--------- No, I notic. I'll be honest. I'm going to call the uh meeting of the legislative intergovernment affairs committee to order. Uh first item of business is approval of the April 7th, 2026 minutes.
>> All those in favor? Any opposed? Great. Uh, action items. Consideration of recommendation of appointment of two new subset judges and related salary. Chief Gonzalez, I think you're stepping up. Thank you. >> Microphone. >> Council member Crane, committee members,
and staff. I'm here today requesting to fill two vacant part-time substitute judge positions. Substitute judges are appointed for two-year term and the current term expires March 31st of 2027. We have eight substitute eight
substitute part-time judge positions. Six are filled with two vacancies. They're appointed for a two-year term and in in oddnumbered years and they're limited to work 19 hours per week. They're compensated only for the number of hours worked and there are no benefits. One vacancy is due to the
appointment of a full-time uh judge from a actually the appointment of a substitute judge to a full-time judge position and the second vacancy was due to a resignation of a substitute judge. The first substitute the first vacancy was due to the to appointing substitute
judge Karen Boyd Williams to fill the full-time judge position commencing April 1st, 2026. And the second vacancy was due to the uh resignation of substit substitute judge Leslie Lincolnis effective March 31st of 2026 which created an immediate need to fill the
vacancies promptly. On Thursday, February 5th, 2026, the panel selected substitute judge Karen Boyd Williams to fill the full-time judge position, thereby creating a vacancy for the substitute judge. However, at the conclusion of the
interview process, the committee selected Dena Dina Stallings to fill the vacant substitute judge position. The second vacancy was due to uh the uh resignation of substitute judge Leslie Linkis. So, we posted the position for a
two-eek period as far as we posted externally from March 12th through March 26. We received three applications. One applicant recused or sorry withdrew. Two were interviewed uh on Thursday, April 1st, and the panel selected Raymond
Daniel to fill the substitute judge position. The interview committee consisted of Deputy Chief Bradshaw, two municipal court judges, and the clerk of the court assistant director. Dana Dina Stallings is a graduate of Baylor University School of Law, licensed in Texas since
1996. She's a solo practitioner with a background in criminal and family law as well as contract. Raymond Daniel is a graduate of South Texas College of Law, licensed in Texas in 1991, also a solo practitioner in the areas of wills, trusts, and probate, family, and
criminal background. The recommendation is to approve the appointment of Diana Stallings and Raymond Daniel as substitute judges for the remainder of a two-year term commencing May 16, 2026 through March 31st of 2027. And I also recommend to
establish the same rate of pay as all the other part-time judges or substitute judges at a rate of $64 per hour. Uh the next steps consists of an MNC to the mayor and city council for consideration on May 12th uh 2026. Any questions?
>> Any questions? No. Uh, can we take both of these recommendations together? Right. Okay. Do I hear a motion to approve the recommendation to appoint uh Dena? Is it Dina? >> Dina. >> Dina Stallings and Raymond Daniel as substitute judges for the all those in favor?
>> Any opposed? >> Great. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it, Judge. Thank you very much. >> All right. Next up, we have the federal legislative update. And I see Casey Pipes in the house. Step on up. Thanks. >> Good afternoon everybody. Mr. City
Manager, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. Uh on behalf of Terresa James, TJ Patterson, and our entire uh government affairs team, happy to update you on what's going on in DC. I was joking with uh Teresa and TJ that it's odd that you would ask me for an update.
