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Video-1: youtube.com/watch?v=RXCduHCIkjU
Video-2: youtube.com/watch?v=4prj_pYtDI8

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--------- Okay, I will call our special called budget work session to order and turn it over to Jay Chapa. >> So, we're going to try to get this pretty quickly since we know we've been here all day. We have a few a couple of presentations to really respond to

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previous budget issues that were brought forward. Um and then also the actually one of them the group health fund updates. But we also wanted to touch on the classification and compensation updates um a year ago or a little bit over 18

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months ago the city started a compen- compensation study and so we have the outcomes from that. So, I'm going to turn it over to Chris- Kristen Smith our HR director and it's her show today.

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>> Good afternoon Mayor and Council. I will talk really fast. I know you've all had a very long day. All right. So, as um the city manager mentioned, the first presentation is about classification and compensation and what we are projecting for potential

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contributions in this area. Um but just for a little bit of background, our employees um move throughout our pay structures in just really a couple of ways. So, at initial placement, so that includes at hire or at promotion, uh their base pay

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is set. Uh we do periodically um look at market driven data and by market I mean our labor market. So, we uh tend to look at you know, larger cities. We have kind of a mix of 10 cities that we look at, but we also look

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at aggregate data from private sector employers as well to make sure that we have a good gauge on where people should be placed. Uh but these types of studies are infrequent. They happen over several years as opposed to things that you know, happen year over year.

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Uh annually, we do have our performance management process, which includes a merit uh increase or pay for performance, which it's called here. So, that's another opportunity for an employee to grow their base. Uh and outside of just their initial placement and um what they trended upwards as far

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as their performance, um outside of at hoc, excuse me, or one-time kind of, you know, um special merit type processes, uh our employees' pay stays fairly flat. So, best practice with compensation is to

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make sure that you are competitive. Sometimes it is based on indicators. If you have more turnover uh or you're having to, you know, kind of pay more to attract a certain level of talent, that lets you know that it may be time for a market study. But, regardless,

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employers, you know, historically, will periodically do reviews of their salary structures to make sure that they're competitive and that they're paying at a rate that's um attracting and retaining the level of talent that's needed for the organization. So, the classification and compensation

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study was a comprehensive uh project that started in 2025, looking at overall base pay, our salary structures, uh alignment on position levels, meaning if you are, you know, a planner one, then planner two, planner three is a good

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example, and then also any impacts to compression across our structures uh due to the change to the $18 an hour minimum wage. So, our initial study findings uh really showed that our compensation structure,

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so our salary grades, are um pretty closely aligned with market. Uh but, what the primary uh area of opportunity is is our employees in their seats and where they sit in their salary grades are falling behind market. So, overall

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from minimum to maximum, our salary grades are competitive, but the placement of our employees, um taking into account things like years of experience, span of control, breadth of responsibility, our employees are generally falling behind in that area.

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So, given the FY27 financial outlook, our recommendation is to focus on keeping our salary structures as is for this current fiscal year, but really focusing on the employee placement in those grades since that was the largest gap that was identified in the study.

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But, this was again a very comprehensive study. It will also allow us time to look at a multi-year implementation plan of what the full study looks like. And so, that includes wage progression, um really incremental adjustments based on

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years of years in position, years of experience, other indicators, um but also creating a governance model around pay placement, um so that we have consistent and competitive practices for employees. So, based on those recommendations and

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again, the highest priority area from the class and comp study, um we are uh looking at between 8 to 10 million dollars towards those market adjustments, and then, you know, plan to come back with further recommendations around a multi-year um strategy to

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implement the full uh classification and compensation study. Then, in addition to um just employee placement, again, we have both base pay and that's at hire and promotion, uh as well as performance. So, uh the city

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does have a citywide performance management process for general employees, so non-civil service, uh and that typically follows um a merit increase um based on where employees are placed. So, right now our performance management process

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slates employees overall as accomplished, are valued, or underperforming. And for the last year, which was a little bit of an unusual year because of the METStar transition, we had a 41% accomplished, 57% valued,

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and the overall average increase was about 3.8%. Starting this fiscal year, we are revamping the performance management process. This is all as a result of feedback from our department heads wanting to be able to identify talent

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and have a broader scale to address that. So, we are moving to a five-point scale for our performance management process. Um, currently it is a two-part process, and I'm going to pause for a minute because it may be a little bit complicated to explain, but we have our

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performance review process, which is pretty standard. And then following that, based on the allowable budget, our anyone that has a direct report is able to calibrate their merit. So, let's say I have five employees and I have a you know bucket of a certain amount, I

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can kind of adjust those employees. I may give one 5%, one four, one three, one two. So, the that decision right now is at the individual supervisor level. So, another change that we're implementing for FY26 is

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expanding the review process, but once that performance management process ends, providing city management with a report of all of our overall rankings, and city management will determine the merit distribution. So, it allows for more consistency citywide. It also

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allows city management to drive the timing of when um, merit is actually allocated based on allowable budget uh, and other conditions that may need to be considered. So, we will be working on lots of education and prep for employees and our

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uh, reviewers, our hiring managers, and supervisors in this area, but again, the review process and having expanded um, criteria was directly related to feedback from our department heads, uh, and you know, again, looking for consistency in our processes.

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So, in summary, the labor market adjustments and and being responsive to our classification and compensation project, uh, between 8 and 10 million dollars for the next fiscal year, and then the pay for performance uh,

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allocation is roughly 12.5 million. I'll pause there for questions. >> Questions from Council? Yeah, Councilmember Flores, and then Chris. >> Um, yeah, a couple of questions. Um, so,

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on the compensation uh, the compensation, I know we had talked about this a couple years ago, and uh, well, I think when Dr. Williams was here, we talked about um, the pay increases, and our goal was to get to uh, starting pay at $20, and

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we negotiated uh, or worked around to get $18. And so, when you talk about the 8 to 10 million dollar uh, look of those that are in positions, is this including the high-tier employees as well? Cuz I think we kind

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of talked about um, we thought a best practice was to work from bottom to top. And so, where you have the top tier, maybe the top department heads, or um, in the ranges of north 150 or 200,000,

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versus your smaller tier employees that are making 16 at that time now are making $18. So, when you include this 8 to 10 million dollars, who are who's all included in this amount? >> Yes. So, the 18 8 to 10 million dollars

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includes all general schedule employees that have an indication that they need to move within their range. So, we're not just, you know, it's not a blanket move of everyone. We're looking at where they're sitting in their salary um grade based on years in position and making

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recommendations for where they typically should be based on that experience level. But, I will also say that raising the minimum wage, you know, you mentioned working from kind of bottom to top, it forces that anyway. So, part of the class and comp study is looking at

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wage compression as the, you know, kind of bottom of our pay scales move up, then compression happens. So, we're taking that into consideration, but the majority of the 8 to 10 million is really looking at years in position, how people are placed in their salary grade.

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So, it could potentially be multiple levels, but you know, for an organization this size, you're going to see a a lot more movement at the bottom and the middle than you would at the top just because that's where the majority of our employees are actually being paid.

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And it compensation gets very confusing, so help me get to an explanation that that fully answers your question. Okay. The 8 to 10 million could potentially include a director if they are falling

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way behind in their salary grade. So, where that may be common is somebody that may be moved within the organization as opposed to coming from the outside. So, if they're falling behind in their salary grade, there could be some examples of leaders that have adjustment, but the class and comp

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study um did provide us a recommendation for all employees, but it was focused outside of directors. >> So, okay. Well, I appreciate the um I guess the knowledge or information you have on paper. Maybe a graph would maybe better

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help me understand uh where this 8 to 10 million dollars uh increase is going to go. Uh because I think if I'm you know, maybe I came in cuz I have a higher education and I was at a certain level and maybe they come in, she didn't have

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that higher education, but she's worked longer than I have. So, she might fall under this 8 to 10 million dollars where I may not because I'm already there. Is that kind of what I'm understanding? >> So, partially. So, primarily we're looking at years in position. We're not

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taking into account education levels. So, if you know, we are >> Just an example. >> As an example, we may have the same title. We're primarily looking at our years years in position. So, how much experience or tenure we have with the city, generally where we should fall in

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our salary grade, and that then gives us an indication of whether someone needs to have an adjustment. So, you could have two similarly situated employees with the same title, different education levels, different prior experience levels. We're just looking at how

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they're progressing within their salary grades based on tenure. >> Uh Councilman Vote, couple of things. So, if you have a band, say somebody the pay is between for for a certain position, um and a person's been there for 10 years, right? But we did a market

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adjustment on the band and the the band moved up, right? But they only got their 3 and 1/2% or 4% one year. Then they're actually lower in the band even though they've been longer. You hire somebody in that at the same level with two years

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with what this is telling us is that that person that has been here for 10 years should get an increase so that they're more compared to market for others that have worked for that period of time. So, it would impact that employee that 10-year employee would then get an increase to be more aligned with the market overall

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in that 8 to 10. All of these I just want to preface this all of this these dollars is what the the study's telling us. We're looking at a budget deficit. >> Yeah. >> The ability to do all this is contingent on where we end up with all and how we we implement it. So, I just wanted to

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reiterate that that's >> I won't get in the weeds here. It's cool. >> I'm I mean >> [laughter] >> You know what I mean. No, you know what I mean. >> You got it. You sure? Okay, perfect. >> I I do have a note to So, maybe graphing my position and possibly including some

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of the other indicators of where people may be placing their salary grade as a follow-up. >> I appreciate that. >> Okay. >> I think you alluded to this when you made a mention of the unfilled positions in our fire EMS system. But, does the compensation study also

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take into account unfilled positions the city has currently? >> So, the the compensation study Are you talking about the full classification project or the 8 to 10 million for recommendation for next fiscal year?

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>> Talking about the 8 to 10. >> Okay. So, the 8 to 10 is looking at where our existing employees are in their current seats or where they're falling within their salary grades. But, you know, we have some cushion there to take into account for vacant positions,

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but primarily we're looking at our existing workforce and where they're falling in their salary grades. And if a new person was to start, they wouldn't be eligible for, you know, some of these adjustments. It's primarily focused on retention of our current employees. >> I see.

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>> These do not cover civil service. >> Understood. Thanks, Jeff. >> Right. >> Thank you. >> Any other questions? Thank you. >> Okay. And I did have just I wanted to mention just, you know, compensation is one piece of a overall total rewards

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strategy. So, as we're talking through pay and benefits and many other areas, just know that um you know, we're considering all things that impact an employees uh take-home pay [clears throat] and other salary and benefits. Okay, the next presentation is on uh

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group health if we're ready to move to that. Thank you. All right, so I won't um spend a lot of time on this. We talked about this um last month, but um we know that our group health fund is projected to um continue to operate at a deficit uh and

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also currently does not have a reserve uh to help address any um fluctuations uh in claims utilization or other costs. And because of that, we have a multi-year strategic plan that we are working on for group health for FY27 and

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um you know, as much as possible for the remainder of FY26, our focus is on cost containment. So, rebuilding our reserve uh requirement, making sure that we're accounting for all expenses that are um hitting the fund uh as well as uh

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right-sizing our claims utilization. And then in future years, that looks at our plan and program design changes, making sure that our um plans are more competitive because our benchmark showed that the city uh is actually lagging in this area as well. Uh and then long-term

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um planning so we make sure that the fund stays whole and can sustain itself. So, I did because GLP-1s became um a big conversation last time, and I know it's a a hot topic just for many employers, I did want to share a little more information about how we got here. Uh it

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is not unique to the city of Fort Worth that GLP-1s have, you know, drastically increased pharmacy costs. Um like most employers, GLP-1s were introduced as a new category to treat type 2 diabetes. A lot of employers, including the city, uh

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offers a higher level of coverage for uh individuals with type 2 diabetes because it tends to be one of our higher uh diagnosis uh categories. Um but because GLP-1s were a new drug category that had not been uh available

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on mark to market before, it took, you know, a couple of years for many employers to understand the impact of what that cost looked like. So, um costs really grew exponentially, and um based on the data that we're seeing, uh plan's

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that it will continue to grow, and right now we don't really have any safeguards around utilization uh or cost in this area. Also wanted to share that um again, GLP-1s make up a large percentage, about a million dollars a month uh in cost to

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our plan. Since just last month, um my presentation last month, the number of subscribers or members that are using GLP-1s uh purely for weight loss increased almost 50%. And so, the number is, you know, continuing to grow. The

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million dollars or so per month was at the, you know, 900 level um as far as participation, but you know, we far surp- surpassed that already. Uh and again, we're not recommending any changes for diabetes-related GLP-1 use.

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All right. So, recommendations also include looking for additional options if we do navigate members away from GLP-1 use on our plan. So, we've been exploring direct-to-consumer options

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that could represent between 8 to 10 million dollars in cost savings, but looking at a way to offset that transition for members so that it's not, you know, an immediate hard stop with them being able to utilize other programs. And then the city always also

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offers several health and wellness programs that have both the weight loss and nutrition and other focus to them. So, making sure that there is a lot of member engagement and education and resources for options that are available.

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>> Can you tell me how much we spend collectively on Noom, Wondr Health, Form, Ramp Health, and Digbi? >> I will take that as a follow-up. I actually just looked at Noom's contract today. It was about 100,000, but I will take that as a follow-up for all of those. Wondr is a good example.

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We don't pay anything additional for them. It's a part of our Blue Cross membership, but I will take that as a follow-up for the remainder. >> Thank you. Can you can I don't need an IR or anything. I'm just you can email it to me if that sounds good. >> All right. And then again in summary, so

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GLP-1s are not the only area that we're looking at for cost reductions. Several of the items listed here are really just moving towards best practices. So, doing a dependent audit is a great example of making sure that we have the right members on our plan.

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Also offering support for, you know, higher term Um, more chronic surgeries like MSK treatments, which is also a very high cost to our plan. So, everything is not GLP-1 related, but GLP-1s are, you know, one of the

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actually the fastest growing cost to our plan and has the most opportunity for more immediate impact if there is a change. Um, so overall, and this includes potentially reimbursement or having a

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model for direct-to-consumer GLP-1s, around 12 and 1/2 million forecast reductions to the plan. But, we are continuing to explore other areas as well. So, some of those are yet to be determined. All right. And in summary,

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between 89 to 99 million dollars is what our employer contribution is expected to be. This is just for claims and third-party administration. So, our This is over 30 million dollars in increase

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as a baseline just to right-size our claims activity on the plan. In addition to that, about 5 and 1/2 million for overhead. So, that's any additional contracts like Noom and other programs, staffing that supports our benefit programs, and then working on a

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multi-year strategy to build up the contingency reserve so we meet that requirement. And then lastly, just long-term planning. This will, you know, for many, many years and really probably for the foreseeable future, will continue to be

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a work in progress and a very high focus because of the impact of this fund. And, you know, with health care changing at a much faster rate than, you know, our annual budget process can support. So, plan and program design changes, making

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sure that our plans are competitive from our employee perspective that they're accessible and affordable, that we have a cost share model that supports the sustainability of the fund, and then looking at other programs like our health centers and wellness programs

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to make sure we have the right level of engagement, and many many other opportunities that are part of our multi-year plan. And I'll open up for questions on group health. Questions? Councilmember Hill and Beck. >> So for the wellness programs, do we utilize any local companies or they all

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large national companies? >> Right now our primary wellness partner is Ramp Health. We do have various wellness options that are available to us through Blue Cross at no additional charge. I'm not aware of any I'm not aware of the location of some of

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our other like fitness instructors, but most of them are large branded programs. >> Okay. Is there a way if we had ideas on local companies that provide nutrition or wellness services, could they get in touch with you? What's the best way to do that? Okay. >> Absolutely. >> I'm trying to think of other ideas outside of the large national companies

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and help support our small businesses. And then two, the audit for $850,000, is that not something Blue Cross Blue Shield does anyway for dependents? >> So this they don't do a dependent audit. We do have the ability to engage in a claims audit with Blue Cross Blue Shield, which is part of our strategic

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plan. So this is really best practices from an employer perspective. We should be doing a periodic audit anyway, so this is just moving us towards best practice. >> And does the audit just examine how many dependents? What is the What is the ultimate >> eligible dependents that we have. And

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And again, spouses and children are often high cost drivers, so we want to make sure if we are covering family members that they are qualified family members that are eligible for participation in our plan. >> I see. Okay. And that costs $850,000? >> It's a savings of estimated savings of

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$800, >> What does the audit cost? >> Um, I don't have the amount, but I can follow up with you. >> That's fine. Okay. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Sorry for the confusion. Yes, customer rebate. >> Thanks, Beck. Uh, thanks, Mayor. Thanks, Beck. It's been a long day. Uh, thank you for putting all this

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together. I know I had a bunch of questions for you last time, and I appreciate you trying to address them. Um, I'm I'm frustrated, and not with you, um, that we're still having a about taking a class of medications out

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wholesale, um, because they are this class of drug is so rapidly, um, evolving in what is treated, um, or what conditions can be treated with this. Um,

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I'm I'm concerned that we're taking, you know, just wholesale taking that off availability for people is going to do a disservice to our, um, to our employees. I will say, um, I do think the most prudent, um,

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way forward is by reimbursing, uh, members of the plan for going out to market. I mean, it doesn't make sense if I can go get a prescription for $200, um, it makes more sense for the city to reimburse me that $200 than to pay the

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$1,200 through the contracted pharmaceutical price. Um, and so, that would be my direction to city staff is to develop a plan where we're not cutting out, um, the use of these, um, prescription drugs,

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um, >> [clears throat] >> but also, um, being a little more fiscally responsible. It saves us about 1 and 1/2 million dollars a month if we just reimbursed everybody that was using a GLP-1

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$200 for to go off market. I think that's much more reasonable. My question is and this is really what I want us to think about from a policy perspective is we're taking this medication away and we've said, well, you know, it Ozempic

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is only used for type 2 diabetes and these other things, you know, they're off market for weight loss or whatever. That puts us that interferes with my relationship with my doctor. My doctor gets to choose what medicines I do and don't take and how I take them and what

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I need. And so by us removing that, we're we're interfering with the with our medical care, with our relationship with our physicians. So, how do we how do we fix that? And that's not a question I'm asking you to answer today cuz that's probably not

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a question for you to answer. It's a bigger, broader question. So, I I don't think I'm looking at you to >> No, I understand. >> But we're interfering with that. And so, you know, if we do this reimbursement, there's just we're going down a road, right? If we do this reimbursement, do I

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have to first show that my doctor has approved it for me or do I do I just get to haul off and do it, right? Like there are some there's some tradeoffs in this. And so by by going through a pharmaceutical route and making my doctor prescribe

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something to me as opposed to me just willy-nilly getting on Noom and deciding I want, you know, minoxidil and GLP-1s and hormones and you know, whatever else it is you can get on those websites. Um are we going to see more people using

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it? And that's a question, too. So, I think I really want us to go back and look at at how we better serve our employees and I don't think a wholesale prohibition is how we get there. But I would like to see us um up a

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reimbursement plan for our employees up to $200. >> Do you have any idea back to slide six pertaining to GLP-1s when you were transitioning employees to direct-to-consumer what the cost differential may end up being per employee if they were on a traditional

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GLP-1? >> Yeah, for sure. >> And again, we have multiple options for weight loss providers, but I've spent a lot of time in the last couple of weeks talking with our Noom contacts so I understand their program better. >> Okay. >> So on average and I do want to say that

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Noom offers both compounded and branded options. They offer different dosing levels like microdosing. It's about $200 per month depending on what the participant chooses. The city as a part of our agreement pays for participation

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in Noom so it's a you know full program. It's not just about accessing the medication. So there's no cost to the members for that. They're also able to engage with a clinician via telemedicine before they get access to the medication. If they do choose the

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standard branded options of the GLP-1s, they are redirected to the provider site the the manufacturer sites, but there are options in their model to get it on average about $200 a month.

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>> Okay. And And right now it's at no cost. We're covering full cost. Is that right? >> We're covering um it depends on which plan you're on. So if you're on our health center plan about $50 or so and if you're on our high deductible

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plan, you are covering that cost until you meet your deductible and then you're getting it at no cost. >> Okay. That's helpful. >> And that I'm looking to make sure I'm saying that correctly. Okay. >> Was there something else or no?

