--------- Happy birthday. That right there. Good morning. How are you? Good. How dare he? No. What are we gonna do? We're going to How are you?
It was working a minute ago. But I can technically go in there already, right? Yeah, you can. Thank you. All right. How are you? Here we go.
Okay, council. I think we're about ready to get started. I've got enough for quorum. Good morning. Good morning. I'm going to call our budget work session to order and turn it over to Jay Chapa. Since we're have a series of meetings today and we're short on time,
I'm just going to turn it straight over to staff so we can get the ball rolling with our presentations. So, Christianne is going to lead the show. Good morning. I'm staff Christian Simmons for Worth Lab. All right. So, um thanks for joining us budget work session. We're
moving right along to fiscal year 26 already now that it's June. I'm going to do a quick legislative update, but really our primary focus today will be HR. So, I'm just going to get through these few slides. You've heard about most of this, but happy to talk about any anything you like. So, as you know, the 89th legislative session has
adjourned and so staff has worked really hard over the last few months to track and comment on and testify on bills and we're really appreciative of Leanne and Teresa and their staff for leading us through that effort. Um we've been tracking bills that have a legislative sorry fiscal impact for fiscal year 26
and beyond. Um and so there's only a few right now that are um you know we still have some that we're tracking and pending as they sit with the governor but um for fiscal year 26 the most tangible um impact that we're seeing is in Senate Bill 1008 108 whatever you
want to say. Um we talked about this last time and we'll even hear about it more in our next budget work session when we talk about fees and rates. Um but this is the one that has to do with regulation of food service particularly what we can um charge for health permits. So without any mitigation what
we look at for fiscal year 26 with regard to this bill is a $ 1.9 million revenue loss in the general fund because of reduced permit revenue. So that's thing one for fiscal year 26. Um thing two for fiscal year 26 is Senate Bill 122. This one is not as tangible of an impact. This um bill has to do with
third-party review of development documents and inspections. Um, we are not sure if this really has like a tangible fiscal impact. More likely what will happen is that we'll have to reconfigure our permitting system or the Excela system that so many of you are familiar with. Um, so that will just be an administrative cost. We're not sure
yet like what that cost will be or if it can just be absorbed with development services and NIT or if we'll have to do some sort of small reconfiguration. Um, but really for fiscal year 26, we're looking at a $ 1.9 million impact again with no mitigation. We do have an idea for how to kind of fix this. um or
mitigated at least that we'll talk about. Uh in future years though, starting in fiscal year 27, there's there's a little bit more on the horizon. So, House Bill 9, we've talked about this is the bill that increases the business personal property exemption
to 125,000. It's currently 2500 um and the original bill was 250,000. So, this is a bit in the middle through an amendment. Um but this has a $6.25 to 5 million revenue loss starting in fiscal year 27 in the general fund and then also in debt service of course for property tax we see another $ 1.75
million loss. So 8 million this is reflected in the long-term forecast that you saw. Um but this is a reality now. So we just want to remind you that this is coming. Uh and then there's a couple of other bills that have to do with impact fees which again are more administrative in nature and we'll just have to and there's some increased
constraint with um how we can step up impact fee increased schedules. Um there's an administrative cost now for periodic audits that we'll have to do on impact fee related activities. Um and so we'll continue to watch those. But the real tangible fiscal impact you'll see there at the bottom is um really having
to do with uh House Bill 9. Any questions on any of this? This is mostly a reminder, but just wanted to um questions from councils. We're good. Okay, great. So with that, oh sorry, let me tell you this. Um, Senate Bill 108, this is a preview
because again, um, in our next work session on the 17th, we'll talk about, um, an idea for fees. But, um, 1008, $1.9 million revenue loss. What Environmental Services is going to recommend in an M andC that you'll see forthcoming is to charge the uh, a flat
rate for these health permits. Right now, they're on a sliding scale. You'll see the detail here. um they'd like to increase that fee to $773 flat rate, which is um what the state of Texas fee schedule allows. Um we have to give 60-day notice on this to the state and this is effective September 1. So that's
why they'd like to do it sort of in advance of the regular budget schedule. Uh and so uh Cody's here, he can talk about any of this, but really we'll we'll talk a lot about it on the 17th as well. This would change the revenue loss from 1.9 million. it would mitigate it a bit and we'd lose more like 650,000. So
that's the reason. Are Cody, are we still required our requirement for our participation in the inspection of these facilities hasn't changed. Correct. Yes, that's correct. So just as a reminder, we still plan to deliver the same
service through health inspections and health permits. We just need to review our fee schedule to be in alignment with this particular Senate bill that has now into law and also to maintain all those other state regulations. So, we're not looking at a change in service. As we move forward in the next few weeks, we'll have a better frame and a better plan of how we're going to structure
that. Thank you. Okay, now I think I'm done unless there are other questions. Okay, so I'm going to call in Joanne Henson from HR and we'll talk so much. you know, compensation is such a huge part of the budget. So, we thought it'd be helpful to do some previewing for you today about um pay plan, compensation,
benefits, all kinds of things. So, turn it over to you. So, I'm here focusing mostly on the benefits as side of the house. Um first of all, of course, we've got our total compensation, the b the base pay, pension, medical program, dental vision, we offer basic life insurance, holidays, sick leave, um and
the employee assistance plan. So, the city health insurance is what's called self-funded, and that means that we assume all the financial risks for our benefits. We pay a TPA to monitor the claims and to run the claims for us, but we pay the actual claims. We do have a stop-loss for an amount of a million
dollars per claimant. We do, however, have one child on our plan who actually has what's called a lasered stop-loss. For him specifically, because of his claims, we actually pay the first 1.8 million on this child. And to just give you a little perspective on stop-loss, I've been with the city 13 years now. In
the first 10 years I was here, we hit stop-loss twice. In the last two and a half year, two years, we've hit stop loss five times. On the activives alone, we hit the stop loss on the retirees once already. And I have an 895,000 claims sitting out there right now, which means he's probably going to hit
stop loss as well. I have three claims that are over atund over $350,000 right now. They may or may not get to that stop-loss tier. So, we're we're struggling a little bit on claims right now. For fiscal year 2026, we're proposing a 7% increase in city
contributions. The last four years, we've increased 5% on the city side of the house. 2023 was the first employee premium increase since 2020 since 2018. Um, and then in 2021, we actually were able to do a premium holiday because we were so we had so much fund balance
built up. At the moment, we have about just under 10 11,000 employees covered. When we add the MedStar 100 employees that are going to be part of the general population, um that will include that number will increase. These numbers do not count the 440s plan is that it's a separate plan and they do not run the
same way we do. And here's where you can see our claims costs and here's where our big problem is. You'll notice from 2023 to 2024, we jumped $16 million in claims costs. It's been rough. Um again, five million claims over the million dollar mark in 23 and 24. We've just got
a general increase in the complex medical conditions. In 2023, 44, 2022, we had uh 23 claims hit over $250,000. In 2023, it became 28 claims that hit over $250,000. And in 2024, we had uh 31
claims hit over $250,000. So, it's just a general increase in all of those kinds of things. There's no trend to back out of that, right? I mean, it's just a number of claims. It's just the number of claims and it's the number of complicated claims. is the real problem. It's the complicated claims. It's the
claims that are requiring more hospitalizations, longer hospitalizations. Cancer is a big problem for us right now. Um, and as we are a hop, skip, and a jump away from MD Anderson. We've had at least two members go down to MD Anderson. MD Anderson is 28% more expensive than if they had stayed here in the Metroplex. So, it's
things like that. Um, we also do cover GLP1s. So, those are the weight loss medications. We cover them also for diabetes. And we cover it at 100% which is extremely generous. What we're looking at doing for uh going forward is we're bringing in three different weight management companies to kind of help us
with that so that people are not just getting the GLP ones, but they're also going to get the uh lifestyle discussions to help them kind of move forward and go forward and get a better lifestyle plan. Um but there is just an overall increase in treatment costs.
