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Video-1: youtube.com/watch?v=cHNY6ci0VSM

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I know that. >> Well, so ours is we're not perfect. Uh so, my Instagram credit They did zero to Yeah. I mean, obviously I would always go through it. As already scheduled. How long is the course? It's 50.

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Uh I don't know what that is. A lot of fire but it was really good. They did some Yeah, so you know, she was she was out there for the weekend. Uh So, it was it was awesome. I don't know I had a hotel on It was really really good.

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Cuz I used to live there. Uh Whenever I see you. Uh But I never really Once I saw him Yeah, I know. I'm sure you Obviously you got to get more of a feel. All right, thanks.

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Yeah. Uh We were supposed to be able to bring our own shooting equipment. I'm sorry. But I never really Um Obviously you got to Yeah. Uh We were supposed to be able to bring our own shooting equipment.

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Uh Actually don't No, yeah. >> I go at the end, so maybe I'll be there. >> Okay. You can Google it. >> Yeah, right. >> Thanks. Not really good. >> Actually don't >> No, yeah. >> I go at the end, so maybe I'll be

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>> You can Google it. >> Yeah. >> Thanks. Not really >> Good morning. Good morning. >> Good morning. How's the table? >> [laughter] >> Well, they're the only ones that almost the only ones they ever have are here. I was saying

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I was >> How are you? How are you? How are you? How are you? How are you? How are you? How are you? >> [laughter] >> Okay, there is quorum. I think we're ready to go. >> [clears throat]

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>> I thought it was Michael's. >> All right, let's go. We got eight. Lisbeth Searin, Heather Searin. All good? Okay. Good morning, everyone. It's 5 minutes after 10. I call to order the City

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Council work session for our budget work session on the FY 2027 uh budget meeting. for Tuesday, June 16th. Uh Jay, you're opening remarks. >> everyone. It's 10 minutes after 10. >> This is the last

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>> city council budget work session work session on the FY 2027 uh 2027 uh budget meeting. >> I want to thank >> June >> Good morning, everyone. Heads and the departments, the hard work that's been going on. >> Good morning, everyone. >> A good morning. This is the last

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>> As we've been talking about, we're staring at a pretty hefty uh budget gap as we move forward. And uh last week we went through what we call budget blitz, where every department uh came and uh offered up their proposed budgets along

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with potential cuts and additions and those kind of things. Uh we have we got them all done. Um and so now the budget group and the city manager's office is will be working on trying to put this together and get to a balanced uh budget. As we mentioned last time, uh

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when we started off, we were looking at about a $50 million budget gap. We're still in that range. Um without we we are looking at a lot of different ways to close that uh gap. No final decisions yet, but we have some significant um

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cuts and changes that we'd be probably offering up. In July, we'll get the final appraisal from Tarrant Appraisal District. Uh we're hoping that we'll have a positive surprise on the uh on the commercial side on the appraisals like we did last year. Um

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This year again, we're not going to really have a big change or any change. Uh and if anything, it's going to be negative on the residential existing residential since those uh properties are not being appraised. So, with that, I will call up uh Brady

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Kirk to start us with uh our list of of different presentations today. >> Morning. Thank you, Jay. Thank you all for being here today for this. So, you're going to hear from a lot of different departments today. You're going to hear from uh our environmental services, our water

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department, and transportation and public works. And everything you're hearing about today in today's work session is about rates and fees that are paid by by users, uh residents, businesses within the city. And leading into all that, we're going

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to start with an overview of really everything that a typical resident would pay in Fort Worth just uh for essential costs for being a someone in the city. And the amounts we're looking at are current amounts only. So, any potential

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increases you hear about later on in the work session are not reflected in these amounts. So, we're really in a key part of the budget process right now. And as we go through this every year, a lot of our focus and balancing and key decisions has to do with the general

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funds. So, when Jay talks about a big gap that we're trying to close and some challenges there, that's in the general fund. And that naturally gets the most attention. And even within that discussion, we can almost boil that down sometimes to where it all seems to be about what's going to

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happen with property tax and any kind of decision on the tax rate. And that's fair and and justifiable because that's a a major cost of being in Fort Worth and affordability. But when you look at what somebody who lives here has to pay all wrapped up,

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almost half of those costs are things that come on that monthly utility bill that are other than property tax. So, here on the screen, you're seeing an approximate monthly amount if you added that all up and and of course people don't pay their property tax

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monthly, but if you spread that over 12 months, that's what that would look like. So, out of about $240 overall, someone would need to be paying to the city for city services about 108 of that, 46%

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or 45% comes from those other costs. And all cities in Texas are providing the same services. Uh but there could be some difference in how they pass the cost of those along. I think these easiest example to see of

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that is that in one of the cities we're going to look at there's actually no solid waste charge on the utility bill. But that doesn't mean that residents are not paying for that. It's probably just covered in the property tax and the sales tax and the general sources like that.

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So, what we want to show you today is if you look at cities all across Texas and then within the Metroplex how does Fort Worth measure up to what other cities are doing? And all these combined charges that we're going to look at are these ones that we're including on the screen right

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here. So, no matter where you are in Texas, if you own a home, you're going to be paying property taxes or at least vast majority including every city we're looking at here. And pretty much everybody is also going to be paying water, waste water rates on

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a utility bill and solid waste fees. And then some of these other ones might not be universal, but a lot of cities are going to charge a storm water utility fee. I think every city we're looking at today includes that. Most cities are going to have an environmental protection fee.

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Um sometimes you might see a street maintenance fee and then one just one city in the the peer groups that we're looking at today also includes an EMSV. And we're looking at three different groups of cities here. So, you could compare

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Fort Worth to other cities on some different bases. So, the first one would be major cities across Texas. And this is I think the truest way to really build a peer group for Fort Worth. So, major cities we're saying anything

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above a population of half of a million residents and that includes Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, and El Paso. And then the next one we're going to look at is local cities. So, we're saying that cities that are

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right around Fort Worth. So, you imagine maybe a person who's gotten a job in Fort Worth or in one of these cities and they could really live anywhere around here and they're trying to decide about where they want to be based in order to just put down roots here and and live

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their lives. And then the last one is what we're calling regional competitors. So, this is still within the Metroplex and it's those larger to mid-size cities, Plano, Irving, Garland, Frisco, and McKinney. So, these are a

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population all of them right around a quarter of a million residents. And these are cities that Fort Worth could maybe compete with if it was something like a a company headquarters, a major development, maybe even events would be something where Fort Worth

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would be competing with these cities. So, just like on the first slide, you saw that roughly $240 per month for a typical resident, uh we built a comparable amount, an estimated amount for every one of these cities that we're going to be looking at.

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So, um we're using consistent usage assumptions for water. Uh so we're using those cities' rates, but our volume assumptions, uh except for if a city published what its actual average water bill monthly was for a

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resident, we use that. Uh for solid waste, we're using the largest cart size they have, and we're using our own largest cart size. Uh 2,000 square foot home, a median single-family taxable home value as published by the cities, which

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mostly they have to do for tax rate purposes, but I think there's at least I think there's only one to where we use the average listed price of a home and then applied that city's homestead exemption. And then we're also seeing what these costs are in aggregate as a percentage

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of a median household income, and we use the 1-year average from the Census Bureau for that, or 1-year median. So just as a high-level summary, looking down these lists, and and overall, it's there's five in each of those categories, so

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along with Fort Worth, that makes a group of 16, or three groups of six. And Fort Worth consistently is above average in in all of its affordability, and then really even the metrics you see at the bottom of that list, which is what

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percentage of income goes to these city costs. Uh against those large cities, which is Fort Worth's real peer group, we're especially competitive on that front, being in the top third of almost everything. Uh versus the local cities, we're

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doing well as also. I'll dive into that, and then we're consistently the most affordable if you compare to those regional competitors, but it's just hard for Fort Worth to compete on an income basis against some of those. >> So starting with the major Texas cities,

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when you look at this list, what stands out is there's one city which is is far above the average and and one which is much more affordable than the most of the group, but overall uh the majority of this is pretty

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tightly clustered around a similar range, and and Fort Worth is fortunately the lowest among that group, so it it edges out a couple of those cities just narrowly, but it comes out as only the um second

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second most affordable out of this entire group of six. Looking at the local cities, which you think about that, that's a a group that has totally different economics uh in their scale and just what they're dealing with in terms

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of offering services, but even though Fort Worth is really competitive against the large cities when the way it stacks up against these small local cities, which are nearby, uh it's coming out it's really close to second, it just gets narrowly edged by Arlington for that,

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but it's it's still in the top half of affordability among these local cities. And it's the same thing mostly, you see four of the six pretty tightly clustered around a similar level of affordability. And then finally, if you look at these

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regional competitors, it's a lot more simple here. Fort Worth is is really by far the most affordable of this group, and uh just again, why we would compare to a group like this, this these are still cities people might consider living in for one thing within

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the Metroplex, but these are also cities that have made some big public moves in economic development, and so that's a good basis to compare to them on. Um and like I mentioned earlier, some of these cities being a little bit more suburban, it's hard for Fort Worth

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to compete necessarily on on the income, but even taking that into account, Fort is Fort Worth is still within the middle third of affordability relative to median household income. So, just to sum it up, I coming back to the point that

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no matter which group you're comparing Fort Worth to, that if you stack up against really large cities, some of the biggest cities in the country, or some small cities, populations in the low 10,000s, that Fort Worth is competitive against all those, and also

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against some really affluent cities, I think that's a great, really encouraging sign. And then any increases that you'll see today, just a reminder, those were not included in this group. But at the same time, cities all across the state are going to be increasing their costs as well.

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Everybody's dealing with the same um regulatory and economic environment. And so, if you see Fort Worth coming up on anything, you should expect all those peer cities to be similarly increasing some of their rates just to keep up with what they need to do cost-wise.

