--------- There we go. I'm glad to hear that. I can do it. Look, these people were You made it girl. I had Sunday. I didn't go. made
Good morning and I will call us to order. Is just after 11. Welcome to our city council work session specific to the budget and I will immediately turn it over to Jay Choa. Before I do that, I want to sincerely thank all city staff,
um, those that are in the room and those that are working across the city for your help in passing successfully all of our bond propositions. I think that deserves a round of applause. But those of us around this table know that our city staff worked tirelessly um to transparently explain that bond
election, justify it, and we're just really appreciative of all your hard work. So, thank you, Jay. Over to you. Thank you, mayor. Thanks for that recognition of staff. They are hardworking group. I especially want to thank uh the Fort Worth Lab, Christian and April Rose specifically uh that did
a lot of the heavy pulling there at the end. So, thank you all. Um as far as the the the workshop today, um this is the start basically of the of the overall process for the city council. The staff started a couple three months ago
pulling things together. Um, as you already know, it is going to be a tough budget year just based on current projections as we're looking at the whole thing. What I would ask is for you to have patience to work through the process. Um, we uh will begin to pull things together from the individual
departments. They're all doing a lot of work to see where uh how they can um make the biggest impact to try to get everything in alignment. And as we go through this, a lot of this is information for you to hopefully provide you a depth of understanding in the
different areas of the of the budget so that when we actually put together the recommendation and present it in August that you'll have enough knowledge to be able to to make decisions and give us feedback uh as we move forward. So with that, I believe Christian's going to
kick off the show. >> Thank you. Good morning everyone. I like today. I like budget work sessions. So, some of you might remember a couple of years ago, we made this shift um in the way that we deliver budget information earlier in the year. So, prior to a couple of years ago, we'd present the
recommended budget in August and then we'd respond to your inquiries and sort of schedule some work sess sessions from there over the next four to six weeks. Um, a couple of years ago, we started doing them in April and May, just realizing that the budget's big and even the revenue picture was getting a little more complicated a couple of years ago
with some of the appraisal district activities and other other drivers. And so, we decided, you know, we'll start communicating a little earlier and bring you along the way, hopefully give you, like Jay said, a depth of understanding that's helpful um to you and to staff and as you communicate in your districts or your constituents sort of what what
makes up the budget. So, this year continues that tradition. It is frankly a little more work for staff and I always like to give the caveat at the first session. Um you know this is a work in progress so we're bringing you really along in real time. So numbers are shifting and assumptions shift as we get more information. So um thank you
for your patience. We do think the juice is worth the squeeze with the extra early work sessions. I hope it is for you too. Um so I'm going to you're going to hear from both of the Fort Worth Lab assistant um budget directors today. Christy Lemon um oversees the operating and capital budgets and those associated
analyst teams um and then Brady Kirk, you'll hear from him on revenue. So, I'm going to let us get to work and turn it over first to Christy Lemon and then I'll come back sort of at the end of her presentation to um introduce Brady's topic, but we're excited that you're here. Thank you for being here. And I'll turn it over to Christie.
Good morning. Pleased to be here. Christy Lemon. the assistant director um as Christian mentioned in the Fort Worth lab going to just the conversation today is really about context as we go forward in the budget process. So where we're starting um kind of challenges we're seeing right
away. Um so this is our kind of overall timeline that gets us to adoption in September. So a little more than a month ago we had a kickoff um meeting with all city staff who were involved in the budget process. We opened our budget software and then departments submitted
their budgets last Friday. So, we're busy looking at those already. We have about a month in the Fort Worth lab to analyze those budgets, ask tons of questions, make sure everything is tying out properly. Then, uh the very beginning of June, we'll have our budget blitz uh with the
city manager's office. So, those are really just budget presentations that all the departments make for CMO. Um and then the city manager's office will be considering all of the decision packages, both reductions and additions. And then we get certified um tax roles at the end of July. And then we'll do
final balancing leading up to a recommended budget presentation in mid August. I think it's August 11th this year. Um and then we'll do community engagement throughout the summer and then be ready for budget adoption with a balanced budget midepptember. So that's
kind of the timeline that we're working with. Um just picking up where we left off with our last conversation. So, last time we were together, Brady presented the long-term forecast and kind of highlighted our budget gap. So, you may
remember that we're almost $50 million in terms of a gap. Um, and really the most simple way to explain this is that revenues are growing much slower than expenses. That's kind of like the the bottom line there.
Um, this gap includes a number of things that we've done in past years and kind of carried forward in terms of planning. So, the past couple of years, we've been increasing the vehicle and equipment uh maintenance fund by about a million dollars to try to catch up on equipment
replacement. So, that's factored into the gap. Um, we also have operating costs for all of the uh capital projects and facilities that will open in the upcoming year. So, we always budget those items first to make sure we have staff to run those facilities when we open them.
We have um about $7 million plugged in as a placeholder for implementation of the the pay study that's been going on. Um and then we increased the EMS subsidy about $6 million. So last year we budgeted $20 million in subsidy. This
year we have a placeholder for about 26 million. That's based on some early budget work on the EMS fund. Um and then for the health fund, as some of you have been in audit and finance committee meetings, we've been talking about condition of the health fund. We are
seeing increased claims costs. Um and so for early budget development, we plugged in a 40% increase as a placeholder for the employer contribution um for the health fund. So that's a big driver as well. And of course, everything we're
talking about is in the general fund. So really the presentation going forward for the rest of today is focused on the general fund making some of these same adjustments though in the other funds. So like the health um healthcare cost adjustment has has been factored into all budgets in all funds. Um so that
amount is 17.5 million that we have plugged into that gap for the health fund. So we're going to talk about target budgets. We kind of visit this in our first uh work session together each year as we start budget development. So we
use target budgets to constrain spending at each in each department in the general fund. Um so departments are given a target by for lab and then they build their budgets to that target and last year we reduced the target 1% from the previous year. Um and then
departments built to that target that was that was 1% less than the previous year. We did the same uh used the same strategy for this year as well to try to cut some things that are discretionary and could be reduced and also constrained spending a little bit.
Just to recap on what we were able to do last year. So when we um held budget kickoff, we had a gap of about 11 million. So a little bit different than what we're seeing this year, but we generally always start with a gap and then work to balance the budget over the summer. So, lots of different levers we
can pull and lots of different decisions to be made um to get to that balanced budget by the time it's presented to you in August. Just a recap of last year. So, we did reduce property tax a quarter cent. Um we incorporated full funding for emergency medical services. That was
our first full year of operation in that fund. Um we sustained payo and then we also did a few things in the general fund um for code enforcement. we um expand in the mobile tool shed program. So, some small things that do have big
impacts on neighborhoods. So, that's that's kind of where we landed last year and then we'll talk about how the targets are built. So, um as we're building the target, there are several layers of predetermined costs that go
into building the target. So, one year we showed you a layer cake and we went through a layer cake uh example. This is kind of using our beautiful city hall um and kind of walking up the building with different uh factors that go into the target.
So we start with a prior year's adopted budget. So that's a starting place for each general fund department. And then um we always have some one-time costs that we're able to reduce out. So for example, we had a one-time cost for
um the comprehensive plan study. So, we don't do that continuously all the time. So, that's a good example of a onetime cost that we'll budget and then once the study's complete, we'll pull that money out of the budget for a future year. So, we do reduce out those onetime costs. We also had a small reduction this year for
some IT projects that were completed um and we don't need the funding for those to continue. And then we look at our prior year commitments. So, uh, probably the easiest example of that are the capital projects that we're building and we know
we need staff to run them or we have maintenance for parks that we're building and so we factor those costs in as prior year commitments. We fund those things first to make sure all of those new facilities are are operating well when they're opened
and then um we look at the cost allocations. So some of our other funds do have um costs that they allocate out to general fund departments. So examples are IT fleet risk management and we do hold departments harmless for those costs. So if their IT costs rise, we'll
hold them harmless for the IT costs. If fleet costs are increasing, we'll hold them harmless for those. Those are um sometimes pretty big numbers for some of the small departments and pretty hard for them to work around. Those those are a little bit more like fixed costs for them. So, we reduce that out from their
1% um reduction. And then we layer in the salary and benefit costs. So, that includes retirement, health fund, so that 40% increase that we talked about. Um and then, uh pay for performance, any other
related salary and benefit items, we'll add those to the target. So, this is what our target summary looks like. So the growth this year is 52 million. So it's almost 5% in growth.