There's absolutely nothing interesting going on in Washington. assassination attempts, wars, tariffs. Uh but for our purposes, appropriations is going on. So I wanted to update you on sort of where we are in the process. Uh what comes next and then also mention
uh the at great crossing campaign that we've begun. U so you have the report in front of you, um or you should have the report in front of you, uh list of meetings that have been done very active in the last couple of months mainly because we're trying to get all of our uh appropri. So, uh, 89 meetings over
the course of the last month. So, every day, uh, we're in somebody's office, uh, pushing for the city's agenda and the city's request. We put in 13 different requests, uh, for Fort Worth related projects. Um, most of these we put in
directly. Some of these were others put in and we supported them. Alliance is a great example of that. Uh, but they total uh, in some, uh, 13 requests for $40 million. Uh and these are the CPFs. So this is the restricted earmarks uh
the community project fund funding possibilities. This was brought back online about five years ago. Uh and so we want to use that as much as we can. But that's doesn't mention or include the programmatic or plusup requests uh which will happen this summer. And those
are the ones where there's already a line item. Uh there's already a budget item that is money is flowing uh to a to an entity, a Fort Worth entity. Uh and we try to go in and plus those accounts up and add money to them. Uh we have submitted roughly a hundred to $110
million uh in plusup requests. So that's actually where the real money is. Uh and we'll have more of an update later this summer. We're still early in that process. Uh and I'll be back to to update you on that. I did want to mention before I take your questions uh the atgrade crossing campaign. I think
I've me discussed this with everybody uh on the committee. Uh this is the idea that came up in our meetings in the fall. We always meet with the entire council individually in the fall and try to get a sense of what they want to work on in the coming year. This issue came up over and over and over again that uh
there are too many at grade crossings uh that are creating an issue. This is obviously where the road and the railroad meet. Uh and so we're trying to find uh and launch a campaign uh to find money to alleviate some of these. So I'm going to be coming around and doing meetings with individual council members
to try to show you the map that Kelly Porter has come up with. Uh it's an exhaustive map. It covers every at grade crossing in the city. There's I think about a hundred of them. So we're going to go through and look at your individual districts and try to prioritize um the most important ones in your areas
and then we're going to try to get money for them. Uh Scott has already begun the process uh with the DOT. Uh in fact, you you will notice in your uh page two of your uh summary. Uh Jay Payne is the deputy administrator of the Federal
Highway Administration. We've had a couple of different meetings with him. Scott has um Scott couldn't join us today, by the way. He had to be in the speaker's office, so I guess we'll forgive him for doing that. Um but he's had a couple of meetings with Jay Payne, and there's a couple of different ways to go about this. There's discretionary
money uh that the agency has that we're going to pursue. There is the grant process in particular uh the consolidated rail infrastructure and safety improvements grant extending them is Chrissy grants uh which Kelly Porter Porter and his team are looking into.
There's CPFs next year uh and then there's the plus-ups that I just mentioned. So, a lot of different angles of attack we can use on this. Uh but we are going to try to pursue massive amounts of money uh because this is not going to be cheap to do it. But it's a
gamecher for the city if we can get this done both in terms of public safety and in terms of just moving goods and services uh around the city more quickly. So a very very busy spring uh and it's going to be an even busier summer uh as we look to the plusups on
the approp side. And let me stop there and take uh any questions or comments that you have. >> Any questions? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Thank you, Casey. On the atrade crossings, is Kelly Porter ranking those by priority before we get that list?
>> So, the list that I have is just a map that lists all of them by district. Um so, we can certainly work with him on prioritizing it, but we also want you guys to give us input as well. So, we we probably will do both. Okay. And then do
we have a dollar amount that we're kind of pie in the sky that we're going to go after? >> So if we were to fix every atgrade crossing, it would be $900 million, something like that. >> So by triaging these and coming up with, you know, three or four in each
district, we can dramatically reduce our price, but still a lot of money we're going to need to get. >> Okay. And sorry, one last question for Alan. Um, can you talk a little bit about Dallas wanting to align with us on appropriations request? Oh yeah. Uh it's
a true story. Uh it was a actually a request that came to the city manager. Um it was I think it was the regional chamber um that had asked if they could coordinate all of the appropriations requests uh for the entire region and we politely said no. We like the Dallas
Regional Chamber. They're they're fine, but um we want to get Fort Worth money for Fort Worth projects. And uh we took it as a compliment. Um, they obviously know that we do appropriations very well and uh kind of want to we we suspected
they kind of wanted to get in on some of our relationships at the committee and um we're not >> Alice asked that. Remind them that they need to be good regional partners if they want that and just point them to their members on the RTC committee.
