I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to and call the afternoon session. Okay. We're going to go ahead and call the afternoon session. Okay. We're going to go ahead and call the afternoon session. Okay. We're going to go ahead and call the afternoon session. We're gonna go ahead and call the afternoon session to order. It is 11.49 a.m. on December 17th, 2024. And we're going to go ahead and go into a closed session pursuant to VTCA government code chapter 551.071.0.0.8.7 and 0.072. you. you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to back to order. Welcome everybody. We're going to move on down to 3.1. Miss Nixon, you have a guest you want to introduce us to? Thank you mayor, April Nixon, CFO. Today we have as a visitor, Joe Don Bobbot, who is the new chief of prazer at the Terrent appraisal district. He came to us in February of this last year. And so he's new to the system and making lots of changes and that sort of thing. So we thought he could come and brief you on those. So thank you. Mr. Bobbitt, come on up. Good afternoon. My name is Joe Don Bobbitt. I'm the new chief of prazer for Tarrant and Priscilla District. We've been trying to make the rounds. Visit with all the different entities asking you questions or answering questions you all may have as far as the governing bodies. And so we've met with most of the cities in a couple of schools. And so if there's ever anything that you all want questions or have answers to, I'm more than happy to come back out and address anything that you'll have questions regarding whether it be values or anything else. And at any time, if you'll have questions about what I'm going over, please stop me. I'll go over to'all too much. The Board of Directors, the election just happened and basically was finalized last night and so we have two new members and then we'll have three returning. I can go over the names if you're curious. You may already be aware but the main role for the Board of Directors is the higher and farther cheaper praiser. Select a board chair and secretary. adopt the reraisal plan, our budget, approve any contracts, appoint a tax payer liaison officer, and appoint an appraisal review board members. This is the current board members through December 31st. So come January 1st, the new members will have to be appointed and sworn in and then they'll take office. The reappraisal plan, this is what kind of has made the news most recently. The Board of Directors has, they made motions to direct me to not reappraise for 2025. So the values from 24 will be carried over for residential. Most of the changes they made were directly regarding residential properties. And so the residential values from 2024 will roll forward until 2025 and 26 and then we'll reappraise again in 2027. 2025 is a property value study year for us. And so the state comptroller's office will come in and look at all of our numbers and make sure that we are plus or minus 5% is what they're looking for. If we get outside of 14.5%, then the schools lose funding or potentially lose funding. The benefits to the plan deal with potentially reducing the number of protest. We've gone from, you know, decades ago, is 40,000 protest total to well over 200,000 at this point. A lot of that is more so tied in with as values and taxes increase, the number of protests increase with it. This isn't just a tarant, a praise district problem. This is across the state. As values have gone up, the number of protests have gone up drastically. We're hoping that by doing the re-apraisal plan every two years years going forward people will only have to come in and see us once every other year. So it may give people a break on the off year that we don't reapprise is kind of the thought. And so that will provide additional stability to the taxpayers. And so they won't have to come in and argue with us every year. They'll come into what to expect. It does have limited impact on staff workloads. So one of the thoughts was that if we had to re-appraise every other year it may reduce our workload, maybe our staff requirements. The amount of analysis that we do that actually goes into our re-appraising is really limited to maybe a two week to four week period where we actually look at sales, do the analysis, and make all the final changes of the values. So most of the time the appraisers are actually out in the field looking at permits, looking at new construction, and they're trying to make sure that what's on the ground actually matches what we have in the system. And so that work will still be done. The other half of the year, we're kind of dealing with appeals and protests protest so it's limited on how much it'll save us on manpower. On the process change we are trying to focus more on customer experience this year we we got the average wait time down to 15 minutes if you came into the office to protest prior to that there were stories of it being two to four hours just on a routine basis and so the staff had a lot of good ideas on changes to the process and they made a lot of improvements. We did have a higher protest settlement rate this year. And so I know some of the staff had brought that up as far as compared to years past. It looked like we had lowered the value more during the protest season that we had in past years. Some of that was due to ransomware, not directly because of it, because of the time we kind of compressed our timeline. We wanted to make sure that we certified on time as required by state law. And so the staff were kind of given the directive to be a little more lenient with the taxpayers. If they have a decent argument, go ahead and agree with them, get close, but we're not trying to give away the farm, But at the same time, if it's close, don't need to send with ARB in a formal hearing. A lot of the... go ahead and agree with them, get close, but we're not trying to give away the farm, but at the same time, if it's close, don't need to send a they are being a formal hearing. A lot of that had to do. We also wanted to reduce wait times. There was a pretty big demand from the public to be easier on the taxpayers and be less of an impact. Repeat protests will be difficult to settle. So if people came in last year and protested, if we don't raise the values, if they come in again next year, we may not have a lot of room to negotiate with them where we don't raise the values, if they come in again next year, we may not have a lot of room to negotiate with them where we have in the past. So if people are coming in year after year, the second year they may be disappointed that we can't give them a 10% reduction in value. We're also pushing a lot of people to our website. We've enhanced that quite a bit, so now you have a dashboard. We've had in the past, but we're really trying to push people to that where you can see your evidence, you can see our evidence, you can upload information, you can rescale your protest, and we're trying to make it easier on the taxpayer, which everything's there available for them. We've had quite a few personnel changes since 2023. I'm here. We created the deputy role which is William Durham, the owner of Raise Your Hand William. So we now have a deputy chief of prazer. He's also the commercial director. And then we have new department directors for commercial department, residential, business personal property, information services and administration. So most of our staff directors have changed out since last year. A praisell software. There's been a decade of problems with existing software. We were the only county in the state to use this system. It was the kind of the beta system. It was kind of a failed professional service agreement. And it never, we never had the money to finish developing it to get it to where it needed to be. And so what we're doing, we're moving to another product called True Prodigy. There are 25 other clients that are on it, other counties that are using it. It's only been around for about seven years, but it's rapidly growing. They grow about four or five counties every year. It's by far the best on technology standpoint. It's designed and made for the cloud. That way, if anything happens to us again and rent somewhere, it's in a separate environment where it isn't likely to be attacked the same as if our system is. It's not a beta product. They've already deployed to this in Travis County, Montgomery County, and Dent County. And so they have a good history of rapid deployments and large counties. Recent tech upgrades because of the ransomware, as bad as that is, it kind of gave us a justification to upgrade our technology. We were probably 10 years behind at least in some areas. We had, there were some computers that were really, really old, like 10 to 15 years old. We still had, I forget, one is XP on the system that was actually being still being used. So we switched to Microsoft 365. We upgraded our phone system. We just received and installed our new desktop PCs. We now have a new firewall system, NVPM. We're using multi-factor authentication to log in. We have updated new antivirus and anti-rancine wear products. We actively monitor our network and all of our equipment. We started doing email fish testing, so we send fake emails to the staff to try to get them to click on things. They shouldn't click on. And then we sign them up for additional training. And most of our systems have been moved into the cloud to kind of separate. We kind of have everything is siloed now. So the phone system is not in our building. It's cloud-based. The appraisal system will be cloud-based. We're trying to separate everything. So if anything, does get compromised, it doesn't spread to all the other systems, like this last incident. The homestead audit, this is a new requirement from the legislature from five years ago, or they required it, I believe last session. And it requires that we re audit all homesteads in a five year period. And so our current process is that we mail, we take the county, we divide it up into columns. And so the far left column, 20% of the county, based on area, we mailed home state applications to all those property owners, all those homesteads. And we're having them reapply within, with a paper application essentially. And so what we're looking to do, or what the board is authorized, we're moving to a product called TrueRoll. So instead of doing 20% of the county each year, we're gonna audit the entire county every year. And so instead of us just mailing you a letter and hoping you reply to it and update it gives us the same information you've already given us, this will actually flag properties that are more than likely ineligible. So it'll flag if you have based on voter registration, vehicle registration, there's your property shown up on a rental website, mail and address change. There's a lot of different reasons that it'll flag it, or if it shows that you're on the master death file. There's a lot of different reasons that it'll flag a property, and the more flags we see, then those will be the priorities that we have, those people reapply. It'll also do the inverse. So there's a lot of people, especially in the Spanish community, that they own the property. It's in their name. They have a driver's license and matches. And they should qualify. But they don't fill out the letter either because they don't understand what we're sending them. Or they're afraid to come deal with the government organization. And so we can target those people more specifically, say that we have four or five indicators that say, you actually qualify. actually qualify, out. Right now, the law requires us to, anybody that the mailing address matches the physical property address, we send them a home state application every year. And so it's just a mass blanket, we mail probably 15,000 of those every year for their address matches, and they don't currently have a homestead. So this allow us to target them a little better with the little more, we can reach out in different languages and stuff and try to get their attention, hopefully. It also provides a vetting process. So when new applicants, when they buy a house, they'll be able to do an online application. As they enter their driver's license information, it'll read their driver's license and go ahead and pre-fill their application with their address. It'll tell them right off the bat, if your driver's license does not match your homestead, then you're not eligible for the homestead, and you have to go get that fixed with the DPS. And also notify them if any other uncleaned exemptions they might be eligible for. Litigation history, we have roughly 1,800 lawsuits per year. So these are primarily commercial properties that it's really in their best business sense to go ahead and sue us every year. Because I mean, they're talking quite a bit of money for their property tax. And so they can spend a couple thousand dollars to take the risk and try to get their property tax burden or lowered. And so a lot of them do every year, they just repeat customers. Our staff does an outstanding job. We get it down to about $834 per lawsuit. And I don't think you've ever been sued. We've been involved in lawsuit to get $834 on average is extremely cheap to handle a lawsuit. 99% get resolved without having to go to trial. So the litigation department and Williams over here, you can come up with him. He's got some other stats, but they handle most of these things and try to come to a mutually agreeable solution with the taxpayer that everybody can kind of live with. That William Durham, nice to be here today. I'm going to jump around since we're segwaying straight into the cost. And let you all know that our counties that are similar in size to tarant. Bear County averages 1279, Collin County 1945, and again I'm speaking on a per case basis, just like that. Harris County 1562, Travis 1773, and then there's Dallas. They have an unusual rate at less than $300 per case due to an old arrangement with one law firm that's about to expire. So I expect that they're going to enter into our stratosphere as far as legal cost. If we at Turner Prasal District spent the average of bear, colon, Harris, and Travis, that would be $1465 a suit, which would mean an additional 1.1 of TAD budget needed to participate, defend. We're never the plaintiff. We're always the defendant to defend ourselves in these district court cases. So I believe that in general we do a great balancing act of considering the budget, the downside, the downside of the courtroom, what can happen to you in the courtroom regarding attorney's fees. The legislature has set it up where we would be on the hook for the plaintiff's attorney's fees if they were to prevail, but not likewise. If we prevail, we getraisal District in in 0708 we were at around 500. That number went to 6,700, 9,1100, and right around 1100, this one I retired the first time. And then I came back and it grew to about 13,1415. You know, there's about 40 billion of property value. That's an litigation. Good news for the city of Arlington. For 2024 cases, that number is a little over 4 billion. So typically Arlington's caseload compared to our total caseload is usually in the 11 to 15% window. But this is typical Dallas County. When I, Dallas Central appraisal district was at around 1,200 lawsuits when I started they're at about 3500. We could say the same for Travis and Bayer and other urban districts. This is not, it's not unusual. The amount of reduction that as a snapshot 2020 through 2023, those four tax years, the suits that involved property in the city of Arlington, there was a 14.3% reduction in terms of where the final litigation settlement ended up. And I can say since 2007, Terrance Reduction Aggregate County-wide has always been in the 9 to 16 percent range. And again, if we check with our peer appraisal districts in similar size metro counties, you'll find similar numbers. Good news on the 2024 suits, 64 of the 236 of them are already closed out at just 10.58% aggregate reduction. This doesn't necessarily mean we're better this year. This means that the more reasonable, easier to swallow, lawsuit settlements, typically occur first, and the more difficult protracted ones, or the ones that often bump that little percentage up. But again, we are certainly normal. I think three of our last five big lawsuits were basically Arlington Highland Shopping Center multiple years. Same property, just different tax year. I refer to them as our old friend. So other than that, that's kind of a high level on litigation and I'm going to actually have to duck out of here shortly, but the chief will have my contact information. I have to speak at a celebration of life this afternoon. So it's not the present company. I just have something else I have to do. Yes, sir. Yep. I have some concerns about TAD these days. You know, Arlington budgeted for a residential property tax increase at 5% over the next two years, a very conservative estimate. And now that's gone. I've also noted a massive drop in valuations on commercial properties. It looks like TAD is laying down on a lot of lawsuits and giving in to commercial property owners and giving them historically large tax breaks because I'm told TAD believes they're slack in the commercial property tax system that needs to be let out and taken up. That is led to the fact