Sorry, just on the GLP1s, um we're covering those. Is there an expectation that there'll be any um decrease in claims because of the increased rates of chronic illnesses associated with the weight loss? I mean, is that why we're doing it or are we just doing it to do
it? What we're hoping to do is that if we have people who work with lifestyle management that that what we will see is that people will be able to get to a place where they'll be able to come off the GLP1s and still continue to move forward either in maintaining a lower weight or continuing their own weight loss. That's the goal. Um and that's the
programs that we've we've contracted with. That's what the we're hope is. So we are proposing again the 7% increase on the city side. We at the moment we have a proposal of 3% increase on the employee side. I have run the numbers on a 5% increase on the employee
side. It gives us another about $800,000 to our budget if that's the case. Um but you can see $67 million is what we received from the city. that is um not what we need based on the
claims on the wellness program. We do have the premium incentive where you can get 4616 off of your paycheck premium differential. We do have the cash payout for $250 that occurs the second pay period in jo in January. What we're proposing is instead we can do the cash
payout or an optional two wellness days. And so that benefit would then provide people an incentive to do the get the colonoscopy, get the mammogram, get the preventive visits in. Um the benefit there would be that the days are not carried over from year to year. So this
it represents no hard liability to the city and it potentially would save us if 50% of the population that currently does the 250 thou $250, it would save us about $175,000. Joanne, what's the current participation rate for the premium incentive today?
86%. Great. Thank you. A question on that one there, Council Lord. So, um I know we had brought this up before about, you know, this particular option for giving an employee the day off to actually do the diagnostic testing, which I think would one, it's the right thing to do, and then two, from a fiscal perspective, certainly save the city a
lot of money down the down the road if catch something early. I think my my only concern with uh offering the option of um you know this or the $250 cash payment especially for those employees who aren't exactly you know making a lot and they're working paycheck to paycheck is they're always going to take that
$250 option because it's you know it's an interesting perspective but if you look at it if they were to look at it strictly from the math um nobody at the city earns less than $11 an hour which is what the $250 would represent in two days worth of days off. Okay. Maybe I'm
just going back to Marines and think about what, you know, Marines would do and you offer them cash over, you know, doing what would be the the wise thing over time, right? They're always going to take that cash. But um so it was yeah when we offered so we offered it up until year up until 2015 which is when
we were requested to stop it we had about a 50% part of the population would take the days off as opposed to the cash because of that um concept of you know I earn more than $1 an hour basically is yeah I'd like to just take a pause here
and talk about that $11 an hour figure well 250 if you divided it by 16 actually I guess it's not even 11 it's $9 an hour. Oh, did I misunderstand you that you said that there were employees making $11? Not at all. She's just saying that would be the breakdown of Yes. Not at all. My point being that if
I were if you look at it from a directly purely fiscal standpoint as a person, it's better for me financially to take the days than it is to take the cash. You bet. Any other questions? Keep going. Okay. Um so the in order to receive the points we have a three- tier
system right now with 2 2500 points 3,000 or 3,500 points and it gives you three tiers. We would give the proposal is that we would give five hours for the reaching tier one, 10 hours for reaching tier two and 16 hours for reaching tier three total. Um in order to receive those points you have to do certain
things. You do your three roll through three requirements and then you have to do a preventive screening on top of that. After that in order to receive points you do things like engage with ramp health. We've just finished wrapping up a uh spring into wellness event that was citywide that people could participate in. Track your steps, do your classes, um engage with a health
coach, watch some videos, um participate in a mission. And a mission is a multi-day kind of activity that you can do to learn more about things like weight management or sleep or stress. We have city sponsored wellness classes that you can also earn points for. Attending the health, safety, and
benefits fair gives you points. attending the heart walk, uh doing the blood drive, and then also within the departments, we allow departments to earn points within their own department. So, for example, code compliance just did a mental health um day. Anybody who participated in that mental health day, they were able to receive points for
that. So, we allow people to do that as [Music] well. And then the pay for performance. So, in fiscal year 2026, we're proposing the same 0 to 7% option um with budgeting for the 4%. We have noticed that in the 2025 and in
2024 um 96% of the employees that received more than 4% are still here. And that's great for us. In 2024, 4% are still actively employed. And so that's what we would like to do is to keep our employees. It costs much more to replace them than to hold on to
them. Any questions? No questions. Thank you. Okay, I'm speak away now. Good morning. Holly Moyer, interim HR director, and I'm going to talk to you about an update on the citywide classification and compensation study. So, briefly, I'm just going to
review what we did in FY25, our pay strategies, and a little bit of the historical pay strategies that we uh also have completed in the past few years. and then I'll go into a little bit more depth about this classification study. So on FY25, we did a salary
structure movement of our pay pay scales. It was a 4% across all pay grades and classifications and we entry rate from 1545 to6007. That was in October of 2024. And in February of 2025, we increased the