Um just in those the the basic target. Um this covers some of the additional items. I talked about some of them along the way, but we do have um those committed costs for meet and confer. So we added that in at 15 million. Um, as I
said, we added in health insurance. Uh, some additional dollars there for health insurance allocations went up some. Um, the pay for performance is in there. We are seeing lower vacancy rates across the organization and so we're restoring some dollars back to departments. Um, we
typically will budget for them to have some savings in personnel costs because we know their positions all positions won't be filled all throughout the year. So, we know they'll have some savings, but as we see um turnover slowing, we'll push dollars back to the departments to make sure that they can afford
personnel. Um for payo growth, we budgeted 2% and that's that's equivalent to the growth that we are budgeting in terms of our revenue. So, it's matching our property tax revenue at 2%. Um those other prior year commitments are all the things I
talked about related to capital projects. And then um we did reduce uh we do have in here a 1% target reduction that's equivalent to about 7.8 million. And I'll show you what each department's
uh impact is there. And then the onetime cost that I talked about and then IT capital that I talked about. So these are kind of all the little things that go into building that target. Um that's increasing 52 million. What we don't have in here yet is collective bargaining. So negotiations
are underway and so we don't have a number plugged in here um for the collective bargaining contracts. So strategies for closing the gap um we started with budget kickoff um doing a couple of different things. So one is to ask departments to reduce their we
reduce their targets 1% and then we also asked them to submit reduction packages in the amount of 3%. for public safety departments um where we have contractual obligations, the civil service salaries are not included in that 3%. So those are excluded. And then we are working on
tons of different projects to identify opportunities to cut costs in order to close the gap. My mouse isn't working. Okay. Um so this is the 1% target reduction. If you add uh every department's 1% savings, it's
about 7.8 million. This shows what each department has been asked to trim as they build their budgets to their targets. And then the 3% reduction packages is about 14 million. So the big difference
there is in the 1% uh from 1% to 3% is that exclusion for civil service pay in the 3% scenario. So departments um as of Friday submitted all of their reduction packages and then city manager's office will be evaluating those. Last year of course we took all the 1% cuts from
departments and then the 3% we took some but not all of those reduction packages until we were able to balance the budget. So oh yes please. >> And I know this is an overview but I want to put on the record. Uh I think we talked about this the last time. We're
asking uh city departments to do the 1% cut and they're presenting well you guys are presenting us the overview of what the cuts are. >> Yes. >> I'm interested in looking at uh what each department is cutting in their uh department if it can be through a
spreadsheet uh because some of those things that may be cut it may be vital to the city of Fort Worth that we may have a discussion about. So >> I see what you pres pro provided here, but I would actually like to see line item by line item for each department.
>> Okay. >> We did present a summary of that last year and so we can put together a summary again. Jay, I'm sorry. Didn't >> Yeah. So we will pre present that when we when we do the recommended budget just because it's going to change so much right now as we go through the process. But yeah, I think last year we
did it we did an overall summary in a spreadsheet and we'll do the same thing this year. ultimately what was part of those cuts. >> All right. So again, 1% seven and a half. Um and then last year we took
about almost $5 million in reduction packages. So I think we generated 13 million or something like that in potential and we only needed to to cut five million to balance the budget. So when Jay was saying things will change a lot throughout the year, that's an example. So, we had a a group of of
reduction packages we were considering and then we got the final property tax values and then reconsidered after we were working with really solid numbers on the property tax. So, that's going to flip, you know, a few times throughout the summer. Um, so the budget gap um that we're
starting with uh 49 million, the 1% reduction is 7.8, 8 the 3%'s 14 and so that leaves us um with about 27 million that we're still solving for. So the punchline here is the gap is still
pretty big after asking departments to make all of those adjustments and if we took everything that they submit we still have a $27 million gap. So that's just kind of a magnitude conversation. >> Um I I'm sorry. Can we and you don't have to go back to the slide, but just
in the 3% reduction packages um first I appreciate all of the um effort that's been done to see where we can reasonably um trim some fat and it gets us kind of where we need to go, but it certainly doesn't get us where we need
to go. What I'm concerned about is um that we're doing this necessarily across the board for all departments instead of looking at really um maybe one department can shed 5% and another need not shed. And I bring that up
specifically because I see that um that we're asking the fire department to do that. and all the discussion we've had about EMS and new vehicles and new um you know equipment bedding and things like that reasonably can we make that cut and then provide what we need to
provide that for EMS >> well again part of this process is to allow the departments themselves to identify what they believe they can cut this is what the 3% gets you a third of the budget is not touched because it's
civil service salaries that's why 3% only gives you it's more like 2%. Right? So it it it's less. So part of it is to allow the department heads who are closest to what's going on in on the ground what they would think would be
the things in their department to that that could be reduced. At the end of the day I I can tell you not every package in that 3% would be would be part of the cut. This is just an order of magnitude for you all to see in the process that we're going through. If if numbers stay
where they are, we still have to find another 27 million, right? And you'll see in Brady's pres presentation coming up where the dollars the big dollars are. And it and I mean we can say we don't want to touch certain departments and their sacred cows, but then that
means, you know, 3% in one department is is maybe a whole department somewhere else. And so if we want to eliminate that service, that's something we can look at. All I'm saying is that we're too early in the in the to make for me to provide a recommendation one way or
the other. I say that we we can't touch the the EMS piece. >> Yeah. I'm just I'm not first of all I think we're going to have to look at some sacred cows. Honestly, if we're in the budget, we're going to have to make >> someone's going up on the altar. Maybe it's you. I don't know. But we're going
to have to make some tough decisions. And so, you know, um I get that. But that was just my one concern is because we've had those conversations about how EMS really we don't have a handle on it yet. And so I just wanted to make sure >> when EMS is in a separate is in a separate fund. >> Okay.
>> And that and what we're showing is fully funding the subsidy. Okay. >> Or EMS. So EMS is not even part of the equation. >> Okay. Okay. >> Because that subsidy is not out of the fire department. It's out of non-EP departmental. Okay. >> I appreciate that. Thanks. I if I may interject right now, I hear what you're saying, Jay, and we'll hear more later
to this work session, but uh we can't presume too far ahead since, you know, we have more to consider, more to listen, uh as far as any revenue generating, you know, uh matters that we can, you know, take advantage of. Again,
>> that's part of what Brady will be talking about as he comes forward and a breakdown of where our revenues come from. I think the reason it's it's hard to get ahead is because Uh, you know, we just received the first round of TAD numbers last week. They'll get better at
the end of this month. They'll get even better at the end of June and then the final ones are in July. And last year, what we saw those numbers changed and and basically they come in the highest they are now, and then they they work their way down because of protests and
all those kind of things. But um last year what we were projecting the amount that was coming down didn't come down as far and that's why we were able to put that $5 million back into the into the budget. So as we go along we part of it that's why I said earlier about having
being patient through the process because it's hard not to get ahead because you want to solve the issues but then the numbers swing so wildly that you said well we went we did a whole lot of work here and and put people's expectations at a certain place and part of us is I I don't want to get I don't
want to get to the point where employees especially are overly nervous and they decide oh I I've got to go find a different job and we lose a lot of good employees through this process. So, I want to make sure that we're being transparent and communicative, but also
not over uh oversell the the plight we're in as well. >> All right, with that, I'll turn it back over to Christian. All right. So, uh, as part of just the earlier engagement and the lab and the
city's commitment to transparency, um, something that we're considering that we just wanted to run by you and see what you think, uh, is doing an earlier than usual round of engagement on the budget. Um, so a lot of pure cities do this. Austin, San Antonio are two that we looked at, for instance. I know Denver does, Charlotte anyway, some others. Um,
but some of the feedback we get, and I'm sure you get it too, is um, when we do public engagement in August and September, people are like, "Well, you already baked the whole budget, so we're just kind of responding to, you know, a static document and or you're just kind of doing engagement as window dressing." And so we thought, well, why don't we
launch, you know, just a a pretty quick survey through Connect for Worth and CPE can help us get it out there um knowing that we have a tough budget year coming just to get some general sentiment about what people's priorities are, what what services they might be willing to um you know, sacrifice or or reduce uh in order
to keep those priorities high. And so we thought um just based on some benchmarking that we did of what other cities do, we could ask questions such as, you know, what city services or programs are most important? and what are less important for you to be able to keep those things and we could provide the right kinds of lists. Um, and then
we also considered doing a a question on property taxes. You know, we hear a ton of different sentiments around the property tax rate and what it should be depending on the service levels. And so we thought we could ask a property tax related question. You know, would you like to keep it the same and keep services the same, that kind of thing.