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>> I was just making sure I was >> Okay. that correctly. >> Okay. >> From memory. >> Okay. Thank you. >> I was just going to mention I think we modeled this as covering 50% on the on the cost, but as we go through the budget process we have to at the end of the day have to

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put everything together, right? And so um we'll be looking at at all the suggestions here and we'll be probably be bring back some kind of options to the city council based on our need to fill the gap when we come back in August. >> Any other questions or comments,

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Council? Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Uh any future agenda items specifically for budget work sessions in the future? If not, this meeting is adjourned. Thank you.

Part: 2

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Perfect. Okay, council. I will call our work session to order and turn it over to Jay Chapa. >> Good afternoon, and I'm glad we're inside versus outside. It's pretty hot out there. Uh today, uh under upcoming and recent events, organizational

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changes, I have one. I'm going to call on Sher Knight, assistant library director, to introduce our new public education specialist for the library department. >> Thank you, uh, mayor, council, and city manager's office. I am so pleased to

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introduce Lindsay Russian. Uh Lindsay is our new um staff member at the library who is got a wide variety of responsibilities, but her um one of her main responsibilities is going to be to launch and manage our new community art

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spaces. And um I will just tell you a little bit about Lindsay. She was born and raised in Oklahoma. She moved to Texas after attending the University of Arkansas and Florida State University where she studied flute performance and

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historical musiccology. For the past 16 years, she has worked in every department from marketing and fundraising to operations and production at Kasamana. And since 2021, she has served as adjunct faculty for the arts leadership

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and entrepreneurship program at TCU. and um she has been here for almost one month and in that time she has hit the ground running and uh we are so lucky to have her as part of our team. >> Did you want to say a few words?

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>> I was just going to say I look forward to working with you all in this different capacity um as we bring uh art right into our communities and support our local artist scene. So, thank you. >> Thank you. Welcome. >> Thank you. Welcome. >> Welcome, Lindsay. Good to see you here.

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Moving forward with informal reports. The first is the 2026 debt financing plan overview. Alex Laugher is here to answer any questions. >> Questions for Alex. >> Okay. Next is development services

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inspection response times to inspect under permitted or unpermitted construction work. Evan Roberts assistant director is here to answer any questions. Council >> Flores. Hi. I've read the report, but I kind of

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wanted to get maybe some anecdotal type of feedback. Uh, you know, given our our current staffing and the amount of work that's going on there when it comes to contracted work, uh, could you step me through and see, you know, again, the

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inter the intervals of inspection times are working. I know there have been a couple of things that have occurred before. you know, I won't get into the details that certainly maybe an inspection would have would have helped sooner rather than later. >> Um, yes. So, u addressing I guess the

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the question there's a couple questions in there or some some nuances to that. So, in issues where and so work is going on without a permit. We have historically recognizing and I think we mentioned that there historically we were really bad at that. I'm going to own that. we were short staffed and

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getting the inspections done for projects that were were permitted were and scheduled to try to keep the getting the economic base and things moving. So, we didn't do a really great job with our um complaint inspection. So, um in this instance, what we have begun to once we

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were able to fill out the inspection team after that, we've been able to to give this the attention that it has has richly needed or or deserved. And so, the team were moving forward with that. We're actually had a a training with the um state attorney's office on Monday about how to write citations and build

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cases to move forward. We've heard from the council that this is something that's important to move forward and and we're moving on that. The the as far as catching them there there are issues and we've so that was a two-prong approach that we took that I think the last time I was before you all I spoke

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about. we're adding some some more teeth and some more um fines and and fees for when we find people that are skipping inspections and doing those other pieces. So, um no, the not to speak to anyone specific project, but yes, there have been some times where work was

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happening we gotten out there. The sooner we can stop people whether they genuinely the people that genuinely don't know, they're like, "Oh, this is my property. I thought I could just do whatever I wanted on it." Right? There's some of that. When we can educate them earlier, it's better. Um there are some bad actors who just do it until they get

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caught and they're like, "Oh, fine. I'll go get the permit." And in in those instances, we we treat them and we're trying to to do a little more um we'll say enforcement or or more aggressively treat those and address them. >> Okay. And then just one party comment. I understand that and thank you. When it

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comes to new contractors, contractors that are new to uh city work, >> are they on the same type of interval of inspection or because they're new, are they inspected more frequently until they're fully vetted and we think,

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"Okay, this is a keeper. This is a contractor we can work with." >> So, not to to mix apples and oranges. So, our third party contractors do some follow-up inspections with them. our regular just anybody that just builds with us. The required the the required

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inspections are the required inspections, right? You you need to get a framing inspection. Anything the the the rule or the thing that I tell people when they come is before you cover anything up, let us look at it, right? You you don't want to if there's going to be wires or plumbing or whatever, if it's behind sheetrock, if if you can't

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see it when you walk in the building, we need to look at it before you cover it. And so those inspections happen on every project with every contractor and are we they are scheduled at the pace when the contractor is ready for them. They schedule them with us. We don't set that cadence.

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>> All right. Thank you, sir. >> C Martinez. >> So Evan, just really quick, can you just uh you know just go through the process again? Somebody calls and reports uh construction that they suspect happening without a permit. Um, so they, let's say

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they just called 311 or in the app, do you know if there's the option, and I think it is because I, I think I went in there and looked to report, you know, a project with >> Yes. Um, in the the the Forth app is actually one of the best ways to do it. When you go through the Fororth app, it automatically creates a permit record, a

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complaint record in our permitting system, and automatically schedules the inspection for the next day. We've had some trouble because it's scheduling inspections on Sundays when people aren't available to do them, but we pick them up on Monday and cover it. So that's the best way and and on those and that's the reports for the for this year

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we are hitting those automatically scheduled inspections on the day they're done or within three days at a at a a really high rate. >> So development services would respond then or would code then development then code for enforcement. >> So when you in the forth app if you

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select the work without a permit right that automatically schedules to us. Now, there are some times where if it's unclear, right, there are we sometimes people schedule work without a permit and it's actually because there are clothes piled up next to the clothes,

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you know, the drop off stations and and so then then we partner with our our our code our code partners and say with this one's yours and when they get one that that comes to us and we we work them that way. Are there certain CA uh instances where development services is

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doing the enforcement and then others when code is doing the enforcement or is it all code? >> Uh no development services for construction work without a permit that is development services. Um there are other there are other complaints and other things that would would come up like I I mentioned they're they're doing

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like you know the closed drop off boxes and there's just clothes piled up around them. that's a that's a code violation or sometimes there's high grass or any of the things that is are wholly the code compliance in their realm. If we get those we forward them to those and vice versa when they get the ones they forward to us.

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>> So let's say they um they're asked to to go uh come to city hall and and secure a permit and they don't do that then you would continue with that or you would hand it off to code for >> No, no, no. We've continued with that too. So we actually again in in when we

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relooked at this program, one of the one of the holes we found earlier in the year was that it would get one we go out there and we'd leave them a notice and then no one would ever go back. So we have since reprogrammed the the permitting system to uh when you when we resulted as a notice of violation it

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automatically schedules another inspection in 10 days and then the notice of violation two schedules it another 10 days and then notice three is a zero days and we start a more that's when we start writing citations and more rigorous enforcement after that. >> Okay thank you. So just I'll continue to

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recommend to submit through the my forab without a permit >> the best way. >> Thank you. Okay, moving on. Uh, the next one is master transportation plan update and Kelly Porter, assistant director and DPW is here to answer any questions.

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>> Any questions for Kelly? >> Nope. Yes. Appreciate you, Kelly, and the entire team. Great work. >> Next one's National Flood Insurance Program Repetitive Loss Area Analysis Update. And Jennifer Dyke, assistant directors here. >> Council Rebec. >> Yeah, I just have a couple of questions

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for Jennifer. Thank you so much. Uh the the flood insurance repetitive loss area is that similar to the mapping that we did um the high floodprone it's a little bit different. So the rep

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loss areas are focused on insurance actual insurance claims. So they have to have flood insurance first and they've made a claim to FEMA and it's a rolling 10-year period. they look at the amount of claims and so potentially it could be an area where we don't even have any

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risk mapped. Um so it could be either in FEMA or a non-FEMA or no flood risk mapped at all but it's all based off of the FEMA information. >> Okay. And then the the FEMA and I know the next IR is about the us updating the

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the FEMA flood insurance. So um I might cross over a little bit here if you don't Okay. >> Um that the FEMA flooding the FEMA flood plane mapping impacts flood insurance. >> Yes. Now, this um this repetitive loss

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area, are those um are those parcels or properties that are also within already within identified FEMA uh flood planes or are those am I conflating? >> So, so the replos areas can be anywhere. So some of them are in FEMA areas and

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some of them in are in some of the non-FEMA city flood risk areas or potential high water areas. So it doesn't matter the only the thing that triggers them to become rep loss areas is they have flood insurance and they've made a claim and those claims total up

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to a certain amount within a 10-year period and then it automatically says okay you're in a rep loss area. So, I don't know how FEMA takes that into consideration in terms of there's been so many changes in the flood insurance program over the last several years um that sometimes it's a black box and we

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don't know exactly. We're not the insurance people. Um but but we use that information to help us understand what those flood risks are and to help us communicate with those residents and take them into account when we look at our maintenance and our capital projects. >> Okay. Um couple more questions and I'll

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let you go. So these um repetitive loss areas, they could be individual properties um or they could be a a cluster of properties. Correct. So typically it's it starts with one and then they they look at that property and

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they look at the area around that property to kind of see are there structures kind of with that same type of risk and then they group those together as a rep loss area. Um, so we're not just looking at that one structure, but we're trying to see, oh, does the neighbor have that same type of

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risk? Is there something that could help all of these together versus just one property? Okay. Um, thank you. That's all really helpful because I know um having experienced um us notifying residents of of flooding or of be, you

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know, being in particular areas um I know what the phone calls to our offices are going to be. So, thank you for all that information. And so then that's my segue. Um, you know, we kind of learned through error last time when we first started sending out the notices about the floodprone areas, >> correct?

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>> Um, and we corrected course and went out to neighborhoods and really educated people on what this was and and what it wasn't. Are there any plans to do that associated with the notifications um, relating to these areas? So these areas to my understanding the communications

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went out like I guess a couple years ago when we started this process and so really kind of we're updating we're adding two new areas because of recent flood insurance claims so it would be pretty small. Um so I'm not exactly sure how we would be communicating with those

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few property owners. Our flood plan management um leader is at a conference this week to learn more about FEMA. Um, so I can follow up with her and find out specifically how they plan to communicate, but it would just be a few like a handful of people. >> Okay. And if just um if if you can to

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the extent that you can just identify maybe what council district they're in and just letting our offices know. You don't necessarily need to give us the exact address, but when we get the phone calls, they're going to >> Yeah. Yeah, definitely. We can do that. And just so y'all know, this is pretty confidential. The FEMA flood insurance

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claim information. We cannot share that out. Um and so so it's they don't even let me have it. Our floor plan administrator keeps it pretty wrapped up. Um but we'll specifically let you know kind of like general areas. Um so then y'all can be prepared if we get calls.

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>> Don't leave. >> I know. >> Next one's the upcoming FEMA flood plane mapping updates and Jennifer's >> questions for Jennifer Hill. >> Sorry, Jennifer. Do you mind just doing a general overview for me? >> Yes. Yes. So the the FEMA one is so our

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our program um works closely with FEMA. We want to make sure that the FEMA maps are are accurate. Um the FEMA maps are used for flood federal flood insurance purposes, but at the city we use them to help regulate development and communicate flood risk and and then plan for our maintenance and our capital

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projects. So we have a contract right now um that we need to add some scope to. And so this is there's an M andC coming up in a few weeks um because we got some comments from FEMA that we need to address. So in in short um we

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recently um updated or in the process of updating three different areas um in the city, the FEMA flood plane maps. Um but this is not just like a one-time thing. We go through the city and we have a prioritized way to look at the FEMA flood plane maps, look at how current they are and where those biggest changes

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are in risk because people look at those FEMA flood plane maps and that's really the first mapping that they look at to understand what their risk is. So, we want to try to keep them as current as possible so people are are getting an accurate understanding of their risk. So, we work with FEMA um to update the

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maps officially. These are all FEMA maps and so it's the lines just change. Sometimes people are taken out of the FEMA flood plane area, sometimes they're added. Um, and then through that process, we're making sure that we're notifying the people. Um, so depending

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on the amount of change kind of drives the type of communication. So, we recently had a meeting uh for with the Eastland Creek community that we went out and met in their neighborhood because it was going to have a pretty significant impact on the number of residents. So, we wanted to go out there and meet with them. Um, other times we

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just use mailers or social media depending on the amount of impact. Um, but this is really what the IR is about is just kind of the an update on our current process for these three areas and where we're at in updating the FEMA flood plane maps.

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Other questions for Jennifer? >> Thank you, >> Jennifer. Next is a neighborhood Wi-Fi program achievements and completion update. Kevin Gunn from IT is here to answer any questions. No questions.

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>> Opportunity zone 2.0 nominations and program update. Jessica Rogers, economic developments here at >> Council Member Martinez. >> Hi, Jessica. >> So, I see Well, can we get an overview? But I see that um you know there are

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significantly less opportunity zones than there are in that are going to be proposed and I really want to get an idea of you know the types of projects that um have benefited from these opportunity zones so that when the time comes to um help you know promote or or

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you know answer any questions that interested parties might have you can speak to that. >> Sure. So, opportunity zones is a federal program that encourages investment in lowincome, high poverty areas. Um, this iteration of the program is called opportunity zone 2.0. So, it's sort of

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lessons learned from opportunity zone 1.0 and then reapplied. Um, one of the challenges kind of to get directly to your question of places that have benefited from this. One of the challenges in 1.0 was there weren't any reporting requirements. So, we know a lot of general information about the

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program statewide, but we don't have a lot of specifics um on local use of the programs. I absolutely have some examples that um were made public in Dallas, in Houston, and San Antonio. I don't have a specific example where a project in Fort Worth was used. We only

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have six designated zones from 1.0. So, we are submitting I believe the list you guys have says 45. The final list will that we were going to propose is actually going to be 42. And that is because at least one of us got a little crosseyed looking at all of those census track numbers and two of those were

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duplicates. One has now been deemed ineligible. Um they were actually very low on the priority. The one that was ineligible was actually our lowest on the priority list um at this point. Anyway, um but with that the program that changed um one key thing that

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changed and why there are fewer zones that are eligible or fewer tracks that are eligible is the requirement is now higher. So now they have to be at 70% of area media income instead of 80%. So that dropped our number of eligible tracks from over a 100 to only 87. Staff

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then went through those 87 tracks and looked at where we had areas that we thought projects that qualify could happen and were those projects areas consistent with the comprehensive plan. things like our strategic development

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areas, industrial growth centers, revitalization target areas, um transit oriented development, um working collaboratively with neighborhood services and planning to kind of identify those. Um and that's how we came up with the final list and I hope

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if if there's any more kind of specifics, I'm happy to answer those. >> Just an example from Dallas at least. >> Okay. Yeah, let me. So, one of the projects that I pulled from Douglas. So, one that um I found was called the

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archive multif family project which was created near downtown Dallas. Um and they were a the developer was able to use an opportunity zone to redevelop underutilized land and 300 housing units. Um the largest proportion of investment through opportunity zones has

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actually been in housing. Um and that includes multif family housing, single family rental housing and affordable housing projects. So um if you kind of look at the distribution of where opportunity investments have have gone, it's been primarily in housing. Secondary to that is commercial business

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development. Um, and the other areas, hospitality and direct business investment are much much smaller, very low percentage of the actual use of the opportunity zone program. But that's just one example of the of the type of project that that is possible using this tool.

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Thank you. Any other questions for Jess? >> Yes, >> I just have one statement. Mayor, >> go ahead. >> Yeah, just thank you for this, mayor, and thanks for working on ensuring mall is on that list. It's prime commercial redevelopment right there, but obviously

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hindered by the APZ at the base. So, appreciate us putting that on that list, too. >> Any other comments or questions from council? Thank you, Jessica. >> All right. Next, overview of the request for proposals process for FMS billing

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services and Tony Rouso, finan finance assistant directors here. Answering questions at Council Flores. I may have some follow-up questions, but let me start off with this. I know that there was a process to evaluate some proposals and u

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you know the purpose being to increase the amount of uh revenue collections that we have with our EMS service. So is there a specific target or metric that we're trying to hit that you could tell us about when we're evaluating companies

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like this? So typically we um receive we collect about 27 anywhere between 27 and 30% of the the charges that we have and um in this case for EMSMC they're they actually reduced their their charge so

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we're expecting a savings of approximately $370,000. So they're reducing the charges uh that we would get assessed for the collections, >> right? Their their rate normally, right? They're reducing the the rate that they would receive.

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>> And typically what are their collection uh what collections do they realize stay in the market like ours? So, um it's several million dollars, but essentially it's 2 point um

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>> and percentages is what I'm talking about, not so much dollar amounts. >> So, so they'll it's it's an average of 2.4% I believe. And then, um they also have a what they call a safety net thing that the city currently doesn't utilize

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with them. And so they go up to a they actually go up to a third party service and almost like a collection agency where they try to follow up and collect and they collect money and that's a higher percentage. That's approximately 14%. However, we don't the city doesn't pay anything more on that. We just pay

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exactly what what they're paying on that. >> That occurs after the initial attempt to collect. The follow-up attempt is where this third party agency kicks in. >> Yeah. After the the third third attempt to collect. Thank you. >> Next is a Rainwater Charitable

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Foundation expanding literacy access grant and Monnique Hill Parks and Recre is here to answer any questions. >> Yes, Council Member Hill. Mon'nique, maybe it just helps to go over the IR. Thank you. >> I didn't have a question. I really just

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had a statement. And I did want to publicly thank Jeremy Smith and the Rainwater Charitable Trust for um investing in literacy and investing with the city of Fort Worth. So, we appreciate you. >> Good afternoon, council. Excuse me, Mayor and City Manager Chopper.

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Yes, we are extremely excited um to receive and you'll hear from me two more times. So, about this grant um but we are extremely um excited. Not sure if we have anyone here with us from right today.

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They're not. Um to receive a grant that is over $338,000 that will help us with the expansion of our literacy program. And so we will do on the uh 23rd a full presentation to

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you about this program. And so uh thankfully the mayor uh has uh connected us with rainwater to expand a program that started back in 2018 and it was a vision for us to have a literacy program which was really to look at the

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prevention of summer slide um at our community centers during the summer. Um and so in order to do that we hire what's called a literacy support specialist and those are usually certified teachers that come and they work with us. and so they are um their

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salaries a little bit more because we want to have the best working with our uh children. What this grant will allow us to do is to not only hire those positions, but they also will expand the amount of time that they're able to spend with our children. Um so we're really excited about that. In addition

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to that, um it helps us to dovetail into our program to look at screening for dyslexia. Um, and that is with our partner with the Sid Richardson um, Foundation. And I'm not sure if they're here today. We are not. Um, and so with that, we'll

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be able to use these positions to help us with coordinating uh, the services to make sure that our kids we're addressing literacy headon. Um, along with some of our other programming, the mayor's reading challenge and the library. Were there specific questions that you

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>> No, that's all I wanted. Thank you, man. Your staff's done an amazing job. We appreciate all your partnership and for Literacy United and Caroline and their team and of course Rainwater as well to bring this to the table. >> Absolutely. We're really excited. Thank you. >> Thanks, Monique. Next, we have the

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review of city DSHS contractor model for mobile food vendor inspections and Wendy Turpin from environmental services is here to answer any questions. >> Councilor Martinez. >> Hey, Wendy. Okay. So, I see we're not going to go into contract with uh the state. Um so,

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we get a lot of um complaints from constituents about um food trucks on the um you know, on the rideway or um on properties that that aren't operating. Um so, what should we do when um they

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come to us? Should we still uh direct them to 311 so that it could it could be like a land use issue? and then um that department would then you know forward them to the county or how would that work? >> Um if you have mobile vendor complaints

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you're more than welcome to have the 311 have all your residents call 311. they will talk to the resident and more than likely it'll end up in our house here in environmental services consumer health and we'll address it either because it's a zoning violation through our

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commercial compliance um or if we investigate it and find that it needs to go to Tarant County Public Health, we'll send that over for them. And so when they report this through the mobile app, is there a specific >> um option there for this request or just

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is it in general environmental? >> There is not a specific option for that. I can absolutely talk about adding that. >> That would actually be really easy. >> I know there's another or there was, but okay. I just wanted to, you know, guide our constituents in the most efficient

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route. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? Nope. >> Okay. Next selection process for construction contractors and engineering professional services for the city capital projects. And Lauren is out six,

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but Patricia Wadsac, TPW, assistant director is here to answer any questions. I >> think this may was mine. Can I get an overview? Trisha, >> good afternoon.