that the city of Arlington on TAD actions alone is facing a $21 million budget deficit next year that we're gonna have have to cut services to Arlington, Arbays, taxes. That's a real impact on the city of Arlington. And I don't necessarily thank settling lawsuits as the best way to go, especially when it comes to commercial property owners. They have powerful legal departments that are dedicated to driving their burden of tax down as hard as possible and every time they win it raises the tax burden on residents. All right. So I just have real concern about what's going on over at TAD because it sounds like somebody has taken it upon themselves to force every single government entity in Tarant County to institute massive budget cuts. And that's okay if it's done gradually over time, but the jerk that carpeted out from under a city like Arlington who conservatively budgets and is very proud of its conservative budget and the fact that we have decreased the tax rate here for years and years and years until just recently, that's not okay. And I really wish you would take back to your board the fact that these actions which may be in abstract and theory sound good have practical applications that hurt people and hurt cities and school districts. And I really wish you wouldn't settle as many lawsuits against commercial property owners. I wish you'd fight them more, the community to tax them at a higher rate, so that we can be more gentle on our residential property owners who are suffering from high property values themselves. And I know I don't expect you to have an answer to this, but I appreciate you listening to my concerns And I'd like you to take that message back to your board and tell them exactly what I said Because next next year when we're trying to cut city budget in Arlington $21 million We're going to be thinking about you and Tad and what you did and how it directly affected us and it's not going to feel good I just wanted to share that all right, I appreciate those comments. There's two topic matters there. One, I can speak to, which is litigation. The chief can speak to where values are going and the 5% conservative estimate. But I will say, I was the litigation manager from 2010 through 2020 until 2022. And all 12 and a half seasons of that litigation, which involved about 9,000 lawsuits, every reduction was in the 9 to 16 percent range on aggregate Every year had a range. So there's nothing new there. We didn't magically jump to 30% or 20% or 18%. It's always been in this range. I did a calculation for four years put together, which is 2021. I'm sorry. I don't think I do have that. But I will say so, there's been no change there. Now, there's been a change in the number of suits. And again, that statewide, we've gone from 500 to 1800 over a 14-year period. Again, Dallas Travis Bayer. They also have. We have taken commercial property all the way to and through the fact finder, the bench, judge or the jury themselves. And the last time we did that, it cost $140,000. So at $834 a suit, it's a marked difference. If we did that on 20% of our cases, we would be coming to the good folks at all of the cities and school districts saying that our budget, instead of being around 30 million, needs to be around 50 million. And I don't think that's anything anybody wants to hear. But there is a balancing act. It's not a perfect science. But I will back up and say this. What's being litigated are opinions, not facts. And that's a very difficult subject matter to fair it out, to come out in the wash. So they get to have an opinion as well. And I will tell you on experience around the state, the human tendency for a judge or a jury tends to be to split the difference and perhaps go 10 to 20% in the way of the more credible, more credible party, whether it was the plaintiff or the defendant or 10 or 20% the other way for the opposite party. And they know that, we know that, know we act accordingly. Sir, I'm sorry. Are you a trial lawyer? No, sir. Well, you have two of them sitting here in front of you today that will call BS on those kind of comments. Now listen, let me just say in respect to property tax. Not real world. I'm saying with respect to litigation here. I'm just talking about. I understand that y'all are simply carrying out the directives of the board. I get it. But these directives, just like the city of Arlington, our city manager carries out the directives of this council. But it's prudent upon this council to listen to our city manager and our deputy city managers and our department heads because they know more than we on a lot of these things. The same thing holds true with TAD. Y'all are the experts. We need y'all to be standing up and explaining to the board what will work and not work. And what we're doing right now simply is not working. Mr. Bobbitt, you just explained to us that the directions were made that were given in essentially on the appraisals. We're getting them settled quickly. What I'd like to know is how much money Tarant County has lost in doing that since those directions came out because I can tell you right now the city of Arlington, just this past year and what we're going through right now, we've lost $21 million. That we have to work collectively together to figure out where we're going to come up with $21 million or what services we have to cut. we have to explain to our constituents why they're not getting all of the streets repaired, why they're not getting the police or the fire equipment out there as need be because we are not getting the monies from the county. You know, Texas only has a two-legged stool by which we can make money, property and sales tax. We don't have income tax. And our own county is cutting one of those legs out from underneath us. its it's frustrating as hell. And it needs to be changed. And I hope this newly elected board understands the importance of going back and fixing this. Having no appraisals till 27, is that what I'm hearing? For residential. For residential. Is that something that you would advise the Tad Board to do, Mr. Bobbitt? It's not what we recommended. It's not what the executive director recommends to the board, but the board insists that we're not doing any appraisals on residential properties till 27. Let me tell you something. If my city manager came up here and recommended something like that, and I was like, let's do this, this council would have my neck. And they should. So I hope you stand in front of that tab board and explain to them that you're the one that had to come here and answer these questions. I don't fault you for doing what you're doing, sir. I appreciate what you're doing. I really do. And I apologize to you for the frustration in my voice, but that tab board board needs to get their act together and they need to listen to the damn experts and that's y'all. Mr. Hogg. Yeah thank you Mayor and to my two colleagues thank you for what you said. You're exactly right on on this and apologize to you guys. There is some frustration We're we realize some of the you know the hard work we do to run a really tight budget and all of a sudden It makes it look like we can't manage our budget from this perspective. I've had to go through a riff I've laid off 5% of a population before there's nothing worse on a vote So if you see some frustration, that's where we're coming. And then I'm all for, we see your budget going up, that's okay, that happens. If it had to go up more to get some more appraisal, then I would understand that. But let me commend you for coming, for showing up here. Mr. Bobbitt, Arri says a lot about you, that you're going to be here and talk with us because I can tell you I've served a long time and I don't think I had absolutely. Bob, it already says a lot about you that you're going to be here and talk with us because I can tell you I've served a long time and I don't think I had another tax appraisal, appraisers come in to me. So just from that stance, I think everyone would say thank you for coming and hearing our frustration because it helps you do your job better and we fully understand that. So I really appreciate it. As folks were running for the board and we start hearing and there's some of those folks that didn't get elected that are working really hard and and boy let me tell you they go to more pre-sale board meetings than I would ever want to go to no offense to your appraisal board from that. But they talked a lot about quality and accuracy of the appraisals. Can you help me understand what you're doing? And you mentioned a little bit in your slides to really increase the accuracy of appraisals. Because if we're not reviewing every three years that's pros now, how is the accuracy going to increase to make sure we're getting the exact right? Because there were some claims that accuracy was pretty far off. In the meantime, there wouldn't be much we do regarding the accuracy at least for residential properties. For commercial personal property, we can still affect those. If there's new construction permits or We're sales we can we can look at those properties, but we're very limited on which ones we can Kind of correct. And so there will be an accuracy, or at least an equity potential problem. Okay. Okay, that makes me nervous. Then let me ask, maybe I just don't understand this on the residential, and what percent is residential versus commercial and Terren County? County Wad, I believe it's like 56 to 60%. Which side? Residential is the majority, 56, okay. And so with that, on a multi-end listen, every single person in this room is a homeowner, right? None of us, we wanna pay our fair share, we don't wanna pay more than our fair share of taxes. On that increase, you know, you're capped by the state at 5% increase, 10% is a project. So over three years, if it waits, would that then be a 30% potential increase? Help me understand that. I haven't heard a good clarification of that. That was my original understanding. The board's attorney explained that it's really is 10% from the last year of his reapprace. So if we waited three years, we can only go up 10% over 2026. So from the 24 appraisal, it will only then be a 10% increase when it eventually happens in 27 again, correct? For the appraised value, for the appraised value. So the market will still go up to what of the market it is, but if they have a homestead, it has a limitation on value. It has a limitation. And so when the legislature passed that, I think they assumed they were every year increases. So do we think there'll be some legislation change? Because the reality in the world of school finance, they're on formula funding. So if their funding goes down from the local property tax, the state cost has to go up. And so then it's going to put the state on more of a pinch for some budgetary process from where it is because school districts don't have a ton of incentive to increase tax rates. That limit our tax values, let me say that. From that perspective, so do you think, and as y'all are preparing for this legislative session, Senator Bedincourt, who's kind of the tax, I don't know what to call him, the tax subvant, who understands and works on that more than anyone, do you think there is legislation that will be coming to potentially change this to once a year because of some of those pieces of like a 10% like you just said, they can only happen now every three years. There's been discussion, but I don't know exactly what they would introduce. I haven't seen anything filed yet. So I would suspect something, but I don't know if it'll gain traction. Yeah, I appreciate that. And I'd ask my colleagues and our government relations team that we need to be monitoring and making sure we have that. I think that is in our legislative agenda, but make sure we really and also work with you from that perspective. Because Mr. Bob, I think what's going to happen is multiple. We're not the only city that is in this bind right now. And so now what seems like a really good concept and idea has a lot of bad ramifications and it could be layoffs across all of Tarrant County, which helps a county as a whole in a really bad situation from that. I do think the legislature will help some of the schools, but there are risks and some risk of their present value that's going to hear real risk for for what they're doing. So once again, I commend you for being here. Sorry for our frustration, but it's not going to end until we get all this figured out. So appreciate it. Yes, Mr. Bam. Thank you, Mr. Bobbitt. And thank you, Mr. Durham, coming in and speaking this today. I got a question, Mr. Bobbitt. give me the list of the five people that got elected? It was Mr. Alfred, Ms. Burgess, Mr. Campos, Ms. Pena, and Mr. Blaylock. Okay. Now, the system is broken. I stated that last week. And the law needs to be changed, and the only people can change that is I'll let you stay towards it and stay in Texas. They need to do it quickly. Because like yesterday, Berthview School revoked it again the second time. So they can get certain individual more vote. See, is it right? No. Is it legal? Yes, because the law allowed to do that. And also too, for a lot of council members, all the city and in town county, all tax entities, that appointes the tat board of directors, they've been doing over and over the year. So we got nobody to blame but ourselves because we keep, keep, put the same people. When you wreck the mandem this year, don't do it. And they told me, they say they do it free for three years. So we are on West Enemy, the elected official of all the city in town county. See, we should look at ourselves before they criticize both of you. And, you know, that's why they need to change the law. Also, the people that on their list that have cheated on the homestead exemption. And now that individual might be sitting on the tad boar, you cheat the taxpayers. Now you sit there and manage my tax dollars. You know, we need to recall that individual, but I don't know how many council members belong to all the city, belonging to town county have the guts to recall the individual. We need to start doing that. We need to send the message, the message allowing clear that we don't tolerate cheater. Now, they can be convicted because it's that limitation right now. See, so we are on West Enemy, but then sometime we blame you guys. Now, you're not at fault. The board directors are the one that cost all these promfers. That's why last week and last year, I won't know because we keep putting the same people in there and they want to cause a problem you know and I wish sometime my colleague would agree with me but I'm I find a battle alone I will cave because I can do what's right for my constituent in the taxpayer of Olinton in the Ten County taxpayer so Also, I get another question for you about the Al county tax payer. So, also I got another question for you. About the aligned corridor, what's the value commissary with the dented value of like properties? Can you explain that? That I'm not super familiar with. Okay. So if you can get that answer me later, that's fine. But that, like again, we had a problem. I pay taxes. And I don't mind to pay taxes. And I challenge before sometimes they drop a little bit of some time I lost. But then the day I don't have a problem because we need to pay tax it to note we have to fix the road Take care of the hospital take care of the community college all the stuff we pay as you go our tax and I'm okay to pay my fair share Okay, and I do apologize that you can beat up today You guys shouldn't deserve that because you all didn't make that decision. The boy of the directive made that decision that caused the problem. So maybe next year, I will encourage my colleague deep down inside, look at the individual, the people that, oh, you don't have a chance to win. Oh, we can talk to each other differently. They vote again. They don't like it, all I want is this person to get more vote. That's what the problem with this system is broken and with the state of the state that fixed that. And I would encourage my car to contact all the state of the state that you have to have them to change the law and fix that that can help the 10 counter-praise district and help all the city and town counting everybody in Texas. Thank you, sir. Mr. Gonzalez. Thank you, Mayor. Gentlemen, thank you for being here. It's been tough for all of us, and I'm sorry you haven't go through this, but it means a lot for you to both be here. I know Mr. Hogg was also on the school board while I was on the ban a school board, but we did have Mr. Lawler come in here before. And so you're the second ones since I've been here. It's important that we get this corrected. I mean, as you can see our frustration, I don't want to say the same things everybody said, but being involved in this in the Tad Board for 2010, I have seen some of the changes that have happened. I'm glad some changes have happened, but we need to continue. but we need to continue. But like the mayor said, you've got to stand up for us also. You know, I don't think we're going to get much help from Austin. Austin's in the same direction. In fact, I used to think that I was more worried about D.C. than anything else, but I'm more worried about Texas, how we're losing a lot of local control. And this is part of it. So all we ask is please go back. And in fact, I'm really surprised you didn't bring a board member last time we had, when Mr. Lauren came out here, a board member came up here and she heard what we had to say, but it was not like this. I wish we had said what we said today back then, but thank you for doing what you're doing. And like I said, we've got to keep working together. There's going to be a lot of frustration and like I said, when people start losing their jobs and people start pointing fingers at city council, it's not us. It's all of us as a team and we all have to work together. And all we're doing is hurting the state of Texas and we've got to start fixing this together. So thank you gentlemen. Yes sir. Mr. Bobbitt, I'm afraid we got sidetracked from your presentation. Would you like to finish? Well, I think it's my good last laugh. Never mind. I think those last slide. Oh, OK. Where is that? Was that a thank god I'm on the last slide? But I will say like to your question as far as Mr. Peel, if there's numbers that you want us to look into, I'm more than happy to look into it. I did a cursory comparison between our preliminary numbers, our total values from 23 and compare that to 24 and they looked in the same ballpark. And so if you're looking at something that shows that we gave up a significantly greater number, then we had in prior years, I would be more than happy to look at that, but I'd like to see what your numbers, your numbers, your numbers are coming from. Yeah, I think we can provide that to you. It has to do with big multi-family developers in large grocery store chains and other entities like that appear to have a greater decrease in property values, taxable values than they have in the past. We'll get you that information. I appreciate you asking me for that. Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. I have a sneaky suspicion, gentlemen, that y'all are probably every bit as frustrated as we are. You don't have to agree with me it's okay I understand. I do apologize you sort of I've joked earlier about you coming into the lion's den but you sort of did and it was a courageous thing where you came in here and was willing to answer the questions and deal with all of us like this. I appreciate that tremendously. I wish everybody would have that kind of decency. So thank you both for doing that. I have a question, Mayor. Yes, Dr. Odom Wesley, thank you. Thank you. And I would add my appreciation to having you here as well, and information that you've provided. You made a statement questioning quality and accuracy of the tax valuations. So it sounds to me like there's a lack of confidence in the process that the way we value properties, whether it's residential or commercial, we can't seem to justify the valuation so that we settle lawsuits rather than not settling and say, yes, this is the proper and appropriate value and we stand on that. So I guess my question is, do we audit the process, have we updated the process? Or maybe what even is the process? How do you come up with valuation so that we still have a question about quality and accuracy? It's several aspects. We do mass appraisal, and so we're looking at high level information about a property. Most people don't want us to come out and actually get to know their property. They typically don't go inside unless they invite us inside, and that's rare. So we're limited on the amount of data that we have about a property, and it's a non-disclosure state. So we have limited sales that we can have access to, but we're trying to come up with market value. Once we determine that market value, we're doing 650,000 residential properties all at one time, using schedules and statistics. And so we know that there's a level of inaccuracy built in, that's just part of Massopraisal. And so we're trying to value more emphasis is put on a high number of properties and getting done by July 25th than being super accurate. Because even if we were more and more accurate, the problem is it's still an opinion. And so I have an opinion, but that doesn't mean my opinion is any better than the taxpayer of the owner that lives there, and their opinion is still based on something. And so they come in with either a tax agent or their own evidence. And so if they come in with pictures of condition, we're more than happy to work with them on the condition of the property because it's something we did not know. With cells, we can typically run cell comparison grids and look at it and see, you know, before we're looking at neighborhood or a market area, and we can tell that overall the neighborhood is accurate, but when we get to their specific house and their particular condition of the property, we may not be 100% accurate on that particular property. So anytime in any priceless district, you have on the median, if there's a thousand properties of neighborhood, the fifth, the 500th will be at market value. But you have 500 that are going to be too low and 500 that are going to be too high, may not be by a lot of large amount. It should be within 5 to 10 percent typically. But the majority of them will be calling the bell curve. Most will be pretty accurate, but the further you get away from the velcro of the more inaccurate it is, the more unique properties you have. If that kind of answers your question, with, we'll go ahead. Well, as far as an audit, it is important to note that the Comptroller's Office audits our performance as appraisers every two years. And Terrent, it's every odd year. Hence, there's office audits our performance as appraisers every two years in Terrent it's every odd year and so they do come in and they perform a property value study to see if in fact we were within these desirable statistical ranges or if we have fallen out and. And when we fall out of that desirable range, there are ramifications negatively to school districts and cities as well. But they do answer your audit question at every two years. I hear your response. And I guess I'm just a little bit baffled that the goal is not 100% accuracy. What's the goal? That's the goal. That is the goal? That's the goal, but being in an opinion business, it's rarely a fact. So I hear you say valuations are based on opinion, not that? Well, it's been referred to as part science, part art. It is not like a scientific model where you can put a certain amount of a particular compound in a beaker and another element and you will get the same result every time. It involves opinion, experience of the expert, the appraiser, and all these are defined evaded terms over the last 100 years of the United States. But it is ultimately an appraisal by definition, is an opinion. OK, well, I would just encourage UNU board to move toward greater quality and greater accuracy and minimize the lawsuits. the city of New York, and the city of New York, and the city of New York, and the city of New York, and the city of New York, and the city of New York, and the city of New York, and the city of New York, and the city of New York, and the city of New York, and the city of New York, and the city of New York, and the city Manager Randall Fand, Sarah Stubblefield, are you all here? There you go. Thank you very much mayor and members of City Council. Lemmeal Randolph, deputy city manager. And the previous conversation really highlights some of the challenges that we're seeing relative to the implementation of the many needs that we have in the city's environment. So today I'm going to be providing an overview of the hard work of the 19 member citizens bond committee. This work culminates about seven months of planning. We began last May with this effort. And the specific recommendations will be presented by the committee chair, Mary Phillips. And I wanted to recognize we've got several committee members in the audience if you could raise your hands as well. Appreciate your attendance today. And so what we wanted to do is to provide you really an overview and context of our capital improvement program and specifically the bond program. We'll talk about the bond committee's process as well as the recommendations that our chair will provide. And then we'll follow that with a tweak in recommendation from a staff perspective that we'd like you to consider. And then we'll also talk about the next steps in this process. And so you've seen this chart before. This really represents our capital improvement plans kind of cycle. It is an ongoing exercise really established through the priorities that you determine on an annual basis as well as the sustaining of our core services. And so our capital budget approval typically happens in March timeframe. The sale of bonds typically happens around May. And then we start implementing projects. And that's everything from right away acquisition, design, sometimes preliminary design, and then ultimately construction of a variety of different projects, many funded by bond proceeds, but also other funding sources as well. We are actually in the bond program development and bond election piece now for, and so in essence the way you consider this, it's an annual cycle, but on an every three year period based upon the council's direction, that plan is infused with funds for that next bond cycle. And so why do we do this? Well, it's important to do this because over time, if we were not to invest in our infrastructure, that infrastructure would degrade at a precipitous rate, which would cause significant challenges to keep our facilities in optimal condition. So we invest over time, and we like to elongate those assets as long as we possibly can and we'll certainly demonstrate some you know some examples of that as we get further into the presentation. Our bond program principles really it's it's not unlike the maintenance of your your homes that investment is required in new the Ro new HVAC, and the like, and it's similar, although much more vast in a city context with all the different facilities that we have. We use conservative financial principles, and so our debt terms do not exceed the useful life of the asset, and then we typically issue bonds with the level principal, so we allow that debt to retire over time. But the GeoBond program is only one piece of that funding mix, and so this chart represents the different tranches of funding that we have available for our capital needs. The Geo Bonds and Street Maintenance Sales Text Bonds are the ones that are voter approved, but we also have other sources of funds. And oftentimes we mix these funds. In certain examples, we may receive a grant for example Randall Mill. Road is a product of that. It's primarily geo funded, but we also receive some county funds to augment the needs there. And so all this is done within, really sound financial principles and transparency that this council has reinforced over a number of years. And there are a couple of principles we'd like to highlight. One is we've referenced that the debt terms do not exceed the expected useful life and so for example, if we are going to fund the purchase of a fire vehicle and that is intended to last about 12 years that we will ensure that those bonds are paid off ahead of that that schedule. The debt service tax rate is currently 1852, which is a little bit up from last year. Part of that is a factor of the penny increase to the tax rate. But, unfortunately, it is roughly the same as it was last year. At about 30.9% versus 30.8% of that percent of INS total, which refers to the bond rate. Our total ad valerum tax base as a ratio to the debt is less than 2%. And then our general fund expenditures plus debt expenditures less than 20%, which averages about $1,465 per person as per cap. We're able to achieve a lot of what we do with the favorable bond ratings that we've achieved over time. And so with Moody's, we're at AA1, S&P, at AAA, and then Fitch at AA+. And so the way we're able to reinvest is as we pay debt off over time, we can sell additional debt to keep that level and that's how we're able to project to the available funding in subsequent years. This chart gives you a sense of where we've been kind of in recent history. And so the 27th teen bond, which was the active adult center, all those proceeds have been sold. And obviously we're looking towards a March 25 opening of that facility. The 2018 bonds, about 93% sold, 7% remaining, which we anticipate by 2025. And then the 23 bond, about 23% sold. And we expect the balance of those to be sold by FY28. We included this chart in here. It references our GeoBond tracker. And this is a very valuable information that highlights, and you can slice and dice this in a number of different ways to if you have specific interest in either project category or a year of bond sales, or there's some status updates as well to a lot of these projects. This bond tracker is available online and open to the public so that they can have really good access to all the bond activity that's ongoing. And so the bond process last spring, you discussed what our routine would be relative to bonds and it was determined that a three-year cycle would work best for your needs. And so we're able to work with that number and constantly remind the public on a three-year basis of the needs to reinvest in our infrastructure. And then once that's established, obviously the voters have the final say. You will ultimately determine the package of projects that goes to the voters for approval. And then the citizens will make their selections. And then we reference earlier those Geo bonds are typically sold annually. And so this is how that through your bond cycle plays out. You will note some overlap that overlap is strategic because because these are voter approved, we certainly can't guarantee the voters will ever approve a particular bond. And so as we overlap the years, it allows us to stagger some of those projects and continue to invest. And then if we have a bond fail, that subsequent election, we could pick up right where we left off if those bonds are approved by the voters. And so this is process to date. As I mentioned, we had started this process in May and we laid out a presentation to you with respect to the proposed program. In June, we briefed, you know, on the committee appointment process and then in the summer, staff was hard at work, developing cost estimates. And we also finalized the debt capacity that was recommended. In August, the committee was appointed and they began their work in September over the course of about five meetings. The first half of that was a lot of listening and questions from the committee and I do want to credit the hard work of the committee on the level of questions that they asked and the general level of interest in really doing what's needed for all of Arlington. So I was very impressed with their professionalism and their input. At the tail end of that process was a selection and prioritization exercise that the committee established and they were able to finalize their recommendations that you'll hear about shortly. We went to the Planning and Zoning Commission in November and outlined the 26 projects that are recommended for consideration. And that list of projects was approved on a 72 vote for you to consider. The two voters that voted against that recommendation, it was primarily, it was not specifically related to any of the projects on the list, but more a question of our debt ratio and some inconsistency in language that we've used historically in terms of a level debt ratio. And so we've clarified that moving forward we'll clean that language up so it's very transparent what our intentions are with respect to the debt ratio. And so at this point we are here in front of the city council and we will transition to our committee chair, Ms. Mary Phillips. Thank you. I'm the chair, Mary Phillips. This is my fourth bond to serve on. So I did come with some experience here. I've been in Arlington for 50 years and I have certainly seen a lot of change and so my hat goes off to the City Council and to everybody of what we've done in this time. We started off with a high priority project totaling $400 million and our job as a committee was to reduce that almost in half to 198 million, which was what our budget was. The, oh, I've got to do, excuse me, I've got to do some slide changes here. That'd be me. Okay. The list of the 40 million projects included everything from roadway rebuilds to police and fire to libraries and other city facilities. The chart shows on the left you'll see the $400 million versus the funding available for our committee. All of these projects are important and we knew this was going to be challenging to reduce this by 50%. We received, to start the process on our first night, we received very thorough introduction to the city's approach to the Capital Improvement Program from Trey Everton. We wanted to make sure that all the projects were highlight, were the highest need, regardless of geography and other political factors. Prioritizing roads would be the largest portion of the program at about 70%. We were also made aware of the impact of capital projects on the operating budget and how different types of capital projects could result in savings, remain the same, or add funding needs to the operating budget. As a result, we wanted to be mindful not to choose too many projects that would increase the burden of the operating budget in future years. The committee