employee entry rate to $18. And in the same budget year, we uh were approved for this comprehensive city-wide classification study. That was to help us evaluate our salary structures as we looked at our pay compression of of the uh pay ranges because we had to compress some of the
entry level pay ranges and collapse titles into the same pay grade. We're also looking at our pay ranges. We're going to look at our compression with with uh employees and the competitive pay. And so this is kind of a phased approach of our classification study and
I'll give you details a little bit later. So historically the last time a citywide classification study was done where we looked at our our jobs was back in 2015. And the best practice is to look at this every 7 to 10 years. And so we also do a bannual market study and
it's something that we look at both public and private sector to make sure that we are competitive in our wages. And as Joanne mentioned, our annual pay for performance up to 7% has been in place since 2021. And so one of the things we look at every year is our hard to fill
positions. We know out there there is a uh there's some positions that are difficult to fill. So some of the things that we've looked at doing for example with the engineering group and also with crime lab we did sign on bonuses and that helped us in able to recruit and
retain employees. And one of the things we also do is called an autoreclass program. As employees are hired, they want to see where they're going in the future and what their career path is. And so we have this program where basically if you start out as a maintenance worker to a maintenance
worker senior and up the up the uh job family, you're able to u be able to promote into the next level with the business need without going through a promotional process. So employees really understand exactly what they need in order to be able to go to the next level of um the position and have more
responsibility but also more career path what that looks like. And then some department stra pay strategies included on call uh incentive program or uh that type of thing that we look at in a department by department basis based on what their needs are. And then we also
did a shift differential pay increase in the fall of 20 spring of 2023. So when we look at the uh citywide classification study back in January kind of gave you a brief overview of the program and what's happening. So where
we are is basically a job description questionnaire was something that employees had completed and their supervisors reviewed and it was submitted to Seagull Consulting which is our um vendor for this project. They anticipate only around 750 to 850
JDQs, but our employees are very, you know, they like to uh go ahead and show us how they're this is important to them. And we had over 1,900 completed JDQs. And a job description questionnaire is a very comprehensive document. It takes between 20 and 30
minutes for them to complete. And so we I wanted to applaud the employees and their supervisors and managers taking the time to complete those JDQs and be able to submit them. Some some of these JDQs were done on an individual basis and others were done by teams. And so
that's why you see the different numbers there and this is across all departments. And so this comprehensive review will help seagull give us a job architecture, what our job families should look like and look at what levels that we need because we want to make sure that we have the jobs correct in
order for us to be able to get the right market data. And so the recommendations from SEO will be how to look at our pay structure in the future to address the compression that we have. They're going to develop also a compensation philosophy based on our past pay practices and what we should anticipate
in the future. but also look at the fiscal impact of recommendations. So currently we have four pay schedules. We have a non-exempt pay schedule, exempt, IT and executive. We have over 400 or 550 job titles that
have to be looked at and about 4,500 positions and these are just general employees. Our civil service fire and police are not included in this study. And so the reason that we're looking at this is we have the compression of job levels in the lower skill skilled areas that's compressing up with the higher
level jobs. So for example, what we have is employees who may have little or no experience like a senior maintenance worker whose pay is similar to someone who is an equipment operator who has a license and has a higher critical skill set and responsibilities similar in pay.
And so that's one of the reasons why we're looking at this whole classification study to mitigate those issues. And one of the things that we're finding is that there is a difficult recruiting if you have similar different skill sets in the same pay ranges.
So one of the things while we're doing this study is we're still continuing to do classification activities that includes the auto recclass program which is something that employees really still need as a career path moving forward. We're also had uh in this project
included the office of medical director which is going to be on board here in the next month and also emergency medical services. We want to make sure that we have the correct jobs aligned with the employees so that when we look at the market, we would be able to have that readily available. And so we also
continue looking at reclassification requests for vacant positions because again we still need uh to continue our business needs ongoing practices. So that's something that our team still is continuing to do. So the citywide classification study
uh a project initiation was in December. we had um as you look at this time frame I'll go into the next slide a little bit more details but as you can see there is overlapping types of projects that are going with on at the same time as we move
forward. So in March of uh March 7th, they had 20 seagull had 20 uh on-site meetings with stakeholders with department heads and key staff to discuss with them what are their concerns, what are their pain points, what are the things that we need to be able to address as we look at the study.