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Um, the purpose of this informal report was to talk about how we select different types of projects, both our construction projects and our consultant, our professional engineering services contracts uh, for the city. And

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we do um the vast majority of our construction contracts are procured through the low bid process which is outlined in this report and then um by law for consulting services we have to do a qualificationsbased selection. So

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it outlines the qualificationsbased selection process also in this report for selecting engineering services. question. >> No, >> thank you. >> Thank you. >> Okay. And the last IR is the update on

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project safe neighborhoods expanded areas and Mark Barton Barton is here uh deputy chief police department. >> Any questions? No. Great council. That's the last of our IRS. We'll move to any changes to

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memberships and boards commissions or significant zoning cases or changes on their questions on the MNC log. If not, we'll move into our first presentation. Will Rogers Memorial Center management transition and Jess McKern is presenting.

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All right, mayor and council, I am extremely excited about this presentation today. This is something that has been in the works for many years here in the city and we are finally to the point where we are ready to move it forward for approval and that is really talking about the future management and operation of our historic

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facility, the Will Rogers Memorial Center. So, this facility has been under city management since 1936. We are coming up on the 100year anniversary in just 10 short years. And within the culture and tourism fund, which is where

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this facility sits, if you will, there have been growing pressures and significant capital investment needs for this facility as well as the Fort Worth Convention Center. So, starting many years ago, the city started looking at how should we approach the future of Will Rogers. And we've been considering

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a management transition or a new approach, if you will, since 2019. There have been a number of factors that I'll talk through in just a moment that have caused this this lag to where we are just now finally getting here in 2026. And so I'm here today really to present

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the solution to you, which is to outsource the management and day-to-day operations of this facility to Gendy Street Management Corporation, which is a nonprofit uh composed of partners at the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo and Trail Drive Management Corporation Dickies Arena.

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Okay, this image right here is the map of the Will Rogers Memorial Center. You are all extremely familiar with it, but just to reiterate, this facility sits on 120 acres, has more than 17 buildings, and is very much an equestrian focused facility. That said though, this

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facility is rented often and by a number of different entities. So, we have everything here from horse shows and rodeo type events to uh black taigalas. This facility is so unique in that it is up and running nearly 365 days a year.

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To say it is busy is an understatement. And to set the stage again of how we got here, I do want to walk you through a little bit of a history on this facility. And I won't take too long, but again, just starting all the way 90 years ago in 1936 when this facility uh was first opened and constructed.

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Uh not quite 10 years later in 1944, the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo began operating at Will Rogers Memorial Center. In 1987, the Stock Show assisted in raising funds to build a parking garage out of the facility. And this was really the start of a lot more partnership, not just hosting events at

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Will Rogers. It's not up on the screen, but I'll note 1988 was the year that I first went to the stock show in rodeo with my parents, and I've been to nearly every stock show uh yearly since then, and I've learned a lot about cattle at these at the Forest Stock Show. In 2001,

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Event Facilities of Fort Worth was incorporated. It is a support arm of the Forest Stock Show and Rodeo. And then in 2003 um the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo or EFFW through their arm was uh instrumental in helping the city launch

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the project financing zone which was a key financing piece to the construction of Dickiy's arena. Also in 2003 our nonprofit organizations partnered with us to build the prominade and the multi-purpose pavilion as well as renovate barn and the milking parlor

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and they committed to paying half of the debt um towards those facilities. So that was a a really big financial contribution. In 2015, the city approved the master agreement for the development of the multi-purpose arena. That is the formal name for Dickiy's Arena. And our

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nonprofit organizations agreed to pay 1/ half of the cost of the construction of Dickiy's Arena, which was up to $450 million. In 2016, as we continue to move forward with the construction of Dickies Arena or the multi-purpose arena, we

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formalized or the the nonprofit formalized the creation of MultiPurpose Arena Fort Worth, which is commonly known as Trail Drive Management Corporation. For the sake of this presentation, you will more hear me refer to them as Trail Drive. In 2018, Trail Drive in the city entered into a

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qualified management agreement for Trail Drive to manage all of our parking assets out at the Will Rogers complex. We pay a very minimal fee for that service. In 2019, EFFW and the stock show split the costs with the city on the barn renovations which were were a a

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wonderful uh improvement to the historic facility. And so late 2018, early 2019, we had a leadership change within the public events department. You had visit Fort Worth really ramping up in the tourism space. Um, the city at the time knew

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that we wanted to expand and renovate the Fort Worth Convention Center. So, the city hired an entity, Hunden Strategic Partners, and assigned them with the task of creating a governance study for both Will Rogers Memorial Center and the Fort Worth Convention Center. The outcome of that study came

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in late 2019, very early 2020, and the recommendation was ultimately to outsource both facilities eventually to third party management. Um the intent at the time was that the convention center would go first and Will Rogers would go second. But in 2020, we all know that CO

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19 pandemic happened and really derailed a lot of our plans at that time and threw us into a tail spin. I will also note that in 2020, we hired Mike Crumb as our public convince director and we hired him specifically for his expertise in transitioning facilities from city

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operations to thirdparty management. and that was part of the recruitment that they did for his position. So, COVID pandemic hits, all of our plans to move these facilities into thirdparty management were just put on pause. Instead, our public events department shifted their focus really to sheltering

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people during that COVID uh 19 early ages of the pandemic. And then after that, our focus really was on the recovery. So, how do we get our convention center and Will Rogers back to normal operations? How do we get events booked and up and running again? In early 2023 is when we finally picked

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back up the discussions about outsourcing the management of the Will Rogers facility. And so we started naturally having conversations with Event Facilities of Fort Worth, again an arm of the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo. And we talked to them at the time about two different aspects. Number one,

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how do we engage them to help manage our capital projects because they have always been very instrumental in working with us on our capital projects. But number two, um, let's explore the conversation about venue management. And so the two IRS that are noted there, they're just for reference if anybody's interested in looking at those. Those

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were IR updates that were provided to council at the time on those conversations that were happening. In 2024, very early, the council approved the management agreement with um, EFFW to manage our capital projects, and we again continued at a staff level

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working on the venue management negotiations. In 2025, as we were getting closer to wrapping up our negotiation, our negotiations, and just all of the aspects that that entails, we notified our staff early that year that we were still in progress and we were expecting

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to wrap it up soon. And then the fiscal year 26 budget, the one that council adopted, included completion of assignment incentive pay for our employees. And the purpose of that, and we communicated that with employees, is we really wanted people to stay through the transition. We didn't want any of

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our staff to get cold feet or feel uneasy about what was to come. And so we created the incentive and then ensuring that we're letting them know that they will be taken care of and they are still an integral part of this facility. So here we are today. Uh we have concluded our negotiations with our third party

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for the operation of this facility and the MNC will be on your council agenda next week for approval. If you approve that, um, the real work or the very nitty-gritty work starts immediately and the, uh, third-party management agreement will then go into effect on

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October one of this year with the start of the next fiscal year. So, why did Hunden Strategic Partners recommend thirdparty management in the first place for this facility? Well, three things really. Number one, we were experiencing rising operating costs,

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especially coming out of the COVID pandemic. You've seen this a lot across the city and all of our departments were really being hit with rising post-pandemic inflation. On top of that, our city processes, many of which are really rooted in state law, especially procurement, how we buy goods and

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services, how we contract for work, they just add an extra layer of cost to them. Sometimes they add a lot of intricacies and delays and long timelines to get things done. On top of that, the facility is 90 years old. We have the 100-year anniversary coming up in just

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10 years. And so there's a long list of capital needs that are needed to improve this facility and to keep it up and running for the next 100 years. On top of that, this facility shares the culture and tourism fund resources along with the Fort Worth Convention Center.

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You all know because we've seen a lot of presentations on it that we are about to issue the debt to do phase two of the expansion of the convention center. And so that really taps a lot of the financial capacity of the culture and tourism fund, not leaving a ton of capacity available immediately for the

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reinvestment into capital improvements at Will Rogers Memorial Center. So the ultimate solution or recommendation is that we should look to reduce our operating deficit, the cost to operate the facility and then use any of those savings or any of the financial

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improvements through the reduction of expenses through potential increased revenue and take every bit of that and reinvest it directly into the facility in capital improvements. So again, all the the entire purpose of this qualified management agreement is to free up money

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to reinvest into the capital at Will Rogers. On this slide, you've seen this before several times before, specifically when we talk about budget, but this is just a snapshot at the increasing deficit. Again, that deficit being that it costs a lot more to operate the facility than

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the revenue we're taking in. I've listed on the right here just some of the main drivers that are leading that deficit to continue to increase. So number one, reduced revenues. This is not something to be alarmed by. It's as we have renovated some of the facilities there like the barns at first, then the

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coliseum most recently, those um particular buildings come offline and are not available for rentals. So we just naturally have reduced income coming in during those renovations. On top of that, again, I mentioned already the post-pandemic inflation, just everything is costing more. We're also

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being very intentional about increasing our janitorial and our maintenance expenses into the facility again with the ultimate goal of improving our customer score. That was something that in 2019 we were hearing a lot of is just dissatisfaction with the state of the facility and how it appeared and the

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cleanliness. And then of course the coliseum renovation expenses as well are are contributing to that deficit. So, we get to the need for contract management. And as we were working with our city attorney's office and our finance department to determine what is

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the most appropriate way to move this forward, there really is no other question other than a qualified management agreement. Because this facility has taxexempt debt on it and we anticipate issuing more taxexempt debt in the future for capital improvements, this has to be structured as a qualified

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management agreement in order to preserve that taxexempt bond status. And then just in general, again, the private sector is oftentimes a lot more efficient and entrepreneurial in the way that they can operate facilities. And so we've seen that here in the city of Fort

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Worth already. We have some great success stories. Um those are pictured here, but really the top left in that picture that I'll give as an example is the Fort Worth Zoo. We have outsourced that facility to the Fort Worth Zoological Association since 1990. And to date, the zoological association has

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raised more than $19 million in private funding that has allowed for some pretty spectacular improvements there, such as Texas Wild, um the Museum of Living Art, the World of Primates, the African Savannah, and Elephant Springs. And I think you all remember this because you

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see the stats and the awards that go to the Fort Worth Zoo frequently. But right now, our Fort Worth Zoo is ranked number one in USA Today for zoos in North America. I guarantee that would not have been possible if not for the outsourcing the partnership with the zoo. On the top

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right picture, that is our Cowtown Coliseum in the historic stockyards. We have outsourced that facility since 2002. We are on our second operator and we've seen incredible improvements at the Cowtown Coliseum. Um, right now, I don't have the exact numbers off the top

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of my head, but we have taken that facility from costing the city money every year to a true revenue generator. So, we're seeing in excess of 1 million in profit. That's a a revenue, a profit sharing that's coming off of that one. That is also a historic equestrian facility. And just the success is is a

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great example of what we expect to happen at Will Rogers. The bottom left picture is the Fort Worth Herd, which we outsourced to Visit Fort Worth starting in 2010. Visit Fort Worth um works handinhand with Friends of the Herd. So friends of the herd does a lot of

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fundraising and then visit Fort Worth leverages their expertise in tourism as well as destination storytelling and they have helped to turn the Fort Worth herd from a local tradition to really a national cultural landmark. Just this year alone I heard that they have had 12

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requests to come film the Fort Worth herd in action and many of those requests are coming from international um locations. And then lastly, but the Botanic Garden was our most recent example of outsourcing to private management. We outsourced that facility in 2020 to the

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Botanical Research Institute of Texas. And to date, they have raised more than $21 million in funding. Um, a big part of that is contributing to the construction of the Baker Martin Family Garden, which is set to open this year. But some other notable examples of their success in taking over that facility is

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that since 2020, the attendance has more than doubled at the Botanic Garden, which leads to increased revenue. And as a whole, they've been able to take the city offset or the city deficit that we still fund for that facility as well, and reduce it as an overall percentage of the revenue that is funding the

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operation of the Botanic Garden. So as staff again as we were thinking about who is the best entity to take over the the management and operation of this facility who will care for it as much as we have and who will really elevate it into the future and the the

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ultimate recommendation is Gendy Street Management Corporation which is a nonprofit joint venture comprised of the Fort Stock Show and Rodeo Event Facilities of Fort Worth the the partnership arm of Stock Show and Multi-purpose Arena Fort Worth again Trail Drive Management Corporation that

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operates Dickies Arena. And the reason we chose them is again because of their long significant contributions to this facility already. Chapter 252 of the local government code allows for an exemption to competitive bidding for the management of facilities

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to either professionals or to nonprofit organizations that have had significant financial and otherwise contributions to the facility. I think it is very clear that Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo Trail Drive uh management corporation absolutely meet that that criteria of of

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significant investment into the facility. Trail Drive Management continues to operate Dickiy's Arena and they do that at no net cost to this city. And then of course they also manage our parking assets that are part of the Will Rogers complex. Both of these entities have a vested interest in

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preserving the future of the Will Rogers Memorial Center. And I've shared this already, but again, Will Rogers is such a unique facility. It's really not like any other convention center where anybody could come and operate it. It is heavily equestrian focused. It is rented

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364 days a year. You need somebody here that really understands the unique nature of move in and move out of equestrian events while also at the ability to hold concerts. We have a a great concert hall there, a small um theater, and somebody even that can host formal black tai gayas.

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Okay, at this time, although these two gentlemen really need no formal introduction to you, I am going to introduce um Matt Carter, who's the president of Forstock Show and Rodeo, and Matt Hman, president and general manager of Trail Drive. They're going to walk you through a little bit more about their organizations and the contributions to the facility. And then

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when they're done, I'm going to come back up and give you a highle overview of the management agreement that you will see on your agenda next week. Uh, first and foremost, thank you, mayor. Thank you, council. Thank you, city manager's office, uh, for having us here today. I'd also like to thank the

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staff that we've been able to work with, specifically Jess. Thank you very much. Mike Crumbs has been great to work with, alongside Keith Chisum, Allison McNamera, and Taylor Parish. They've they've all got us to a wonderful point here. Uh, a lot of what you're going to

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hear me say, uh, Jess is probably covered. So, uh, we'll we'll try to be brief, but but both Matt and I felt like it was important that you hear about hear from the heads of the organization, uh, that that hopefully we'll, uh, form a partnership with with with the city on. And we truly do believe that this is

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another iteration of a public private partnership. Uh, most of our partnerships up to this point has have been really surrounding or or the formal ones have really been surrounding uh, facilities and improvements, but uh, but we really believe that this helps take it to the next level. Um, again, Jess

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covered a lot of this, but uh, uh, the the principles in this joint venture, if you will, Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo, Event Facilities, and Trail Drive Management, uh, all three are 501c3s. Uh, we've obviously at the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo been a tenant of both Will Rogers and Dickiy's Arena, uh,

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I think for 83 years now. So, I I think what that really underscores is that we have institutional knowledge. Uh, we know the facility. We've been there. Uh we've wor worked alongside the Will Rogers employees which I think is really important. Uh we'll talk about that a

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little bit later. Uh and then you know our surplus operating revenue at the end of the day goes to to two things. One improving the facilities. Again we'll touch on a few more of those uh specifics here in a moment. Uh but also to supporting you know Texas kids. Uh last year we were able to funnel about

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$12 million into the pockets of Texas kids uh to help them with their next steps. Uh in addition to that, we're we're a proud sponsor of our local community. We support things uh Cook Children's Charity Foundation, uh you know, members of our local chambers and and Visit Fort Worth and and all of the

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the things that are important around here. I support a lot of the local festivals. Uh event facilities Fort Worth, as just mentioned, was formed really initially with the specific purpose, uh to uh you know, hold land in

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in expectation for Dickiy's Arena. did that for many years and then later became the development partner uh for Dickiy's Arena and I think uh that's also important and then since that time that that organization that funding mechanism has been used to help partner with the city of Fort Worth. Uh Matt's

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going to probably talk a little bit more about Trail Drive Management Corp here in just a little bit um when we get to those slides, but I'll I'll move forward a little bit more uh specifics and details about the partnership uh between uh the Stock Show event facilities, kind of one and the same, and uh and the city

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of Fort Worth. Since we moved to the Will Rogers complex in 1944, uh we have either invested directly or have a commitment to invest over $130 million. Uh so I think that our commitment is is absolutely real. Um uh

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vent facilities as as Jess touched on uh provided all the design services, all the development services uh free of charge to the city for Dickiy's Arena. Uh we wore the 50/50 partner, but we also agreed as event facilities to cover anything in excess of 50/50 capping the

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city. uh and event facilities actually invested over $350 million in Dickiy's Arena and gifted all that back to the city of Fort Worth. Um again, I'll say that we have done this uh through event facilities and stock show with no charge for any of the services or any of the

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staff time that that we've ever done. I think it's also important to kind of underscore the ways that we have also been able to partner with the city that that aren't facilities oriented. Um uh for a long time uh the stock show obviously we're very involved in the equestrian world uh and the livestock

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world have partnered with the city and the staff at Will Rogers to to bring in horse events and and it's not not nearly what it what it is today uh when we have over you know 360 event days out there a year. Uh there was a time when it was lacking and and so the stock show really

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stepped up and partnered with the city uh to to bring in and go cultivate new relationships. Um, you know, we work with the city, uh, and the cultural district on on planning, uh, projects, everything from Camp Buouie, uh, to helping figure out how to get the the trucks and cement trucks down into

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Bedanic Gardens to pour the new family garden. So, so we're always there to help support. Uh, we work with Allison and her staff uh, to make sure that there's places to store dirt on the facilities that we own that are outside of Will Rogers facility to get that back and forth. Uh and then in cases where

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it's hard for for them to contract with somebody that they need to contract with, we step in and contract with them and and figure it out on the back side. Uh the last thing, you know, I'll talk about is really, you know, kind of a big thought uh uh partnership. uh event

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facilities alongside the city in 2013 uh worked very closely to come up with the statute the project finance zone statute that not only helped provide a line share of the financing capabilities for the city for Dickiy's arena but is also providing the line share of the financing capabilities for the now

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convention center expansion. So again, I I just I underscore these things to to talk a little bit about the way that we've been able to partner, the the type of relationship that we have and the long tenure nature of of where we're headed and where we're taking this. Um

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I'd also like to kind of underscore as we talk about Dickiy's Arena, the other ways that we've partnered with the city. You know, we were a thought partner on how how do we include MBE and SBE in that process. So when we were the private developer of Dickiy's Arena, you know, we were like, how do we reduce those barriers? How do we overcome those

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things? And and because we know that's important to our community and important to our city, uh we took on all the insurance for that. We we created an OIP. We took on all the insurance. Therefore, there was no insurance barriers to entry from bonding or or or providing enough insurance to be on a

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project like that. We took it a step further. We audited ourselves every month to make sure that we were staying on track and in line with where we were headed with those goals. And again, I think all this just speaks to the institutional knowledge that uh that the stock show and event facilities and and

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I know Dickies has uh with the city and where we're headed and and I really do want to want to underscore and we'll talk about employees here in a moment, but you know, we know the employees out there. We work alongside them every single day, especially for 23 days, but every single day. They are important to

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us and uh we want to make sure that they have a great home for for the uh foreseeable future. Uh now I'll introduce Mr. Hman and let him take it from here. >> Thank you. Uh thank you all. And obviously uh before I got here I worked