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So, throughout the morning, you're going to hear next from Cody from Environmental Services. Then Chris Harder is going to come up from the water utility to talk about water and wastewater rates. And then finally, Jennifer from TPW is going to talk about

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um stormwater utility rates. >> All right, thank you, Brit. And just as a reminder, this is like we did last year, I think it worked really well, getting your feedback on this is where staff is with proposed rates and where they'd like to see them. Um but like last year, we got your

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feedback, and I I think we ended up reducing, for instance one of the rates in half. Another one the council was more uh apt to increase it, so we did that. Um so we wanted to get your feedback. We're in the middle of the of the process, so nothing's set in stone from

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from a stat stats perspective, so we can make adjustments all the way through. >> Chris, do you have a question? >> I have a question. Um so you said San An- we we were looking at monthly cost uh comparison for major Texas cities. San Antonio is 55% larger in population

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than we are. What are they doing differently that has their costs so low? >> Um if you talk about San Antonio's strategic approach, uh it's hard to comment on that. I think >> If you go back to the graph, you can see the areas where they're cheaper on the

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presentation. >> Okay, yeah, so >> I guess let me let me rephrase it. What are How are they able to keep their costs so much lower? >> I wanted if they can put the presentation back up. >> Yeah. >> Whoever's controlling that. There is um

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>> It's a good question. So if we just look at the categories that drive that, I would it looks like San Antonio's um water and wastewater rates really stand out. They're the the lowest by far of that group. So that's one thing. Um

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it's hard to say cuz I think you're talking a little bit more big picture. What does San Antonio do? It's hard for me to answer that, but one thing at least about San Antonio that stands out is it's not like some of these cities part of such a a larger connected

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metropolitan area um like Dallas and Fort Worth or or Houston, which is almost the third largest city in the country. It's mostly San Antonio, and San Antonio kind of is the main city, so I don't know if that could have anything to do with this. >> Oh, a couple of things. One is the average

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home value is much less. So when you apply the property tax, that's why the property tax is is less, so the actual tax is paid is less. And then on the water side, all their water is ground water. Is that correct, Chris? And so they're not paying a regional

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uh water group like we are to turn regional water district that has to build and maintain all of the lakes. And so their cost of raw water, just pumping it out of the ground, is much less than the cost for anybody in this region where all our all our water comes

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from lakes. >> And they have a significant, if I remember correctly, they have a significant water reclamation system. >> They do. And I mean I think we're not as as uh long as they are or in this region, but the difference is they have less water to get out of the out of the

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ground. And then finally, the last thing I'd say is just traditionally, they've spent a lot less on infrastructure. And so they have a we have some some uh storm water issues in Fort Worth. They have a lot a lot more than we do, I think, when when it rains heavily down

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there. >> Any other questions for Brady? We're all good? >> Thank you. >> Okay. Thanks, Brady. All right. Looks like we have next step uh You do this or I do? Cody Wittenberg from uh Solid Waste Environmental

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Services to give us a presentation on on rates. >> Good morning. Thank you for a few minutes. So, in Environmental Services, we have three specific funds that we look at each year. So, we have our Environmental Protection Fund. This is all about litter and keeping our city clean. We have our General Fund, which

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is a portion tied to consumer health specifically and commercial compliance. And then we have our Solid Waste Fund. I'm just going to touch on each of these three today. Starting with our impact as a overall, we our community is really focused on creating and maintaining a clean, attractive city, taking care of our waste, taking care of our properties,

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and just keeping things clean overall. You can see many of the things that we experience on a day-to-day basis here in this photo. And to start with the Environmental Protection Fund, so key priorities are keeping the city clean, litter, street sweeping, making sure that we take care of illegal dumping, air, land, water

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quality, environmental inspections, making sure we're promoting reuse for cleaning up properties through site remediation and the Brownfields program. And we have some unique characteristics. We've worked very hard to build solvency on this fund over the past few years. And as we look into the future, we want

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to leverage our ability to pay for pay-go capital, really invest in our street sweeping program to continue the the efforts we've made so far to create that clean attractive city. We also have an ongoing demand. There's a big demand to keep our our campsites cleaned up, our roadways clean, making sure that our

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properties are well managed even if it's public or private sector. We work very diligently to do that. And then we also have our allocations annual adjustments. I think the punchline here is we worked again since 2023 to really leverage this renewed sense of security for this fund.

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And we just want to lean into this space a little bit further. As we look into our FY27 proposed budget, we are meeting our reserve requirement. It's about a $25 million fund overall. Again, you're going to see these key features to really invest in our fleet and really keep things moving forward in that environmental

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cleanliness space. We also want to make sure we're committed to reviewing this fund on a year-by-year basis and bring forward these rates reviews every single year. So, what is the punchline for the Environmental Fund? This year we're proposing an 11% across-the-board

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increase. So, for your typical residents, that's from 225 to 250 or a 25 cent per month increase. And uh the the additional changes there that you see for commercial, industrial, and nonprofit follow suit. Our key goal is to really add another uh up-spire crew,

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to bring in a couple of street sweepers, and really again build up that fund balance for our pay-go capital. This overall promotes that concept of a clean city and really invest in these programs moving forward. I'm going to talk a little bit about the rate history very briefly. Fund was established in the early '90s and really

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got solidified in 1995. And we've worked very hard, but I want to point out that there was no rate increase on the environmental fund for about 28 years. Then moving into 2023, we leveraged our services between the solid waste fund and the environmental fund and really found that rate and and rate balance and

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that fund alignment with those services. We've added crews across the board to keep our city clean over the last few years and really moved into most recently in 2026. We added five crews to really focus in on illegal campsite cleanup. And I think they've done a beautiful job taking care of the city.

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Moving into our general fund, switching gears a moment. >> Can I just uh interrupt you for a second, Macy? >> Yes. >> Cody, I had a quick question. I We addressed this when we you did the preview for me on page seven. Going back to the flat rate of 11%. We talked that through and why it's 11% to all those categories.

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>> Absolutely. So, we we wanted to try to have a a very defined budget for our residents and those ratepayers that are at the residential rate. And so, we started with that 25 cents there. And then in order to keep those You can see the categories between residential, commercial, industrial. They're not the same. We want to make sure that we're

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accounting for those different business types and the uh the amount of material that they may produce into the community or impact to the community. And so, we tried to keep those different rates um strategically spaced so that you can see that the resident is is uh three is 250,

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keeping that $41 at commercial, and 130 at industrial. We really want those commercial industrial ratepayers to pay more as all payers pay the environmental fund. >> Cody, uh one question that I have right now. Um going back to your chart, priority three,

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um you know, the the addition of a um you know, up-spire crew and then two sweepers. Is that a purchase of two sweepers or a leasing? Or is that been determined? >> Absolutely. So, it takes a moment for our sweepers to be built and to be received. So, we'd probably start with

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maybe adding in some additional crews for through a through a contract service as we did to kick off the street sweeping program in 2024. And then we'll work to to bid out and to receive that equipment and and add those in in the near future. >> All right. Thank >> Woody, just for fun, when we get when we

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actually get our street sweep the new two in, are we going to do a naming competition for them like we did for >> You know, there's probably some backup names on the list, but I think it'd probably be fun to go back out and see what people think. >> All right. >> Deborah. >> Well, I had to tell Dr. Wittenberg I I am extremely proud of the work we're

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doing with our Up-Spire teams. I told him I was out on a Sunday and I was going from one meeting to another and the Up-Spire teams were out working on Sunday. And as we see the proliferation in additional homeless camps, it is good to see these

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teams out there because that's probably one of my biggest resident complaints is making sure that we are getting to those camps and getting the services to the homeless the unhoused that are there. So, thank you. >> Absolutely. Thank you. >> All right. Proceed, sir.

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>> All right. So, moving into the the second fund that we perceive within our with our department is a portion of the general fund. Again, this is your commercial health team and your and your consumer health team and your commercial compliance team together to really find that synergy there. Here's just a list of some of the initiatives we collaborate on with our departments and

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some of our core mission. Again, this is is restaurant inspections, keeping food safe and healthy, and making sure that those consumer components are really really well taken care of. As we look into this particular fund, we're really just leaning into that consumer health business unit. So, every

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good business wants to make sure that every business unit is balancing their expenses and their revenue. And so, in this case, this is the the rate payers are those permittees. So, these are your restaurants, your grocery stores, your child care, hotel, motel, those in in in individual units that get a health

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permit from the city. That's the revenue coming in. And of course, we provide those services in terms of inspections and reviews and what have you. So, we have a few changes. You may recall Senate So, SB 1008 last year changed the way that cities could hot charge restaurants for their health

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permit. So, we have a flat rate at 773. And we've worked the last couple of years to really look at all of our our permit fees. So, a couple of things we're proposing for this year. Last year, you may recall hotel and motel health permits and swimming pools and spas health permits did a we we agreed

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with the various stakeholders to look at a two-year phased approach to get those to cost recovery. And so, we are looking at it a year two of that two-year approach this year. Last year, we did not raise our health permits for child care facilities. And similar to what we did with motels and hotels and swimming

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pools and spas, we're proposing a two-year incremental rate increase to also balance out cost recovery on that particular set. Again, same concept like every business, we want to make sure we're looking at all of our fees annually and bringing that forward on a year-by-year just to ensure full cost recovery. I want to underscore the goal

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is not to to make money. We are not a for-profit entity. We're just trying to cover our cost to provide these services to these individual individuals. >> And we appreciate your department being sensitive to council input on that regard to try to, you know, extend this and stage it so that it's not an immediate impact.

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>> Absolutely. Appreciate that. So, when you look at >> Go ahead, Chris. >> Um sorry. You said that we haven't raised our rates in 28 years. So, for 2025, where what was the gap or was there a gap in in what we brought in versus what we had to pay?

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>> Absolutely. So, so on the environmental protection fund, we we had that that gap. So, one key thing is we we were able to get our fund in service is re-aligned. So, as an example, there was about $4.5 million on the solid waste fund where just the solid waste customers were paying for

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those services for litter and illegal dumping and those types of things. And so we were able in 2023 to offset some of those costs and also to do another investment of about 2 to 3 million dollars into our programs. So it really wasn't necessarily a a cost deficit, but it was really about program expansion

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and getting those services right aligned with the the right ratepayers. And again, environmental fund, everyone pays. Solid waste is just those individuals that have solid waste service. >> Can Can we go back to the fund uh the sheet that talked about the rate increases and uh specifically

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the health care permits for uh tier one, tier two, and tier three. Um what was the thought process behind that? And I do like that because I have smaller uh uh health care day cares in my district. So but kind of walk me through the

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thought process. >> Absolutely, I appreciate that. So again, picking up with the general fund and our consumer health rates for for proposed for '27. Whenever we looked at our our child care or our day care facilities, we wanted to really look at a tiered system to really allow for some some

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variability from the smallest businesses to those larger businesses. So as a as a point of as just a point, you can see in that second column under children in care. So the Department of Health and Human Services licenses day cares based on the the number of children that they

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can have within their capacity. And so we do not provide a health permit from the city for those smallest businesses that are 12 or fewer children. That's just a a license straight through the state. We'll of course work with the state if there's any sort of issues, but we're not performing that right routine inspection or charging that extra

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expense for a permit. But as you look at tier one, tier two, and tier three, this particular year is the first time we've ever approached it like this and we tried to allow for that for that stair step, 12 to 99, 100 to 174, and 175 or over. And again, it's all based on that

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state licensing capacity that that child care has. Just another another couple of points here is uh before and after school care. You can see that that is another group here that we have also promoted. But as you see, 400, 440, 480, and 520 as a reference point.