And we also had five on-site and virtual options for employees to be able to understand what the study is and the job description questionnaire, how to fill it out. and over 750 employees have participated in that presentations. And so currently we're in the time frame of
the classification analysis that's going to continue ongoing because as we said we've got over 550 titles to be look looked at as we look at the process and they're going to continue with the market analysis at the same time and by January through April of 2026 we should
have a compensation philosophy developed in order for us to be present here in May of 2026 the final results and recommendations. Any questions? questions from council. Council member Blot. Thank you, mayor. Uh, so just based on
this time frame that we're seeing, this will inform not our current budget cycle, but next year's budget cycle. Correct. 30. Thank you. Other questions? Council member Larsto. Thank you, Mayor. Um, are they going to be providing recommendations as they go through on anything we should start
looking at changing now at all or we're just going to wait till 2026 and then make the recommendations and then implement any change? No. as as we go through the near the end of the time frame here where there's the development recommendations in January through April, that's the time frame that we're
going to have more of the analysis and understanding of what the city wants to do as far as their structure and pay. So, it will be uh during that time frame that we have a final solidification for the process because we have to get the beginning stuff done which is the classification and market before we can
get into that philosophy. So, it'll be at the end of the project. Thanks. Any other questions? Council member Nettles? No, I do. Thank you. That was a good question. Uh Charlie, um I got a couple of questions here about um the the compression and I I see Well,
let me go back to the last slide. The stakeholders that you met with, can you kind of give me a list of who these stakeholders are? It was department heads and their executive team and key management positions. Okay. Um because I know this is one of
the one of the major concerns that Dr. Williams and I had about the pay structure uh for our city employees and so it would be good to kind of talk to um some of the council as well. I don't see that on here. Uh but when we look at the compression I think one of our
biggest concerns was when you talk about compression it should be bottom up and not top bottom. um cuz we have a lot of our top seniors um which is going to cause our compression or cause our uh budget to
take a a a significant hit. And so we when this uh when this study is coming out, do you know how they're going to deal with that compression piece? That's something that actually is across city nationwide is what we've heard from our consultant about compression issues and
that's why uh you know currently there is money in the budget to be able to address those things at the entry point where we have people that are new you know lower experience that are making the same amount of money with someone who has more experience or similar type of money. So that compression through
the range is part of the uh projected uh to be addressed in this uh project. and then looking at the structures itself based on the philosophy where we want to stand with the market and the structure itself. Okay. And final question I think for
right now are we uh anticipating cost of living to take uh effect as when new hires come on. So um are you asking about what what we're looking for as an entry rate? Yes. So currently we proposed entry rate of
$18. Uh but we do know cost of living changes from year to year. So is that also already embedded into what you guys are doing now? So we have a budget response that we're going to be able to address that for you that discuss discuss those same issues. It'll be at
the next budget session June 17th I believe that we'll have that information readily available for you. Okay. And I think one of the last things we may have received I don't know Dr. Williams remember or not but uh some of the major cities where they are as it
relates to uh employees um rates of pay as well. Yes. And we have that information. Some of the we've uh asked for this information from our large Texas city employers DFW area and some of them right now are still in the uh cautionary stage. They're not sure what
they're going to do in this budget cycle if they're going to increase their entry rate or not. So, there are some cities that haven't given us that information yet, but we will give you what the latest information is. And I know Dion, do I don't know whoever
can answer, but did we already do a uh when we worked on $18 uh as an increase for the next budget cycle? Did we already embed one in the uh Oh, you may have it. I'm sorry. I just remember working with you. Yes, we did. We did
have that as far as that. We'll we'll share that with you again. The uh it was the MIT calcul. Yes. Yes. Okay. We'll share that with you as well. All right. Thank you. Which to be clear, Holly, you're not sharing that today. You're sharing that in June. Yes. On the 17th. Okay. Council Williams.
Thank you. Um and thank you for the presentation. I just have two questions on the study timeline. Um obviously I know this is a lot of work and um especially to complete by next uh May. Um but I do think it's important um to
stay on timeline. Um so first question is um um on the study timeline is there any efficiencies that we could find to maybe shorten the timeline by maybe a month or two? I know budget planning is always tight and any delay in the study
would mean that we would forgo um having the information you know the city council needs to be able to make informed decisions about the next um um the next fiscal budget um following this one that we're working on. I can't make promises, but we're going
to do our best see if we can get this shortened. We'll see if we can find some efficiencies to be able to shorten the time frame. Thank you. I think that's really important that we don't have delays. Um just to be um you know frank our public servants um are are
hardworking folks um you know many of which are hardworking um families and uh a delay you know even of a year for um increasing um our entry level wage to ensure that forward public servants are paid a living wage that they can afford
to live in the city is really important. And so I I would stress on this council and city management to do everything that we can to um ensure that we're meeting this timeline without delay for for the next budget. Second question is um for this upcoming budget um are we
still scheduled to provide merit increases for all employees including those whose entry level wages have been increased to $18? Yes sir. It was in the beginning of the presentation. The four to seven the range average for across the board is
still part of that process and that'll be based on Excellent. It'll be based on performance like we do every year. Excellent. That's really good. Um obviously our um I would think that all of our employees work hard and and deserve an increase and so that will certainly help on top of the $18 entry-
level wage as we wait for this study. Um, I really appreciate uh working with DA on and you know the council and and uh city management on this um compression study and market analysis study. I think it's really important
that we do that and so looking forward to getting the results and thanks for the all the hard work. I don't estim underestimate the amount of work that's going in this and don't undervalue it. So, um, thank you'all for doing this. And, and just to clarify, to make sure, we'll still have the $18 entry wage, but
those folks that are currently at that level, they'll be like everybody else will have the opportunity to receive a merit increase uh, as we go forward into next year's budget. Additionally, we'll be coming back on the 17th with an
update on the MIT study that shows the current um uh cost of needed in order to have a minimum wage in the area. Council member Flores. Uh thank you, Mayor. Uh just one question. As part of
our comprehensive review, will that include any new or additional compensation analysis software? No detail what we use here at the city.
That's why I'm asking. No, there's no software that would be part of this process. I think am I answering your question? Yeah, you are. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions for Holly? Thank you, Holly. Great updates. We
appreciate it. So, I think at this point we can take future agenda items pertaining to the budget. Anybody has anything in particular they want to make sure is addressed at our next meeting. Everybody's good. Great. With
that, we will adjourn and give it a few minutes before we move into our next meeting per city secretary's office. Thank you. Part: 2
Maybe not quite happy. Those guys are very serious. Yeah. Anything Mike's been kind of spearheading it on our side. Yeah, I had a
brief already by Robert. Oh, yeah. I tell you about this. Yes. Yes. Do you uh for our meeting, do you want anybody else to um I
think topics that I'd like to at least talk about. You may have some that you want to talk about and then just whoever best facilitates that. Uh for me, I like to keep meeting as possible.
Yeah, I'll get something on the schedule and see if I can get it done before the 11th before Mike and we're getting our 56 champions champions. Yeah. But it will be close.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I did see that was funny. I was like somebody All the way south because All right. I'll get a meeting set up and then we'll get agenda items over the next week or
so. Hey Charlie for I just wanted to budget thing was going on. That's previous session. Follow up with Okay, council. I think we're going to get started if y'all are ready.