was also made aware of the public safety equipment funding request that were originally in the general fund budget but deferred to the capital budget by the City Council. So the committee then went into the prioritization process with these specific goals in mind. Our committee was made up of 19 members and we had, I have to say, excellent attendance throughout the process. This was the most well-attended bond group that I have been a part of. We met over five weeks where we learned about the overall capital improvement program. We received detailed project descriptions from the department heads on each of the projects on the list We were given the opportunity to tour facilities both on our own and with staff to see the conditions of the facilities for ourselves We completed we completed our task with a prioritization Exercise many of the committee members had not been through this process before so were a little skeptical. But I knew based on my experience that this was an excellent process and we would be successful. In fact, out of the four times that I've been a participant on this bond committee, this is the first time that this committee came in under budget through the prioritization process on the first attempt. As a result, we were able to add a few more projects to the final recommendation while staying at our $198 million capacity. I'm proud to present the count to the council, the 2025 Citizens Bond Committee funding recommendations. This project list is a consensus built recommendation that meets all the goals we set out to achieve as a committee. This map gives you the geographical distribution of the recommended project list. However, the majority of the projects are in the white box up on the left corner of the map. The funding for these projects are in multiple locations and will be spread throughout the city to improve the capital infrastructure for all residents. This recommendation is 26 total projects which is 63% of the projects that were started more than 50% that we anticipated. It includes six safety projects, public safety projects, four libraries, one project at City Hall, two park projects and 13 public work projects. And I want to review each one of those projects that we have. The first public safety, 48,930,000. This represents one fourth of our total recommended bond of our bond program. And there are many needs in this area, including equipment or upgrades. But the project for the public safety, for this bond is 10 million for public safety training facility design, 13.5 for fire station number five, 15.8 for fire equipment replacement, 4.2 million for improvements at Utt Krib's Public Safety Center, 1.5 for improvements at East Police Substation, and 3.9 million for dispatch radio replacements. at 2,425,000 because of the relatively low cost of the improvements requested at the library, the committee was able to include all the library projects requested in full amounts within this program, including improvements at Ron Ride, Lake Arlington Branch, Southeast West Branch and Woodland West Branch. Our city administration building, 3,105,000, many of us were able to tour this facility and saw firsthand the need here. The committee is also recommending this major improvement of 3.1 million. This funding is specifically for functionality of the building and does not include any cosmetic improvements. Parks and Recreation, 6,545,000. We would have loved to have had many more park projects in our recommendation. However, the projects that we have included are crucial to the continuing improvement in our part program, part system. Doddy Lynn, which is one of our oldest recreation centers, will bring improvements to add several years to the life of that facility. Additionally parks infrastructure improvements will allow parks to replace playgrounds, scoreboards, old signage benches and other infrastructure that needs replacement at our over 100 or at our 100 city parks. Public works in streets, 136 million, 995,000. Finally, the committee is recommending almost 137 million in funding for our streets and public infrastructure, making up 69% of the total bond program. Three major street recommendations are in this, the Randall Mill, Cooper to Fielder, Pleasant Ridge Construction Plumwood in the Chanted Bay, South Collins, South Webb Ferrell to Debbie Lane. In addition to the city projects to improve neighborhood streets and intersections are recommended. I'd like to highlight a new program for this bond package, Street Reclamation. City staff expressed that moving this program into the bond program will free up street maintenance sales tax funds for additional mill and overlay. This shift will allow our Public Works Department to improve more roadway lane miles moving them out of the Red Street category. The committee is also recommending funding for all of the annual programs that supplement the work of the major capital projects to ensure our public's work department can increase the signal ITS program of our street network, be competitive for federal and state grant funds, and to meet all our legal requirements for our public infrastructure projects. Overall, this recommended program addresses the most immediate needs in the city, including nine facilities and three major roadways. We have prior to, I'm not gonna be able to say that word, apparently. We've put a priority on public safety equipment and facilities for our police and fire department. Miss Phillips, don't you worry about it. Our mayor does that all the time. Thank you. Thank you. And that's and 69% of our program funding will go directly to streets throughout the city. I am proud that this program recommendation will benefit residents in every sector of our city. I'd like to wrap up by thanking Council for appointing an excellent, diligent, and well-rounded committee. Wonderful to work with this group. I'd like to also thank our committee members as, that have already been recognized that are here for showing up for all the meetings, taking on this task with eagerness and professionalism. Thank you so much. I'd also like to recommend to recognize our city staff. They were there with us every night of these meetings. They presented details on the proposed project and answered all the questions from the committee. It was a pleasure to work with them. And I try to tell all the people in our city they need to get on this committee and recognize what our city is doing for us because we've got an excellent excellent staff. I've learned that over these four bond sessions and with that I will turn this over to the Mood to finish the presentation and I thank you for your time. Thank you ma'am. Can I tell you a little secret? The staff talks to me a lot about these committees and stuff. They said that y'all are absolutely the best group of people they've ever worked with. So I think they feel the same about you as you do them. They just sing y'alls praises like there's no tomorrow. So thank you and the whole committee for everything. Thank you Madam Chair. I'm just a couple of additional slides and by the way at your place you'll see two documents and two spreadsheets like this. The single spreadsheet is the detailed list of the projects that were recommended and then the one that's stapled has the list of the $400 million worth of projects. Also note that that $400 million certainly represents high-priority need but the list is actually much larger. We just wanted to make the exercise for the committee palatable, and so we put on that list for their consideration the highest priorities within the needs that have been established. A couple of additional slides, and then also referenced a slight modification to a recommendation that would'd like you to consider. I wanted to show you a couple of different ways to look at historical spend on our bond programs since 2014. And so this slide slices it in terms of the project categories. And so you can see the total number of projects per category as well as that total spend ultimately including this bond cycle about nine hundred million dollars worth of projects We also wanted to show that from a council district perspective recognizing you know, we will never achieve equal totals on that just because there are disparate needs based upon geography, age of infrastructure and the like throughout the districts within the city. But certainly wanted to be able to highlight that. Additionally, as you'll note, a number of the projects are in that various city wide category. And so those projects ultimately will impact every district within the city, but they're not geographically specific with an address. And so when I talk a little bit about modification to the committee's recommendation, and this This is based upon some recent analysis from our police department with respect to their radios. Their mobile radios are coming to a quick end to their useful life, requiring this scavenging of parts to some extent. And so based upon that need that that was recently determined, we found a way for you to consider funding that within the current allocation. Ms. Phillips referenced $10 million allocated for the new public safety center. That $10 million was established based upon a gross estimate of a roughly $100 million ultimate build. We do not anticipate that we will build a $100,100 million facility at one time. And so what we're suggesting is to take about $4.3 million of that $10 million, allocate that to the purchase of 600 radios. And then that would allow police department to be made whole over the next couple of years as those radios are purchased and would also allow for the public safety design to stay whole. What we would likely do is a master plan of that facility. As you're aware, you recently authorized purchase of land for that facility. We anticipate that the facility will be phased over some time. And so perhaps even up to three different cycles of funding, that 10 million versus 100 million refers to a roughly 10% factor for design. And so the way that would look is that list would change a little bit. The public safety training facility design would go from 10 million to 5.7 million. And then the police radios would be added to the fire equipment radios. And so that total would increase to about 8.2 for the same total of 198 million. And so certainly would like to get your feedback today initially. You do have some time to make some final decisions. As you can see by the calendar, it's not till February 4th that we'll need you to make a determination of what projects you want to put on a list for the voters to consider. And this meeting would be obviously the first meeting as a full council to have some of those discussions. We have a number of staff folks here available for responses to certain details of projects, but with that certainly entertain any questions that you might have. Ms. Honour. Thank you. I want to, let me, I wanted to get clarifications on a couple of things. When we were going to the slides, I think we refer to station five that we, in fact, mean station six. Just so that people that are listening to that clarification. Station six. Absolutely. So also you refer to kind wording a little bit for and reference to the deaf ratio. So would that be changed on the ballots at all? Once we put this out in May. Hi Ethan, close treasure. That is not on the ballot itself. language, that language is in the staff report where it was more of a statement of fact as opposed to a nuanced where it said that the tax rate would not be affected. It should be clear, should say, the projected overall tax rate is not expected to change change due to these projects. Anybody else? Mr. Hogg? Yeah, thank you, Mayor. And, uh, Lemuel and Sarah, thank you for all you all have done. I know you all gave me some follow-up some of those and Ms. Phillips thank you for the committee. I know how much work goes on this. Limu, this is a question. It may be to Mr. Brooks, a central email. We kind of talked a little bit about Randall Mill Road. It's our largest project on here. It's a $54 million project. And I think we, anyone drives that daily will all say, boy, that is a high-need road from where it's going. We've renovated from Collins to Cooper already and with the help from Council of Governments, making a really good project. I'm really looking forward to making a really good project. I'm really looking forward to making a really good project. I'm really looking forward to making a really good project. I'm really looking forward to making a really good project. I'm really looking forward to making a really good project. and worse. if you drive. So now we've renovated, we'll have that next mile done, but then you go from field or to Oakwood, and there's some areas that are probably even worse than field or grand of mill. Mr. Brooks or Limby, I know some clarification and you send me an email on that. That is on the prepracted mill and overlay coming up hopefully I think in this next year if that's just some clarification on that. of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of As you mentioned, we did do a temporary fix on the section between Collins and Cooper Street with the intention of coming back with a full not only rebuild but also widening on that section from Collins to Cooper. And then of course in this bond election that we're proposing here, we would extend that permanent fix if you will, a rebuild from Cooper all the way to Field of Road. Yes, there are some other sections that we are looking at. And like I said, sometimes, you know, the projects that we can't get on a bond election, we look at various other methods to try to get those done. We are one of the things that like the chair, Miss Phillips mentioned is we're gonna be using a street reclamation moving that to bond projects, so we can do more projects similar to that section of a random remote road that you're mentioning. On top of being able to do more mill and overlay projects around the city. But we'll use a combination of using most of our bun projects to do the bigger projects. But we'll just use various methods like the street reclamation to kind of help mitigate some of those costs. So it's a little less expensive than some of the the full rebuild. And Mr. Brooks, I was asking that question because it seems crazy. We're renovating all these areas and then you have one section that is still. As worse as the others. So you're driving from Nice Road, Nice Road to all of a sudden. You know, it's a, it's a major issue and I understand you're not going to tell me yes, it's 100% going to be done, but it is top on the it's a high priority Listed red. I think 63 something is the score of that road correct most definitely and and we have to we have the these projects are so expensive You have to kind of you know take a bite-sized pieces as you as you go So kind of like what we when we did the full rebuild on Abram Street It took us a while but we went all the way from Cooper all the way to Great Southwest Parkway. It took some years to do that, but it was a combination of about four or five projects to get all of that done. So we do take a systematic approach when we're looking at these projects. And Mr. Brooks, at least my next question. What is the, and you may not know this off top of your head. that proposed section in this bond, for the 54 million is expanding that from, in that part, from fielder to Cooper, you know, where we're talking about, we've got a zoning case today, a PD come in, and it's actually six lines at that portion. It then, you know, with some turn lines added in in there it then drops to four lines most the way. And we're proposing for that 54 million to go to a five lane across if we stated a four lane. Did the committee or did your public works consider what is that cost difference of a four lane. staying in the four line and just redoing it, making it quality versus going to a five line where we're having to take some land full sidewalk renovations those things. Do you know off top of your head what that cost difference is? I don't know. I don't remember I can find out what that was but when we took a look at it we looked at not only just the cost but we looked at the functionality. And in a lot of our projects, we're adding a continuous turn lane just to help with mobility. It keeps cars from stopping in a through lane to make a left turn. They have that extra lane that they can, and that tends to reduce rear end accidents, vehicle accidents. So we take a look at the whole safety of the court or not just renewing of the street, but while we're there, are there some mobility things, some safety things that we can build into it? And it might cost some more money, but ultimately, if it makes the road safer, that's something that we take into consideration. Well, we fully agree with safety, but there's also a value of cost analysis of safety versus cost because if we just chose safety then the only reason then we wouldn't do very many projects because we fix everything. So it just if you maybe you and I have a later discussion next week or after the break even After that we have that discussion of what happens on four lane to five lane because if someone drives that I do they're more office buildings and there's some It's a medical street along there a lot and so we do have people turning left But I just want to see that cost