Um, so open to any feedback about the idea of doing the earlier survey. We would plan to keep it open maybe through the summer but perhaps present to you some of what we're getting through the data maybe mid June before the break and then that way we could you know give you some um some actual data to look back to
with the recommendations. Yep. Go ahead. >> No, I think that is perfect. The sooner we get to our citizens about what they'd like to see the better. And so I agree when when we do it in August, people say it's we've already made decisions and so
I am in favor of doing it now. >> Thank you. >> Shan, I'm curious. What does success look like in terms of um constituent engagement on the survey >> and this is not meant to be a slight. We struggle >> Yes, we do. >> with actually real engagement and who
are reading and the number of people that are actually responding. >> I know. Yeah. I mean, I think like the best practice is like 1% engagement, which obviously is an underwhelming statistic. Um, but that's, you know, I think municipal engagement is just a challenge and Sana and her team have
great ideas for how to get the word out. Um, but we certainly would like everyone to engage. We've been trying to meet people where they are through pop-ups and digital engagement and that kind of thing and we'll certainly continue those strategies. Um, but I don't know that we'd get, you know, half a million people to respond or anything,
>> right? Okay. Yeah. >> Any other questions around this? >> Questions, thoughts on questions? >> I think we have to try though and so the more we get it out and we've got Sununa now to help us with communications, but
I think the the early outreach is much better. And I know that participation is low. Look at what just happened in the last election. But we need to try to do a better job of getting out and then all of us have a responsibility to talk to our constituents when we're out in the
community and urge them to participate. >> Thank you, mayor. >> I think maybe Jan, I'll come back to you. I I think we can maybe come get some input on what survey questions could look like and giving people real open. I know these are just examples, but open-ended like which services do
you like the most or that's not really helpful. It's more like these are the these are the current budget decisions we're making. This is what a 3% cut, 1% cut, and then letting the reaction to be to that because I would suspect that most of the reductions currently proposed and we still have a $27 million
gap aren't likely things that are front-facing with constituents as much other than maybe personnel they don't really see. Um, and then you might get a few answers that would surprise me, but if you're asking people, do you want to raise your taxes? I can guarantee you
their answer is going to be absolutely no. So, let's just think through how we're asking those questions. >> Sure. >> We can pull together some some additional options. >> Janette. >> Oh, no. Just I was going to concur with Councilwoman Peoples that yes, the sooner the better, but um you know, just
an idea of maybe including because we're going to have a lot of kiddos registering for the summer program, maybe a part of that application process. >> Oh, yeah. Thanks. Good idea. Like the creativity. Okay. Um, all right. And then this is just an
early kind of skeleton draft of what we're planning to bring forth. So, we're doing your kickoff today. Um, next week we meet kind of late in the day and so we just have one topic which is the health fund. So, um, audit and finance committee members have heard a couple of presentations on the health fund. Um,
Kristen Smith with HR will give some more detail on how that's permeating through the budget for fiscal year 27. May 19th will be a big one. We're going to do preliminary values then as well as more sales tax data and then talk about street maintenance which I know you're familiar with. Um we'd originally talked
about doing class and comp or some related topic on June 2nd. So that will probably be an HR centric um meeting depending on what kind of data we can share at that time. And then June 16th we'll do rates and fees. So you might remember around that time last year we did water, storm water, environmental
and solid waste. So some of the the resident facing fees. uh and then looking forward after the July break to Jay's recommended presentation at the beginning of August. And then of course we can do council specific or council driven work sessions from there. Um so let me know if you think anything's
missing from this list, but this is certainly just kind of like a preview of where we think we're going. And is that all for me? I think so. So we'll switch topics a little bit. Um still in the budget vein, of course, but I'll ask Brady to come talk to you. He's
going to talk about general fund revenues in a way that I think is a new kind of slice and dice. It's interesting. It we try to be intentional about maybe showing you the same information but from a different view knowing that it might land from different perspectives. So interested in your feedback on Brady's presentation as
he talks about general fund revenue sources and sort of how how those fund our different services. All right. Well, good morning. I'm Brady Kirk and as Christian said, we what we want to give you an idea of with this presentation is when you look at our
biggest priorities in the general fund and you consider that within the scope of our revenues, just how much of that funding do our largest priorities take up? So given that this is a little bit more cerebral and today's holiday, I'm
going to start out with an analogy about this. Okay. So imagine that I'm making a batch of margaritas. And the way that I'm serving this is that let's say Jay and Mayor Parker just drink all the tequila. And
then our first few council members just get to sip on the tequila mix. A couple people just have to eat ice. Someone gets a spoonful of salt. Maybe at the end there's a lime for somebody to bite into. That's not really how you make
margaritas. And really in the same way, what you're seeing here is not literally the way that we fund our general fund departments. But hopefully, nonetheless, this will show you the magnitude of what it takes to fund some of them and and how that goes when you allocate the
money. So in the general fund, we've got a few different revenue sources and it's a balanced fund when we adopt it every year. So the expenses are always going to equal the revenues. So in there we've got some revenue that the departments
actually generate in the course of business. And this is mostly what you see when we bring you the fee ordinance and we change fees each new year when we adopt the budget. Then for some of our departments that provide services citywide, like the Fort
Worth lab, the city secretary, the legal department, we allocate some of that cost to some of our other city funds because they're getting the benefit of those services, but those employees are not in those funds. So that's a little bit of revenue as well, but the vast majority of how the general fund is
funded is just by general, usually tax related sources of revenue. And that's why it's the general fund. you have a lot of services that everybody gets to enjoy and they don't have to pay for as they use them. And that's that's really why we have property taxes and sales
tax. And beyond that, there's also some other taxes, most of which are franchise fees >> appropriate for budget. Geronimo, >> right? So in this exercise, what we're basically doing is we're going to
theoretically fund every single of our general fund departments with the revenues that are available. Um, and so how do we go about doing that and and seeing how much it needs? Well, most departments, like I mentioned, generate at least a little
bit of their own revenue, uh, but not enough to cover the full cost of their operations. So that would be really the first source for funding that department's expenses. Then after that is applied and then there's some allocations
and payo. I'll get to that. The funding is going to have to come from those general sources. Now, the public safety you're going to you're going to see and and you know very well already is the largest cost category and that
that really places the priority claim on that money just because that along with roads is pretty much the top priority to our citizens. And as we look at surveys year-over-year, we usually see that play out. And it really makes sense to merge
these two because if that's the largest priority, the property tax on the other hand, and that's what I mean by these two, the public safety and the property taxes, that's really the one major funding source that we have any kind of direct control over in the general fund
that we set the fees, but um of those large general sources, that's the main one. And like I said at the beginning, this is really only an illustration. We don't actually give our departments property tax revenue and and sales tax revenue in
their budgets to do as they see fit with. So, we're going to fund every department um along with the department revenue and payo, which is also more targeted to their specific needs. We're just going to go down the list. So, we're going to
apply the general operating property tax revenue until that runs out and uh some of those departments are funded. Then we'll move over to sales tax which is the next biggest and then finally use up the other tax revenue. Starting out with only the police
department which is our largest uh expense budget within the general fund. At the top of this page you can see the whole funding mix. So that big blue bar is the operating revenue. Then the next bit is the payo revenue which is still
property tax revenue but smaller portion then sales tax and on down the line. So if we see how the police budget stacks up to that there is a little bit of department generated revenue within police but almost everything that we spend on general fund policing is going
to have to come from that operating property taxes. Then when we go in, we add every department into this model or this table, it looks like this. And it's it's taking up a smaller amount as we go down the line because we're starting with the
biggest departments first. And except for public safety, we're we're putting first. So the operating property tax revenue gets you through the police and fire department. And then there's if you show the the subsidy for the EMS system in
there, there's a little bit of it that goes towards that, but then you're mostly on to sales tax, which is going to take you about twothirds of the way through. And then the rest of the departments are funded by the other tax category. So, I'm going to show you more
numerically what this looks like for each of our departments. And a reminder about the portions of our property tax rate of 67 cents total only 52 and a4 cents is in the general fund. So that's the only amount we're actually
allocating. The 14 and 3/4 cents for the general debt service fund is outside of the scope of this. So you're not going to see this on the next table. But of that 52 and a quarter cents, the lion share is the 45 cents for general operations.
And over half of that is going to police. And really, police and fire are eating up all but about a fifth of a penny of that. So before we've actually funded all of our public safety, which includes the EMS subsidy and the general fund and also the um office of emergency
management, we've used up the operating property tax revenue. Uh and property tax and public safety is still not fully covered at that point. >> Freddy, I want you to repeat that. Maybe not for us, but for others.
to repeat that before we've even fully funded our public safety needs, we've already used up all of the operating property tax revenue in the general fund. >> Thank you. >> The payo on the right side, that's more
targeted, more specific about certain things we're paying for. So that's not as much general revenue. So we're showing the departments that that's going towards funding. Like I said, to finish funding the public safety, then we start dipping
into the sales tax. So, as a reminder, we have two cents overall of city sales tax. One full cent goes into the general fund. One half of a cent goes into our crime crime control
and prevention district fund for mostly for police. And then the other half cent is really kind of external to the city because that funds Trinity Metro which is a public entity but that's an external organization. But continuing on with that about 15% of
our sales tax goes towards funding the rest of that EMS subsidy and then the emergency management department within the general fund. And then you can see the departments that are funded with what is the other 85% of our general
fund sales tax penny. The department that gets the most is parks. And that's not because it's larger than TPW, but TPW also has a the by far the largest amount of the PGO property tax revenue. And then there's just a little little
fraction of library under this method that's not covered. So we start moving into the other tax funding that really if you talk about just the number of departments is covering the majority. So this is all the other departments we have that need some sort of general
funding. So a lot of those are also allocated out to city funds but uh you have 14 total that are getting some of that other tax funding. Uh, property management is going to look a little bit funny on here because it looks like it's 100% allocated, but that
also has a good degree of PEGO and sales tax funding and department generated revenue. And that pretty much brings me to the end, but these are the points I'd say to wrap this all up and leave you with. So, of all of our general fund revenue,
which is over 1.1 billion now in the FY26 adopted budget, 92% of that pretty much comes from general sources and things that we don't have too much control over aside from how we set the tax rate each year.
And then the public safety commitments to reiterate that again because I know it's one of the main messages and one one of the main takeaways those take up more than 100% that operations property tax revenue which is 45 cents. Um and
they have the potential to exceed the general fund revenue growth rates. One of the main things that Christy mentioned as well that we're in this position that we have a gap because there's a difference between how revenue is growing and how expenses are growing.
And if you look at our departments, the number of departments in the general fund, about twothirds of those are to some degree reliant on that other tax funding which has been growing at less than 1% per year.