Okay, I'll call us to order. And this is our bond workshop. Over to Jay Choa. This is a followup for our last uh meeting and Christian's going to kick it off and we have an update on our um with
more information on how we move forward with and pick streets. That was a a question last week on how the prioritization happens. Uh and uh recommendations. you should have a list that matches the list that you'll be
seeing um from TPW as they come up. So, Christian, yes, that's all I was going to say, Christian Simmons. So, yep. Um good increased collaboration over the last few weeks to respond. Um, I'm almost immediately going to turn it over to Lauren, but like Jay said, you do
have a list that um is slightly updated just to match the recommendations that you're going to see from TPW today, which involves some shifting from arterials into neighborhood streets. Uh, so you can follow along there or check out the latest list. We can also provide that electronically if you don't already have it in Dropbox. Um, but we'll let
TPW take the reigns. All right, mayor and council, thank you for your leadership and dedication to Fort Worth's infrastructure. We understand that the roadway improvements are a priority for every council district and this proposed program is designed to ensure that investments are
made where they will have the greatest long-term benefit. So today we'll examine how the 2026 bond program strategically directs resources uh toward the streets most in need of reconstruction. So with over 1,800 lane miles beyond maintenance, this will
require an estimated $4 billion today. So the decisions that we make now will shape the sustainability and functionality of our roadways for years to come. So I'd like to turn over to Trisha Patricia Wadsac, our assistant director for capital delivery. Thank you, Lauren. It's a pleasure to be here
to talk to you about strategic investments in our minor roadways this morning. So, our agenda this morning is first we're going to talk a little bit about the status of our streets. Then we're going to talk about how we manage our network to include
heavy maintenance and reconstruction. We're going to get into how we prioritize the streets and the neighborhood street program. We're going to give you some information on the minor roadway program and then we'll roll into the 2026 bond
recommendations. So, first we'll talk about the status of our streets. I think you've probably seen this map before, but in the gray, these are our streets that need preservation. That's about 40% of our network. And about 30% of our
network is represented in the orange streets. Those streets need maintenance and that is normally paved with PGO. So we'll go into that in a little more depth. The red streets are the streets in the worst condition and they uh
represent about 23% of our network and uh they need full reconstruction what is normally paid through a bond program. So about once every four years, we go out and we hire a company and we have them drive the entire network and um
take data and we determine something called a pavement condition index or PCI. And that data, that number is how we rank those streets. You can see gray is above 85, orange is between 85 and 50, and red
is below with a PCI below 50. And as Lauren just mentioned, if we were to replace today all of the streets we have in our network below a PCI of 50, it would cost over $4 billion. So I wanted to give you a
visual so you could understand instead of in numbers in pictures what these kinds of streets look like. So on the top left we have the pictures of streets in excellent or good condition. Those streets require preventative maintenance
and surface treatments and that's normally done with our in-house crews. Move over to the fair streets. Those streets require heavy maintenance and we normally pay for that with PGO. On the far right, you have an example of
a poor street and it requires complete reconstruction which is paid for through our bond program. So now I have just a little bit of data by council district to show you. Uh we have about 50% concrete streets and 50%
asphalt streets in our network. And this is how they split out by council district. The concrete is shown in the orange and the asphalt in the blue. This is how the pavement condition index or PCI splits out by council district.
As you can see across the board, our PCI for our concrete is uh significantly higher than our PCI for our asphalt streets. And this is broken out by council district. the streets that have a PCI below 50. So these are the the
streets that are in a failed condition and bond funding is required to uh reconstruct those streets. We also we've given you at the top of each bar the number of lane miles per council district and also the percent of failed
lane miles as compared to the total lane miles in that council district. So next I'd like to talk a little bit about how we manage our network. And let me ask one question just by something. Okay. I understand how the PCI works.
It's looking at the current pavement condition. Correct. What about paper streets? Are they lumped in there in in terms of you know below 50 or paper streets a different category? No, paper streets are not included in this because they don't
technically exist yet. Okay, thank you. So, we're going to talk a little bit about how we manage our network, specifically the heavy maintenance and reconstruction pieces. So heavy maintenance projects, these are the ones that are PEGO funded, focus on
preserving the existing pavement through um asphalt overlay, what we call P and concrete panel replacement. So asphalt overlay only goes down a couple inches. We take off a couple inches and replace it. P goes down 8 to 10 inches and we
replace it or we some we go in and replace concrete panels. There is minimal curb and gutter, sidewalk or driveway repair done as a part of these projects. We never change the pavement and material if it's already asphalt. It stays asphalt.
There's no design involved. And because of all that, we have faster construction timelines and lower costs. This is used to extend the life of the street, not completely restructed, reconstruct it and restart the life of the street.
these projects cannot be capitalized and so therefore they're funded through pay. So when we're talking about heavy maintenance that's a little more detail on what that means. Things we consider when we're talking about heavy maintenance we look
at the total life cycle costs. We look at the soil conditions beneath the street. We look at the type of water line. Cast iron lines versus PVC. So cast iron lines are very brittle and the heavy equipment that is needed to do
heavy maintenance tends to break them. So typically if we know we've got a street that's got cast iron in it, we will pull it out and not use it as a candidate for heavy maintenance. We also look at the risk of failure and we look at our maintenance
cycles. What we're trying to do is strategically invest our money to catch those streets right below before they fall into a lower category of maintenance and and uh improve them. So, we're trying to to look at the maintenance cycles and strategically
decide which streets need the maintenance the most. This is a picture of the heavy maintenance projects we've done in Fort Worth in the last four years, just to give you a visual of where they've been.
And this is a list. So this list is or this chart is break broken out by council district and it again shows you where we've invested money in the last four years in heavy maintenance. And it's got the lane miles on each piece.
And then at the top we've got the percent of total lane miles per council district. Across the board, we're averaging about 3% per district. So, now we're going to move in and talk about our reconstruction projects. These are the projects that
are actually bond funded. So, here we're going to do full street reconstruction from subgrade to surface. We're going to replace 100% of the curb, gutter, sidewalks, and driveway approaches. The pavement type
might be asked for falter concrete. What we do when we bid these projects is we bid them out both ways and we see how the price comes in from the contractor and then we make a decision based on how the price comes in as to whether we're going to move forward with a concrete or
an asphalt replacement. This includes full design plans um which are required to add the ADA upgrades and the curbs. Um the street width will always remain the same. We do not acquire additional
rightaway with this type of project. And in this project, we can include water and sewer line replacement as well as storm water improvements. It's higher cost, longer construction time frame, but it provides
long-term infrastructure upgrade. So, here is a visual of the minor roadway projects that have been in the 2018 and 2022 bond programs as well as those that are proposed in the 2026 bond
programs. You will notice that the majority of this work is inside the loop. And here's the same U bar chart as we showed for maintenance showing how this breaks out by council district.