analysis of what that would be from four to five As we allocate these dollars towards these projects. Thank you most definitely any other questions or comments Council mr. Gonzalez. Thank you mirror. Thank Thank you, Lemuel. Thank you, Mr. Brooks. So let me ask, I mean, I saw in District 2, we only have 130, which I understand because I represent, or I guess the people in District 2 vote for me, but I represent the entire city. So I fully agree that these projects need to be spread across, so I am not arguing that point. The question is, I guess, just like Mr. Hogg said, is we're some of those streets, like Eden and calendar and Harris that are just getting more and more traffic. What can I tell people when they start calling us like, what are we going to do about these roads? I mean, is there anything in the process? Then you don't have to give me an answer now, but if you can send me information on those, I know that's already come up. And also with Cliff Nelson, I don't want it to be obsolete like the senior center, and obviously we can't use it because I know it's not the oldest, but it's the second oldest, and I know it needs some repair. So if you can help me with that, I would appreciate it. With regards to the community, I want to thank Ms. Bennett. Thank you for, or Ms. Phillips. I'm sorry, I don't know why Ms. Bennett. Ms. Phillips for doing this. I know there was a question from one of the members that emailed several of us several several times asking the same question. And he basically said that he asked this question and you all gave him the answer that is up to us on how we can handle facilities, maintenance, and equipment issues instead of going through bonds. That it looks like we're letting our infrastructure go down and we're basically letting the public decay, see that CD decay. And so that's how we keep citizens voting for bonds. So he says there's a different way that we can fund these. I mean, do you remember that discussion or what that was about he talked about depreciation? Do you want to talk about that real quick? Certainly I can talk a little bit about it and and we may have others to weigh in as well Fundamentally his his interest was to fund those infrastructure needs needs in essence through O&M and kind of put that money aside over time to satisfy those needs. Is it possible to do theoretically yes? Adventure to say you're not going to find an agency of any size that does that and there are a number of reasons for it, the impact on the tax rate. If we were to switch to a format like that, there'd likely be several years where we weren't reinvesting because we're trying to gather the funds to be able to do that. So, you know, and the example that he used was an HOA, which is fundamentally very different from the structure of the city. So, that's kind of my initial reaction. He did bring that up a couple of times within the committee and we didn't get any response from committee members about affording that for more examination. But he did indicate that he'd be talking to council members about his ideas. I just want to make sure what he's telling us is what you heard. So I appreciate you basically saying hey, he basically thought it was always up to us. We can make that change easily, but as you know, it's not something that we need to be doing right now, but the way it was sent to us, it was like, it's up to you all, you can just make this change like that. So yeah, it would not you know It would not be something that staff understand recommend. Thank you Anybody else Thank you. I appreciate it We're gonna go down three point four the Arlington pilot Area Form Based Code. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Tharani Devi Palma, principal planner with the Long Range Planning Team. I am the project manager for this form-based code initiative from the city site. Pass August, the city council awarded contract to livable plans and codes for the development of form-based code in a pilot area. And since then, our staff and the consultant have been meeting with internal stakeholders We led a public education forum to educate the public on what is forum-based code and its advantages. And we also conducted site visits in the three shortlisted pilot areas and also in some parts of Roanoke and Fort Worth to understand the advantages of the forum-based code. Today we have our consultants here to present their analysis and provide their recommended pilot area to us. With that, I'm gonna hand it over to our consultant, Jay Narayana. Thank you, Tharney. My name is Jay Narayana. I'm the principal of livable plans and codes. I do have my other partners on the project with me from the consultant team. I have Jeff Fittaker with Kim Lee Horn, who's an engineer and planner on the team. And then I have Randy Hutchison with side partners. He's been a long-term planner with the City of Fort Worth and now retired and is willing to give us his expertise. I think I'll skip over this. We did the team introductions. We do have a fairly broad and broad team with a lot of expertise in farm based coding, but also expertise on the infrastructure side because it also has to relate to the streets and other public investment that goes into a place. And a lot of folks do do have an understanding of form based codes but we wanted to just start with the basics. Your conventional zoning that you see in the city of Arlington really focuses on what happens within the private property boundaries. It's really about use, how much parking, density, height. A lot of times it really doesn't relate to what happens across the street, across the street or next to it. If anything, you just deal with dryways and possibly as sidewalk. A lot of times the setbacks are fairly arbitrary and don't really guarantee a result. So for example, you may have a minimum setback, but the building can be setback even further beyond the minimum setback. A lot of times the parking is based on the use or So anytime you change a use, you may have to actually provide more parking. This typically happens when an office use changes to a restaurant and restaurants are parked at a higher ratio. Form-based zoning really relates the building and development to the street and what happens next to it on the lots next to the property. It looks at the development more holistically and relates to the sidewalk and the public realm what we call the street right away is what we call the public realm focuses on putting parking on the back so you encourage more walkable streets and sidewalks. You want doors and windows along the street so people feel more comfortable walking along the street. So there's some transparency requirements and then it focuses on buildings that are next to it. So what happens along the street and across the street is also just as important as what happens on that particular property. A lot of times along some major corridors, cities kind of look at, you know, we want to kind of change the context along the corridor. Your typical context is you have a six or seven lane corridor with the typical turn lane in the middle and you have buildings with deep setbacks, the typically parking is in the front. Then they decide let's do a form-based code along this major roadway because you have a lot of underutilized, you know, aging, shopping centers and older retail. So we want to see that redevelop and they say, let's do a form based code. But what ends up happening is you end up creating a code, but you're really not changing the street context. So a lot of times, nothing actually changes. A lot of developers usually push back on requirements for buildings to be closer to the street, especially when you have a very wide roadway. So if you want development that's more walkable, you really need to start thinking about the public realm and how that encourages walking and redevelopment. So without that, you're really not going to see a lot of redevelopment. And I think a lot of folks know this intrinsically when you look at Abrams like West of Collins versus East of Collins, I think this is where it's really evident that a lot of the redevelopment that was triggered was because the context of the street fundamentally changed. So walkability is really about matching those two realms, the public realm and the private realm, what we talk about. So it's really about making sure that the city's investment in the public realm is also kind of reflected in a private investment. It kind of catalyzes private redevelopment. So a lot of typical tools that you see in a form based code and this is just a fancy name for a zoning map. We call it a regulating plan because planners like to think about new terms, think of new terms. So it really shows us some sub districts that are really within the form based code and possibly the street network because this is an important element of a regulating plan. It's making sure that you have walkable streets more compact blocks as you develop. This is an example of a regulating plan that we did for McKinney, the downtown McKinney, which is called their town center. And not all of downtown is the same. We established different sub districts, and you have 80% of the standards are the same, but the 20% is really about identifying what are those unique elements of each of these zones, and making sure that the development standards reflected it. For example, in this, the orange is the historic core, which is the most intact historic blocks that the city has. Then the downtown general is the yellow, and then the transition into the neighborhood is in that peach color. So we just wanted to make sure that we understand the context of these blocks as we write the standards. And then the east side was where they had a lot of the legacy industrial that would take a longer term to redevelop. But that was included in the plan. So then you'd have a context for when those properties redeveloped the reservation for what that would be. So some of the advantages of a form is code or flexibility. It does provide developers some flexibility, especially on the use side, because we don't know what uses will be market based in the next 10, 15 years. So as a market evolves, maybe the uses can change and allowing developers that flexibility makes sense. And they also want predictability because a lot of formats codes really do the heavy lifting of planning up front, establishing the vision and identifying what goes where. And then developers like the predictability because they know if they meet the standards, they can actually develop without with approval. This is this really relates to the streamline approval process that we would recommend that we want to make sure that if they meet the code, then staff would be approving it in house, so that's that would limit the need for rezoning for every project. For example, it would limit the use of PDs that would just vary one standard for the development. You'd also want to relate it to the public realm. So we want to make sure that any redevelopment that happens relates to the streets and the investment in the streets that the city's undertaking. You can see that on front street, for example, market response of uses. That's what the flexibility that developers are looking for. And we want to look at also Arlington's goals for a form-based code. We also want to keep that in mind as we recommend what area the city should consider for that pilot area. Build on the current momentum, where in the city does the city have momentum in kind of in the redevelopment context. So we want to build on that. Where is the city focusing on economic development and tourism so we can catalyze more of that? We can build on that. Implementing current policies, you do have the downtown plan, the recently approved Safe Streets plan. Other ways we can piggyback on policies that are already on the books. And removing barriers to redevelopment, we've heard in some of the locations where redevelopment is happening, it's challenging because there are rules on the books that people, it doesn't really work with existing sites. So they're looking at PDs as a way to kind of address some of those existing conditions. So maybe look at removing some of those barriers to redevelopment. And again, at the end of the day, having a series of PDs really makes it administratively difficult to manage redevelopment because that limits predictability. We want to align cities investment in infrastructure with the bond projects that you're considering. You want to make sure that the cities investment is also supporting private redevelopment and you also align it with the incentives that the city would have from an economic development standpoint. And then we want to create this adaptable zoning framework that you're looking at the pilot areas, your first area, but you're looking at this as a tool that you could utilize in other locations too. It's a way to kind of make sure that you're creating these tailored development regulations for different locations, but you still have the jigsaw puzzle pieces if you will to help you with future zoning in different locations. In terms of our work, the project's project tasks that we have undertaken as we have done a lot of the background assessment. We have looked at existing plans that you have in place existing quality policies. We are met with a lot of the internal stakeholders city departments, city staff, we are developing a plan for how do you engage external stakeholders, property owners, business owners, homeowners, et cetera. We also had the education forum on November 20th, which I think we had 40 to 50 people attend. And then we also developed a methodology for the selection of this pilot area. We kind of built on what the city has already done work on in the past when they had the original ten areas and they brought it down to three. So we have some recommendations for how that methodology could be tweaked. So we had the original three areas where these three areas that were in the request for proposal for the pilot area for Miss code. Area one is the area along East Abrams Street, East of Collins. Area two is the area at the intersection of Matlock, Pioneer, Parkway, and Arkansas. So it's, I think it's really the smallest area there, the blue area there. And then area three is division street on just north of downtown, the railroad tracks. So we did do a tour of these three study areas, but also some other locations in the city. So we looked at a couple of other locations. One was this area we call 4A, which was straddling parts of downtown, division street, and we went east of Collins to this area along Harrison Avenue to Johnson Creek because we did find out that the city has some projects there in the next five year horizon. And then we also looked at New York Avenue at Park Row because there is an underutilized shopping center there and city has some properties there. But for a couple of reasons, we kind of dint really move forward with with those recommendations because first, area 4A, it kind of straddle downtown. So you're kind of creating a new boundary for the form base code in addition to what's already on the books like the downtown business district. And we felt that the area east of Collins, especially along Harrison Avenue, the development there is going to depend on the success of what happens west of Collins along division street and in front street and once that redevelopment actually takes off, then the area on the east side of Collins can actually be more mature and can be redeveloped at that time. And I think the extension of AT&T ways south and the connection to Abram across the railroad are all things that are not fully fleshed out that may be in the next five years that can be and that could be a natural extension at some point of a form base code. And then on the New York Avenue, Park Row intersection, we felt that the existing property owner was not there yet in terms of the willingness to redevelop. So at the time that there is a property owner that wants to work with the city, I think that's when the city can look at this as a potential form based code area. So we looked at another area 4B which was downtown. We looked at all the boundaries for downtown that were in different policy documents in the city. For example, you have the zoning, which is the tan color and the pink. And then you have other boundaries that are not zoning related, that are not changing, but you do have the public improvement district and the tourist boundary as well. So the tan is really the downtown business district which is the downtown zoning district for downtown and then the pink is actually an overlay. So you have the neighborhood overlay but you also have the underlying zoning districts under them. So you do have an additional layer of standards on top of the base zoning district to address the areas around downtown. So one of the recommendations we came up with based on the existing boundaries that you have for zoning and the fact that you want to implement the vision for downtown is to create this new form base boundary for downtown as the pilot area, as a recommended pilot area. And this is a preliminary boundary, we will be talking to not just council members to you all, but also with the community stakeholders, et cetera. And this will be refined further. And the final boundary that will come forward with a