Now I'd like to call the meeting of the Arlington City Council to order and it is currently 12.071. Try that time again. Oh, excuse me, 12.54 PM. 12.54 PM. All right. and then 0.087 deliberation regarding economic development negotiations would shut the doors. you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go that 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 Yeah. I'm going to call the work session to order. And our first item of business is to talk about the 2018 annual audit plan and I'll call upon Ms. Lori Brooks, our city auditor. Good afternoon, Mayor City Council. Lori Brooks, City Auditor. Per ordinance, I'm required to present to you an audit plan each year for the upcoming year and we're here today to share with you what we have planned for 2018. First of all, to identify the audits for the plan, we do a risk assessment each year and that involves me sending out surveys to management, discussions within our department about issues or concerns that we've seen, and then we solicit input from the City Manager's Office in you. And some of the risk factors that we consider in doing the risk assessment is whether there have been any significant changes in a department such as new management, new structure, new technology. We look at the complexity of the financial transactions or the complexity of the operations in the department and the impact of their work on our community. We look at the extent of laws, rules, and regulations over that area. We take a look at the number of functions or grants, contracts under their purview. And then we also look for areas where there may be potential for cost savings as well. Generally, our audits involve reviews and assessments related to compliance with policies, laws, rules, regulations, efficient use and safeguarding of our assets and efficiency and effectiveness of our operations. And then we also follow up on previous audit recommendations. The audit plan needs to be flexible to address changing concerns, risk priorities. Therefore we set aside about 500 hours each year for any special projects or requests that might come up. The audits that we have planned for this year include the me. Include the Trinity River Authority Contract Audit. Employee on-boarding and termination process audit. Construction contract change orders audit. The police report management system post implementation audit. And then any special assignments or requests that may come up during the year. For the Trinity River Authority contract audit, we plan on identifying significant contract requirements and assessing compliance with those. With the employee onboarding and termination process audit, we plan to review and evaluate the current processes and practices we have in place. Look for compliance with any policies and then to evaluate our current practices for efficiency and effectiveness. For the construction contract change orders audit, we plan to review a sample of change orders and verify compliance with established policies rules, applicable guidelines or even best practices. With the police report management system post implementation audit, we plan to evaluate the results of the software implementation, including system reliability. We'll look at expected versus actual results related to the cost scheduling and then achievement of original objectives. We will also be assisting the external auditors again this year with the annual financial audit and then of course we'll be monitoring the fraud hotline for any issues that may come up there that need to be addressed. And then we will be following up on a couple of previous audits, the gas well funds management audit and the genitorial contract management audit. And with that I'd be happy to answer any questions you have about the plan. Any questions, comments, Mr. Glasping? Thank you, ma'am. Just a general question with your criteria that you looked at to define what you might want to audit. I assume that red flags will sort of generate it from it. Would you take one of those examples of what we're going to do this year and just kind of walk through how you decided that this should be one. Okay. What we do is I have a survey that I send out to management. It's a list of about 15 different risk criteria and some of those I mentioned just earlier. And so they respond with the impact of those respectors on their operations. And there's a scoring mechanism there, depending on how they answer. And then within our department, we attend council, or we listen to council meetings or attend them. We go to the city manager's office staff meetings on Wednesday. We take note of issues and concerns noted by you, city Council and management as well. And there's a scoring matrix that we do, and it helps guide us where we should go with audits. Mr. Guasquez, you said there were 500 hours for things that need special. Yeah, I was that compare to the overall amount of capacity. Our total capacity is about 5,000 hours, but of course we have training and those kinds of things that we have to attend. So it's probably about 10% of our available hours. Ms. K. Part. Thank you, Mayor. And in that vein, Mr. Glass-V, I'd like to the Council to consider having an audit of the Action Center hotline. I continue to get a lot of complaints. I recently called it myself. It was less than satisfactory. I'm not sure that we're putting our best foot forward. So if the council's in agreement, I'd kind of like to take a deeper dive into that to see if we need to make some improvements or changes. Okay. We'll certainly consider that. I think we have a lot of things to do with the public. I think we have to do that. I think we have to do that. I think we have to do that. I think we have to make some improvements or changes. Okay we'll certainly consider that and we can either add it as an audit or make it a special project for the year. Well as this Brooks is that mean you need to take something off because you've got a full load without this. Does that mean that you substitute it in for something else? I can substitute it or we can consider a special project for the year and try to do them all. If I do substitute it, is there any particular audit that you suggest that we substitute it? Miss K. K. Part Miss Brooks I was thinking that maybe the 500 hours you set aside. Is that for special project? Yes Then why don't we just use that? Okay, that is fine. We can sure do that everybody all right with that Can see head shaking all right, so we'll plan on doing that Okay, I'll do that any other questions or comments from miss Brooks Okay, I will do that. Any other questions or comments from Ms. Brooks? Okay. Thank you, Ms. Brooks. Appreciate the work you're doing there. Thank you. Next, we have a capital pawn program update from Mr. Jim Parijion, Deputy Chief Manager for Capital and Basement Economic Development. As a result of an inquiry from Council Member Parker at one of your council meetings to have an evening or an afternoon work session, we have a bond program update that we want to provide to you today. You've seen this slide before and this is really the cycle of our capital program and as you notice we do a five year plan. We receive significant amount of input and feedback from our citizens and businesses as well as the elected body as it relates to potential projects as well as we have a lot of systems in place that help us identify where we have needs such as road condition indexes and things like that and some testing that we do as well as pattern of development or redevelopment and then as you can see we seek and then as you can see we seek a bond program approval through our citizen elections and we will then on an annual basis get a capital budget approval from the city council. And then selling bonds and then we'll move forward with projects and this slide I think does a pretty good job on the right side identifying how projects really are focused. They're developed, they're designed. The design process can be fairly complex, particularly if it involves a building or a vertical structure. There is a series of many cases we do a conceptual design which is more of a initial what should it really look like moving into preliminary and then final design. The road projects one of the key aspects of that is right-of-way acquisition should we need to do that. So those tend to be some time crunches for how we do bond projects and certainly moving forward with the bill. So really the rest of the presentation is about the progress we're making as well as sort of a highlighted point of view as it relates to the active adult center and where that stacks up in the capital program as well as perhaps an early look at when the next bond election might the council may want to consider that. So this slide really on the left side of the slide really shows that we're just about done with the 2018 bond program. In fact, the South East Wreck center has a little remaining dollars left in terms of I think it was a web community park 2008 funding component so that 2008 will have expended all of the capacity of that by the end of 2018 and then 2014 is the one that the citizens voted overwhelmingly to support. And we're making steady good progress on that. As you can see, about 37% of the bonds have been sold. That's the blue part of the circle and then got about 63% left. Keep in mind, when we do projects, there's a pretty early lead in as relates to design and then we move into construction, which is the bigger chunk of the money. that's why you see the percents that aren't exactly 50-50. The next couple slides what we thought would be helpful for you is we're showing percent complete and then we also have some slides about timing by year and we'll start with most of our road projects as the council has articulated in the past this council has spent a significant amount of emphasis on road roadway work street construction including street maintenance things like that as well as new streets and rebuilds. And as you can see, this is just a sampling of the projects that are in the bond program. But as you start from the top and work your way down, every project has got some level of completion. Many of them are at the top or really the design is complete. A good example would be Abram Street. That's a $20 million project, almost $21 million project. That design is complete. The right-of-way acquisition is essentially complete. And that project will go into construction in early 2018 after the holiday season. That's actually actually a very big project. Another one I'd call attention is the Madlock Road One, which is very significant. That's conceptual design right now. Part of that is we want to make sure that we're careful on how we impact the people in that corridor because that's a tight corridor. But as you can see, there's everything from the top at the annual program, which are things that we do on a very consistent basis, obviously annually. And those are fairly significant dollars. There's over $40 million just in residential rebuild projects. So, and the final point I'd make on this slide is the where these projects are. They pretty much are spread throughout the city. Some are related to new growth areas in the south and some are related to what I'll call challenging areas from a congestion standpoint that we need to fix. On the Parks and Rec area has been a really very busy time. Our Parks and Rec teams and our capital team have done a really nice job in moving some of these projects forward. The first floor I'll show that those projects are 100% complete including the recent Rush Creek dog park and Helen Westler park renovations. As you can see, Ditto golf courses moving forward rapidly now. I think there's a maintenance contract on your maintenance building contract on your evening agenda. So that project will continue to move forward. And all the other projects are in conceptual design. So there's no project that's not, again, just like the road projects that's not moving forward. Just some remaining major Brown projects. This gives you really by year. And what you can see is it's really loaded very heavily on a major part of construction really in 2019. So a couple of years of really strong design with a lot of park construction in the beginning part of the 2014 bond program. But in the back end of the 2014 bond program. But in the back end of the 2014 bond program, a lot of street construction, even more than you see today, which is over $100 billion on the street construction, as we speak. And there's some very large projects here. And then just again on the 2018, you'll see that towards the tail end just as I explained in the 2014 bond election had quite a bit of upfront program projects in the 2014 bond election and then towards the end of our five year program it's substantially less with I would point out the active adult center which is slated for their 2020 as a design in 2021 as construction and Then we also have other projects besides those that want to just highlight two Fire stations one is a rebuild a one's a remodel that will start in 2019 stations. One is a rebuild, the ones are remodel that will start in 2019 with some design and construction. So you'll see that moving forward towards the tail end of the five-year program and then the Woodland West Library remodel, which is a small remodel, but important one, that will be undertaken in 2018 as a construction project. What I wanted to show on this slide is just sort of the staging of how we do things. And again, the council gets chance to see this every single year when we look at that 2014 bond election. And then we bring back to you in a systematic way every year what we would suggest the council authorize in terms of work product and consistently council has stayed with the 2014 bond election process in that schedule. But occasionally we do have some available capacity when things are going well. And that may be the case as we bring this forward in the future and that would represent an opportunity for you to either accelerate a project or to add a project. I know in talking with council members, there's several projects that have been talked about but are not funded at this point. And the capital program is a good way to try to do that. not funded at this point and the capital program is a good way to try to do that. Just a couple things about our capital planning both for the Council and for the audience. Again, it's a five year program with fiscal 15 to 20. That's what the voters authorized of the city and we make systematic progress through that to try to achieve that in that five year period. I would also point out a few things, the public doesn't necessarily see. We have a lot of tracking mechanisms to try to keep us on schedule and things like that. And these are complex projects, so sometimes those will move a little bit, but we use a bond tracker that is on our city web page. We also use a series of internal programs to really help us manage and make sure that we get an early warning if a project's struggling perhaps with a right of way or with the utility relocation or something like that. Our capital plane strategy always involves some overlapping in the program so that we have a constant pipeline of projects that are moving forward again. It's a lot like just a good proper maintenance of how we do things and making sure that our infrastructure is in good shape. That's a big driver of our economic development as well as our neighborhood stability. And in 2019 most of our bond program will be designed and will be under construction. So the bond program is going to need to be recapitalized at some point to provide funding for streets, parks and other projects as we speak. Potential as we look at kind of how that recapitalization works, potentially in November of 18, that might be something the council might want to consider in regard to potential bond election. I know that's a little bit fast, but just wanted to share that with you and take any questions or any direction the council would like to offer Questions comments miss Walman Okay, I think I'm missing something, but I'm not sure and you can help me find it. Where is Richard Simpson Park on here? Richard Simpson Park is I believe it's it's on it well one it's on your count on On your agenda tonight. Yeah, it's actually in this year's capital program. We were looking outward. Okay. Okay, because I kept playing. Yeah, that's not an inclusive list. I was looking at sort of the go forward. They go forward. Okay, because that's done and it's going to get started. Yeah, there's a lot of work that's being done under the current years capital program that was really showing you sort of how it stacks up in the future. Okay, thank you. Mr. Parker. Thank you, Mayor. Essentially this FY the bond issue for 2014, what was the, do you remember what the vote was on that, how the margin of victory that it wanted to pull the 6040? It was higher than that. I think we were in the 60s. Okay. So it was a significant. My point in asking that question is the fact that the senior center was on the ballot, just this last ballot, and that one by 7030 without a campaign whatsoever. And that the citizens of Arlington would really like to see their senior center developed. Now we have gone out with a RFP for senior living in that area and it's my understanding that we had two very prominent results from that RFP that we could go ahead and start building private industry senior living in that area and start to develop that piece of property. Can you tell me what your intentions are as a result of that RFP? Sure. Council gave staff direction to start the discussion and negotiation with one of the firms, one of the companies that provide that type of development program. We have had numerous meetings since Council directed us earlier this year. We continue to work with them to start to put together a program that we can take to council for development purposes. It's essentially a negotiation of what they're looking for and what perhaps would be in the city's best interest. But we've had serious discussions, more than discussions. In fact, there's been work on the site. We need survey work. That's fairly detailed. There's quite a bit of topography there. There's the developers working on a master planning of how they would propose to lay out the development. The developers also working on some detailed performance beyond what they provided to us previously. So it's more reflective of the market as they see it. I would point out they see that the senior market is a very strong one in Arlington, and that is where they're targeting their efforts. But we're also looking at infrastructure costs to develop the site and things like how to enter the site, how to exit the site, its placement of the active adult center in relation, some of the programmatic elements that would be in the active adult center versus what the private sector might cover as a gap, for instance, restaurants, things like that. So it's worked out pretty well. I'd love to tell you it's it's going to be a fast process but I think we would be in a position to start to give you some some pretty good milestones over the next couple months. Okay so we have selected a company to go ahead and do that and win preliminary discussions as to how to lay out that senior living area. And our senior center is currently due for design in 2020 and construction in 2021. I have, I don't know the council's appetite for this. I have asked that the bond issue for avenues H and E and it was put back in the last year of the bond issue, the construction of those because of the 360i-30 interchange and the trucks going in and out of there that would probably ruin whatever good things we could do there. And so that was put in the back of the bond package. My request would be that E and H have been held until such time as the 360 I-30 over exchange would be complete. And then if we could use some of that money to go into design in an earlier stage, I think that would be a good utilization of that rather than to try to construct something for 18 wheelers to destroy. That would be my suggestion to the council. So just make sure I understand that Council Member Parker. So Avenue H&E, we really have them slated for designing 2019 end construction. So take a portion. So essentially we would be accelerating the design of the active adult center from 2020 to about 2019. I would like to accelerate the active adult center the whole as soon as we possibly could. That would be my personal choice. But for the most part, in the event that we can further it, the construction of those roads, until such time is that interchange is complete, is not a good use of the tax payers money. So we have these two options, I believe, to utilize that money. And of course it goes from district one to district three or four, I'm sorry. But it's still a utilization of taxpayer money, of which they have voted to allocate. It's just the timing of which they have voted to allocate. Now, I wanna make sure that since the senior center is not on that slide right there, that the utilization, I should say the positioning of the senior center is will not be encumbered by any future bond election that we may have. Is that correct? It would not be. Okay, so it gets, and is there any possibility, is there any capacity for debt that would possibly be able, other than the money is used in those particular projects. Is there any capacity for debt to be utilized in say 2021? You've got an extra probably, I don't know, $10 million or so. And then those are each $8 million a piece. So that's a $26 million. Well, I like the answer. Thank you, Jim. Mike Finley, Chief Financial Officer. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm trying to do is I'm trying to expedite the desires of the voters. Okay. And in doing so, trying to develop that piece of land simultaneously with the RFP winner. And also with the you you you you you you you you you Yes, sir. The one challenge there would be in order to start construction, you would have to have all of the funds available so that future councils aren't required to pass a budget to finish it. So we generally pass enough to finish an entire project within a budget appropriation. What about this suggestion to move to look at getting design started on the active adult center. And here's another reason to do that is we move forward on the senior housing. The first thing we need to look at is, and we've looked preliminary at an overall master plan, but the opportunity potentially for a wellness center which you know those are the three components that we've talked about is senior housing, wellness and active adult we need to have a little bit of design work there to make sure of where do we put the senior housing on the side, how does that work? We have to get the design done and then that might give the opportunity earlier sometime for construction that we can't foresee right now because we don't know what gross going to be and so forth but perhaps if we could start in on the design the other thing I think that that would do is to give us lots of time for public input. There also there and to figure this out to do the best job we can because the design dollars are much easier appeal to swallow than they are than the construction. Just a thought. Just a couple of other things there. Certainly if Council desires, we can move up the design of the Act of Adult Center by a year. By design is probably in the neighborhood of $4.5 million, so it wouldn't have to affect both projects fully, it'd be a percent of that. But the other thing is if the Council is successful in its partnership with this private development company, that company most likely would have started to move forward with perhaps say infrastructure or some of the pre-work that's necessary in order to build a project. So kind of sequentially if you move the design up by a year, during that time, you may actually start to see the development partner actually start to move forward as well. And there may be some opportunities to actually accelerate some level of actual construction on that site, even if it's to prepare the site for development. So that's, and then construct the active adult center under the schedule that's been proposed previously. So there'd be like three pieces that, as staff thought about that, that's probably what we think is the best way to accelerate the project without substantially affecting other projects that are in the queue. That sounds pretty reasonable, Mr. Parker. Okay. That sounds good, Mr. Paragion, is everybody okay with that? Yeah, Mr. Glass, me. Wait, man. Mr. Warren, there you a question about the last line of remaining capacity of remaining. When and how do we go about assessing what is the best utilization of remaining capacity? Every year when we do our capital budget, Mike and his team have been great. It's a good opportunity at that point to assess. Here's the dollars, here's what the market is telling us. We can afford to do in that period of time. And that also relates to the staging of where we are on those projects. So council gets an opportunity to see that. And you may, in fact, I know several the council members have, specific projects, such as a bridge, such as sublet road, things like that. So there are some opportunities to look at that, but you do it on an annual basis. Now it would be in the early spring, right? I guess the other thing, as long as we stay within the gender description of the projects we plan on doing, we have the flexibility to move those funds around. Councillor Sforri to move any project that you choose back and forth within some criteria. Ms. Wolfe. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor. Mr at this point we are working towards that. I would think that needs to be perhaps come get all of our ducks in a row in appropriate order first. Yeah, all those things will come to the council as we get to those stages. Right now the developer was selected on qualifications. This is a developer that does the types of things council and our citizens have expressed interest in and they're qualified to do that. The last series of discussions that we've had, I would call more pre-planning and trying to ascertain how our partnership is going to work. This is a complex negotiation. So it'll be similar to how we've brought other things forward to the council at stages so you can weigh in on choices and opportunities. How point is before we start reallocating bond dollars, we don't even know if this is actually where the full development is. So I would just think, put it on the table and it's continue to look at it, but I think it's always off. Mayor, I just wanted to respond to your question to all of us. I don't personally have about agreeing to the acceleration of the project. We had this discussion, I don't know, two years ago, 18 months ago, whenever it was. And I thought it was the will of the council at that point to complete as much as we could the 2014 bond package, because we still have 2008 money, we haven't even spent. And so what I don't want to have consented to by failing to say something is the acceleration of a project that was approved in 2017 over an entire laundry list of projects that were approved in 2014. I think it's our responsibility, no doubt to be responsive to the citizens and their wishes. But the citizens also voted back in 2014 on a big wish list that we still have a bunch to go on. So anyway. Yeah, Mr. Parker. The issue that I see is that the I-3360 exchange is not going to be done until 2022. And if we start paving H and E, those roads will be ruined by the time 2022 rolls around. So I think that $16 million on those two roads can be utilized and accelerate a portion of senior center design and or some portion of completion. I don't want to see us spend that money and then have to redo it again. Well, at this point, I think all we're talking about is I think Ms. Wolf hit it. We need to move forward on our L.O.I. and then look at accelerating some of the design only at this point. And then I imagine Mr. Parker is going to continue to look for ways to make that happen. Ms. K. Parker. Thank you, Mayor. And so if the staff could get back with us on some of the things that we've discussed today with regard to the 360 interchange, what is that projected date? Would indeed doing avenue A, your avenue B, E in advance of that completion, not being the best interest of those tax dollars. But by the same token, on Avenue H, it's what, 7 mil for, right at 8 mil for the construction, but on Avenue E, it's also the design. So I'd need the cost of the design and the construction broken out for E because it seems like Maybe the construction part of E F&D constructing it now is not the best interest Maybe using that to advance the senior center design, but I agree with Mr. Shepherd and while that was a very popular and while that was a very popular, supported, active adult center at the polls, I can't tell you how many people came to me and said, but it doesn't happen until you've already done the other. That was the commitment we made. And if we start reshuffling the deck, for me, there's got to be a compelling reason. And Charlie may have articulated one, but I need to know that empirically. So if you could get me that down. We can come back and get me that down. We can come back and give you that information. And then I know when Mr. Brooks just got up, I bet he's want to tell us about when 360's done, but also there's going to be at because really the timing of Avenue H should be set for when that Avenue H ramp comes in and not before to Mr. Parker's. Yes, Mr. Brooks. Yes, sir. Keith Brooks, Assistant Director Punder Works in Transportation. As far as the schedule for the I-3360 project, the latest that we've gotten on that is still scheduled for 2020 as far as the schedule for the I-3360 project, the latest that we've gotten on that is still scheduled for 2020 as far as completion. Now, the Avenue H, of course, is scheduled to go into construction according to our schedule in 2019. And then Avenue E would follow the next year in 2020. So we kind of positioned those in the bond election or the scheduling to sequencing if you would so that, you know, as the interchange is wrapping up, you know, we would just be getting into the construction of those two projects. The only with the 2020 start for Avenue E, we felt we would be good because of course you do a lot of utility work at the beginning of the project And so you you're really not in danger of the pavement necessarily being disrupted Would it be in in 2020 so that's kind of what our thought process was with that Can you also check on when they may open the Avenue H ramp. Most definitely. Most definitely. All right. Well, anything else here on the capital bond program update? Okay, with that, thank you, Mr. Parishan. Next, we'll move to benefits update and Ms. Kerry Zika, Director of Human Resources. Good afternoon Mayor Council. Carrizica, Director of Human Resources. Today I'm here to go over a couple of RFPs that we've reviewed over the past year in relation to our health insurance benefits at all, as well as our employee clinic. This has been to committee and it is on your consent agenda for today. So the first RFP I plan to talk with you about is the one that covers everything basically except dental vision and critical illness and accident coverage. So pretty much our whole plate of benefits, so health insurance, pharmacy, life insurance disability, family medical leave administration, employee assistance program, et cetera. We don't talk about benefits much before you, but just to give you a quick refresher of what we offer on the health insurance side to our employees and retirees. We have about 5,500 lives that we cover. It's a self-insured plan. And you can see some numbers there on our retirees and spouses. So it's employees, dependents as well as retirees. We offer two plan designs. We've been with United Health Care since 2005. We have an exclusive provider organization, which is not a PPO as you're used to that term because we don't provide any out of network coverage. It's just an EPO. 25% of our membership is enrolled in that. The majority of our membership is in our high deductible health plan, which a health savings account attached to it if they're eligible. We also give our post-65 retirees insurance availability as a Medicare supplement plan through United Health Care's connector program, and that's a fully insured plan. So to talk about this RFP, it's always important to look at our metrics. This is a request for proposal. So it's not all just based on cost. There's a lot of other components that wrap into the evaluation team and what they look at. We did receive 13 responses across all lines of business. So companies had the choice of submitting a proposal on everything or one thing. So it was pretty much a lot to sift through for the committee. Just so you know our evaluation committees for benefits as well as the second one on the clinic are made up of a conglomeration of individuals. I am not an evaluator. I'm the executive sponsor, so to speak. But we have McGriff Sebel's and Williams, who is our benefit consultant, as well as benefit staff, executive manager staff, and individuals from our benefits committee. So we do have representation on our evaluation teams for employee benefits from across the organization. on our evaluation teams for employee benefits from across the organization. So what that team recommended for this RFP is staying with United Healthcare for Medical Cobra, Post-65 Medicare Supplement, the Health Savings Account, and the Flex Spending Account. We did, the evaluation team did opt to carve out our pharmacy benefit management for this next coming year in 2018 to a company called Navitas. That is a standalone pharmacy benefit manager. And we are, we'll talk about this in a minute, but we're anticipating that we can see considerable savings through Navitas as well as transparency. We are currently with SIGNA on our Ancillary Benefits and the recommendation is to switch to Prudential and they will administer our employee Assistance Program. The long and short term disability are basic and voluntary life and the Family Medical Leave Administration. So I want to get into some details about each of these individual lines of business for you and why we chose or the evaluation committee chose the direction that they did with United Health Care as our third party administrator. One difference that you will see in the staff report is that we are recommending a one year contract with the option of two one year renewals for this line of business. That is different from what we normally do. We normally have a three year contract with two one year renewals, which you'll see on the other lines of business. That is different from what we normally do. We normally have a three-year contract with two one-year renewals, which you'll see on the other lines of business. The reason that we're doing that is because the market is changing in the area of health benefits. And United Health Care, as well as some other vendors, showed us what's coming, but it's really new yet. And so we didn't want to go down that path without the experience at this time, but having a shorter contract period allows us that opportunity to continue to evaluate what's being offered, not just by United Healthcare, but by other administrators in the market. And so we'll have that opportunity to continue to go out, perhaps do a request for proposal, a request for qualifications in a shorter period of time than normal. This also results in no change to our benefit design or the provider network in 2018. Through the negotiation process, we were able to increase our wellness budget from United Healthcare from $25,000 to $250,000. That's an important item because as we roll out the employee health clinic, those are dollars that we can use towards administration of our employee health clinic. Other things that we use wellness dollars for are our annual employee health and wellness fair, flu shots, any other wellness related activities. United health care can cover those costs so that helps us in our budgeting as well. Staying with United Health Care for 2018 also provides us the opportunity to open the clinic earlier than if we were to switch third-party administrators for 2018. Hopefully we can get that up and running here before the end of the year. And they do have a new narrow network option to offer and we're going to continue to look at that as I said. It's a narrow network that involves Texas Health Resources that we continue to consider for 2019 and beyond. Navitus as our pharmacy benefit manager is the regular contract period three years, two one year renewals. This will give our employees back some pharmacies that we took away last year because we were trying to save costs in the area of healthcare containment. And so we're going to get those back like Tom Thumb and CVS. We did get some noise about that. And so by carving this out and going from Optum to Navitus, we can have that pharmacy network expanded. As I said earlier, Navitus proposes that based on our claims experience from 2016, they can save us about a million dollars. It's also improved plan management and transparency. Not so important to you, but it's important to me because I need to know that A plus B equals C. And in the pharmacy shell game, sometimes that's really difficult to get down to the basics of what are we really paying for, what are these rebates related to, et cetera. So we know what's being charged back to our health plan. So that's important to us and the evaluation committee saw that. And I think that Navatists will really be flexible as far as formularies, different programs we can offer our employees and really have a true employer partnership with us. On the ancillary products, again like I said, this will be a change for our employees to go from SIGNA to credential on employee assistance, long and short term disability, basic and voluntary life in the Family Medical Leave Administration. This is really more behind the scenes. These types of benefits are not front and center for our employees and so only those who are needing that life claim filed or need a disability claim will see this kind of a change probably the biggest change will be those with FMLA administration that have existing claims in place and we have a charge under United Health Care so we are moving that benefit over to prudential and it just dovetails along with our disability and life programs and they did provide some overall lower cost altogether and we think they'll be enhanced customer service and improved account management as well. Like I said earlier we're going to continue to evaluate the marketplace. We've got the affordable care organizations coming forward. The Texas Health Resources has a new health plan design that they've just started bringing into the market, it's called a coordinated care plan. We're not sure what's going to happen with federal health killer reforms, so we have to keep our eye on that and how that's going to affect our program, as well as the impact of the clinic. These are all components that affect our health plan total costs. And so in order to do that, we have to focus on member education and consumerism and start getting our employees to understand truly their role in keeping our health care costs down. So next I'll move on to the other RFP that we did, which is the Health Wellness Clinic. Yes, this one goes back to 2016. It was a long process, but we made it through and I think it's going to dovetail nicely with the health care administration changes as well. So much like I did on the last RFP, these were our components that were evaluated by the committee, again, a very strong mix of members on this evaluation committee. And why do we want to do a clinic? I will tell you when I was hired several years ago, somebody said, we brought you in. One of the reasons we brought you in is because you can bring us up a clinic because I've done it in the past. I was like, okay, so here we are. I'm very excited about this. And there's a lot of benefits. I was like, okay, so here we are. I'm very excited about this. And there's a lot of benefits. I have two slides on our benefits because there's a lot of benefits not just for employees, but for the employer as well. We believe that this will provide more quality time with providers. Right now, you go in for your doctor's appointment. Not only do you have a long wait time, but how many minutes do you get with that health provider? Three, five, do you ever really pay attention to how long that is? It's very short and you feel rushed and you feel like they're just trying to move you through the process to get the nurse in to finish up your appointment, right? While in a health clinic situation, we do value the time with you as the employee, as the member of the plan that needs the health care. And so the way an employee health clinic works is you have specific time slots that's just yours. So in a normal provider environment, if you ever sit around that waiting room and go, huh, they got here two minutes before me. That one just walked in three minutes after me. We all have the same appointment time. Oh my gosh, you don't have that in an employee health clinic setting. Everybody has their own appointment time, and there's no double stacking or triple stacking. And so the point is you get in and out. Little to no member expense, the out of pocket costs are minimized for our members. Right now, like I said, 75% of our individuals are on the high deductible health plan. So until they meet their deductible, they have to pay the full contracted rate costs for me not at health care to that provider. A primary care office is it that's not a wellness, those are at no cost, no matter what. But a primary care office is it's sore throat, sinus infection, et cetera. That could be anywhere from $140 to $175. And our members have to pay that to go to the primary care doctor and sometimes that's a barrier to care and so having an employee health clinic Because of federal regulations we do still have to charge them something for the non-wellness visits But it will be lower and it's yet to be determined but somewhere perhaps between 30 and 40 dollars out of their pocket instead of that 150 plus we're going to make it convenient We're going to have accessibility which. We're gonna have accessibility, which removes additional barriers to seeking treatment. And also a health clinic offers health management tools. They're gonna have online, an application on their phone. There's lots of ways they can make appointments themselves. There's very good accessibility for our employees. On the employer side, we're able to better control our costs per visit. So that primary care visit for a sinus infection not only costs the member but it costs the city as well. So we're going to cut out the insurance middleman and we're going to pay the true cost of that through the administration to the third party administrator. We hope to improve productivity recruiting and retention. A lot of cities across the metropolitan have clinics already. And so that is a benefit that we can tell, it says, hey, we offer an employee clinic and it is a value. We'll provide actionable health management, reduce risks and costs over time. One thing I want to mention too is absenteeism. As I talked about earlier, when you go to the doctor, it's at least a half a day off, because you have to drive somewhere, you have to wait, then you get back to the room, and you wait some more, and then you have that five minute visit, and then you have to wait to check out, et cetera. And some folks say, oh, I'm just going to take the whole day. Why not? I've got the sick leave, right? In a health clinic setting, especially the location that we're going to look at here to open first, you could probably be in and out in an hour and be back to work. You've got a 10-20 appointment, so you leave the office at 10 o'clock because it takes you 10 minutes maybe to get there. You have your appointment at 10-20, you're out by 10-40, and you're back to work at 11 o'clock. That's good for everybody. You're not burning as much sick leave. Your employer sees you back at the office. One of the things that our benefit consultants did put together was projections of why are we doing this? Why is it important to the bottom line? The finances do matter. The employee matters, but so do the finances. And so this chart is very detailed, but it lays it out all the way to 2023. With a medical trend of 8% and a pharmacy trend of 12%, how much our plan, which is currently close to $30 million, could expand to if we don't start really paying attention to our healthcare costs and putting things in place like an employee clinic to try to mitigate those costs. So what does it place like an employee clinic to try to mitigate those costs. So what does it look like with a clinic? With a clinic, it drops our trend considerably on the medical side from 8% to 3%. We're not sure about the pharmacy trend because perhaps in areas such as asthma, diabetes, we might see more utilization of pharmacy costs because individuals are now taking care of themselves, where they may have totally been ignoring going to the doctor and managing their diabetes now they are. And so they're finally being compliant with their medications. And so we left that trend alone for the moment. But you can see there, the bottom line, a total roll-up from 2018 to 2023, we expect to see a savings of $21 million. And that's because we're trying to keep our trend flat in healthcare spending, because the trend is just increasing exponentially. So what we're recommending on the clinic, after all of that consideration is one proposal was from CareATC, which is a shared clinic model. And I make that point because there were different models presented to us. There were standalone clinics. There were healthcare providers. There was a lot of different ways that you can open up and employ health clinic. We chose the shared clinic model because what this does for our employees, it gives you more than one location. At 99 square miles, employees scattered all over the city. It's not just about where you live, it's also about where you work. And so you want to make it easy and accessible. They currently have locations in Arlington, Richardson, and Fort Worth. And they anticipate opening a location after the first of the year in Mansfield. And that's because our population in Arlington is heavily located south of I-20. So the current location that is on Cooper Street is only open right now to Quick Trip. Quick Trip is their other client. So a shared clinic model is open to employers that they contract with. So right now they only have one other employer that they're contracted with. They're adding the city of Arlington, but that location is going to be the one that they relocate to the Mansfield border area that our employees will have access to. They have recently signed a lease on center street, just south of Vandergriff Park, for the location that will open first for city of Arlington employees. It's a brand new building and I'm not sure it's over 2,000 square feet, four exam rooms, two office providers offices, etc. It looks nice and it's a new building. So I think that's the key is you have to build it so your employees will come. You can't put an old trailer in the back of a lot behind the service center, hoping that they'll go there. It's got to look good, it's got to feel good, it's got to have that. This is my doctor kind of feel. So this is a slide you've seen in previous budget presentations we just wanted to put it up as we continue to talk about the importance of strategy, the importance of knowing what's ahead of us and always staying on top of that game. So we had mentioned in previous years we were going to open an employee health clinic. So here we are with that. We're going to implement changes to the Medical Pharmacy Network. We're doing that. We are working on newsletters and better ways to educate our employees with this large of a population that we have in all different lines of service. That can be a tough task. And so we're trying to look at new ways that we can get the word out about how to be better healthcare consumers. And like I said earlier, evaluate the emerging market changes. 