Again, you can see how many lane miles were built in each bond program or proposed u per council district and then how that um stacks up as a percent of total lane miles in that council district. So now we're going to move on to
prioritization and I will you do have this as a handout. Um but I wanted to uh this prioritization is a very complex multi-step process and I just wanted to give you a visual of how complex it is. Um we can geek out later about about the
details of this if you want. Um but I just wanted to give you an idea. So the projects are selected based on their PCI and um we are going to look at the curbon gutter and the PCI of each street in the
city to determine where they fall in this um decision tree. So, I just zoomed in here on one piece, the asphalt piece, to let you see that only two of these options end up in
capital reconstruction on this piece of the decision tree. So, it's we have lots of other things that we can do like the MOL and P and the sealants. But then, so we use this process and we identify which streets need capital reconstruction.
Then we move on to our criteria step two which is where we uh apply the council priorities. We look at all these streets and we rank them according to the council priorities. Then we move to step three and it doesn't make sense for me to send
heavy equipment out to one council district and then immediately move it all the way to the other side of the city. It's not cost-effective. So, we group these streets by geographical area. We take into account schools, bus
routes, the density of population we're serving, and high customer service requests and continual maintenance. So, that's our step three. And that's how we get to the lists that we present to you. So, before we move forward, I want
to talk a little bit about minor roadway information. Historically, these are the amounts of lane miles, um, number of roadways, and millions of dollars we've invested in the last three bonds. And you can see
that even though the dollar value has gone up with each bond cycle, the number of lane miles and the number of roadways has decreased. And our goal has always been to try to be at around 50 lane miles, but just so you know, that only represents
2.7% of the total streets with PCI less than 50. This is how TBW's funding splits out by project care uh category. As you can see, by far the largest category is major roadways, but the second largest
is minor roadways. And this splits out the areas of focus in TPW's program for the proposed 26 bond by um highest priority in each district by dollar value. So you look at
your district and uh the most money is being spent on the first item and then the second most on the second item in this list. So now we're ready to move into our recommendations. This is just what you
saw last time as far as the total lane miles and estimated cost per council district in the minor roadways program. Couple of things has ha have happened. First of all, you need to be aware that the 2022 bond program,
neighborhood streets program, had a shortfall of 16 million. On May 20th, council acted uh to approve a $10 million tax note, and that has allowed three of those contracts uh number 15 in
District 9, 17 in District 8, and 19 in District 9 to move forward. and they will start construction by this winter. However, we still have a 3.5 uh we still have a shortfall. 3.54 million was
included in the proposal that you've seen in the past for the remaining contract number 18, which affects council districts 5, 8, and 11, but it still has a $2 million shortfall. In addition, on the major roadway side,
we have a developer who is going to be responsible for their adjacent portions in Bonds Ranch segment one. As a result, we're able to remove $7 million from the proposed 2026 bond major roadway program
that you saw last time, and we are proposing to use it to cover that $2.4 4 million shortfall on the 2022 bond neighborhood street program. That leaves us 4.6 million that we'd like to apply to the next highest ranked minor
roadways. And just briefly, I want to show you about your other handouts here. These two lists they uh list the first three quarters of that page is the funded streets. The bottom one quarter is unfunded streets. And one sheet is
sorted by district and then rank and the other sheet is sorted by rank only. So this slide shows you the unfunded list sorted by rank. And we are proposing to add the
top two ranked streets from contract 14 into the proposed 26 bond program that affects districts 9 and 11. Do you have by any chance what the value of the rest of the unfunded streets on
this list would be? Um the total value I mean I think the value is listed right here sir there's a column the the total value would be 1225 million for all that was
um ranked and prepared. So, okay, that number is inclusive of the funded and unfunded, correct? I I was just kind of interested in what the the total dollars of the unfunded list was. We can get you that information, sir.
Um, I really appreciate uh staff's work on this. Um, and I appreciate the time that y'all um, spent with me yesterday walking me through. I think you're going to see a bunch of IRS later because you gave me a lot to think on. So, thank you for that. Or maybe don't thank me for
that because you're the ones doing the IRS. But, um, we will all be better for it. So, thank you. Um, I'd like to point out, um, that of the streets, if you go back to the slide with the PCI below 50,
um, district 9 is the second highest in the city at 35.5% of our streets being um, below that 50% mark. Um, which is only slightly under the highest, which is district 11 at 36.2.
But when you go and look at the 2026 recommended bond program, minor roadways, District 9 has the lowest number of lane miles invested in. And so it seems to me that if we're ranking, there should be some sort of correlation with the number of lane miles in our
minor roadways that we're repairing um to those percentages. And the reason I asked for those percentages was to give us some sort of um idea of what each one of us are working with in our districts. Some of us are very lucky. Charlie and
Allan, I would love to be you today with those uh 3.7 and 2.4 numbers. Um, but I I don't I think maybe with the addition of those two new projects, we'll see some of that level out, but to
me that doesn't seem right that it would I'd be the second district 9 is the second highest in the city, but the lowest number of lane miles are being invested in the bond. I understand your concern, but I would refer to the heavy maintenance projects lane miles where council
district 9 does have the most projects, right? And so also referring back to our um scoring matrix, if you will, there are many other options for streets uh for heavy maintenance than just the bond. Um and one of the main drivers for
bond projects is the need for curb and gutter, right? Um so it's very possible that maybe you've got better curb and gutter in your district, so the heavy maintenance is more suitable for the majority of your roadways. Gotcha. Okay. Thank you for that. I appreciate that.