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Switching gears a little bit further into our >> And And if I can, before he goes on to the waste fund, this is part of the general fund. And so, these are not full cost recovery. Um so, this is just trying to maintain where they are

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on a percentage-wise. Any Any Everything else is subsidized by by the general fund, which is mostly sales tax and property tax. Just want to make sure that was clear. >> Uh Do we have a an idea of what the deficit is then? I mean, what are we not covering?

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>> So So So right now, if you look at those top three bullet points on on our consumer health group, as we look into FY27, we have about an estimate of about 4.7 million coming in, and about 4.9 in expenses. Now, there's a little bit of overlap there. These are citywide programs like the

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mosquito program or under pest cleaning. We expect for the general fund without the the component of permittees or ratepayers in this case to cover those. But we are very close to break even. And I think as we continue to refine that, we're going to be able to make sure that this business unit within that greater general fund is covering all their

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expenses. >> But it's not fully loaded like you would think of an enterprise fund where they would pay for a portion of city manager's office, of the law department, of HR. Those services aren't fully loaded into this department. So, So, there is a There is

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a coverage factor that does not included in that number. >> Thank you. >> Switching gears, the third fund within our department is our solid waste fund. Again, this is residential garbage, recycling, yard and bulk, our drop-off stations, our ECC. This fund also covers

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for dead animal collection, pedestrian street cans, our education, residential collections compliance, so making sure what portion is supporting those code officers that are helping to enforce our our garbage rules. And then also we have our oversight of our Southeast Landfill.

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The solid waste fund challenges, we worked last year to get the first rate increase on this particular fund. Um we recognize that our rates do not fully cover our annual operational cost on the solid waste fund. And the reason that we have been able to do that is we have really as a community leveraged

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these additional revenues that we get because we own our landfill, we receive rent and royalty and some other revenues like our landfill environmental fee. But as we've discussed, we have some cost on the horizon as we prepare for the future closure of that landfill one day and what those long-term solid waste

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solutions look like. And so we really want to make sure we are leaning into this fund and really having really good fund management and fund stewardship. There's three key pieces of this, daily operations, our capital investment that we're going to need now and in the future, and then also those long-term service obligations. As we know time

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moves on and cost to do business increases. So for >> to just note worthy to point out Cody that maybe back around the 2012 time frame, the city council then made a decision to go with a diversion program

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for you know waste management and that reduced the amount of you know types of waste that went into the landfill. In other words, if you had yard waste, wouldn't go in there. Recycling wouldn't go in there. So that added you know life to the landfill. And

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now we're looking at this point in time and and it's expected, right? There there's a there's a certain lifetime to you landfills, but had the city council then not done it, we would have been in a probably a much worse position. >> Yeah, you're absolutely right. So diversion programs are critical and

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every landfill has a landfill capacity. And so, we want to make sure we're always honoring that and trying to maximize our landfill life as long as we can. We'll talk a little bit about that at the end as well. Thank you for that. So, looking at the particular fund overview, the reserve requirement is met

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here. We are We have about 24 million in that reserve requirement and about 24 million or so held for for paygo. But, we know that the cost of landfills and things in the future is going to be a lot more than that. It could be between 200 and 250 million dollars. So, we have to really lean in and start saving now

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for those long-term investments. And we have done this. You may recall last year we kicked off the RNG or renewable natural gas project at the Southeast Landfill. That's a new revenue source that we did not have currently in design, but we are receiving that development fee for as long as they are

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in that place. And we were able to secure, you know, for this year, $1 million is tucked away for that future long-range solution. And we have the ability to do that with other lines of of revenue. So, maybe landfill rent and royalty can be delegated and reserved

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for this future cost. Or for example, the landfill environmental fee. I'll touch on that in a moment as well. For this particular fund, we have continual annual rising cost for our our expenses go up every year. We also are always trying to balance out for that

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again that paygo capital. And we want to make sure we're looking at our rates year over year to look at those annual rate adjustments to see if we need to move things forward. Our punchlines here are services and infrastructure needs. Everything that we're proposing as part of these rates is really just to balance out the fund and could keep things

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moving forward in that respect. A different way to see this rather than all the words on the page are three key areas. So, you've got daily operations. You can I want to point out that this fund also did not have a rate increase for about 19 years. And this was our first rate increase was last year to

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start to to play catch up to make sure that this fund is is fully solvent and recovering. So, you can see we have made efforts to close that gap. In FY25, we had a $20 gap. In 26, with that rate increase that was approved, we got it down to 17 million. Again, there's lots of variables here. And as we look into

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27, if these rates move forward, uh we'll be able to continue to close that gap incrementally with a $7 gap moving forward. We also again want to make sure we're having adequate savings for these long-range cost, and we want to make sure that we're always looking at all of our costs across the board as that

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subsidy ends with the landfill, and we're balancing out all all of our contractual obligations. Just a picture of what that kind of looks like over time. You can see that in uh to to Council Member Flores' point, in 2003, we moved to a contract-based system where the city no

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longer collected garbage. That was a good move in terms of a business decision, and then we developed the three different lines or the three different cart sizes at that time. So, we have a 32-gallon, a 64-gallon, and a 96. We also have just seen that that those rates basically remain the same.

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There was a small change for a healthy recycling market in 2014, but for the most part, it was pretty neutral. However, we know our costs continue to rise, and we still needed those savings for those future solutions. So, as we move into this particular fiscal year, we are looking at uh

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proposing a 20% across the board. I kind of view this as the top of a peak or of a of a multi-year process to restore some balance to this fund, and then I kind of maybe the apex, if you will, and looking at the next few years to really bring this fund fund into really sound

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financial management. So, you can see just as an example, for those individuals that were grandfathered in with the 32-gallon cart and want to continue that, it's a $2.75 increase, so going up to $16.50 per month. 64-gallon, again, 1950 is the

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current rate with a $3.90 increase at 20%, that goes up to $23.40, and then 96-gallon, similar concept 2575 with an additional 515 goes up to $30 and $0.90. Again, the whole goal here is

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to make sure that our rates are bringing in enough revenue to cover our true cost and we're paying saving for that future pay go requirements that are going to be needed. Just another way to view that. You can see that again, remember there was no rate increase for about 19 years. So

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that FY25 rate of 1250, 1750 and 2275 at the bottom really was kind of where we started. In 26, the the the rates increased and that dark green color shows the proposed 27, but I want to point out that we're still not fully bringing in enough revenue to provide

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the services that we perform. I also want to point out to the right side. We really looked at each individual business unit or business line item within the services we provide to come up with a monthly overview for each of these particular programs. You can see that breakout there.

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So as we lean into a few other fees really quick and then we can have some additional conversations about solid waste. We also are always looking at our different business components to make sure that there was full cost recovery and we are also able to leverage any of other revenue as we save for those future expenses. So here you can see a

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couple. The landfill environmental fee not to be confused with the other environmental fee. This is paid at the landfill and Republic, our landfill operator, provides this over to the city as a function of of that particular group. You can see there's about seven and a half million dollars there between

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those two. This is an example of revenue that we could leverage and save for that future pay go rather than using it to subsidize the rates in a long-term strategy. The last three that you see here, overloaded carts, extra bag fees and nothing out trips. I just want to explain those a little bit further. So a

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couple years ago we realized that that some of our customers were causing us extra expenses on the city side through our WM contract to allow for these overloaded carts. When the lid is up and there's trash overflowing or when they set extra bags down, it takes extra time for the crews to collect that material.

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So, we did start the conversation and and we're able to move these new fees forward with $6 and $3 respectively. Over the last year, as we really lean into this, you don't see a huge number of extra bags. We see some overloaded carts, but we want to make sure we have full cost recovery. And it takes staff time

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and some other components to make sure that these individuals are making sure that those line items are put into the water bill, entered into the system, and verified cuz we don't want anyone to have a charge that's incorrect. The last one is a nothing out trip charge. Sometimes individuals will call for us to go out

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and to go they call the call center and WM or one of our city crews will go out and to collect material that's supposed to be there. Sometimes that material will not be there. We want to make sure we have full cost recovery. So, if we go out and there's nothing out, there is still a charge. We do communicate that to the residents when they call in the

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call center for this particular service. >> Cody, when it comes to cost recovery, when you're looking at items like uh overloaded carts, for instance, uh the technology upgrades that council, you know, has supported in the past, are those beginning to help us out in that regard in terms of maybe reducing the

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amount of staff involvement with verifying that that now that we have the properly equipped trucks, they can see this and then, you know, give us that uh um electronic, you know, confirmation. >> Absolutely, and I really appreciate that. So, our our our garbage and recycling trucks, they are equipped with

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smart view technology. And so, that smart truck technology has cameras that we're able to log in and see the the footage from that particular route for that day. So, if someone was to to call in and say that their their trash was missed, for example, we're able to verify that rather than going into the

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field, we're able to look at that that footage. And I think to your point, we're able to also verify extra bags and overloaded carts because we want to make sure those charges are absolutely correct. And we have that footage to to discuss with those homeowners, but it does save us that field time to get out

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there and we are able to leverage those those gains, absolutely. >> Yes, go ahead, Nancy. >> Cody, we go back to 19 where you can see the Yes, it's perfect. Um so, I know what you're proposing for 2027, but we look at the gap, is there a plan for

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2028 and 2029 to close that gap or do we all propose something just a plan moving forward? >> Absolutely. So, we're looking really carefully at all of our financial models to understand what all of the ins and outs are and how this fund looks moving forward, what impacts are to our expenses, where we're able to leverage

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and cut, and we are hoping to be full cost recovery within 2 to 3 years. So, hopefully by 29 or 30, we are seeing that we are just looking at incremental rate increase to rate increases to maintain rather than trying to have to fill this gap. So, again, hopefully this

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is the top of that apex for a a 2 to 3-year strategy to close that gap fully and then maintain it moving forward. >> This is year two. I think we presented last year of about a 4 to 5-year plan. >> That's correct. >> We thought if inflation leveled out, it would be more of a 4-year plan.