city initiated rezoning would likely be different from this because this is more of a planning level boundary to look at what makes sense to at least initially consider for a form base code. And not everything in this boundary will have the same set of regulations. You wanna make sure we understand where does the city want the highest intensity and where do we have to kind of look at transitions to neighborhoods. We want to be mindful of that too. So with that, I'll drill a little more into the selection criteria and the methodology that we used. So one of the important things we looked at was the block structure. We look at which area has a good block structure. That means you have connected streets and blocks that are small, that are walkable, and which areas do not have that. For example, the area that's along the division and in downtown has a well connected street network and a street grade, whereas the area on Pioneer Parkway and Cooper really doesn't, you have these major roadways that are actually barriers that make walking really difficult. And some of those are text roadways too, so the city has even less control over them. The second we looked at is proximity to existing residential. You do have some of that on a long East Abram, for example, a lot of the neighborhoods to the south, but there's limited residential to the north. You do have the creek there and the railroad line that kind of cuts you off. Then we looked at what are the opportunities for residential infill. You look at different lot sizes because you want to encourage a lot redevelopment of all scales and you don't have to have one developer consolidate a block to put a super block up. You want to make sure you allow small lots and small duplexes and patio homes, but also town homes and live work units and the bigger mixed use blocks. And then we looked at the street context. A lot of times how much traffic is on the street really dictates how walkable or pleasant the street is and also whether it is a good candidate for improvement to make sure you can actually transform the street. For example, Centre Street is a one way roadway but it has less than 5,000 cars so it's really a good candidate for improving and increasing pedestrian activity along the street. By the same token, Cooper is, it's got more than 18,000 cars, especially in north of Abram. It's a little bit less south as more. So that's really difficult to make it a comfortable walking environment when you have 18,000 cars. Then we looked at land to building value ratio. And again, this is just one of those criteria that it's not a science, it's an art in terms of whether that really kind of comes into play on a lot of redevelopment. All things being equal if you have land value that's going up relative to everything else. And the buildings are older and the property is likely to be redeveloped. But that doesn't necessarily always mean every one of those properties will be. But I think you also have to look at where the market momentum is. In case you do end up with buildings that are old or you have metal buildings, existing improvements are not very highly valued they have already been amortized for example then those properties become valuable for redevelopment especially in the context where you have new development happening and then we look at existing building character, especially when you look at downtown and along Division Street you have buildings that have historic character that can be reinforced through the form base code. There is some existing fabric there that we can build on. You do have parking lots and use car lots, but we can take inspiration from the near- and dear buildings in and around downtown. So we went through this analysis taking these different six different criteria and applied them to each of the areas. So we do have slides that describe that, but we are not going to go through each of them, but we're just kind of summarizing them. So this is area one, which is East Abram. And then the summary findings for area one are, it has a good block structure. You do have residential and close proximity, which is to the south. There are some improvements that have already been done to the right away, but it doesn't really go far enough to kind of make it truly walkable. For that, we see maybe addition of on street parking, maybe reducing some of the travel lanes because the actual traffic is not that high along East Abram. But maybe the city is not there yet because this it was just kind of improved recently and a city did spend millions of dollars on it. There are some underutilized properties but a lot of them are shallow blocks. So maybe in terms of the return on the investment, maybe it's a little bit lean, especially if you look at further improving the street and spending more money improving the public realm than is redevelopment really going to pencil out. And then there is really little existing urban fabric to build on. So it's really next to downtown. So we want to kind of see this as maybe an extension or an approach corridor to downtown. So this is area two analysis. We kind of looked at all the different metrics that we considered in the selection criteria. One is block structure is weak. You do have some multi-family around it, but it's really not connected. These are single use kind of uses that are cut off from the commercial development at the intersection. The existing street rides away up pretty wide and you have fairly high traffic volumes. So it's really almost hostile to pedestrians. There's some underutilized property, again the street environment is really not conducive for walkable mixed use it's more conducive to your suburban commercial and the existing fabric is fairly suburban characters unless you have some of these major property owners come forward and say they want to be developed it almost looks like there are two different projects one north of Pioneer Parkway and the other south. And we did the same for division street as well. So the summary is of the three division was kind of ranked the highest but we'll get to that. The block structure is good. You do have an existing residential neighborhood to the north, which is some of the oldest residential fabric in the city. The site streets are better candidates for pedestrian activity. As you can see, you know, what's happening along north street is kind of an example of that division with the high traffic volumes is really not that attractive for pedestrians. It's going to be challenging to make that more pedestrian. And some under utilized properties, especially the use card lots. Maybe they're cash flowing now, but long term, there's value to looking at how those transition. There is some good urban character in your center and miskeit, but it kind of fades off when you go east and west of it. But there is potential because there is a context in the middle of the planning area there along center and miskeit to build on that. So next we can be drilled into downtown and kind of looked at the actual criteria and how downtown would really match up against the other three areas. So the reference map kind of shows you the boundaries. It's approximately 675 acres, about 900 properties in total. So we looked at why is this a good candidate? One is you have actually invested in a lot of street improvements already. You have redone Abram, you have redone front street, parts of it, main street, et cetera. So it's really trying to take advantage of the investment that's already been made in a lot of the street infrastructure. There are large public anchors, the city, the university, the entertainment district, etc. So you already have a lot of the ingredients that are creating the, they're becoming the catalyst for redevelopment. It is the critical connection between the entertainment district and the university. The two big anchors you do have in the city. So it's the connective tissue between them. And it also gives us the opportunity to streamline the existing zoning in the area. You kind of saw the layer cake, right? You have the downtown business district, and you have the the neighborhood overlay and all the other boundaries. So we're trying to kind of maybe there's an opportunity to clean up and streamline the zoning. So we looked at the block structure and the actual boxes here are different colors, but there are different colors for a reason. The green kind of says it supports the form-based chord goals. There is yellow which kind of it supports some of the goals, but it's not entirely supportive. And then the red is kind of it really doesn't support the form base code goals. So in this case, it's green, so the block structure generally supports walkable context. proximity to residential it's it's yellow because we think there is some opportunity for residential especially to the north and here closer to the university but there's obviously more opportunity for new residential development within the boundary. So as this shows, yes, there is more opportunity for residential infill. You can kind of see what the existing lot sizes are. There's a range of different lot sizes here that can give you a variety of redevelopment options. Walkability, there is, you do have some of these edge conditions along these major roadways, like division and Cooper and Collins, but the core of Abrams Street, UTA Boulevard and some of the other east-west streets, that are not the major streets like Front and North, have more potential for walkability. And street context again, you look at Cooper's Cooper and Collins. These are some major roadways that are going to be challenging to make them walkable. So the land to building ratio again, a lot of this land is actually owned by public entity like the university or church or city so a lot of them don't really have information in their appraisal district values so it's difficult to calculate some of them are red for that reason. But you can kind of see there is pockets of areas where you have higher than 50% value of land to improvements. So that means that there is opportunity for some redevelopment, especially north of the railroad. So you can see the existing, this is what we call figure ground. So you can see the existing character. You have a small of small neighborhood buildings to the north, and then you have some of the larger buildings to the south of the railroad. So you do have a range of existing blocks and existing character on the ground. There's historic fabric, there's new mixed use, there's some auto-oriented development that has potential for redevelopment. You do have neighborhoods that are next to downtown and then you have student housing as well. So that's just a summary. And this kind of drills down and compares each of these areas by each of these criteria we just laid out. So you can kind of get a sense for what kind of comes to the top for each of these areas. So area one, for example, the block structure and existing residential are a positive. Area two, You really don't have any positive factors. Area three, you have a few more positive factors, and then area four kind of builds on that, those positive factors. So that's a summary of our findings. And I'd be happy to kind of go into any detail if anyone has any questions about these Thank you, miss Okay, yeah, I have a lot of comments and I'm sorry. I missed the meeting The public meeting I was ill. I really wanted to go to that. But I think your findings are interesting, but sometimes I think people who live in an area or spend a lot of time in an area see things in a little bit of different light. So I wanted to go over those and see what you think. So I'm just going to go through my list. I agree with you about area two, so we won't discuss that. I think you're finding for area three is interesting, but I don't think it accounts for the fact that Division Street along much of that stretch is a state highway. And I don't see that in the negative column. So it should be a pink on that area three. I think that's a major roadblock for us. It's just an extra hurdle for redevelopment. And so I think to be fair to each area and to be consistent, we have to put the negatives where there are negatives, if you see what I'm saying. My concern about area 4B is that it's just too large. It also has some negatives that aren't listed on there. And one of them is there are some very large single entity owners Which in essence create super blocks which are not very good for connectivity and That sort of thing so I Think what my main concern is is that this is a pilot project and we need it to be successful And so I need to have more evidence that area three or every area four would be more successful. The other thing about area three is a lot of those businesses on there. Although you're talking about land value to building value. the land value on much of those businesses based on what those businesses are. And they are high profit low overhead businesses. A lot of those owners are out of the city and out of the state. And so they're just collecting a nice profit on those properties as is the really no incentive for them to redevelop. So I guess my question to you would be why would form based code get them to consider redevelopment and many of them are also shallow which should be in the negative column because you talk about shallowness elsewhere on some of these other ones. So to make apples and apples, I think we need to talk about the same consideration in both of those. All things being equal, I would love to do area three, but I see some negatives that I think maybe you're not seeing there. You said area three or area three? Yeah, because the shell and the high-profit low, extremely low overhead businesses there. Whereas in area one, it's the opposite. that you have lower profit businesses and smaller entities along there that own and they're mostly local. So they have more of an interest in what's going on in their city, I would think. So in other words, did you consider any of those factors? Yes, we did, but the biggest factor is really the roadway context and whether the city at that point is willing to go the good then next level in terms of transforming that roadway to maybe eliminate another lane of traffic and then add on street parking and wider sidewalks and the street escape context similar to what's west of Collins on the east side of Collins as well. Because right now, there is a median, there is, there are crosswalks as some, but it's still a fairly suburban roadway. It's an attractive roadway. Yeah, I would totally. So I think... But one of the attractiveness to form-based code and you hit it on earlier in your presentation, is that it's a vehicle to incentivize that kind of transformation. And I like that word transformation. That's what really form base code is about. And so if you look at the large area, area 4B, I guess you are calling it. Those are already pretty entrenched interests. A lot of large single entity owners that really don't have any incentive. One of them being the city itself, having large blocks. And we have seen redevelopment along Urban Union. And we are about to see redevelopment at the Abram and Mesquite block, it's a large super block, and that's without FormBase code. So those things already happened. So I guess what would like to know your evidence for how Form form-based code is gonna further incentivize development that's already happening? I think, I mean, I really wanna kind of make one thing clear. You will get walkable mixed-use development without form-based codes. There's no doubt about it. It's really about aligning your public investment and where the street improvements have been made with the regulations on the private realm and really bringing them together is what the power of the Farmways code is and it really will unleash the potential for all properties and not just the few that are willing to take the risk. That's part of it. And I agree with that. And in that vein, area one, we put in a lot of public infrastructure along East Abrams Street. I think it was, I inquired about the number. And just along that eastern stretch, not the entire stretch, was 17 million. We're not getting a return on that investment right now. And that's one of the factors that I think would be looked at. The other fact, the biggest factor is the flexibility that the developers would have to me, that's the biggest one. So I think I just would like to consider those factors a little bit more. And I guess I don't have a vested interest. I want it to succeed. I want this pilot project to succeed. So I want us to pick the area that is most likely to succeed. That's my main goal. And other areas that we've seen, Rosedale Street in Port Worth, which wasn't one of your case studies, but it was a similar area, very low income type of area, low income businesses, low profit businesses. And another area was Mansfield, which was a little bit more small town rural. And they did form base code, and they had some good return. So I just want to get your thoughts on all that and what you think of these areas. Actually, on Rosedale was in the near Fombay's code which we did have Mike Brennan Frazzanette at the Rosedale. Yeah so Rosedale actually interestingly Rosedale was a six-lane roadway when Tech Start had the turnback program and return that to the city it was built as a six-lanelane roadway