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in private management my whole career for um you know 11 over 11 years or over 20 years in private management managing facilities across the country. I moved here because of the opportunity of something unique where the city and the p and the private side uh developed this

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arena and any net proceeds this arena was going to generate was going to make it self-sufficient. That's something that's not done anywhere else in the country. And I found that very unique and very uh moving for my career to do something that uh I felt, you know, was important. As you can see across the way

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in Dallas, these arenas don't last long because they don't redevelop it into it and they're moving to different locations. And that's not why we're going to be here. The reason, you know, the great thing about Trail Drive Management Corp is the only thing we can do with our net revenues is put them back into that arena because we want

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that arena to look the day the day the day we opened it in 2019, in 2029, and 2039 and beyond. And we have a commitment to the community to maintain the facility for the entire community. Uh we've developed strong relationships with local and regional promoters to

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bring the highest quality events and diverse entertainment to the city. And this is important for a couple reasons. because we cultivate local promoters. We want them to do more events at Thicky's Arena and over at Will Rogers. We think it's a benefit to everyone. Uh we operate a self financially

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self-sustaining uh venue and we established significant reserves for future capital maintenance improvements because as we all know this the public side did their part when they put up the 225 million uh through the city. And so our job is to ensure that we don't have to come back to the public again and ask

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for more money. So when we need a new scoreboard, new ribbon boards or anything like that or new seats at Dickies Arena that we are selfunded to do that in the future. Uh we've demonstrated operational excellence with excellent customer experience standards. I think this is important on a on an

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average we average above a 4.5 customer survey experience score and that is based on all the attendees that come to Dickiy's Arena. You know, it's important to have good customer experience with the promoters, but it's also the patrons that are using it on a day-to-day basis. Uh, we've continued part partnerships

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with initi with all of our initial sponsors at Dickiy's Arena. Currently, um, community engagement is something that we are focused on. We're a good neighbor to the district. We we help with Sinko in the district. As you may have recalled, this past week, we were the security and usher team for Colonial

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Golf Tournament. Uh we hosted over 23 graduations for high schools and colleges in the past 13 days. Uh and we do financial donations include tickets uh for charity event auctions and donations space for charity events. And we're also, you know, as Matt mentioned,

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we're proud to be members of all three chambers. We support all three chambers. We're proud that they have supported us through this initiative along with Visit Fort Worth. And and that's something that means a lot to both Matt and I. Uh we're committed to continuing uh continuing to staff all events with

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Trail Drives Management employees which are currently over 2,000 employees both part-time and full-time. And we're consistently recognized nationally by major industry leaders including Polestar magazine, Billboard Magazine. More recently, we were just ranked number one in the United States for

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venues of 10 to 15,000 seats and number four in the world. Uh this is a huge accomplishment. It's a great achievement and it's why people want to keep coming back to Dickiy's Arena. Um, what we can do is, you know, trail drive management uh has an impact

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already on Will Rogers. As mentioned, uh, we've been successful in managing the parking lots at Will Rogers since 2019. I'll remind this council that at that time the city was paying a management company about $125,000 a year. uh we are doing that for 25% of

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that agreement basically currently and we've honored that since there and the whole goal was to make it a good customer experience and to manage the parking from one solution for the entire campus. Uh we've been successful in management of of concerts and events over at Will Rogers. We've hosted on

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average about 15 shows a year at the auditorium. We believe that we can grow that in the future and and get up around 20 to 25. and recently renamed the food and beverage concessionire and have had immediate success with the events that we've done for the Will Rogers clients.

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Our potential contribution is that our senior leadership at Dickies Arena, our trail drive management corp, has all 20 plus years of industry experience and that includes managing multiple facilities. We've established infrastructure for financial reporting, policies, procedures, legal standards,

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and risk management. all that we do in house and we have an immediate contribution of resources from all aspects of the operation. Uh we hope to experience and maximizing operational efficiencies to produce positive financial results and again generate good customer experience with all of the

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customers out there at Will Rogers. You know, as as we talked about from the jump, um we really do believe that this is just another iteration of a public private partnership. It's obviously for operations and management. Uh but it but it really is the next generation of of

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where we've already been. Uh you know, we we both have both of our organizations have a vested interest. Uh you know, if you all have spent enough time out there, you can't really uh take Dickiy's arena out of Will Rogers and you can't take Will Rogers out of Dickies. Uh so we really felt like this new structure was was absolutely

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advantageous to everybody involved. And and I'll underscore something here. uh even our governance structure has the city involved in it. So, not only will we be reporting back to the city staff on a monthly and and quarterly basis about where our budget is, how we're

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tracking all of those different things, we will have two members uh of city staff on our board of directors, uh city manager from pardon me, assistant city manager as well as the city council member from from the particular district that's in. So they will be uh part of the governance structure of our

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organization which I do believe uh is uh is very very important. Um you know as we go through this uh when we we set up Dickiy's Arena and Trail Drive Management uh as as Matt said it was set up as a 501c3. Uh the specific

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purpose of of that organization and this Gindy Street management is to lessen the burden of government through through management. Uh we really do believe that we can do that. that we we believe that with the stock show's knowledge and expertise on livestock and equestrian events, our knowledge and expertise on

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the facility itself along with the operational excellence that Trail Drive management brings to this that we we are a great team to take this on. Uh again, I I think we are both very customer centric organizations. I think if you've ever been to the stock show, you probably get run over with people

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excited and eager to tell you hello and to try to help you. And I know that that's the case at at Dickiy's Arena. Um, as Jess mentioned, uh, any excess funds that we generate, uh, can only go back into this facility. You know, Matt was pretty humble a minute ago when he talked about, uh, managing the parking

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out at Will Rogers. Uh, he has absolutely taken that to another level. And I will remind you that yes, they do collect a fee for that. But the only thing that Trail Drive management can do with those funds is reinvest it back in the cityowned facilities. That is all that we're able to do with these funds.

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Um, you know, I I do think um the other thing about this is and and I've touched on this a couple of times and I I just don't think it can be understated. It's the employees at Will Rogers. They absolutely love that facility. They are the heartbeat of that facility and we know that and we know them personally.

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We work with them every day. Matt's team works with them every day. We really do feel like we can work with that team to to escalate the customer experience out at Dickiy's Arena. And we want to make sure that that institutional knowledge, not only that we have, but that they have stays with that facility. I know

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Jess is going to cover this in a moment, but I I think it's very very important to Matt and I. Um, every single employee out there is going to be given the opportunity to stay at a at equal pay, equal time, equal hours, equal job title to what they have now, if if not better.

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And we really do believe uh they'll have very comparable benefits uh as we move forward. and that's that's very very important to us. And with that, I'll let Matt wrap it up and we'll turn it back over to Jess. >> Thank you. As Jess kind of alluded to, uh there is a pre-transition and that is

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very important. Um right now Will Rogers is a little understaffed to say the least. And so part of that transition is trying to ramp up employees to help that facility and help the staff that's out there right away. Uh we need to establish this organizational chart on

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board all employees analyze uh existing contract and vendor agreements you know uh take the network that's currently on the city network and make it its own independent network which is going to take a lot of time to do uh in order for an October one transition but we feel we can do it along with you know one of our

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goals is to provide free Wi-Fi out there at at Will Rogers. It's something that's currently not done. They charge for Wi-Fi and we want to make that free to everyone. uh telecommutions and uh telecommunications and desks and then establish marketing and communications and public relations efforts. You know,

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create a new website for for the uh facility that is much needed uh and work with the city chambers um to create more opportunities for small business enterprises. Uh that's our pre-opening goal, which is a lofty task in in a couple of months. But our year to one to

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two goals are pretty uh important to us as well. Uh we want to do significant improvements to the overall campus cleanliness and pest control which is much needed out there and safety. Uh gain more granular operational understandings. Um identify opportunities for efficiencies with all

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all of our organizations combined. Uh we want to establish a holistic approach. right now they don't the they the staff at Will Rogers is not fully aware of if events are making money or losing money out there and we need to change that to make it a more um businessrun operation

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out there for you know for the facility. Uh and then training of staff. It's something that we pry on at Dickiy's Arena. We want to give staff the safety and security needs that they need to make their job successful. And finally, you know, culture. Culture is very important. Culture is very important at

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Dickiy's Arena. It's very important at the Fort Worth stock show and rodeo and I think it's you know it's something that we want to transition over to there to showing ownership with the employees and making them feel comfortable and proud to come to work at Will Rogers complex every day.

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That's it. Thank you. So, let's cover really quick the high level or the most important points of the uh qualified management agreement that you're going to see. Like I mentioned to you, the M andC will be on your agenda for next week for your consideration. That M andC is very detailed and covers a lot more, but

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here's the most important things that we need to know as we move forward. Under the QMA, Gendy Street Management Corporation will be responsible for the day-to-day operations and management of the facility. The city as required by the IRS will still be responsible for any operating deficits. So whether they

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reduce it, increase it, whatever, we still have the obligation to cover the cost for that facility. Uh Gindy Street Management Corporation will prepare the budget and present that to us for approval as well as the list of recommended capital expenses, but the city still retains the approval authority over that budget and the

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capital projects. And then lastly, again, as we've all said, but I'm just going to say it again because it's so important. any improvement in the financial position, any reduced city subsidy, all of that money is reinvested directly into the facility. It is not going anywhere else. So, this is truly a

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way to create a a funding stream for capital projects before we can issue another trunch of debt again because we have the convention center expansion also in the culture and tourism fund. You see on the right hand side of your screen, we are approving with the M andC next week or it's anticipated that

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you're going to approve up to $2 million of transition funding. Those are going to be the actual expenses that are necessary. You saw the list on the prior slide that Matt Hman covered about what are the examples of those things that will be funded here. Again, hiring of employees. It's really hard for us to go

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hire employees when we think we are about to transition the facility over to the new entity. So, that's just the the kind of the biggest example. an annual management fee. Again, this is required by the IRS to have a management fee of some sort. So, we have established that fee at $10,000 per month totaling

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120,000 per year. They've already mentioned this, but we, the city, will hold two seats on the Gendy Street Management Corporation board. They are honoring the small business program for all contracts over $100,000. And then just like we did with Britt and the zoo, all vehicles, equipment, and

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furniture will transfer over to Gendy Street to stay at the Will Rogers Management uh complex. And then lastly, I just want to spend a little bit more time on employees because I want you to understand that we have employees at the forefront of mind as we are going into this transition. Um we are following

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really nearly identical to how we handled the transition for the Botanic Gardens. So number one, the ideal solution is the employees choose to stay with Will Rogers and that means go to work for Gendy Street Management Corporation. Gendy Street truly wants the employees to stay because they know

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this facility backwards and forwards. However, we do know that we have um I I think the number is around 12. I need to verify that. But we have some employees who are almost to their retirement eligibility date. So, just like we did at the Botanic Garden, any employee that is within 5 years of retirement

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eligibility, we are going to allow them to stay at the facility and work at Will Rogers. They will be under the day-to-day direction of Gendy Street Management Corporation, but they will stay on paper as a City of Fort Worth employee. We will still handle their paycheck, their insurance benefits, etc.

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until they get to their retirement eligibility date. And then number three, if there is an employee that chooses they would really like to stay with the city long term, they just want to be a city employee, then again, we will work with our HR team and we will identify different positions that the employee

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fits within and um and and facilitate that process. Or lastly, we may have an employee, I hope not, but we may have an employee who just chooses they want to work somewhere else altogether. They don't want to stay with the city, they don't want to stay with Gendy Street. That is okay. Any employee today can make that decision at any point in time.

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So that is also an option. But truly our hope is that we stay we keep everybody here. Um again I'll just make the final point because it's so important. No employee will lose their job or lose a job as a result of this transition and no employee will reduce from full-time

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to part-time status. Everybody stays where they are. I think it's also worth noting through the negotiations because I was just so impressed with this. Um Gendy Street is honoring the tenure of our employees. So if an employee has five years of service with us, even through the transition, they're honored as if they have five years, 15 years,

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etc. And I think that's a really important point. Lastly, I'll end with this. This is the timeline um that we've laid out for you. Again, um the MNC will be on next week's agenda for your approval. If you approve that qualified management agreement,

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then starting the very next day, all the real nitty-gritty transition period activities begin. We do already have all of our teams coming together to really start working on the details and get ready for that. Um, and we've already met with our employees at a high level introductory just to let them know again we're we're finally back up and talking

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about this and moving it forward. We are live streaming this meeting right now. In fact, to our employees over at Will Rogers, although they get drinks and snacks, so I think they're coming out better than me right now. Um, and then we will set up a series of informational sessions for them. We will also do

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individual meetings with each employee to go over the benefits at the city, the benefits at Gendy Street Management Corporation, what the retirement looks like, what the payout for their acred leave that are on the books with the city looks like, kind of all those details so that each employee can make a

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very informed decision um and ensure that we've answered all of their questions. And then lastly, October one that management transition starts. Now, technically October 1 is a Thursday, but that is the start of our fiscal year. So, that is when this will take effect. Okay. So, with that, if you have any

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questions, uh we are here and ready to answer questions or comments from council or Jess or either Matt's. Yes, Council Hill. >> Um well, first I wanted to thank you, Jess. Um and thank you, Matt Homeman, Matt Carter, and really all the city staff that have worked on this for so

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long because this has not been done in a vacuum. It's done for years. This has been in the making. So, I appreciate that. Um, and to the mats, um, y'all have taken in account just not the history of Will Rogers, but you've honored the history of Will Rogers. Um, the patrons that are very unique to that facility and improving the customer

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experience. I think as the representative of this area, um, I do get a lot of feedback, some positive, some negative, and I feel like there's a lot of opportunity for improvement. So, I look forward to that. Um, and lastly, I really appreciate the, um, focus on the livelihood and the well-being of the

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employees at Will Rogers. I think there's been a lot of consideration to go above and beyond to make sure that we're taking care of them and I'm greatly appreciate that. >> Any other questions or comments? >> No, thank you for being so thorough, Jess. >> Yes, I appreciate it and truly, you know, they did a great job of

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recognizing some people. I I had forgotten to do that and I wrote it down, but we have had a lot of staff from across departments working on this, not just public events. Our city attorney's office has been invaluable. Taylor and Dennis have been instrumental. Um, also our finance department as we look at the debt, our HR team getting ready for all of this.

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This has really been an all hands-on deck exercise and we appreciate all of their contributions as well. So, thank you. >> Thank you. >> Council will move to our next presentation presentation on proposed economic development agreement with Seikko Enterprises. Michael Henning.

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>> Thank you, Mayor. So, I'll do my best to keep this brief, but I do want to take a moment just to recognize the work of uh the Tar Regional Water District. I believe we've got Susan Alise here in the audience as well as uh representatives of Seikko

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here as well. Uh but truly the the project I'm about to present would not be possible without the partnership of the water district. So the purpose of this presentation is to uh discuss a proposed economic development part uh program agreement with Seiko Enterprises

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for a development on Panther Island. And of course that project would be located here within the Panther Island district, but more specifically the project is proposed to uh be located here right in the heart of the district uh at the corner of North Main Street

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and Northeast uh Fourth Street. The property also has adjacency to North Commerce Street and would be uh up against the uh proposed uh canal that which would be built just to its north

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as we'll talk about here in a moment. This uh project and the site proposes a lot of strategic advantages. So Seikko Enterprises is based out of Austin. They've delivered several uh major projects in that area um ranging

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from multif family, retail, office. Uh and what they're proposing to do on this site is to build a 290 unit mixeduse multif family apartment project with ground flooror retail totaling approximately 250,000 square feet of total development. Uh and with a minimum

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capital investment of $100 million. The overall impact of this project um is really difficult to overstate. Uh this is anticipated by the developer to be the first phase of development. They do owner control an additional 32 acres of

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develop of property nearby that they are uh viewing as a possible opportunity for future development. Uh and then again the the location of this project being where it is, this is viewed as being a potential catalyst project for generating other development

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opportunities on adjacent sites and as serving as a proof of market for the district. So just want to dwell just for a moment just on the picture on your right here. This gives you a sense as to what is there today which is not much

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and this gives you a look at what the developer is proposing for that site. This is a view from the corner of North Main Street and Northeast Fourth Street. Now, the project does face a number of challenges and that includes a uh

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verified financial gap. One of the key drivers of um of the financial gap and the overall challenges that are preventing this project from moving forward ultimately comes down to just the elevated risk of delivering a project like this in an unproven

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district like Panther Island. Um this project would also be required to deliver uh fairly atypical public improvements and we'll be a little more specific about those here in a moment. Um, and at the end of the day, while market rents for this area are strong, uh, they're still not quite at a level

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that are necessary to be able to achieve the necessary yield that would be required for a project of this scale and of this quality to be delivered uh, within this district. Uh and then finally, the reason why we're here having this discussion is that uh public

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improve public support of the kind that we will be outlining really strengthens this project's ability to be viable and to be able to move forward. So, as part of the proposed agreement, the developer would be committing to building a new high-rise multif family

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property with ground flooror retail uh and investing a minimum of $100 million in total development costs, of which $75 million must be in hard costs. The developer would be committing to a small business goal of 30% of real property

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improvements going toward uh small businesses. And as part of the terms of the agreement, the developer would be committing to a minimum 12-story mixeduse development with a minimum of 290 units of rental apartments, 9,000 square feet of retail, and public

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improvements that include providing access pedestrian access to a planned canal, uh the bearing of utilities, particularly overhead electric lines, and the installation of a water quality device given the potential for runoff into that canal. This development would

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be required to be completed by no later than December 31st, 2030. To help make this project happen, staff is recommending and that the city enter into an economic development program agreement to provide up to 10 annual grants. And those grants will be based

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on a combination of two potential sources. Uh the first would be 80% of the city's incremental property taxes generated by this project. and only if necessary, uh, we would supplement that with funds from the city's economic development initiatives fund with an

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overall $1 million annual cap for each of those 10 possible years of support. Now, those annual grants, the actual amount specifically provided in any given year would be based on the verified gap that is necessary to achieve a target 6 and a half% yield on

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cost. Now, what is a yield on cost? So y cost is just a primary metric that real estate developers, investors, and lenders look to to be able to evaluate the strength of a given investment. It at the end of day looks at the income

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that's produced by something relative to the cost of purchasing or building that thing, right? And so the uh overall effective bare minimum yield on cost for a project of this scale and of this quality in this market is six and a

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half%. When you begin to drop below that point, then uh you you begin to reach a point where it makes more sense for investors to look at just acquiring a building that's already been built or to invest in something like a 10-year Treasury bond, which has a yield of

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about four and a half percent today. So the grants that would be provided to this project would only be based on the the gap that is necessary to be able to hit that threshold. If it is less than $1 million annually, then it would be

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reduced down to that mark. If they clear that benchmark of 6 and a half% then the city would not provide any grant in within that year. Similarly, the grants would be would be reduced proportionally if rental rates

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exceed projections for this project and those rates would be stated within the final agreement uh that would be authorized. Now, as you can see, this agreement at the end of the day is really designed to specifically meet this project where it is and to be able to reduce the

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perception of risk, which is the thing that is hindering this project from being able to move forward. uh and in doing so it actually mitigates that actual downside risk while delivering a high quality high high-rise residential project that can serve as a comp for other projects within Panther Island.

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Staff is also recommending the waiver of transportation impact fees and certain other building fees associated with this project. I mentioned that this project has a lot of strategic value um primarily given its potential to be able to serve as a catalyst for other development on nearby

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sites. Uh it fully aligns with the strategy that was outlined in the Panther Island real estate strategy and in turn vision 2.0. As I mentioned, this is really intended to serve as a demonstration for the market um for a

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project of this kind while also through partnership with TRWD uh supporting canal delivery within Panther Island. So, just to summarize again, we're talking about a minimum $100 million in total capital investment, 250,000 square

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feet of development, uh and a the delivery of a major catalyst project on Panther Island. The maximum incentive, as I mentioned, would be uh $10 million overall. Uh that would be $7.3 million on net present

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value basis. So in today's dollars, uh the city's participation in this project would therefore amount to about 7.3%. This project would carry a 13.7 to1 private to public ratio. I also want to quickly um mention something that you

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will see in the embassy that will be in front of you next week which is that in addition to the grant that would be provided to the developer to support this project. Uh the city this agreement in response to a policy change that the city council adopted uh

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back in December is going to be producing an additional 5% grant that will be generated by the incremental taxes generated by this project but paid not to the developer but instead to the housing finance corporation to support affordable housing within the area.