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Inflation hasn't leveled out, gas prices are up, all those kind of things. So, it's probably more of a 5-year plan that started last year. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> So, just working to close out the conversation here, our ultimate recommendation from the Environmental Services Department is really to adopt a

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master fee schedule with respect to each of these three three funds for environmental protection, again, really focusing on a clean and safe city and developing out our sweeper program. Again, consumer health, our entire goal is just cost recovery from those individual permit holders. And then for solid waste rates, two key points,

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continue to close that gap and to prepare for those long-range solutions. So, over the next few weeks, we'll continue to receive feedback, communicate carefully with all of our stakeholders with the respective fees, and then we're also, of course, we'll continue to develop out that long-range plan to continue to refine those costs

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for our future capital. So, thank you for your time today. >> Thank you Cody. Go ahead Chris. >> So, with regard to just the size of of the the residential waste. So, it's waste waste management, correct? Um we're now 10th largest city, we're a

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million people. Um waste management already had an issue with the subcontractor not being able to fulfill the contract. Have you guys considered changing the way this is and not putting all of our eggs in one basket and maybe breaking the city into regions and having multiple sub

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providers um provide services so it allows us to make sure that those contracts are competitive? >> Absolutely, and I appreciate that conversation. So, we are a large city and we know that a single provider is is one way to do that and as we look into

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maybe a new request for proposal for for collections or any other function within our department, we're always looking to maximize our efforts and so that could be something that we look at in the future. Absolutely. >> Thank you. Thanks uh Dr. Weinberg. Going [clears throat] back to the environmental protection fund for just a

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second. Let's see the the prop FY 27 proposed expenses 18.8 million. Um do you know off the top of your head cuz maybe I missed it, but what was it for 26? As far as the expenses. >> About 18. I would say it's I need to

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look at all the allocations and what is adjusted. I'll have to circle back with you on the specific numbers, but um I would say this is is effectively the same with just a few increases for those allocations for other departments. >> Okay, got it cuz I guess one of my concerns is the uh the campsite cleanup. Um cuz I can't remember if it was the 3

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million in 24 that was spent and then I think it was 6 million in 25, but I remember it doubling and it was pretty stark and so I know we know those costs aren't going down. Um and so what I would just ask is and maybe we discussed this in public safety or I don't know where,

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but as we undoubtedly spend more on that campsite cleanup. Um working with uh PD as well and fire and all the stakeholders there to figure out, you know, what we're doing to um just prevent it as much as possible

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as well. So, we're just not always spending more and more and more to clean up. Uh certainly for those that are looking for services, city of Fort Worth is known to have a lot of services, so we certainly want to make sure we're offering those. But for those who just say, "No, I'm good. I just want to camp here." want to make sure that

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it's not the entire burden isn't just falling on the uh taxpayers who have to spend money on cleaning up because all they're doing is just moving from camp to camp anyways. >> Absolutely. >> And I know you all are doing an outstanding job of getting them cleaned up rather quickly. Uh but seems like we just keep chasing our tail and spending more and more money every year and as it

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increases, you know, those expenses are just we're just going to go up. So, maybe we can have a future discussion on that and what we're looking at to I guess we have to bring that back. Thank you, sir. >> Right. Elizabeth? >> I actually think that that's a valid point um that we, you know, as we continue to spend more money on these cleanups, what

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we really need to be asking ourselves is is this the most appropriate way to combat homelessness. I think the answer is not PD and fire because that's not a prevention. That's a tool that moves these people around um in large part creating the the cleanup. So, I the

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charge is for city staff, I think, to look at um neighborhood services and what we're doing on the prevention end and the the ending of housing, or I'm sorry, of homelessness. Um so, when you do that, I think it's fair, but I think we need to look beyond PD and fire because those happen after

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the fact and they don't uh necessarily prevent the homelessness. And cuz you're right, this is whack-a-mole and we're going to continue to pay uh for the camp cleanup because we are just moving people around the city. So, what are the solutions? >> Well, and that is why, and we've talked

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about this. I appreciate Tara Perez and what she does. I call her my homeless czar. They we have to do a holistic approach to this. It can't just be police and fire, but it has to be neighborhood services. So, we

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I am seeing it being done in my district and I think that it works. This holistic approach, but but that is why I >> [clears throat] >> I love what the Up Spire team does, but they go out not just by themselves. There is Hope team and other teams that

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work with them to get those unhoused individuals who want help to get them help. And so, I agree with you. It can't be just one piece. It has to be holistic and I think Tara is doing a good job of of coordinating that for us.

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>> I think at some point we have to What's the cost-benefit? And if we continue spending money on cleanups, which we need to continue to spend money on cleanups. People don't want homeless camps. What's the tipping point? When do we say we're spending so much money on cleanups, how much

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more effective would it be if we took that some of that money and put it into prevention? >> And I agree and and just to make sure that the one of the keywords I mentioned there was stakeholders. So, it's all of those parties you mentioned and and again good I'll just reiterate

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the point is and we've we've had this discussion at at nauseam, but I don't think it's something that needs to go away and it's a discussion we need to keep having is you have two, for lack of better words, two camps of folks and you have one who wants the help and the resources. Those we absolutely have the resources

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we could certainly use more, I'm sure. And that's where Tara and her team they're doing a great job. But then you have the others and there's a family that I actually talked to they're veterans and trying to get them help they're like, "No, fam. We're good. We're just going to stay here. We're going to do our own thing. This is how we want to be." That's the ones we would we need to figure out what are our other

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options there. Not just saying, "Hey, if you're homeless in a camp, we're going to go out and clean it out." and you know, boot you off somewhere else. It's a matter of taking care of those who want the help and then figuring out how we're going to prevent those who just want to be a blight. >> So, understood. Good discussion. Yes, go ahead, Macy.

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>> Just one more comment, Cody, since we're on the topic of homelessness. I mean, I think it's helpful publicly for you to address the work we've done East Lancaster and the support you've gotten from Councilman Nettles and myself on working with our shelter partners. And I don't know what the solution would be if y'all weren't there to clean up that area, but can you walk through the work

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that we've done so far? >> Absolutely. So, thank you for the opportunity to recognize that great team and the effort that Up Spire is helping with our city staff to keep the Lancaster corridor clean and even the greater areas around downtown. So, we have made a couple of programmatic adjustments since last fall to have one

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dedicated crew out in the Lancaster corridor and around downtown pretty much every single day. We noticed that there were also some needs over the weekend and it was really difficult to to clean areas up following a weekend. So, we were able to stretch resources across a 7-day period. So, we always have

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coverage. We have a now, I think, nine and to 10 individuals that are out there throughout the week really working to keep the area clean. Our city staff inspect every day twice a day the during the week to make sure that things are moving forward and I think it looks tremendously better and we've heard great positive feedback from our

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partners in the area and many people who visit the area. Thank you. >> Thanks, Cody. All right, next up we have a Chris Harter who's going to give a presentation on water and sewer plenary budget rates. Good morning, Chris. >> Good morning.

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If I could, I wouldn't mind starting with just kind of a additional information related to the San Antonio water system. They recently their board took a four-year rate increase plan to their city council. And they're going to be looking at some significant rate increases to to Jay's

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point to kind of catch up with infrastructure. so I I I would just say that we we when we benchmark, we look really uh competitive with a lot of our benchmark cities. So, today I'm going to be going over our proposed budget and proposed rates.

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Uh my finance team just loves this picture. And we recently drained and cleaned that storage tank, but we did not find a pot of gold at the bottom. >> [laughter] >> So, so uh if you've seen presentations from the water utility in the past, we start with

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just the overall increase in our budget. And it's looking at about 8.7%, but I'd always just uh predicate that with the fact that our system is growing and it's growing substantially. So, even though our expenses are growing, our revenues will be growing as well.

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So, I'm not going to be presenting an 8.7% rate increase to you. So, that $58 million, that 8.7% uh budget increase, it's kind of broken down by these main categories. O&M is the largest uh this year. When you look at O&M, uh you're talking

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about uh chemicals, power, personnel, um in this case, meters. You saw an MNC that on June 9th, there was a fairly large MNC related to meters. This will be our first year that we're actually going to be doing meter replacement. We started commercial

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meter uh installations in 2016, so now those some of those meters are all 10 years old. So, we're going to be replacing some parts and components of those meters. Um and then one of the things that uh and you look at that O&M, there is a focus

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this year in terms of increased plant maintenance. So, we're going to be really um focused on replacing a lot of instrumentation, a lot of the equipment that's uh needing replacement. So, there's an increase in the budget in terms of O&M at our plants.

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The TRWD TRA uh TRWD is our raw water provider. They have a I think a 12% budget increase accounts for about a 6% rate increase. Like us, they are seeing their system grow.

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And then on the TRA side, I think their their increases are more modest about 1 to about 3 and 1/2%. But taken together, it's about 12 to 13 million dollar increase. Capital, we're again increasing our

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capital expenditures. We're about 60% of that increase is on the cash side, about 40 45% of it is on the debt side. And you know when that when we talk about cash versus debt financing of capital, we usually use debt for growth related

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capital, cash we try to do for infrastructure renewal. And then transfers out, as our budget grows, you will always see the transfers out component increase because part of our transfers out is relates to um

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pilot, which is an asset valuation as well as street rental, which is based off 5% of our gross service revenues. And then on top of that, there's just some allocations that are also increasing. I think one of the largest ones relates to the IT allocation.

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So, I mentioned that our capital expenditures is increasing. This is our capital plan. If you've seen the capital plans that we presented over the last couple of years, you know that we are really focused on trying to get a lot of the

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growth related infrastructure installed. So, you still see 2027, just like we had in 2026, just like we had in 2025, some pretty pretty large expenditures. And uh hopefully, we will have most of this

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construction done by the summer of 2029. But, you know, we are going to be bidding out the Mary's Creek project here in another month. That's about a $430 million plant project. We're in the construction on the Eagle Mountain plant expansion,

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which is a $300 million project. We have pipelines that are going to those plants. And we have when you start talking about miscellaneous facilities, those are pump stations, lift stations, tanks that store and pump our water and waste water.

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I will make one other comment. If you see major transmission mains in 2027, $172 million. A lot A lot of that funding is related to replacing the large diameter cast iron transmission mains, which has been in

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the news just recently. >> That it has. And then one other uh uh task or one other I guess line item that I thought I'd show you is the loan forgiveness grant, $177 million. That is to fund the PFAS treatment at

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our Holly complex. And we've applied for a um a water development board board loan with loan forgiveness to fund that. So, there are rules that are um potentially being modified related to PFAS and related to

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uh the requirements in terms of the schedule. So, we'll be following that. Uh obviously, what we would like to do is we'd like to build that without necessarily impacting our existing rate payers. >> As far as any PFAS litigation, I know

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that Leanne has said before that it's kind of on a not much movement there. It is still coursing through, you know, the legal system. Um Would you like to add anything in that regard, Chris? >> So, we we did file

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a lawsuit. We opted out of the 3M and the Dow settlement. We opted into a BS BASF and Tyco settlement. We recently got some settlement payments on that to the tune of about $4 million.