2019, 2020, these are always an ebb and flow. But these are the kinds of things that we continue to look at on the horizon. What else can we do to help mitigate the cost of our increasing health care costs, smoking, surcharge? That's always been on there, but we're able to kind of push it forward every year so as we find other ways to do things. Is there a two-tier emergency room charge that we could implement? We're always looking at the employee city contributions and are they set correctly? What can we do for our spouses their high utilizers of our plan our dependence our large portion of our costs as well? So those are the kinds of things that we'll be continuing to look at in the next year and beyond And this is just a list of educational opportunity ideas that we've got Lunch and learns town hall, getting to retirees is never easy. They don't all have email and they're not all plugged in and so we're always looking for new ideas on how to reach our retiree population because they contribute to our high costs as well. We have a lot of high risk populations that we want to continue to target and the health clinic will help us with that. Diabetes, asthma, musculoskeletal, especially. We're gonna do that through use of our employee health clinic. And like I said, continue to promote consumerism and what does having a clinic do to help them do that and what narrow network options could we do. So people understand what's out there and how it impacts the bottom line. And I just want you to know that I've got Scott Gibbs here who's from Agrif Sebel's and Williams, our benefits consultant, and I will take any questions. I just want to call me out there. Appreciate the work here on the clinic. The potential for $21 million worth of savings is remarkable. I also think it's very smart to keep our current, or the contract we're doing on the one-year basis for our health insurance because of the opportunity to take advantage of new advancements there. And for us to even look at that and continue and I appreciate y'all looking into all of the advancements here in health care. I see anybody else in Mr. Glasping. Thank you, Mayor. Just sort of a side line question. You mentioned what is a quick tip and a relationship with CARA, T.C. or whatever the case. Have we looked at the possibility of us, say, partnering with somebody like the school district or whatever, and helping to? Because I'm sure all those organizations have got the same problem. You know, these medical expenses are going, going like crazy, have we? Yes, sir, we have. And one of the reasons that it's been about three to four years to get to this point is because we've been exploring all of those options. UTR, LinkedIn, the school district, you could even go so far as the county, Fort Worth. Everybody's looking at it from a different perspective. And we have enough lives on our own, over 5,000 lives to support having a clinic on our own. And so we have had those discussions, but they didn't pan out with any of those various groups at this time. That doesn't mean we've always left the door open and said, you know, we'll circle back. And once they see how successful we are, they, that tends to happen is then they re-approach and say, oh, wait a minute, what are you doing? So yes, we have explored some of those options. I have another question. In our conversation today, you mentioned that about 50% of our employees really don't have a doctor relationship. So you just kind of elaborate a little more on what we might be able to do in the way of communicating and encouraging people to take more responsibility for it. One of the, I forgot to mention it. So thank you for that prompting. But one big reason to have an employee health clinic is to target those individuals who do not have a relationship with a primary care physician. Our population, it's over 50% of our employees don't have a primary care physician. We think some of that is the cost barrier because you're on the high deductible health plan and so you're only gonna go when it's necessary and then where do you really go when it's necessary? You end up at an urgent care, you end up at the emergency room so you never end up establishing that relationship. The way we wanna organize setting up the health clinic is we want everyone to go that's part of our wellness program. And so we would make it a requirement as part of the wellness program that you do go there for your annual health risk assessment and your blood draw. And that would put everybody on the same plane field for comparison purposes down the road, return on investment, et cetera. Because right now you might go to Dr. Jones and you get a chem seven. You go to Dr. Smith and you get a lipid and you have some of the same blood work done, but it's not all the same. And by having individuals go there to the health center for that piece is an important component. Doesn't mean you can't then share that information and the health clinic can share that information with your primary care doctor if you're somebody with that relationship. If you're somebody who doesn't have that relationship, this is the perfect opportunity to say, wow, I'm gonna get 20 to 40 minutes to talk to a new doc. I've never had that before. Get them to buy into what the health center can do for them. So they can go through that blood work with you, pert in person and say, you know, your numbers don't look so good. You're pre-diabetic or your cholesterol is high or we've checked your blood pressure a couple of times and I'm not so sure it's white coat syndrome, there might be something else going on and having that continued care through an established relationship with the physician at the health clinic, then they don't end up in the emergency room. If you're able to manage somebody with asthma and make sure that they know what medications to have on hand if they have an incident, you're avoiding that $5 to $10,000 ER visit when they have an acute asthma attack. So it's that education component and having health coaches available and things like that that can help people really understand and become good consumers of health care. So to answer your question. Mr. Parker. Thank you, Mayor. Kerry, I want to thank you so much. You brought this subject to my committee twice and really kind of put it under the microscope, looking at a $213 million liability over the next five years and pairing that down by over 10%. I think that's really remarkable. I also wanted to say that you have taken the ability to change this up over time, one year, contract with the two one year options, to see what other abilities or other companies that we can take advantage of for further savings. So I think you've really looked at this objectively and come up with a very viable solution. And hopefully our employees will have better healthcare as a result of it. So thank you very much. Thank you. Ms. Walman. And I'm probably going to go back on something Mr. Glass be said about partnering. And I went in the committee so I don't know you probably talked about it. But was there ever any discussion about partnering with one of the care companies that, because we've got them all over town, do they ever partner with any companies to like say, you know, have a specific time and doctor or whatever to take care of the? That is, if you're talking on the employee health clinic. Yeah. Option. Yes. That is one model that is available. And I believe one of the urgent care centers did bid. Maybe two. I think it was two. And so that is an option. It just didn't make the cut in our evaluation process. Yes, ma'am. OK, don't see any other comments, but this is going to be an exciting development here to really help our employees in a lot of different ways. There, thank you very much. Well, next move to small business update. And again you know, call upon Mr. Parijon. Mayor and Council, Jim Parijon, Deputy Chief Manager over Capital Investment Economic Development. At our recent Council meeting, Council, Dr. Farrah Myers, has asked for a future agenda item related to small business and small business update. Today, at your place is the actual presentation we're going to review today, as well as together with Michael Jacobson, our chamber president. We're going to tag team the presentation, and we're going to talk a little bit about the different range of assistance available to small businesses in the Arlington community. Be remiss if I didn't say that we have a wonderful and very strong relationship with Michael Jacobson and the Chamber of Commerce. They've been a great partner for us and they really assist us a whole lot in both systematic things related to small business. But also those little individual questions that come up, Michael's been a great partner and I just want to make sure that he's recognized for that. And he's going to take the second part of the presentation which will really be more related to some of the chamber and community resources and I'm going to touch on some of the more city-oriented resources that are available. So some of the process that we went through, you know, again, there's a lot of things that the city does for small businesses, but it's not necessarily packaged as small business. It just is things that we think are good business practices because our city survives and our foundation is really related to our small businesses. We're a city that definitely has a significant presence of small business and that really is reflective of our economic stability and our growth. So we're really proud of them. We also looked at some of the communities business resources which in Arlington we have actually a bevy of those. It's actually, we're very fortunate. I've worked in other cities. They really do not have exposure to the same level of community business resources, small business resources that this community does. And then, like all things, we don't wait. We continue to move forward with some things that perhaps might be beneficial, including a business resource guide. I'll talk a little bit about a work in progress that we have on a website that truly is a work in progress. But as part of that, we think it's probably useful to also have something in print that we can share with people that perhaps are not as apt to go to our web page. So again, I think this is a fascinating slide because a lot of people, when I ask, well, what is a small business, we kind of think about that business with one or two people in it. It's not at all the case. The US Small Business Administration really establishes two standards for small business. You can have up to 500 employees for certain type of industries and in terms of annual receipts, you can be $7 plus million. So these are, by the way, very, very small businesses. They are also businesses in Arlington that I think on the service we think are fairly large businesses but they really are considered small businesses. So just a few things I'm going to talk about. We're going to talk a little bit about the work and progress on the website. I'm going to talk about the one-start development center. The position that was created last year, our development coordinator position, which is a lot about an omnibus vendor, our troubleshooter. We also wanted to highlight that the city has done some block grants for small businesses before, and I've got an example of that. We also have a very robust program for contracting assistance and bid assistance so that small businesses can become more active in partnering with the city in terms of goods and services and professional services and things like that. Something I'm particularly proud of is the Urban Design Center and some of the assistance that's provided there. That's primarily a small business initiative. It's not a small business initiative. It's not a big business initiative. And there's just a couple of other things that are not on this slide, but I do want to highlight the development services group team on the second floor. That whole system has been set up really to not address the large business but to address the small business. To address the company that perhaps hasn't done business in Arlington before or as a new contractor just starting out. And what I mean by that is that we do a lot of over the counter permitting. In fact, we probably do more over the counter permitting in most cities. What that really is about is those small minor permits that you might have, you know, the plumber, the brother of the cousin decide that they're going to help fix a fence or put a new door on or something like that. These are really, in many cases, small businesses that survive off of those types of work. So the quicker we can get them in and out of the permit process, the better off everyone is. In our case, we have designed and set up on the second floor a specific office just for over the counter permitting. I think the latest number I saw was almost 30% of all of our permits are done over the counter permitting. I think the latest number I saw was almost 30% of all of our permits are done over the counter in this past year, which is a pretty amazing number when you think about the number of permits the city does. And then the second point I'd make, and again we kind of goes on notice because we just do it, but we have a walk-in approach. We just talked about the health, so I was thinking about doctors appointments awaiting in line. And occasionally there are weights downstairs, but that whole front counter area was set up so that you could just literally walk in with a question with an issue with something that you're thinking about and you can meet with an engineer, you can meet with a planner, you can meet with a plans examiner without an appointment and get your questions answered. I can't tell you that it's always as speediest we would like because of the fact that it is a walk-in process but those are all small business aspects that we do and we have been doing for quite a while. I would tell you that most of our walk-ins are typically people that are still learning how to perhaps do business in Arlington, so it's really wonderful. The other thing I would point out with that is we have made a very significant push by language opportunities downstairs so that if we do have someone that perhaps is more comfortable in a different language that we can serve that purpose. So this is really what our old website looked like and, again, nothing wrong with it, but it is-and that maybe not as easy to work with as something more like this, where it's really related to how do you start a business, and you want to learn a little bit about your property or property that you're interested in, really trying to get more and more information that the way the customer would receive it as opposed to how we would like to provide it. The One Start Development Center, this was really intended several years ago with a help of Bruce Payne to really take the bulk of the development processes and not have to go to multiple departments but to go to one single department with one accountability tree to be able to achieve your needs. I would point out here and this is probably a great place to point this out. A couple years ago we had a what I'll call a development improvement committee or team formed. It's about 30 plus people. They were contractors big and small. They were developers. They were engineers. They were planners. They were architects. They were engineers, they were planners, they were architects, they were small businesses and some larger businesses. And they helped us substantially in identifying things that are working really well in our processes. All those are different, represent different processes. As well as some things that perhaps we should look at doing differently. Such as a good example is we normally do our development processes in sort of a sequential way. You get your zoning, you get your site plan and public improvement, and then you go to building permits. We do that primarily because at the building permit stage, it can be very expensive to redesign a building if it's in the wrong spot. We also though recognize and talking to this group that there are opportunities sometimes where that's we can accelerate that process. We can combine those. It doesn't have to be sequential. And in fact that's actually what we have put in place for certain types of projects. We've also as a result result of that, gone to more third party review and inspection processes, which I think are starting to yield, helps us with some of our workload issues that also represents an opportunity for some of our local businesses to participate. And most recently, with the Chamber's help, and again, I've been a wonderful partner in this, we had identified a specific issue. In fact, the Chamber identified this issue for us along with some of our customers about greestrapes. So that was an issue that was identified. Staff team looked at it, tried to figure out how perhaps to address the concerns of our customers. Then the Chamber set up a very significant meeting with a lot of key stakeholders and staff got an opportunity to present that information. And that solution I thought was roundly accepted by our industry and that that solution is now being implemented. We have other issues like that. I think one of the next ones is related to fire review and fire inspection. So I point that out because we already have a really good partnership and place and a system and place with the chamber to try to work through that. And it's all really related to small business. Just quickly, this is that development coordinator position. It's a woman named Maria Carbohal, it's a single position and her job really is to troubleshoot and really to be proactive. She has access to a lot of our internal systems so she can identify proactively where a project might be stock maybe having some challenges. We're still working through that net issue but I think it's starting to yield some benefit. We don't do this very often but we sometimes use our block grant program to assist a small business particularly if it relates to job creation. Mel and Mushroom is a good example of that. Again, I mentioned with bidding and procurement with the city, and we are a very large buyer, a consumer of goods and services. So small businesses in Arlington need to be able to take advantage of that. So one-on-one meetings, monthly supplier meetings, supplier meets and greets, I know with Reginald Cleveland, he's been instrumental in really moving that forward. And then the design center, as you know, it's a collaboration between the city and the University of Texas at Arlington. It's staffed by a combination of city staff and graduate students from the university. There's no cost for the service to the general public, but it really helps move a potential idea to perhaps fruition. And what I like to do is show you examples. Sugar B, sweets and bakeries. Our design center helped them with a small little project. These are small businesses that are getting free service from the city that other cities do not offer. And Jay Gilgins, which is one of my favorite restaurants, so I thought I'd put it in here too, is about some patio improvements, and the design center assisted them with that as well. So I'm gonna stop there. That's some of the internal resources that the city has. There's a lot more that we're still working on and a lot more that can be done. But I'm going to turn over to Michael