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Now, as many of you know, the city is a participant in the Panther in the Trinity River Vision TIFF, TIFF 9. Um, and it will be withholding its incremental revenue from this project from what it would otherwise contribute to the TIFF during this 10-year period.

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But beyond that, it will continue to contribute to the TIFF. And even during this 10-ear period, all other participants in the TIFF will be contributing their gains from the investment uh that would that would be delivered through this project. And so overall, we estimate that that impact to the TIFF would amount to approximately

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$32 million over the lifetime of that TIFF district. Uh and then finally, the city is uh estimated to net approximately $1.6 million uh gross and $1.2 million on a net present value basis.

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As far as next step, staff is recommending that the city uh enter into the EMP development program agreement as outlined. Uh and an MC will be brought in front of council for consideration next week at the June 9th council meeting. I'm happy to answer any questions. >> Thank you, Michael. Questions or

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comments from council? Council Flores. >> Uh thank you, Michael, for that presentation. I also want to thank I think Joshua Nem uh from Seiko Partners is here. Uh appreciate the ongoing discussions and the work that you've done with staff. You know, we've discussed this before on council. It is a catalyst project for the Panther

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Island area that we're trying to uh you know get ignited and I think this is going to serve uh that you know that purpose six and a half target on yield cost I think is uh realistic and under the current market conditions uh based on what I have been informed about uh

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you know we know about the uh traffic impact fees you know the the proposed waiverss uh permit and other fees u I don't recall the exact number but uh those are being considered as well uh street utility infrastructure construction by the city of Fort Worth. I think that's a very important

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component uh to keep in mind and again uh this is a partnership you know it extends beyond the city and Seikko also with TRWD who is interested in doing you know some innovative you know water quality projects as well that they're still discussing with Seikko so I'm in

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support of it. >> Thanks Carlos. Any other questions or comments from staff or for council? Okay. Thank you Michael. Appreciate you. Next up is a discussion on our downtown library and community arts. Dana Bergdoff will lead our presentation.

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All right. Thank you, mayor and council members. Appreciate this opportunity to provide this update to you. I'm excited about this presentation, but if Madori Clark could have been here today, she would be super excited. So, I want to pass on that. >> Well, that was almost mean that she's not here today. I guess so. She worked

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very hard on this, but she's taking a Yeah, she'll be back tomorrow. >> Okay. Thanks, Dana. >> Thank you. >> So, we'll visit about the downtown library, 512 West Fourth Street and 1300 Gendy Street, and talk about next steps. So, as you'll recall, when we sold

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Central Library, we decided that we needed a new uh needed a downtown branch to serve uh residents and and folks outside of downtown. And so at that time we had uh what was a win-win opportunity with 512 West Fourth Street that was owned by the Center for Transforming

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Lives. They were wanting to invest in our Berry Riverside urban village. And so the sale of that property to the city created a win-win where we had an opportunity for a community facility with a central with a downtown branch library and them investing in in Barry Riverside. uh as we hired the design

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build firm uh and worked with through community engagement um there were some layout challenges some of which we we knew when we bought the building but they really um became a bit of a pain point as we were working through design. So one is um that north entrance that faces third street is the single

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entrance for families and children uh transient adults uh daily box truck deliveries and and so on. So, it's a pretty congested area and it's a very small lobby uh with no security space. Uh so, if you're familiar with a downtown or urban library, security is important. Um and as you come into that

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entrance, you immediately uh hit some split level stairs where where you go up or down. Um and then the lower level is broken up into multiple rooms. Uh it was the former daycare for the Center for Transforming Lives. The upper three floors, that's actually um the upper three floors are actually an Lshape,

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which is a little bit odd for a library space. Um, but those were the where the studio apartments had been located that served the women and children that that the center had served previously. And uh, prior to that was a was a lodge usage. Um, and so then lastly, uh, we knew that the library would be spread

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out over six floors, but that's actually harder to manage and um, and and trickier from a security standpoint. So, uh, the firm, um, that we've been been working with came up with a really inventive solution to try to address some of those, uh, space constraints,

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security constraints, logistical issues. Um, but it required an addition be added to the north, uh, end of the building. And as they looked at other renovations that would be required um on upper floors as well as just the equipment and elevators and so on, it came up to a

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roughly $30.5 million price tag to use that property for a downtown library branch. And so, um, Madori being very wise came to us and said when she was unveiling those numbers to me said, um, if we're going to spend this kind of

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money, um, and not get a modern library that has some of the amenities and the operational characteristics and innovation that we'd really love to see in a downtown library, should we revisit the question about whether this is the right building for a library? So, um, we

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came up with a proposed plan and, um, given some of the, uh, some of the the demands given the closure of Gendy Street, the idea that we need some community arts space, uh, you'll recall that Madori, uh, came to us, you've, you've, uh, met Lindseay Russian that

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we've got some community arts opportunities in the community, right, with our library spaces, our community center spaces, to have some gallery space, but still to have a center where folks could come together for community arts was is veryant. important and so the idea was could we pivot and consider

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West Fourth Street as a new arts community arts center uh for for our community and with that select a new library site where we could u potentially do new construction. Uh I think our original idea was that we might have to wait until the 2030 bond

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program. we heard a pretty harsh no to that idea and so so thank you for that direction and so uh kudos to to Jay and Reggie and Alex Lawer and their team for uh determining that with the defeasence of the the debt which is described in the IR you have on your work session

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today that'll occur later this year that that'll create some debt capacity where we could uh move some money around with certificates of obligation funding to enable us to have dollars to actually construct a new downtown library and really meet the needs uh that we've heard from community residents that

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we've been engaging with so far. So, very interesting idea here. So, I want to also express thanks to our property management department. So, Marilyn Marvin and her team uh went through and looking at uh looking at the uh a block that we're we're a couple of blocks that we've looked at downtown um that we're

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evaluating for potential acquisition. So, they've come up with if you have a 30,000 square foot library, what might that cost? and they came up with this cost here, you'll see on the screen of 36 million. Uh we're very fortunate to have the the Fort Worth Library Foundation uh that's engaged in wanting

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to support a downtown library. And so there's some hope that we'll be able to have some significant fundraising and partnership with the foundation that could add on to the costs that property management provided and give us a um a really um really exciting library opportunity for downtown uh for our

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residents and visitors. So, pivoting back to Fourth Street. So, um, in thinking about it, uh, for potential community arts, these are two photos from inside the building. It's a beautiful historic building. On the right is the first floor grand room, uh,

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that could be uh, potentially uh, has a lot of good light. And then on the left is the second floor where there's a a small there's a theater there and and and space for audience or other meetings and events. And so, uh, we as staff, um,

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brainstorming, we've toured the toured the site and thinking about just from from bottom to top. The lower level daycare might lend itself, the way it's broken up into different rooms, could be an artist marketplace was was one idea. Uh, the first floor grand room could be

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used for community arts, uh, display space and events. That second floor theater would lend itself to performing arts and events. And then the third through fifth floor studios would lend themselves to become artist studios. Uh which there are certainly other artist studio spaces in downtown, but we think

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this would be a more affordable option that the city uh could help make available to the community. So, but that's just city staff looking at this looking at these ideas. And so it's really, we think, important to have a working group of folks who care about

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this topic uh and could help us gather public input on the preferred uses for West Fourth Street as a new city-managed community arts incubator. And incubator is a term that's been discussed with um uh with Madori and and uh Wesley Gentle actually about how we might use that

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term to really help grow community arts here in Fort Worth. So, on the working group, we're excited to have um I think Bob Jameson uh who retired just in time to uh as our former CEO and executive director of Visit Fort Worth, Bob

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Jameson has graciously agreed to chair a community arts working group. And I also want to thank the council women who have um agreed to serve on the community arts working group. Council member Peoples, Hill, Beck, and Martinez. uh would also uh Wesley Gentle is the executive

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director of Arts Fort Worth and then others that'll be determined. We're getting recommendations from the council members. We appreciate that and so we'll get that working group formed. But the idea would be that they would consult with community arts stakeholders on the uses for West Fourth Street and what would best serve the community as well

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as be feasible uh to to operate. So that leads us back to 1300 Gendy Street. And so various stakeholders of course have have spoke to spoken to the city, reached out to the city about 1300 Gendy Street. Um and we're fortunate

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that uh some foundations and others have approached the city about funding a feasibility study to determine the most appropriate use for the property. And so that would include identifying what we would hope would be financially sustainable arts and culture uses and

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operations. They would integrate with the existing cultural district area uses and attractions and then identify partners to help us fund and implement the recommendations of the of the feasibility study. And so again, we're very fortunate to have these funding partners who've come

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forward. Aman G. Carter Foundation, North Texas Community Foundation, Goff Family Foundation, Scott Foundation, and lastly, Visit Fort Worth. And so you'll note that we have North Texas Community Foundation listed as the lead. And so uh they would be the entity to contract

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with the study consultant. Uh we understand that that study would be able to begin in July and be completed in four to five months and that that consultant working um working with the those funders and others would meet with the arts and culture stakeholders on

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that feasibility study. So, in terms of next steps, we'll uh finalize the working group for community arts for West Fourth Street and schedule those working group meetings. On June 9th, city council will consider the debt plan that was laid out in the IR today.

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And then June through August, we're hopeful that we'll be able to secure the site for the downtown library property. And then lastly, in July is when the feasibility study would begin for for Gendy Street. So, with that, I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have. >> A lot of great updates. Thank you, Dana. Council Mayor Beck.

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>> Um I just want to start by uh thanking staff for uh hearing that very harsh no when it came to making sure that we have a downtown library. Um this goes back years to when we sold our initial library and we promised the residents of

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not just downtown but Fort Worth that we would provide them with a downtown library to replace what we were taking away. Um and we have uh to date not given them that. And so I think that um thank you for coming up with a plan and not making us wait until the next bond

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election to to see this through. Um it is so important for a city to have a Hallmark library and I'm really excited to see what we build. So I really want to thank staff. I also really appreciate um what we're doing for the arts community in this particular um we could

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have sold the building. We could have said it didn't work for us, but um we found a way to we're finding a way to make it work for our community um to fill a gap that is desperately needed. So, I just I know that I've been not the easiest to to deal with on this, but

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it's because I really firmly believe we need a downtown library. And so, I think this is um sometimes the longer route um is the better route because I think it's getting us to a a better community solution. So, thank you, Dana, and thank you, Jay and Madori. I know she's not

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here, but thank you, Madori. >> Council Hill, >> just want to reiterate what Councilwoman Beck said. This is a lot of dominoes had to go into place, and you have really thought outside the box, and I commend um all the city staff that have worked on this because it's taken a whole lot of effort. Um and we're not done. This is just a first step, but we really

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appreciate everything you've done. Thank you. >> And maybe I'll just note that we've discussed, as you know, Dana, a need to make sure the committee on community arts has a finite amount of time. We're going to get to work pretty quickly, have a series of meetings so that no one's waiting any longer so that we're kind of aligning with our depth

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financing plan to get the community art center up and running downtown, which is idea. >> I'm hopeful that they'll come back with recommendations by this fall. >> That's great. Thank you, >> Chris. Did you have something? >> Yeah, I Yeah, I just had another thank you. Uh because there was a lot of moving parts with this, even with the transform lives, you talked about that

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today. uh that uh the this council and even the community gave a lot of feedback and we kept having to pivot and so you guys have done a great job pivoting and I think that the library the community arts and even transform lives has a better home within the city of forward and they are comm community

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uh giving back. I just saw a post today that transform lives um was able to give out so many grants to the community because they have a bigger space to do the work even with the grant they got from Taran County to do uh revitalization. So, thank you guys. Forwards is doing a really good job and I think we want to make sure we give the

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kudos one time. All right. Thank you again, staff. >> Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions from staff? Thank you, Dana. >> Mayor, ahead. >> Oh, Council McCra, please. >> Hey, sorry. I just want to make a point. I commend staff for putting this together and exploring. I do want to

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make the point of the creative use of the what? Well, sorry I'm getting feedback there, but the space downtown doesn't necessarily replace the theater portion of what was existed down at the community art center. My own daughter went to the programs there. So, I just

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want to the group that's forming to to put that together just to keep uh that in mind as part of it. >> Thank you, Michael. And thank you to Bob Jameson as well to volunteer to serve. Okay, our next presentation council is data center development regulations and Jess McKern will kick off our

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presentation. All right. Well, what we've all been waiting for today is really to talk about data center development regulations. Um, it it is no surprise this is a really hot topic right now here in Fort Worth, here in the state of Texas, and really nationally. And

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rightfully so. We're seeing a huge boom in um interest in data center developments. And I'm going to talk a little bit why in just a minute. we're seeing so much here in Texas and then what can we do about it specifically here in Fort Worth. I will tell you ahead of time this is a very detailed

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long presentation. Um I really try to to reduce it as much as possible to stay on point but there is so much important information that you need here and that our public wants to hear. So bear with me as I work through it all. At the end I welcome any questions or direction

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input that you want to give me. Um, so quick outline of what we're going to do today to walk through the presentation is we're going to start with a just a smidge of education about what is a data center, why is there so much interest in Texas in general. We're going to talk a little bit about the economic impact of these types of development here in the

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city of Fort Worth. And by no means am I suggesting that's a decision point, but I think it is an important um factor piece of information that you council will be interested in. And from there, we're going to walk through four areas of city regulation that we have the authority to regulate. And at in each

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section, so zoning, noise, water and wastewater treatment, and then economic development incentives, I'm going to inform you first on what our current regulations or policy is, and then second what our staff recommendations are should you choose to move forward with some of our recommendations. And

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then we're going to end with a um potential next steps. Okay? And also I just want to share with you um as we've been working on this now for a couple of months. This has been a huge effort for our city staff. We have a number of people across departments that have

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worked on this. And I really want to recognize their efforts because they've done a lot spent a lot of time both in the research and looking at what other cities are doing um in providing guidance based on state law to inform what we have here. Our development services team has been invaluable. um

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environmental services weighing in on some of their areas, economic development team, water and wastewater utility. I have learned so much about water and wastewater. I don't think Chris will turn it over to me to operate fully yet, but you know, I feel confident and close. Um our city attorney's office, again, invaluable as we have worked through all of this and

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all the different aspects. And then I do want to give a special thank you to Bethany Warner and our city management office. Um she has been the glue that has kept all of our parts moving and kept me on track with everything as well. So huge thank you. And as we get to each section and I and I cover the recommendations that we're putting

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forward to you, I do want to just let you know how we got to some of these recommendations. It really is based on our staff research, based on our city attorney's advice and the laws that we have uh governing our operations. And then also very heavily from the input

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and the information that residents, land owners, and even data center operators and developers has shared with us over the last couple months. um we we truly could not have gotten to this point without the input of all of those individuals. So starting with just the education piece about what is a data center. A

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data center is just a physical facility that houses IT infrastructure such as servers, storage devices, networking equipment to store, process, and manage digital operations and data. Simply put, it is the backbone to nearly everything

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we do in a modern-day society. So, if you are searching on the internet, if you check and respond to an email, if you stream a video, if you are watching this city council meeting online or even on TV, if you check out a digital book

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from our library, uh use GPS to find your directions, use any kind of an app, so many more things. Use banking, book an airline ticket, anything you do, you are touching a data center in at some point. So they really are unfortunately

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the backbone of everything. They are coming to Texas specifically because we have a very uh businessfriendly environment. We also have lower cost electricity in general compared to some other states in the US. We are known for faster permitting times to get from concept all the way through

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to construction. We have state incentives and exemptions that are operated through the state and I'll touch on those in a second. And then just in general, Texas has a lot of land available and a lot of that land is in proximity to power infrastructure. And as I've learned in in in researching

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this topic and talking to different data center operators, power infrastructure is probably one of the most important aspects that's needed as well as the water. as we approached the preparation for this presentation and both thinking about how do we educate on what our

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regulations are today, but really how do we put forward recommendations to you council? How do we tell you where we think we should go as a city? We had two main goals in mind. Number one, it's how do we protect the health, safety, welfare, and quality of life of our residents that are potentially impacted

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by these data center developments. And how we do that is by leveraging our regulatory authority. And number two, how do we position Fort Worth to responsibly capture the economic benefits of these data center opportunities by requiring the best-in-class data center development

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practices? It's also important to note that data centers are not a new thing. Again, we're having a boom in interest right now in developing new data centers, but they have been here in Fort Worth for quite a long time. And I'm going to make the the distinction too as we're going

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forward through this presentation that what we're talking about are data centers as a primary use. So in other words, a standalone data center, a building that is constructed for that sole purpose. So we are not talking about a data center that for example is here in city hall. We are not talking about Tarant County's data center. We're

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not even talking about data centers that are accessory uses to many of our corporate locations here in the city of Fort Worth. Again, standalone data centers as a primary use. So right now in Fort Worth, we have four data centers already in existence. The oldest one was

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constructed in 2000 in council district 5, and then we have three currently located in council district 10. Um, one of those was constructed in 2003, one in 2008, one in 2015, and then our newest one that was just constructed uh last

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year in 2025 was an expansion of one of these current data center operations in in 10. Those four data center developments comprise a total of 10 buildings and are cumulative just under 3 million square feet. And then just a few notable facts about what we have

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here in Fort Worth today. Our smallest data center is a twostory data center that totals 209,000 square feet. Our largest is a campus totaling 1.5 million square feet. But the average of all of the individual buildings, if you took that, is 275,000 square feet. Again, and

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I already said this, our first build was over 20 years ago. Our newest was just last year. We also have several data centers that are in various stages of progress. So, one is currently under construction right now in district 7. We have four

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more that are proposed, one in each of districts 3, 6, 7, and 8. Um, these are all ones that have their zoning in place. They are working with Irk and are anticipated to be approved for interconnection into the grid. They're working with Encore and are are getting

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their approvals to either construct or to tap into existing substations. So when I say proposed, I think reasonably anticipated to move forward. We do get interest all the time across the board for any new development and it could be as simple as somebody saying, "Hey, I'm thinking about this piece of land. What

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do you think?" Um or or it could be somebody asking, "Do we offer incentives? Here's a concept I have in mind." Again, that's not anything that I'm going to call speculative in nature. I'm not including in what we're counting in progress. And then we also have two data center developments that are

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currently contemplated in our ETJ. Both of which are within our water service area, our CCN. And so both of those will be served by city water even though they will not be in the city limits. And I'll touch a little bit more on that here in just a moment.