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So, that has not even you know, we've already spent about $9 million to to do the design on that that treatment plant expand our treatment plant process improvement. So, you know, what we're really looking for is some type of

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cash infusion before we go forward with a an actual construction project. >> All right. And while we're on the capital improvement plan, you mentioned earlier IT and you and I talked about this before a few years back. You know, you had some um

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you know, older systems, some legacy systems there in place and the idea was in and please correct me if I'm wrong. Are we going to a more centralized IT support of whatever new equipment that you adopt software to support the

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current plant systems? >> Our IT staff will still be maintaining our our business functions. So, we feel like that's a pretty good model and keep in mind that we are in progress right now on a skater replacement

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project as well as we just started the billing system replacement project. So, you know, having IT staff dedicated to those projects that are going to see them from beginning to the end is pretty critical.

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>> Okay. So, you will have specific members of the IT department who are you know, trained on those water systems to maintain them. >> Yes. >> Okay. Thank you. >> So, let me talk about the the the projected growth. This goes to what

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we anticipate in terms of revenues. So, we anticipate in our retail accounts growing by 2.323% retail water usage and sewer flows growing by about 2% and you can see that that's down from

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last year. Those that five and four percent those are almost like a catch-up type number that we used last year. But we think that the two two and a half percent is probably going to be something you're going to see more frequently coming from us in terms of

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growth projections. I mentioned we had the 8.7% budget increase. This is what we're looking at in terms of a revenue requirement in in order to meet that budget. The 3.6% on the water system corresponds to about a $10 million funding gap

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and the 2.85% on the wastewater system corresponds to about a six and a half 6.3 million dollar revenue gap. So, how are we going to uh how are we going to adjust our rates to uh recover this revenue requirement?

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So, you remember last year we changed around our residential tier structure and we left the lower lower two tiers the rate alone. We're planning on doing that again this year. So, the lowest two tier

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rates are not going to increase. The rate increases on the upper two tiers are very very modest. And on the residential sewer side, a very very small 3 cent per CCF rate increase. So, what does this do to

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a residential bill? So, the different rates that I just presented are related to the volume. We also have a fixed charge that's based off of your meter size and that goes with all accounts. The fixed charge related to the water

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meter is going to be about 70 cents per month for a 3/4 inch meter and about 45 cents per month for the sewer for the same size meter. So, what you're looking at is whether you're an efficient, whether you're a large, you're going to be having a a

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$1.15 in fixed charges added to that bill. Then when you add on the volumetric charge, whether uh you're efficient or typical, you're going to see under a $1.50 increase per month on your water bill.

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And like I say, uh we do benchmark our rates uh with other utilities statewide, even national, and our our rates are really competitive. So, we're pretty proud about uh the financial stewardship we've had of this utility. So, that we're not um

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necessarily uh up on the high end like Houston is, like Corpus Christi is, and some of these other utilities that um just have some fairly large uh water and wastewater bills. So, we um we did have a meeting with TRWD. We feel like their rate is uh

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fairly fairly firm. Uh we have some meetings coming up with TRA. They uh bill us from both the Denton Creek plant and the Central plant. So, we'll be uh anticipating finalized numbers from them. And then uh we presented our our wholesale rates to our wholesale

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customers last week. Uh and then we have a uh couple more retail rates stakeholder meetings meetings. So, again, these are preliminary rates, uh but with that I'll ask for some feedback. >> Great questions from the

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anybody? >> What has the feedback been so far uh you know, from those retail stakeholder meetings and the wholesale meetings? Just generally. >> So, one of the I guess one of the items that we look at is obviously everything is based off

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cost of service. And so, these the stakeholder meetings, they have people from the uh industrial side, commercial side, and residential side. So, they're representing their their you know, category. And

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so, what we try to do is we we we present our allocations. We put put everything together and and show that that rate for that customer is based off cost of service. And so, that that's I think very appreciated from that group.

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One of the things that we we do look at is when we benchmark um the the scale from the lowest tier to the upper tier on the residential side. We're on the very very low side of that. And you know, what we've done is over the last couple years we've put a lot of

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the rate increases on the residential tier on the upper tiers. Because that is also the tiers that are driving a lot of the capital improvements, right? The plant expansions, the tanks, the pump stations. So, you know, I think that we're in the long game, but we're going to continue

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to kind of follow that strategy is that it also promotes conservation. It's it's that kind of usage is what's driving a lot of our capital investments. But we are on the low side there right now in terms of the the scale between the lowest tier and the upper tier.

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>> All right. Thank you, Chris. >> That's that's a one of the discussions I was we we generally have. >> Understood. Well, are there any questions? Thanks again, Chris. >> Thank you. >> All right. Next up, we'll call on Jennifer Donick to give us a

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presentation on stormwater utility fees. >> Hey. So, good [clears throat] morning. So, I will start my presentation with a brief history of the stormwater program background and our functions, and then we'll talk through our budget planning considerations and our proposed fee increase and our needs and how that

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will benefit the Fort Worth residents, and then of course our impact on the ratepayers. So, the stormwater utility was started in 2006 by Fort Worth City Council in response to devastating flooding in 2004 across the city. So, significant number

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of homes and businesses flooding as well as loss of life. So, our mission has always remained the same to protect people and property from harmful stormwater runoff. Um so, we are funded by a dedicated stormwater utility fee that is on the water bill

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as Brady discussed earlier, and that's paid for property owners with impervious surface with a few exceptions shown here on the slide. So, impervious surface impacts runoff, which in turn impacts our stormwater infrastructure, and so that is what drives our

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stormwater utility fee. We have four primary functions, which are really focused on public safety. So, first we maintain our infrastructure, so we've got miles of engineered channels, we've got drainage pipes, we've got culverts,

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and inlets across the city that we regularly maintain. We mitigate our hazards by reducing risks through capital project. And because we can't afford to just go build everything at once, we have a very important flood warning program. So, that's flood risk mapping, education,

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communication, and our high water warning flasher system that you see here on the screen. And then finally, we establish and continuously improve and review our development regulations focused on making sure that there is compliance with our development

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regulations and keeping both those new residents as well as existing residents safe from new developments. And all of these work together again, focused on a public safety function. So, as we planned for fiscal year 27,

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several key key factors came into play. So, again, just like everyone else is, we're experiencing higher economic costs. So, this graph here shows actually construction costs from the National Highway Construction

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Board. And so, you can see that's huge over the last few years. The broader economic climate, of course, is also impacted materials, professional services costs, labors. And then, at the same time, we're continuing to refine the understanding of our citywide needs

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and prioritizing and again, taking a tackled phased strategic approach to looking at our level of service. And so, of course, we want to balance all of this with rate payer affordability because we know everyone

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is experiencing these higher costs. So, the realities on the prior slide really shaped our proposed fiscal year 27 fee increase. So, we're recommending to keep the fee increase small at 5% to minimize the impact on our rate payers while also continuing to help our

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program improve the level of service that we provide to the community. So, the new revenue from this increase would support these three areas shown on the slide. First, it would launch a new program dedicated towards mid-size flood mitigation projects, which are generally

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in the $1 to $15 million range. It would increase the capital funds we put towards partnership projects. And then, it would fund a new position focused on improving channel and stormwater facility maintenance agreements, or what you often hear as Swiftmas,

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improving the asset management and inspection for those. And so, I'll go into each of these in a little more detail. Before I do that, I wanted to touch on the impact of single-family resident residential rate payers. So, for a typical tier two home that's shown here

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in bold, um they pay right now $7.29 a month on their water bill, and so that would increase by 37 cents more a month and go to $7.65. So, at the very top you can see the smallest tier one homes uh would pay 18

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cents month more with this rate, and then the largest tier four homes would pay 73 cents more a month with this proposed rate increase. And I'll circle back at the end of the presentation um and share the impact on the the larger rate payers as well.

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So, these two pie charts show the division of the new revenue for the next two fiscal years. Most of the revenue would go towards the capital mid-size flood mitigation improvements that's shown in green here, um and then with the next towards capital partnership projects in purple,

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and then the smaller amount to the new position for um asset management and inspections. So, you you will see um that blue slice towards that position larger in the first year because that includes the acquisition of a vehicle that's mostly a field worker, so we would acquire the

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vehicle and put more money to that in the first year, and then of course that goes down just to pay for that position um operational costs for the second year. >> [clears throat] >> So, the mid-size um flood mitigation projects is really important. Um

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as you know, we've been getting a lot of rain over the past few years, so we've got challenges across the city. Um we've identified 83 areas with roughly $500 million total um of needs identified in past um engineering evaluations just to

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understand our our flooding across the city. On average these projects cost around $5 million each and address neighborhood level flooding that can impact homes and businesses and roadways. Um but the needs don't reduce without the investment. Um, and we expect this

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list to continue to grow as we continue to evaluate more areas and we continue to have more rain events and get more reports of flooding that require investigation um, and more detailed um, engineering evaluation. So, without this dedicated funding,

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improvement needs just remain unfunded. I wanted to highlight a couple recent mid-size flood mitigation projects just so you could see how beneficial they could be. Um, in Westcliff, so that's um, a currently going on project, but it's it's nearing completion. I know

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residents are are ready for us to be done out there. That was a around a $16 million project and it will reduce flooding for 57 properties at the end. Um, and then in recently completed Greenfield Acres, um, this was a four-phase project totaling around 16

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and a half million dollars. Um, and that will mitigate flooding to around 66 properties or it has. Um, and both of these projects were actually partnerships too with the water department and the streets group as well. Um, so

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uh, these really just show how impactful mid-size flood mitigation projects can be especially when partnering with other groups at the city. So, changing the focus on partnerships, partnerships projects are one of our cost most cost-effective tools. Um, over the last 10 years, we've

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provided funding towards 28 partnership projects that are led by others. Um, and the city contributed around $12.6 million in stormwater capital investment towards these other projects. So, these projects reduce flooding, protect lives, they extend the life of our existing

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stormwater assets, and avoid future retrofit costs. Um, they also really minimize that disturbance to the community because we're able to put money towards a larger project. Um, so people can get new streets and new water and get some stormwater benefits as well

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all at one time. So, we're not having to go after the fact and disturb the same residents in a generally short time frame after the improvements are done. So, increasing dedicated partnerships funding allows us to participate more in projects led by other departments

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benefiting residents citywide. So, I wanted to highlight a couple of our partnership projects as well. We've contributed some storm water funding towards the Wagley Robertson arterial improvement project. This will mitigate a very hazardous road

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overtopping location shown here on the slide. There was a rescue here in 2021 multiple reports. We get there all the time. We never would have been able to do that just with storm water funding alone. So, we were able to help contribute some funding towards the arterial project to help make this happen.