>> I'll point them to you, Miss Beck. Yes, >> I've already >> I'm sure Casey and this this may be better directed to Kelly Porter U, >> but I'm going to echo uh Councilwoman Hill's comment. I would really love to
have some data around that around those crossings to prioritize them. And the two things I would look at are the number of minutes per day that the crossing is is blocked and then the sheer volume of traffic that uses the
particular road at that crossing. So we can really really see which ones have the maximum amount of problem. Yeah, that that was going to be my suggestion as well is if we can look at number of cars, whatever that formula is over
total timestalled because >> um you know there's some that are a pain, right? But there's others that are a real problem and so like we were discussing the West 7th, right? Like that's that's a huge um when it stops and you know it's a lot of cars that
back up. So there might be a couple cars backing up for 30 minutes someplace way out, but if we've got hundreds of cars backing up for 30, that's a problem. >> It's a great point, and I'll check with Kelly. He is a savant on this issue, as you know. Uh he tooured me around about
10 of the sites one day and uh he knows them inside and out. So I'll I'll get this data from him before I come meet with you guys. Carlos, >> uh, Casey, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the, uh, aerospace and aviation, uh, innovation initiatives. I
see listed here in your handout that Texas A&M University has included. That's, you know, rightfully so. Um, I also wanted to point out that uh TCC Northwest Campus also has, you know, a a program they're getting off the ground u
that pertains specifically to air traffic control training because currently there's one center and it's in Oklahoma and it's kind of a fast track with a high wash out rate. So we need help in that regard uh to provide some
fundamental education, you know, for candidates going into that type of uh schooling and training. >> Sure. >> I would ask include that. >> Let me follow up with you on that because there may still be a way to pursue plus up money on that. >> Yeah.
>> Absolutely. >> Uh anybody any other questions? Uh who did we ask who uh what member offices that carry the CPS? >> So uh there's 13 did um I think four of
them. Uh Roger did around four of them. Um and uh VC did all the rest. Actually VC did six I think if I recall correctly. >> Great. Well thank >> go ahead. Go ahead TJ. We'll thank them
on our behalf and I know y'all continue to work them as part of this process. >> We will. We'll miss uh we'll miss Mark when he leaves, but we're getting Roger to take over a lot of his district. So, uh it's not a bad backup plan to have Roger there. >> Great to know. Well, thank you for being
here today. And if there's nothing else, >> great. Uh meeting is adjourned. What's next? Part: 2
Good morning all. At this time, I'm going to call the audit and finance committee meeting to order. Our first order of business is approval of our March 3rd meeting minutes. All in favor? I motion passes. Thank
you. We have two briefings today. Our first briefing is from Patrice Randall, our city auditor. I'm almost awake today. >> Good morning. Patrice Randall, city auditor, here to present an update since
our last audit committee meeting. We've completed a park safety and maintenance audit. That audit has not been released, but since there were no material findings, we wanted to go ahead and make the presentation. As a part of the audit, we interviewed park and recreation department staff. We reviewed
responses from the most recently completed citizen survey, reviewed work orders, service requests, inspection records. We also conducted walkthroughs of selected parks. We concluded that the park and wreck department's process for identifying and mitigating risks was
adequate, but we did however identify a need for written standard operating policies and procedures. We've also completed a data analysis report for the first and second quarters of this fiscal year. Proud to say there were many that had no exceptions. We
didn't have any exceptions with duplicate vendor payments. No exceptions with duplicated employee numbers, duplicated vendor identification numbers. We found no employee to vendor matches. Uh no vendors assigned multiple vendor identification numbers and the
wire transfers were adequately documented, supported, and were um for a city business purposes. We did however identify weaknesses or exceptions with the employee termination payments, gift cards, and personal
paid holiday. So in reference to employee termination payments, we found that four of our 15 sampled payments were erroneously calculated. Two of those were overpayments, two were underpayments. Uh
while we don't make recommendations for our data analysis reports, we did make an audit comment or suggestion to management that they implement an enhanced process that requires review of terminal leave payment calculations on at least a sample basis or for payments
in excess of a certain amount. We also found exceptions with gift cards. For gift cards, we surveyed city departments to find out which departments had gift cards. Uh we had two departments, neighborhood services and the police department. For neighborhood services, we were able to
account for all but nine gift cards that were valued at $100 each. I will say that once we made this um once we concluded that these were not accounted for, the neighborhood services department immediately drafted and
presented written standard operating procedures that govern their gift cards. For the police department, we were unable to account for 429 of the gift cards valued at $50 each. During our review, the police department
had reassigned this task to an um an employee. That employee was actually trying to get the gift card logs throughout our process. So, what we plan to do is come back to the police department within one or two weeks to try to account for these 429 gift cards.