Jacobsen, the president of the Arlington Chamber of Commerce, who's going to walk you through some of the external resources. I'm going to leave this line. Yeah. Click right there. This one forward. That one, that one. Okay, I'm very happy to be here and I appreciate so much working with the city, whether it's the city staff or our council members. It's been a real pleasure here over the last 18 months to engage with the city and help move Arlington forward. I'm going to share resources that are available. I'm not making any sort of recommendation, so consider this more level setting of what's available today. I'm obviously gonna be very familiar with what the Chamber provides. I am familiar with our partners and others, but some of these, if you wanted to get into detailed questions, it's possible. I might not know the answer. Most of it though, should be just fine. So the Chamber of Commerce, let me talk about the Chamber for a second. So we are about 950 members. You'll hear a lot of folks say Chamber of Commerce represent the interest of big business. The reality is less than 10% of our members fall into a big business category. We are a small business chamber. And the large businesses that do engage with the chamber, they engage because they support our mission. And our mission is a pretty simple mission, but it's a powerful mission, which is together we champion economic and community prosperity. So the goal is to help grow the economy and grow the businesses across the board, whether small or large. We do this in different ways, so I'll talk about some of our programs. Under business development, we help with the networking of our members, helping them get together, leads groups, business over breakfast. An example, business over breakfast every month, we have about 100 businesses that get around the table and they share leads with one another. Talk about who they are. When that meeting ends, you can come by an hour later and they'll still be in there talking, again, providing advice to each other, sharing leads, whatever that might be. We also help with access to capital, so we have support through our lending institutions that are members of the Chamber. There's all sorts of affinity programs that we have which can help our small businesses as well. And then we have increased the amount of professional development that we do. And that professional development we do through our member, through some of the organizations that I'll talk about here in a second. The Chamber itself has its own programs, but we're also an umbrella. So we have Memorands of Understanding with groups like the Small Business Administration and others, as you'll see here, in a second. Okay. others as you'll see here in a second. So we are definitely the voice of business public policy is important to us. So we have engaged at the state level and at the local level to support the interest of business, small business, large business. Again, we're there to advocate on behalf of business. And we work on education, workforce development initiatives and I'm not going to go into a lot of them now. I'll go down to economic development. So in the last year, we've put together an economic development committee we've been working with Trey and Jim and other staff members, Bruce, on that relationship between the chamber and the city on economic development. Two areas that we've landed on where we've engaged in Meadley 1 is on business retention. So what are we doing to make sure that businesses that are located in Arlington are going to stay in Arlington? So we have a process that we're going through now and hopefully someday I'll come back and talk a little bit more about that business retention strategy. Jim talked about development forums. So that's what the Greece trap activity is one that I would put into that development forum. So as issues what the Greece trap activity is one that I would put into that development forum. So as issues become we're aware of issues. Let's raise them. Let's talk about them. Let's try to find solutions. I also want to talk about minority women to own business enterprises. And I should put in here as well local Arlington opportunities. So one of the things that we can do at the chamber is connect businesses to some of the big projects that are taking place. So Manhattan has been in, Texas live has been in, the ballpark, the Rangers, and trying to find ways to connect to small business to those big opportunities that are taking place. All right, Downtown Arlington, again, a great partner of the chamber. But what I would say with Downtown Arlington is they have tools themselves to help people understand what the opportunities are in downtown. They do provide some matching grants. I'll show an example of that. They showcase the real estate opportunities. They'll help do some analysis on the opportunities that exist. And certainly there are experts on the tours and how that benefits local businesses, small businesses in the downtown area. So as far as their grants go, they will do up to $5,000 to help on the exterior. This is an example of CoolCag and what they did with a grant there, $5,000 grant. But there's other examples of grants that have been used from downtown management corporation. So that's a great tool. The governor's office has a small business assistance program. There it really is just connecting businesses to many of the opportunities that exist. So in some instances they'd be funneled right back to us and helping engage with the chamber and finding that solution, but they'll look across the board. They provide a lot of tools and resources online that will help small businesses. And they do some government grants, but I think they're fairly limited. The Small Business Administration, everybody's familiar with the SBA. Some people think the SBA actually does direct loans, but I think most of y'all here realize they don't do direct loans. They guarantee loans, and then they provide funds to intermediary lenders. And there's four programs. You can see the programs on this slide where they help provide funding. Now, just like the Chambers and Umbrella organization that works with our partners, so is the small business administration. You'll see some of that in just a second with some of our other partners. But I would say with the SBA, we do have a memorandum of understanding with them. We manage an award ceremony for the North Texas region. We also do a business trade show and connected to that award ceremony. So a really strong relationship with the SBA. So strong that we, the administrator came to our event this year, Linda McMahon. So we were really proud of that. Score, I'm sure people are familiar with the service core, retired executives. They do a lot of great work. So they're the ones who sit down with you. Why the SBA doesn't itself sit down with you and do one-on-one counseling. Score will sit down with you. Why the SBA doesn't itself sit down with you and do 101 counseling. Score will sit down with you and do 101 counseling and mentoring on your business. They do this through volunteers. So volunteers who have great experience come together and will provide that 101 counseling to help business. Of course, the University of Texas at Arlington, a couple of programs I would point out. One is V-Bock, or the Veterans Business Outreach Center. It's also funded by the SBA. So you'll see a lot of linkages here. And they work with SCORE as well to help provide the mentoring that veteran-owned businesses need. The V-Bock that we have here is the second one in Texas. And I believe UTA, someone else may know. I think they may be the largest institution in the state when it comes to, maybe in the nation, when it comes to educating veterans. So it's way up there, I know that. So they have this program. There also is the T-Mac, or the Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center, and cross timbers procurement Technical assistance center. So TMAC is really hands-on help to a large extent to manufacturing But it's it goes a little bit beyond the distribution logistics health They will again sit down with businesses and help them come up with the strategies that they need to be successful help them come up with the strategies that they need to be successful. Cross timbers will help with government procurement. So they'll help businesses understand what the opportunities are for doing business with government. The Small Business Development Center, this is another one that is housed at the Chamber of Commerce. It's a partnership between the SBA and the Tarant County College District. Again, this is hands-on counseling that they will do with small businesses. They help do a lot of them market research and financing and then they'll work with score to help put together business plans. They also provide professional development. So one of the professional developments that we were doing is on how to start a business. And we're looking for other opportunities to do these sort of forums. By the way, they're all free. Okay, so that's a good news. And anything we do at the Chamber that's in partnership around professional development with someone like the SBDC, you don't have to be a Chamber member. Anybody that wants to come in and get that development will make that available to them. Hopefully later they'll become a chamber member, but we just want to get them in the door and help. One of the cool tools that they have, it's their size up software program. So if you're a small business and you want them to understand how many businesses do what I do in a particular area. What does that competition look like? They can, this tool which is great and the city has access to this tool. It'll get all this market analysis and research analysis for you. It's really cool. And I mentioned the workshops that they do. Workforce solutions, which again, it works very closely with the city, and we have slots on the Workforce Solutions board. They're really helping companies get the labor force that they need. And they do that through job fairs. There's a great website that they have, workin-texas.com. There's an opportunity to get tax credits if you're hiring from the right demographics. There's a potential of getting tax credits as well. Judy McDonald in the Workforce Solutions, great partners of the Chamber and of the City. And they're there to support small business. And the Texas Workforce Commission is there too. So there's an opportunity of getting workforce training grants from the Texas workforce commission. And then on this has the wrong header up here. Unfortunately, I didn't notice that. But the Department of Commerce also is located at the Chamber. They're there. Their US Commercial Assistance Center is there to help businesses learn how to export what business opportunities are there. So that's another tool that is available. With that, I think that's the external tools. Thank you very much. Dr. Mars. First and foremost, I want to thank Mr. Paragand and Mr. Jacobson for providing such a detailed and in-depth look at what it is we are providing currently in the city as well as within our partnership with the Chamber. So I applaud you and your staff for doing so much at this juncture. I have a few questions, follow-up questions to the report. I'm very excited to hear and I was very pleased to know about the development forum and how the grease trap went when I went well. I've heard a lot of good feedback from businesses as well as folks who attended there, feeling as if they were part of that process. I heard you say that we're planning on doing an additional one, perhaps, on inspections and fire inspections. Are there ideas to do further or different ideas that we have in the hopper, so to speak, already identified, or do we need to go back to that original group that we talked with two years ago to sort of identify some of those pressure points. I think we need to do two things. So my answer is both. We owe that group that really participated very heavily with us. We need to go back to them and give them some progress updates on the things that both we've done and some things that we have agreed not to do. But also some of their still heard enough of that I think we follow a similar process to the grease trap discussion. So there's really kind of two pieces but I think that group that we started a while ago is probably a really good group for that. It really is a very broad spectrum of people that have been doing this a long time, people that have not, and it's a really good mix. So I think we, it's not a single issue. I think we would want to, at key points, to look at the progress we're making on the issues that have been identified, and then continue to go back and see if there are other issues or improvement. One good example is it's a new initiative. Eventually, we're going to be moving forward with electronic plan review. Well, that's a great opportunity to get more feedback from our customer in terms of how that's going to work and what are some of the challenges or some of the benefits of that? So things like that. Yeah, no, I would just say one thing. So, you know, a holistic looking at things holistically is always important to do. I would not let that get in the way of where we know where there's issues that we need to resolve. So at times you need to move forward on targeted things like grease strap and not wait for the bigger holistic approach. So where we know there are some opportunities, we ought to go after those opportunities. Holistic is important too. Dr. Murray. Just one follow up too. Thank you. I was hoping you were going to say that that was continuing ongoing discussion. So I'm pleased to hear you talk. Report that back. I'm interested also in ways to create other synergies between we obviously you've created now an economic development committee within the chamber and that's strengthening. We have an economic development committee here with the city council sort of strengthening that relationship and those discussions as we move forward. I don't know if there's an appetite by Council or others to explore opportunities for which to continue conversations through that mechanism as well. Well I think that was a setup right there because Dallas Business Journal announced five weeks ago that Arlington Texas became the number one economic development city in the Metroplex and we're certainly appreciative of all our partners here. Small businesses, a big part of that. Michael Jacobson in the Arlington Chamber certainly a part of that our economic development department is. We're going to continue to work on that but you know our Council members asked for this update because we value small businesses. 86% of our jobs are made up from small businesses and I'm a small business owner and even though we're talking about challenges here in permitting and inspections, which we've been working on, and we're going to continue to work on. And it's a journey there as our city manager has told me, too, that you may never be to the point where our, but that's the thing I think we recognize. And I hear that among our council, I see it among our staff. We want to continue to get better at it. And that's so important, but I've never known a time here in Arlington, Texas in my 33 years where small business wasn't a top priority there. And I think that's an important thing to realize and Mr. Jacobson has certainly continued that here with our Chamber, and there hasn't been anything that our partners here haven't been willing to jump in and do here to help create jobs, which is so important here for our community and continue on to help our small businesses grow and to bring in new business. That is such an important life cycle here for a community there and thank you for your work. Mr. Jacobson, Mr. Parijon, Mr. Payne, there are many others because this for economic development to be successful, it is a complete circle. There of having everything going from your housing to your education, there to your health care, to your public safety, all of that has to happen there for everything to be successful. Are there any questions or comments here still yet to be in by council? I don't want to stop this up. Yeah, Dr. Myers and then Mr. Glassby. Side to to monopolize. I promise this is the last one. I saw the new website design, the idea of moving toward those the buckets to help people identify. I think that's an absolutely wonderful way to help people navigate our system. I think our current website is very difficult for people to do. I very much like those tabs. I would also love to see as we build that website having a connections back out to the Chambers resources as well to show that connectivity to allow people to understand if they want to go learn at a class at the chamber they can do so as well as what we have resources here in the city so I'd love to see that collaboration be visible via the website and I promise I'm done now. Thank you. Thank you, Madam. First of all, I truly appreciate the presentation. When you take on the consideration of wealth of resources that we do have in our community, and the interaction between the different units, you feel pretty comfortable that anybody who may be out there wanting to start a business struggling with that business, have an opportunity to touch base with somebody to get support they need. Yeah, I would think absolutely. It doesn't mean that there's not more that we can continue to do, but I think there are multiple ways and avenues for a new business to come into our own tent and get more assistance than they're going to get in most cities. And again, working with the Chamber, you just saw through Michael's leadership, they have a substantial amount of almost concierge service for a small business, which really is somewhat unusual, I think, for major cities. And I think that the answer to that question is I think we're doing a good, real good job in this area. And just wanted to ask you, if I'm not mistaken, I know it's a champion one time that was involved with the business incubator and didn't that go over to UT? Allington for them to take over and kind of way is that? The center of innovation. Yeah. Yeah, it's over at UTA, but it's not really operating as an incubator at the moment. They're certainly looking at strategies. So no, that doesn't exist today. Thank probably another thing that you hit on Mr. Jacobson and Mr. Paragion both that I want to compliment and that is the involvement of our MWBE businesses. Everyone is working together to step that up and to work on education and to work on developing and work on opportunities here for our MWBEs and in fact our Chamber has formed a CILR community influence leaders around table that our staff and talk about Chamber staff, City staff, our deputy mayor, pro-tim and myself participate on it, and then our council has taken steps here to step that up too, and it's working here. And then also, compliment you on your partnership with the Greater Fort Worth Metropolitan Black Chamber, who, by the way, is made up of a lot of Arlington people and Arlington businesses. They're also, so a lot of collaboration is going on. Are we, where we want to be? No. Will we ever be? No, because we're going to have a hunger for creating jobs and bringing and helping businesses. But we are working hard to try to be better every day. And thank you all for what you're doing there. Mr. Jacobson, what do you have to add to that? Well, I already done it. Because the question in both your answers, are the tools out that the tools are out there for business. But every day, I think about how we can do it better. We can communicate better. We can engage do it better. We can communicate better. We can engage with businesses better. There's always room to improve. Some of that's going to be driven by the bandwidth that we have at the chamber and how do we build that bandwidth that will allow us to do more. So I think the tools are there. We can do better. And it's my job to help us do better and move us along that path. So just echoing what the mayor says, there's no perfect state. You know, you're continually trying to improve and there is room for improvement. All right. Anybody else have anything else? Thank you all for your presentation. Very helpful. Very important. Thank you all for your presentation. Very helpful. Very informative. Thank you. Okay, next we'll move to legislative update. Ms. Jennifer Whitman, Director of Management Resources. Thank you, Mary. Good afternoon, Mary and Council Jennifer Whitman, Director of Management Resources. I'm here to bring you a brief update on the recent special session of the State Legislature that's just ended. There we go. So the special session began on July 18th. It ended in August 15th, just one day early of the 30 days, so 29 days. There were 20 items on the call. And we did a lot of work here at the city But I did want to particularly highlight the work that all of you did and making calls and and signing letters That was very key to making our position known and I think it did make a big difference So we we do appreciate that So we had Several threats as we were going in this we were concerned about several areas that really were threats to our operations As we look through now that we we were concerned about several areas that really were threats to our operations. As we look through, now that we're at the end of the session now, there was really just one of those bills that passed. That was the tree mitigation bill, and that was House Bill 7. That's going to be effective on December 1st. It made several changes to, in general, about what state tree ordinances are allowed in cities, but it only had one small effect on Arlington simply because we don't already regulate trees on residential properties. So a lot of elements that were related to homeowners didn't really affect us. The only change that we saw was that we currently have a three-inch replacement tree size and this has a two-inch diameter replacement tree size. So there was that one small change, which certainly we would have preferred to stick with our current, but overall it was not a large impact on how we operate. There were several bills, however, that we were very concerned about the din pass, both revenue and spending cap bills, the bathroom bill, which we kept a close eye on. There was a property vesting bill which also we had a concern that would affect any potential short-term rental ordinance that the council may at some point choose to adopt. There was a permit streamlining bill. There was a larger sort of a super tree ordinance preemption bill that we were