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Another example here is shown in the historic Southside. Here we partnered with streets to relocate a drainage pipe to improve future maintenance. >> [clears throat] >> And then the third major area of need is improving asset management for our storm water facility maintenance agreements

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and city engineered channels. So, our current inspection capacity really limits how well we can prioritize our maintenance needs because we're only able to prioritize based on what we can inspect and condition assess. So, this graph shows here just the

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recent growth over well, not recent, but growth over time of storm water facility maintenance agreements across the city. So, now we have more than 1,000 across the city. >> If I can ask a question Jennifer at this point. >> Yes. >> I want to go back, I guess to slide 13.

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You said you're limited in what you can inspect. Is that primary driver number of available staff that are trained appropriately to do those inspections? >> Correct. >> do you have compliment wise that can do inspections? >> So, we have one position right now and

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they are focused on the SWMA's, the stormwater maintenance facility maintenance agreements, and then we have one position focused on channels. So what we're proposing is one new position that would do both to help with both. >> Okay, thank you.

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>> [clears throat] [snorts] >> Okay, so I talked about having over a thousand SWMA's now across the city. So these private drainage improvements come from detention ponds, drainage retaining walls, channels, and they're really critical for storing and

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conveying that runoff from private development to make sure that the private development doesn't make the flood risk worse. But every year we're identifying more and more locations that aren't being maintained appropriately and inadequate maintenance can lead to public safety issues

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and then also just aesthetic issues as well. >> [clears throat] >> Okay, so this this just talks about what Mayor Pro Tem Flores just asked about. So we're really proposing this position. The little

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infographics here on the slide show that with this additional position we can look at around 110 more SWMA locations annually and then five more miles of channel. And then it will also help us to have a two-person dedicated team that

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can go out there and do drone inspections so that can really help um more easily inspect really hard to reach areas. We're able to go and inspect those a lot faster and easily with a drone. But then we'll have to pull in someone from another team to do that. So

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we'll have another position there that can help get more drone inspections done. So again, all of these are focused again on making sure that the infrastructure is being looked at more frequently, focused on public safety and and >> [clears throat]

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>> Let's see. So, this um slide just kind of summarizes what um the benefits would be of our proposed fee increase. So, again, improved public safety, reduced flooding, more partnerships, um improved um maintenance um and prioritization of

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capital projects and um maintenance improvements as well. Okay. So, as mentioned earlier, uh we really looked at affordability when focusing on our fee increase. So, over the last several years, our stakeholder group has shared that smaller fee increases are easier for residents and

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businesses to pay, but they continue to remind us um of the impact of our proposed fee increase in addition to all these other costs that the residents across Fort Worth are paying. Um so, that it's important, of course, as Brady talked about to look big picture at all

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the costs. Um so, as mentioned earlier, our stormwater utility fee is based on the amount of impervious hard surface on properties. So, properties with more hard impervious surface pay more. Um so, earlier I mentioned that um the average single-family resident would pay

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37 cents more each month um for our proposed fee increase, and that's because they have a smaller amount um of impact on our stormwater system. So, this table shows the impact of our proposed fee increase. The top two lines on a small commercial 1-acre

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site, and then a medium commercial 10-acre site. Um and then below that are top 20 rate payers. So, um circled in red is the city of Fort Worth. So, we are the largest rate payer. So, you can see the two blue columns are really focusing on the monthly payment

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increase, and then the annual payment increase for the larger rate payers. So, just using kind of a 10-acre medium commercial development as an example, their your payment increase it be um kind of a $60 increase more each month

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and totaling $730 more a year due to this fee increase. So, I do want to mention again that that that is because they've got more impact on the stormwater system and we do have stormwater utility fee credits available

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for these larger land uses. So, specifically Fort Worth ISD has mentioned in the past the impact that these rate increases can have on their student education. They are one of our high users of our stormwater utility fee

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credits. So, the Fort Worth ISD does renew their credit annually. So, this table just shows the history of the stormwater utility fee and again our fee was started in 2006 at $2.90 a month. So, that was pretty low compared to

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needs, but that was the starting point and then there was an initial 4-year ramp up that you see here and then there was around an 8-year gap where we went without a fee increase. And then in the past few years we've been taking a very small approach to ramping the fee up a little bit at a

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time to really help tackle these citywide needs and increase the level of service that we provide to the community. So, we're really continuing to focus on very small phase strategic increases of our stormwater utility fee.

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So, with that I'll take any questions. >> All right, Charlie and then Macy. >> Yeah, thank you Mayor Pro Tem. I want to go back to slide 18 for 1 second. I know you had mentioned Fort Worth ISD and I'm glad you did, >> [clears throat] >> but I want to take a look at the other ISDs as well.

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Just from those five that quick napkin math which shows wrong is 109,000. Looking at some of the other ones where you have like Bell Helicopter, Amazon, obviously large businesses who are certainly for-profit and I think we all agree our ISD's are certainly not. Um

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and even a $17,000 increase is going to be a huge hit on a school district. >> Mhm. >> Um so, what is the the process that's being relayed to them as far as, "Hey, here's a proposed increase, but here's how you can apply to get a credit for that?" Or, I guess what does that process look

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like? Or, could we just carbon blank, just say, "Nope, we're not going to charge these ISD's more money that they really can't afford." >> So, what we did last year, and what we were planning to do this year, is kind of following this budget work session presentation, we mailed letters, um or sent emails to all of our ISD points of

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contact to let them know that council was considering a potential fee increase, and then remind them of our storm water utility fee credit. Um to remind them again that's available to them, help give them information on, "Hey, if you want more information, we're willing to meet with you to figure

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out how to set this up, or how to, you know, renew your credit every year." So, that's the plan with both the ISD's, as well as the top 20 rate payers, is to reach out to them after this meeting, um and help coordinate with them, just so they're not caught off guard because of the the large increase to them.

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>> Okay, got it. Well, I will make sure, especially for the two in District 4, uh cuz unfortunately, once again, we know one that does not respond well to emails or postcards, I'll put you directly in touch with them. >> Okay. >> Um that way they can discuss it, cuz with everything else going on, I'm sure this is something easy to just kind of

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slide by, not notice until after the fact. >> I'd be glad to give them a call. >> Awesome. Thank you. >> Jennifer, um what Just a couple questions. One, on the percentage breakdown of the fees. I mean, how much actually goes to maintenance that we have going on currently? How much is for

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capital needs? And then, how much is savings towards future capital projects? >> Right. So, going back to the fee. So, focused on the the fee increase, um all of the green and the purple all

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goes towards capital. And then the blue amount will go towards the new position, which is an operational position. >> No, I'm I'm talking about just currently. The the whole the whole the whole storm water fee. >> Got you. Got you. So, I would say around half of the fee goes towards capital. We

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always try to put more to capital. So, around half of it goes to capital and then the other half is operational, which includes our maintenance. >> And then second question and just for consistency sake, the last year presentations had a deficit of this is how much we need to increase the fee to

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cover all of our needs. Do you have a number on that? >> So, so we're a little bit different in terms of not like water, where we've got to build the water infrastructure and people are using the water. Um it really kind of comes down to impact on the rate payer and what level of service we want

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to give to the community. So, we've got I would say over a billion dollars of needs known across the city, but of course we would not want to, you know, suddenly charge that much for it. So, we're really just again taking that small phased approach of how can we

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continue to maintain the infrastructure in a way that reduces the impact um on flood or im- improves public safety um as well as continuing to improve that level of service, really focusing on where we're getting those complaints.

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So, that Swift Mud position, we do get a lot of complaints about our storm water maintenance facilities and that's why we brought that one up. >> Okay. Um I guess I'm just thinking more of it separating in different silos in my mind on maintenance, how much does that actually cost us annually to to break

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that down and then how much does it cost us I know that number varies on the needs as they come up. We've seen that through Arlington Heights and the other neighborhoods across the city. We don't know they have a flood issue until they have a flood issue and so then we have to address that. But I guess just the ongoing maintenance of our system currently, if we could get a number on

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exactly how much that cost um our taxpayers and then if there is a deficit, what does that look like to cover the cost? >> Okay. Yeah, I mean I can follow up with the specific breakdown for each year. But again, and kind of what that maintenance entails. So, we go out and we don't

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maintain the whole system every year. So, every year we try to maintain a certain number of cleaning so many inlets and so many miles of channel and so many pipes. So, I can provide that information back to you as well. >> Jenna? >> Jennifer,

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we get a lot of complaints about overgrown channels. So, I just wanted to get an idea of how much it cost to clear out one of those, the smaller channel maybe. >> [clears throat] >> So, if it's a maintenance, I can't tell you the cost off the top of my head. But, we do all of our

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maintenance in house, and so I can follow up specifically and and maybe pull an example maintenance cost. It is much cheaper for us to maintain the channels frequently enough. If we don't maintain them frequently enough, then

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they can have larger issues and that can lead to a capital project. So, we're really maintenance is very important to us. It's if we're maintaining it the right way, then we're reducing that need for a larger, more expensive capital project. >> Um so, with just this addition of a new

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inspector, I guess, so we're only going to be adding an additional 5 miles that are going to be inspected? >> So, yes, because they would be broken between both channel inspection as well as the swift mud channels inspections. >> Yeah, I'd like to see that cost just

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because I know that we do have a lot of miles that we need inspect and there's vegetation just grows so quickly and a lot of those can turn into capital and a lot more expensive. >> and I will say when when we talk about maintenance, we do vegetation

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maintenance. So, we mow three times a year typically, Um, well as then we'll do more, um, sediment maintenance. So, removing sediment to make sure the channels continue to convey the storm water away from homes and businesses. Thank you. Thank you. >> All right. Any other questions from

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anyone? All right. Thank you, Jennifer. Appreciate it. >> Next up, Kristiane Simmons, and she's going to field questions regarding the budget responses we received so far. >> Wow, Jennifer is so much taller than me.

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Goodness. Yes, hello. So, we have one budget response today, and actually I will let Lane and Lauren Oh, we have See, I already see I already see a finger. Yep, okay. >> Kristiane, you already have a question? >> I don't have a question. Thank you so much. This is exactly the information

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that, um, that I was looking for when we talked about how this would really impact our bond. Um, I think for the, um, for all of our public-facing folks in the room, um, when we talk about this street

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maintenance fee to the public, I think illustr- using this graph to illustrate what it saves us is going to be key in getting, um, community support. Cuz when when I see the What was it? 30 Yeah, a 34, um,

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34% of our streets get taken out of of the bond, I just think of um, how much more we could do in our bond for our libraries or firehouses or our parks if if if we're shaving off 34%. So, thank you for that. It's really exactly what I wanted. And I

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just want to go on the record, um, I know that y'all took the time to put in here about, uh, the potential impacts or our exemptions or discounts to that fee, and I just want to go on the record of saying, um, I wouldn't be comfortable exempting or discounting anyone given the information that's in the IR. >> Okay.