We will say that when you have uh gift cards, it's important to have a log that is centralized and that accounts for gift cards from the point they are purchased until the gift cards are distributed. And so whenever you have um
a change in custodianship, it should only involve transferring a complete set of records from one custodian to another. Patrice, what are they using these gift cards for? Is it for internal awards or is it in community programs?
>> It's a community program. >> Okay. Code. Okay. And then personal paid holidays. So, the city allows two paid um personal holiday leaves for employees. And we found that
35 of the 52 uh sampled employees exceeded that two-day or 16-hour um leave. Uh three of these were overpaid to former city employees. We had 31 that
were overpaid. These are current city employees and one that was 31 that was overpaid and one that was underpaid. And these are for paid uh personal holidays. And as mentioned, we don't make recommendations, but for this one, since we've had uh prior exceptions with
personal holidays, we uh suggested to management that they consider either changing the personal holiday leave to a full eight hour day or set up personal holiday leave as an absence. And so when it's set up as an absence, the system
will prompt the employee to see how many hours are eligible. And so then that way they cannot use more than what's been permitted by city policy. So that was our suggestion to to management. That concludes our audits. Are there any
questions or data analysis? >> Questions? >> Trice, thank you very much. Appreciate the update. And at this point, uh, Leslie Teneico, our senior administrative assistant, is going to present to you all what we've done so far with our SharePoint.
>> Good morning. Leslie Tanoku, senior administrative assistant with internal audit. So, I will be presenting our SharePoint site to date. This is our homepage where you'll find information um for the internal audit department as
well as um more information um about our office down below. I'll start with our first tile um which is the status of audit recommendations. So this section will uh display the status of uh prior audit uh
recommendations since October of 2023. Internal Audit will be updating the recommendations uh no later than 5:00 PM on the last Thursday of each month. You'll be able to see the departments listed down below. And I'll be using
neighborhood services as an example. So in this spreadsheet, you'll see all of the recommendations for neighborhood services. You'll be able to see the audit number, audit title, uh report release, audit recommendations, uh management's responses, and the target implementation dates and the
implementation status. Our second tile is audit tips where you'll see preventive internal controls. These are resources for management as well as detective internal controls. And we also have Q&A audit tips by RO
where you'll be able to see questions for contract compliance administrators and we'll add to this uh we'll continue to add this to this in the future. Our last tile is the audit and finance committee PowerPoint presentations where we have them listed um by calendar year
2025 and 2026. I'll use 2025 as an example um where you'll see um all of the presentations uh for last year from uh February 2025 through December 2025. And I'll click on the first one as an
example um where you'll be able to see our presentation for that meeting. And that concludes our presentation for uh our SharePoint site. >> Thank you, Lesie. Any questions?
