, or $184 less on average in a med star. Our contract, as we negotiated, only resulted in an increase of $10 where if we were under the old contract, our increase would have been about $70. So we negotiated a very good deal, a very good strong team who carried all the way and helped us negotiate a good deal. Our response times did not change. So our response standard is very high as compared to the rest of the country. Our minimum number of ambulances are now nine. So we never go below nine. We used to be at eight. We've raised that base to nine because of the activity in our system. We added two basic life support ambulances for interfacility transports that no longer takes away from the emergency response system for ambulances We're going to interface our CAD systems the city's CAD system and AMR's CAD system because I believe that somewhere down the road We're gonna have a nurse line to help stop unnecessary ambulance calls Because we're going to move into public health and try to be preventative in that area so we don't so we can control the demand of what the future is bringing. Ambulances look different. They're not just the EKG anymore, the YDKJ, we're retooling that. We have new technology, live pack 15s of video, the risk of scopes as we stick to tubes down your neck and to your lungs. And a lifting device on the back of the ambulance because it would be surprised a lot of the injuries come from lifting people on stretchers. So new technology is going to help us. And on top of that, we have 28 ambulances that serve the city in total, special event model, emergency model, and a facility model. What we avoid and cost is this, roughly a hundred and eight employees. City doesn't pay for those folks, the business model does. The AMR fleet is significant. Their regional headquarters is here in Arlington. They maintain a FEMA fleet and a warehouse in Southeast Arlington. All those things good for the community, should a disaster strike, will have access to those additional resources. What's changing in Arlington, I never thought I would see this in my history, but first and foremost, Texas Health Arlington Memorial Hospital is now an accredited behavioral health facility, which is good for the community. There are also a three year partner with us in our community health program with our paramedics, and the registered behavioral health facility, which is good for the community. There are also a three-year partner with us in our community health program with our paramedics, which is, I'm gonna show you a video in here a minute and let them tell you the story. Also exciting for us is that Medical City of Arlington is now a level two trauma facility. We don't have to go to JPS all the time now, like we used to, and take ambulances out. We've got one here trauma surgeons on duty all the time ready for service the only difference between a level one level one and a level two is a level one to teaching facility level two has the same level of trauma ability and care and You can see as you look at The responses these are the hospitals where all the ambulances go to you can see, as you look at the responses, these are the hospitals where all the ambulances go to. You can see JPS, transports are starting to reduce because they don't have to leave the city now. We sent them to Medical City of Arlington. A very good thing for our community as far as quickness and care and assistance. The police officer that was shot in Northwest Arlington went to MCA. We were on the phone with the surgeon as our firefighters were with that police officer in route to the hospital and the surgeon met the methadure. Those are the kinds of things and care we expect from a trauma facility. And that's what we're getting out of Arlington now, which is a big, big deal. Lastly, a methadis Arlington, meth Methodist Arlington, Methodist Arlington, Methodist Man's Field, is achieved at level three, trauma designation, south, Arlington, quite frankly, based on distance, travel distance. Some of our patients will make it to the Methodist Hospital, it's still closely located, still, not so far away that we can't get resources back into Arlington when there's a need. But you can see we're a very, very busy system with a lot of activity and transports occurring. And you can imagine that the emergency physicians, advisory board and medical director and our medical operations group are very, very busy because they are. And we have a very busy system, but a very efficient and productive system. We're happy about that. From an activity perspective 35,000 transports a year. I've said this last year about 6,500 of those are trauma. So it is important that we get you to you quickly stop the bleeding. They do on average about 50,000 55,000 calls for service, but that includes inter-facility and special event activity. It's about 150 service calls a day. So we're getting the bang for the buck out of LSA franchise. We're very happy about that. Another thing that comes up periodically is we'll just, how often are we building people? We only build when there's a transport. And on average, only 64% of the time, or little under 64% of the time, we're transporting someone, because we solve, sometimes it's just not transportable situation, and the reality is we're providing, we're trying to provide appropriate care based on what the issue is. So if you don't need to go to the hospital, we're providing, we're trying to provide appropriate care based on what the issue is. So if you don't need a little hospital, we're not taking you. The light vehicle response program I wanna talk just a little bit about this because we activated these rescue units. These are separate from the squad units, the EMS squad units that are in district two and district four in the northwest part of town. These units are evictiv activated when we have enough staffing. So when our staffing's up, these two person units go active based on demand that called a band map. The most busy area gets activated first. And fiscal 18 was a difficult year from a staffing perspective. But when you look at what kind of activity those rescues did in Arlington, you look at what kind of activity those rescues did in Arlington, you can see what kind of impact are making on the overall picture. They are taking up a lot of volume when they're activated in a cost effective manner. You can see the busy areas because those heavy clustering of the red dots would represent the heat areas. And I think it's proving out. It's proving out its point. It's keeping us in the right place. It's keeping the heavy fleet available for the big stuff and it's working. And when the big stuff happens, those same lightweight units go to the big things too. Okay? So there's, you'll hear some terminology and some claims about staffing. Everybody's going to the big stuff, even the little vehicles. But the fact is, if the little vehicles were engaged, those big vehicles wouldn't be going because they'd be on the little stuff. And that's, we're doing it the right way. I'm proud of the outcome. We were recognized, our community paramed community program was recognized again because it is tough to change traditional perspectives in business models. And we are fighting an uphill battle on being a progressive organization and trying to do things in a common sense or a way. I really rely on our people who do it every day and I'm gonna show you a quick video that was on Channel 4 just a couple of short weeks ago. After realizing emergency room and admission beds at Texas Health were constantly full, they decided to serve patients with chronic illnesses at their home. Fox was actually predisposed in now with more on the Arlington Community Healthcare Program. Actually. Well, it's a really great program. About 54 patients have been referred to the program so far this year. Some of them have diabetes, others have cardiovascular disease. Paramedics set up weekly appointments to help them, but they're also available on a 24-7 basis. So the next thing I know, they were knocking my door and they explained to me what this program is about and I work in a man and they like heaven since they've been heaven since. Yeah, so it's been well. Not only for Valeta Richard's set, but her grandson. He's got himself a new little bed to sleep in there. That and much more provided by the Arlington Community Healthcare Program. You always seem to trend up when we're here. It was designed to help keep patients with chronic conditions out of the emergency room by making home visits instead. Is that comfortable? That's wonderful. I can't sleep if I don't take a breath and treat me. I can't get up and go take this shower unless I take a breath and treat me. The program started three years ago. Texas Health Arlington Memorial Hospital had a growing problem. The same patients kept coming into the ER. That's when the hospital teamed up with the Arlington Fire Department and Medical Transportation Company AMR to make house calls. We start out with our intent of seeing a patient once or twice a week and the goal is to keep them out of the hospital for 30 days, up to 90 days. Our goal is to make them better. And move that fluid out real. The paramedics do a lot more than just check on their current condition. They help patients manage their diet and medication. They also visit with their physician to make sure everyone is on the same page. So I'm going to take you butt pressure again. They even check to make sure patients pati in a safe environment and need it. We've delivered furniture. We go to place but a mattress land on th paramedics go to mission these items, which are do the small gesture. That's does. Go away. How are you? Yeah, it's really incredible what they're doing because it is just so widespread how they're helping, not only their medical needs. I mean, they plan out their medications for them because sometimes it can be difficult when you're seeing five or six health care providers. And then for them to also bring in items for the little baby her grandson I mean it's so special and meaningful right special touch the personal touch of course and the number of inpatient readmissions in the hospitals emergency room that has dropped about half since the program started so we can see the success right there and of course and not only benefits the reduction of nine-1-1 calls, but also helps out because there's not going to be as many fire trucks and ambulances going during emergency situations. They're already there in helping them, and it's such a great cause. Right. Appreciate seeing that success. Ashley, thank you so much for your reporting. So she did a really good job by a prover message. That's a funny message. So she, but it really speaks to the character of our people. These are people going further than what typically is expected because that's who they are. Miss Tilly, certainly part of the equation too. In fact, it's not just the fact that we're helping people stay out of the hospital. We're also engaging the frequent callers of 911. One individual in particular called 911 70 times last year, one time in fiscal 18. So the thing is we're problem solving, we're case working issues to help with our demand, so we can compete and compensate for changing reality in the city. And I think this right here is a sort of and compete and compensate for changing reality in the city. And I think this right here is a sort of preventative healthcare effort to stop emergencies, just much like the fire service did back in 72. When America burning was established by the study was done on the fire problem America ever since then, you saw the prevention efforts hit and you saw the American fire problem drop the same things happening with health care and we've got to be on the front end of trying to stem the tide of what's occurring in health care. We're still the CPR capital of Texas okay it's to make that clear and we recognize some police officers on chief Johnson's in here, but we had a situation out at the AT&T Stadium. The gentleman was in a vehicle leaving a ball game, had a heart attack. Their Collins and Randall Mule, a couple police officers recognized it. They started bystander CPR. Our people showed up to fibrillated the patient, took over CPR and patient care, and he was alive before he made it to Arlington Memorial Hospital. We were excited and we celebrated that. He's there in the left-hand corner. We had a big event out at the stadium and I recognized the police department and the fire department team and all people. He was certainly as wife was very happy about it too. But from a national average perspective by standard CPR happens 57 almost 58 percent of the time here which is above the national average. Our time our dispatch center is part of the equation. They follow protocols established by our medical director and they will talk a caller after triaging through the call to a CPR effort. And you can see that our time from call to CPR is dropping. That means our survival and our chances are going up. So it's a full team effort on CPR. Arlington's always been about that. We're not stopping. We're committed. And we're very proud of our team. And Seattle knows about us. And there are our primary competitor in the national light. But which takes me right to the dispatch group, which quite frankly has been through a lot these last few years. Through your support, we've made things a little bit better. They just cleared the CLIA reaccreditation, and we're very happy about that. In fiscal 18, our part of fiscal 19, actually, too, we installed new next-generation technology. We left our positron call-taking system to a next-generation call-taking process system called Vesta. I'm the chair of the Tarrant County 911 Board of Managers and we are implementing Vesta technology in all our dispatch centers across Tarrant County, Irving and Grand Prairie. And once it's completed, next generation technology will be available as we look at next step, paradigm shifting realities like text 9-1-1. The first problem that we've gotta look at is security because we're all interconnected in Ternic County, too, the thing we have to pay attention is cost. Because as the paradigm shifts from a phone call to a text message training additional personnel may be needed and we can't see that clearly yet. We're proceeding carefully as we move forward with this but that will be a thing that this council will have to contend with in the future as changing realities are coming. Fire prevention I want to talk about them briefly. They're not just your inspectors. They're your enforcers of fire code, bomb squad people, special event people. They do a lot of things for us. They're an accredited bomb squad with the FBI. We'll be growing to 12 dogs in June. As our special event model dictates the mission from a K9EOD perspective. And they're quite frankly, they're just very, very busy. We've made some progress. We the Council authorized a fire specialist last year, who is now helping development move more effectively, and we're very satisfied with that. As we can see, the communication and the service is improving, and we're very personally excited about that. The one thing I'm still concerned about is the EOD mission. When the country shakes, we shake too. So when Austin was going through all the bombing concerns they had down there with their bomber, our call volume started going up. And our local team is the biggest team in North Texas. We helped the FBI and the ATF for some regularity. All in North Texas starts shaking. And so it's a demand that's not going to slow down. As the special event model and other issues occur locally and nationally, this will only continue to grow. So we've got to continue to be adaptive and adjusting to the reality because we track it. We're data driven, we're watching it, we're paying attention to it. It's a workload factor indicator now that's impacting other areas of our ability, because you can't be wrong on this one. You have to be right every time. And you can see we're regularly investigating EOD calls, and the trend line is certainly moving up. Special events, another great year. Chief Johnson did a good job explaining it. I'll move through it quickly. But it's a good business model for us. It's a good business model for the community. It's a good business model for the fire department. And we're excited about it, but quite frankly, things are changing there too. We'll have a new stadium here before too long. And we'll have to cross some bridges as the business model and the special event arena will start to change. We are going through reaccreditation right now with EMAP and emergency management. Irish handcock and his team continues to do an outstanding job. I always try to talk about certain things. Mosquitoes always come up every year, but we have leveled out the mosquito issue since the 2012 thing in our business model continues to be partnership with other entities in the city, a proactive approach. And just really, our team is really in the high level of performance right now and I'm very pleased with what emergency management does. In fact, I think they communicated something today about siren when our sirens activate and the National Weather Service Grab didn't retweet it at 90 times and apparently people tell me that's a good thing. I don't know what that is. But we're still cost effective. Physical responsibility still matters here. We are the lowest cost per capita department in North Texas. A lot of that has to do with our business model for EMS, but overall the whole department operation a very efficient perspective. Clear that. Staffing, Mike Finley was here a couple of weeks ago talking to you about staffing. He pulled this model up and I thought I'd take a little time to further explain what this is. This is our minimum staffing level right here. This is our target staffing level. We'd like to be more up here, less down here. Anytime we go below the red, we're paying overtime. We've had a few bumps because of the implementation of civil service cost and delay and hiring and other things. You're helping us fix that. Get ahead of the curve. In fact, you authorized us to hire 25 additional firefighters who are now in rookie school that will help our staffing numbers move up to the area that they need to because when they're up, when they're at 86, all five rescues are running also, which helps with a call to man. So the more we can have the rescues running, the better off our response times are going to be, the better off our capabilities are going to be. And we're staying within the zone, but we would like to be higher than lower. And we think that this latest move by the Council and authorization to the budget adjustment will help us do that. I expect that a number of firefighters will be out by the mid-summer. And the rest of them who were not medically certified will be out by December. And that'll be good overall for the organization. And for our numbers. Go talk a little bit about looking ahead. I'm getting close to the end here. And I always try to look 10 years out. I do a three year projection, a six year projection, and a 10 year projection. There's so much in the immediate future. I thought it was necessary to go straight to a few things so I'm going to start off with a little video here. This is a DC-9 landing at Arlington, Minnesota Airport and the reality is the airport is getting busier and it's seeing a lot of large aircraft from the DC-9 covering about 24,000 pounds of fuel to 737 that carries almost twice. And we our airport not have an arph component to deal with it. In fact, the station that is stationed at the airport is covering a district, and often it is out in the district taking care of other emergencies. And I feel now that we're at a certain level of concern that I'm going to, again, put it into the 2020 budget as a thing that we need. I think we can do it cost effectively. I think we can do it in a manner that is respectful of the taxpayers' dollars. But we've got to have a contingent out there. When an opening day or a beige special of intercurs, there's a lot of jets parked out there. In the middle of the night, General Motors are landing big cargo jets out there. That was a cargo jet you just saw land just the other day. And the fact is, I'm going to be proposing an RF contingent, and a cost effective model, like the other municipal airports in North Texas has. Secondly, looking forward when the rangers move into their new stadium, they will be a venue. They will not just be a baseball stadium, they will be a concert venue and other venue. Rob Matwick and Jack Hill have been great partners with us historically. They are working with us right now as we implement security measures and infrastructure inside the stadium to prepare it for its future. But our business model will have to shift from what has been commonly done at the previous stadium