Thank you. Any questions or comments from council? Anyone? Um maybe with one comment is we continue to work through budget into the summer. The way we articulate
um the restraint we have both with a property tax revenue that's coming in and then you mentioned a growth of expenses. Those growth of expenses are basic city services. And we need to make sure we're clear on
that, right? If we're we are in need of revenue, it's because we need to make sure we provide police officers, firefighters, parks, litter abatement, homelessness services, all those things. Um I just don't want us to get lost in the language there that that makes the assumption that we're just spending
money. Um that's that's actually not the case at all. These are basic city services for the highest quality of life. And that's why putting pen to paper for department heads is quite difficult. Um, you can always find, you know, 1% 3% here, but we still have a long way to go. So, that's just those are hard decisions we're gonna have to
make as a council in in the next budget cycle. >> Something Chris? Yeah, I I was thinking about that and I think I mentioned this the last time when we talk about the tax rate or anything going up or down. I think it might be very important that we
outline if we're going upwards, we're able to do X, Y, and Z, which is going to bring infrastructure to your streets or provide police officers. If we're going down, then this is what that decrease is going to look like. It may save you $100 off your tax a month, but
what would it do if we did this? I think it's going to be very clear that we explain articulate uh the direction that we're trying to make a decision around this table. >> Anybody else? >> Brady, how do you think you'll
communicate or Jay when you get final tax rules in July? How will council members be notified and opportunity to kind of digest that information prior to August budget sessions? >> I mean, I think we'll we'll you'll be at the point probably by the time we end in
June of what we're we're projecting and then we can provide the city council final numbers and let you know that what you saw last time we either have x millions above or x millions below what we're estimating so it gives you a better idea. One of the key things and I
think Councilman Nettles touched on it is at the end of the day that at this point in the process really the only lever we have as a as a city to pull that impacts revenues is the property tax either down or up. And so that's
that's a key decision. It's a key decision for the recommendation from from me and my office and then also through the city council as we go forward. Um, beyond that, they're kind of set things. And as as Brady pointed out, all of those 14 departments that
are funded with other tax revenues that over time we've lost when I say we, local government has lost control of those of how you set those because the state basically has changed how the rules work in the state and a lot of
those. So that less than 1% growth those 14 departments if you think about it to keep up with market on traditionally we try to keep as around 4% pay increases to try to keep up with market and those kind of things but at some point those don't if you looked at it just strictly by
these sources that's not going to level out right and what's helped us in the past is that our growth on the sales tax side has really come through higher than than 4% and then property tax values have also done that higher than 4%. % and so that's allowed us to to be able
to be on the trajectory. I think we we've run out of that rope right now with the current economy and some of the changes with the appraisal system. So all that to say that's big picture that's kind of where we're where we're at and as we go through the process we'll we'll be whittling down um on the
cost side because really other than that tax rate piece it's just the cost side is the only other thing that we have control. Any other questions or comments for Brady? Yeah, Charlie. >> So, Jay, I'm glad you brought up um you know that 4% growth that we typically
see. And there's going to be really difficult conversations as we go forward too, especially as we talk about public safety. Um and how we fund things. And I know one we talked about before it's going to be incredibly important is how we're looking at our um fire department for our recruits who understand they're
not part of the um negotiations but their pay still being at $39,000 and that they haven't had a raise in over 20 25 26 years and we talked about before and that's going to be a really difficult one too is how we make make
that right u because I think it's really going to hurt with recruiting at some point for So, I don't I don't know if we're going to end up I'm sure we're going to have a lot of one-on- ones in the different offices and we talk and then you all take all that. I also think as far as neighborhood outreach, one of the things I would like to do, kind of shifting
gears a little bit to outreach is uh bringing in some of the um very active HOAs and some of their leadership that can really help us get that word out because unfortunately sometimes they get bad information and we saw a lot of that with that this recent uh bond issues, just a lot of bad information. And when
you have people in positions of leadership in their own community who are getting information, interpreting it their own way, and then passing that to people, you know, they trust those individuals more than they trust us in government. Um, and so one thing I'd like to do with us uh in
District 4 is actually bring a lot of those key leaders, you know, down here sitting in the conference room and having some of the uh the big brains uh like yourself helping explain a lot of this. And really, if you break it down to where if I can understand it, then everyone can understand it. Um, and same
to the mayor's point about the questions and looking at some of those, you know, certainly bounce them off me because I'm going to be the dumbest guy in the room 99% of the time. And if I can understand it, then then certainly our residents are going to understand it, too. So, >> see if I can give you a run for your money title.
>> Oh, perfect. Let's go. Let's compete. >> Yeah. Anybody else? Charles, >> um maybe this is best articulated in the form of an IR. I'm wondering since um and there are a lot of moving parts to this. I mean, there's more than one thing that needs funding that has a
funding gap. I understand that. Uh but taking certain items, uh could we have staff take a look at what kind of uh response volumes we have for assisted senior living centers?
uh because I think maybe there might be some correlation with how they're staffed when it comes to uh taking care of the needs of our seniors, which is very important. But uh I'm curious to see that particular industry, right? What
it's doing. I mean, do do they have sufficient staff there at the facilities to take care of the needs of the seniors or is that over time being gradually, you know, offloaded to, you know, our fire and EMS?
>> Are you talking about like a a ratio of staff to folks? >> Yeah, exactly. >> We'd have to check with law to see if we have that authority in the state, but we can look at it. >> Thank you, Brady. Appreciate. Thank you,
>> Jay. That's the last of our presentations, correct? On budget today. >> So, at this time, we can take requests for future agenda items pertaining to the budget. Anybody in particular? Talked about a few today? >> No. Okay. We're going to adjourn here and
then head into executive session. Yep. I've got a piece of paper to read. just any requests or any follow-ups. We'll bring them back to the bond to the actual budget uh workshops instead of into the council so we don't mix them up with IRS. >> Okay. The city council will now convene
an executive session on the following matters. The city council will conduct a closed meeting in order to seek the advice of its attorneys as authorized by section 551.071 of the Texas government code. Deliberate concerning real property matters is authorized by section 551.072 of the Texas government code. Deliberate
concerning economic development negotiations as authorized by section 551.087 of the Texas Government Code and deliberate concerning security as authorized by section 551.076 and section 551.089 089 to the Texas
government code. Part: 2
Okay Council I think we can get started. I will call our work session
to order. Good afternoon, and Jay, over to you. Good afternoon. I'd like to
start off by making an upcoming event. Next Tuesday May 12th at 10 a.m.,
we'll be having a little press conference here at City Hall to talk about and
put out more publicity about the illegal gunfire campaign that we've started. And so we welcome any city council members that would like to attend. Under organizational updates and employee recognitions, I'd like to start off by calling up Jessica McAkron to recognize our stormwater team. You know what? We will postpone this because I don't see the team here. It's a nice day, so they're cleaning things up. We're going to
postpone it. We're going to come back. All right. It's not raining, so they're actually preparing. Okay, then we'll jump to the next one. Deanna Giordano, Assistant City Manager to recognize Public Service Recognition Week. All right. Afternoon, Mayor, Council. I'm Deanna Giordano, Assistant City Manager, and it's Public Service Recognition Week, so May 3rd through the 9th. So we want to be able to – this actually has been celebrated since 1985 for both federal, state, and local government employees. And it provides
us with an opportunity to celebrate our employees here in the city of Fort Worth. And those are the individuals that bring a level of dedication and integrity and professionalism to our city to make sure that every day behind the scenes it's keeping our community safe, thriving and moving forward. So I'm going to take just kind of a brief walk down memory lane and to remind us that the city was incorporated in 1873 with the population of just 500 employees. That year the city hired their very first public servants. Their jobs were to keep the city safe and deliver essential services
to its residents. Now fast forward more than 150 years, 1 million residents and over 8,000 employees. And the core of the public servants, what they do is still the same, to keep the city safe and to provide essential services. So a lot has changed in terms of growth, but the core of what we do is still the same. I'd like to add that our city, particularly here in Fort Worth, I hope you're as proud of them, of our employees as I am, because they are the very best public servants that I have seen. They're highly skilled with top-notch expertise. They
not just only do their jobs, but they do it very well. They come to work every day to execute your vision, the community visions, and making sure that we operate as one city and one team. So please join me in thanking the members of our city team for Public Service Recognition Week. So I'm going to look to the audience. If you're a city employee, if you would kindly stand to be recognized. That's most of you. Thank you. And anybody that's watching online, give yourself a pat on the back because you all
deserve the recognition for keeping Fort Worth thriving and moving forward. Thank you. I saw our chief financial officer didn't stand by. I think he didn't. He doesn't like the condition of the budget. Yeah. He doesn't want to acknowledge it. Moving on, William Rumley from our courts department to recognize our teen court program. Thank you, Mr. City Manager, Mayor, and City Council. I'm just going to turn this over to the Chief Judge. We just want to recognize our teen attorneys and the
coaches that helped them. And I think we have a presentation. Good afternoon, Mayor, Council Members, City Manager Chapa, staff, and guests. I'm here today to recognize the achievement of our Fort Worth Teen Court program. On March 28th, the Fort Worth Teen Court competed in the Texas Teen Court Mock Trial Competition held at the City of Frisco Municipal Court. The competition was limited to 12 teams. Each team was comprised of three members. Our team attorneys consisted of Sienna
Shresa, James Jacks, and Christina Azor. I am proud to announce that our team attorneys placed second overall at the mock trial competition. Our teen attorneys were coached by teen court coordinator Ivan Yanez, municipal court judge Patricia Summers, municipal court judge Laura Genoza, and assistant city attorney prosecutor Adeline Atkinson. At this time, Judge Summers would like to say a few words about the teen court program and
the state competition. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for having me here. I tell you, I am so honored and grateful to have an opportunity to talk to you about the recognition of our team court program and especially our outstanding achievements as a team court competition program. But just a little background information on myself. I began, and a lot of people don't know, is I began as a volunteer back in 2000 and 2001. And then I became a substitute judge
in 2002, and then I became a full-time judge in 2014. So in my opinion, teen court, along with the support of this city council, you have given me a very rewarding career. Thank you for that. During those years, I've been involved with training many of our teens. both as a teen court program and as a teen court competition. And I also serve on the Teen Court Board, hey, thank you.