And then um as we talk about the overall bond list, which is right here, given us so much paper today, um I noticed that we've increased the um the open space proposed funding $10 million from last
time's um proposed bond. I'd like to see that uh discussion about that going back to the 2022 level at 15 million to take that $10 million and put back into TPW so that we can get more of those unfunded projects off of our
list and I'm happy to have that conversation. I don't agree. I think we're growing so rapidly that this land will be gone before we can preserve it. Um, I think we have a really unique opportunity in 2026 to partner with philanthropy possibly and even double the size of that fund. It's a healthy
exercise. I do respect that. Um, but I just want to put that on the record that if we're going to discuss it openly that that part of that money, it won't be available to us to purchase in 2030 based on a lot of our projections with open space tool and the work with trust
for public land. So, um, and furthermore, we can't utilize other funds for open space or have traditionally not in the past, um, to any kind of effective rate. So, happy to have that discussion. Um, on the streets conversation, Lauren, I think one thing
that might be missing, especially helpful to council members as they have conversations in their districts, is this is this presentation is so helpful. It's very technical. And the other thing, especially for our neighborhoods that are inside the loop versus outside
the loop, we've all kind of experienced what it's like to communicate the tale of two cities, you know, where you have newer construction, newer neighborhoods versus historic neighborhoods inside the loop, and the infrastructure needs of those neighborhoods are quite different. And I have to commend you as a leader of
TPW. You've used a tremendous amount of technology and data to really inform the way we make decisions. And so to the extent necessary, maybe working with SA and communications, how do we communicate this more clearly so that if a council member Beck or Council Member Nettles is trying to meet with their neighbors, those presentations probably
need to look different than up in D10 where you have newer neighborhoods and build out. And sometimes I know it's a frustration because council members don't probably feel like they have the tools to do that, especially if it's in a spreadsheet form. So maybe as we get through this this cycle, we can talk
more about that. Yeah, absolutely. And I would say just as a comment in the past two bond programs I've worked with, a continual talking point is specifically on the minor roadways, if you don't see your your street that you're concerned with in this program that we proposed. It is not panic time. There are many
other options uh and there might already be uh work programmed for the streets that you're interested in. Peoples, I just wanted to thank Lauren and Patricia for giving this council person a remedial lesson. You all did an
amazing job and I I want councilwoman Beck to know that I spent a lot of time looking at these charts and I was concerned about district 92. I was very while I'm concerned about five and I expressed that at the last meeting. I
looked at a lot of the work that was being done inner city inside the loop and district nine. I I advocated for you as strongly as I did for five. But I I commend you all because if we go back to the slide, this is what concerned me on
the number of miles that we're able to to fix. The co the number of lane miles continues to go down and the cost continues to go up. And so if we don't come up with a process like this that's
aimed at fixing some of these the lane miles I hate to look at the next bond uh election because I believe that based on the way they're going will be under we'll be in the 20s for lane miles and
the cost will be skyrocketing. So, I uh I applaud you for this approach because I think we've got to get our hands around the cost and try to do the most coste effective way of repairing not only those things inside the loop. And watch this, Lauren. My street is
concrete, okay? But we've got to get our hands around that so that the costs don't continue to go up because we're going to reach a point where we're not going to be able to catch up at all. And to piggyback on council people's
comment, do you have a a top level what are your best cost mitigation strategies you've employed over the last few budget cycles whether some of it's bringing teams inhouse rather than contracting? Can you point to any of those today, Lauren? Uh so every year we do a cost of service analysis where we essentially
compare our in-house crews to a a contracted version. Uh now obviously uh they're different mechanisms. So, uh, we we do kind of look at those with the with the appropriate lenses. Um, but also, you know, our push for more
maintenance. Um, it is more fiscally responsible to maintain what we have than to reconstruct. If we are always trying to reconstruct what has failed and not maintain what we have, we will never catch up. Thank you. Yes, Council Member Hill.
One, this is very, very helpful for me. This list that y'all provided, the offended and unfunded list is extremely helpful to me as well when we look at budget and kind of put a pin in this for our budget conversations. Could we get a list like this for the heavy maintenance roads because I think that having it
ranked by district, how long they are, how much it is, that is incredibly helpful as we try to figure out where the priority is for us at budget cycle. Yeah, we can accommodate that. And to answer council member Bllelock's question while we're on the topic, uh the unfunded is 35 million. So we plan
for a total of 125 million. And then question on the 35 million unfunded list and this could be at a future workshop but curious what of that list you anticipate could be covered in future budget cycles out of the general
fund outside of a 2030 bond election. Thank you. Mayor, if I may. Yes, please. Council Martinez. Lauren, um I know that there are um you know many areas in district 11 that have cast iron and so those
streets are pulled at least for PGO and I don't know about the bond but um I'd like to see where all those are at just so I can uh be aware when the community reaches out and and you know just kind of have questions about why my road hasn't been um maintained or or repaved.
Yeah, absolutely. And and just as a point on the record, you know, streets with cast iron are not excluded from bond consideration and in fact uh many are included in the bond program to have that economies of scale in construction. Council member Beck, didn't you ask that
question? I it was two cycles ago present about cast iron and the work with water department. I don't think that I got clarity on that either. I did and it's part of the litany of um IRS that I have that I'm gonna ask for because I got some a little bit of
clarification yesterday in our meeting. Um but I think we need to dig a little deeper on how we and I'd be fine even if we wanted to do that another bond workshop if you want to do that with water department because I know that's quite complicated. That's fine with me. That's helpful.
Yes, council member Crane. Thanks Lauren and team for putting this together. I I would just like to have a conversation. and we don't have to do it right now, but later some of these roads are in district 3 that have been identified are are transitioning. There's some homes there, but they're industrial, turning it into industrial. So, I'd just like to
have that conversation of what we're going to do there, what that looks like, and maybe what responsibilities some of those businesses have as part of that, too, since they're using those in a way that aren't really conducive to city streets. Okay, we have two. Yeah, Council Flores,
one example of uh something similar that uh Council Member Crane pointed out in my district, Aron uh Avenue. I know we've had some correspondence with TPW on that. What's going on is that you have 18-wheeler traffic cutting through
neighborhood streets. Why? Our esteemed colleagues at Tex dot decided to build concrete medians on 28th Street which forces this type of traffic through that street and I get complaints every week about it and there
is no enforcement solution to that. I've outreached to texttop myself seems to be falling on deaf ears. If there's anything that TPW can do about that to increase the attention on that, I really do need a median cut. That would solve
the uh media problem in my opinion. I'd be happy to look into that. Thank you. Because that's a lot of wear and tear on that street. It's already appearing on our unfunded list. Janette asked a question earlier that made me think to your question. So each
of you receive a call from a constituent that says, "I'm unhappy about McCart or whatever the street is." I guess each office probably does this differently in terms of your access to knowing these are the streets under construction. This is how we're communicating to the public. That's sort of what I'm getting
to, Lauren, is to make sure and we can I mean, honestly, district directors probably would love to sit in a room and say, "This is how we like to communicate this to each office or to each constituent because I know that's a huge volume of calls that you get out of question." And it probably would be really nice if it was readily available. You feel like you were constantly having
to go back to TPW with that, especially as we head into the bond election. And if you have questions about this unfunded list, okay, what does that mean for my neighborhood? And so, we're actually right at the time where we'll be scheduling our uh byanual council district updates where we discuss your your active projects and your planned
projects for the ne next fiscal year. And we'll leave each council member with a handout uh for reference and then also introduce um both our assistant directors responsible for these programs um as well as our customer service representatives who can help answer those questions. And I also feel like it
could live on your websites. I mean really building out each district website to say this is a live tally of where we are, where it's funded, what the construction looks like, who the contractor is, all of those things. So, I do believe most heavy maintenance projects will be listed on on the council members web page as well. Great.