of the current stadium because the model will shift and they will become more like AT&T stadium for us. Just their construct is a little bit different, but we are talking with them and our chief Gerald Randall our special event chief is working very closely because it has changed and nobody likes change and working through change is something we just have to do with the growth of the entertainment district I would predict somewhere in a 10 year future that a storefront public safety facility would wind up being out there also because the things only going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. We're all excited about it. We just wanna be a part of a positive evolution out there, and we're trying to see things early and act on things early. But we're very excited about how the Rangers are working with us as they're building the stadium. Jack has again been a partner with us for public safety space like an AT&T stadium. And Rob's always a great partner to work with as we work through these things. Homeland Security, we basically fund SWAT and EOD programs and hazmat programs through Homeland Security funding. You've got to stay legislatively in tune with the UOC and help us stay in position. through Homeland Security funding. You've got to stay legislatively in tune with the UOCY and help us stay in position. We're back to number 10, MSA. But the fact is, we've got to stay on top of it because if we lose that Homeland Security funding, the city cannot sustain that kind of cost. Vertical structures were getting taller. I've already talked to the city manager about future vertical structures and including public safety systems that reduce the demand for certain elements of the fire department for the reality is a high rise incidence takes three to one firefighters as compared to a ground level into that. It is logistically demanding. It is complicated. We're trying to build in safety systems that reduce some of that, reduces some of that demand. But as the city grows taller and more dense, we're going to have to look at staffing and other elements associated with the growth and vertical structures. I always worry about health care in Arlington. I also worry about poverty. And it is clear those in the poverty below the poverty line are calling for EMS services as a substitute for health care. So we've got to look at strategies that help address poverty in the city from a health care perspective. It's something you can't avoid. We're trying to do some things, but I would envision community, public health, growing out of community paramedic program, because we've got to do something about the parts of our city that they need help. And we're there, we're gonna be part of the solution. Changing technology, talked about text 9-1-1. Be prepared for that. It's coming in some capacity. I'm struggling with this personally under civil service that hiring diversity, as we projected, is now a problem for us. The first previous eight years, our recruit classes were about 39 to 40% diverse. Our last two civil service higher classes, 6%, 8%. And if we don't invest in some sort of strategy with the community, we're gonna walk back some of the progress as fire department's made over the last eight years from a diversity perspective. Quite frankly, the civil service system doesn't account for the diversity factor we have to. And we've got to figure out how to overcome that hurdle. Lastly, staffing is a, is a byproduct of everything we do. I'm not going to ask you for staff that follows any sort of non-validatable business model. It's going to be based on efficiency and effectiveness that follows a common sense principle of effective delivery of services in the cost effective manner. While keeping my team safe, we have very good procedures and fundamentals that keep our people safe. But quite frankly, when we're going to need more staff for different changing things, I'll ask for them, but it'll be based on a risk or demand model, not anything else. Lastly, I want to talk to you about an area here that's highlighted in red that we're paying attention to. That is an area not covered directly by a circle that's typically served by a fire station. And if you overlay this area, which is the Kupe Rye 20 cord war, with our demand, you can see there's plenty of demand in the area. If you overlay the heat map to it, you can see there's plenty of demand in that area. So we're evaluating strategies to address that area, lightweight response vehicles, part of the equation, but maybe down the road road another station may have to be in this area we're still evaluating it right now but that is something we were paying attention to based on our data and our metrics so that's for your your awareness we are a data driven organization I'm not going to come here and try to sell you any other kind of thing it's got to be based on metrics. City manager demands that. I demand that. It's just the way we should do business as a stewards of government dollars and so we'll we'll make our business proposals that make sense that serve a community need and represents a good effective business principle for the fire department. Partnerships we talked about that. We're a big partnership organization. We're not just this fire department that thinks differently. We need the help from others, and we're helpful for other people, whether it's private industry, for other public entities, other public safety groups, or nonprofits, we are connected significantly. So a lot of our solutions don't cost money they leverage partnerships. We too are an accredited organization, we're an ISO one, we're clear accredited in dispatch, OEM, Office of Emergency Management is EMAP accredited the sixth city in the country to achieve that standing alone. Dallas is now an EMAP entity after Arlington. Our bomb squad is a I'm sorry I had to do those things. Our bomb squad is FBI credited and we're storm ready and heart-safe community that not all communities get to be. We've been recognized various venues and we had a lot of partnerships in 2018 with these entities that helped that not all communities get to be. We've been recognized, various venues, and we had a lot of partnerships in 2018 with these entities that helped us produce great value for the community. Lastly, I'm gonna talk about a thing that's very near and dear to me. It's cancer prevention efforts for our people. The firefighting profession is a hazardous one. It is one that is every fire or chemical emergency is fraught with carcinogens and protecting our people is the paramount thing of what we do. We are a best practice entity that follows certain guidelines. In fact, we've invested in technology where most of our fire stations now have extractors that clean our gear for our firefighters to get out those contaminants. We decon our people on scene to get it off of them because I don't want the next generation of firefighters sort of carrying forth the legacy of my generation or the generation before and the reality is it's a lot of work. It's a lot of cost. But it's worth it because we lost a friend last year. David Cullhane, who was the lieutenant at station four, he was the pride of the northwest corner, was really connected with the community. He was the longest-ttingered firefighter in the department when he retired in 2017, but eight short months later, he died due to cancer. Now, I don't have any definitive evidence, but I would say that 38 years in the fire service and exposure to various things didn't contribute. I mean, didn't help. And the reality is, he's a reminder for us that we've got to be more conscientious as far as the things we deal with and how we protect our team. His wife, Deidre contacted me a few months ago, wanted to establish a legacy foundation for David, because he was one of our best trainers. And we had rookies at needed time, and went to Forrest, and worked with David. He was the best of the best and Deidre, his wife, wanted to honor his memory by establishing a foundation that trained the future firefighters at TCC. It's a $30,000 seed money that will provide scholarships and perpetuity year over year. And we've already raised about $17,000. So we've got two years to get there. We're pretty excited about it. But we're remembering David and Diedra, honoring David and Diedra. Because our team matters. And for me, the terrifying thing is when you retire, you enjoy the fruits of your labor. You don't go into the hospital. And this is the thing is when you retire, you enjoy the fruits of your labor, you don't go into the hospital. And this is the thing we don't want to happen to our firefighters. So all our procedures, all our efforts, all our funds, where we can, are moving towards efforts that prevent cancer because we don't want more stories like David. Okay. We're gonna post his bunker gear and a frame out of the station for new rookies to touch because they need to remember they need to keep themselves clean. And David very clean, don't get me wrong. He was a rule follower to the max, but the very nature of the job is risky. And we got to do our part to be as effective as we can, because we can provide them with the best of equipment, the best of air breathing equipment, technology and other things, but we still have to manage behavior and things like that. David followed all the rules, always did. He was the, that's why we sent people to him. He's a complete rule follower, but the environment itself is so hazardous. We have to be more conscious of it, and we're gonna try to stop future reoccurrences like this in our next generation team. So with that, I'll end my fiscal 18 annual report and open it up to questions if you have any. Thank you. Any questions, comments? Ms. Myers. Thank you, Mayor. Gee, thank you so much for a really thorough report. And I want to thank all the men and women in blue who served the city self-asleep day. I have a question you didn't mention in. It's on sort of your partnership list. And I kind of wondered where we were with that. And that's a Dan Dippert Center where we continue to have the fire training program going on. At one point in time when that was originally built, the program, the agreement with AISD was that there would be another training tower that was built. In fact, the pad was poured for it. My understanding is that's never been completed. Is there an opportunity for us to continue through other avenues or I'm going to have to go to the next meeting. I'm going to have to go to the next meeting. I'm going to have to go to the next meeting. I'm going to have to go to the next meeting. I'm going to have to go to the next meeting. I'm going to have to go to the next meeting. I'm going to have to go to the next meeting. I'm going to have to go to the next meeting. certainly welcome any opportunity. I think we hit a few roadblocks on that one. It's been a little complicated. I know Councilmember Wolf also involved in this discussion. So we would hope that the school district would find a way to make that happen and that we would partner with them in some capacity. I will tell you this, we just picked up two more Academy graduates into the organization. So that was a surprise quite frankly. Now we're up to 12. Couple of these individuals have promoted in this organization or leading now. And I think it's a valid program that represents opportunity for folks for a generation of young people who want to be firefighters, but quite frankly having that asset out there would make the program that much better. Chief, do you know what the Delta is on money? It said money was the big problem. At the time, it was about $350,000. Okay, and do you know Dr. Myers if how much the school district has or they have anything allocated? Nothing. I was in city manager may correct me but as far as I know in my last discussion there was no plans to complete and there were no funds to complete this. The previous person who reached to run the program for the Firefighters Association, we worked together on trying to get some outside and funding from some local businesses and some other foundations. But for my knowledge that has not continued that effort. So I just was curious where that, because it would be nice to close that delta and get that finished. Sure, what? And Mr. Yelves. Yes, Mr. Yelves. Just on that point, one point of clarification is that to my understanding there was never a city commitment to do that. It was always a city desire to help the school district. So we're kind of being supportive and hand in glove, but it's not like there was something to be done that we didn't follow through on. And so we'll continue to look at funding opportunities to see if we can support them in that way, just to clarify. Ms. Thalman. Thank you, Mayor. I have a couple of questions, so that's okay. To clarify, going back to the firefighter cancer situation and the work that you're doing to help prevent that. Are we going to be implementing training at the rookie school so that the new guys and girls coming Okay, and then I have a question on trauma and mental health. What types of resources are available to, and those in our fire department, to deal with trauma situations that are lingering in their struggling with? I'm sorry for firefighters or for citizens. For firefighters. We have a CISM team that occasionally is activated. We have a core group that helps us when serious things occur and colliding our chaplain, Don Coker, who's been our chaplain for almost nine years now. Forty years of service in total, I wanted to mention that, volunteer and as a member of the organization. So we have a CICM team that's activated when it's appropriate when the trauma is so exacting that I do briefing needs to occur and Those things do happen a couple of times a year This is really more of a comment or request on the side where you showed the Arlington was the leanest and our operating budget and Cost per capita that is wonderful and as a steward of taxpayer dollars myself. I love to see that and I think we're all painfully aware of every dollar that we spend. So we hear about it from our residents as we should. But this is one department and probably the only department in the city, at least from my perspective, aside from the police department, where it would really be okay with me if we weren't the leanest in this department. I'm not sure if it's a very good opportunity, at least from my perspective, aside from the police department where it would really be okay with me if we weren't the leanest in this department. And so I just want to encourage you as we start to talk about the 2020 budget to really let us know what is needed and needs and once we can balance those so that we can make sure that both our firefighters and residents are safe as we can possibly be. I appreciate that. Thank you so much. Wonderful report. Thank you. Mr. Glaspie. Thank you, Mayor. Thanks again, Chief. The report just a couple of questions. If I heard correctly, you indicated that fire station 12 was up and running and modernizing off. And I got the impression that we may need to do similar things to other fire stations. So is that legitimate? Well, I think for station 12, when we remodel station 12, we built it for our vehicle potential in the future. And so that's the thing. 12 needed to be modernized. It was an imperfect station. And now we repositioned it for potential missions that may serve. We do have some other stations that are needy but not desperate from a technology perspective that are all equipped equivalently. But there are clearly station eight and station six are in real need. I think is the next bond package materializes, will certainly insert the other stations that need to be addressed. But I think overall the infrastructure of the station is our stations are pretty good. And on the emergency operation center, would you elaborate on kind of our regional responsibilities? And off? Regent Center, would you elaborate on kind of our regional responsibilities and all? Well, I think originally we're leaders from emergency management perspective. We help other emergency management operations in the area. When the George Bush Library opened, we sent Irish Hancock and his team over there to help with their emergency operations. Our experience based with Super Bowls and other things and tornadoes and other events is fairly significant. And the fact that we're an EMAP accredited organization basically verifies we know what we're doing. And so our responsibility is to be a good partner to other communities who are in need and we'll step up and help that. There are also our grant management group. They help us coordinate grant issues. We work with Cog, Irish sets on a couple of committees out at Cog, helps watch our city's interest and the region's interest. So they're really part of our intergovernmental wing as we connect with other communities because when what's up with the happens in regions, we connect through our EOCs and through our dispatch centers and through leaders. But what we're really trying to do is keep the entire region at a certain level of capability. Because Arlington won't be hit by itself as something disaster hits. The region will be and we'll need to work together. And I guess my final question you indicated that we participated in helping with wildfires but I think we do it in catastrophes in general right would you elaborate on how we interact with with others and assuring that if people need help, we can provide it. Yes, we didn't send anyone California because I didn't have a level of satisfactory level of information to send our people to something like that, which is outside the typical scope for Texas. But during Hurricane Harvey, we had three units down there. We had our U-SAR team members, the Texas Task Force 1. We sent our Tiffness team down to right to Port Oranges area and basically managed infrastructure issues for those communities. And then we, the Chief of Fort Worth and I connected with the other chiefs in the region and put together a strike team for the Director of Emergency Management down the state. And we sent 13 units down there. The Arlington units were in Houston Fire Station 72, 71, 73 and 90 I think for extended period of time to the area that where they had to release all that water. That's the area we served. So the state calls will certainly be there, but I won't send my folks into things that I don't have sufficient information so I can ensure their safety. The Texas operations I'll do out of state that's another thing we have to look at. We could participate in an out of state effort but it's going to have to test a passive level of sufficient information and awareness before I'll allow that to happen. But we do a really good job or a good state partner. Miss Sheppard. And we'll go to Miss Mary. Chief, thank you for your presentation. I extend my gratitude to you and your command staff for everything you do every year for the fire department, the innovative ways that you continue to maximize efficiency while still providing a high level of service. So my hat's off to you guys. I appreciate it. Thank you. Well, I think I echo everything you said, Mr. Shepherd, in that I'm so impressed with the you and your team and the creativity and the way you manage this whole area, this city and what you do for us. I mean I feel that our citizens are safe with a fire department like you've created and yes the creativity of all the programs and your emergency management, it's been incredible. I just think that we couldn't do any better. Maybe, yeah, we can always do better, is that right, Jay? Sure. But you're doing just a wonderful job for this city and I think we all need to be appreciative of what this Fire Department has accomplished in the past years. I was blown away with everything you do. And when we say lean, I feel like it's just management in that, and this council I think has been behind you in giving you what you need, and you've been open to come to us, and I hope we've been open to help you and the city manager in our budget process to keep the team that we have and the staff that we have the way it is and to bring on I love your vision for the future I think that's that's where we are we've got to bring those new leaders on and I'm very proud that you're doing that with all the you know that you have to use and the resources you have so I want to thank you personally and for everyone that what you're doing for our city and the safety and the resources you have. So I wanna thank you personally and for everyone that what you're doing for our city and the safety and the management. You've got a big job with all the different things that you do. You're not just putting out fires. That's for sure. In many ways, you're putting out fires, but not just the ones that you, what do you call it, kick in the doors and squirt or whatever it is. But you're managing all of the well-being for our citizens and the health issues that are challenging. And I love those numbers. I'm gonna read this again, and I hope we can get it out to the public. And I hope that our communications department is going to publish this on our website, so that all the citizens can see the what you've done this just this past year. But thank you very much. Absolutely. Thank you, Ms. Wolfe. Thank you, Chief. I think we all agree. It's just phenomenal what you do. You talked about partnerships. Could you tell us briefly how you interact with UTA and how you serve and your folks serve UTA? Well our history of UTA is interesting. I remember connecting with Liz Postor and Beth Bencini, school of nursing, 10 years ago, 12 years ago, as we were working with their smart hospital and doing some collaborative partnerships on CPR and things like that. From a state far marshal perspective, we work closely with their team. From a development perspective, we work with their folks on certain code issues. From an emergency management perspective, Irish and his team has been connected with Kim Blomow and others historically as we try to keep the two emergency management groups together because that is such a big population over there. And those kinds of things we work with in constructs of a friendship, partnership thing because the point is that's state of Texas territory from a code perspective and we have to work around that a little bit but we've done some hazardous tier-all training elements and other practices with UTA. We experiment constantly with them as an educational facility but also as a partner in public safety. So it's sort of just a normal routine relationship for us. I know it's not just normal routine to all of us, but in the event a fire broke out, you cover it. We cover it. That's Arlington. That's what we'll take over the buildings when I understand they have their own code and their own building criteria. But when an emergency comes, I've seen your trucks over there taking care of it. We're at the NanoFab and other elements over there periodically. And if something seriously happens over there, it's Arlington Fire Department will take care of that. And we're grateful for you. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. K. Bart. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Chief. It was a great report. And like you've already heard from many of the surrounding the horseshoe today that you guys are doing a great job. I attribute a lot of that to the staffing that you guys have, the employees and the rank and file and the vision quite frankly that you've had for that department. And it's not only been visionary but it's been very responsive to the needs of the community. And I'm really struck a lot by, it's not the fire department of even 20 years ago. I mean, it is a fire department that's really having more of a call for services for medical problems than it is for fires. And that's great in a way. And it's great that you found really cool ways to address it, so to speak. But I do have one question. When you raised the issue of someone of your slides about the area at Cooper and I-20, so what was about six years ago? We moved that fire station from Cooper Street down on Wembledon and built a new fire station. So what is it that's different now? Yeah, that's, the station was moved about almost 10 years ago or nine years ago. And, and, yeah, yeah, it does fly. And that was a calculation that the city made at the time. And I think when we move the station a little bit further east and south, part of that may have been a situation that created an area that we have to pay attention to. Because we call it the 964 corridor or the 390 corridor. Sure. The thing is, is that our busiest station, 6 and 9 and 1, and then you got station 3 up there. Those all wind up responding to this area in some capacity and their coverage circle does not touch all of that area and that the I-20 Pleasant Ridge Cooper area, it's a busy area for us. And so we're calculating, part of the reason why our first light weight response vehicle nine is the one that goes active first. Because that's an area that we've got to cover by some method moving forward. And I can't always predict a demand in that area, but I would think in a heavy retail, heavy transportation corridor, that's gonna stay consistently active for us. And we've got to look at it more carefully on how we approach that area. So is the demand attributable to traffic accidents on 20 in Cooper Street, or is it medical demands of people in their homes or? There's red dots. That's what we're doing right now is we're working through those things. We know the demand is there whether it's traffic or it's medical or it's fire. It is a demand area for us that is routinely and repetitively a demand area for us. Okay, I was just curious because there's not a lot of new housing development in that area. Right. So I was trying to figure out what it's attributed to, but okay, you're doing the analysis on it. Thank you. All right, thank you. And again, great report. Thanks a lot. Okay, along that line, Chief, it just brought to mind, and even looking at that, I know we work with Pantico. Do you also service DWG and? We do not. We do not serve. We don't service DWG. We've looked at a few things in the past of a potential partnership with those partnerships didn't materialize. If you see this second circle here, that's the Pantico's circle that covers part of Arlington for us. That's a partnership. Yeah, I knew that partnership, but then it occurred to me. I don't think I've ever asked that question. So what service do they have in DWG? They're a volunteer organization. And I've floated a few proposals to past mayors and those have asked for proposals. But there hasn't been a decision to do those things. two past mayors and those who've asked for proposals. But there hasn't been a decision to do those things. We still have a standing proposal. But in Pantico, do you also service them with this medical? We will. You will. We will. It's because our partnership is with AMH. Oh, okay. And so if they have a patient that happens to be in this circle here, we'll still take care of that individual. Okay. Thank you. Is Moe's? Just a couple of comments. I really was impressed with the whole report and I think the way that you're managing your resources is really, it can be challenging in a public environment and so it was really nice to see so many of your efforts focused on the business side of it. Particularly the Ambulance Services contract that took, I could tell because I negotiated large contracts before. Your team that worked on that had been very professional. I think we came out with win-wins for them and for us for the very long term. Very touching community service efforts. I like to see that we're trying to address those kinds of things creatively and not saying we can't perform that we can't help. So I would really encourage you to keep doing those things. On the diversity side, the numbers were really kind of shocking. Is that because you had fewer candidates who were minority candidates or because they weren't meeting the civil service standards? or not meeting the civil service standards. No, our outreach in the community is still at the level it was. We have a significant level participation from minority community. However, the way the system design now, it affords extra points are granted for military and it's the only way we can determine who the candidates are in order where historically we did a much more comprehensive competitive process that also included performance-based efforts that we no longer can calculate in our hiring process. Okay. So do you, I mean, have you talked to cities who have had, who have civil service who are having some success with finding alternative means to gather good candidates? I think for me, larger cities have less of a problem because their demographics are more favorable. But for cities of our size, it's a much more difficult proposition. And the reality is, the fire department of the past was not in the right position on the diversity issue. And we had tried to make significant improvement in dead. My concern is I've got to come up with a new strategy with my team to figure out how do we address this within the confines of the civil service station. Are most of our candidates from Arlington, are they from surrounding cities? Because I know Farman don't always live here. It's a mix bag. We have made a real effort in the past of Arlington citizens to become firefighters, but under civil service rules, we basically are disconnected from that effort from active you know, recruitment because they come from other cities. They do come from other cities. Okay confirmation that that's understood I understand that so okay well I just I know you're gonna try to seek a solution yes that that would lower our numbers pretty rapidly I think if it went on for several years yeah we don't want to walk back to progress we've made and and we will figure out a solution I'll promise you that or promise you our effort towards that. Okay. I know you will. And thank you again for the right report. This is really good. Thank you. Very informative. Mr. Glass-B. Thank you, Matt. I wasn't going to ask this question, see. But what things make it difficult for you to sleep at night and what we might be able to do to help you with those? Yeah, but these right here, these things on the list here are things that I pay attention to, some regularity. And a few of these things have made it into previous budget proposals. I think as things evolve, there's sensitivity to these issues either grow or they decrease, I think, quite frankly, as we're evolving as a community now. These things are on my radar and they're important. So I will tell you the airport thing is the thing that I think about quite a bit. I worry about us staying in position on a Homeland Security perspective. And the other reality is keeping pace with changing, evolving technology, universe is another thing that we've got to be in tune with. The workforce is changing also. I will tell you that not just police departments, fire departments are having difficulty with the recruitment. We are servants, our nature is to serve others. And we've got to do a better job on making the job attractive. I think when the job markets is full as it is right now, maybe public safety is a little less attractive, I don't know, but I know that my peers, another community just had 19 openings for firefighters, 41 applied. So those kinds of things are something we've got to pay attention to and I don't know what is occurring but we've got to quickly figure it out and Work our way through it Chief There want to wrap up with a few questions here that probing a little bit Vertical structures, you know our city is growing and and then with us being where we're at density is going to come And we're gonna have more multi-story buildings. Can you describe some of the things that you want to see built into these structures here that you mentioned you alluded to it earlier there? Could you give us an example? Yes sir, about several months ago I met with a team out of Seattle fire. We were looking at airline systems, installing airline systems along the standpipe that serves provides water to our planes. You don't mean airplanes, but airlines. Airlines? So, firefighters can plug their air packs into them? There you go. And fill up their air packs. I'm sorry. Not American Airlines. So. We're all programmed to think about American Airlines. Right. So, yes. So part of the things on high rise is the logistical power, staff power you have to use to get those resources up the stairs. And so incorporating many large cities and are now looking at this including Plano, here locally in McKinney, implementing airline systems along the standpipe to where every third floor of firefighter could plug in because typically we haul air with us, air bottles with us, and hose and everything else. And getting exhausted firefighter to the 12th floor, I don't know what good the air's going to do. And so to lighten their load and to use the building systems more effectively would be something we would want in future structures and quite frankly even retrofit. You can do some cost effective retrofits that can be done too. Secondly, as an organization, we'll need more from an air management perspective, big fans that can pressurize buildings, that can push smoke around because one of the things we'll hire is the key thing is how you move smoke. Move it, get it out so people can survive because the thing that kills people to smoke, not to fire, it's a smoke. So we need capability to roll up trailer fans into areas that will pressurize the building in a manner that is fairly low cost in the grand scheme of things. But we need that type of technology even today, not to the extent that we don't have the density, but I think density is coming. We should look at those types of things. So anything that we incorporate into the building itself helps us be more cost effective overall and could potentially lessen some of the demands that we would have to throw into it because the system, the building itself would have those systems that we would not have to do ourselves. So. Chief, one of the most talked about things here in town from our citizens is about staffing. Could you talk to us about, we have actually increased staffing here. It isn't just a trition that we've replaced and could you talk about that a little bit? Sure. I think right now with the fact that we've just added 25 firefighters, that takes us to over 360 firefighters. That's the largest number we've just added 25 firefighters, that takes us to over 360 firefighters. That's the largest number we've ever had in the organization. Okay? So that's a good thing for us. By December, we'll have more staff on the trucks on a regular basis. Even now, there are days when we were running at 90, because there's one shift that people don't call in sick. And the thing is, is that the more firefighters we have in total, and that's happening, we are seeing our daily average move up. The reality is we should do staffing based on what is needed, not to some artificial standard, because Arlington is built for Arlington. We do things for Arlington with Arlington needs. I, as a chief, ensure that my people are safe and that we run our systems and our procedures as a matter to keep our people safe. But quite frankly, what drives staffing is demand, demand, and risk. And those are the types of things you're getting, getting from me. But as an organization, this, this fire department is a very effective fire department. We had about 120 working structure fires last year, okay? We stopped most of those in the early stages of it. And, and when we assemble teams, it's not who's riding on a truck. It's the teams you assemble on scene and function how you use those teams. It's what keep people safe. A certain number of people on a vehicle is not what keeps people alive. It's decision making and how those resources are used on scene. We do meet the national standard of number of firefighters we get on scene within the first alarm within a certain number of minutes. We do very well in that area. Our spacing of our stations is a primary driver of that. There's sort of an equidistant modeling here of the triangles between stations that helps us get these units together quickly and commanders manage those resources and in effect a matter. So what matters is getting the staff to the scene, not what vehicle are riding on? Chiefs, since you have been chief, what is our neck gain there? What is our number now since you have become? What you mentioned that we're up, you know, 300 and so now, what was it when you came on? I wish I had that we're up, you know, 300 and so now, what was it when you came on? I wish I had that number. I'm thinking we probably gained 50. We're probably 50 in that area. And then we're looking at a budget here this next year to add more. It is something that we are working to continue to grow. Here's our city grows too. And that's an important thing. Well, I've never, Council's always supported the fire department. And when we bring important issues to you, you've been good in assisting us. This, the staffing that we just hired, the 25 firefighters, we just hired, we're going to hire two more inspectors. We're in the process hiring two more inspectors for EOD team for our 12 EOD teams. The council has been very supportive of that, helping us leverage funds in a manner that helps us address our need. And so I feel very comfortable that by the end of this year, we're going to be in better position than we are now. We're in good position now, but we'll be in better position to activate those five rescues on a very routine basis. And then we'll have sufficient resources that I can throw more firefighters onto a large-scale emergency if necessary. And that's a good way to do business as we're addressing all the needs of the community, not just the single fire need. We've got a lot of business models we're running here. And then chief, a detailed question that we hear, M&M, is why do we not have four people on a ladder truck? You just went through a general explanation, but specifically on a ladder truck, why do we not? Sure. Multiple reasons. First and foremost, our primary driver here is medical. And we'll put two firefighters on a rescue vehicle, but if there's a fire, those two firefighters could also just show up on the fire and be tasked to the truck company to perform truck company functions. It's not the truck that controls the fire. It's people. It's the commanders. It's how we utilize people and effective manner. The four persons staffing model is a consensus committee vote driven by my industry to try to establish some sort of consensus standard. The problem is not all cities are on the same nor are there issues that are in the same vote driven by my industry to try to establish some sort of consensus standard. The problem is not all cities are on the same, nor are there issues the same. Cities have to adapt to the needs and demands of their community and they have to operate a business model that best serves their community and their model cannot be designed for a west coast city or an east coast city. If you're a central city. And the city of our size is designed to meet the needs of our city. The truck functions that are necessarily the need to be performed are handled by our personnel as they're assembled on scene and directed by our commanders. Our commanders have the flexibility to take people from one company to another company, a sign on various functions, and our teams are cross functionally trained anyway. So, do I want more staffing? Sure I do. I'm a fire chief, but I don't want to do it in a manner that doesn't represent the taxpayers interest, and it doesn't follow a proper business model. We're very effective on the fire ground right now. Our metrics prove that out. Fires don't get too big in Arlington. We'll have an occasional one ever now and then. But most of the time, we stop them in the room of origin. Because we get to it quickly. And that's what's working here is that our model is geared from a performance model, not from a model that fits another city. And so those are the things where I mentioned. Chief, just let me try to be a little clearer on that. Like when there's a fire in town, how many people do you all dispatch to a fire and how quickly will they assemble? We get about 17 people to a fire and they get there within less than nine minutes. National standard would be 14 people to a fire in about nine minutes. So our performance is very good in that area. So I like numbers. I'm a numbers person. I don't mind talking about numbers because our performance in these areas are very, very good. I think that's the thing is that these standards don't consider risk and demand analysis factors. They're just, it's a committee vote and in particular, they make up the committee's drive what the consensus standards are. And so we run a more scientific model, less a political model, because the consensus vote is a, let me just add one other clarification. And before they attack a fire, unless there's some exigent circumstance, there's four people on scene before they do that right. Yes, we have a two-in-two out rule. It's in our standard operating procedures. We don't risk people unnecessarily. We keep up with, there's always a rule. It's an our standard operating procedures. We don't risk people unnecessarily. We keep up with, there's always a strategy and there's a fallback strategy. The only time that we will put ourselves at extraordinary risk is when there's a clear evidence of an individual at risk. That can happen anytime. That can happen right now in this room. The fact is though that our standard operating