It was right in my face. But this is not about me. This is about our teens, our teens in our community. Teen Court Program is a voluntary alternative to adjudication and sentencing for teenagers in the municipal and justice courts. It allows eligible teens to have their cases heard by their jury of peers, and instead of paying a fine, sanctions may include community service, educational programs, and or future participation to court. Once the requirement is completed, the cases are
dismissed and they do not show up on their record, and they can also ask for an expunction of their total record. Youth Diversion, we have that. It just started last year. Teen Court is a part of our new Youth Diversion program as well. Many times people come and they have an opportunity to volunteer as juveniles and as adults in our criminal justice system, which leads us to the Teen Court competition. Since 2007, the Texas Teen Court Association...
began a statewide competition where teens come together to compete in mock trials in a one-day competition. The students volunteer to compete and demonstrate their leadership in public speaking, teamwork, critical thinking, and courtroom procedures. The teams are made up of three teams: two attorneys, either defense attorneys or prosecuting attorneys, and one witness. They must demonstrate their ability to present both sides of their case before two judges. Those judges
then grade them based upon their opening statement, their closing statement, their cross-examination, and examination of their witnesses. From 2007 until 2020, Fort Worth Teen Court has been involved in those competitions, and we have won many awards, including three times as the first-time placement award. But during COVID, things kind of slowed down. And so it was just this year that we were able to reinstate our
participation in the team court competition. And I am proud to announce that our Fort Worth team earned second place this year statewide, competing against 12 teams. I'm not sure if our kids are here. No. Our children are not here, unfortunately, but... I will tell you a little bit about them. James Jecks, he's 17. He's about to graduate from high school in two weeks. And he is a very confident, dynamic, and definitely a natural
leader. His plans after graduation from high school is he's going to serve his church on a two-year mission wherever they take him. Very young, very nice young man, very strong, very articulate. Christina DeZore, she's a highly intelligent 16 year old. Christina graduated from high school at the age of 15 and is currently attending Tarrant County Community College. Through her experience with us this last year, she has decided she
now wants to become an attorney. Even though I told her doctors make more money. That's here nor there. And then Sienna Sathos, who unfortunately she could not be here because she's taking her AP advanced classes, and she is 15 and is attending North Lake High School in Denton. Very talented performer, and whose dance recital was rescheduled just so she could come and represent us in the Fort Worth Teen Court competition. These young people
trained tirelessly beginning at Tuesdays, Thursday evenings, and all day Saturday. Their dedication, discipline, and teamwork led to an incredible accomplishment. I would also like to thank Yvonne Yannis, our court coordinator, our team court coordinator, Judge Mike Colley, Judge Laura Gonoza, and City Attorney Prosecutor Adeline Atkins for helping coach and prepare these students for success. Teen Court changes lives. It gives youth a confidence,
a purpose, and a second chance. It teaches leadership, accountability, and service. Today, we proudly recognize these exceptional students and celebrate the continued success of our Fort Worth Teen Court. Thank you very much for your time. Next up, we have Marilyn Marvin, Director of Property Management, to
recognize our Fleet Group. Good afternoon, Mayor, Council, and Jay. Thank you so much for this opportunity. Marilyn Marvin, Director of Property Management. And earlier this year, our fleet was recognized through the North Texas COG and the Clean Cities Initiative. And we received, the fleet, not me, received a gold award for providing clean property. transportation
through our cities. And so I'd like to just let Brad, who is our assistant director, just say a few words. Hi, I'm Brad Hunter, assistant director of the fleet division. Mayor, council, Mr. Chapa, thank you for this recognition. I also want to recognize our director, Marilyn Marvin. Her leadership and support, both in front and behind the scenes, has been key to this operation. This recognition reflects the work of our technicians, supervisors, and support staff that put it in every day, keeping the City of Fort
Worth equipment in service and departments moving. We manage a tough fleet. It does not slow down, and neither do we, nor shortcuts. We make the hard calls. Not every call is easy. Not every call is perfect, but we own the results. Fleet's mission is critical. If it's down, the operations are impacted. We 100% acknowledge that. It's that simple. Our job is to keep equipment safe, reliable, and ready when it's needed. We're responsible for every city asset in our care, and we take that very seriously.
Everybody behind us, I promise you, they're sitting here thinking, man, did I call that customer? Is that vehicle going to get done because I'm sitting over here? I guarantee they're all thinking that right now. That expectation is clear. We do the right thing every time. We're proud of this recognition, but focus doesn't change. We stay disciplined, we execute to the standard, and we are accountable for
the results. We truly are one vision, one journey, and one team. I thank you for this recognition. - Thank you. - Thank you, gentlemen. - Okay, I think we put out the bat signal and the Stormwater folks are here now. And so I'm gonna call Jessica
McEachern to recognize them. - As we know, perfect. Well, I'm joined today by Jennifer Dyke, Assistant Director of Stormwater And Lisa Biggs, our floodplain administrator who I've gone shopping with. I can't believe I just completely went blank. Y'all come right over here so they can see. So every year in Texas, Governor Abbott proclaims Texas Flood Awareness Week. And this year he has proclaimed the week
of May 18th through the 22nd as that week. And last year we were here around this same time to recognize our stormwater utility folks. And this year it's especially special to me to recognize them because this year in Fort Worth is the 20th anniversary of the creation of the stormwater utility. And you might remember it was created after a group of stakeholders were put together following some really catastrophic flooding in 2004 that led to five deaths. And the mission of the stormwater utility is and was, remains to protect people and property from harmful stormwater runoff. This team has worked incredibly
hard over the last 20 years to start with a very nominal fee that created a little bit of money to tackle some small projects and they really have leveraged that into some really monumental projects for the city of Fort Worth and they continue to do some really great things. I asked them, what are some of the examples that you are most proud of over the last 20 years that the stormwater utility has done? They named that they have mitigated hazardous roadway flooding through many areas of the city, but a great example of that is off Haltom Road. In areas where
they can't do the infrastructure improvements to mitigate that hazardous road overtopping flooding, they have installed high water notification systems, flashing beacons, etc., They have maintained the high water warning flasher system at over 60 locations. And in 2024, they launched a new effort. What was the new one? I'm so sorry. I'm trying to blank. Thank you. That notifies people ahead of time before they get to the area of where there is high water and to go to a different route. They have
mitigated flooding to 125 homes in the Westcliff and Greenfield Acres neighborhoods. They are constantly assessing the condition and rehabbing aging drainage pipes and we have continued to expand that over the last 20 years. The new culvert inspection program that was created in fiscal year '24 has inspected 2,600 of the city's 4,000 culverts and they've cleaned 1,600 which has a direct impact on mitigating flooding. And then a huge celebration that we shared with y'all is they recently
were awarded $90 million in flood infrastructure funding, a grant, for the Upper Lebeau Flood Mitigation Project. And that's just a really strong testament to the work that they have continued to do to demonstrate success and then identify funding opportunities to go after. And then last year when we were here recognizing them, we shared with y'all that they had received the Texas Floodplain Management Association Excellence Award in 2025. This team continues to do some really phenomenal work for the city of Fort Worth. We saw it recently
with the heavy rain and flooding that we saw just over the last couple weeks. Last year, I think at the same time when I was up here, we had just experienced a flooding event as well. So we are no strangers to that, and we are so thankful for the work that they do. Lisa, you've been our floodplain administrator now for how many years? Two years? Over 10 years. And Jennifer, you've been with the city now for? Around. 11 years leading the city and as Jennifer mentioned we do have our field crews out responding to all of the calls for assistance
over the last couple weeks and we really appreciate them but please join me in thanking this team for all that they do for the flood awareness education and protection in the city of Fort Worth. Just a couple more to go and Dana Bergdorf has the honor of finishing us out. The first one is to recognize Midori Clark and our library team for an award. Thank you, City Manager Chapa and Mayor and Council. Appreciate the opportunity. So unfortunately, Midori couldn't be
with us today. She's at an important urban library director meeting, but we do have the team that really deserves a lot of the credit here today to help accept this award. So I'm pleased to announce some wonderful news that the Texas Library Association recently announced its 2026 Branding Iron Awards. and Fort Worth Library has taken home the top honor in the fundraising, annual report, and strategic plan marketing category. So, ta-da, there's the state award. So this award specifically recognizes the innovative marketing campaign behind the library's
fiscal year 2024 annual report. The selection committee was particularly impressed by how the library team developed a comprehensive planning strategy that resonated with our residents, demonstrated strong community enthusiasm for libraries, and evolved their engagement practices to better connect with our city of learners. So this branding iron award is a high honor in the library profession Signifying that Fort Worth is leading the state and how we communicate the value of public services, which Deanna spoke to earlier It's a testament to the hard-working communications professionals who ensure
our residents know exactly what their library has to offer them from millions of books and free printing to ESL classes and world-class cultural programs So as I mentioned Midori couldn't be with us today, but I would like to invite assistant director Sherry Knight of Communications Manager Teresa Davis and her team of talented communications professionals Todd Overman, Erica Stewart, and Sarah Gunther to formally accept this award for
the library. So please come forward. Dana, stay up there. Next, Dana is going to recognize Jessica Rogers, the Economic Development Director and her team. Or the last of the stars. Yes, yes, the stars are winning here in Fort Worth. So I'd like to call up Jessica Rogers and her team.