concerned about that would have had much more effect than House Bill 7 did and then there would have possibly also been a texting and driving preemption which would have just put into effect a state law which is similar to what is in place at the city now but would not have allowed the council if it's some future date the Arlington Council would choose to adopt something different would have not have allowed that. So we're hoping that these will not come up again until at least 2019, but we are sure that it will come up. These are not issues that are going away and we expect to see them again. There are still great constituencies in their state legislature that are interested in having them passed. So as we look to future sessions, certainly we have local control will continue to be an issue protecting the home rule authority that the voters in Arlington created with our charter and elect you all to implement. Revenue caps will probably continue to come up. It was one of the highest profile items. It was not passed. There was an opportunity that the Senate had to pass, moved back to a 6% rollback rate, but they chose not to do that. I believe to read that. They did ask for an additional special session. Today, I haven't really heard anything or have sort of our sources heard anything about how, about that being an imminent possibility. I'm knocking on wood as I say that though. So hopefully that will not come up, but I believe that the Senate has its eyes set on a more significant change to the rollback right. And that's what we will see in the future. As we've talked about before, school finance reform is really needed. And then just through one other item in here. There's one other element that could possibly pull us back, could have pulled us back into a special session, which was redistricted on a couple of congressional districts, not in this area, one in Austin, one down in Corpus Christi. When we put this presentation together, we thought that that could be a reason to call a special session in order to redraw those districts. However, the Attorney General has decided he's going to appeal that to the U.S. Supreme Court. So that is not a reason currently to call the legislature back into special session. So as we look at, I just want to just a reminder as we think about the property tax reform and what an important issue that is to the overall property tax relief, just as a reminder this I stole from the budget presentation, but it's an important reminder. And there was a bill, House Bill 21, which was about school finance, and that did end up passing. It puts about $563 million of additional funding into various areas of public school. A big portion of that goes to the teacher retirement system. So it's not all in the classroom, but it all relates to education. The House had wanted 1.5 billion more than that. So when they did accept this bill, they sort of swallowed a pretty bitter pill that they had wanted a great deal more relief to go to our schools, but it did not, and it will not at least as far as we can see based on what happened this past session. So the path forward we will continue to gather data as I've talked to you about some elements of it before but it's important that we have information about additional costs that we bear up related to the state the city manager shared with you during the budget presentation about the additional $7 million that the city is now sending to the state just through courts and our sales tax processing. But collecting other information like that to make sure that we're prepared to make the points on these issues that we know will come up next session. So we will continue to try to be aware or we will be aware if there isn't second special session out there. We'll keep an eye on that. As I said at this point, I'm not seeing that, but that certainly could change. And then there's always interim activities that go on with rulemaking, which will continue to keep an eye on. And of course, we'll continue to work with our federal delegation in Washington to keep an eye on possible issues there that could affect the city. Generally, what we have been seeing, though, is – and you may have notices at the end of the session related to city issues. It's kind of a divide and conquer philosophy with cities. They are really trying to peel off larger cities, which Arlington has included in, away from smaller cities, thinking that that's an easier way to get some things passed. So we've seen that as one strategy. We'll have to keep an eye on that. But we do generally cities are aware that when some of us lose rights, there's a big chance that all of us could lose certain rights. So we feel like we've got a good team to approach that in the session or whenever it may come up and I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have. Well, I think picking up on that, let's talk school financial form. Could you put the graph back up? A lot of this came about in trying to get property tax relief. And right here in our community because of our economic development and because of tourism, we've been able to keep our property taxes down. In fact, lower than our surrounding cities of Grand Prairie Mansfield and Fort Worth, for example. And as Miss Whitman stated, the bills that they were talking about really weren't going to provide any tax relief, and that's the reason I believe it didn't come forward. It really didn't produce that. There is a real wave right now of state representatives and state senators who believe that next session they should tackle school financial form. I think that needs to be a message that we all, I'm talking about our citizens and so forth, ask our state representatives and state senators to move along that path because you can see that's where the real dollars are in this, but then also I want to share with our citizens that this money that is shown in this particular slide doesn't go to Arlington ISD. It goes to Austin to be administered and our school district gets a small percentage of this. Same way with Mansfield ISD that you you know, 40% of the students in MSD are in Arlington. Those two school districts are not realizing that, so do not beat up our school districts for the amount of taxes that we're paying. They're into the school district, but instead, let's take a positive approach and talk to our state representatives and state senators about doing a really meaningful tax reform and looking at our school finance and then realizing too that education is so important here to the future of Texas and certainly to the future of our community. With that, I'd love to open it up, Mr. Glassby. Just speak back on the point you were making by tax relief. City manager made an excellent point in this presentation of the day that we provide a great deal of tax relief with all the exemptions that we provide for our citizens. That's so true. In fact, Mr. Yovatton, if you could share about our homestead exemption and what a difference that makes for our citizens and there what a difference it makes in our tax rate. Sure. So, as we talked about during the budget, our tax base in Arlington is about $32 billion of which about 25% of that is exempted or about $8 billion of value. The largest share of that is homestay exempted property, residential property that people have lived in for over a year. And so in Arlington, that's 20% in other cities close by some, even that's 0%. So that homestay has been something that this community has long done. As far as I know in my my time here at the city, it's always been offered. So not only do we provide that, but we provide the senior tax freeze the $60,000 exemption for seniors as well as their state required disability exemptions. So there is a significant amount that is provided on that and then along the lines with the mayor said our rate is amongst the lowest amongst our neighbors the ones that touch a specifically Grand Prix Fort Worth Mansfield. When you value that homestead exemption against a city that for example has no homestead exemption. If Arlington were to eliminate the homestead exempted value, get rid of the value of the homestead and put it back on the tax rolls, that's equivalent to about eight cents on our tax rate. So at just shy of 64 cents, we can drop it to almost 56 cents if we did not have a homestead exemption. That said, what you'd also be doing is removing tax relief from homeowners and you'd be spreading it amongst all property owners, which is really more of a benefit back to business. So our tax policy, as I talked about in our presentation while back, is really favorable, particularly as it relates to residential property. Sometimes the misnomer is the the baitmants are such that are given to big business. But when the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the next week. We have this discussion and of course overwhelmingly our council members want to give that tax relief to our homeowners and not spread it out. However, you don't get the credit for it unless we share that message. We are proud of our home state exemption because it goes to the people who said I want to call Arlington my home and I think that's very important. Yes, Mr. Yeovarton. I might just add a little bit because I know a lot of people do kind of what I do. I like comparison analysis of data, you know, compare one versus the other. And if you look at the region, you know, many cities and entities are holding their rates the same. Some are lowering them relatively notably, but when you look deeper at what's going on there, the ones that I've noticed that are doing notable rate reductions are also properties that are cities that do not offer a home-state exemption. And when you look at some of the others that are keeping their rates flat to modestly lower, many of them are changing their strategies as it relates to the home setting exemption. Several cities in the region, you'll start to see them creep that exemption up. I think you can look at Grand Prairie, starting to move that. Keller, South Lake, or other cities talking about it that have not historically done it. So while they're not moving the rate, they're starting to get where we are, which is move up to that homestead exemption. It will take those cities multiple years to get there, because you're not just gonna jump right out and exempt 20% of your residential tax base. But most of them are taking divots, you know, three, five percent a year, three to, you know, kind of a four or five year plan to get to where we're at. So we're ahead of that game. We've got a low rate. We've got a favorable tax policy. We've been providing those benefits for years to our residents. Anybody else have any questions or comments? One thing along the legislative bill is that SB4 is very prominent here in the lawsuit that's going on there. And I think it would be important. I think there's a misinterpretation there of why we're not in the lawsuit. And I also would like an update on where it's at. If councils are, I'd like to get an update on where it's at. Also, it would like for us to have an opportunity and hear to talk about it. Because there is no question that Arlington, Texas values our international citizens and our international visitors. And that's who we are. We are a hospitable, welcoming city who also is working very hard with our minority communities and our new citizens here so that we can continue to be a successful city. We're also the home to the University of Texas at Arlington that at any given time is in the top five of international students who many of them love Arlington stay here, their families move here and so we want to continue to be a part of that so because of that I'd love to put that on the agenda if y'all are willing to do that. Appreciate that Miss Wolfe. Mayor I was also going to suggest for a future agenda item. We had a council committee that was reviewing short-term rentals and when we found out that the state legislature was going to override any opportunity for municipality to make their own decisions, we withdrew that from a committee and I think in lieu of the fact that what Jennifer just told told us that that was not addressed I would like to see this council move forward with short-term rentals I think that you know without a doubt everybody's alright with that Yeah, we want to take care that mr. Yellis just one clarifying question on that would you like to do that as a as a group of the Whole or would you like us to go to commit go back to committee there you go back to committee bright Okay, Miss K part Go back to committee. There you go back to committee. Bright. I'm writing that. Okay. Miss K. Paard. Thank you Mayor. Jennifer, I just wanted to thank you for not only good suffering through the regular session, but the special session as well. You and your staff, Eddie Yomans work, and we really appreciate all the effort and the updates that you gave us. I remember I was remarkable at times that I'd get to see mail with all that detail. So we appreciate that and it was very helpful. Thank you very much. Mr. Glaspie. Thank you, Madam. And I want to do that comment and also is there a time that we can feel comfortable that there's not going to be a special section. Why is that? No, sir. Unfortunately not. special section. No, sir. Unfortunately not. The governor has the power to call it at any time, but we will continue to keep an eye out on the winds as they're blowing to see if that's on the horizon. Ms. Walman. And just on another note from what she said and what we've all heard is that all of those issues are probably coming up in two years and two years go very quickly. We need to stay in touch with our local representatives in Austin and not just let up on that and just say oh well wait for two years we need to keep talking about and keep them informed as to where our position is on that so I hope that we can do that, and I know Jennifer's up on it, but for all of us. Ms. Walman, I know you're gonna be talking to him, asking him to address the transportation needs, aren't you? Now, that'll be something more positive, I think. Anybody else? Ms. Whitman, seriously, thank you for all you did. Ms. K-Park put it well. Thank you for all you did. Miss K. Park put it well. Thank you for all your work and so forth there. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Sure. Next, we'll move to discussion of informal staff reports. Does council have any questions on any of the below? You've got the reports there. Does anybody want to bring up any of these for discussion? Miss K. Park? Yes, I'd like to bring up 4.1, the Gateway sign, and then 4.3 Stovall Park operations. And on the Gateway sign, Mr. Packing. And I appreciate the report and all the detail and the locations and all that. But Mayor considering some of the staff comments about I-30 and I-20 and maybe we can't really go forward real quickly with those for construction issues and other things. And then also on 360 because of that. I'd like to make a recommendation back, I guess you're going to go to the parks board and have discussion with this. I'd like to make a recommendation that we proceed with the next one to be out on 287, where you really do have the convergence of everything south of obviously Arlington. And then you go in and you're either headed east or west and you're close to Fort Worth as well. So I'd like to be able to delineinate to people that they have left Middle Othien, they've left Mansfield in their now in Arlington. Thank you very much. And because of all that major traffic problem that we have there, the convergence of 20 and 287 and 35, it's a 20 rather. It's really a mess out there. So just a recommendation of Council's integrity. The only thing I'd like to add to that is that I'd like to see the third one on I-30 this morning I think we had a property owner that was even willing to donate the property to be able to put it on and that would be on Westbound I-30 coming in there too because I think I think Miss Cape Art identified a very important place and I think the other one that we could do would be the one there on the east. And then from there, you know, at 20, I think is the most logical next step there along the way because we've got a while for 360. Be shaking out. Yes, Mr. Parker. My question would be, are there, is there an opportunity going forward here because I know the signs, I saw the amount of the each sign on the reading. Is there an opportunity for grants for those particular signs going forward? We have been reapplying to the Governor's Achievement Award where we got the first grant every year and we will continue to try to do that. Obviously that's a competitive process but we are looking for other grant opportunities to help fund future science. Okay. You wanted to talk about Stovall Park, Miss Cape Horn? Yes, sir. And Gary again, thank you for the report. Stovall Park has continued. Oh yeah I guess we should say that. Yes. That Arlington marker out there is awesome you know and it is received so much great feedback and it really puts our flag in the ground for saying thank you all for that. Okay now I'm going to skip our time. I'll let Lemuel introduce the topic then I'll have a comment. Thank you Lemuel. Certainly Ms. Capehart you had requested an item with respect to the Stovall Park I'll have a comment. Thank you, Liemio. Certainly. Ms. K. Bart, you had requested an item with respect to the Stobel Park operations and consideration of an adjustment in the operating hours from a midnight close to a 10 p.m. close. And so we provided you a report with some level of detail about some of the activities that have been occurring over the last couple of years and we're certainly prepared to answer any any questions that the council may have. And I appreciate the detail that you've given to the council. Stovall Park continues to be somewhat of a magnet for after-hour activity. And it's one of those things where it's really more than a neighborhood park, obviously, because you've got bud-kunikshofen water park out there. And it's become a great gathering place. And generally, that's a good thing. But around nighttime, because it's surrounded on three sides by a neighborhood, it becomes very much of a problem. And I guess it started maybe what about a year and a half ago, Mr. Randolph, that we had a neighborhood meeting. I'd heard complaints over a period of years, but nothing consistent. But now it's consistent. It's about every weekend, I'll get a complaint. And it really has to do with the fact that they're very concerned about after hours activity and why can't you shut it down sooner. So I happen to go out to the park one evening just to kind of see for myself and it was problematic. I have to say and so if you're the neighborhood that backs up to it and they're back yards back up to that area and there are lots of places where you can't really see the people. So you kind of have to be out on the trail and to see them. And you can see the disruption. And there's been a lot of graffiti. And there's been a lot of loud music. And there's been a lot of just all kinds of other activity that I'm sure I'm not aware of. And so what the neighborhood is asking of us is to consider closing the park at 10 instead of at midnight. And I very much support that. I think we've given it a year and a half of trying other methods to see if we could get to some better mitigation effort and it just hasn't worked. And the neighbors continue to be concerned. And if I were living in that neighborhood, I would too. So my proposal to the council, and I don't really know the protocol mayor, if we should take it to Park Sport. And unbeknownst to me when I asked for this is a future gen item, that same week on Thursday night, do you mean on Thursday night? The neighborhood showed up in Park Sport asking for the same thing. I was unaware. So they're very proactive. They have called the city to find out what the process is. And they're trying to implement that process. They were unaware that I had asked for this as a future agenda item. But I think we've given it long enough, and it continues to be a problem. I don't see it really being relieved through the efforts that we've tried. So. So is everybody all right? And then, you know, four or four of the trap need to return program. Oh, you have something. I'm not sure, lemio got direction. Okay. So is everybody, is it mayor? Is everybody okay with closing the parking tin? Yes. Miss Wolfe. I was just curious that the neighborhood went to the parks board and the parks board degree. In 2015, there was a request from the residents for the parks board to consider an adjustment in the operating hours. At that time, the Parks Board did not accept that recommendation. It has not come back as a formal request for the board. We did have a meeting on last week to discuss the operational issues to hear from the citizens and more of an open form about what their concerns were. We had representation from the police department as well to talk through those issues. And so it's an item that the policy committee of the Parks Board is prepared to address and provide a ultimate recommendation to the advisory board. However, obviously, if council chooses to make that call, then that would obviously trump any action that board may take. Shouldn't we work through the channels here? Yeah, that was my question of the council. I don't know what the protocol is. I'd like to hear some of the specifics, you know, so that we can try to address. So maybe you work through the committee and then bring a report back on what they are looking at doing here to our council. Yes, Ms. Walman. I'm a thorough ringer and because I know this is a problem, but we've had, and they rent the parks board and Richard Simpson Park. That's a different animal because of the lake. But the problems there have just been, and I thought we had it soft through the police department, but not so. So while you're talking to the committee, you might just throw that one in, because it's coming and you know it is. Sure. Yeah, okay, thank you. So in summary, we'll let the policy committee of the Parks Board work through this process and then you can let us know what they come up with then. Certainly. Okay. And Mr. Glass-P did you have just okay, okay? All right. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Randall. Miss Capehart, why don't I get you to talk about 4-4 because this came up from our citizens here and we wanted to revisit here. And anyway, I know that you have particular interest here and did a little investigation yourself. Thank you, Mayor. The TNR program, which has been implemented now for two years, three years, I kind of lost track, has been incredibly successful. And in fact, Arlington has kind of considered the model. Now some of the first partners that we had when we implemented TNR, the trap Newton return policy. We first implemented it. Those organizations have disbanded or they've gone under other interests. But the annual services under Chris's direction have always been able to pick it up to find the next set of volunteers, how are we going to cover this program, so on and so forth. And then today, we've been given a letter and I'll let my bass or Chris Huss speak to this from the best friends animal society. That is a premier animal rescue group. They're based out of hey and it's going down. They're based out of Utah and they have come into the city of Arlington. They've done some research and I know they're out of the shelter. They interviewed shelter staff, volunteers, people just coming into the shelter to find about operationally how is the shelter run and was the success rate particularly with the livery release rate whether it is through adoption or through rescue groups. There was a lot of focus on the TNR program because it's somewhat unique because Arlington has been so successful with their program. And so as a result of that and Chris and Mike had the details but I think they were within in the city for a couple of days and they didn't just focus on the animal shelter. They also focused on the city and went out to visit to other facilities within the city. And then they came back and have written a letter to us offering a significant grant of about, tell me the number Chris, because I don't have it in the letter. Hi, I'm Chris, to be able to do that. I'm going to be able to do that. Tell me the number of Chris because I don't have it in the letter. Hi, I'm Chris. Mayor and council. 55,000 with the AB plan and I'll explain that to you. Mayor, if I can, I'm going to turn it over to Mike and Chris to give you the rest of the detail. Okay. Again, I'm Chris Huff. Yes, best friends, animal society did come to the city of Arlington. At the latter part of June, they spent three days with us. And they looked at the city as a whole. We gave them a tour around the city. They looked at our volunteer program. They looked at our TNR program. They looked at our stats for TNR and exactly how the program was going and how could they help. And the outcome of that was they are planning to provide a possible $55,000 grant in order to help with an option A and an option B. The option A would be a part-time staff member to help with, to go out into the community to help with education, to help with the trapping portion of TNR. Also the surgeries for TNR for about 50, about 550 barrel cats in the community, as well as equipment. Option B would be a full time TNR staff member to help with the surgeries as well as education for the city. Mr. Bass, you have anything to add to that? No, ma'am. I have to praise Chris and staff. They do a tremendous job for a very challenging and difficult sometimes, you know, irreplaceable point of view of some individuals as far as how they perceive animals in the community and what we do to help them. So, I'm very proud of the staff and I think this is going to really keep us moving forward and be more progressive and a continue model for other cities. Mr. Glass-P. Discussed so when would we receive the grant and what process will go through to decide on how to use the grant? Again, they met with us in June. Our conference call will be held on September the 6th. And after the 6th conference call, then they'll decide if they're going to go with plan A or plan B. And we hope to have that by October the 1st, which is beginning our fiscal year. But in the meantime, we have a remaining portion of a grant from Pets Mar charities. And that will carry us over into the new year. from Pets Mar charities and that will carry us over into the new year. So they will actually assess what they believe would be the most effective way to utilize the grant. That's what the visit was for. Yes sir. Mr. Parker. Is this going to be a reoccurring grant or if we if we hire an individual to do this is it going to be contingent upon the reset receipt of that grant on an annual basis or what's going to be giving us that funding to hold us over for one year. And during that year, we hope to organize the program which we've been doing in the process of doing anyway. Where those two groups left off, this will take us through the new year and allow us to focus on the two hotspot areas that exist in the city. Any other questions? I'm Mr. Yellert. Mayor and council, I just want to take a quick second, too, to echo a little bit about what Mike has said. Often, you don't see Chris up here very much because she's down there buried with a bunch of furry critters trying to help them have a good experience. So it's pretty rare that she comes up to City Council and helps address questions and so just because you're here I want in front of everybody to tell you how much we appreciate everything you do y'all you and your team work so hard to make everybody so smooth and comfortable that they can be down there we just appreciate everything you doing. I want y'all to know how much and how hard this lady works for your city. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. Thank you. And I do want to say that it is a team effort. The animal services team, your staff really go above and beyond to help the community, the animals in the community, the animals in the shelter. And I appreciate them and I appreciate them, and I applaud them as well. And many of the progress, Mayor, if I may, that have originated out of animal services, is everything from having therapy animals going to senior homes, senior living facilities, is for people who are having to relocate, but they can't afford a pet deposit. They try to get that pet deposit covered through a lot of times, sponsor adoptions, who does that a lot with us. And then they have a lot of education. They've partnered with MISD and their vet tech program. And all of that is originated out of our own animal services. So I couldn't be prouder of them. There are always challenges. There always will be, particularly when you're dealing with animals. And our live release rate is what now, Chris, you have it off the top of your head or Mike, I'll pitch on this bottom, sorry. If I look at FY 16, I believe we ended at 75 to 78%, I'd have to get your specific number. That's phenomenal. From municipal shelter, That's phenomenal. From municipal shelter, that is phenomenal. And a lot of that is through the partnerships that Chris has created. So kudos to all the animal services staff and Chris is there later. We appreciate it. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Just want to mention real quickly, in 1976, a time capsule was deposited at the Bicentennial at our library. It's going to be moved over to our new library. And of course we can't open it because instructions are that it's got to be opened in 2076. I actually have one at the Sherman Library that I participated in in 1976, some of my stuff went in, but I sure would like to see us share what's in that. I think we have a list of what's in there and I think that would be a neat thing to share with people right now. I think it would be a neat story coming out sometime from our communications about what's in that capsule and it's there and then again for our library to continue to make people aware that that is there it's kind of a neat thing appreciate that. Okay next we have City Council priority enhanced regional mobility Mr. Parazon Good afternoon mayor and council Jim Parazon deputy C manager capital investment and economic development It's gonna be really hard to follow Chris off, but I'll do my best so Transportation continues to be a really incredible opportunity to work on some creative innovative opportunities. In fact, when I look at the newsletter, I almost feel like this is a technology newsletter because it's really about mobility and technology. And I just want to do a couple of highlights. Probably the biggest one is the city on August 26th, which is this Saturday. We will become the first city in the United States to operate an autonomous shuttle program. First one in the United States that is actually operational and that will be running Starting with the Cowboys preseason game on the 26th So we're very excited about that for more information about Milo, which is how the shuttle Automa shuttle program is called there's our city web page that has really good information about Milo. We had a really good national event on August 11th for the media as well as some of our key stakeholders. And we got significant input and press from that in terms of being the first in the United Nations in the US. I'd also point out that staff has gotten a lot of communication from other cities as well as technology companies that want to understand how we were able to implement this. So we've been certainly proceeding in that discussion. Just quickly, you know, that the Milo is not about volume. It's about the test. It's about the opportunity to use technology. And to that end, the staff has already set up some very early opportunities for the public to ride my low, even if there's not an event. Those dates are already publicized on the city's web page, but just for the public, there's August 29th, September 7th, September 9th, and September 30th, that you literally can go on our web page and book a ride. It's free. It just gives you an opportunity to test out the technology. And that's just one way that we're going to continue to try to move the technology forward so that we actually use this as a pilot and find out how the technology really would work in a city of our size and scale. The other things are maybe a little bit more nuts and bolts that I wanted to highlight. One is related to street construction projects. There's five street maintenance projects that are underway under construction right now. That contributes to some of the construction activity that you see in most parts of our city right now I relate to street construction. On the 3360 project, really excited about this, this is the new 360 southbound frontage bridge is almost complete. In fact, it will be complete by the end of 2017 so that project is moving forward well as can be expected and as Keith Brooks mentioned the overall construction still expect to be completed in 2020. The 360 South project this year you're going to see several of the new bridges opened and in fact some of them I think are about to be open or they have opened. They'll really help with the traffic flow and the southern part of our city. And then that overall construction is expected to be completed in the spring of 2018. That's a very fast construction process. And then the final one is just to finish up. I know the Council of Committee and a briefing about the Transportation Advisory Committee and I'm not going to say anything about that other than that committee worked over a 12 month period and really put in substantial significant effort and energy and I know you're going to get some briefings on that but I just wanted to highlight and recognize that committee significant effort and energy and I know you're going to get some briefings on that but Just want to highlight and recognize that committee for their work is really substantial I'd be happy to take any questions on your priority Mr. Glass-me Thank you ma'am back back to my low you You indicated is primarily a test But we have any feel for how much Traffic we may be able to to move in process and and are we just going to it's just one vehicle will be using or When it's fully operational. There'll be two vehicles. They'll be running an hour before the events To an hour before the events to an hour after the events. There are really 12 passenger vehicles, but comfortably it's probably in the name of 8 to 10 people. I just, you wrote. It's not about the amount of people. It's practically maybe during the event we might be able throughout that event to maybe carry a couple hundred people. But it's really about the opportunity for people to test the innovation and the technology and get comfortable or providing input as it relates to the technology autonomous nature of it. How it operates in an environment like a city environment, get feedback, and that's really what this is about, and that's really how we would measure the success of it as opposed to just pure numbers in terms of how many people, because it wasn't designed for that, because it's really only two vehicles. Looking forward to our citizens getting the opportunity to try out the technology and having some open houses where they can just ride it and try and see what they think. Mr. Glantzmi. Just to start off, off to side question. We have any feel for how many people take advantage of that Tesla charge it because I want to pass through to actually cars. I do not have those numbers, but I think we certainly can talk to the Tesla folks and it might give us some sense. I will tell you, my act totally, every time I go to the convention center I see four, five, six vehicles. So I know it's fairly consistent. vehicles so I know it's fairly consistent. Miss Walman. Back to the Milo because I've been asked questions and I probably given some information because I didn't realize are we going to have more days per week or sometime where citizens can go and try it out and I know you mentioned there's some on the website. I would check that but I think that people that are interested should because and maybe we can keep that going through even more than just the events is that right because we plan to what I guess I wasn't clear. We'll run them normally during the major events. Yeah. But there's obviously people that might not take advantage of going to the events and riding those. So we have started to put opportunities for our citizens to ride those outside the events for free. And those are just, we put four of them on just for this next month. But we'll continue to do that during the test period and the pilot period So that people can ride those so I can't give you an exact number But I would would venture say there's at least a few each month that people can just sign up and they're four or five hour Blocks of time so they can accommodate a lot of people should do you want to do that? Okay, the other thing we're doing is we're looking for Test track opportunities. So that, for instance, if there were a regional meeting, maybe at the Cog or a transportation group that might want to see this technology in place, we can run it for that purpose, as well as we're working with the university right now to talk about potential deployment on the university campus. So it exposes not just the students, but some of the research potential and the opportunity for the continued innovation of that. So our pilot isn't just the advantage, it's as broad as we can possibly make it. And that was really the value of how we created the contract. Okay, so you didn't mention that are we working with the convention center as we have those convention or people coming that it would be available for them to try because they're coming from all over the U.S. and since we're the only one it would really it seemed like would be a good partnership to open it up for some of those many. Certain types of conventions as well as the perhaps the largest ones I we would do that. So yes yeah okay because I think everybody's interested but there's still this we get this I'm not getting in one and I think once they try it we're gonna really find people are very interested in it, which it's coming faster than, you know, sooner rather than later. So I'm glad that our citizens are getting a taste of it. But thank you for all you're doing. Thank you, Mr. Parasjohn. Next we'll move discussion of committee meetings, municipal policy, Mr. Glaspie. Thank you, Mayor. Our committee met this morning and we had, we discussed a garage sales. We've over the last few years have been more and more concerned, voiced about, uh, garage sales and problems they created in particular congestion and the impact and equality of life of residents. And it turns out of course we have very, very little in the way of regulations for garage sale. So after a fairly lengthy discussion of what, if anything, we might be able to do the committee concluded that we should make these recommendations to the Council in total. And if it's okay with you, we'll have staff to follow on. One thing that Ms. K. Parfart brought to my attention that might be a benefit to the Council, one of the things that we that might be a benefit to the council. One of the things that we were shown was a graph indicating the cities in the area. They surveyed the cities in the area to see what, if anything, they're doing. It turns out there are 13 cities that were surveyed. And of those 13, 11 had ordinances in place to deal with garage sales, which indicates we probably should take a close look ourselves. So our final recommendation from the committee was one we need we should have a permit required in order to have a garage sale to limit the number that you have to tool year the duration to be 72 hours for each one no more than one sign on the premises for garage sales and we suggested implementing a fee of $10 per permit for them and then hours of operations should be restricted to 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on that particular day. So we bring this before the council to see whether you an agreement or want to make modifications to that. That's the direction we'd like to give to staff based on what you think. Any other comments or input, Mr. Cape Art? Thank you, Mayor. And our chair did a great job of explaining it a little bit more personal observation from me. I think oftentimes we may think that this is an issue in one area of town but it's not. It's an issue that's growing throughout and one of the really good communities in District 2 over on stage which was developed probably back in the early 70s, it has become a real problem for Overland Stage, a real problem. And I get complaints from the HOA president and others saying we've got to do something. And unfortunately, there are people who take advantage of the fact that we don't have any governance over it. And some of the pictures that they showed us in committee were pretty outstanding in a bad way. People will bring in truckloads of furniture and equipment and I have no idea where they come from. And then they'll line the street with it and it's a garage sale. Well, that's not a garage sale. So in the discussion, we also talked about what about estate sales or yard sales or moving sales or any of that. And it depends upon if it's really stuff that's put out for resale in your yard or on your driveway or in your garage versus in a state sale, which is usually someone who's relocating or is passed away and the entire house kind of in its contents. And so you're going in the house, it's not necessarily an outside venue. And so people who are in the estate sale business, they're not going to have a permit at the same location more than once because you have the estate sale and you're done. So this is just at the same location twice a year. And there is a cost associated with it. And most of the cities had a cost. I mean, even Kennedell has one. And I was surprised at that but they do. And so the cost is pretty nominal really $10 for each permit and I dare say if you're going to have a garage sale you hope to make a whole lot more than $10 so it should be offset pretty easily but staff's done a great job I thought Michael you can weigh in as well with regard to making it accessible online so you can get it and you can print it out. And so you've got your permit with regard to the one sign on the premises. That's, they weren't concerned about that. They were, the people that were in opposition were more concerned about where you've taken down my signs in the right of way. That has nothing to do with the garage sale. You can't have signs in the right of way, period. And so that has nothing to do with the garage. You can't have signs in the right of a way, period. And so that has nothing to do with an ordinance or not having an ordinance. So I think it'll go a long way towards supporting our neighborhoods and trying to keep down the people who take undue advantage of the fact that we have not really had any standards in place. Well, and just to support that, you know, we're not trying to keep people from having a garage sale. What we are trying to prevent is abuse, like you said, because I get a complaint on one house now that has a garage sale every weekend on a major thoroughfare that's still in a neighborhood right by an elementary school, and they happen and it's not their stuff they basically bought this house as a business and operate there and they have garage sales all the time and nobody bargains that when they move into a neighborhood to have a constant yard it's really a yard sale and garage sale. It is all over the yard. And anyway, it's a really difficult deal. So I understand that. So from here, we are right with staff moving forward here and trying to work on an ordinance on this. Okay. Does anybody else have any input? Just one of the make mention of aside from just complaints that have been coming in, we have had on June 10th, we did have a hearing to really give people an opportunity to give us input on what students shouldn't be done. That was kind of on both sides, but I think the bottom line on it is, we're at winter position now where we probably should do something to help our neighborhoods those who are really concerned about these. Yeah. Anybody have any objections or anything they want to voice any other suggestions? All right. Then we'll have staff move forward on that. Yes, Dr. Myers. I just, you mentioned the public hearing. I would like to perhaps see that. I know the committee, I'm not a part of this committee, so I'd very much like to see the feedback that we received from the public on this. As we move forward, be very helpful to us. Ms. Wolfe. I will just add that I was in attendance at that June 10th meeting and there were over. This room was packed and I think they had over 50 people signed and a lot of people did not sign in. So it was well attended and I think they got some great information that we can work from. So. Okay. We'll move to finance and audit, Mr. Parker. Thank you, Mayor. We had a discussion about, if you recall, way back in the day we had a discussion about those individuals