until the street actually ended up accommodating on-street parking. They lost a lane of traffic and the city transformed, took the transformation even further and made it a true boulevard. That's when you started seeing the redevelopment along Rosedale. So I think that kind of really highlights that for East Abram to really be like more successful and see the development, the transformation of the street has to be taken even further. So the further we need to do more is what you're trying to say on that stretch before that's a good candidate. I think I would agree with that. The most enticing thing to me about 4B is the consolidation of all these zoning districts. I think cleaning that up would help enormously. So that's a big plus for me on that one. And so I'll just have to rethink what you're saying about the roadway itself. And I do agree with you. It's very suburban in character. But in which comes first and you're saying the roadway comes first and the form base called comes second. They one can't overcome the other. Well and there has to be the promise of that reinvestment even in Rono for example the city didn't even know if it was going to succeed and they spent 12 million dollars redoing Oak Street and then that kind of started the the ball rolling in terms of the private investment. They will not get out in front of the city in terms of taking risks. They want to make sure that the city has a scheme. Well, we already spent our 17 million on East. Exactly. And so maybe the idea is to kind of say that when the success on the west side of Collins really takes off, and then there is more pressure on the properties on the east side, those can be the approach corridor and can set yourself up for a future extension of the form base code to include that. Because remember, in this particular boundary, we'll have different sub districts. We're gonna try and create enough sub districts that you can possibly look at other places where the conditions and the context would work for that sub district. So you could look at some sections of Division Street and I'm just thinking outside the box could be a corridor commercial district or a corridor mixed use, which could be extended along East Abram as well. So the idea is that we would create a tool that can be amended and added onto in the future. Okay. Well, thank you very much. And I think 4B also includes East Division, East of Collins as well, which I think is also a plus for that area. And that boundary may also change as we talk to. Okay, thank you. Hard to order, why so? Thank you very much for all this work and bringing it all together. I was looking at the area that you recommending the four, the area four, and Councilmember Member of Boxell pointed out that it is rather large. So would you tackle the entire area as a pilot, or would you take sub districts or phase it in, or I mean how would that work? Well our initial recommendation is to go with this as the planning boundary that we would consider creating the code for the whole. But as we talk to property owners, neighborhood groups, we may decide to add or take away based on the discussions. And remember, a lot of this portion is in the university campus boundary. So a lot of it, yes, it's technically in the boundary because the neighborhood overlay extends into that, but the city really has limited control over that. So that itself is, technically in the, the phone base code really won't apply to any property there. So and I think once we go through the process, we hear from folks and they're like, we really don't want to be included in this and we kind of go through the engagement and then we get pushed back and we kind of feel consider at that point do we scale it back or not and but we'll bring that discussion back to you all at that point and say this is these are the different options that the city has in Moving forward, but initially we'd like to start with a planning boundary at least that we consider Cleaning up the the different zoning district boundaries and the overlay boundaries that you have so that's kind of what's driving This initial boundary. Thank you. Oh, another question. Council Member Gulante. Well, thank you for the presentation. Very good ideas. Well, I have the pleasure to attend the class about the form base code that we had a couple weeks ago. Also visit some of the areas. I spoke with the people, the stakeholders of the for-warf area in the rural noke area, the Oak Street, what they implemented the the the form base code. And seeing look at the areas here so it's very clear by the color code makes it it easy to see that we are in between area 3 and 4. There will be most beneficial to implement the form base code. Yep, right there. So the question is, we want to start the Palab program. Starts small, having only division street, division street between Cooper's and Collins, which we were doing it. Therefore, already with the sidewalks, the rebuilding of the sidewalks, we have a historic hotel coming in, the Caravan Hotel. We already have action in that area, though easily, give us the vision and how can we rebuild the division street, which is for the Cades, a vision for the residents in the area and from the city also. Or we want to expand the scope of the Pala program that includes different neighborhoods like you see in Magnolia district in Fort Worth, which is really, really encompasses the medical research centers, the entertainment centers, and the living and also the housing, new apartments, high density in Magnovia. To my colleagues, we have just to decide what size of the scope we want this. We want a small pilot program to see if it works, which we know already works. So we save us time on permitting process is more efficient. Being a developer myself, we see that many, many times the developers come to the table, have to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars to go through PNZ, PD process. And then at the end of the day, they don't know what is the ROI and they don't know if they're gonna do the project they wanna do. Or, you know, and having this implemented, what is gonna happen, we're gonna have the opportunity next year to create the code and this is the code. After we have the code, internally, the staff is gonna make sure that the code is being followed, extremely lining the process, that's what the developers and investors in the CD1. I really love what I see in the results and talking to a lot of people. I put a lot of time on considering and reading and talking to you guys. It's up to us to decide, really, what size of the Program we want. We want division only, which is already in place. It's already motion, or we want to extend it and have like the size of the scope, not the size of the scope, but the scope of a magnolia area, but in Ariton. I like what I see and leave to my colleagues to make comments and considerations. I'll remember Boxel. Okay, assuming we choose one of these areas, then what is the next step? Do we, do you go out and talk to each individual landowner because you talked about possibly scaling back based on input so can you explain that process for me that what you would do after the areas chosen? Well now that you brought it up I forgotten that we had the projects scheduling the next steps and so what we're going to do is once we select the area, we were holding off on doing this next step until we selected the area, because we're going to kind of identify those stakeholder groups, business owners, major property owners, maybe public members, like university, city, county, et cetera. So kind of identifying groups of these and having like small focus group meetings with them to kind of identify what their vision is for their property, their hopes and dreams, et cetera. And then how this form base code and we'll explain to them what this would do for them and hopefully get input as to what they want to see in terms of future development and future growth, you know, for their properties or what their interests would be. So we would do that in January. And then once we have that preliminary import, we're going to do a design workshop, we're calling it a shared as a fancy name, but it's literally a design workshop where contemporaneously we're going to have feedback loops between the community city staff, people that would be invited to different sessions to kind of see ideas that we're going to draw up conceptually to kind of say, hey, under the form base code, this is the kind kind of development you could see and identify different locations where you could see new development. These would just be ways to explain what the new code could bring about. It's not requiring people to redevelop those properties, but it just kind of trying to inspire the vision for different areas in downtown. So we would have a design, a three day design shred where we would have community stakeholders that are invited and then we would have one big public meeting that everyone would be invited to. So it may be an open house where people can walk around, kind of provide their input on what they like, what they don't like, etc. So then we would go away and refine that after the design shred. And then we would create something we call an FPC framework, a framework for this new zoning tool. That would be kind of a regulating plan that would show what sub districts we're thinking about, what the vision for each of those sub districts would be. That is generally saying, okay, we look at this area as being three to four stories and generally, you know, ground floor retail with, you know, kind of upper floor residential. In this area, we see more of institutional buildings because as you know it's's more of a campus Develop and not in this area. It's more neighborhood transition. Maybe we want to see more townhouses Duplexes patio homes that can transition to the neighborhoods kind of identifying those kind of character zones and what those character defining Elements would be for each of those and that would be a framework framework that we'll bring back to you all to say, hey, this is what the community said, this is why we are recommending this framework. Does everyone think that we're going in the right direction? Before we even write one single word of the new zoning? Because we want to make sure know you don't end up with a 50 or 70 page zoning document at the end of this process and say we have never we didn't want this. This is not the direction we want it to go in. So we want to kind of have check in with City Council and PNZ at these key milestones. So bring that back to you in March. Then we'll actually draft the actual regulations that would be the the form base code and then work with staff and doing the internal review and then have a public stakeholder review of the project and then we'd have you know we'd have counsel also looping in that process at that time and then do the formal adoption, which is the city initiated zoning, which would be then you're notifying all the property owners and 200 feet and all that. Yeah. Any other questions, comments? Thank you You should We're gonna take a quick little break. We'll be back in at 4.30 you you you I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm sorry. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. We're going to move down to or move back up to 3.2 infrastructure investment and jobs act update with Natalie Raulston. Good afternoon, Mayor and Councilmembers. Natalie Raulston, Intergovernmental Relations Manager. You have in your packets the most recent update for the city's activities relative to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. You've been receiving these updates for a little over three years now on regular interval. And while there are still two more years of funding for some programs under this act, the organization is working towards providing this body with a more comprehensive view of the city's grant-related activity. And in support of those efforts, this is going to be the final installment of this report. So Dr. Nikki Lewis is joining me today to share with you what the grants management department has been working on. But before I pass to her, I want to see if there are any questions about anything in today's memo. Looks like not. Perfect. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Glad to be here. We will not take up much of your time. time I promise this will be brief we really just wanted to provide you all with a bit of an update on the transition of the grants procurement that you've been traditionally accustomed to to the grants management department since its inception or at least since trays day and grants grants management has traditionally focused on our HUD funds and our HUD dollars and making sure that infrastructure projects are funded throughout the city with CDBG funds. Home funds are invested in our affordable housing initiatives and our nonprofits have been provided for with our funds as well. And now we've taken on a bit of an expanded responsibility and also ensuring that our departments, canisists are aided in securing grant funds as well. And so we wanna give you all just a brief overview of some of the systems and the processes that we put in place to help aid in this process, to helping secure funds. We're hoping to create a transparent process, and also one that allows, of course, the grants to help alleviate some of the stress that we've been seeing on our general fund budget. So we have our grants portal, it's already live, and it's active. And so I have Raven Pritchett with us, who's going to come up and just kind of give you an overview of our grants portal, some of the systems that we put in place, and then also our grants resource allocation portfolio, which is a centralized hub of all of the grants that the city has received in. So it's pretty much just a one-stop shop so that you can go in and kind of look and see citywide or enterprisewide, the funds that we're receiving real time. So I'll bring up Raven. Good afternoon mayor and council members. I'm Raven Pritchett, the senior grants developer for the grants management department. And I'd just like to give you a brief overview of our grants management portal and then walk you through our resource allocation portfolio as an update to where we are today. Not what I wanted to do. There we go. The grants management portal is live and you can access it through the SharePoint portal. We begin with an intent to submit form. What that would look like if you were a department submitting is you would literally say I'm a single department, you'd walk through this, it's very quick, it takes less than five minutes. And what that does then is automate an email to me that says we're beginning this grant process. And that's how I then know to trigger things like staff reports for resolutions and moving forward with the very, very front end of grant acquisition. From there, there's a grant tracker. So you've submitted your grant and you wanna know where your grant is in this process. You would click on grant tracker. That will literally take you to a complete database of all the grants that have been submitted, where they are in process. For example, this one has already been submitted. It's in review by the grantor. Every time I change the status of these, an email goes out to that department. So they then know where their grant is in the process. We have linked in here available grants, websites that will help you search like egrants, grants.gov, tceq. These are helpful in just knowing where to go when you are looking for grants yourself. But as a department, we also send notices out and say, hey, did you know that the Office of the Governor's just released this batch of police grants this week? Did you know that there are these court plans or an upcoming solid waste management grant from the COG? There's just a plethora of resources all the way down and through this, including a newsletter that we write from our department if you wanna know what's going on. Or if you wanted to search other grant news, there are actually websites dedicated to what type of grants are popular today. What is getting funded? USDA gives a lot of money for urban farming. Do we have a need for that? Then, since I've gone very quickly through that, our grants resource allocation portfolio is that centralized hub that provides a quick overview of all of the grants in the city that we're currently managing. This begins with a generalized overview. The wind rate specifically is an average of applications. So this is not tied to dollars because some grants are three million dollars. Some grants are a hundred thousand. So it's important when you're looking at that wind rate that you understand that that is literally an average of applications. You can filter this through all manner of filters. If you want to see just what happened in 2024, you can do that. If you would like to only look at competitive grants, you can choose to do that. If you want to see what we're doing in our formula-funded areas, those are choices for you as well. You can also, if you choose, sort by Council priorities. So if you want to see what we've done to champion, you can review them. These slicers appear on every page for every department. So as you move through this, if you are looking at the parks department, you can see how their projects align with