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When we're thinking about how do we evaluate our regulations and our policies related to data center developments, it's it's really important to note that there's really two sides of what we're looking at as a staff perspective. There's both opportunities and there are impacts. So from an

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opportunity standpoint, data centers are a significant private investment. And so with that, they have a substantial commercial tax base and that means significant property tax revenue. Again, not a decision point, but definitely an important factor. Every year, council,

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when we talk about your budget, we talk um about the property tax base composition between residential and commercial. And right now in the city of Fort Worth, you saw this very recently in one of our um budget reports, 63% of our property tax base is residential in

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nature and 37% is commercial. as a a really thriving city or healthy city, we want those two paths to get back really to meet in the middle 5050 or even have our commercial tax base exceed our residential. And I'll come back to this in just a second as well. Um there is

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substantial revenue in property tax in the form of property tax not just to the city but to all local taxing jurisdictions. And the other benefit or opportunity with them is that uh most of these data center developments have very little impact on city services. So, when

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you build one of these, it's not like a distribution facility. It's not like a um there there's not a lot of congestion or cars or vehicular traffic. It's very minimal impact on your roadway network. Um we looked at just so we could understand at a staff level are do they

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require a lot of calls for service either from police or fire or code enforcement or that kind of thing. So, we also looked at our our complaint data over the last five years at all of our existing locations and we found that there's zero complaints. So, these don't generate calls for service from police department or fire or that kind of a

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thing because they're not residents. There's not a requirement to construct additional community centers or um libraries and that kind of thing. But really, what I want to hone in on is this last line here on the opportunity slide. Anytime a data center development is inside the city of Fort Worth, we

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have the opportunity to have oversight and say in that in that development. And we can do that through our zoning, our development standards, through noise limits, through um our water and wastewater utility, through our policies. We can determine how much water is going to be served and that

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kind of thing. Any of these developments that are outside of our city limits, we have zero say and regulatory oversight into that development. And in some cases, especially when we're talking about water, that development is likely pulling from the same water resources that we are. But again, we have no

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influence in over how much water it's pulling from. No say in how that development is situated against adjacent property owners, etc. So, we see tremendous value there by having it at least in the city. But it's not all sunshine and roses. There are definitely real impacts that

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we have to consider and and these go truly to any development but especially data centers as well. There's concerns over the impact on our resources. So the availability of water is a huge concern and one that we are asked very frequently about. There's concern over

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what's going to be disposed of into our wastewater system. There's concerns over energy and the reliability of our grid here in Texas. When there is close proximity of a data center to a residential development, there's very real concerns about the noise to the neighbors um to potential air quality

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impacts as outdoor lighting is one that we hear pretty regularly anytime there's industrial near residential. And then just across the board in Texas, we haven't heard as much concern about this here in Fort Worth, but in Texas, we're hearing about the concern for overp proliferation. Again, we're hearing a boom. There's a bunch of data center

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developments that are trying to get to market and get constructed. Are we going to end up in a world where we have too many data centers? Are we going to end up in a world where we have vacant buildings or or buildings that are just no longer needed? And then in hand with that, are we going to end up with overbuilt infrastructure? This is

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commonly called stranded assets. And you'll hear it talked about at the state level as well, but it's where um either a city or um or the energy side will build infrastructure based on the anticipated need of a development and then that need either is low or just doesn't come to fruition. and now we've

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made that investment. So, all things that we are striving to address as we work through this presentation. So, here's a snapshot on again the economic impact to the city of Fort Worth. Um, it's again looking at this top line, the big bold box that you see

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there. Looking at the last five years of our four existing data centers that are here in the city, our gross property tax revenue was a little over $83 million. Now, again, think about that from the school district's perspective. Their tax rate isn't double ours, but it is significantly more than ours. That's

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again a huge impact to a school district as well. In 2024, if we look at just again that revenue stream that was in 2024 off data centers, it would have taken the equivalent of approximately uh just under 8,400 average value single

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family homes to generate the same level of revenue. We took a look at that to say, okay, from the proposed data center developments that we know are in progress, what would that revenue look like in 2030 and how many average value single family homes would it take to

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generate the same amount of revenue? And that number in 2030 is 22,700. Now, the one caveat I want to put with that is that we built this model in 20 the 2030 model, Fort Lab built it based on what we know today from those four in

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progress data centers. So, a couple caveats with that. One of the four that are in progress are not actually anticipated to start construction until 2030. So, that revenue is not accounted for in this model at all because it will not be online in tax year 2030. Additionally, the others that are in

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progress have given us phased construction plans. So, they are not anticipated to be fully built by that date as well. So, this accounts for the phasing that we are are aware of today. So coming back to our property taxbased composition, if we looked at again that

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2030 mark and and they come online in the phases that they're anticipated to come online, this would shift a little bit to where our commercial tax base would jump up to around 54% and our residential tax base would drop down to

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57%. I think it was 53 and and uh 57. So it starts to I'm sorry, 43 and 57. it meets it a little bit more in the middle. So, it starts to inch towards that closure point. And again, that's not with the all four of those proposed data centers coming fully online. That's

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in phases. So, this is a really big topic, not just here in Fort Worth, not just in a lot of the other cities that we've been watching and researching, but the state as well. In 2025, the 89th legislative session, Senate Bill 6 was adopted. And

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Senate Bill six served to um establish a regulatory framework for the um electric reliability. It really aimed to ensure that as these large loads and this is not limited by the way to data centers. This is any large load over 75 megawatts

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that we are preserving how it's connected to the grid, preserving that electric reliability. um ensuring that in emergency situations we can require their electric load to be shed so that we are preserving the electricity for those in critical need hospitals

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residents etc. It's also aiming to shift the cost burden of the direct infrastructure needed for these um extensions that might be needed to serve them to serve new developments to the actual development instead of making it a systemwide cost. And then it also is

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enacting or looking to put in some data transparency measures so that we are able to better account for what's to come in the 90th legislative session. We fully anticipate the state to take up more action related to data centers, but we don't yet know what that's going to

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look like. We are already seeing both Senate and House committees have hearings on interim charges right now. And so we are closely monitoring all of those hearings just to keep tabs on what we expect to come. We are seeing um interim hearings right now on the electric grid, on the water supply, on

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infrastructure demands that are needed, on economic development, and just in general regulations around the data center industry and what they need. everything that I'm going to give you here today that is making recommendations for our local amendments both to zoning to noise to water to

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economic development just know that the state is going to take up this industry or or the development around it and we may see changes coming up next year if we do we'll come evaluate those changes and make sure that we are always in compliance with state law but we think it's important that we act sooner rather

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than later and that we take a look at what should we be doing here in Fort Worth now as opposed to waiting on this state next year in the legislative session. So, we hear a lot of questions right now from concerned constituents about a

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number of things and I think this is a really important just pausing moment spend a little bit more time here on what do we in the city of Fort Worth have the authority to regulate because a lot of the concerns we don't and some we do. So starting on the left hand side in

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the state of Texas, we have no regulatory authority over anything related to the electric grid or to power generation that falls to the public utility commission of Texas. They establish all the rules for the state. Um the public utility of commission also has some oversight into water and

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wastewater as well as electricity. Under that kind of umbrella, you have the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which um operates and manages the grid that covers 90% of Texas. And is an independent body that I think of it like the stock market. So they are managing

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the transactions back and forth of power on the grid. So they're managing all the generation units that are coming online. They're managing the retail electric providers, the enduser customers, the transmission and distribution companies. They're connecting all the dots and kind of if you will uh facilitating those

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financial transactions in the sale and distribution of power for statewide water planning that falls under the responsibility of the um Texas Water Development Board. The Texas Water Development Board is the lead planning agent for the state of Texas, looking at

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water resource availability for the entire state of Texas, broken up into regions. And they are charged with planning and looking at the state's future water needs, both taking into account population projections, anticipated growth, future demands, and what's needed over the next 50 years for

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each region. They're also charged with evaluating what available resources are for each region today, what projects could reasonably constructed in the future, and then how much are those projects going to cost. And so another aspect of Texas Water Development Board

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is to serve as a financing institution for these very large infrastructure projects that are needed to get water resources where they are needed. For air quality, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is the regulating authority. predominantly they focus on

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air emissions right now and I will note that we have a local air quality program that we administer under the um purview of TCEQ. We do the initial complaint investigation. We do some um limited enforcement where our hands are tied is

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that we can only enforce what TCEQ regulates in their rules. So we can't adopt anything that goes above and beyond what TCQ has today. And then lastly on the state side, we've got the uh state tax exemptions and incentive program. The exemptions are administered

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through the Texas Controller of Public Accounts. And um the state sets the criteria that are required for their exemptions. They do have some high criteria for data center developments and they administer that program. But what I will note is that does not affect our local sales tax. So even if a

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development gets a state sales tax exemption, they do still pay local sales tax to the city. Um and then the state's incentive program is administered through the Texas Economic Development and Tourism Office and that is housed under the Texas Governor's office. So

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now on the right side, let's think about what the city of Fort Worth can regulate where we have the opportunities to make sure that we are crafting rules that lead to the best-in-class types of development. Number one, and probably our most notable are our zoning and development regulations. Council, you

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see our zoning cases every month. You know exactly what this is, but this regulates where certain types of development can be constructed. And then our development standards establish how that can be constructed. And we do that through things like setbacks, through height limitations, lot coverage, landscaping, buffer requirements, all of

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those things. We have the ability to set local noise rules, so we can establish maximum sound levels for certain areas. We also regulate the local water utility and I'm spend more time on this and we do that in cooperation with Tarant Regional Water District who is our raw

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water supplier. And lastly, we have the oversight to determine what city what local economic development incentives we want to do. So, um I'll touch on this when we get to that section, but council, you adopt our economic development incentive policy every other year. You review it every other year.

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Um, we just did an update last year, but we're going to recommend some changes to that as well that are tailored to data centers. Okay, so quick pause here. Any questions to this point so far? Excellent. All right, let's keep going. So, jumping into zoning and development

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regulations first. Again, in each section, I'm going to first tell you what our rules are today, then I'm going to tell you what proposed amendments we have going forward. So currently today we define a data center as a building to house and uh computers and support systems used ma

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mainly to process data and transactions. We allow data center developments in all three of our industrial zoning districts by right. Our three industrial zoning districts are light which is typically a very low intensity industrial use. So typically you can think of something

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that has no noise leaving the site, no odors, no um there's really no impact to anybody offsite. Some examples on the right hand side of what could be an eyelight industrial includes like a warehouse type use distribution or even light assembly. So light assembly, think

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of like assembling furniture. You get all your pieces in. You're not producing any of those pieces. You're just going to put them together. And then I'm also going to note really quick, you'll see that there on the right hand side under each industrial um heading. You will note that our zoning is a tiered type of

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zoning system. So in ilight industrial, you are allowed to have any of our commercial uses plus ilight industrial. Medium industrial builds on I. So you could have any commercial use, any light industrial use as well as medium industrial and so on and so forth. A medium industrial is a more moderate

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intensity type of use. Again, still no noise or odor, dust or fumes coming off of the site, but it might be a type of processing facility. And then lastly, for heavy industrial, that is your more intense type of industrial use. So, some examples of that would be a concrete

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batch plant, a lumber yard, solid waste processing facility, a recycling facility, something that really is going to have more outdoor um impacts. Typically has um noise, maybe it has chemicals stored on site, that kind of a thing.

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As it stands today, any type of data center development follows our standard industrial development standards. We do not have any uh data center specific development standards. So, in an industrial development, any type of industrial development that's coming online, there is a front setback

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of up to 20 feet if fronting a residential. So, think of across the street from a residential uh property. On the side and rear, there is a 50-ft setback. If it is adjacent to single family or duplex residential, if it is adjacent to a multifamily residential,

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then there's a five-ft side setback or a 10-ft rear setback. If a data center or let me back up. If any type of industrial development is adjacent to commercial or other industrial, there are no setbacks required. There is a max height of three stories or 55 ft in

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light industrial or a max of 12 stories or 120 ft in medium or heavy industrial. All industrial developments require landscaping and buffers of 4% of the net site area or a 30-foot depth coverage along all public roadways. All

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developments are subject to our urban forestry requirements for industrial. That to uh means to retain and or plant a tree canopy coverage of a minimum of 20%. And then finally, outdoor lighting is limited to zero foot candles within 150

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ft of a residential district and a max height of 20 ft including the wall fixtures. Now, you'll note there I underlined the word district. That's because you might remember in the last legislative session SB840 was passed which allows for multif family development in commercially zoned and

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light industrial zoned districts. So this rule right now would not apply to those because it's based on district. This is going to be one of our recommendations that we capture that and change that moving forward. So getting to what zoning amendments do

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we recommend adopting? Number one, we have a great definition of data center, but we are not explicit in that a data center does not include cryptocurrency mining or think of Bitcoin mining as a primary use. So, our recommendation is that we take the steps to define

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cryptocurrency mining separately, that we list it on our non-residential use table, but not allow it in any district, and then furthermore adopt supplemental standards that effectively together would prohibit cryptocurrency mining as a primary use in the city of Fort Worth.

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And then second, we propose that we establish data center development uh data center specific development standards. So this list right here of our recommendations is to establish a building setback of 250 ft from all residential districts and uses.

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We would still allow parking and driveways within that supplemental building setback which is very common and standard today because there's no above grade improvements. We recommend prohibiting standby generators to be within 300 ft of residential property and to require them to be fully

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screened. So that would mean a wall that is taller than your generator uh standby generators. We recommend requiring rooftop cooling equipment to be located behind an acoustic barrier that is at least one and a half times the height of the cooling equipment. Extending our outdoor

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lighting regulations to residential use as well as district. Adopting a landscape buffer yard of 50 feet as well as the screening fence along all residential properties. So where that data center is adjoining to residential and finally requiring a

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continuous row of evergreen trees at the site perimeter adjoining residential. And I'll note here the reason that we put evergreen trees instead of any other type or just selecting from the list within our urban forestry um ordinance. It's because in the winter evergreen trees don't lose their foliage. So it

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would keep that screening uh for both visual and noise all year long. Any questions on zoning and development regulations? Okay, we'll keep moving. So, for noise regulations, before I talk

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about what our recommendations are, I want to help you visualize what are we really talking about. So, this is a noise scale, and this was um actually borrowed from our police department update that they gave to y'all quite a while back when they were talking about updating the noise ordinance. So, this is just to help you understand when

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we're talking about decibel limits kind of what those different sounds, what the examples of those sounds may be. I'm going to focus for the sake of this presentation moving forward, just to really hone in on uh the middle where you see 70 dBA on top, 60 dBA at night, I'm sorry, on the bottom, and 80 dBA. So

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for our residential areas, we do have a maximum sound level established by ordinance that allows daytime sound levels up to 70 dB and nighttime sound levels to 60 dB. Again, in residential areas. In our non-residential areas,

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except industrial districts, there is a max daytime sound level of 80 dB and a nighttime sound level of 70 dB. So, some examples of that 70 decel mark, I call it kind of your common. A dog barking that's up to 50 feet away. A clothes

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washing machine if you're standing within two feet of it. That's about what that sound level would be. A vacuum cleaner 5t away is going to get to your 80 dB, a little bit more. A concrete mixer that's up to 50 feet away. So, here we're covering both our current

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noise regulations on the left and our proposed noise regulations on the right. Currently today, industrial districts are exempt from a maximum sound level. So that means a data center development coming in is exempt from a maximum sound level. We are hearing a lot of concerns

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about what the impact of the sound coming off the data centers um and those standby generators when they do have to run. So we are proposing that we establish some noise regulations that would apply to data centers. So on the right hand side you'll see our proposal

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is within 250 ft of a residential property. We propose to require a 72-hour pre-development ambient noise study. The purpose of which is to tell us what is that baseline level of noise before any data center is developed there. And then we would propose number

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two to establish that maximum sound level to not exceed five dB above that predetermined noise level based on that study. I will tell y'all um two things to note. This is really following what we did with the gaswell drilling ordinance that we found to be

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successful. So, this is very similar to that, nearly identical. Um, the one other caveat that I will note is while I've got the five dB in here, we have reached out to several data center operators just to make sure that that five is actually a reasonable number. So far, I'm hearing good feedback, but

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that's just one thing I want to share with you that um we may determine maybe that needs to be seven, maybe it needs to be eight. We don't know what we think. So far, what we're hearing is that likely five is okay. We would also um require mitigation measures. So post construction, if a

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data center is operating and they exceed their maximum sound level, we would require them to take whatever mitigation measures their engineer determines to be appropriate and they would have to put those in place at their expense. Lastly, we want to restrict the standby generator testing schedule to be only

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during the weekdays between 8 a.m. and 5:00 pm. Now, I'll note that I've learned that TCQ actually regulates typically the um testing schedule for each site and that usually would in fact almost always fall within that weekday schedule of 8 to 5. But this just gives

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us some guardrails as well to say it can only be during this time. We would have an exemption though for emergency operations. So again, if power is not available to a data center side or if the state, the PUC demands that a future data center shed its load, take it

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offline in the case of an emergency, they have to operate on their backup generators. So at that time only, it would be exempt from the noise ordinance. But I will also note that TCEQ limits the amount of hours per year that these standby generators can run. So this is not something that we should

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expect to happen very often. It's a very limited time. All right, let's jump into the water utility requirements. So to set the stage, it's first really important to note that we get all of our raw water from Tarant Regional Water District. We

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are not TRWD's only customer. We are one of many, although we do account for the largest share of water that TRWD supplies. So we currently account for 60% of TRWD's water supply. Um this is this map shown on here is Tarant

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Regional Water District's service area. And so the key thing that I want you to keep in the back of your mind as we go forward and talking about our water supply and our proposed recommendations related to water policy is that any development within this service area is

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pulling from the same water resources that we are. But again, we only have authority within our city limits. But I'll talk a little bit more about the caveat in just a minute. So think about, you know, there's data centers again that are looking in other parts of this service area. A data center in Ellis

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County is no different in terms of water usage than a data center here in the city of Fort Worth. So a benefit to regulating them and actually having these types of developments in the city of Fort Worth is that we can regulate the amount of water. It's also really important to note our

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service area. So this map here shows our service area. It's also called a certificate of convenience and necessity or CCN. That service area is approved by the public utility commission. And you'll note that the yellow shading goes a little bit outside of our city limits in certain areas. That's where we have

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acquired the CCN. It's been granted to us in certain parts of the city that are currently covering our ETJ. So again, any development that happens even outside of our city limits, if it's in our service area, we're still going to have to provide it water even if not

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inside our city limits. Um, it's really important to note, and you'll see the key word on this slide, obligation. With our CCN, we are obligated to serve all development that comes to us in this area so long as we have the availability

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of water and we have the ability to serve through our water treatment plants or through our pipeline. Currently today, um we in city of Fort Worth are very fortunate. We have ample supply. We do currently have a little bit of an

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infrastructure limitation and that is affecting mostly north and northwest Fort Worth, but council, you've heard a lot about that. Um, we have some plant expansion projects and we have very large pipelines, that north side pipeline that's under construction right now that will address our current

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limitation on supplying water, treated water to customers in that area. When we have an infrastructure limitation, that limitation is really temporary. The minute we have addressed it, we've completed our construction projects, then any of those pending development projects that were waiting on our

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infrastructure improvements, they can then move forward and come online. So the only way we can say no to a development or no to providing water is if we didn't have the supply, which we do, or if we didn't have the ability to serve and treat through our plant, which we are remedying as we move forward in

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general. Again, not for data centers, that's just for development in general. So thinking about our water supply again, we hear a lot of concerns and there are other parts of Texas that have a very real shortage of water, a very real issue where they do not have the

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availability of water. Tarant Regional Water District again is the responsible entity for supplying the water. We are the responsible entity for treating and distributing that water. TRWD though has done a great job over many years of planning well in advance and executing

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projects to ensure that we have the water we need in this um in this region. We have a priority contract with TRWD that we share with the cities of Arlington, Mansfield and Trinity River Authority. And that means in all of TRWD

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service area, our water needs come first. Whatever we need, we have that priority right to get. Um the state water plan which I touched on just a second ago talking about the role of the Texas Water Development Board. That state water plan works handinhand with

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Tarant Regional Water District and looking at our region which we're region C to look at what are the water uh demands today. What are the projected water demands in the future? What is the availability of water today as opposed to what is needed in the future? And

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then it it prepares a list of projects that are needed in order to ensure that we have that water resource availability. This last box here on the right is looking at the water supply strategies that TRWD is undertaking to ensure that we've got water in the future as well. Currently under

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construction is a $2.3 billion integrated pipeline project. That is moving water from three lakes in East Texas into our region to supply our needs. In addition, TRWD is already designing some indirect reuse projects that will pull water from the Mary's

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Creek and Cedar Creek reservoir. We anticipate construction to start on those within the next 5 years. And TRWD doesn't stop there. They're already looking to what's next. What is the next slate of projects that are going to be needed in the future? Now, we're going to shift to what is the

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city of Fort Worth's role? So, how do we look at all development? This slide here again is not specific to data centers. This is truly how do we look at any development that is coming and proposing to be constructed in the city of Fort Worth. We look at every development through a critical lens. Every

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development is required to provide a water loading study and that study is prepared by um by a developer's engineer. That study is built on the requirements within our design criteria manual for the water utility as well as based on what that development may need

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specifically above and beyond our design criteria manual. The water loading study is going to tell us what is the demand needed. So what is the total amount of water that that particular development needs. It's going to tell us what is the potential impact on our water system. So the impact on the plant, the impact on