who were going to come off septic or come off their water wells and be included and how they were going to be included. And although that's a very expensive option, we were going to institute a financial assistance program and essentially allow and not alone, but simply the opportunity to get up to $20,000 to hook up to septic pursuer. And also establish an anti-siphon or backflow system in that same expenditure. It's, like I said, we decided we were not going to charge any interest on that particular assistance. And we got off in the event that you go into default of the payback of that assistance. There is no provision for us to curtail service of water or sewer. There is, so there is very little that we can do other than invoke a lien that we would have on that individual. And the lien would not come into effect until such time as the property would be sold. We drove off into a ditch fairly quickly after that because the question was posed. Does the Constitution allow us to legally invoke a lien? And that was on residential property with a homestead exemption. And so that was decided that we would get a read out from Terrace's office on that particular item before we proceeded down the path further. But let me simply state that this is, we have already encountered this on a commercial basis here in Arlington. And I think that Corpus Christi has exemplified this particular issue when they had an asphalt company. And their byproduct flow back into the city water system. And it became very problematic. So we can enforce a lien on a commercial premises and we're going to find out legally if we can enforce a lien on a residential premises. But we did have one of our businesses have an issue with an anti-siphon system and it was I think $12,000 to do that and we have the ability to help them out in an effort to allow their business to come under code and proceed. They had a time restraint also. So anyway that was what we will get our reading from legal. We will pursue an ordinance at that time and then come to council Thank you mr. Parker any questions from mr. Parker Okay transportation and municipal infrastructure miss Walmond Thank you mayor. Yes today we had a Outlook on the new, the TAC, our Transportation Committee that is getting ready to bring forward their recommendation to the city for their transportation, all the work that they've done this past year. They started last October and they've met every month since then. And they've done quite a job and it's been really end up, Mr. Verkess, the chair of the committee was in our committee meeting today. And Mr. Paragion made the presentation, or excuse me Mr. Dugan, hit. And so it was very informative. They have not, they have getting ready. This month they're wrapping up and will be ready to present to us in September. I was particularly interested in the public participation that they had. Though it's a 31 member committee, these stats just right out were very indicative of how much the citizenry is interested in this issue. They had an average of 18 attendees at each meeting. That's not the committee. Those are just citizens that came with and two to five speakers, issue. They had an average of 18 attendees at each meeting. That's not the committee. Those are just citizens that came with and two to five speakers with two to three written comments. And they had common themes of all of the things that they were interested in were the things that the committee was looking at. So I think it's really a cross section that we had the large committee which really did go into it and our staff did a wonderful job of bringing all the new technology, the new things that we can do, and talking about how we can do it. They did a wonderful layout of our major corridors and where they thought that these transportation corridors should be to begin with. So I think we're going to be pleasantly surprised when we get this report in September and I think that we can know that our citizens have had their voice and that we are listening and we are looking at this. I think it's going to all fit together and it's going to be an exciting time for Arlington, for a transportation system. It won't be one system, it will be a multitude of different systems that they've come up with that I think will all be in agreement. And as we talked about, it's hard to make a long range transportation plan because it's changing so quickly. Great point. You know, we can make one, but to say, oh, we're going to put this system in for the next 10 years, that is probably never going to happen in today's world. Because by the time you get one on the ground, or you think it's about to be there, there's a new one coming on. And that's what Arlington wants to do is stay ahead in the transportation field with the new technology, new ways to move our people, new ways to help our industry and bring business in here, because they need to move people to have that business. So I think it was an exciting thing. Haven't seen it all yet, but what we saw today was a real taste of what we're going to get next month. So it was a good meeting. Thank you, Ms. Walman. Any questions from Ms. Walman? Okay, we'll move to appointments to boards and commissions, Ms. Spino. Mayor, we'll have 21 appointments this evening for council's consideration. Right. Evening agenda items, anybody want to discuss? Mr. Dugan. Mayor members of the council, John Dugan, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I and herry on that. Also, the residents of Arbor Grove, the applicant has agreed to all the conditions and changes that we've talked about the last meeting. And the Arlington and Senior Living, they're requesting a two week, continuance to further address the issues that were brought up of the last hearing to September 5th. Okay, any questions from Mr. Dugan? Thank you, Mr. Dugan. Anything else on the evening agenda items? Okay. Issues relative to city and textile projects. We pretty well talked about that when Mr. Brooks, between you and Mr. Parijon here earlier. Okay. And then future agenda items. Ms. Walman. I'm sitting here. I did think of one. And I probably need to talk to Mr. Dugan or Mr. Paragion about it. But I know that we've had an issue. I think it was when we did was at the UDC that some properties got changed. Their zoning got changed. And I know that we have an issue now with a piece of property in Arlington where the zoning was changed. And we didn't really quite realize it when we did that. I think you'll know the one on the fielder. And I think there are other properties that we had talked about looking at and seeing if we need to do anything about that that or at least be aware of them. Could we possibly have an update on some of those properties? Would that be possible? So that if we need to do anything about it and not have this issue come up again where we can't do anything about it? Okay, so we want to have that as future agenda. Yeah, could we please everybody are out with that? Okay? Anything else on future agenda items? All right, then we will move to the 2018 budget, Mr. Yeoverton. I'm going to go ahead and move on to the next slide. Mayor, members of the council, just want to continue our process of discussing the budget for 2018 based on some of the questions that you all had at the work session. Trying to loop back with some data for you and then see what additional information you have or other topics you would like to discuss. And so I think at your place there's a little bit of a slide deck on as it relates to the proposed budget. And so one of the questions that I think the mayor asked a little bit was about the contingency plan that we have deployed in the budget as it relates to civil service specifically as it could be for unknown costs, particularly as it relates to litigation costs that may exist. And so the current budget as proposed has $1.3 million in it for two fire apparatus that have, that are projected to be $665,000 a piece. So what I had suggested to you all to consider as a contingent contingency plan was that we would go ahead and consider acquiring one engine at the beginning of the year. And then defer the other until such time we got far enough along in the year which would at least be the third core to determine whether or not we were seeing any kind of increase in the contingency costs that we are concerned about. And if we are then we would hold off on that item and that contingency hold would provide about $665,000 of hedge if you will against that concern. And if things are going smoothly, then we would go ahead and look at acquiring that second piece of apparatus. And of course, option two that we could consider is to look at reduction in fire personnel cost to cover a targeted amount at unknown personnel cost that may or may not occur. So that's the question of, do we want to plan for a certain amount and budget that amount and show an offset? I would suggest to you option one is probably the better option for us because we have a known large piece of apparatus that can provide that hedge against the concern, and then some further data before we make any judgment on that is a little bit about the fleet itself in fire. So, we have a couple slides here that I want to make sure you take a look at. So, the average age of our active engines, we have active engines and reserve engines. And so, the active engine, frontline apparatus is a little over five years. The reserve engines that are there like like it says reserve when a frontline piece of apparatus is down for repair the reserves are deployed is 12 12 years. And so when you combine the averages of all the equipment it's just shy of seven-year average for our fire engines. On the latter trucks, or we would also be known as a quint type unit, the average age of front line is eight, and the reserve increases to 13.5. And so when you look at all the units, it's about 9 1 1-1- age. When you look at that based on a pure inventory perspective, these are listing of all of the pieces of equipment that we have from engine one to engine 17 and what their current age is. And you can follow me down on the left hand column under age and you get down to the average age of 5.1, eight years. If we go forward with acquiring the two pieces of apparatus for the engines that will bring our average life down to five, if we go with only one piece of apparatus, it would increase to five and a half on the average age of the unit and you can see the fleet is fairly new. The reserve apparatus are different. So there we're going to have more mileage and more years that are there. And so you see currently the average age sits at 12. If we go forward with two, we'll be able to lower that a little bit. If we go forward with one, it will increase just a little bit. And then on the truck and quint side, you see a similar comparison as it relates to the age and what we would project it to be there's no new apparatus in the quint and ladder truck area I'm proposed. So what I would suggest to you as we look at this consideration of whether or not we potentially defer a piece of apparatus. This average age of fleet is young. Gilbert and I would know back in our days in Dallas. We I can remember making budget adjustments to take the average age from 12 to 15 in the Dallas Fire Department for example. I wouldn't suggest that we do that but five is is a really young average front line apparatus age. And we could certainly hedge our bets with no real concern on missing a cycle and increasing our age to a negative effect. So that's what the data looks as it relates to the question that the mayor asked on how we're gonna hedge our bet for potential liability concerns. And then also don't forget that the risk fund that handles our litigation costs is there and capitalized for that purpose. This becomes the ability to reimburs ourselves or to prevent us from having to draw from that fund. Those two layers, I think, working together help meet that objective. But if the council would prefer a different alternative which is identifying the cost and setting aside essentially a financial reserve amount specifically dedicated to civil service implementation then that's also something that we could take a look at. So let me pause on this one and get your reactions. Well I think initially this is good but the real question is if it's enough there because especially in what we're hearing about arbitration there and I'd love to hear from Missalos about what happens in these arbitration cases and in the way of litigation. The primary cost and I'll let also HR and Pamela may want to jump up and chime in on this. But if you're using outside council to handle those arbitrations, then you would have a pretty extensive amount of money because the investigation that went into that discipline would have to be reviewed, that entire case has to be reviewed by the outside council. That is not what we plan on having happened here. What we plan on having happened is that the new civil service attorney is going to be handling those arbitrations. So you wouldn't have that outside council cost. You are going to have some cost relative to the cost of your arbitrator and just material cost from putting together documents and gathering documents and copying for each side what we consider a kind of typical discovery cost if you will. Is there anything I'm missing, Pamela? There will, we do anticipate additional costs based upon civil service implementation. The civil service process when it comes to disciplines will change. The current process is the assisted chiefs issue the discipline and there's an internal appeals process that allows the department head to hear the appeal and consider whether or not to sustain that decision or reduce that decision overturn that decision altogether. There's no cost associated with that because that is an internal process however that cost will now be a reoccurring cost under civil service because that level of appeal will now be taken away. The chief himself will actually be issuing the disciplines and should an individual determine the need to appeal that decision. That first level appeal will now either go to the commission or it will go to third party arbitration or hearings examiner. And in most cases, we've been told civil service-wise employees generally appeal to a hearing's examiner. So those are additional arbitration costs. So whereas over the past three years, we've had about an average of 12 or so department head appeals that generally went to the chief to handle. And then only about four of those resulted in actual arbitrations beyond what the chief decided. Now if we go along with that same level of productivity related to disciplines, we're going to have at least about 12 more arbitrations to anticipate. And the cost associated with that, the city's cost is anywhere between $1,500 to $6,000 of our part on arbitration cost. Mr. Dalman. Thank you Mayor. What determines whether it goes to the commission or arbitration or the commission? He can't fully make the determination of whether or not they want to appeal to the commission or whether or not they want to appeal to hearings examiner which is basically the same thing as arbitration, or whether or not they want to actually exercise what is the city's arbitration policy, which still is present and available for all employees to utilize as well. So it's the employee who makes the decision. Okay, thank you. Pamela, you might want to tell them a little bit about from our discussions with other cities, what tends to go to the commission versus what goes to an arbitrator? We've contacted other cities to pull them on generally what you do see in the commission and what you see as far as arbitration is concerned. You'll have the issue of testing processes and specifically examination results, test questions. Those matters are matters that generally go before the commission. So after every test, promotion wise, and those test occur annually. If an employee has desire to appeal a test question, that goes before the commission. So those are all commission hearings that will be held associated with test questions. What generally tends to go to arbitration and ultimately district court, those are usually the disciplines that are engaged in and maybe occasionally a demotion or a Passover on a promotion because the chief has the opportunity to pass over an individual that's on the promotional list. That's an appealable incident as well. So that's something that they could elect to take to the commission, which is usually most likely a commission item. But as it relates to disciplines, we will see an uptick if we continue at the same rate of arbitrations and appeals beyond that to district court as well. Any other questions or comments, Mr. Parker? I'm a little confused. If arbitration is not binding, why don't you just go directly to court? I mean, if you're going to go through the arbitration process and you're going to take that step with the attitude, if I don't get my way, then I'm going to go to court. Why don't I just go to court and solve the whole problem right out of the box. Well, you still have the process. Again, civil service provides for what are your appealable options and the avenue you take for that. And the avenue is first going through the commission or appealing that to a hearings examiner. Those are your two options. But the city also has another option, which is third party arbitration that's been in place and what you've been hearing about in the past when we bring issues to you. That is still available and on the table as well. So I believe you recall when we had the issue about burden of proof and what standards we were holding the arbitrator to, that was under the city's personnel policy. The discipline process and the appeal options associated with civil service, they set out what those standards are. If an employee, because to your point you're exactly right, if an employee elects to appeal in discipline decision to the commission, then they can appeal the commission's decision straight to district court. And it's a trial denovo, which means it's a whole nother bite at the apple. You start all over again from scratch. What we have benefited from an arbitration in the past is there are limited options for appeal to district court. You don't necessarily have the opportunity to appeal an arbitration decision to district court. It's only under certain circumstances that you have the opportunity to do that. And we've kind of brought that to you before when we've had to make decisions on whether or not to appeal in arbitrator's decision to district court. Any questions or comments on this? Okay, Mr. Yovartin, we'll move on then. Oh, Mr. Glassp does have one here. We are just a general question. You indicated that I fleet compared to what you've seen elsewhere in relatively young condition. So there's no operational concerns we would have whatever we do then. There's not a significant negative impact on the deferral certainly one and I would even argue too in the case of the current age of equipment. You don't want to get into that habit of missing. You would like to be a cycle in a system in order to maintain a certain average age But we are we're in really fortunate situation there council over the years I was adding up just in the last five or six years. I mean you we've been looking at two and three pieces of equipment every year Which is what's made this front line list so young and as you can tell they're not which is what's made this front line list so young. And as you can tell, they're not insignificant for an engine $650,000 in the latter. Outer truck's over a million. So they're significant. And so if we can avoid a cost, particularly if it's advancing another corporate purpose of hedging against a potential cost, I think it's something that makes a lot of pragmatic sense for us to think about how to handle that concern. Okay, at the last meeting, you all talked about the K9 unit for the police department and for the fire department and gave us direction to pursue putting together a strategy on an additional canine unit in police. So as we talked about there's essentially two segments of that cost. One And then the recurring cost of the one FTE benefits, supplies, uniforms, et cetera, $107,000 roughly. So assuming the Council still would like to pursue this particular item, the way that I've talked with Chief and Mike about how to handle this is that we would look at the one-time costs as non-general fund costs that we would ask the department to look through grants, donations, other types of ways to raise that up front, capital cost. I think there are a couple of very legitimate choices for the department to pursue in that way. And then on the recurring side, as you all know, in the budget, we made some rather notable adjustments to the base budget for the police department to take care of some things where we weren't really taking care of some base items that needed to be covered. And they've been making that work to a not insignificant difficulty. So this would be an offset against that breathing room essentially that we're providing which I think in the budget was about $426,000 or so. It will reduce that by about $106,000 but we just asked the chief to within the significant resources that he's got over $100 million to figure out based on vacancy levels, staffing ramp ups, as well as the adjustments to basically providing him to make that work within his budgetary context, and he indicates he can do that. So that would be the plan of action as it relates to implementing an additional canine unit if the council would like to do so. Ms. Walman. Okay, so you're saying that this will not impact the budget that the police department has now. I mean, it won't be a negative or something else won't be dropped because of this, but that you can add it into their budget or do you have to get the money somewhere else? I'm saying it maybe mostly is that case, but there is certainly an opportunity cost. So we're not increasing the dollars of the police department to be specific. There's a specific number that we put in the proposed budget. We're not suggesting that that reoccurring amount would increase that dollar amount. This is not new money going to the department. What I am saying is that the new money that is proposed in the budget, between that and the various other ways that the chief manages his budget on a day-to-day basis, that they will make that number work within that context. So no new dollars, particularly tied to this, but taking an allocation of the new dollars, they are getting in the budget, as well as budget