Thank you. Any other questions? Great job, ladies. Thank you. What's next? J. That's it. Okay. Council. So on this topic though, what future bond discussions do we want to put on future
agenda items for our next round table? You have any didn't have to be transportation related. Any other council beck wanted to talk about open space that needs to be on the table. Anybody else want to talk about anything else? I have one mayor. Yes, council lorf. And we we kind of brought it up before, but since it's on this list,
just if we can talk through the public art again and how that process works, um the funding for that because, you know, to council member Beck's point, you know, that that $10 million that I mean, honestly, every dollar we have that can be going to streets really does need to be going to streets. I don't care if
it's four, six, 10, I don't care what district it is, but I think we need to just have that conversation how that works and what we can do. And importantly, the last presentation they gave options for us to consider. I don't know if anybody thought those were the right options. If you had feedback on those, I mean, we need to recircle that
around before we have the public discussion. I think that's important. Yeah. Council member Nettles. Yeah. And just the concern on the public part I mean the public uh art. Uh was it discussed that we can only do public art with bond funding?
We were we were talking about the amount of dollars that go to public art from the bond funds. We weren't talking outside of bonds. Right. But I'm saying if we got rid of the bond uh dollars for public art, were we able to use uh other dollars for public art? You're saying if
we did, would you use general fund dollars? We we could. Yeah. It's not a I think we actually provide funding out of the general fund for public art currently. Okay. So at the next I was hoping our timeline
for we come back with the next meeting we can go over these items. We'd like to see if we're at a position then to have a finalize the actual bond program so that we could kick off some public meetings in in late July to try to fit
into a schedule where we could finish before the end of the year to bring a final, you know, list to the council in December that would be ready to go into the next start of the next year before the actual bond election. So that's kind of the timeline that we're trying to
hit. So we could come back on the 17th um with the next bond uh presentation between now and then we can resend well you have the full list that was provided today uh but we can have the major topics be open space and the public art
piece if you all are with that. Well, I just want us to be very clear that while I welcome the discussion on open space and public art, you cannot or it is my position that you cannot just arbitrarily take money from that and put
it in the streets because those are amenities that make this city so attractive. And so I'm a big proponent of public art and conservation, especially in my district where there's a lot of green space. And I want to make
sure that we're understanding if we take from those pots and we put it in the other, we're starting to to diminish the things that make our city so attractive to people and why they want to move here. Council
Larsdorf. So, I mean, and I totally understand that point, but one of the points I made a couple months ago about that was, yeah, while it's it's great, it looks beautiful, the issues whenever you have um roads that are in such disrepair, not necessarily in for as council member pointed out, you have
roads that are in such disrepair, I think it's disingenuous to taxpayers, if it's like, all right, you got this nice piece of art, but if that money could have gone to improve that pothole that that car just, you know, got destroyed by, and now they're, you know, sitting on the side of the road waiting for uh for roadside assistance, looking at a
pretty piece of art. I just think it's a the priorities I think are wrong and you're sending the wrong message. It's like, hey, we believe in this. However, we have other priorities that we completely put to the bottom of the list for something that is a nice to have, not a need to have. Uh, I don't think anyone here on this council would argue that public art is it's great and it's
it's nice to have, but as long as we have needs, uh, and we hear from TPW on the the billions of dollars that it would actually take to to take care of that the needs right now, not even just preventative, uh, but to actually fix them correctly. I think it's a slap in the face of those taxpayers who need
every dollar they have. uh it'd be like telling them they need to adjust their home grocery budget to um have a you know going out to Andre's you know racing cars instead. I again I think it's just disingenuous. So that was my point there. I don't think anyone wants to completely get rid of it. I think maybe finding other ways to use public
partnerships or uh private partnerships and helping to to pay for some of those. Jay, I had a question. Um, if there is a project that was on the secondary recommended unfunded list or whatever you call it, I can't remember what the term was. Um, when
would be appropriate to should I reach out to the department to kind of like swap a project out or how would that work? I think I think the idea was that we'd go out to the public process to get feedback from the public overall. Mhm.
You mean like swapping out a project in your district for a project in your district or? Yes. Based on what you think is a better priority. Oh yeah, we can we can discuss that between now and on the streets and so reach out to that department in particular. Yes. I'm glad you brought that assistant city manager over that area. And that's a good point,
Council Martinez. If you look, each of you may already have had time to do this, but on the bun the street bond funded list compared to the unfunded list. Yes. if there are swaps for good reason that you want to work with TPW, let's do that now before you go out into
the public um and confuse you know that's smart the neighborhoods they're more interested in this road versus that road that makes total sense and within your district okay hard part is when you start talking about multiple districts yeah I wanted to I want to make that suggestion before we go out to the public meetings and so Jess that's you
so keep an ear out for my call makes sense I I do have something Thank you, mayor. Um, I guess it was the unfunded list, not just the street, but just the uh the unfunded list. And I
believe in one of those slides we had 10 million or 5 million in housing. Um, and I don't I know it didn't make the list. So, I want us to have us discussion about that when we come back of next meeting. Yeah. next where we can squeeze
out um that $10 million at. Yes, Council Hill. Um I know you mentioned it, but I just want to reiterate, could we al have that list that Charlie's referring to about our options for public art so before we have our next bond meeting so we can actually have a robust conversation about it? Agreed. We'll we'll resend a slide out
to everyone. Anybody else? Nope. Okay, we're going to adjourn and we'll move into executive session. So, and I'll read this before I go back there. The city council will now convene into executive session on the following matters. The city council will conduct a closed meeting in order to
seek the advice of its attorneys as authorized by section 551.071 of the Texas government code. Deliberate concerning real property matters is authorized by section 551.072 of the Texas Government Code. Deliberate concerning economic development negotiations is authorized by section 551.087 of the Texas Government Code.
and deliberate concerning security as authorized by 551.076 and section 551.089 to the Texas government code. Thank you.