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our pipeline infrastructure. It's going to tell us if there are any needed off-site improvements. Again, think of pipelines in order to serve that potential development. And the developers responsible for paying 100% cost of the off-site infrastructure that's needed. The only time the city of

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Fort Worth may contribute financially, is if we want to oversize a pipeline, and we do that in accordance with our policy, and we do that in order to to build the full construction pipeline that we're going to need in the future to serve other land around that area. But council, you might remember we typically recoup that through connection

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charges that are set by ordinance by you. Um, all development also, oh, I missed the meter tab. probably one of the most important parts on here based on the water loading study that is provided to us. We cap the meter and the tap size based on the actual needed

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volume of water that's in that study. So in other words, you can't come and propose a development and tell us we're going to use very little water, but I need a 4-inch water meter or I need a 5 inch meter. That's not how it works. Um, so most of the, in fact, all of the data center developments that we've seen so

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far that are proposed looking at their water loading studies that have been submitted over the last 12 months, they're all proposing to go to a closed loop water cooling system, which I'm going to talk a little bit more about in a second, which uses a lot less water. And all of those have shown us that they

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can be served off of a 2-in domestic meter. That in and of itself has a natural cap on the amount of water that can go to that site. And then all developments pay their water and wastewater impact fees. These fees are used to offset the um the

502
02:16:42.719 --> 02:16:58.880
region cost or the plant infrastructure if you will. Um and then lastly they pay the connection charges. So again if by ordinance if we've oversized a pipeline or we have done some other investment ahead of development then council you adopt an ordinance that determines a connection charge and any development

503
02:16:58.880 --> 02:17:15.040
that comes online then later pays that based on their water loading study. So based on the amount of water that they tell us they're going to need and that allocation from the pipeline. So now let's get to a comparison where we're talking about what kind of water are we actually talking about. I have

504
02:17:15.040 --> 02:17:31.840
read so many articles and studies and seen number after number. And I will tell you I'm not an engineer. There's no way I can determine which one is accurate and which one is not. What I can tell you is that again we have four existing data centers. So we have some

505
02:17:31.840 --> 02:17:46.800
degree, not some degree, we have real knowledge of the water consumption that we've seen so far. We've also been reviewing water loading studies that have been submitted to us over the last 12 months. So seeing what those engineers are showing us. So we do have some reasonable comfort when we're

506
02:17:46.800 --> 02:18:01.200
putting forward this general comparison of water consumption. And we're trying to just give a visual frame of reference of what does it really look like. So for the sake of an example and know that there are a ton of assumptions that go into this and the other caveat I'll say

507
02:18:01.200 --> 02:18:17.679
is there are there's so much variability in water consumption per data center. It depends on the site conditions. It depends on how the building is constructed. It depends on the type of technology that they're trying to cool and what is that target temperature on the cooling system. There's a lot of

508
02:18:17.679 --> 02:18:32.880
variability in here. So these are just generalized assumptions. If we look at developing a a 100 acre tract of land and we look at it from two different frames of mind. We look at developing as a data center on the left or we look at developing it as a single family residential on the right. This is just

509
02:18:32.880 --> 02:18:48.399
to give you an idea of the comparison of water consumption for each type of development. So on the right, this is the easiest one to calculate and think about. 100 acre tract of land can accommodate anywhere from 250 to 350 homes. truly it can accommodate even

510
02:18:48.399 --> 02:19:02.639
more but for the sake of easy numbers we're going to go with that. So the two million gallons here average monthly consumption that you see that is assuming 300 single family homes which use an average of 7,000 gallons per month that comes out to 2.1 million

511
02:19:02.639 --> 02:19:18.080
gallons of water average used per month. If we look at developing it as a data center I want to go to the bottom number first. So this evaporative cooling evaporative cooling is kind of the it's the old technology. It is what we have seen the most of and there is no doubt

512
02:19:18.080 --> 02:19:34.639
it is a more water intensive use on evaporative cooling. Again based on what we kind of see and normalizing it for the 100 acres it's safe to say that that type of cooling uses around four to six million gallons of average monthly water. Now again there may be months where that usage number is higher. In

513
02:19:34.639 --> 02:19:50.160
the summer you're going to take more to try to cool it. In the winter it may be much lower because it doesn't take as much. A lot of variability but just averaging out over the year. If we look at a closed loop system which is the new industry standard and what um most developments are going to what we are

514
02:19:50.160 --> 02:20:07.600
seeing prevalent um it really minimizes the use of water to a lot less and really what I'm hearing is for the most part that closed loop water cooling system is not typically using domestic water city water it's using a specialized mixture that is trucked in because it's a mixture of both water and

515
02:20:07.600 --> 02:20:24.880
a cooling chemical. So the best analogy that I've been given as trying to understand what a closed loop cooling system is is your air conditioning system in your car. You do an initial charge into that air conditioning system of freon and that system is closed. So every time you turn your air conditioner on that freon circulates round and round

516
02:20:24.880 --> 02:20:41.280
and round and it keeps your car cool. Now if you develop a slow leak, if something else happens, you may from time to time have to top it off. You're going to fill that system up. If there is a leak, you're going to do the repair, whatever is needed, and you're back up and running again. These types of data centers that are going on, the

517
02:20:41.280 --> 02:20:57.920
closed loop cooling, what we are predominantly seeing, and again, we don't have one yet today. So, I am going based off of the studies that have been submitted to us and our consultations with real operators, um, is that they do the charge with this specialized cooling solution. And so, the water needs going

518
02:20:57.920 --> 02:21:13.520
to that site is really typically limited to the needs of employees. So, at that point, it's going to be what is the water needed to flush the toilets, what is the water needed to run sinks, to run kitchens, um to irrigate the lawn, and the landscape requirements that we have. It's those kinds of uses. And so, we've

519
02:21:13.520 --> 02:21:28.960
seen a range projections of anywhere from 300,000 gallons per month up to a million gallons per month. And again, so much variability all dependent on that specific uh design criteria and how it's developed. And just for frame of reference, I wanted to share this with

520
02:21:28.960 --> 02:21:46.000
you. this this bottom number. Um I I don't think I said it earlier and so I want to say this now. The city of Fort Worth is a regional water supplier. So we not only treat and produce water for our city limits, we treat and produce for 33 wholesale customers of which 28 of those are other cities in this area.

521
02:21:46.000 --> 02:22:01.760
So this number in the bold in the blue box that you see there, it's a very large number. We are treating and producing approximately 6.5 billion gallons of water average per month. Again, that's because we are supplying the needs of 28 other cities, five additional wholesale customers in

522
02:22:01.760 --> 02:22:17.520
addition to the city of Fort Worth. So, when we are looking at these proposed data center developments that are looking to come online in the future and we see the closed loop cooling technology utilized minimizing water, this really is um you know, just to put in relative perspective, a very small

523
02:22:17.520 --> 02:22:37.600
amount of water that we're treating. Okay, moving to wastewater requirements. So under our wastewater permit through TCQ, we have the authority um to regulate and have permit requirements. One of the um options that we already have today is to require a pre-treatment

524
02:22:37.600 --> 02:22:54.240
wastewater pre-treatment permit as a non-significant industrial user. We have not historically done this. Again, we we have four uh three of which were constructed a very long time ago. So this just hasn't risen up to something that we have felt the need to do. But after hearing a lot of the questions and

525
02:22:54.240 --> 02:23:11.040
the concerns from the constituents that have come through zoning hearings and reached out to council and reached out to our staff, we feel like this is a a great thing that we already have the ability to do today, which is to require that all data center developments obtain this wastewater pre-treatment permit and be classified as a non-significant

526
02:23:11.040 --> 02:23:27.439
industrial user. it. That permit would address all the things that you see listed on here, but the biggest takeaway or the benefit to this is that it would give us a a permit, an enforcable permit on what is being discharged into our wastewater system. So, it would give us

527
02:23:27.439 --> 02:23:43.760
a lot more insight into any potential chemicals that would be coming into the system. What is the spill prevention plan? What is the action plan? Um, it gives us the monitoring and oversight abilities and then most importantly again enforcement. So, if we see a notable change or we see something that

528
02:23:43.760 --> 02:24:00.319
we don't allow that um breaks the permit limits, then we have an enforcement policy. We have a tiered enforcement policy that we would follow and that starts with giving a notice of violation and a a time period to cure. We can elevate that to fines. If somebody still

529
02:24:00.319 --> 02:24:15.439
is not addressing whatever that permit violation is, we have the ability to disconnect water in an absolute nuclear situation, which my understanding is we don't really do because we don't ever have anybody that gets to this point, but we could even cap the sewer line. So, you can't discharge into our

530
02:24:15.439 --> 02:24:32.160
wastewater system. So, this is just a really great tool that I think addresses a lot of the questions and concerns that we've heard from constituents that we can do. So wrapping up our water recommendations, um we our recommendations to move forward with amendments is number one, we recommend

531
02:24:32.160 --> 02:24:48.880
that we move forward with adopting our updated installation policy and design criteria for the water and wastewater system. This is a policy and design criteria manual that we have updated. We did actually several years ago. The reason we haven't moved it forward yet is that we've been trying to bring forward all of our design criteria

532
02:24:48.880 --> 02:25:03.920
manuals that affect development regulations at one time. But based on this conversation, we really feel let's go ahead and bring this one forward. It does a number of things. So this is not all it would do. There's a lot in there. But the two data center specific things

533
02:25:03.920 --> 02:25:20.560
that we can add to that updated policy and we adopt is number one to mandate a closed loop water cooling system. So again minimizing the amount of water that's needed to serve a development. We are seeing most cities that are adopting regulations right now on data centers.

534
02:25:20.560 --> 02:25:37.760
most are going towards requiring a closed loop cooling system. And the one thing I'll note again, technology changes. So if something comes along that's even better in the future, we can always update to that as well. This is the best industry standard right now. And so we we recommend that we require that. And then second, just formalizing

535
02:25:37.760 --> 02:25:55.680
that we would require a data center to obtain the wastewater pre-treatment permit. We already have the authority to, so it's not new, but it would be the clear requirement that we would apply that to all data centers. Moving into our last section, let's talk about economic development.

536
02:25:55.680 --> 02:26:13.200
Oops, too far. So, most of the items on this list, everything except for the approval that you see on this bulleted list is what our economic development department looks at on every potential project that comes to their office. They are evaluating the site appropriateness. So,

537
02:26:13.200 --> 02:26:29.600
if you're bringing us a proposed project of any kind, whether it's manufacturing, processing, aerospace, um, data center, anything, they're going to look at the parcel, the identified parcel of where the development wants to go, what is the zoning, is that appropriate, um, what are the

538
02:26:29.600 --> 02:26:44.880
surrounding uses, what is the infrastructure capacity to that site, what is the infrastructure that may be needed. They're going to look at, are there truly site alternatives that we are in competition for? Typically, these alternatives are outside of the state of Texas, but sometimes we might even be

539
02:26:44.880 --> 02:27:01.680
competing for a site here in Texas, but we want to make sure that we are truly in competition before we're going to consider incentivizing a development. We look at the company track record and their financial capacity. Is the company, you know, can they really execute on what they're telling us they're going to deliver? We're going to

540
02:27:01.680 --> 02:27:18.160
look at the project scale. Our policy, our economic development policy that you approve is set on investment minimums. So every incentive program that we bring forward has to meet our policy investment minimum and typically there's other requirements such as job creation,

541
02:27:18.160 --> 02:27:33.840
business personal property values, etc. Um ARC approval status and encore support. This is one that really is tailored more to data centers or anything that's going to require a very large electric load. Uh we do again under SB6 there's a lot new requirements

542
02:27:33.840 --> 02:27:48.960
and there's rules that are in development right now that we just don't yet know but we want to make sure that any development that we are going to expend some energy on on considering incentives that they really can get the power and connect to the grid in order to serve their site. And then lastly we

543
02:27:48.960 --> 02:28:04.399
look at the necessity of those incentives especially if they're needed to address sight specific issues or a competitive disadvantage. So, an example that I might give you of that is we've got a development that's coming in. They're going to have to build a roadway. That's standard. All developers build their rough proportional share of

544
02:28:04.399 --> 02:28:21.520
the roadways, but maybe instead of just a roadway, maybe it has to be a bridge. Maybe there's something that is just excessive above and beyond the normal. And so, that might be an area where we want to um consider doing an an incentive to offset that infrastructure need. All of those things that were

545
02:28:21.520 --> 02:28:37.200
listed on that prior slide are what we do today. Those are already in practice, but they are not formally set out in our policy. So to make it very clear, we would recommend that we bring back our economic development policy and we would amend it to establish all of these rules

546
02:28:37.200 --> 02:28:53.120
to be very clear for data center developments. So again, demonstrating multiple sites under consideration, uh demonstrating significant local value, that there's clear project improvements above and beyond our standards, a really good development, demonstrating that

547
02:28:53.120 --> 02:29:08.800
there is substantial progress through the inter the interconnection process. And that is a very long process. It is not quick and easy to get through that. And then here's the most important part. We recommend that tied to data centers that we significantly increase our

548
02:29:08.800 --> 02:29:24.800
policy investment minimums. So currently today, we call out in our policy a data center as a mega project. There's a line item for it and that would require a minimum investment of $50 million. Our recommendation, as you can see here, is that we significantly bump that number

549
02:29:24.800 --> 02:29:41.200
up to a $500 million investment minimum. We also think it's really important, we've learned a lot over the last year with um interest in this industry. We think it's really important that we require by policy an identified enduser. So in other words, you have to tell us

550
02:29:41.200 --> 02:29:56.399
who's really going to go there. We're not going to incentivize a speculative development that doesn't know yet who's going to be operating at that site. In order to ensure that there is continued investment in the facility long after the initial build, we would

551
02:29:56.399 --> 02:30:12.800
require a minimum business personal property value to be made maintained throughout the life of the incentive agreement. And I will tell you most data centers, they do aggressively reinvest in their facilities. Again, servers, technology, it changes so rapidly that really within three to five years is

552
02:30:12.800 --> 02:30:29.439
typically what I'm hearing for that that refresh in the infrastructure. And this would just require that value to be maintained. Lastly, we would recommend that we limit or cap the amount of the grant or a tax abatement to no more than 50% of that tax revenue. Currently, under our policy

553
02:30:29.439 --> 02:30:49.359
today, under that mega, it's capped at 85%. So, this would bring that threshold down just a little bit. >> So, I've given you a lot. Yes, ma'am. >> A list of questions, but I just want to get clarification on that. So, right, the proposal is that it would be no more

554
02:30:49.359 --> 02:31:07.200
than 50%. Correct. Currently, it's no more than 85. >> Correct. Now, the one caveat I want to put on and and I should touch on this kind of you see in the big brown bold at the top, every incentive that we do is case by case. So, while our policy sets minimums and caps, you will note if you

555
02:31:07.200 --> 02:31:23.200
pull all of the incentives that you've approved over the last 12, 24, 36 months, it doesn't matter. Not one is identical. and not one says here's what our policy says. So you automatically get that everything is a case- by case evaluation. So based on what the development tells us based on their job

556
02:31:23.200 --> 02:31:39.200
creation, their investment, whatever the other things are that we're considering is how our staff determines what to recommend to you. So I will note um just from my own, you know, what I've seen coming through to y'all, we seldom go up to that 85% threshold. It's a cap by policy. We seldom do that.

557
02:31:39.200 --> 02:31:57.680
>> It's a it's an overall cap for all incentives. We don't have a specific category for data center. >> This would create data center specific >> right >> policy. >> To add on to that just a little bit more because I know there were some questions about what are our policy. Um so right

558
02:31:57.680 --> 02:32:14.640
now our policy is kind of broken up into I'm going to say three sections. There's probably more but the three that matter here. Number one we have our target industries. So we have a section that is devoted to any development that is one of our target industries. here's a specific set of criteria and incentives that we'll consider. It has um its own

559
02:32:14.640 --> 02:32:30.399
individualized minimum investment, job targets, all those kinds of things and caps. Then we have our non-target industries which is kind of the all else umbrella. So something that comes to us that really we like, we want to incentivize, it makes sense, it falls under that section. The third is where

560
02:32:30.399 --> 02:32:46.560
you have mega investments and that mega is really the large dollar investments. Um, most of our data centers that you've seen over the last year that have gotten their zoning, they're going to fall into that mega category and that was where I was commenting currently our policy right now has the mega but calls out

561
02:32:46.560 --> 02:33:01.600
data center specifically at a $50 million minimum. And one thing to this, you know, we have some data centers that have been developed in the past um and and even, you know, maybe some of those that we're hearing about, not all are these very largecale data center

562
02:33:01.600 --> 02:33:17.760
developments. So the ones that you're most familiar with right now are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars in investment even potentially billion. There are others that may come in that are those very small um you know I'll call it a pocket data center. It's not really that's not the terminology but there are different levels of threshold.

563
02:33:17.760 --> 02:33:32.399
This matters also when we're talking about the OOTD um and the electric needs. So right now any development that is that large load follows that large load interconnection process but that's at 75 megawatts or more. anything that's

564
02:33:32.399 --> 02:33:51.920
below that doesn't even rise to that level of scrutiny. So there are you know there's there's offshoots of everything >> just to try to I guess get an overall understanding of the time frame required. You alluded to that just a few

565
02:33:51.920 --> 02:34:08.319
minutes ago. So that in your opinion, what is the total amount of estimated time that staff would need to um amend our zoning ordinance, create regulations, define what our economic development uh prescriptions will be,

566
02:34:08.319 --> 02:34:25.600
and create this encompassing data center policy? How long would that >> you're teeing up my next slide, so I'll get right there. Summary slide. I think you've all heard it, so I won't run through it again, but there is a summary just high level again. all four areas where we are recommending amendments to our zoning ordinance, to our noise

567
02:34:25.600 --> 02:34:42.560
ordinance, to our water policy, and to our economic development incentive policy. So, let's jump straight into timeline. So, Mayor Pretend Flores, to answer your question, um if council, if you like the recommendations that we've put forward before you, or even if you want to do some minor tweaks, make some adjustments, but you're ready to move

568
02:34:42.560 --> 02:34:57.439
forward and you want to fasttrack this and get these in place because we know that there's a lot of um interest in this type, we can have the zoning and development standards on the July 8th zoning commission agenda. we would need to make that call ASAP this week because

569
02:34:57.439 --> 02:35:14.319
we would need to draft um you know the agenda item, make sure we have it ready and then get the notice out of that um potential case, but we can do that. And then we can have all of the amendments, everything I've presented here for you today, we can have that on your August 11th agenda to adopt. So that's your

570
02:35:14.319 --> 02:35:30.720
zoning and development standards, the noise ordinance amendments, water and wastewater policy adoption, and then the economic development policy adoption. Now I will touch here. Um we can also add we um we know again that there's a lot of public interest in this and while we used a lot of the information that's

571
02:35:30.720 --> 02:35:46.720
been given to us, we haven't really had an opportunity to engage a lot yet. So we couldn't add here and I think there's a lot of interest in this. We can do an information openhouse. Um so we're looking at our calendars right now to try to figure out that date. We would be aiming for probably end of June um

572
02:35:46.720 --> 02:36:01.680
because a lot of people are on vacation that very early July and we want to do it before the zoning commission meeting on July 8th. So, we are looking at the end of June to add a public information session. I would anticipate that'd be here at city hall. As soon as we get a date nailed down, we can get that published, advertised, put out

573
02:36:01.680 --> 02:36:16.880
everywhere. So, know that we can add that step. And then this website that you see here on the page, it is not live today. It will be live by the end of the day. All of this information that we've talked about today, plus more, will be put on that FAQ website for everybody

574
02:36:16.880 --> 02:36:32.319
for the public to go see. >> So, we're back now. >> Yeah. Um, so a couple I have a list of um issues with the potential policy. I'll start with I think what's the easiest one and that's the economic

575
02:36:32.319 --> 02:36:50.080
incentives. Um we're the 10th largest city and we shouldn't be behaving like a pickme girl. Um these are not desirable um land uses and I think we've seen that and I think what makes them desirable is their tax base. Um, so by giving that up

576
02:36:50.080 --> 02:37:05.600
to to get them, I think is a ridiculous policy. Um, if they want to come to Fort Worth, if if they're so needed, then they'll come. And if they're so needed and they need an incentive, they can go somewhere else. And that's

577
02:37:05.600 --> 02:37:22.560
just these are billion-dollar um businesses. They're not just putting data centers in Fort Worth. These are companies that are putting data centers in all over GFW and Texas. We've seen that with one that we're dealing with now. Um and so I just don't think that

578
02:37:22.560 --> 02:37:37.920
it's good city policy to provide economic incentives to these organizations. >> Okay. >> Um so right off the bat, >> first question is um

579
02:37:37.920 --> 02:37:53.920
can we cap the size of these data centers? I by and large what I have heard is this concern of these mega data centers. Um you saw what happened in Utah and you've seen if you've driven out to Abalene you see what's on the

580
02:37:53.920 --> 02:38:09.040
side of the freeway there. I mean these are massive massive buildings. Um we talked about annexation but the truth is is um our land is finite. Um and it's not good policy to continue to annex uh farther and farther out. I think we we

581
02:38:09.040 --> 02:38:25.040
know that every time we talk about a bond. Um and so I'd like to see if legally there's a way that we can cap uh the size of these so that we're not taking up all of our usable land for no jobs. >> So I've talked to um city attorney's

582
02:38:25.040 --> 02:38:40.800
office a little bit loosely on that and I'm going to let them answer it. So let's get a more detailed answer. We can either come back but one of the things to think about through zoning. So, we regulate, you know, the amount of land that you can build on by requiring open space and landscape and buffers and having setbacks and that kind of thing.