procedures ensures that the safety of our firefighters provides for the safety because we have a fallback plan. It's too in-to-out. That is a national standard that we follow all the time and we'll never walk away from. That's what keeps our firefighters safe. Chief, the other two things I had down here, I think our other council members have talked about, and the hiring diversity there is, was a shocking number there with civil service going from where we were at, at 39 to 40% dropping to 6 to 8%. I think we all need to help. Whatever you need to help tackle that, and it's, I know it's a hard thing, but that's just the right thing to do for us to not let that continue on and to move forward here as far as finding a solution there to our to continue our diversity there in our fire department and and and it has been an awesome thing that has been happening in the past. The other is the fire academy. They're, you know, invisting there over there. It's an exciting thing to see our young people learning a great profession there and providing an opportunity that many would never have there too. And then, of course, we hope that it will not stop of how many kids growing up think about and dream about being a fireman and this is a path over fire academy that is affording many of our economically disadvantaged an opportunity there and a path to get into the fire department and then Ms. Myers I agree we we many to look at our private sector there to see if again, if we can try and get that tower. That was, you know, for all the things, all the great things have happened at the fire academy. That was very disappointing not for the school district not to be able to afford the tower. Money catches us many times there on that. Then the Community Paramedic Program, how exciting is that? It continues to win awards, but also Arlington started it, and now the nation is following suit. But it is saving lives and helping quality of life. They're and saving money. I mean, it's a huge win-win. And then now to have a level to trauma. Emergency room is a dream country. I don't think anybody thought that we would be able to achieve this and here it is in our city in Tarant County and that is huge. We just went to the opening there of the women's hospital of MCA yesterday. They were making tremendous investments here in Arlington and in our citizens. And it was many generations turned out for that opening, realizing what a difference it's going to mean. But when you look at the response times for our fire department, which are phenomenal, but then the opportunity instead of having to go to Fort Worth to be able to go to MCA right here in our town those minutes save can save lives or help quality a life because they're able to take care of them quicker and I've experienced that myself with my granddaughter there in fact of who had actually stopped breathing and was not responsive and the fire department was able to get them to MCA in time. They're getting well there's that just one example of things that happen every day now that another advantage of living here in in Arlington. And then too I am so proud of our fire department for making the ISO Class I rating. You know, one eighth of 1% of fire departments around the nation is the only ones that achieve that. I mean that's from the bottom to the top. Everybody being able to work together to achieve that and very proud of that. And we are, I think you heard it from every one of us We are so proud of our fire department and do we are we gonna stop? No, we're gonna continue moving forward to be better and and continue to work on the way and then you know our council is committed there to doing that as as we move forward committed there to doing that as we move forward. So thank you, Chief, and please pass that on to the entire department there of how proud we are of them, and thank them for the hard work and dedication and commitment of them and their families here to the safety of Arlington citizens. And we thank the Council for all your partnership. There's many years. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next we'll move to the City of Arlington website. Mr. J. Warren, Director of Communications and Legislative Affairs. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Again, J. Warren, Director of Communication and Legislative Affairs. Here to officially kick off our new city website. We did a soft launch as we discussed with you last month. About a week and a half ago, it enabled us to do a few things related to the site which I'll go over over the course of today. But today is really our, we call it public unveiling not only to you, but to the public at home who are watching this broadcast. This has been about a 15 plus month process that we've gone through. Really truly a partnership with the office communications. Been in addition to that, our partners in the IT department with Dennis Johns Group, all of our departments, citywide that we've been working with throughout the beginning of this process, asking them to assess what their needs were, what their desires were, factoring that into the overall design, the website, and then working with them over the past few months as we kind of did the build out of this migrated their content and got it up standing up and ready to unveil to the public. And then finally, our last partner in this has been Civic Live. That is the vendor that we worked with that we selected to help us put this together. They have built about 2,500 municipal websites. That's what their expertise is in. At the end of this process, and I told them going in that they might find us to be, I think at the term I use was high maintenance, but they might find us to be a challenging group because we had a lot of needs and demands and desires for our website and its functionality. And at the end of it, they didn't use quite that term, but they said that we definitely had the most robust, comprehensive website that they have hands down ever built of 2500 websites and the one that uses the most innovative forward thinking technology. And we did push them on several of those things that I'll showcase to you today. So we went at this really four different criteria that we wanted to look at. We were very interested in obviously the user friendliness of this, making the website more accessible and easier to use. We wanted it to be vibrant and to really showcase our city. You all loudly said that to me as we started the process 15 months ago. And I think this first image that you see here, this video, is a hope and demonstration of that desire that we're not here showcasing buildings, because that's not what Arlington's about. We're about the people and we want that people to be the people of our community to be showcased in that opening montage, what you see here up in front. I initially wanted to be responsive on all platforms. About 50% of our traffic actually comes from mobile devices. So when you think about kind of always looking at the desktop, well, that's only about 50% and frankly that's a declining number. So we'll see more and more people on the mobile devices. So this needs to display and be as functional on a cell phone as it is in a desktop view. And so all those things had to be kind of wrapped into this to make it really. And then the final one was to be innovative that we start looking at the front end of this technology. How do we be at the front leader of this technology. How do we be at the front leader of this? And we've got several things that I think demonstrate how we've done that. So from a user kind of friendliness standpoint, the first thing I'd point out to you, I can kind of drive and talk to you at the same time. But this mega menu is the first demonstration of that. So with our old website, you had to do multiple clicks to get anywhere. And here, without even a click, I can scan over all of these different things. And really, you get a pretty good sense of where you want to go at a pretty fast pace, including the city hall getting to any of the departments again, getting there without one click. But most important of that, I would highlight that I want to button. And as you kind of hover over that, you can see through Google Analytics, and really, this entire site was built using analytics. What do people click on from our old website? What were they utilizing? And how do we make sure that's front and center on this website and easy for folks to access? And I want to feature really does encapsulate that. All the data on here is things that people either go to all the time or that we want them to go to all the time. And so, and this is something that we can continually tweak. This is not just a set and stone menu here, but as things change, as we learn the habits of the users, as new things come online, we can certainly augment this. In fact, when I met with you a couple of weeks ago, there was a request about how do I donate for things. So, Ms. K, part of your notice there, we have a donate too, and we've got all the different categories where you could make a donation, pretty easy addition for us to make as an example. So we can tweak this as needed as we go through the process. Not the only way, though, that you can actually figure out how to use the site. I think that's certainly one of the easier ways, but we have a new search capability here that is in the center of the screen, and we wanted this to function much like a Google search. Frankly, if you used our old website search feature, I think it was universally from the users at home, and also from the users here at City Hall of frustration, then it wasn't very good. And so we wanted to improve that. And this function actually is powered by Google. So you can type in really anything there, and it should give you the right results. Now Now we did a soft launch a couple of week and a half ago. And it's going to take us probably another couple of weeks, frankly, for this to become as comprehensive and accurate as we'd like for it to. Google basically needs to crawl the new website and had to be live for this to happen in order to really learn our site and start producing the most accurate results possible. So we're still building that, and it's becoming better and better day by day. But we have one feature here that a Civic Live had never had before, which is a verbal request. So that if you want to, certainly you can do that on your cell phone already. You can do it, maybe on a tablet. But you can now also voice activate the search through the website. So you have to do is click on that button. How do I join the dream team? Automatically displays it. I hadn't said that first. Sorry. Let me change it now. I practice that five times, by the way. Now I'll fix it again. Try one more time. How do I join the Dream team. Silence. Now, you'll see the first result that comes up is the Dream team. And directly to how we want to join the Dream team, which I hope everyone in the room will do if they haven't already. So it's a pretty simple feature, but it was forward thinking Civic Live took six months to try and figure that out. No other city had asked for that or had done that. So as we talk about the innovative features that we have with the website, that's one of them. Lots of, by the way, easy ways to get back to the homepage. You can click here or here. We want to make that very easy and also intuitive for folks. Also, if you're off the website somewhere at a different page, this logo is clickable and gets you back to the home page as well. One final thing, so we've got, I want to, we've got the Mega Menu from a user friendliness standpoint. We've got the search feature from a user friendliness standpoint, which by the way, it stays on the page the entire time. So if you start to scroll down, you'll notice how it pops up here. And as you continue to surf the website that stays up there so it's always there and accessible for you to do a search if you want to. Again a feature that they had not done on any other website. And finally we through analytics we did these quick links based on what we know people want to do. How do I pay my water bill? How do I get a job with the city of Arlington? How do I contact the city? Whether it's the action center or through the ask Arlington app? How do I get a permit? These are high profile visible things that folks want on a regular basis. So we want to make that again very accessible to them. So you see, just without doing any real scrolling through the website, we've really focused on the user-friendliness of the website. But as we scroll down, again, building this through the analytics that we got from the old website, we learned up front that the most visited page of our old website was the news page. More than a million views annually. And so we want that to be prominently displayed on this page as well. So it's the second thing you see you just start to scroll down. We have a dedicated news pages we did on the last website, but we wanted on the homepage. So that information is there as people go to the homepage to pay their water bill or whatever else they're doing. So you'll see a featured story there but you'll also see some scrollable stories where you can click through and see what other content we posted on that day. Annually we produce about 360 videos a year. In addition to that we do about 4 to 5, sometimes 6 original news articles on the webpage a day. So there's plenty of content for us to populate here about the things that are happening here in Arlington. So we continue to scroll down. You'll see we have our featured filtered calendar segment here. This is generally one of the more high profile and also things that the residents ask for on a regular basis and it can be filterable by departments, whether you want it, you're only interested in let's say library events or parks events or animal service events so that's of course a feature we had in the last website that we wanted to continue. A new feature that we have here is what we call your city at work. This is a dashboard that really takes the scorecard that we do or any other measures that we do on a regular basis here in the city. We have a few displayed here with the how many potholes that we filled or how many tons of material have we recycled. But we've got lots of these measures in the hundreds that we could look at here that really shows what our organization is doing to serve our residents. And we track all these things. So we want to show folks what we're doing, but also this is a transparency tool. It's an opportunity for us to display that information for our residents. And if you click on view all results, it will take you to a page off of our website that is powered through one of our programs that we already had here at the city called Ezri. So with no additional cost, we've been able to use their platform and their mapping feature to build out this transparency tool for our residents. And we are one of the first cities to utilize this tool and certainly without question the first city to use it with this robust features we have here. We have over 83 different performance measures that we're displaying for the public and we divided them out by your city council priorities. That's how we do the budgeting the public. And we divided them out by your city council priorities. That's how we do the budgeting every year. And so we felt that was probably the smartest way for us to display them here on the performance dashboard with core services being the kind of final category that might encompass some of our public safety or finance measures that might not fit in some of the other categories that we have here. But any of you, as you scroll down, all those buckets are similar to what you see in this top dashboard. But if we click on support youth and families, you'll see that we've got four different measures that we've got displayed here on library and parks programs as an example here. And it gives you some cool data that you can look at. You can look at the history dating back a couple of years on that measure. It is, as I said, this is a transparency tool. So it may show us where we're performing at the level. We want to perform that. It may show us where there's a little bit of work to happen. And there's also a measure where we can say where we're purely measuring. It's a blue bar that kind of gives us an idea that maybe we're on target to meet the goal at the end of the fiscal year as an example as we go through each quarter of the fiscal year. We'll go back to the main website, the final segment that I'll show you at the bottom of the page is we have a full feed from our social media, a new feature that we did not have on the old website as well. And so if you're interested in YouTube, that's up here at all times, but also you can look at our Facebook feed or Twitter as you go through the list. So trying to make that the content that we have there more readily available to our residents. Couple more pages I wanna show you, and I'd be happy to take any questions that you have. One thing that we do a little differently here at the city of Arlington, many municipal websites if you go to them, you might have a pretty cool homepage like this, but that's usually when you start to get to the department pages, those department pages will be what you would think of as an interior page. Basically a lot of text, maybe a couple images, contact information, and that's it. But our departments really have a desire for, I think, a much more active and informative design for those. So we were able to work with Civic Live to create pages that really resemble what you could think of as a stand on website, but it is a part of our website. So it looks like a homepage or a landing page rather than an interior page with all the imagery that you see here. And this also where you see the puppy dog here from animal services, that could be a video as well. So the video that we had on the homepage could also be applied to the department pages. Another feature that we have here that, again, makes this feel more like its own web page for the department is a secondary mega menu. So you can scroll across this just like you did the top navigation. And for the individual departments, their navigation can appear without a click. Again, a feature civic life had not created for anyone else. They have quick links for services and also what's happening and then very prominently displayed all their contact information. That's, frankly, one of the common questions we get. How do I get in touch with the department? What are their hours? What's their email? All of it publicly displayed in a very prominent place here. And then for our departments, if they have their own data here, so in this case, their own news, or their own social media feeds, or their own filterable calendar, or their own measures from the performance measure segment, it could all be programmed on their landing page with their specific social media feed, their specific news feed, their specific performance measures. Again, really giving them some kind of customization or personalization to their individual pages. And as I mentioned, news is an important segment to what we do. We had the MyRalintinTX.com website on the last website. We wanted to continue that here. CivicLite had never done, and this kind of struck me as amazing. They've done 2,500 websites, but had never built a news page similar to this. And ours functions much like a newsroom. And similar features to what we had in the last website in terms of all the content with our top story, all the web stories that we present, and they can scroll through easily. More prominent location of our video content. We want people to be driven to seeing the videos that we're producing. Last quarter we were at over a million views. Last year, we had over four million views of our videos. And hopefully this will even give it greater visibility. And we can increase that even more. Our social media feeds and the calendar here as well. And then finally, again, as I said, we kind of function as a newsroom. So we have our own weather feed Arlington specific. If anyone living in the metro place snows just because Dallas is getting rain, doesn't mean Fort Worth or Arlington is getting rain. So we can have specific weather data here and also our traffic cameras, the dozens that we have stationed throughout Arlington all display here as well. At the end of the day, what we hope to really provide to our residents is a platform that is more user friendly, more innovative. We've streamlined our content using the analytics that we provided the departments so that they would cut the content that they had down by hundreds and hundreds of pages. If you've only getting five or six clicks on a page, we probably don't need that data out there. And if you do need that information out there, can it be positioned somewhere else in your page so that it gets higher click rate than people are seeing it more readily? And that's really what we drove. This entire project was driven through. Again, we went live. About a week and a half ago, it was a soft launch, but this is really our official kind of kickoff and we'll do a marketing campaign for this to educate the view of the public at home about this project starting after today. But I'll be happy to take any questions that you all have. Ms. Moeys. I was just going to say I love website, so I played with this one some and it's a, you did a great job. This is, this is truly, I think it's very user friendly. I could find things with a click. And I'm not ordinarily that good with these things. So having tried to develop these sites for large portfolios, I know they're hard to develop and this is just outstanding. And cover so many areas I wouldn't even have thought of. So lots of fun to travel it. Thank you. Ms. Myers. Thank you. Miss Myers. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to say, and to all the staff who did this, great job on putting this together. I just, for the sake of the audience, as well as the sake of planning seeds for the future, I get a lot of requests from students, probably given my professional, professional, professional to use data from the municipal, and I think there's a lot of data here. I'd love to see students and teachers in our city think about ways in which they might utilize this data to understand what we offer here in the city and get a greater depth and appreciation. Not only in projects, but perhaps in ways in which our younger children can also learn more. So I just wanted to plant that seed for whoever is listening because I know I was having fun playing with that data button. So thank you very much. Absolutely. Thank you. Yes, Michelle. Just before you wrap this section up, Mara, I just want to say same things on the path of the staff, Jay, you and your team, and also Dennis John and IT, you and all your team that was really helpful in pulling this together, but it was an organizational wide effort, because every department had to be on the team to manage their sections, and they will continuously manage their sections to keep it evergreen and up to date and tight the way it needs to be. So it was a big organization lift, and I want to thank the leaders, but also thank you all support in order to be able to make that happen for our residents to make it easier to find. Also just from an IT perspective and a lot of times we talk about you know patching or upgrading and sometimes you don't really feel like you get the new truly catalytic, truly moving forward investments and technology, putting technology to work. This is one of those examples where we truly didn't just patch or update to the next software level, but we moved to the next generation. And I hope to have another presentation, somewhere for you all in the planning world at your next council meeting, but we're kind of in a way, and I feel like we're turning the curve a little bit on some of these products, where we're able to move it in a meaningful way and I want to appreciate the team for that, particularly on the measurements. Dennis and his team really helped us with Esri and plugging in those metrics. And those are going to be evergreen. It's not perfect right now. It's a start. And as we deepen our capabilities, we hope to add more and or make it more current. Some of it's quarter to quarter, but eventually we hope to make it live. And so that's also part of where we're going to go towards the future and then just one last piece of feedback, Jay. You need to put more cats on the front page fewer dogs more cats Glass me Wow Reminds me of my first challenge when I got on the council working with dogs and cats Just it's been nice. You're allowing us to take a look at the progress you're making and really done a great job with it. Just a question. Have we done anything in a way of testing with citizens to get some feedback from? Which really the last week and a half was because that soft launch allowed us to get some feedback. And this is, as Mr. Yolfe pointed out from the IT perspective on the dashboard, it's kind of work in progress. This will perpetually be a work in progress. I mean, there's always things we can do just weak here and there. And so the feedback we've got over the last week and a half, we've been able to integrate. And we'll continue to do that going forward, because it's important to us that this was designed from the user's perspective. We used their use patterns and their analytics to get us to where we are, but we have to continually, I think Mr. Glass-Bee, look at those that data continually, because we have it. It's ours. We just need to look at the back end and say, where are people going and what are they doing? And how do we help them get there in an easier way? And so that's a commitment we have for continued work. Ms. K. Bart. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Jay. I love the fact that it really shows Arlington not in a very stale way, but a very active way. And you see, so I think we tend to focus, at least I know I do, on what this website does for our citizens. But in a much broader perspective, particularly as we continue to advance our international relationships, this is what they see. And so they don't just see a building. They see the activity in the community. They see the variety of things that we have here. And that speaks volumes. And it's better than almost any portfolio you can put together quite frankly So great job. I know it was yoamans worked you guys did and I have he left But the product proves up the fact you guys knew what you were doing and it's great. Thank you One other thing mr. Yevrton continues to be very perceptive. Yes One other thing, Mr. Yeowerton continues to be very perceptive. Yes. Miss Walnut. Very taken note. Yes. Well, it's very impressive. I've totally blown away by what all you accomplished with this thing. I guess one of the questions I have in Dr. Myers brought that up. Do you know how many AISD students and MISD students actually use this? Because I think this enhances, we're talking about the future and how we need firemen and policemen. And if they're looking at what's going on in our city, will it, what they're appetite to say, hey, maybe I'd like to have, you know, my profession to be in city management in some manner. Is there any numbers that show that? I don't know that I have a specific number on the students for those different entities, but we do have good working relationships not only with the two ISDs, but also TCC and UTA. And I think from that open data perspective, and we've talked a lot with UTA in particular about the open data tools and all the data is out there. But we have those relationships where I think we can, I think, present this website to them and really work with them to increase their usage. Because I agree with you, it could be a great tool for them. Well, that's what I was thinking. I mean, I'm thinking even younger because they want to know what's going on in activities. And if they're able to access this, because we know they're all over this, then they begin at a very early age seeing what's going on in this city and why I like to live here and why I want to stay here. I want to go to school here. So that's kind of where I was thinking that it could go. And the only thing I need you to do is when I come on and ask voice Could you could I use your voice Mr. Warren, thank you so much for all your work. I want to hit on a few points One is our community calendar you've been working with all of the groups in town to try to create a community calendar. How is that coming? And what do you think we're deficient and what do we need to work on there? So there's a lot of different entities that are doing different things. But what we have to do with the city's website is really we keep the calendar honed in on the things that the city sponsors are that we are actually hosting or there are city events. But really we kind of have to keep it, keep it in our lane, so to speak. But there are a lot of things that we have, our hand in, so to speak, from a city perspective. So, you know, and we work continuously with the school districts as an example or with the love at Pavilion, where there's funding sources. So we get a lot of that integrated in here. And this calendar is really robust in that regard. And so there's a lot of different ways you can filter this to get to all the activities that are happening that we have there, there in our lane. That doesn't mean we're getting everything that's happening at the stadiums or elsewhere. And they've got that we have other ways that we can help promote some of those events, Mason and I'll see you on our calendar, but maybe for the news page. So we work with all those groups hand in hand to the extent that we can. Okay, and then could you repeat to the social media reach there that we have? Sure, so it depends on what kind of metric you want to look at, but from a YouTube perspective alone, we're averaging about 4 million views of our videos annually. Our following on Facebook and Twitter is, I think, combined well over 60 or 70,000 from the city's perspective. If I start to add everyone else's together, so the city's got a Twitter page and a Facebook page, a police department has a Twitter and Facebook page, the animal services does, the library team does, parks and rec. So you start to add all those together. We're well over 400,000 users and all those different platforms. And it's what important you may have some overlap in those groups. And then if we really start to average this out into what our other partners are doing, whether it's UTA or the CVB or the Rangers. And we work together with all those groups when everyone starts to share our content, It really starts to rush them out. And that's what our overall goal is. We kind of know what our group, our world is. But how do we get other people to share that as well so we can reach a larger audience? And then how does our reach compare to other cities in the state? We have the largest Facebook following of any city in the state of Texas. And our analytics and our research shows that we have, that's where a lot of our residents are. It's on Facebook. We don't have as many residents on Twitter as maybe other cities do, so our following isn't as high there as you might see in other cities. But that's kind of demographic driven as well. You so Austin may have a higher Twitter usage than we do. And so we see some of those variances there. A lot of our residents, well over 70% are on Facebook and that is where we have the most of our interaction and engagement from our residents. And then Mr. Warren, you convene a lot of the other communications directors there. Can you share a little bit about that so the citizens know what's going on there? So as I've been mentioning these partnerships that we have, we have a group that we call the Arlington Communicators Group that involves all the different major brands here in Arlington. So obviously the city, but AISD, MISD, UTA, TCC, Downtown Arlington, the Chamber, all the entertainment district groups, the Park Small. It's a wide group of individuals, the art museum. And we bring together regularly, we least try to do it every quarter, if not every month. We get together for a couple of reasons, one, to share what each other's doing and then help promote each other. Because again, we know what our universe is, but the Rangers have a huge following that can help us in certain areas. The Cowboys may have a different following. UTA has a huge following. they can help us in certain areas. The Cowboys may have a different following. UTA has a huge following. We're all sharing each other's content. We're all working hand in hand. We're going to be much more likely to get our story out to the wider audience. And it's really, I think the only way we can be successful in getting the message out. But it also helps us build and maintain those relationships that are important, just on a regular ongoing basis. And particularly if we have some type of crisis situation to know that we've got the right person, we know them, we've got a working relationship with them as this isn't the first time we've ever talked to them. Makes it a much more effective group, and also makes us, I think, much more ready to handle what comes at us here at the city. And then a very successful program that you started is Dream Ambassadors, and can you talk about, you had a big jump here at the first year and could you talk a little bit about what you're doing? So as I indicated on there, how do I join the Dream Team? The Dream Team is our digital ambassador program. And this program is dedicated to recruiting folks that want to share the story that we're producing. As I said, we're producing a lot of original content on a daily and weekly basis. But how do we get more and more people to share that? So the Dream Team enables us to do that. When you sign up for it, all you have to do is sign up with basically with your email address. It will ask you if you will share the content that we're producing a couple stories a week usually on your social media feeds. So we're able to take what we know. We're getting in our 30,000 followers on Facebook and 35,000 followers on Twitter as an example But how do I get your followers and your followers and your followers to see all that on the same platforms to keep mushrooming this out and growing it out and so the Ambassador program now is we've increased by more than a thousand or up to 28 Actually 2000 or up to 2800 folks who are a part of program. So we're hoping to be to 3,000 here pretty soon. Awesome. Really appreciate it there. That is such an important thing. There are website and I really should start again. Our communications department does so many more things to actually be able to put into a website. Our staff does so many more things. And I think that's what we're fighting. The historical, typical city website is a pretty boring place. There's nothing boring about the Arlington website. It's exciting. There's videos. There's great information. And every time I go to it, I'm surprised I find something else that I go, wow. And surprised I find something else that I go wow and And then now and and our city manager has been so proud of the staff for for producing so many more data points For you know, and once again it just opens up the door therefore our citizens to have easy access to all this data Now that being said to our communications department as as we know, is one of the best in the country and has the awards to prove it. However, I believe this is one of the biggest challenges in America right now because we are in a communication technology revolution, but we're in a transition because local news is so hard to find anything. And our, you know, and I appreciate our star telegram right there. But we are down from 15 to 20 reporters covering our city to one sometimes. That's an example of that. And then we have bloggers that are going and so forth. Well, we want truth, in fact, and responsible journalism. Well, here is a great source that is there for you to feed. And then I think, too, one of the biggest challenges that mayors and council members face is things that are put on Facebook that are not true. And we have to work through that all the time. So the more our citizens turn to the website, the more informed they're going to be there about our city and then it also helps our underman media that is out there right now trying to get the word out themselves there to it and I really appreciate that because it is amazing when we go out. There are how many times we're sharing and they don't know and especially when we see the numbers that you're reaching, but yet there's still so many more out there. Now that being said, this is a major step, a real celebration of a huge step forward for us here because we are so much more user friendly now with this platform there to be able to do it. But I want to really affirm what you're doing there and affirm all of the different programs you've got, the videos, they're golden because they're featuring many times citizens or businesses and so forth and kind of give a citizen's an idea there with it. And then also we, you've got to push the Dream Investor program there very much because that's so important there because we truly could reach our 400,000 citizens if we were got more to share there along the way. So with that, Mr. Warren, do you have anything to add? No, thank you for the support. Well thank you so, oh Miss K-Part does. Yeah, I just have a question Jay, so and I realize what I'm about to ask you, it's a work in progress. But the new welcome sign is there at Russell Curry in 287. So I can't tell you how many people have been calling me because they see what was coming under construction. What are they doing over there? So when we got it up this week, the base went in first and we got it up this week, I put it out and it was amazing the number of responses. But so something like that, I'm assuming we'll be on here, but probably isn't on here yet. Is that correct? We haven't done a story yet, but we absolutely will. And we'll get, we'll publicize it publicize it much like we did the first one. Well and I know when it's completely done it would be the bigger story because you'll see all the capability but even now it generates a lot of interest if just a hint of a story you might want to put on there for the moment. I love that. Thank you. Thank you Miss K. Bart thank you Mr. Warren. Appreciate it very much and please pass that on the communications department very grateful and entire staff. Thank you Next we'll move to Texas Rangers golf status update Mr. Lemuel Randolph director of Parks and Recreation Department Thank you very much mayor and members of city council. I've got a brief presentation for you to provide you an update on the status of the Texas Rangers golf club. You'll see on the image here, the image to the left is the on deck circle that represents a really majestic view of the new course and certainly a picture-taking opportunity for many of the folks that have come out to the course. So what we'll do is talk a little bit about the transition of this facility from the of picture-taking opportunity for many of the folks that have come out to the course. So what we'll do is talk a little bit about the transition of this facility from the Chester Ditto course to the Texas Rangers golf club. It's only been open about six weeks and we had a couple of statistics from the old Ditto course, about $1 million in annual revenue and annual rounds just under $40,000. We had a soft opening on February 17th and so we're open about six weeks now and so these are our stats to date, about 250,000 in revenue, 2700 rounds with an average weekly revenue of about $41,000. That needs to be taken in context. So over six weekends, we've had one weekend or it was over 45 degrees and we didn't have rain. And so that needs to be taken into context somewhat. So a lot of the discussion that I know you've heard and we've heard as well revolves around the rate structure of the course. And there were really three things that we were trying to accomplish as we developed the rate structure. We wanted to, one, the course itself is a much higher developed course than the original course. And so the cost to maintain and operate that course is higher. With the proximity of the entertainment district there was an opportunity to leverage the significant visitation to the entertainment district and bring those customers for weekends at the Texas Rangers Golf Club. But three we wanted to provide a value for our city residents to play at the course. And so the rate structure itself was tiered to accomplish that. And so in essence, you could pay as low as $36 for a round of golf, depending on one if you're a resident, what your status is as it relates to a senior if you're a frequent player. And if you're willing to play on days that is not quite as popular. Conversely if you want to come in let's say during September is there's a Ranger playoff that weekend you want to play on a September on a Saturday morning at eight o'clock and you're coming from out of town where you're going to pay a premium for that privilege. And so that's how the rate structure was developed and so far while we've gotten some feedback about it, we do have some data that suggests the value that the perception of value is pretty high. And we'll get to that. So a couple of statistics that we've gleaned so far have been turned of our Google rating at 4.1 out of 5. And we had one one rating. There's another story to that that I can share, not in this context. But 4.1 out of 5, Google rating, 100% of Facebook reviewers recommending the course, and 74% rating