>> Excellent. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Patrice Lesley, thank you for the presentation. Our next briefing is a review of our month monthly financial report. We have Kate Perry and Christy Lemon, our
assistant finance directors, presenting. >> Good morning. Kate's a little bit under the weather, so you just get me today. Um, >> Christa, you're enough. >> I'm happy to be here with you. Christy Lemon, assistant director in the Fort Worth lab. um just going to cover a couple things on monthly financial
reports and then of course have time for questions if you have additional questions. So we'll start on page five of the report um and look at revenues. So the story is really the same as the last time that we were together. Um you'll recall that there was an error in the certified values report. $2.6
million is what it lowered our collection um our ability to collect. So you are seeing that the property tax revenue is 9 million coming in 9 million under budget um for the year and so that's based on that correction and then
also we're just continuing to see um protests and other things throughout the year very similar to what happened last year. So and then for sales tax we're projected to be $3.5 million under budget. Um again we had a pretty big adjustment there so we had a negative
audit adjustment of 3.6 million. So that has a big impact there. Um we are seeing growth in revenue in licenses and permits um really development activity beyond what we budgeted. So that's great. So the bottom line for revenue is
we're expected to be about $8.4 million under budget for revenues. Um and then we will go to page eight and look at the general fund expenditures. So, as you'll recall, we have a hiring freeze in place and also a discretionary
spending freeze, and that's really related to what's happening with the revenue. So, we've been working with departments over the past couple of months on discretionary spending cuts and bringing down their projections. Um, we are seeing just under 1% um over
budget in revenue, I mean, and expenditure categories for departments. So, a couple of highlights here. Um for the fire department, they're uh almost $9 million over budget and that's really due to a couple of things. One is
overtime. Um and then the other issue is fleet costs. So we've seen that the past couple of years their fleet costs have been rising higher uh higher than what we're budgeting for them. So you will see a projected transfer of $780,000 from the general fund to help offset
some of those fleet costs. So we were holding some contingency there and non-dep departmental for that purpose. Um yes please. Yes. So yes fleet cost and overtime those are the two drivers and we are
working with the department to see if we can bring down those projections. Um same on police department. The majority of that is overtime as well. And there have been a number of conversations over the last few weeks about how they can make adjustments to operations in order to bring down overtime costs. So,
>> I'm sorry. So, I know that the police department is hiring and expects to be at full force. Will that bring that overtime down then? We expect that to continue to drop. >> I believe so. What we're starting to see is that as um they're filling positions,
then their normal salary and benefits are going up, but the overtime costs haven't dropped yet. So, we're kind of in that middle space where we're seeing both costs. So, yes. Um and then in
uh park and recreation and TPW, those are really operation costs and we're working with them to identify opportunities to trim. So, some good conversations in the last couple of weeks about where we can make adjustments on those questions on any of the other general fund department
expenditures. Okay. And then I'll just highlight a couple of the other funds. So, on um CCPD is on page 11. There we go. Just want to highlight here you will see a 10 almost 11 million transfer out
that's related to 200 Texas Street. So, that's a planned thing, but it's a big number. So, just wanted to highlight that for you. And then on page 20, group health. Um, this is the one we've been tracking really closely. Lots and lots and lots of work behind the scenes. Um,
just continuing to see some high claims costs there. Uh, but are working with uh folks in HR department to figure out what we can do about the fund. Um, so active a lot of active work going on there. they are projecting to use um
almost 17 million in um or sorry 16 million in net position through the end of the year. So there will be in next week a budget work session on the group health fund. So lots more detail coming in that presentation but continuing to
track closely and working on making those adjustments. All right, those are the highlights I have for you. Any other questions on anything in the report? No questions for me committee. >> Thank you so much presentation.
>> Appreciate it. >> Think that concludes our business. We have one more item. >> One last thing. Chairman Bllelock, if you could please come forward. Okay. On behalf of the Fort Worth Lab Finance and Audit Committee, we'd like
to show a token of appreciation to you for the work you've done uh to support us and to uh just look. Anyway, I'm I'm speechless of all times. I'm speechless, but I hate to see him leave, but we're so glad of the
time that you shared with us. I came on board. Uh you were here when I came on. You weren't here when I left the last time. and I've really enjoyed working with you and I'm going to pass the mic to Reggie who thinks he's not going to t talk as well as Christian >> and you know just one note you during
your leadership you know we've seen tremendous improvements in the overall financial management as you know we've had very successful audits over the past several years and a lot of that's due to your leadership so we're going to miss you.
>> Yes. Yes. I'll echo that as well. Thank you so much, Chairman Bllelock, for your leadership and for your communication with Brady and me and Christie around a number of budget issues, not not excluding property tax. It's been um it's a pleasure to talk to someone who
um you know certainly understands like the fiscal obligations of the city and um and the position that we try to keep ourselves in. So, thank you I'll just take a moment and say thank you very much. And y'all give me tremendous credit, but the reality is
you and your teams have done all the hard work that have made the city and our financials so successful. And so I appreciate everything you do, everything your teams do. And I'm just so thankful that even while I may not be here, the
city is in good hands. Thank you. Just for the public record, that was employees purchased the gift. It was not city Well, with that, I'll entertain a motion to close the meeting.
>> So, so moved. Thank you all.