So you may recall that Reggie Zeno provided an informal report several weeks ago about the five transparency stars that his team helped develop. helped the city garner through the Texas Comptroller's Office and I'm very pleased to report that for the first time in Fort Worth history we have achieved the sixth transparency star for economic development. So I'd like JR to tell us a little bit about it. We also did a great job, but we timed it perfectly. This week is also Economic Development
Week. And so I'm really excited to introduce you to a few faces that you may not be familiar with because they do incredibly hard work behind the scenes. So Andrea Duffy, who's our Communications Coordinator, Jordan Brown, who's a Management Analyst on the Small Business Team, and Priyanka Ramkabal, who is on our Business Attraction Team. And these are some really high-powered data analytics folks that when we put numbers in front of you, they have put them through Any number of models so I just want to make sure that these guys get recognized Ryan Poehler who is with the Fort Worth lab
who is on our compliance side also did a tremendous amount of work to help us with this to review this information So I just want to say thank you to this team and I counted last night I didn't have my glasses on so someone can correct me if I'm wrong But we are now one of 16 cities in Texas that have all six of the stars. So I Alan, I think you had something. Oh, I'm going to take a picture. Yeah, I just wanted to give a quick shout out. I
think it was about two years ago we challenged the city to go through the Transparency Star Program, and that was an aspirational goal. I'm thrilled that we've made it. And yeah, while there are 16 cities, there's just one Fort Worth, and we're the biggest. We're the most transparent large city in Texas. Before Dana sits down... I want to recognize Dana and let you all know that she has achieved a really
high milestone in her career and in her area of expertise. The American Institute of Certified Planners has named her and added her to the group of fellows. And that is the highest, loftiest level you can reach. I think she's got a cool hat now. There's some that they make them wear. It's got a feather in it, I believe. But it's the highest level that you can get in that profession. And Dana Bergdorf is now a fellow. Yeah. And if I may, I want to thank Jay for your support in that application,
but also specifically I want to call out Mayor Parker, Mayor Pro Tem Carlos Flores, and also Mayor Pro Tem Gina Bivens, who wrote me recommendation letters last spring for that application process. I had to write a 10-page narrative about my story here in Fort Worth, and it was such a wonderful experience, a lot of work, a lot of hard work, and I just want to thank all of you for your support over the years and the team here. in planning and development. And then last but not least, Fernando Costa, who was my mentor for many, many years and still is to this day. We're so proud of you, Dana, and so thankful for your tenure
here at the City of Fort Worth. I think your business card should just say fellow on it from now on. Or just effin' planner. I don't know. That's how I can say that. We are so incredibly lucky to have Dana and You know, as a former planner, I can tell you that when I grew up, I wanted to be Dana Bergdahl. Absolutely. Y'all do. You know, there's so many aspiring planners that meet you and are completely enamored with the work that you do. So this is well-deserved, and thank you for sticking with us here at the City of Fort Worth.
Yay Dana. - I think we have guests that got to join us. - Yes, I think our teen agers from the teen quarter here, we could actually have them come up and we can recognize them. - Please introduce yourself. - We had one even come who just had a bunch of dental work, so he's just gonna wave. - That's fine, we understand. This is James Jackson, the gentleman I told you about that's going to go off and do a mission for his church. And yes, unfortunately, James had both his wisdom teeth taken
out yesterday, so he's not smiling too much. He's a great guy. And then this is our, we call her Dookie Houser, if you know who Dookie Houser is. This is our brain girl. She is already in college, doing great. Now she wants to be a lawyer, even though I told her. Yeah. She's still going to be a great attorney one day. So this is Christina Azor. Christina, do you want to say anything? You're welcome to. I just wanted to say that I'm very happy to be
here today in front of all of y'all. Thank y'all for seeing me and allowing me to have this wonderful opportunity to meet all of y'all. And I thank y'all so very much. Thank you. Proud of you. Congratulations. - Thank you for seeing us again, we appreciate it. - Absolutely, thank you. - Thank you all. - Feel better, okay. - Go take the pain pills. Moving on to informal reports. The first is our quarterly development activity report and
DJ Harrell's here to answer any questions. Next up is our Human Relations Commission overview and Kristen Smith's here to answer any questions. I would just like for Kristin to kind of share some of that with us. They gave me an informal report which was very good and I'm very pleased with the transformation that she is bringing about to the Commission. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. I'll just kind of give a quick overview of what the IR includes.
The first thing that I do want to stress is I know there's lots of conversation about DEI, but specifically the Human Relations Commission here in the city is tasked with civil rights compliance. And that is directly related to civil rights law, which has been in effect since the '60s. So our Human Relations Commission is responsible for all of our civil rights programming, so that includes our Fair Housing Office, which falls under HUD, or Housing and Urban Development. Also Fair Employment, which would be part
of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC. We also support the ADA for public access, including our ADA coordination, and then community engagement and outreach. The HRC or Human Relations Commission consists of 11 members who are appointed at large. One of our current priorities is making sure that that commission is fully filled with community members. So later this week you will receive an email from me just asking and providing information if you have constituents who may be interested
in serving on the HRC. it's important that we have that commission filled because they also hear appeals that may come through fair housing or fair employment. On the second page of the IR, it includes the names of our current members and how they are elected. And then I've also included metrics for each of our programs. So for fair employment, our top three complaint categories are race and ethnicity, sex or gender, and retaliation. For fair housing, our top three
complaint categories include disability by far, overwhelmingly disability is our highest, followed by race and sex or gender. And then I've also included metrics for accessibility complaints or investigations that have come through our office, which these are specifically limited to public accessibility. So just recently, just to focus on re-engagement, And again, so as I'm building my relationships with our commission members and helping the community understand these programs, we had a special called meeting. It was
a combined retreat with the HRC and the Mayor's Committee on Persons with Disabilities to really do some strategic planning, provide them with training on what their purpose is and scope, and to just kind of talk through ways that we can get the community engaged. And again, in addition to filling vacancies, our priorities include expanding and maintaining consistent outreach, as well as appropriate funding of the programs and agency and making sure that we have support to continue these programs for
the long term. But I'll open it up for any questions, comments from me. Questions from council? No, I just want to thank Kristen and Deanna for hitting the ground running. I mean, I know that you just recently came to us, but the work you are doing is much needed, and I like the speed with which you are moving. I appreciate that. Thank you so much. Thank you, Kristen. All right. Up next is the Multifamily Housing Recovery Program Notice of Funding
Availability, and Casey Thomas is here to answer any questions from our Neighborhood Services Department. Any questions for Casey? Okay. Next is our neighborhood street project timelines and oversight and Lauren Pereira from TPW is here to answer any questions. I'd like an overview. Council Member Flores and Council Member Martinez. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's probably safe bet. We all have questions of varying degrees. Lawrence, will you just step us through your plan? Sure. Mayor and Council, this informal report explains
essentially why neighborhood street bond projects take longer than resurfacing work and how we manage our contractor performance and schedules. In short, resurfacing moves quickly because it only addresses the pavement surface. the neighborhood street bond projects are full reconstructions that includes water, storm water, curbs, sidewalks and ADA ramps. The broader scope averages about 430 days compared to about 40 days per lane mile for resurfacing. Residential access needs and utility coordination does limit how much work can occur
at once. And final paving is intentionally scheduled at the end of our projects to protect the new concrete and underground utilities. We've also reviewed seven recent bond projects in the neighborhood streets category. On average, they receive a time extension of about 54 days or 13% of the contract time. Most were due to unforeseeable field conditions, utility conflicts, or scope adjustments. All extensions do go through a formal change order process to ensure that
they're justified and minimal in time or cost. We did not find a pattern of repeat underperforming contractors, and our performance issues are addressed through contract remedies. So we will continue enforcing our schedule requirements, improving communication with communities about changes, and evaluating our acceleration strategies and strengthening the upfront planning. Who has questions or comments? Should I go down the line? Carlos, you want to
go first? No specific questions. I think you, prior we have talked about some things, Lauren, that you answered them, but as part of this plan, Maybe if you could characterize how actively TPW is looking at new methods, methodologies, taking opportunity where there are some to try them out, right, to employ these things. I know you did that in my district some time back with some concrete work that needed to be done, but it was cost prohibitive.