the value of the round as above average to excellent, with average and above at 94%. These are some of the responses that we've received. Great course, we had a great time. Staff was very friendly and helpful. Unbelievable transformation from a municipal course to a top notch high end course, and so on. So some of our reviewers commenting on their experience at the course itself. So where are we in the progress of the development? As you may recall, the facility itself has developed over three different construction packages. We have the course itself, which includes obviously the demolition of the old course and the establishment of turf and the terrain for the new course. The second package was the maintenance building package and that package included obviously the maintenance building itself and included the pump house. It included about two thirds of the parking required for the full development of the course. And then the final stage, which is under construction now, is the clubhouse. And we expect to deliver that clubhouse by the end of this calendar year. And that package also includes the completion of the parking that would accommodate both for the banquet needs, the course user needs, as well as the restaurant operation of the course. And so where are we currently and where do we need to go? There are a couple of milestones that need to be completed before we can call success completely. The complete to the maintenance building package and on your agenda this evening you have two items associated with the completion of that piece of the project. Food and beverage operations, we issued an RFP for Food and beverage operations last August. We received three responses to that RFP. Those were evaluated by a committee of various departments, five representatives. And what we received from that, because it was through a management fee process, we weren't particularly satisfied with the revenue potential as it related to those proposals. And so what we're suggesting is an in-house operation, certainly initially, with the idea that as the Loz hotel development matures and other development partners mature in the region, there might be an opportunity for us to partner with one of those agencies as relates to food and beverage services. But for now, what our recommendation would be is to go internal and provide that service directly through our city staff. There are a couple of actions that also will be required to complete the clubhouse itself. And so we have a kitchen, we have a fixtures furniture and equipment package, we have a security package. And so all those elements will be coming back to you as we get closer to needing those for completion of the course. And so all those elements will be coming back to you as we get closer to needing those for completion of the course. And so you'll see those over the course of the summer. And should be one more slide there. I guess not. And so that kind of summarizes where we are. We've been pretty pleased with the success of it over the six weeks. We'll be having a formal opening. And again, we had a soft opening on February 17th. We'll have a formal opening on May 2nd. You should have received those invitations if not, they'll be coming this week. We'll also be doing a separate media event towards the end of May for the significant media partners, not only locally but nationally that have contacted us and have interest in playing the course and experiencing the course. But that in essence references just a status update to date and be happy to answer any questions that you may have. Miss Walman. Thank you for the report. It's good. And I know the course is going to be successful because it was quite a transformation. I know. But I have a question about the cost. Would you go back to that side? You mentioned that for a frequent player program, is there a cost for to join or to be a frequent player? Yes. It's $99 per year. And we've currently sold over 200 be a frequent player? Yes, it's $99 per year, and we've currently sold over 200 of the frequent player cards. That's, that's main of what I want to know about. And that $99 also gives you one round of golf as well. Okay, and then you can play for $36 when you come anytime? Depending on the time of day, there's a criteria specified for that. So it's not anytime, but's a criteria specified for that. So it's not any time, but you certainly can pay for that amount. What would it be if I'm a frequent player and I come out on a Saturday morning and I wanna play, can I play for 36 dollars? No, you cannot. What would I play? What would I play? I don't have this specific number in front of me. I'm not a player in front of me. I'm sorry, I'm sorry for the mistakes. But yeah, I should. Mine. Typically that fair or that fee is related to a Monday through Thursday scenario. Okay. Not a prime time weekend rate. Okay, thank you. Well, as clarification, I'm gonna point out, we're literally looking at somewhere around a discount of 30 to $40 at any even if you're not a frequent player and you're just a resident of Arlington you're going to be saving that much there at any time based on a non-resident comparison. Yes, that's fairly unique in our industry to provide a discount for residents. We felt very strongly about incorporating that into the fee structure. So just as a resident, you don't have to sign up to be a frequent player, but just as a resident, you're going to get a 20% discount off of the rac rate. And then there are other discounts that you could apply as well. Ms. Bowies. We're a quick question. On the food service, I have found in running restaurants that it's pretty hard to staff and manage and get the right formula for success. If you're trying to do it in-house, do we have talent somewhere else that we're going to pull in to help with this? Are we going to start something that's totally new for this guy? Especially as I say, we have an event center that seats up to 200. Would we then call in catering companies or how would we handle this type of service? Right. We'll be tackling that a couple of different ways. We do have some in-house expertise. Obviously the Convention Center and their experience is going to be very helpful as we help develop that. Not only the current management, but also past management that have interest in helping us do that process. So we're not going to come into this without any experience at all. We're going to apply all of the knowledge that the city has to help make this successful. Yeah, because you hate to. You can in those types of situations, you can create an environment where people who's confident in you and then it's hard to get them back in. So how you start is going to be really important. So I really appreciate hearing that you do have some experience from the convention center coming in to help you start that up because I think that can be a very big positive for the club in the future especially with the money that's being invested in the building. Absolutely. Mr. Randolph, how much do we pay the Texas Rangers for the naming rights on this golf course? Zero dollars annually. Thank you, Mr. Randolph. Does the city still own this golf course? This is a wholly owned city entity. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. I get that question all the time. You know, how much are we paying them? And yes, you know, the Dallas Cowboys golf course, they do pay a lot of money for the Cowboys name. And we don't here. And anyway, it's a tremendous opportunity for cross marketing there for both us and the Rangers. It also is another thing that makes this course unique because it is the first major league baseball-themed golf course in America. And that hit national news when this was announced. In fact, it was a lead story on golf channel for a couple of nights there, too. And I'm sure they will be a part of media day there when you come. And I want to say that right now this is a very soft opening and a lot of people don't know it's open even inside our city but come may especially after that media day they're going to know and of course our staff is gearing up and I'll compliment the staff out there they have gotten all kinds of great reports about how they're being so customer service oriented and working and then also the ground screw out there in the shape of the golf course is just phenomenal. They're in it but this is another addition here that really helps raise the bar. It also helps North Arlington tremendously here. Just the fence around the golf course was a huge improvement going from chain link there to that beautiful rod iron but also the views there when you're driving around that course and then when you're on the course the views around there are tremendous. Mr. Randolph, what what do you have on your lapel? What is that big metal that you've got right there so that signifies the national recreation parks association gold medal for parks and recreation management excellence so that means all are the number one parks department in the nation yes yes sir thank you mr. Randolph really appreciate the work there that y'all have done and police pass that on I never want to miss an opportunity there because we have a year now to celebrate that and we want to continue to celebrate it every time we have five we can apply for another four years. Oh that's awesome so we can say it for five that's awesome that is awesome. I love that I love that Mr. and I'll thank you so much for your work appreciate it greatly and we look forward to win the clubhouse opens here at the end of the year and let's hope we have a dry fall unlike this last fall so we can finish that on time. Thank you a lot. Thank you. Okay next we'll move to ball field lighting standards. Ms. Jensy Topel, Director of Planning and Development Services. Good afternoon Mayor and Council. The staff report before you discusses the concern raised by a few schools that are located in residential zoning districts and have residential adjacency. So per the unified development code, they are allowed to have a maximum height of 40 feet for their ball fields, light poles, because that is the maximum height for all structures. And many of their design professionals believe, the lighting design professionals believe that the light poles have to be 70 to 80 feet tall for the light source to be more focused on the field and not create glare issues. However, we've also heard from the residential neighbors and they have opposed this in some of the cases as well. So in 2015, this topic was brought to the attention of community neighborhood and development committee. And they discussed the item as a part of UDC amendments. However, at that time, the committee found that each individual site had its own unique challenges and decided not to take any action at that time and move forward with no UDC amendments related to that item. So last month, the council requested to bring this item back for discussion. Staff will proceed as directed by Mayor and Council. I'm happy to answer any questions from mayhem. Any questions from Ms. Topel? Ms. Myers? Thank you, Mayor. Thank you so much for this report, Ms. Topel. I do have one question for you. And it's the end of the second page, the end of your report. We're talking in specific to the residential adjacency issue. It strikes me, all the fields that you analyze, the only one that does not have a residential adjacency issue is the Oak Ridge fields. That's correct. That is correct. And so I understand they changed the zoning to R because they had first anticipated that industrial uses might have happened but now they've turned those all into fields. Is that correct? Yes, during the zoning case where they wanted to have that ledic complex at that time they were required to have a specific use permit to add that ledic complex. So instead of doing a specific use permit because they were zoned industrial at that time, they decided to just rezone to residential, which would allow them to have this use as a part of the school. And that residential zoning also helped them to have transitional buffer whenever the edges and industrial, industrial properties developed. Would there be any opportunity by the schools since they do not have residential adjacency for either of them to rezone the property? So it's not residential so that they can revisit the issue of the height of the, because I know the height is an issue now of the lights that are being put into the new fields and given the fact that there is no residential adjacency. What would be the remedy for that? Is there a remedy for that? I noticed here in the staff report you talk about, there may be UDC opportunity or something to do with a non residential zoning district. You elaborate more on those two options. So there are two options. That's schools specifically because it doesn't have residential edges in seek and decide to go for a rezoning because schools are allowed in every zoning district. So they could be zoned to a non-residential zoning district, which would allow the height of the polls to be higher than 40 feet. The other option is to do a UDC amendment where the schools or parks that have ball feels in residential zoning districts but does not have residential adjacency to it could have the option where the zoning administrator has the authority to administratively approve it. I'd sure makes a lot of sense to have that because, you know, the regulations wouldn't apply to a place that didn't have residential adjacency. So that makes a lot of sense, Mr. Shepherd. And Mayor Agri, I think the second option that you mentioned would be one that I would consider supporting the rezoning idea is a expensive for the applicant and be maybe problematic for the council. I think part of the reason I got downzoned in the first place is there was some concern following the adjacent uses along that quarter of that this may at some point in the future become one of those uses. And so the down zoning to R I think was part of the the idea in the PD. And so I'd hate to go backward on the zoning. But thank an amendment that says what we all think is reasonable, which is if you don't have any residential adjacency, there shouldn't be an issue with your light standards. Try it and we'll have more. You know, there'll be a new schools built and so forth that are not adjacent or I couldn't agree more. Miss Wolf? I just wanted to say I agree with both of your comments. And if you'll go back probably 15 years or so ago, it was the Pantigo School that wanted to put athletic lights on that lot. But it had three residential, very mature residential neighborhoods on three sides. And that's what brought that around. And so I think that's the intent. I think, remember, when the school district was going to light their junior high, redo all their athletic fields and put lights up. And most of our junior highs, maybe I can't say most, many of those aren't within residential neighborhoods. I think that are dressed. I think when you have a property that there is no residential zoning around it whatsoever, a housing, I think your second recommendation just makes practical sense. So is there a good idea? Is everybody all right with us having staff to move forward on an amendment there that would allow it when there is not residential adjacency and bringing it forward to us? It's Ms. Walman. Also in the report, you talked about the technology the new technologies that's coming where they can the light will not go out and so we'd want to revisit this probably within a year or two because it's changing so quickly that there may be even a change coming up that would allow allow taller poles even in residential it doesn't see that light just Z-road in there and it doesn't affect the neighborhood. So just so that we keep that in mind that that will come up eventually. Okay, is everybody all right with Miss Cape Heart? Thank you Mayor. Jinssey and their staff report, it talks about, you know, the improvements in LED lights in particular and that LED lights don't necessarily need that height as they've developed. So my only concern going forward is we may have a poll that's this 70 or 80 foot that a few months from now even is outdated. It didn't have to be that high to get the light spectrum that they needed. So have we gone back and really had that conversation with Oak Ridge? I don't know which kind of thing they're trying to use out there. But I think in the future we're going to see those polls coming down in height considerably and they're kind of on the tail end of this thing I believe. That's right. So before I'm willing to say I'm some man the UDC I need to know what they're talking about with more specificity than I've got right now. So what we know is with the LED lights that could be reduced to between 60 to 70 feet. The other lights is where 70 to 80 feet is what they were saying. So yes, I do see that there could be a trend where technology improves and the light poll, poll height can decrease. However, nobody has expressed that it could be lower than 60 feet. But even with the administrative approval, the authority with the zoning administrator is to actually look at what is the current trend, what kind of maximum heights of polls are required for that kind of a trend that's going on in the lighting industry. Yeah, so, you know, with that, I'm fine with it as long as we've had that conversation. I'm not sure they need the height that they think they need. Depending upon what kind of lighting they're trying to implement. I will definitely check with Oak Ridge School specifically. And then as the direction we could move through the UDC amendment, it does require media notice. So with all that it goes to planning and zoning commission for a UDC amendment. So there will be a little time before it comes back to you. Okay, I'm proud of that mayor. Thank you. That would, Mayor. Thank you. That would be great. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Ms. Topall. Appreciate it. Thank you, Ms. Myers, for bringing that forward. That's awesome. Well, next move to the honorary street sign, Topper process. Ms. Alicia Winklebeck, Senior Officer of Office of Strategic Initiatives. Good afternoon. So we recently briefed you, Mayor and Council, on the request that we had from the Vietnamese community to put in place honorary street sign toppers along Pioneer Parkway between Center and 360. And as part of that request, we started talking to other communities in the area that were also potentially interested in street toppers along that same pioneer parkway corridor. So we've been working with the various communities. We've had one meeting today with the Vietnamese, Latino, and Muslim communities that are interested in potentially placing street toppers in that area. We have a second meeting schedule at the end of this month to continue the conversation. To date, that group has agreed upon implementing the requested signs from the Vietnamese community in two locations along Pioneer Parkway at the intersection of Pioneer Parkway and Browning and Pioneer Parkway and New York. So those will be installed in a ceremony on April 12th and they will honor General Dow, which was the requested individual from the Vietnamese community. And then we will continue to work with those communities to gain consensus with the plans for the rest of the corridor. So, but out of that conversation came a need for us to formalize our honorary street topper process. So in your staff report, in your packet, staff has proposed a process, which I'll just very briefly go over here today. We would look for Council's direction. If you agree with that process, then that's the way we would move forward in the future for requested street toppers. And of course, we're interested in any feedback you have to amend that. So the proposed process would be that staff receives a request from the community that request needs to be pretty specific. It needs to tell us what location, so what corridor they're looking at. The intersection they would like to sign, place the number of signs, and then information about the individual or group to be honored. Then we would ask that that community group that's making the request actually go out to the community and form the community, talk to them, gather feedback and come back with proof of support and consensus from the community on the location, number of signs and individual or group to be honored. Third staff would review that request and review any adopted plans we have to make sure that it conforms with plans that the city already has in place. If that was determined to be in conformity, then the city would go through the process of pairing a draft design for the sign topper. Once that was done, we would come back to council, brief council, and at that point we would open. I think that's a good question. So, I think that's a good question. So, I think that's a good question. So, I think that's a good question. So, I think that's a good question. So, I think that's a good question. So, I think that's a good question. So, I think that's a good question. So, I think that's a good question. So, I think that's a good question should council decide to move forward with the street sign toppers, then the city would fabricate those, and we would work with the community to identify a time for a ceremony to install and unveil the street toppers. So with that, I am happy to take any questions. A couple of questions. So how are the signs paid for? Does the city pay for them? Or does the group pay for them? To date, the city signs paid for? Is the city paid for them or does the group pay for them? To date, the city has paid for them. Our public works department has fabricated and installed those signs. What about wear and tear on signs? How long? You know, faded? That kind of thing. So how long do you anticipate any sign that you put up lasting? And I guess another question is, is there a beginning and end date on the approval for the signs? Like is it five years, 10 years? If the group decides they want someone else, but they sign only come down if the group decides they want someone else honored? I think that's what we anticipate. And answer your question on the where and tear. Unless Mindy Carmichael has any details she'd like to share. I'm not really sure. Well, you want them to be maintained and look sharp. Absolutely. And so to do that, I think you have to then create a budget for it. Because you could have a lot of these requests. Our sign program, we have condition ratings for every one of our 44,000 plus signs and so we reevaluate those on an 11 year basis because unless it faces west, if they face west we know those fatal quicker so we evaluate those on a quicker basis. But every 11 years, the signs are evaluated and replaced as necessary. I'm going to be honest. I've had some calls from people who believed that our signs in Arlington at times stopped last as long as we think they will. So taking on new signs is something I think we need. I mean, I want this to happen. That's not the problem. I'm just saying that it may be that if the group starts complaining their signs are faded or if the community does, these are specially printed signs, I guess all are. Do we print them in our own shop? Yes, ma'am. Yeah, all I would ask is that Do we print them in our own shop? Yes, ma'am. Yeah, all I would ask is that if we do this, the signs should look crisp and sharp, because I think they're part of your entry into a community. And we would want the community to know that we care enough if we're going to take this on, that we keep them crisp all the time. Yes, ma'am. We implemented this program about three years ago. We had a serious backlog. That backlog will be exhausted as of next year. Right. And then we'll be on the annual evaluation program. Yeah. Thank you. Mr. Shefford. Thank you, Mayor. Alicia, the only thing I see that's missing is some type of rationale for the person proposed to be honored. The way I read and I understand this is just kind of getting it kicked off, but the way I read the statement here is all you need is a community group To request assigned to honor and individual or group with a sign topper and so You know, we could have Robert Shepherd Parkway, which I'm sure we will in a couple of years But that's for different reasons. So I just wonder if there shouldn't be some sort of Threshold you know like the person did something or I don't know. Notable clean and clean record and yeah, yeah, because with criteria, it seems like we need to refine some of that that the basis for the the group to be requesting the top and I don't know how we get there, but there needs to be something. Robert, you're getting kind of to where I was going with should you have a limit on once you approve it how long this sign might be there. Well, I think you just go through the link. You have to be re-valuated in renew. Yeah, the link the time I don't care about. It's just a renewal process. Well, I'll just come right out and say it. We are neighbors to the east have had a lot of controversy over a particular individual that served the Confederacy. And to be candid, I could see someone coming right up and saying, I want Robert Lee Parkway. And with what I'm seeing here, other than counsel stepping out politically and saying, no, there's nothing really to stop that. I'm not saying Robert Lee's good or bad. Just pointing out that this is fraught with concern on my part that we don't have a threshold that an individual or a group needs to get over before it even gets to you or us. So Miss Winkleback, y'all can work on a criteria for the actual name of the person who they are and so forth before we would put them up in our city. I think that's very valid. Mr. Glassby. Thank you, Mr. Chepard. Speaking of this, one aspect of it is those who have decided that this is the name they want have to go out to the community to assure that it's okay. So what kind of validation do we get for that support? Sure. Excuse me. I think that that and that is a key, I think excellent points we can definitely incorporate these comments and informalize that part of the process a little bit more. I think one of our expectations is when they go out to the community, you know, they aren't going out just to their communities. So they're having to really kind of look across the different communities that are impacted maybe if it's a specific area, like the International Court or that we're talking about, and make sure that there's consensus from all of those different groups. So I think we would, I feel like it maybe is a little bit of a case-by-case basis in terms of exactly what format we get that proof back kind of depends on what formalized groups are in place for that community in that specific area. But we would definitely be looking at making sure that key community groups, key players and the like are absolutely involved in on board. Okay, so Ms. Winklebeck, you'll go from here, work on a criteria there for that. Also, you're going to be running it by some stakeholder groups here at the end of the month before it comes back formally here to the Council for approval, right? Yes, sir. And so to be clear, I think are the conversations about the international corridors since they have been moving for quite a while now. We've been working very closely with those three communities. Our intention was to go back and work with those communities and get where we need to be on that corridor. We were really looking at this as a process moving forward So if if council's okay with that direction. Yeah, I think that's great and then I want to also April the 12th is going to be a great day You know there has been a tremendous investment there Not only with the Vietnamese Americans but the Asian Americans there in that New York to Browning their own Pioneer Parkway and it is going to be awesome to be able to honor a hero there and I think it will be a very significant thing here for our community to be able to celebrate this and then we have a very significant Asian-American population. And they are contributing so greatly here to our community. And this is going to be a great sign there too of moving forward. And I love the fact that people came together when concerns were expressed and were able to compromise and work through that and work it. And yes, the International Corridor will have other able to compromise and work through that and work it. And yes, the international corridor will have other street toppers and will have a process to be able to go through and it is celebrating so many there. And of course, right now, our city is represented by 100 over 100 countries that our citizens come from. And we need to be celebrating that and looking forward to the April the 12th ceremony in which the Browning and Pioneer Parkway and the New York and Pioneer Parkway are able to celebrate a Vietnamese hero here in our community. So with that, thank you all a lot and we look forward to as you move forward, we'll look forward to ultimately coming back with a process there that we have. Thank you very much, Ms. Lincoln back. Next we'll move to summary of real property transactions for the first and second quarter of fiscal year 2019. Mr. Stewart Young real estate manager. Mayor City Council, which I have in front of you is just a summary of real property transactions that took place in the first and second quarters of fiscal year 2019. These transactions were under $15,000 or dedicated to the city at that time. Be happy to answer any questions. I think we've all gotten to seeing the report there. But Mr. Yon, we appreciate all your work and dealing with so many different people here in moving our city forward and thank you for that. My pleasure. I appreciate it. Okay, next we'll move to discussion of committee meetings. First is municipal policy. Mr. R. Myers. Thank you, Mayor. We had a meeting this morning. All members of the Missile Policy Committee were present. We continued a discussion on new facility naming. We had a previous discussion where we had come to consensus regarding the lake house, but there are the two remaining were the one which is the facility that it was the formerly Youth Smith Recreation at East Library, which is going to be that new library rec building. And then the other one was the South East Arlington Rec Center, the web community park area, the new facility going in there. We had a lot of spirit conversations this morning. I'll tell you that the Park and Recreation Sport worked with several subcommittees, and then the Park Sport itself worked to come up with a ranking of their top four criterion for both, appropriate names for both. On the former Youth Smith Recreation Center in Eastern Arlington Library Branch, that dual, their first four priority names were the one, the Earl. Justification for that was because it was the acronym that everyone started using during the development process. And so some folks kind of got attached to it, I guess. The second one was the one because in that area, there's been a lot of firsts, the first plan, the first development plan and other things that were pointed out. The third was Cottonwood Creek Center because as many may not know, and a lot of us discussed the knowledge of set knowledge, whether or not the Cottonwood creek actually runs underneath there. And then finally the fourth one was the Sue Phillips Center obviously trying to again recognize a prominent citizen. It was the feeling by the committee. We eliminated the Cottonwood Creek Center and we eliminated the Earl because there was a sense by the committee that we didn't want to just have East Arlington sort of a location pulled out. Cottonwood Creek did not feel that there was enough knowledge about that Creek enough sense of that. So it came down to the one and she Phillips. There was a real sense that Sue Phillips, while she is a wonderful, she's the mayor of East Arlington and has done a wonderful work in that area. Really felt that an internal, this is too separate. We have a recreation center, a library. We really have an opportunity to do some naming inside the building and so we'd really recommended that Sioux Philist be recognized inside the building. So it really came down to the last one, which is the one. And no one was really excited about the one. We talked about unity, we talked about transformation. So we really asked staff to go back and take a look at the one unity transforming, something along those lines to try to come back to some sense of one word that would capture that feeling. The park's board chair was there and was, it was an agreement that she would like to she was okay with us going ahead and having asking staff to try to come up with something that captures that sense of place that sense of unity that sense of community and the sense of newness all at one so we'll be meeting again to discuss that one. The Southeast Arlington Recreation Center near the Webb Community Park. Again, the Parks Board Recreation Board came back with the top four. The first one was the Webb based on the location near Webb. Second was based architecturally on the Beacon since it was built its glass structure. It appears out of the prairie. It sort of is a beacon in terms of its architectural style. The third was the use of, again, the cotton fields, this idea that it was in the cotton fields. And then geographic reference to the South East Star, the committee eliminated the South East Star, eliminated the cotton fields, and essentially didn't feel the web captured what we were looking for. There was really, I think, again, census around the beacon, although some people were liking the beacon for the other and not necessarily this one. So I asked staff in the end with the idea that, I know it was convoluted, I must say. I'm so sorry you got this. I'm just going to say, staff is going to look at, again, to repeat for the folks that we're not involved in this convoluted conversation. The staff is an asked to look at the one unity or revitalization or some some to capture that sense when it's dealing with the new to the two buildings that are being put together. And then we like the beacon, but wanna chance to sort of sit with that name and see whether or not we could find, maybe that would be a better purpose for the others. So long winded discussion this morning, to reach to a non-decision, but a decision to yet to move forward to have some discussion with staff. And again, with the input of the parks board to appreciate the parks boards and as well as the parks department. Dealing with the council's ever present, concerned to want to make sure that we get these names correct and because we know that they're going to be vital for the history of these facilities going forward. Last but not least, I'll be asking for a future agenda item unrelated to this, well, related to this, but I'll leave that for that particular item on the agenda. So. Any questions from the smirers? I'm sure she would appreciate it. Not any of them. I'm saying. No more in the second. Mayor, I was thinking here was that naming opportunity for me. I'm sorry we're only looking at the ones that we're focusing but I love you Mr. Shepherd for thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. I probably shouldn't ask this but since it was Hugh Smith, recreation's under before, have we any thoughts of what you were referring to something internal? I mean, this actually the committee did discuss you Smith and why wasn't you Smith going to be utilized and actually what where did you Smith come from? And staff reported to us and please Mr. Randolph, if you still here to and any of the other committees members of correct me if I'm wrong, but formerly you Smith Recreation Center was you Smith was the person that actually donated or we purchased the land from I believe that we purchased the land from. So in recognition of the land purchase or indoor the land donation I I want to be correct on that but I know you Smith was involved with the actual land. So there was no consensus by the parks board whatsoever that there needed to be any to go back to the use Smith. In fact, they were looking to find something that was new, especially since this is a unique facility that combines both a recreation center and a library. They really want that name to be fitting of that very unique center. Okay. Any other questions from Ms. Myers? Okay, we'll move to Ms. Wolfe community and neighborhood development. We had two items I promise I'll be as brief as I can. The first item was from Cheryl Kinney and Hurtine regarding the HUD action plan. You know, we've been looking at that. They, we reviewed public comments. Very well attended. There were 13 different individual groups that attended public hearings and then they received two letters in addition to public attendance in support of the plan and the funding recommendation. Remind you, these are for these are federal dollars. They're the HUD community development block grant home emergency shelter grant and we know that contingency language will be included because we're not sure what the government's budget is going to be. So we've agreed as a committee and we'll bring that forward. That if we get more than what we put forward, we'll just spread that equally among all projects. If it's less, we will reduce what we're recommending. The funding recommendations are continue to be available to the public and other nonprofits through April 29th for just review or comment. The plan will then come before this Council on May the 7th and it must be submitted to DC by May the 15th. And then also, as we've been looking at this over the last three or four meetings, we really were concerned about so many of the Arlington, you know, these are all Arlington groups that only these issues go to Arlington residents. But there were, we noticed that some nonprofits had no Arlington residents on their board or very, very few. So this committee is really recommending that we express a renewed focus on encouraging our nonprofits to get Arlington residents involved and we're going to work with them on what they can do. Perhaps maybe they if they, if they're getting 20% of the HUD dollars and 20% of their board is Arlington residents, they may get like one extra point or something for that. So we're gonna come up with that. But also we mind everybody that this is the end of a five year plan. The new five year plan will start in the fall of 2019. And that's when all this stuff where we're talking about having Arlington board members and broader participation, that's when that would go into effect. So that was topic one. And then item two was Sarah Stubblefield came forward with her group on she is working with the neighborhood matching grants and we had their new thrilled with the response that came about this year. There were over 15 grant requests totaling $196,000. Our budget only allows 150,000 awards. So we had to look to review those. And there were strong applications. And from a lot of existing neighborhoods who have had grants before, and this is kind of phase two, phase three. So they have a really good working process, well, well written recommendations. Just really good, fully full of content and a lot of information. So staff was very pleased with the quality that were submitted. We think that there are, we're going to have to cut that down. We only got $150,000 in less city manager can find this some more money between now and then and anyway we also have other opportunities to discuss those resolution will be coming before grants committee will bring will resolve everything we want to bring all that to this board on April 23rd and get that all Done because it was very well received Okay, good questions from Miss Wolf Thank you Miss Wolf. That's exciting about all the applications on neighborhood matching super Okay, Miss Walmond yes, sir Committee met this morning and all members present Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. the flooding is on our city. This is going to be a 10 member committee. It's both a city staff and external. There'll be two city staff members from public works and stormwater, one city staff member from the office of communication, and one insurance agent, six representatives from the city that can include floodplain residents, utility companies, major employer, real estate agent, mortgage lender, HOA, etc. Those are the people that are involved in the flooding in our city. The committee will meet to establish the outreach plan. And the goals were pretty interesting. There were a couple of things that I was a little surprised about, because I hadn't thought about how flooding impacts so many different people in our city. And they will review the current floodplain messages and they will identify additional topics to be included. The identifies additional target audiences, and that was one. In some cities they've talked to the school bus drivers because they're impacted to give them more information how to handle when flooding comes. And there will probably be a lot of others too. I think they mentioned some others and I didn't write all of them down. But I thought that was interesting that they will go into how the flooding impacts so many people in our city that we're not targeting or educating on what to do now are informing, you know, what we have to do. They will review the flood insurance coverage assessment and identify goals and priorities for staff to implement to improve flood insurance coverage across the city. A lot of people, as we talked about, and the question was asked, how do I know that I need or flood insurance is available to me? When you come into Arlington and you buy a new home, some people don't know that they need it, but I was told that it's at the end of the closing where it's usually