management of $106 million a budget. That's what we're asking them to do to make this work to to to work with a council priority if that's what you all would like to do. But there are certainly opportunity costs that you could make a different $106,000 choice if you're the chief, for example, but that's, we're following the y'all's direction at this point on this topic. Charles budget. Well, I guess my question was, you know, is this, I hate to put you on the spot again, but is this the recommendation that, I mean, nobody will be dropped from the police budget that you had it. This is money that has not been allocated. Is that what I understand? You are increasing the police department budget this year. Yeah. They are getting an increase to their budget. Okay, but they have not. You're not getting a specific increase to the budget that covers this dollar. So they will have to rework the dollars we are giving them, which were non-specific in some ways because we're making the adjustments to base, electric bills, water bills, deferred things that we have not accurately budgeted for recent years that we really need to correct. So it's going to keep that constraint on. I'm not going to get the full relief of the $426,000 that'll be offset a bit by this adjustment. Okay. Mr. Gullispeak. Thank you, Mayor. Chief, would you mind? In our budget discussions last week, you indicated there was, if I understood correctly, that there was some specific benefits to the safety of our police officers, that a canine unit could provide. And also it sounded like we may be able to provide a little more in the way of safety capacity because of the things that dogs could do that humans couldn't do. Would you elaborate a little more on that if you don't? Yes sir. Yeah we'll jump into police chief. You know the use of the K9 is really to augment our response whenever we're looking for individuals who are the use of an animal is much more efficient than the number of people that it would be required to do the same task and oftentimes it can be done safer and faster with the animal. So some of the most pressing examples that you might see is the search of a large commercial building for an alarm that we might have received. It might take us literally hours with officers to search 125,000 square foot at night where an animal can do it relatively quickly. Additionally, if we're looking for an individual that is fleed from police and we've established a perimeter, a dog can help us locate the suspect or clear an area to determine whether the suspect is still there or not much faster than an officer could. And then of course, as the office is escalating, so does the officer's safety risk when looking for a suspect and unfamiliar territory. And so the animal can help at that point also. Dr. Myers. Thank you, Mayor. I guess my question I want to put to the larger issue of just the macro budget. In a sense that I've heard that there was deferrences being made, that have been made and that are being brought to bear this year, we're trying to make up for those things. And I'm trying to weigh the efficiency and effectiveness of what you just are eloquently talked about. A dog would provide that against what is that we are actually making up for that we have deferred in the past. And what, because I'm really worried about the choice that we'd have to make in order to get this. So could you give me a little bit about the larger deferrences that have been made and how that flexibility of the $426,000 will allow you to do some more of those things that make up for past. Honestly, what the manager has presented is something that we do on an annual basis. We constantly have challenges that exceed our budget and we have to be able to manage those budgetary challenges within the resources that we've been authorized And so over the years we've had a collection of some of the line items that have continued to grow And the adjustments of to base have not matched that growth And so the investment this year in particular was to to fund those adjustments to base to try to offer some relief For some things that are as simple as a light bill for the department, the water bill, but some things that are much more scientific like the growing forensic needs that the department is using. And so really what this solution authorizes is it authorizes me to fill an FTE position so that I can then match the resources I have to be able to address both the growing adjustments to the base issues but also feather in a K-9 at the time which is operationally feasible. If this option is selected there will not be a fourth K-9 unit that becomes operational October 1. I mean, but it does, though, as it gives me the flexibility to try to pursue some of the grants that are within the market to see if I can obtain one, then match it with the FTE and match it with the resources that I have. And last year, we passed on a K9 grant because I felt relatively comfortable that I could get the K9 grant. I couldn't get the FTE authorized outside the budgetary process and I couldn't address from a programmatic perspective what a K9 budget adjustment would look like. So honestly, this gives me the flexibility to pursue those grants to try to integrate opportunities that might become available. And then look at it from a programmatic perspective in future fiscal years in terms of what might adjustments might have to take place at that point in time. Mr. Parker, I'm going to ask you one question and it's going to solidify my position on this. Do you want an additional dog and FTE or do you want to utilize the funds in another place in your budget? Authorize me and FTE, please. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay, then we'll move back to Mr. Yeilverton here. One of the other items we were talking about was communication and how we are challenged across society really to explain a lot of the things that we're talking about today to our public and how you get the word out, etc. And so, Jay's team had put together a couple of suggestions for us to put some thought about and want to hit a few highlights. One is to specifically advance along the lines of the social media marketing, particularly as it relates to certain resources that you can do. Some increased efforts as it relates to YouTube and Facebook in particular as we could advance more of the push into the depths of the community, rather than just the surface of posting it to the city's website. We've identified and actually had a budget request in the budget for about $50,000, $50,000 that would do this thing. It was not one of the ones that was suggested, it was one of the deferrals in the back of the book. But should we proceed on with this, what we'd suggest to you is we look at it and funding it in two different ways. One is we did not fully program the budget we had a year in balance that we projected to kind of catch some of the smaller things that might come up such as this. So $25,000 from our year end balance, as well as an improving base that we're seeing in our unemployment claims, as the economy gets stronger, our claims against unemployment type actions aren't as robust and we've seen some lowering of those costs. So in those, taking those two adjustments would allow us to make some increased investment into our social media push. And then the other item that we'd suggest for you to think about in this area and we've just kind of for right now generally called it the the dream team advocacy program and that was picking up on some of the discussion we're hearing about from the council is how do we how do we arm our residents Who are engaged and and active and how we help them further tell the story In the city and so we found a couple cities that have similar type programs and there's a company that offers This type of service that you're able to get your, in this case, the Dream Team Group subscribed to, and you push the city's notices and messages to them. And then with very simple strokes, they're able to share that with their broader network. And I can have Jay maybe speak a little more detail to both these items, but it's projecting it to be a one-time set of costs of about $12,000 with a very modest $100 a month subscriber cost. It would require us to program some one-time dollars out of our un-unprogrammed dollars to make that happen. And then the other thing that I would highlight that we can use in both of these areas is increased coordination with the messaging as it relates to the CVB and chamber coordination in particular. And so there's two ways I would suggest that we would leverage some investments that we've made to do this. One with the CVB, you all know that we added some additional monies to Ronnie's budget that he had requested and we didn't really designate or earmark specifically which direction that needed to go. And so with this kind of interest, we'd start to nudge a little bit on in our contract negotiation that you all will see in September. Some particular language that we would like for them to be accountable for relative to talking about Arlington's news, if you will. And then in the chamber, I do think the deepening relationship there since Mr. Jacobson's come on board is only getting better. And as we talk about kind of our membership with them them those are the kinds of things that we're able to I think work through kind of some scoping if you will for lack of a better phrase of what we can do in coordination with Chamber of Commerce so I'll let Jay add a little more communications color to this just a little bit if he's around as particularly on the the dream team side and then we'll get your direction on how you'd like to pursue these items. Jay Warren, the marketing communications manager for the city. In particular, we know our universe. I know how many followers I have on Facebook and how many followers we have on Twitter. And what we always are trying to do is grow that or expand it and reach more people that may not even be aware that the city communicates at all. And so this dream team advocacy program really will enable us to do that. Anyone can sign up for it and they get a weekly email and they just, all they have to press a button that says, I want to share this story on my Facebook page. Now we're expanding the universe. So these are people that haven't always followed us but they'll see in their feed, and we'll start hopefully growing that out. And if they see content that they like, that they find interesting, or they find useful to their lives, hopefully then they'll start following us, and we'll see our following numbers go up as well. So we see this as a modest investment that could actually make a big difference. And I've talked to some of my colleagues in the area that have just started this and there are also, I think, very interested in the possibilities that it presents. On the YouTube advertising and so forth, the numbers are undeniable on the return of investment. There's a small amount of money per video that can take it from a couple hundred views to tens of thousands of views. So the ROI on that is truly, we've proven that out over the past couple of years. It is undeniable. Well, this is a remarkable program, I think, because communication to our citizens and getting input back from them, I think is just a very, very high priority here as we move forward. And that's always got to be a priority in our communications world is changing all the time and I think we've got to respond to it. I think this is a great investment here but I'd love to hear from you all. What do you all think? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I'm frankly I'm to see it's as low as it is to be able to get what we've got. That's a great return. Thank you. And then lastly, I'll call or almost lastly, next to lastly, I'll call Buzz Pishka up here following up Mr. Glassbees discussion as it relates to kind of the reasons and narrative around the water discussion. So he's got something he's passing around, but I know he can elaborate a little bit more on what the drivers are and what the offsets have been to do cost containment in the water department. Mayor, Council, City Manager, Buzz Pishker, Director of Water Utilities. As I walked up here, I was thinking there's been times in my life when I had to talk about utility rates that I would have loved to have been last on the agenda and hopefully everybody was asleep. That's not the case today. And I just wanted to share with you some information that maybe we'll give you and our residents some perspective. And again, this is a breakdown, not of our total cost of the, but this is a breakdown of the rate increase that we're requesting and where it's being allocated and what's driving that request. I'll tell you one thing you don't see and that's a pie chart section for the Arlington Water Utilities Department. Other than the debt, operating costs, and I'll kind of round back to this, we've been doing a lot of good work and you've supported some initiatives we put in place which reduce costs. This is where they come to bear for the benefit of our residents. The green pie chart that's noted up there, debt service, that is our cost, that is part of our rate increase. And as you can see, a significant part of it. And what that should mean to all of us, including our residents, is we're investing money back in your water utility and wastewater utility system. And I think that's a positive. As you know, we've talked about capital budgets and recapitalizing and upgrading our infrastructure so that it can serve us both today and into the future. And that's kind of an indicator of where the money, the going that we're asking our residents for. You can also see the different pieces. I'll answer any questions you may have related to those. This chart is a breakdown of how the average residential bill that we send out is calculated. And you'll notice that the water part of the water bill is only about 36% of the total. As you can see, there's different pieces and parts. All of those, I believe, are appropriate fees, but they are included on the bill. So when you hear someone talk about G. My water bills $78, really, their water bills $ 20 some dollars and their sewer bills something and their garbage is something and then their storm water bill is something that all adds up to 78 dollars. So I think that's an important message again for all of us to kind of ponder. This graph I'm really proud of because as I stand before you, I can tell you that we have increased our maintenance expenditures and activities dramatically over the last four years. You already know that we significantly increased our investment in our system. We talked about ozone a year ago and as you know, we have some extraordinary capital budgeting plans for the future. This is a comparison not done by the City of Arlington, but done by a third party. And what this represents to you is this. If you look at by, by, the way, we're comparing ourselves now, our rates should you approve what we've requested for in the budget compared to our, what I'll call competitors last year's rates. And as you see, if in fact we put in place the rate request anticipated, we would move from the low cost provider to the second low cost provider. But the magic is in the numbers. The difference between us and being back to number one is 21 cents a month. I would suggest to you that's one tenth or one half of one percent. And my sense is that probably that community will have some increase in their water utility rates this year so that we will move right back to the inviolable position of being a low cost provider in this survey Despite the investment we're making in the community and again That's not an easy task typically because we are recapitalizing our utility the last slide I have for you is Unfortunately, we talk about initiatives and pieces and parts But sometimes we don't have the ability to put them all together and say what are we really accomplishing. We've talked about in the past about principle forgiveness in house design, credit card fees, which is the convenience fee we just put in place, the warranty program. This is where those things hit and benefit our residents, those are the cost reductions that have accrued to each calendar year by those initiatives. And as you can see, some of those move out year to year so they provide a benefit on an ongoing basis. The top line, which I didn't put in dollars and cents for you is compliment means staffing. And unlike some of the people that we deal with that provide services to us, I think you'll see that we've reduced 25 staff positions in the last five years. I will tell you we are doing more than we have done traditionally. We're doing it with less positions because I think we're focusing our capital investment to grow our costs, reduce main breaks, reduce over time, we're buying equipment and equipping our people with knowledge and stuff so they can work better, smarter. And I think this is where it comes home. So by the way, if you took that number and you accrued $50,000 labor, you know, salary and benefits per person, that would equate to $1.25 million of avoided costs that we didn't have to ask our residents for. So, what I hoped is these will give everybody who's watching including Council some perspective on the things that are going on day to day that sometimes taken in pieces in parts don't seem to me a lot but when you put them all together they have significant impact on the rates we charge and the kind of preserve us we provide which I believe is at a high level and we're doing it in a very cost effective way. With that I will take any questions you may have. Any questions from council? I think not, Mr. Fisher. Thank you. And then the last item I have for the Council is a little bit of the thought. Ms. Thalman's question as it relates to the kind of line item detail as it relates to civil service breakdown. And so we have it up here on the screen but I've also put it on a one-pager that's at your place. It might be a little easier to read. And you all have heard us talk about these costs. You've heard it kind of fall into kind of two main buckets, but really five buckets, four of those are positions. Senior attorney, a paralegal coordinator and an assistant. So you see there the expected salary for those positions, the associated benefits. With one item in particular under the HR coordinator, you see $25,000 listed out that covers the recruiting, testing and exam materials. And then you see on the other side, the fire department requests as it relates to the need to offset hiring, the change in hiring process. When you look at the overall total cost of that plus the revenue loss on that change at number of $756,000. One of the things that is important to note that I think actually might help some of our future discussion, which Mike filled me in today on is that of that amount, it actually comes at of two separate funds not one fund So we're pulling $580,000 out of the General fund and 175,000 comes out of the liquidated damages Fund that's been in that way for a number of years and so What what we can do as we continue our discussion on this down the road What what we can do as we continue our discussion on this down the road Is the the offset target that we've been looking for of 756 I think if we keep the money that's been allocated in the liquidated damages fund comparable Then we're able to lower that to 580 What we've what I what we've done is double counted the liquidated damages amount It's in the journal fund counted the liquidated damages amount. It's in the general fund and the liquidated damages fund. So it gives us a little bit of flexibility as it relates to that number that we're hitting in the positive way. So that's a little bit of, I think, good news there. That said, I know we really were going to plan to kind of go into a broader civil service discussion, but given the fact that we've run so late today and you know that we've lost our mayor I think it might be good for us to do that at our next meeting, but To the degree that you would like to give us any feedback so when we come back and we provide you the detail that you have kind of inquired about Then we'll be more on target so If if I could kind of wrap any questions about this line item detail as well as anything specifically you'd like us to weave into the updated civil service discussion we'll do that in our next council meeting. Yes, Mr. Shepherd. Trey, kind of along the lines of what you and I talked about earlier, I think if we could I'm not sure if you can see that. I'm not sure if you can see that. I'm not sure if you can see that. I'm not sure if you can see that. I'm not sure if you can see that. I'm not sure if you can see that. I'm not sure if you can see that. I'm not sure if you can see that. I'm not sure if you can see that. I'm not sure if you can see that. I'm not sure if into small edible portions, specifically helping us understand better what we can't do. I think for me what's problematic is kind of the, here's what 143 says, here's what you do now, and then the ideas tend to get conflated together, and I don't think any of us have a real clear understanding and then the ideas tend to get conflated together. And I don't think any of us have a real clear understanding of here's what you can't do, so talk about what you can. So I don't, and I know you guys in Carri and particular, Lisa, that spent hundreds of hours probably trying to help us better understand it and I apologize for us not getting it after being told for six months what was coming but in any event hopefully that'll help us come to resolution. Mr. Parker. Mr. Parker. Thank you, Trey. If we could also have a breakdown of what civil service benefits are that are indigenous only to civil service and then what the current benefits package is that is above and beyond part 143, I would appreciate that breakdown. Thank you. Miss Myers. Mr. Hamilton, if I could also have on the in particular, the sick leave, I would really like to know the number of employees that are above the 1440 currently. And those that because the 1080 reset, I'm just interested in the number that will be above the number that will be below. So we have a sense of how much the department is being affected by the decisions that Mr. Shepard is suggesting that we make. Any other questions? From Mr. Yeoverton? Thank you, Mr. Yeoverton. Thank you all. Mr. Yelverton. Thank you all. And council, we're going to join the afternoon unless there's anything else. Nope. We're going to join the afternoon session and meet back here at 6.30. Thank you. you