And there was a technology there that you employed. Yes. So most often we'll take a small portion of our Pago allotment and use that for experimental treatments, especially in asphalt. There's a new product coming out every day. So we'll test it on a small scale in the Pago maintenance program. And if worthy, we'll expand in the bond programs if we find those techniques are valuable. Thank you. Council Member Crane. I just wanted to comment the oversight. I won't mention any projects Westridge Avenue, but
I will say it's been what standards are what we put in place when a contractor comes up for another contract based on the performance on the previous contract. I just want to understand those metrics a little bit. Yeah, so, you know, when there are issues, these can be addressed through either formal notices, withholding payment, or when necessary, suspending or terminating the contractor in accordance with their contract. So we do look at poor performance history when awarding new contracts, and it should be noted that, you know,
Council does retain that discretion in awarding contracts and may not choose to award a contract to contractors who have not demonstrated a satisfactory performance. Council Member Martinez, do you have one too? No, just general comments. But I really appreciate you and Mary explaining the different projects, the scope, and why some take longer than others. And so I just wanted to ask about the contracts specifically when there's road work being done around schools or
hospitals or any other. you know, service provider that is critical. Do we have those in place to maybe prioritize those streets that are directly around those types of services? So yeah, in our matrices for how we rack and stack projects, often if you are adjacent to a school or serving a school or hospital or other community resource, that will provide a higher ranking for that project. And during construction, we do coordinate with those specific entities on what would work best for how they operate. Obviously,
we'd like to do all of the work around schools during construction. around schools during the summer. Sometimes we just, you know, their work will take longer than the three-month break that we have. So we're definitely well aware that both ourselves and the contractors would not like to be working in a school zone specifically during the start of the school year, and that is something that we definitely look program-wide to try to schedule as best as possible. Well, I was glad to see that there was
the remedies that were in place and I didn't realize the amount that these contractors were charged per day for going over. the required time. So I appreciate you putting this together. - Right, so as part of our remedies, each contract is assigned a liquidated damages. So if a contractor goes over there, their contract time allotment, they are assessed up to a $650 fee per day. - Any other questions or comments from council? - Thank you,
Lauren. - I have one, Lauren. If you click on the website, by the way, and the way comms has integrated with TBW is excellent. You can click on every project, meeting notes, you can even watch if you want to, pre-construction meetings, it's all there. I think there's a disconnect between what we, with the information we have, how we're holding contractors accountable, and how we communicate that to constituents. And oftentimes, I'll let my council members speak up, your council members are oftentimes the one holding that, And they're the ones that get angry phone calls of frustration from constituents. And so to
the extent we can be helpful, do you need more support? Sometimes signage that's on site is lacking. It may say it's a bond project, but to the average driver that's coming through there, that doesn't tell them anything. And so as a city, because we have so many projects under construction, and now we're thankfully gonna have more because of this bond election, I think we just need to think differently about how we're doing that. And, you know, Michael mentioned Westridge, just one example. When you have a project, things are going to happen, and that's understandable. But people feel sort of they're
victims of our own growth and progress in their homes and in their neighborhoods. And I just don't think we're there yet. And it's not really a blame. It's more what resources do we need to provide differently and better partnership to make that communication better. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. We recognize that challenge. You know, we have been experimenting with QR codes on the project signs as well as a text for a text system for project updates. But you know, those all require that person engaging with that QR code or phone number. So yes, we are always open to new strategies. I know
we've long contemplated just a simple click and zoom map to see the projects, right? Because really, I'm focused on the project in front of my house. And so that's more of a technology constraint, if you will. But those are definitely things that we are thinking about and trying to work towards. And then when things really do go wrong, do you feel like you have a handle on things get elevated to you when needed so that you're the one on point handling it? Or sometimes it may be Chris Harder in the water department as well. Correct. And I think we really
rely on the neighborhood associations and the strength of those to get that message out to their neighborhoods. But also, you know, when folks attend our pre-construction meetings, we take those email addresses, and when we do have significant issues, that's one way with which we can push out that information. This is maybe a question for my council colleagues. Do each of you feel like in your respective offices and your district directors have a proactive relationship where you know ahead of time, hey, we have an issue versus you get an angry phone call from a constituent saying you've messed up again, it's
now 20 days delayed or whatever it may be. And every office may have a different relationship. Just making sure that they feel like they've got the right information ahead of time, which I know is really helpful. I'll chime in. I feel like we have a great relationship with our transportation department. If we do have a complaint, we know how to define the project manager or get their name. But I love that you brought up that sign because I drove by a sign and I was going to drive back, go back, and I just didn't have the opportunity to see if
like a name or an email or a phone number was on there. So I really like that idea for just a generic email where people can complain. But we don't... Of course, we have a lot of established neighborhood associations, but there are other areas where there's none. And so most of the time, people don't speak up, right? I sent a letter to a school, and that's how I knew there was an issue with the school, because they responded. They needed help with that. But... I feel like signage, that additional information on the signs. And I feel like not all the
projects get assigned. I don't remember seeing one. And there is a difference between maintenance projects, which are quick, versus a capital reconstruction. So there is a difference, and there's a difference in how we communicate those. So do the bond projects get those signs? I know PAYGO does because I've seen those, but I hadn't seen. Yeah, so bond projects within our contract specifications, they will have a prescribed sign that the contractor has to place when they start working. So I guess my charge on you is if
there's a project currently – That is being worked on now that doesn't have a sign. Maybe we can get signs on there Yeah, absolutely. Let us know and again, we let me check to see the details on it It may be a project where we anticipate being out there for for less than a week Yeah, so there might be circumstances with which you know a full sign to get mocked up wouldn't be necessarily worth it And then my last little comment, Jess helped me on this one, is pouring down rain days is just an example. Bryant-Irvin's under construction, there's
site barricades all over the place. Okay, we know they're not doing construction that day, but they've got all the lanes shut down. There are barricades literally floating down the road. We want our contractors to take ownership of their projects and communicate that should not be on the city. And we can fix it when we see it because we can text somebody. But I don't know how to get that message across to contractors so they can also work with barricade companies. That just is not acceptable. I mean, you know when weather's coming, let's think ahead of time. Those are the calls we all get. And I understand it's really frustrating and it does look silly. And
I just happen to be driving down in the middle of it to be able to fix it. So maybe that's just a message back to contractors. Yeah, point well taken. And I would say that's the majority of our inspectors' duties on a rain day is just checking traffic control. So traffic control is designed, has to be designed and sealed by an engineer. And it has to stay that way until the conditions change. And that is mandated by the state. Thank you. I'm done. I'll just chime in because I know we had talked about the issue we had with the funeral
home. They were blocked off and they had a funeral procession that was happening that day. So I think it's important that specific businesses that operate outside of Monday through Friday on Saturday and Sunday. So I called you off on the weekend looking for help, but thank you for the help. But how we can communicate our office directly with those contractors too, because they was unwilling to work with just a funeral home, so they called me. So I I'm chiming in on what the mayor just said.
Yeah, and part of our notification process is to actually go door to door. And if we're not able to make contact, then to leave a door hanger, right? But that has problems in itself. Sometimes people don't use their front door. They just go straight through the garage. And, you know, often when we're knocking on doors, it's 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. when most folks are at work. Thank you, Lauren. Thank you. And our last IR, Water Customer Information System Replacement. And Jan Hale is here to answer any questions from the Water Department.
Okay. Any changes, boards, commissions, zoning cases we want to flag or MNC items before we move into our agenda item? Okay. Looks like Eric Flattiger is up to talk about our comprehensive plan alongside MIG consultants. Afternoon mayor Parker and city council members and city manager choppa we're here to give you an update on the status of the 2050
comprehensive plan I'm gonna introduce Jay Rankins from MIG to go through the presentation here in just a moment, but just to set the stage, I know we've got some new council members that haven't gone through this whole process previously. The city's comprehensive plan is its guide for growth and development looking out in the next 20, 25 years. We've had a plan that we've been updating on a regular basis, but it's really now time to create a new one. Our city has doubled in size and doubled
in population since we initially created that first plan, conference plan, in 2000. So it's been updated, but it really needs to address what this community wants to be, wants to do going forward. That's really the point of the comprehensive plan. So it's guiding decisions that the city makes on a regular basis, whether it's zoning commission, whether it's city plan commission, or the individual departments, it guides projects that get into the bond program, get into the CIP, the operational budget, all of that goes towards
implementing the vision of the future of Fort Worth that we're all seeking. So we've been active and working on this for a little over a year now. Based on the comments we've heard from you all, we've really invested in a great deal of community engagement. We've had fantastic input from the community, from stakeholders groups like the Real Estate Council, university presidents, ISD superintendents, business groups, community groups. We just finished, in fact, about an hour,
hour and a half ago, joint technical advisory committee meeting and community advisory committee meeting, had great conversations there, lot of terrific feedback. So you'll learn a little bit more about this, but we've been out in the community, Meeting them where they are. We've done over 110 pop-up activities. We've had 45 focus groups. We've got all kinds of different opportunities for people to be engaged. So I'm going to introduce Jay Rankins from MIG, and he's going to walk through the presentation for you.
Thank you, Eric, and hello, Mayor, Council, City Manager, and staff. Really excited to be here. Jay Rankins with MIG. I'm a principal. I'm a chief practice officer. MIG is a planning and design firm. We assist communities of all different scales, but tend to be asked by larger communities that are growing quickly to help them sort of manage that growth in a way that uses market direction, uses data in a really meaningful way, but also a lot of community input and stakeholder guidance.
So I'm excited to walk you through where we're at right now. As Eric said, the comprehensive plan is a roadmap for Fort Worth's future. There is a mandate from the state of Texas for communities above a certain size, which being over a million people now, Fort Worth definitely triggers that, to have a comprehensive plan. It mandates certain elements are included within that comprehensive plan, meaning different topics are covered. Some of those are on the screen here, land use, housing, economic development, parks and open space, transportation,
arts and culture. Also included would be other utilities, infrastructure, environment, public facilities, other components. And the community does have the ability to add elements or topics to the plan. It just has to meet sort of the minimum threshold within those. It is a community driven effort. As Eric pointed out, the last significant plan development was done in 2000 or the plan was adopted in 2000. And so the plan that you have today that was adopted in 2023 is basically saw incremental updates of that 2000 plan.
And to Eric's point again, that's why we're looking at a larger kind of revamp, both in terms of some of the approach thinking about the outcomes that are desired much more thinking about. placemaking walkability things that started to percolate a bit, maybe in 2000, but I think are definitely top of mind for folks today thinking about diversity of employment diversity of housing and really importantly fiscal health. How do we ensure that the development that occurs over the next
25 years? Is in such a manner of a mix of such in locations that make sense that the city can afford to maintain the quality of life and services that the community expects already today and desires moving forward so we are This makes it look like we're right at the beginning, but we've been developing the plan growth framework for probably the last eight or nine months kind of turning the corner towards the scenario development Which is the equivalent of the
future land-use map so the kind of color Paint-by-number colored map that you see in the plan and most comprehensive plans I'll explain how we're updating that approach to that map and but that's largely what the scenario piece is. The plan also includes a lot of policies, a lot of recommendations. We're not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. We're definitely carrying forward those policies, directives in the existing plan that people just told us were priorities in 2022, 2023, but
also supplementing that where we see gaps and integrating ideas from recently adopted plans And those that will likely be adopted before the comprehensive plan comes before you for review and adoption. So integrating all those pieces, connecting the dots. And then we have this return on public investment. That's what the ROPI strategy and public investment plan is. Thinking about fiscal health, that's a major component where we sort of target areas for economic development, for growth. for infrastructure investment and how do we ensure that the public
investment that is a part of that is actually making the city maybe more right side up than in the past. And then looking at transformative strategies and actions So we want to make sure that it's not just a policy document. It's not just something that sort of sits on the shelf, that this is very action oriented. So that'll be a key piece is identifying what are those big moves that we can take action on in the first year, first five years, so we're not waiting until 2050 to really see the changes that the community envisions. And then it'll be,
I know that's a long timeline on the far right there for plan review and adoption. But of something of this magnitude, particularly with something with so many people providing input and feedback on the process, we wanna make sure that there's adequate time for review and feedback once there is a public review draft plan. And so that December to May timeframe of May 26 to May 2027, that's really what that's for, to ensure that there's adequate time for community feedback and review, as well as for you all to fully digest the plan beyond these updates that we'll be giving you periodically.