suggested or said, you know, it is, and blood insurance is available to everyone in the city. I think there's some misconceptions about that it's only available to people who are in the floodplain. Well, as I said this morning, it's available to everyone in the city if you want it. Most people don't, nor do they, hopefully, they don't need it. But anyway, those were the things that we talked about in the response to the public and to inform them of what they can do. Just small things like keeping your property clean when you're in an area that has been flooded or is prone to flooding or could be Because we know that with the whether that we had last year we had two hundred year floods in what two weeks We could do that again. I mean it's happened once that's not to say it couldn't happen again So I think we all need to be aware and we know that there are many areas in our city they're hit by flooding and it's getting the last year it was worse. This committee will then also review all of the floodplain outreach efforts and report back to city council and the findings. The next steps are just a resolution that's going to come on April the 23rd to council agenda to authorize the formation of program for public information committee staff to contact committee members and schedule meetings starting this summer. So I think we're being proactive in our flooding. I think we were you know I know neighborhood meeting last night. Where are we on flooding in my neighborhood? Why hasn't it come forward? Well we do have plans but I think we can do better with this committee and I think it will be a committee staff will come up with the people that they think would be candidates to serve on the committee that would be knowledgeable about the flooding and the flood insurance that's appropriate for our citizens. So, and that was the only topic we had. Any questions from Ms. Walman? I think that'll be a great addition. Sounds great. Okay, next we'll move to discussion of miscellaneous items, appointments to boards and commissions. I'll turn to Deputy Secretary Martha Garcia. Mayor, we have two appointments tonight. the city of San Antonio and the city of San Antonio and the city of San Antonio and the city of San Antonio and the city of San Antonio and the city of San Antonio and the city of San Antonio and the city of San Antonio and the city of San Antonio and the city of San Antonio and the city of San Antonio and the city of San Antonio and the city of San Antonio and the city of San Antonio and the city of San Antonio for sanitary system monitors. I was wondering what is there a problem or is that are we just getting ahead of the game? Or what? I don't know. It's a little bit of both. We do occasionally have sanitary sewer overflows in our system. And as an effort to minimize that, we're putting technology to work. These sensors set underneath the lid of the manhole lid cover and they detect the measurable flow beneath. And if it starts to rise, it'll send alert to our water crew so they can get out there and hopefully catch it before it overflows. And it's only right now deploying it in historically challenged areas where we've had history of these things before. It's not in the 10,000 manhole lid covers we've got all over the system but it's in hotspot locations to where we're trying to minimize that activity. Anything else on the evening evening agenda items? Okay issues relative to city and textile projects. Okay legislative Okay. Legislative update. Mr. J. Warren. Good afternoon again, Mayor and Council. J. Warren, Director of Communication and Legislative Labor, where Affairs wearing the legislative hat at this point in the meeting. I wanted to go through a couple of items with you. First related to property taxes and rollback as you see in your memo. This has made its way through various different components of the legislature and on Thursday, it will make its way to the House Bill to will make its way to the floor for debate. And so we're watching what's happening there with both the House Bill and the Senate Bill. On school finance also we're seeing the bills move forward in different capacities. In House Bill 3, which is the school finance version of the bill, the more comprehensive version of the two bills has passed out of the house. That bill would inject roughly about $9 billion into public education here in the state of Texas, including the teacher pay raises, although in a little bit of a different format than what the Senate was proposing. Both bodies had proposed a teacher pay raises in some capacity. That bill is now heading to the Senate committee on education for conversation STRs Obviously, this is an issue that we have we've discussed several times recently last Thursday the House Committee on Urban Affairs Excuse me heard from Host of folks mainly residents expressing the issues and the experiences they had with STRs and their communities and or neighborhoods. That bill it did not was not at the time voted out committee is still pending in committee there. The Senate version of the same bill has been referred to the Senate committee on business and commerce and no hearing to date has been scheduled for that bill. Gas wells as you may remember in the last meeting, we talked a little bit about a bill that would require that there be a public hearing held by the railroad commission, not by the municipality, for any gas well that would be located within 1,500 feet of a school or a daycare. At the time you asked for us to put forward a resolution of support, that is actually on your agenda for your consideration tonight in the evening meeting, but we also, at your direction, sent a letter of support for that bill to the authors of the bill as well as the committees, both in the House and the Senate, the hearing that bill. Luckily, we did send that in advance because the House committee has already heard the bill. They heard that yesterday. So we were able to get the letter in prior to their hearing in that committee. A couple of their issues that are on the agenda for you there as well. And then finally, I just today at the, the, both houses have now passed the budget. They're different versions of the budget so that will now go to conference committee to hammer out the differences on the state's budget. So happy to answer any questions you might have on any of these issues. Any questions? Okay. Thank you Mr. Warner. Appreciate you keeping abreast of these. Okay. Next we'll move to discussion of flooding in erosion. I'll call upon this Mindy Carmichael Director of Public Works. Thank you, Mayor. And transportation. So today I wanted to just recap from the storms of last year and provide a status update on where we are to mitigate the flooding issues that came about. So again, we had 32 inches of rainfall last year in September and October. We had 203 reports of additional structure flooding and 19 substantially damaged structures came of that. Our strategy was to continue the watershed studies that were ongoing. These are along our larger creeks and tributaries. We wanted to evaluate the localized drainage concerns. We wanted to proceed with the voluntary buyout program. Protect our existing infrastructure from erosion and prioritize and implement our capital improvement program. So the update on those on the watershed studies, this will identify, these studies will identify projects, like I said, the major creeks and tributaries to date. We have 117 projects identified, and we've completed seven of nine, so there'll be additional projects coming. We hope to complete the remaining two in 2020 and projects will be prioritized and moved into the capital program for implementation. Our local law's flooding analysis this consists of analyzing 70 different areas. This is where existing drainage systems have become overwhelmed from the amount of flow. These studies will help determine the depth and the extent of the flooding, which will help us also determine the number of homes that flood and the frequency of their flooding. The results of these studies will be hopefully completed in December of 2019, and we will take these projects as well and prioritize them into our capital improvement program. We have some channel and ditch design ongoing. We have 10 locations that contributed to residential flooding. Four of those locations will be pulled out and constructed in 2020 and the remaining areas will be prioritized in future programs. Our infrastructure protection, we have 10 locations as well that suffered extensive damage during the floods from erosion. Some of these do contribute to flooding. So there's three locations that will be pulled out and constructed in 2020 as well. And the remainder will be rolled into future programs as well. The voluntary buyout program, we have 19 substantially damaged properties. Three of those acquisitions are complete. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work on to be bought out as of yet. And then our 2019 capital improvements. We have three projects, three major projects in design. California Lane is a conceptual design study that will help approximately 25 flutters. And once we do these studies, we may identify additional flutters as well. Bonneville and Greenbrook has 16. That project is also under design and Harvest Hill will eliminate approximately 20 flutters. Construction this year, we have the Matthews Court drainage project. It will address 74 flutters and Country Club drainage will address five additional. So our flood program, as of today, since 2009, we have completed 213 projects, or we have completed a number of construction projects to address 213 flooders. We currently have design projects that will address 141 additional. We have completed 171 buyouts. We have other miscellaneous programs and projects for a total of 536 residential structures that we have removed from the floodplain since 2009. Moving forward, moving forward will continue to address these programs. As I mentioned, there's a number of these projects that we have to roll into future programs. So we have probably a 20-year program ahead of us to dig out from the flooding that didn't, you know, it didn't all happen overnight. We won't get out of it overnight. But we are aggressively pursuing these projects and we will move forward with these projects as well. Any questions? Ms. Walman. Not really a question, but just the fact to emphasize again that these flooding situations in the community are long term, many of them are long term solutions. And it's, you know, that doesn't help somebody that their home is flooding or potential. But I do think that the more information and that is I just reported on this committee that will help to get out into the public to let them know that we really are working on them. But because they don't see it happening, they think we're not. But I know you are. And I know it's hard when you're waiting, when you're homes in jeopardy. But I appreciate everything that you're doing and the way that we're trying to get the word out to everyone that we do know, we are working and look what we have done. That's a great report. I mean, that really shows a lot that's been done in 10 years. That's a lot. And so hopefully we can move faster, but I know when you're moving these kind of issues, they don't move that fast. And it's hard to wait. But thank you for all you're doing and hope that Mr. City Manager that will keep giving those be able to move forward. We're going to be able to move forward. We're going to be able to move forward. We're going to be able to move forward. We're going to be able to move forward. We're going to be able to move forward. We're going to be able to move forward. Ms. Mom, and I really Council, again, these things aren't possible without Y'all's collective support. And really voters, voters have authorized improvements here. So between bond funds, federal funds, and stormwater drainage funds, we've really ramped up our capabilities in the last number of years to make a meaningful impact in these areas. This has been something I know the Council's struggled with for a long time. And as Mindy pointed out, we'll eventually turn that corner and get everything where it needs to be but it's a long road and we're consistently and systematically driving down that road and making good, orderly progress. So thank you all for your support to help us do that. Ms. Bowies just real quickly. I want to thank Mindy and her team for your professionalism and coming to bat and really helping us with some things in District 1 recently. I appreciate you and I just wanted to say thank you to public click. Thank you. Mr. Glaspie. Thank you, ma'am. I'm not exactly sure how to ask this question, but I'm staying at point of our drainage, I guess, capacity when we have heavy rains and all. How do we go about assessing what our capacity needs are and then gradually getting there? Well, that's part of what these studies are. Those localized drainage area studies, we can take the system that is there, and we know we can calculate the rainfall. And so we know what a SAS pop can handle, what size rainfall. And so we can evaluate that. And when the pop sizing is undersized, it's going to flood back into the streets. And so we will know that and when this pop sizing is undersized, it's going to flood back into the streets. And so we will know the depth of that flooding and the breadth of that flooding. We can compare that to finished floor elevations in the area. And so we will know what what houses will flood and what frequency. And then we'll adjust the sizing of the pops in a new project to make sure that the pops and the inlets and the streams can handle all that flow. So a lot of times what you'll see is we'll have to couple projects together like from our watershed studies to larger creeks. We'll have to couple that with a smaller localized drainage project because we can't up size these pops if the downstream stream doesn't have enough capacity. Ms. Carmichael, could you go back to the slide that talks about your design in 2019 and construction in 2020? Yeah, those look at those numbers right there. And you start adding them up. And you're looking at around 130 flutters that are going to be taken care of there between the design and construction of those projects. So we're looking at a couple of years. It will be very significant progress made there. And then in addition to that, we have 19 that do fit our buyout program. And of course we have about 15 of those that hopefully, you know, three that have taken in hopefully the other 12 will. And then that is very significant over the 200 or so that we have total. And then to speak to what Mr. Yolverton said, you can see these projects were already planned as part of the bond program. We were already moving ahead. These hundred-year storms just happened to hit their head of it, but we were already planning for that. And then there were already somewhere between four and five hundred homes that were already taken out of harm's way. one where another here over the last few years that have made a difference. Now, that being said, there are always those that don't fit, you know, there's a few that don't fit in either one of these categories here that these watershed studies are looking to see how we can address those that are more long term. But literally we have a great opportunity here for the next couple of years to take care of most of the ones that just flooded. That would tell you that 130 plus the 20, that's 150 there that would be taking care of in the next couple of years. And then we just need to pray that we don't get hit again there and you know you go well the odds are that they won't that doesn't mean it they can't but we did have two one hundred year storms and then even a very high intensity storm they're also in the midst of that so anyway that's kind of a situation and of course we've all of us there this is a high priority for us. There are high priority for our staff here to be able to take care of this as soon as we can. Ms. Capehart. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Ms. Carmichael. I'm kind of going back to Mr. Yeoverton's comments. I think a couple of significant things that happened. We're talking about a committee now, but there's probably a committee 12 or 15 years ago of citizens. And it was through that committee, that citizens committee that we increased the rights of the stormwater drainage. And they were very thoughtful about how to implement that over a period of five, six, seven years. I don't remember minting. But, and so these were people who had dealt with flooding, our had witnessed it. And so when we convened that citizen group, I mean, that didn't come from the city that came from the citizens. And it's been very successful. The other thing that I think we did, that was very helpful, we used to only focus on the flooding places, and not the ones that we could see the erosion coming and flooding about to happen. And we kind of bifurcated our money to kind of address both. And that's already made. I know down in Rush Creek has made a significant difference right there at Green Oak. So those two things I think may or may have made a big difference. But I don't want to pitch you on the spot, but I am. So I mentioned earlier about the new entrance sign out there at 287 in Russell Curry. But I've noticed, I guess it's textile that all along that each side of 287 almost all the way up to 20, they're trenching. Do we know what they're doing? I don't know if it's drainage or and it's right there next to the pavement. But there are a payment of the access right. I don't know what that is but I can say. Could you find out for me? I've had several questions and at first and when I first saw it it was around where they're putting a sign in. I didn't pay any attention but it has nothing to do with the sign. So they've got quite a bit of heavy equipment. OK, I'll check into that. OK, thank you. Thank you, Ms. Carmichael. Appreciate it very much. OK, next we'll move to short-term rentals. Any comments, anything on it? Tonight, there, of course, we have our public hearing. And I think some groundwork has been laid. Ms. Cape Art has talked with two of the main leaders of the parties. They will be doing a five minute presentation each. And then if there is new testimony, then we'll allow the two minutes, therefore, any new things. And we ask that we not have the same repetition, therefore, the sake of our citizens and so forth and efficiency here of what we're doing. So that's what we'll do tonight. Anybody else have anything to add on the short-term rentals? Okay. Then we'll move to gas well discussion. Okay, nothing on yet. And then future agenda items. Ms. Myers, you looked ready. Thank you, Mayor. Well, actually, I wasn't ready for this, but I thought I'd bring it up anyway. Because we had a discussion, it came out of the discussion from today's committee meeting. There was a offhanded comment made about, really don't have a naming convention for buildings or a policy or any kind of, we don't have an ordinance, we don't have a policy, just sort of, we've come up with names as they've come up. And I think given our long discussion about sign toppers and creating a policy for sign toppers, it seemed to me that a corollary might be helpful for us as we move forward. Certainly parks may have a different reason for wanting to name things for, you know, for its reach versus maybe honoring us of former employee or an outstanding citizen or other things. So I just thought I'd offer that under future agenda items as opposed to something, a couple of offhand comments in today's committee where I wish we had a policy to do this or some kind of guidance on this. So I'll put that up. I'd like to be great. And I'd love to hear the history there of... Can't go too far. Yeah. I'd love to hear as part of that agenda, the history that we have here in Arlington. And I would love to hear what other cities do and then also even our schools. There, what have they been doing that to support that as part of what Miss Myers is requesting? So I didn't know if I was requesting that as a general or it'd have to come back to our committee, but I'm happy for the council to look at it as well. So I'll leave that up to you, Mayor. Well, I think probably y'all hearing it first and then probably being a general presentation just for us so we can make better decisions. That would be great. Anything else on future agenda? Mr. Glass-Me. Thank you, Mayor. The Arlington Tomorrow Foundation provided a grant to start the beautification process and I just kind of like to have an idea kind of where we are and what what plans we may have to continue that. Everybody all right with that sounds great. Others any other future agenda items? Okay. All right. With that, we'll stand adjourned and come back together at 630. Thank you very much.