council priorities or where those funds come from, but that funding source was. You can also hover over not awarded and a table will pop up so that you don't have to wonder. If we are applying for things where we're consistently not winning, we can really evaluate, is this something that's of value to us to continue to apply? Or is there a reason that our applications are not being successful? Now, I just want to highlight a few pages. Obviously, there's a page for every department that has active grants and we don't want to take your time to go through all of those. This is live. It's on the portal and you can view it at your leisure. But to give you some highlights, for example, here's transportation. They're a really good example of a department that has both formula funded and competitive grants and what that looks like in this format. So as you can see they have their funds from the federal transit authority, they currently have they have 10 applications of that, they have a 50% win rate. That doesn't mean that they've lost, that means that 10 that five of them have been awarded because they have five still that are pending. And if you click on that portion, you can see that and you can see the amounts. There's also a table below that delineates all of that. You can see where they are in the process. If they're pending award, they may be pending submission. That's not the case here, but that would just mean that they're in the pipeline and they've not yet been submitted, but they are on the radar and they're moving forward. Police is a great example of a department that was already very actively pursuing grants and has a lot of data. So this is what that looks like when you have it year over year. For example, in police, because they have done such a great job, we can go back and even look at what were they getting in 2022. And over time, of course, as this bill is will be able to see then how we increased over time and over years. Again, the same slicer supply. If you wanted to see if they were federal funds versus local funds if you wanted to see if they were from any specific entity. For example, if we just want to look at what they got from TechStyle. And then moving down, I'll also show you grants management, which is another good example because grants management typically manages formula funded grants, which do not show up as awarded because we do not apply for them, right? So we have three applications in our department out for competitive grants at this moment in time. So our win rate reflects a zero because they've not yet been one. They're pending. But you can see on the left how we have formula funded versus competitive, so it's easy to delineate where that many is, where we expect it to be. You can also see on project type how we've outlined, and this is true for every department, what that was spent on. So in this case, we have 1.4 million on.4 million on homeless support. But when we look at police, for example, you can tell what was compensation versus what was equipment. That is the gist of what I was going to show you. And that will conclude our tour of the grants resource allocation portfolio in portal. Councilmember Boxel. Thank you very much for this presentation. Was this grants website developed in house with Arlington? Yes. Personnel? Excellent job. It's beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. Sarah Kanima did an excellent job. Councilmember Odom Wesley. Thank you so much. I just wanted to just express appreciation that we have this department. As I visit with council members all over the nation at NLC, there's not many cities that are able to compete for all of these grants and compete so successfully and I think it's because of our grants management department we are truly blessed thank you. Y'all know I'm impressed I told you that when you came to see me so I beat council to the punch okay y'all did a great job this is phenomenal thank you. Thank you, punch. Okay. Y'all did a great job. This is phenomenal. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Council, Y'all, I've got your informal staff reports. For the sake of time, we're going to go through them one at a time. Starting with 4.1. To see if there's any specific questions that you may have regarding a particular staff report. 4.1, Richard Gertz and can answer any questions. Anybody have any questions or comments on 4.1? Dr. Odom Wesley. In reading the report, it sounds like the conclusion is that we are in compliance. Correct. so what is our goal just to be in compliance or beyond that or what are we trying to come? In terms of reporting number one and number two in pursuing the CIP projects that make up the impact fee program. There's a requirement that those projects be executed within the time frame, the tenure time frame of the program, and we are within those time limits. So we're doing excellent. We're not just in compliance. We're excellent, right? Well, when I say we're in compliance, we're doing just fine as far as chapter 395 with the local government code. It's concerned. Okay, thank you. Anybody else? Thank you, Richard. 4.2, any questions for Deputy City Manager Wakeman? I have one there. I'll throw them wisely. Thank you for the news letter and all of the services that we have available for youth and families. According to United Way and several other non-profits, the most vulnerable time for our youth is from 3 PM to 6 PM. Do we have any resources, I guess, in an aggregate format that parents or organizations could access to see how we provide for our youth doing that timeframe? So I can, I think the aggregating tool we would suggest folks use at this point is to get on our website and search for youth because that would bring, I think in a while back, we had an issue where live one of our departments activities were not actually tagged with that that label but if youth or children or children's activities, youth activities, I think all of that will lead you to a great number of activities we have in our parks department and our library department probably in other departments as well. So that would be my suggestion for parents who are looking for one place to go where the city has all that information. Sure. Anybody else? Okay. 4.3 Miss Boxel. I was not able to attend so I would pass this to who was officiating at this bully. I was canceled. Okay. Thank you 4.4 Mr. Field. Do you have anything to add that wasn't discussed in the executive session? No Thank you, sir 4.5 Mr. Buskin do we have any appointments towards and commissions? Yes, sir. We have seven appointments this evening. Thank you, sir. Anything. Molly, do you want to add anything for the charter amendment? Just another place. Yeah, another placeholder for any conversation council might want to have. See a non evening agenda items. Dr. Odom Wesley. Yes, I had a question on 8.4. It had to do with the veterinarian for the animal services. All right, let me find it. Do we have somebody here? 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. Yes, ma'am. And according to the staff report, we can't find a vet. We've been looking for five years and we can't find a vet. Is that right? Yes, ma'am. I actually will know Animal Services Manager. We have been looking for over five years for a veterinarian. I'm as of Prior to the fiscal year ending we had only had 13 applicants for that whole period of time and I believe we dissolved that I'm that position for cost savings to turn it into a contract I'm position that way we can be more flexible with our veterinarians and I get those get our needs met through the the veterinary services that are that we can get. Okay so she's part time I guess yeah she she's part more or less yes contracted yes contracted as needed yes I guess okay and we can't find anybody in the city. She's in weather for She she runs a practice in Fort Worth, but she is I'm she's been devoted to us for several years where she is contracted with us for several years I'm so we have a good rapport with her and I'm we haven't had any other veterinarians locally step up to offer their services that we've been able to find. So none of the 13 applicants with them all to? No, there may have only been four that were actually DVMs. And why is this exempt from bidding? I believe because it's a professional contract, professional services contract. Professional services, so you select based on qualification, not on bid. Okay. So do you find this satisfactory, Ashley? Are we getting all the services that we need? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Boxel. Thank you. Thank you. Um, thank you. House member Boxel. Thank you. Back on 8.4. If we were to find a veterinarian to hire full time on staff, what would be the salary? I believe it was at 120 was the average salary that we were offering. However, again that position was was dissolved. Right, I'm just curious with that. Yeah, and offering was. It was an average of about 120. Okay, thank you. You just ma'am. Anybody else? Evening agenda items. Council member Gonzalez. 8.29. Just had a question on why we're I guess changing the way the committee has put together. So, my. Stanley, it's the feel of the need for greater representation among demographic groups in the city of Arlington. If you look at the original setup of the 19, didn't have quite the range of diversity as desired, and this is an effort to increase that. Do we discuss that during the meeting? Not that I'm aware of. We had missed the open brought it up to me. We talked with a mayor a little bit about it. And we're trying to get some feedback. If you don't want to pursue, it's fine. If you just look at the list, especially for such a big effort, it kind of cries out that we need to kind of broaden it out a little bit. We probably failed you and not pointing that out before you all actually made the appointments. But we'll manage however you need to in this case, just suggesting that it and professional planners were kind of like, we need to need a little bit of help connecting to some areas of town that might not otherwise connect. And I understand that, but I think the council has chosen a diverse group of applicants who we believe think critically about our city strengths. Our selections were based on the applications experience background and knowledge and I'm confident that they'll have a positive impact on this committee. I just want to have our primary folks that were appointed individuals who will make the decisions for the cities based on their experience and not on other criteria. So I don't have a problem. I just I was like shocked. Like, you know, I looked at the adversity and there was diversity. There is diversity when it comes to gender and black and white. We had no Latino or Asian representation on this planning committee at all. I appointed an Asian, I know that, mine was. So I'm not trying to argue, I'm just saying. I didn't see a reason because we start, that's a slippery slope here now. We start doing that for all our committees and everything else. I think we need to look at that in the first place, but we need, I mean, just like anything else, you know, I hope I was not elected to the city council and because I'm Latino, I hope I was elected to the city councilman because I was the best one and that's how I appoint my people. So I'm fine, but I just have to say, I just wanna make sure that we know what we're doing. So I don't think there's any disagreement as to the qualifications of applicants that were there, but the reality of it is when the consultants look at things and they come in and they say, listen, here's what we're needing on this, we have to do something in retrospect. Okay, I'm gonna pull this agenda item so we can discuss that then. So rather than just vote it out. Okay. Thank you. Anybody else on evening agenda items? I have one more. Dr. Odom Wesley, I'll come back to you, Mr. Gonzalez. It's easy. 8.12 and 8.13. Those are related. I think, well, I don't know. Let me ask. Because 12 is, we're rejecting proposals for the three year contract. And then 13, we're awarding the contract. I'm just confused. Yes, ma'am. Good afternoon, we're with Alaska Peking-R Manager. Yes, ma'am, we're rejecting the proposals to the original process that we did for the E-discovery for that project, was we did RFP, we evaluated all the proposals that we received, we did evaluation process, we did product demonstrations as well. We came up with a top vendor. During negotiations, we decided to send the CES best interest to negotiate a contract through their DR cooperative, which is a state contract. And so we awarding the contract through their DR contract and we're rejecting the proposals we did for the RFP. Oh, okay. Are any of those bidders the same from the bid process in 312 and then the co-op in 313? Yes, ma'am. It's the same vendor. Yes. So the one that won the evaluation process is the one that has a DRR contract as well. Okay. Thank you for clarifying that. You're welcome. Mr. Gonzalez. On 12.1. I had a question regarding the financial impact. It says, wave all permit fees and I didn't know if you have a number of what those permit fees may be for that project. Council Member, I believe it comes out to about $4,000, but it would be whatever would the one-stop permit assistance downstairs It would be whatever that process come out to So that's in addition to Yeah, there are the other 1.5 million that's correct. So it'd be a total of about two million then With the weight of fees correct. I mean, it's not, you're not getting money, but it's a, correct. Okay. I guess if you look at it that way. Thank you. Mr. Hogg. Yeah, thank you, Mayor. Item 8.28 on demand ride chair. I think Anne, let's see, Anne back there. She's tired of me asking her a bunch of questions already. So we've been talking about this. And thank you for all the answers on the questions you asked and to my council colleagues, we're okay in about $9 million in essence for on demand. About 6 million is from the city and about 5.4 from the city and about 3.6 or so, 40% from federal funding. And with the change in federal government, do we have any risk concerns about potentially some of that? And they have helped me with all those numbers earlier to clarify. Do we have any risk or concern on that federal funding, or is it funded through that time for these projects now? Thanks, Anne Foss, Planning and Programming Manager for the Transportation Department. So this is referring to our Federal Transit Administration Formula Grant funding, which is 5307 funding. use these funds for both our on-demand ride share service as well as our handy trans service at the city. These funds are appropriated through the federal government process. They're never guaranteed, but these are long term funds that are appropriated each year and awarded and have been for decades. So there's no absolutes. But of all of the funding sources that we receive for transportation projects, these are some of the most consistent and secure I would say. Okay, and with that in on this contract, if something did happen on that funding, do we have an option of reducing our service, do we have an option of canceling service so that if that federal funding cancels it after year one and year two is coming up, do we have those outs in this contract? We do. We have a termination clause in the contract. And then I know I've asked a lot of questions because I do believe in variable-based pricing and I know by the federal government standards, we're not allowed to have variable based pricing Which you know different prices for different people or different prices even at different times And we can't do that but we so on that you know because we have not had a price increase and I don't think since we started it Our last price increase was in January of 2021 when we went to citywide service we switched from from a flat fair of $3 per person per ride no matter how far you were going. When we went to citywide we changed that to a distance-based pricing model which is $3 to $5 depending on the distance. And on that pricing end, I know we have to stay under the federal government. We could increase fees and then provide more free rides is something we could do. And I'm not saying we need to do that right now, but we may want to discuss that. We could increase and then provide more free rides to qualified individuals. That is an option, yes. Council certainly could pursue a fair increase kind of across the board. There are some requirements for the process that we would have to go through involving a public public comment period and a public hearing to adequately notify residents and give them the opportunity to comment on a fair increase. And then we do have the free ride program which we administer in partnership with a number of local nonprofits. They are able to provide eligible clients with free ride passes. That program is quite popular. We have been historically receiving community development and block grant funding to help support that program, but the demand for that program exceeds the funding that we have currently to support that. Okay, all right, thank you, Ann. Anybody else, evening agenda items. Okay. Issues relative to city or text that properties or projects. No future agenda items. Nope. Okay. The afternoon session will be adjourned. We'll see her by downstairs at 6.30. PAPER you you you