583
02:38:40.800 --> 02:38:58.399
It's my understanding that no, we cannot just adopt an arbitrary cap on the building size. Now, the building code itself may have some limitations on a single structure, but as long as um a a property owner owns an amount of land and they comply with all of our zoning standards, setback landscaping, etc.,

584
02:38:58.399 --> 02:39:12.800
then I don't think we have the ability to cap um the size of the structure itself outside of the building code. Now we've seen um not related to this but just in my past you know I've seen cities that adopt a max lot coverage. I'm looking to Dana because I don't

585
02:39:12.800 --> 02:39:30.240
think we do that today she's only in single family. So again I you know and I'm not I'll be honest I don't see that in any other city ordinances that I've researched so far on um industrial either. So, I'm going to go out on a limb and say I don't think we can, but we'll get a better answer for you. >> Thank you. And then my um I've got two

586
02:39:30.240 --> 02:39:45.760
just general concerns, and they both um relate to enforcement on the back end of this particular uh recommendations. The first one is the noise ordinance or the noise regulation. Um if we're completely honest with oursel as a city, one of the

587
02:39:45.760 --> 02:40:03.040
things we are the worst at is noise enforcements. I don't know how many IRS I've asked for about how we can better separate noise. Our police officers tell you they don't have noise readers. We've uh we've had an IR on how many noise readers there are by division. Um I

588
02:40:03.040 --> 02:40:19.359
think that that sets uh an expectation by our residents that quite frankly we have not been in the business of enforcing before. Um and we're not doing it when it's people on the streets or you know um bars and businesses. I can't see us all of a sudden having an

589
02:40:19.359 --> 02:40:36.000
epiphany and doing it for these data centers. And so, um, I appreciate that being put in there, but I'm going to need to see, um, I'm going to need to see how we're actually going to enforce that because it seems unreasonable, um, just given the enforcement that we've

590
02:40:36.000 --> 02:40:52.240
seen with noise in the city on other issues. And then the second um concern again to enforcement is um we have the prohibition against Bitcoin and it's my understanding because Bitcoin mining doesn't um meet all of these noise and

591
02:40:52.240 --> 02:41:08.000
water and everything else that we're putting forward. So, >> as to why we're prohibiting it, >> um what happens if um one we have to know the end user and we don't always know the end user at a

592
02:41:08.000 --> 02:41:22.399
zoning change >> and end users change. So what happens when we grant a zoning change or say we don't say it just it is by right they're allowed to come in because they're not Bitcoin and then

593
02:41:22.399 --> 02:41:38.319
>> they sell and now they are Bitcoin. How do we get them out? Yeah. So um so good question. So under uh Texas local government code we do have the ability to prohibit that type of a use through our zoning authority. So we do have that authority to do that. And then just to the enforcement piece, I mean it would

594
02:41:38.319 --> 02:41:54.640
follow like our standard enforcement policy. Anytime you have a use that sets up shop where it is not legally allowed to go based on the zoning ordinance, then there's it follows that typical city enforcement which to be fair is a process follows state law for what is necessary in order to enforce it as a

595
02:41:54.640 --> 02:42:11.600
zoning violation. So we'll we'll produce some more information though for you. >> Yeah. Would the solution be that these data centers need to be conditional use permits so that we can are conditional use permits tied to the end user? Correct? Can they be? No, >> not to the end user. So there's no way

596
02:42:11.600 --> 02:42:26.240
to >> Yeah. So then there's no I mean what's enforcement? A fine a day. I mean that's the same we've seen with the noise ordinance, right? I've got a a bar that just pays the fine. It's their cost of doing business. Yeah. And so that's what's going to happen to these data

597
02:42:26.240 --> 02:42:42.640
centers who make way more money than bars. It's going to become the cost of doing business and same for crypto mining, right? >> Yeah. How do we address? Definitely. I totally understand that. Um >> I had a thought and then it escaped me just like that. What were you saying a second ago? >> Oh, conditional use permit. Let me touch

598
02:42:42.640 --> 02:42:58.479
on that. We did actually we thought about whether or not we should do a conditional use permit. Um one of the biggest reasons that we do not recommend it is it's typically tied to a time limit. And when you're talking any of these developments, there's there's nobody who's going to make this level of investment to not have the guarantee

599
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that it's going to be able to continue operating. So, it just didn't um it didn't fit with our zoning code and really what we felt like was a good practice. But, we did evaluate it. We've we've looked at so many different options um as we've worked through this. Council Hill.

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>> Um, going back to the economic development piece, Jessica, talk a little about Do you all have any opinion from the Fort Worth Economic Development Partnership on the structure? >> Absolutely. So, we did review this with Robert Allen at the EDP um for his input. Very supportive of the recommendations that we've put for you.

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Also, um, you know, understands if this is something that the council doesn't want to see in there. I'll tell you from a staff's perspective, the strong reason that we did leave it in here and really bumped up that minimum threshold so high is because we do it on a case- by case basis. We wanted to preserve the ability

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for council to determine if there is an appropriate project. At this level, there may never be an appropriate project. You may choose to never approve one, but we haven't prohibited or taken away the opportunity was our kind of thought as we approached this. >> Thank you. Then I had one more question

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going back to the data centers and property tax revenue slide. I think it's maybe slide 10 and Brady is going to be real mad at me. Okay. So that $83 million number that's just gross property tax revenue for the data centers that we know. Correct.

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Okay. And then in 2024 that I guess it's the house numbers that we have >> equivalency >> equivalent. Okay. So I guess my question is have we ever modeled and Brady this is a question for you. Have we ever modeled the cost of providing infrastructure for those >> houses versus a data center which has

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little infrastructure? I'm thinking more of like the the strain on police and fire and the amount of traffic and all the other things that go into building out neighborhoods that would meet that tax base. >> Jess is saying maybe you wash my face processing as I was listening to Jess.

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She said maybe in the fiscal impact analysis but that's not something that my team has worked on. I don't think um a specific project. We'll look into it though. >> Okay. I'd be curious to see what the value is on both sides. >> Okay. >> We we modeled it years ago. It had to be update on the on the but that those that

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was maybe 2017 and back then the average home had to be 340,000 for it to pay cover the cost of providing all city services coming online. But that would have to be updated now.

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>> Thank you. What else? So, let me touch on the timeline real quick. Um, so y'all have received, you know, a lot of um emails and asks um urging you to adopt a moratorum to give you time to consider these uh to consider what development

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regulations you should have for a data center. And I want to just reiterate that is a tool that is afforded to you under state law. It's a tool that allows you time to um have a temporary pause on development in order to determine what your development regulation should be. You cannot use it to just determine we

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don't want data centers in general and we're going to prohibit that use. The other thing to note is uh a limitation on the moratorum is it would not apply to anything that has vested rights. So in other words, those data centers that I showed on that previous slide that are already proposed, they already have

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their zoning, we've seen site plans, they are reasonably anticipated to move forward at whatever timeline, they are not subject to the moratorum and so they move forward regardless. The other just limitation that um I want to share with you about doing a moratorum is that in

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2025 the state legislature amended chapter 212 of the local government codes code to establish um more requirements around the public notice the public hearing and the ordinance readings that are required in order to enact a moratorum. So based on the

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state's requirements, it's a very prescriptive schedule, very strict schedule. The soonest date that you could call that moratorum is going to be October 27th. So end of October. Again, it's intended to be 90 days. So it would expire at the end of January. It does

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buy you time, but we would be open for a little bit of risk between now and that date that you're actually calling it in October. So from my perspective, from our our team's perspective is, you know, if we like these recommendations, again, even if we need to make adjustments to what we bring forward to you, um we just

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feel really confident in let's take action. Let's go ahead and get there. Let's be the leader. Let's hopefully set up a model that other cities can also look at. And again, we can have all of this to you for consideration and approval on August 11th, well before you can even enact a moratorum. But you do

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have that tool available to you if that is something that that you want to pursue. Council Martinez. >> Um Jess, so I just wanted uh to share that I really think that we need to have another uh community engagement option.

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Uh maybe that could look like a general inbox in that data center web >> web page just you know I just >> there's going to be a lot of interest in here. >> Absolutely. >> Uh can't attend or they can watch right. this might be recorded and they later date, but they should have a method to

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be able to submit their feedback. Um, you talked about the different um, you know, how data centers come in different sizes and this is more for those mega centers. So, what remind me what the threshold is on those that would um, data centers that would fall under this ordinance. Do we have a size limitation?

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>> Everything. So, I'm asking because I know smaller data centers. Um, and so I'm not even sure those even require a water cooling system. Yeah. No, that's a great question and I and I couldn't answer that today. Um, we'll take a look at that. We've seen again, we have been

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reading every Texas city ordinance that has been changed over the last couple years. And prior to just recently, there weren't many cities that even had ordinances specific to data centers or if they were, it was limited to it's required and industrial. That's pretty kind of the consensus. We are seeing a number of cities that are adopting things right now and it's all over the

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board although not far from where we are as well. Um we've seen a couple cities that differentiate on the data center size. I've seen kind of that 10,000 square foot as being a bright line. Our ordinance does not differentiate but the distinction that I would make which is

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probably more applicable is that we our data center definition and all of these regulations are where that data center is the primary use. So that is the sole purpose of that structure. And again, we've never seen to this point even a prospect of one that is small that is

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under that 10,000 square foot threshold. Our ordinance already accounts for where um a data center might be an accessory use. So again, we the city of Fort Worth technically have a data center. Tarant County has a 911 data center um that I saw in TAD records. You know, a lot of

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our corporate businesses have their own data centers. This does not apply to those types of things. Um, and so for that reason, we just didn't feel the need to draw a square footage. So again, everything that you see in here would apply to all sizes, all types, um, everything that is a standalone as a

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primary use. I guess I'm just asking, we might need to research because there are maybe government entities that, you know, do have data centers that are offsite, um, where they might have to relocate if they're leasing the space. And it truly is a smaller scale.

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Any other questions? Council Nles and then Council Crane. Go ahead. >> Yeah, I have a um some comments and then maybe a question. Um and I really appreciate the presentation because I think you kind of outline all of the things we have been hearing within the

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community, uh which is the noise, zoning, do we have enough water, uh and even an economic development, uh economic incentive process. Uh, one of the things I I didn't hear talked about today um that may not be an issue I want to ask a question and maybe we can talk

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about at a later date is uh environmental >> uh effects on um the community with the four data centers that we have um and you alluded to there have not been major complaints on noise or any issues

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because I don't think people realize we actually have four and so can you kind of maybe kind of give a little. >> Absolutely. So, um, so the environmental I'm going to bring back to you because I'm going to bring the experts with our team to address that a little bit more. And, and just the one caveat again that I mentioned is we do have a local air

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quality program that that we operate for TCQ, but we are very limited to just their rules. So, we can't go above and beyond. So, um, so as part of our research and trying to understand what we already have here, um, a lot of our staff members and I have gone to each one of our four data centers.

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Personally, I've gone in both daytime hours and nighttime hours. I even bought a decibel meter because I wanted to understand what is that real impact of sound. And there is no doubt that there are bad actors everywhere. We are very fortunate so far that all four of the data centers that we have here are great

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examples of really good development. Um, two of them are adjacent to residential. They are separated by a roadway, but they are adjacent to residential. Again, we have zero complaint history and those have been long operating. Um, all of them have really beautiful landscaping. They have the buffers. They have trees.

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They have shrubs. They follow the lighting standards. All of those four data centers developments follow our standards and they are I'm I'm not Let me say this. I am not trying to have an opinion one way or the other. My job is public policy and it is to guide you and put forth some recommendations. But what

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I will tell you is the four that we have today that I've gone by um they really are great examples of development that we want to see in Fort Worth. >> And so um and I think we have been around this table on numerous different issues. We was here for the car wash

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issue. Uh we were here for uh a number of other things and and what we're seeing today is that there have been some issues with data centers. Absolutely. in other states and around the country >> and they are revamping to try to make sure those issues are mitigated and I

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can see within your presentation today that we're trying to do everything we can to make sure what comes to forward um that we have some type of control over it and so uh with you know we have some that's in the process of being coming I think another four that's

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coming correct even that's already a zone for it waiting on site plan >> um how Can I know we cannot go backwards to get them to condense to what we have in policy if we put it in play in August, but how hopeful are we to work

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with those to make sure they kind of line with what we're going to put forward? >> Great question. So, it's no doubt under state law, anything that's already in progress that's already shown us a site plan or has their zoning in place, any of these rules that we adopt cannot the zoning rules, the noise would still

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apply, the water would still apply, everything else. The the zoning rules would not retroactively apply to those developments. However, um I do feel a large degree of confidence that those um developers are going to want to comply with this. you know, as an example, um,

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Black Mountain, who does have a a a zoning case on the docket for June 23rd and amendment. You know, I asked them about this proposed 250 foot setback. Again, I can't mandate that they comply with it, but would they? And they pointed out that yes, actually their site plan that they've already turned in

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exceeds that 250 foot setback. So even some of the other regulations that were proposed, I'm very I I do feel confident without having the ability to say that I can mandate it that they others would be willing to do the same. Um I will note though we are pulling all of the site plans that we've seen so far on the

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proposed and site plans are concepts. So they can change it between now and pulling their permit again as long as whatever they turn in meets our zoning guidelines and development standards. But we are pulling all of those to see what have they proposed so far. Are they potentially already in compliance and we just didn't even realize it. So, we're taking a look at that.

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>> Yeah, I like what I see here and I I will um agree with Councilman Beck about regulations on the sound. How can we really make sure that is enforced? And then also with Council Member uh Jana Martinez about getting the public engagement, not for two reasons. One, to

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hear from them again, but secondly, also to outline what we are doing here at the city of Fort Worth to answer all those concerns. Thank you so much. >> Thank you, Council Member Crane. >> Thank you, mayor. Um, thank you, Jess,

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too. Um, I from the conversation I've had and all the information I see you've put up there, y'all done a lot of homework. You, uh, it feels like every city department has been involved in some way, shape, or form. So, I want to thank them as well, uh, for putting this

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out there. You've answered a lot of the questions. I had had tons of questions. My colleagues have asked really good questions and pointed out some things already. you know, why Texas, why these are coming to Texas, the property tax piece of it, uh jobs, wages, the setbacks, crypto mining, the difference

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there, water uses, um the other uh environmental permits that are required, the noise standards, uh the generation generators, what the city can and can't control, uh what other Texas cities are doing, the incentive guard rails,

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cryptocurrency, the crypto mining, the difference between that. My question too because this this my question really for you is you you touched on it but I think it's worth noting that uh especially the district three the west part of Fort Worth you've got a lot of ETJ it's in

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other parts too you got it down six you got it in 10 but I want to reiterate um we have the ability to do uh a lot of good things here but some of these could still develop out >> on our peripheries if we don't act in

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some way and encourage them to uh so tell us again the negatives if we say just say no. >> Yeah. The negatives I mean so again if it develops within our water CCN we are obligated to serve it water anyway and so it would fall under our water.

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>> We have we have to we have to give it water. We have to give it water. Um we can't deny it. >> Correct. The only way we could deny it is if we physically do not have the water available or we physically cannot treat that volume through the plant or something like that. Uh but come by 2028, we don't have that limitation. Um

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anything in our CCN would fall within our water policy if it's served by us. So I will note that. But anything just outside of that service area that is in Tarant Regional Water District service area, it we would have no say in the regulation on it, but it is going to

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pull from the same raw water resources that we are and we don't get to put a cap on it. Um so we feel strongly about being the leader in requiring closed loop within this area. And then one thing I'll note because Chris Harter has told it to me multiple times and I just forgot to say it, but I I think it's an important point. With the adoption of

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this updated policy and the requirement to use closed loop and even requiring that wastewater treatment permit, we would strongly recommend that our wholesale customers adopt that same um rule. So that actually would protect an even larger area by by us requiring

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that. >> Great. Um I agree with uh colleagues that said we need uh robust I know you've already talked to some of the groups that are out there residents I would over the next few weeks as as much

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as we can a robust you know resident public engagement as part of this just to make sure that we've answered all the questions that we can and there's a really good understanding you know from what I see what's happening across the state and Fort Worth is really leading the efforts here and I'm proud of

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y'all's staff. You know, we're requiring, it looks like from these regulations that y'all suggested, best practices at the same time working to protect our neighborhoods and our residents. So, I'm proud of that. I think we also just need to make sure that that robust public engagement um

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quills the fears as best as possible that people have about these and answers our questions and make sure that we understand fully what's happening. Said this, we've got one chance to get this right. Mhm. >> Um and so tight policy will help us do that. Um and moving quickly will help us

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do that. And I understand the limitations we have on a potential moratorum. I know counties have done it and there's a risk from the state. It sounds like lawsuits already that they don't have that authority. It sounds like our authority for a moratorium is limited in the the notice that we have

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to give to citizens which pushes to late October. By a uh January, the legislature will go back into session. And from the conversations I've had with our state legislators, this is topic number one in this next legislative session. So, I think we have the ability

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to lead um here and put a good model together that other cities could model too. And so, I I commend you for that. And I think overall, I just want to make this point. You know, our goal is not to approve every single data center that comes to Fort Worth. Um, our go go goals

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goal is to make sure that when development does occur, and it will occur in this region regardless, Fort Worth residents are protected. Fort Worth gets the tax revenue because they're going to be on our infrastructure and everything else. And our neighborhoods are not sacrificed for

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the sake of the deal. And I think what you've profered here gives us the ability to regulate that as best as possible. And so I commend you on that. >> Thank you, sir. Understood on the engagement. Got it. >> Thank you. Chris, did you have anything?

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>> Okay, >> I didn't. >> Thank you. Any other questions or comments from council? Jess, do you have any else you need to follow up on? >> No, I appreciate the questions here. I've tracked them. Um, so we have the list of the few items that we'll work to get y'all some more robust answers. We

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will get our date scheduled then to have an openhouse. So, we'll do an inerson openhouse with our staff. Um, and then we'll also make sure on this website that there's a way to communicate with us, watch this presentation, also access to everything that I've kind of covered in here. Um, try to get all of that information out.

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>> Okay. Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you all. I appreciate it. And huge thank you to our teams. They truly have done an incredible amount of work to get us to this point. We really appreciate them. >> Thank you to city staff for working so hard. And to you too, Jess. Great job. Thank you. Um, council, that's

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conclusion of our work session items. Are there any future agenda items you want to mention to staff? No. With that, we're going to adjourn and then we're going to reconvene into budget session in about five minutes.