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I'm passing with my eyes your thanks onto Lane, because it was Lane and Lauren and Jess who really refined the BR. >> I'm thinking of saying. You're welcome. Um, that graph was created in response to your um, comment uh, that we could create something like that to help communicate

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the benefits and it was a really good idea. So, um, yes, I >> [laughter] >> uh, I went back and did that and um, yes, it is remarkable, you know, even though our street maintenance fee would be spent on our good and fair condition streets,

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um, it also has a direct benefit to those poor condition streets that are in that backlog waiting for funding because we're um, to Jay's point, instead of digging a hole, you know, with a backhoe, we're we're moving to a shovel, right? We're

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we're um, trying to get to close the gap um, and then we'll stop digging the hole, right? But until then, our goal is just to get there um, over time as uh, as quickly as we can to close that gap so that we can save ourselves and our residents

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um, money and wait time for their bond programs to get selected for the bond and all all the benefits that are associated with the fee. >> Right. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> All right, thank you. And we're still

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with me, right? For our last agenda item of the day. Uh, so Christian Simmons with the Fort Worth Lab. Um, I do want to say I appreciate the time and attention. I know this was a longer budget work session. Um, the budget's always complex. It feels especially complex this year, I think, with our significant gap. Um, so we

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appreciate being able to bring you along the way with rates and fees and get your feedback. So, this is very helpful. Um, we were also worried about timing today, so I just want to thank our partner departments who all stuck within their their time limits that we gave them. Very focused and and helpful presentations. Uh, so I'm closing out

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today with a progress report on the budget priorities survey. So, we have about a month of data since I was last with you and I mentioned I'd share back before the break. So, we'll do that together. So, as a reminder, we brought this idea forward at our first budget work

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session, um and you approved the idea, which we appreciated. Um we get feedback sometimes about not going to the public until the budget's really baked, and so this idea was to try to get some early feedback on priorities. We did a digital survey. It's still open now. It'll be open for a couple more weeks.

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It's located on Connect Fort Worth. Um and we kept it intentionally short, six questions, uh just centered around service delivery. Um we had a mix of question types, so some are open-ended, some are like a Likert scale, um checkboxes. All questions were optional, and all questions are anonymous. We just

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asked for a council district or zip code. Um and we did offer it in multiple translations. And we just kind of we just kind of said, you know, we're we're developing the budget, your feedback will help us kind of prioritize where we're going here. So, no promises, but just a great input um option.

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And so, it launched on May 12th after we um came to you and then did some tweaking to the questions based on your round of feedback. I know some of you have shared the survey, um since we sent it out to district directors, so we're very appreciative of you doing that. Um CPE has been a great partner in getting the survey out to the public through the

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website and social media pushes. Um we've we have it on all our screens at all the different city facilities. Um and right now, we kind of cut the data for this presentation at the end of last week, but we have just under 1,400 responses at the end of last week, which I think about this number, kind of two

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things are true. Number one, that's just a fraction of our population, we know that. Um but number two, it's still a significant amount of public engagement with a budget survey uh that we wouldn't have otherwise received. So, uh and I'll note that actually in our historical, the biennial community survey that we

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do, their number for statistically significant is 1,600, which maybe isn't enough. And but we can talk about the statistical like sampling methodology. Um now, of course, our methodology isn't quite as targeted as theirs with duplicate responses and that kind of thing, but you know, it's um it's worth

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noting that it's still a still a good um level I think of voluntary engagement, especially on budget, which maybe isn't always everyone's favorite topic. So, um question one, I'm just going to >> Question >> Oh, hi. Yep. >> When are we

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um how long will this survey be open? >> Yeah, we're going to leave it open I think for 2 more weeks till the end of June. >> Okay, thank you. >> Yes. Anybody else? Okay. So, I'll quickly run through the questions. Uh question one is just which city programs or services matter most to your quality of life and how do they

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make a difference? So, open text response. Um and our analysts pulled out some some themes. Uh these are actual written responses, but they're uh indicative of some of the larger themes we saw. I don't think you'll be surprised by any of these and you'll see the rankings later, but police, fire,

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and EMS certainly um on top of people's list, as well as streets and mobility, and parks and libraries. So, really kind of core municipal services as you'd imagine people would respond on. And you can kind of feel free to read that wording. Um we received really some very thoughtful text responses to this um

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this question. Uh the next one, which three city surveys I mean services or programs would you want to protect most? And you can see them again in order, fire and police ranking there at the top, streets, parks, animal, and library. And then you kind of have a mixed middle

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response there. Um we did caveat to people uh this is just general fund services that we're really surveying on. So, we had some notes at the bottom like this isn't water or solid waste for instance, storm water. We still had some people write respond with those, so they're grouped together in the other

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category. Um and I mean I'm just going to say this since this is a public presentation, just because it's ranked this way doesn't mean this represents what the city thinks is important. Um and I think sometimes it shows, "Hey, we might need to to the public on the benefit of some of the programs that might be ranking

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lower, right? Um But this is just like a general survey of the public and how folks responded. Um and then we moved into like a kind of a dragging Likert scale about how acceptable would it be if the city had to reduce a service level. So, shorter hours, fewer staff, maybe not a total

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elimination, but just service level impacts. And so this is sorted by like very most unacceptable to least. And so again, you see the same themes there. Public safety on top, streets and mobility on top, emergency management. People did not really want to see that

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reduced. Parks, environmental. And then the dark blue is it would be very acceptable to reduce service levels here. So, just interesting data points. And then I thought this one was interesting as well. To help balance the budget, the city may need to make

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choices about service levels and taxes and fees. So, which option best matches what you'd prefer? And so we received the most popular response so far was 44% to maintain or improve services even if taxes or fees would need to increase.

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Another 18% said they'd prefer to maintain current service levels without changing taxes and fees. This is one of those questions that's like you kind of have to have a status quo option. I think we all know that this is almost impossible to maintain current service

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levels without changing fees or taxes or finding some pretty big efficiencies. But it kind of tells us what people's level of you know, expectation is I think with the status quo. Let's see. About a third of people expressed a preference for reducing some services

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either to keep taxes and fees the same or to lower them at that 10% mark. And then of course, we always just put in I'm not sure so that we're not forcing people into a choice where maybe they don't feel educated on one of the other four. So, interesting there. And then we had

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um, participation across the council districts was very little uneven here, um, but you can kind of see how it spread. Uh, we did have people who don't live in Fort Worth respond. I think that could be I think in some cases it could be employees, which we didn't ask. Um, I also think sometimes there could be

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commercial like stakeholders or, you know, business business folks that maybe work in Fort Worth and have preferences around taxes and fees and services. And Oh, I thought I had a map. I do have a map. In your version you should have a map. I don't know what happened to mine.

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Um, but we also have it mapped by zip code, so some people skipped the zip code question. They kind of wanted to share their council district instead, um, and then you can sort of see on the map that you have in front of you the shading of of where the participation landed.

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Um, I will share, I think by the end of the month, um, you might remember for the bond we gave you like a link to a dashboard that kind of showed more detail on the comments and where people were responding and on what. We have that for this, too. Um, and so we'll share that

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link out with council offices in case you'd like to explore more of the detailed comments in your district or see any other themes. We just pulled out a few here, but you'll be able to kind of poke around and see some more detail. We've um, been tagging [clears throat] themes both with AI and with human to

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see like how the AI performs on picking up themes in the responses. So, that's been an interesting project. Um, so I'll share that out. And like I said, it'll be open for two more weeks and then we'll close it so that we can be building the budget through July. We'll have a couple different scenarios, I'm sure, that we're building in July

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waiting for those final appraisal numbers at the end of the month. So, that's kind of where we where we sit now. What questions do you have, if any? >> Well, I have one to start off with. Uh, if you go back to uh, slide eight, uh, Q3. Um,

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curious how the survey uh, contextualizes economic development programs. You know, we can have a a kind of a for me a larger than expected very acceptable uh category for reductions there. I mean, were people, you know, assuming

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these are incentive programs for the most part? >> I think so. I think the descriptor there was about business attraction like comma incentives. It didn't necessarily target like revitalization or any of those items. So, it was a short descriptor. So, people may have been, you know, thinking more about incentives.

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>> Okay. That question. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, and it's interesting you mentioned revitalization programs because we have the neighborhood improvement programs and then I see that uh they're neighborhood services. You know, again just kind of wondering what what your interpretation of that is.

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>> Yeah, for neighborhood services, um I think we called it housing support and community development programs just in broad um descriptors there. Uh and so, yeah, people may be they could be conflating the two with those short descriptions. I'm not sure.

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>> [snorts] >> Okay. Thank you. Any questions, turn? >> I guess if we can stay on slide eight for a second, one maybe it'd be good to get Chief Hill to talk to whoever has beef with fire and EMS for accepting um cuts there cuz that certainly doesn't make sense. Um

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but I think if you go down as well to the economic development programs and you had nearly 25% that said that'd be a very acceptable cut. I think that's a really good story for our economic development folks. Um I guess really to do a better job of

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explaining why those have a huge impact on their on their taxes and their actual bills to bring in more commercial development, bring in big better businesses, better jobs, etc. So, I just really want to point that out cuz that was pretty pretty stark. >> I think you're right. And actually, I don't know if JR's here, but in her

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budget blitz presentation that she did for Mission & Vision, she put up the 65/35 tax base composition. She's like, "This is our Mission & Vision. We would like to see this flipped over." So, to your point, I think there's great education to residents around why economic development and business attraction is so important.

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>> Thank you. All right, Macy. >> Thank you, Christian. Um, can you talk a little bit more about how y'all are going to build out the scenarios based upon the feedback we're getting from the public? And I guess I what I'm getting to is I know there's a lot of nice to haves, but when we have a huge budget for shortfall like we do, what are the

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need to haves? And I'll I'm I guess as we continue this conversation with the public, what other feedback can we get? I don't know if you can change the survey at this point, but building upon the feedback we got about economic development, neighborhood services, are people clear about what's in there? Are they not? And then, what are the kind of

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the extra programs that are nice to have, but not necessarily need to have as we try to close that gap? >> Yeah, so I'll talk about the survey, and then I'll defer. I'm sure Jay would like to comment on this. Um, so the survey will end in 2 weeks, and then we'll we won't do another version. What we'll do then is go to the public with the

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recommended budget. So, in July, it'll be, you know, the city management team, the department heads, and sort of finalizing the budget scenarios, but I'll let Jay talk about sort of core, discretionary, kind of how we're thinking about some of that. >> Sure. So, I mean, going back to the survey specifically, on the economic

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development side, I think there's part of the traditional economic development Fort Worth is the idea folks look at it like corporate welfare, right? In general. But, we base our we base our tax breaks on new taxes coming in from that

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corporate. So, in theory, if they don't show up, we don't have taxes to provide the benefit on, right? There are a few programs though within economic development that are more up front, like the EDIF fund, which is cash that we have on an annual basis. So, that from

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your perspective is nice to haves, that's one of the areas that we're looking at that might be reduced significantly in order to be able to So, it's it's those kind of things uh, just specifically, cuz economic development kind of stood out there, that we'd be looking at where you it's it's not it's a

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ability to reduce what we put into the budget but doesn't have a direct impact on on the actual ability to bring or or incent a certain company to come in. Of course, one of the issues that reason we created that is because we do

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have a hard time competing for headquarters for instance that are coming into an existing building and are are not necessarily building bringing in new taxes but have would bring in high-paying jobs. And so that's one of the reasons we created that whole

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area. So you it's a balancing act. When when we talk about nice-to-haves, I would love to have every council member send me an email on what you think is a nice-to-have um because a nice-to-have for one person is a critical thing for another. Um but it would give us a gauge of

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what's there. I mean, you could say the neighborhood improvement program is a nice-to-have. You'd eliminate 4 and 1/2 million there but then there's a neighborhood that we're not then targeting that is not doing well in the city that it's a program that's been been in place for instance. On the other end of

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it, you could say that having uh um newer vehicles for police and fire are nice-to-haves compared to other cities that don't have the dollars to do that. But for the police police and fire folks that are using those vehicles they see it as a basic. So

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um at the end of the day, I think the whole management team departments have done a a good job of trying to provide us the information that we need. And again, it those are the kind of things we're looking at. Um there will be where we're where we're projecting right now, there will be

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significant impacts to our services in in various areas. And then we are using the survey and we're using the general feedback from the community when it comes to public safety being the top things that we need to maintain, right? That uh

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uh transportation and streets and those kind of things are way high on the list. Parks, libraries, animal control. The none of the survey is new or to me it wasn't surprising. It's what comes back all the time, so.

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>> Well, one of the things, too, and we're going to I was just sending my staff. I think especially in Chris, I'd like to see us really push this in our districts cuz it's heavily weighted one way uh with some of the other districts and uh I think many times our residents don't

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often see these things and don't respond to them like other districts. I've asked my staff to send it back out. I've got a couple of meetings, but we've got 2 weeks left to go and I'd like to see an increase in the number of things cuz I do think public sec Many of the things

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will stay at the top, but some of the things may rise toward the middle. So, I think it's important that we get it back out to some of our districts where and Janette, I noticed yours, too, was um yeah, it is lower. And so, I was just telling my staff we're going to make a

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concerted effort to increase that. >> Um I have some specific concerns about us. Um I appreciate the survey and it is incredibly helpful to help us gauge um where our residents are at regardless of who has or hasn't uh responded, but I

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I do agree we could always do a better job of making sure it's well-rounded. Um when you look at what I want to caution is us using that as a Bible for how we're going to um to at this table. I know maybe staff, but at this table

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using it as a Bible as to what we do want to look at cutting and not cutting cuz when I look at those results, if I'm just a regular City of Fort Worth resident and even if I'm marginally engaged, right? I'm still going to that

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survey and the the things that we see are the most important are the things that everyday residents will encounter every day. It is their roads, it is their fire, it is their police, regardless of what job they have, what neighborhood they live in, they're going to get on our roads, they

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they God forbid might need 911 either EMS or um fire or PD. So, those are going to naturally be important. The vast majority of our residents don't ever encounter development services. They don't understand what not funding

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development services does to the overall economic impact of our city. That's our jobs here on council is to make sure we're taking that public input and then using the the knowledge that we have on how the city runs holistically. So, I just I hear a lot of conversation around the

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table about, you know, well, what this survey did or didn't say and I think it's a great tool for us, but I think it's incumbent on us to make sure that we're not just looking at that as the guide for what we're going to cut. >> Right. Well, and development services part of the general fund, but it pays

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for itself through its fees, right? And so, if you cut the service, those fees would come down and then you end up >> No, but I'm just I just used that as an example of a department that you know, or emergency management. >> Most people don't know what >> They're they don't know what it does, they're not encountering it.

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>> And I'll just add to that I think when we start talking about the nice to haves or the must haves, it can become a slippery slope. You just said it, Jay. You know, something for me might be completely different for Janetta anybody

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else. And I think it's important I'll say this as uh my comment uh decrease in neighborhood services will be a non-starter for me uh because there's so much that happens in our neighborhoods um that have not seen development service, they have not seen

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growth, have not seen economic development. And so, those neighborhood services improvements, what we're doing um and what we did at ask question what we're doing in um I've got the new neighborhood that we have, New Mitchell Boulevard, is significant improvement that's going to

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help the quality of life for that neighborhood. Um and I think that we around this table know that we are the 10th largest city. And so um as we grow that uh we're going to have more responsibilities. And so I think we really have to take a a a jab at what

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our tax rate is going to be and as what our city services going to be because cutting services is not going to be ideal for the community. >> Charlie, thank you. Um Yeah, and I think we we talked about this last couple budget years, too, as far as nice to have's, need to have's,

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must have's. And I think we all have different opinions, sure. I I think for for me specifically in the the the district that put me here, like one of the biggest issues that we're facing right now is a lot of it's messaging, uh especially around this current budget. Um you know, whenever we see again, I

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know I go after it all the time, but you look at some of like public art, which is now it's tied to the bond, got it. But we're looking at all these rate increases and we're telling them, "Hey, we're going to increase these rates. We're looking at a budget deficit, but we're going to go ahead and put in this art." And it reminds me of the time a years ago when I a client, I did a

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work up front for them, it was a little over a thousand dollars. They couldn't pay it after because their deal fell through. Six months later, he's on vacation on a beach somewhere. It's like, "Wait a second, did you actually need that? I mean, you could have paid that." And so I think it's a messaging and how we push this out. Um you know, certainly having the

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discussions on needs to have, nice to have's, and and what we're going to cut and where we're going to cut it. Um I think we're going to have to have those difficult conversations, for sure. Um you know, especially whenever you start talking about public safety. Uh but as far as like a non-starter for me, I'm sure we all have non-starters, like that

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development services absolutely fair for for Councilwoman Nettles for that way. I think for me a non-starter is talking about any sort of tax rate increase as we're already doing all these other things that certainly do seem nice to have. Um great examples, I haven't heard any nonprofits come to my office. I don't know if anyone else has anything

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different saying, "Hey, can we help you fill in some potholes?" It just doesn't exist. No one said, "Can we help you with some of your street lights? Can we help you with some of your infrastructure?" Not a single nonprofit has reached out to our office to offer that, but there are certainly nonprofits that do work in spaces where our city services are also working. So,

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maybe leaning more heavily on our nonprofits to do some of that and lift some of those burdens. Uh, and really just just like what we're doing in the military right now is burden sharing. So, we need to figure that out, too. >> Good discussion. Janette, did you have something? >> Are we sharing our non-starters? Cuz if we are, of course, environmental

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services, you know, we have a housing crisis, and so we >> Well, how however we want to do it. I mean, Jay suggested sending an email. We could talk about it. >> Neighborhood services. >> was being facetious. >> [laughter] >> Just so we're clear, I don't think he wanted those emails. >> Well, yeah.

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Actually, >> Leanne's freaking out right now. She's like, "Wait a minute here." >> All right. The individual emails are great. They're not a quorum deal because then you can share your thoughts. Sometimes it's hard to do it in public, right? Or anyway, when we meet one-on-one,

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part of this whole At the end of the day, we have to come to a balanced budget, right? And so, you can you can do the extremes. If you want no rate increase, we're going to cut $50 million out of the budget. Nobody on this dais would be happy. On the other side, we can increase the

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tax rate by 4 cents. And some people might be okay with some people might not. Those are the just the you know, the the easy two the two uh Somewhere in the middle's probably the answer, right? At the end of the day. And a lot of it's going to be contingent on

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what we get from TAD in July on the commercial on the commercial values. And I think um So, as we put all these things together, we're going to have, as you saw today, and they staff, the departments, Dr.

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Wittenberg, uh Chris, Lawrence's team, uh everybody did a great job presenting and using data and using actual cost to come up with the justifications for why they're asking

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for those rate increases. If if the if the council as a whole doesn't want to see a rate increase, we can cut back services and and reduce that. That's the kind of feedback we're we're wanting from you all. Um when it comes to the to the final decisions on the budget overall for the

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general fund, we're going to be leaning hard on those type of data, that type of service levels, and those kind of justifications to get us there. So. >> And just to add to that, Jay, I just what uh Charlie was saying about um

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giving information out. Cuz I think we talked about uh even a tax rate. Uh we do not know never know new never know new revenue tax rate. We're saving, I think, uh the resident $120 a month or something like that. I I I don't I can't remember.

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>> Well, we'll end up showing all those different >> think showing that, because when you start talking about you saving me $100 versus I'm paying an extra $100 and I keep all my services, that might be a difference different um story around this diocese. I mean, I

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know not raising tax revenue is is, you know, not starting for a lot of people, and it's a and it's also a political tool that uh the federal government have been using, the state government have been using on local cities. And so, I think getting real dollars, what we're

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saving, what we're not saving, for what we're getting, is going to be very crucial to our discussion. >> All right. Good discussion around. Thanks, Christian. Uh before we uh conclude our meeting, I did have a TPW-related question that Lauren can answer if you come to the

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podium. >> Why do I feel something's up? >> I wouldn't know why. Uh, is it true that there is a significant uh birthday today? >> Uh, that is not true. I do not age. >> [laughter] >> She doesn't age.

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>> And I think it's yours. Well, you know, 22 looks great on you. >> Thank you, sir. That is the correct answer. >> Happy birthday, Lauren. We appreciate you. >> Thank you. >> [applause] >> All right, folks. Uh we talked about it already, but any

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budget-related future agenda items? Anything else? Okay. Moving on, I want to thank staff for doing these presentations for us. Uh, you know, we're rates and uh fees, you know, for city services. I think it's important for all of us and I think we understand the gravity of it, you

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know, when it comes to, you know, budgets uh in our city budget, uh sustaining those current city services, and improving on said city services for a growing population. It's very important, you know, especially when it comes to uh delivery of it. And I think all of us

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here are bearing in mind what those uh potential impacts for our residents are. So, this is going to be uh a very interesting discussion going into it as we start giving Jason feedback and um making some final decisions. So, thanks everyone, and we are adjourned at

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3 [snorts] minutes before 12.