So engagement to date and community priorities I definitely want to give a shout out to the city's communication and public engagement department and the planning staff as they've been really instrumental in achieving some of these numbers. We've been utilizing what we call a high touch and high tech approach, sort of a balanced method. So the top half of the screen what you're seeing is what we'd call high touch. So in person engagements of different types. The 9700 plus engaged in
person, we actually had conversations with folks. put stickers on a on a poster board they wrote comments for us, and then the 211,000 plus event attendees that's all those different events that Eric was alluding to. How many people attended those and so our best guess is that we at least raised awareness with those folks that were attending those sessions. and hopefully it directed them to maybe an in-person event where they actually engage with us or online engagement. Which brings me to the bottom half of the
screen. 2,400 plus online survey respondents. We've been doing a series of different surveys and questionnaires throughout the process. So we've reached over 2,400 folks that way. And then where we've seen the greatest uptick actually of late is on the website visits and email recipients. via several different social marketing campaigns, getting the word out, again, utilizing and leveraging your great in-house staff with communications and public engagement. So we hope to just increase these numbers. We're trying to re-engage folks, so that's not just one touch point that
they're tracking along the process. And we're getting to the point, I think, also where the beginning part of the process was more of kind of talking about big picture vision, and goals that are a little harder for people to wrap their arms around and see how it impacts their day-to-day life. And so the open house that we had yesterday evening, just upstairs, actually we had over 150 people really diverse audience and people engaging in really meaningful conversations giving us a lot of feedback because we're
starting to talk about the places where people live and work and want to go shopping and go out for entertainment we're talking about the way that the city grows and the choices that we're creating not just for the people who live here today but unborn children for people who may move here and people are really starting to engage in that discussion These are some photos of some of the in-person events. The online work doesn't photograph quite as well. So you can see the intercept events, workshops, again, a lot of different ways for people to engage
and a lot of different folks engaging. some of the top community priorities that we've heard about these are ranked in order from top left across and then over to the bottom right so public safety being one of the top priorities that we've heard about transportation we've been coordinating with the moving a million effort and the master transportation plan pretty extensively preservation open space housing affordability responsible growth All these topics are going to be addressed in the plan. It's not as if arts and culture in
comparison to these others only got 15% we're going to exclude it. There's still going to be a meaningful robust piece on arts and culture. But we wanted to convey to you what we've been hearing some of those priorities are with the folks that we've been engaging with. One of the fun things we've done recently with engagement is this reimagined city personality quiz. We're brainstorming how to gamify things a little bit more to try to just change it up for those people who do engage
with us frequently, give them something new, but then also try to engage a younger population, maybe a little more social media savvy population. And so we've gotten well over a thousand respondents to date. I think it's over 1,200 at least now. And this is still live. So I have a QR code here and a couple of slides. If you'd like to take it and haven't yet, or anyone in the audience, you're able to as well. - Just don't let Charlie name any of the cities. I see your wheels turning over there, Charlie. Yeah, maybe for our scenarios moving forward,
if you have any suggestions, we could take those. But these are the options that basically people take us, respond to a series of questions, they're forced choice. In a lot of cases, people may want both actually, but they have to choose which one they want more. And through that series of questions, we've been able to discern things like what types of places do people want to live in? Where do they want to be able to go shop? What sorts of recreation do they prioritize? If they
had to make a decision about maybe being able to drive unimpeded to a location versus having a walkable environment where they could kind of walk around to shops and restaurants, which one would they choose? It results in one of these eight options. primary cities, re-imagined cities that sort of responds to that, and then a secondary that they're most similar to. So the results so far, and we pulled this probably about a week and a half ago,
so as I said, I think we're well over 1,200 responses now. This is based on 1,003 total results. Walkersville was the top. 25% of people who responded to this personality quiz responded with Walkersville, which is the connected city. So it prioritizes walkability with neighborhoods that combine housing, jobs, shops, parks, and cultural activities, focuses on revitalizing underused areas by bringing local businesses and housing into abandoned buildings and aging streets. Which I don't think this is that surprising based
on some of the community input that we had and conversations that we had where people were saying that they felt as though a lot of the newer development particularly as you get further from downtown tends to be pretty homogeneous meaning that you know you have a lot of single-family detached housing or maybe even a lot of walk-up apartments with not a lot of amenities nearby and And so I think that idea of walkability, neighborhoods with housing, jobs, parks, cultural activities makes a lot of sense. And similarly, I think there's a perception at least, and I know it's not the case,
we can look at the CIP, sort of demonstrate this, but the perception that there's a focus of investment only in new development areas and not on places that already exist. So that's sort of making sense. makes sense than revitalizing underused areas being a priority. Linkston, I was just behind it at 24%. So this is the transit connected city. So it concentrates new development around major rail transit hubs and high frequency transit routes, meaning the bus or the
train is coming at 10 to 15 minute frequencies. And then higher density housing jobs, shops, and public gathering spaces are clustered near core transit areas. And then the third most is Greenhaven, The green city, about 20% of people have this as their sort of top choice based on those responses. So parks, trails, rivers, and green corridors shape how neighborhoods grow. And housing and development are thoughtfully placed to protect and expand natural systems while allowing for infill and reinvestment. One of the things that we've
been hearing from folks is really the value of sort of the open space within Fort Worth and wanting to make sure that that continues to be integrated throughout Fort Worth and not just concentrated in certain areas. And then also creating more access to those amenities by sort of thoughtful strategic development that doesn't, wouldn't be in the floodplain, for example, but by being nearby so there's good access to trails, river corridors, green space. So the emerging vision framework,
we say emerging because the vision statement in particular, I think, will continue to be tweaked, edited, adapted as we move through this process. This is probably, if I had to guess, our 11th iteration of the vision statement at this point. So I'll just I'll read it and then emphasize a couple key points So Fort Worth is a world-class city of thriving and connected neighborhoods innovative businesses and industries and vibrant places that enhance quality of life and provide opportunity for all The city's continued growth and
evolution is guided by its frontier spirit commitment to people and community and thoughtful integration of green space So we've tested this Probably i'd say over the last four months or so with different audiences, including our advisory committee and then last night with the Community. Definitely it wasn't we had a board with the with this vision statement on it and then a board next to where people have post it notes. It wasn't just a bunch of thumbs up on the post-it notes. I'll let you know that.
But we have not had a chance to fully sort of absorb those, digest those suggestions, but we will. We'll continue to tweak this, make sure that it's reflecting the whole community's vision. But that does bring me to another point. While we have a vision statement that we want to really sort of harness the community's desire for all of Fort Worth, There's, when we're thinking about the types of development that can occur, when we're thinking about the different types of investments that should take place, even in certain cases, development incentives and things like that, when we think about economic development, If
we just try to do everything the same everywhere, we're not necessarily responding to what we're hearing from the community and what they want. They want choice, they want diversity, even in their own lives, right, as they move through and progress through life stages. But we also, there's an opportunity to create differences across the community so we do have choice and can cater to the diversity of that is inherent in a million plus people and 1.3 million people potentially by 2050.
The vision elements that were sort of emerging from that, so different components that we're pulling out from the vision statement that are then driving some of our work as we're starting to dig deeper after today into policy, into transformative strategies, into some of those actions, include complete and vibrant neighborhoods, really building on a key emphasis from the 2023 plan, which was written, as we said, and adopted in 2000, Strategic growth and development. This has been emphasized over and over, particularly by our advisory committees,
but also by city staff, and I don't just mean the planning department. We've been engaging with as many departments as possible, making sure that this is not just the planning department's plan or just Ural's plan, but the entire city's plan. Connected mobility and infrastructure. So that comes in two kind of, there's two components of that. One is around transportation, connectivity, mobility. Just what probably most people think, but there's also this idea of infrastructure. So that's the pipes under the ground, but it's
also thinking about quality of life infrastructure to support our community. Number four, economic opportunity and vitality. So a key component. I think a lot of people when they engage in a planning process like this, they're kind of thinking from that resident lens, which is great. We definitely want to support the people who are living here, but we also want to think about where are people working? How are we driving the economy? How are we ensuring, again, that fiscal health of the community moving forward? And then finally, vibrant public places, which is not just a... kind of residential component,
a nice to have for people who live here. We talked about it with the advisory committees this morning. It's something that when you look at number four, economic opportunity and vitality, employers, employees are looking for more and more. When they're deciding where to locate, where to expand, where to stay, they're looking at what are these amenities and how do public places kind of play into that and attract great employees, which then creates a workforce that attracts employers.
I mentioned way earlier about the color by number map, the place types approach. If you think about those vision elements on the last slide, a land use map in and of itself is not going to address all those different components, public places, thinking about connectivity between, right? It's just saying what use can go on what parcel. So one of the things that the The staff had, I think, enlisted us for, in particular at MIG, we're not the only ones doing this, but we are sort of
the front edge of this, is a place types approach, which is an alternative to future land use. So it still addresses land use, but it also thinks about the built form, height, density, massing, the way that buildings relate to each other. It thinks of a scale larger than just a single little parcel. It thinks about a grouping of parcels, think a district, a neighborhood, a corridor, and how those different pieces need to come together to create a... a meaningful whole. And then what is the infrastructure, kind of the hard roads, pipes, those sorts of things, but also quality of life
infrastructure, green space, trails, parks, to support those places. So this is an alternative approach that we're adopting as part of this new plan. Again, that addresses land use, but expands that with some of these key components that are reflecting what the community has told us is part of their vision. So the place types, we've organized loosely around live, play, and work. There's 12 in total. So neighborhood place types are predominantly residential, but not exclusively residential. As I told you
earlier, the community has told us that they want to have places to go to near home. They don't have to drive 20, 25 minutes just to get groceries or to get certain services. And so those come in different forms though. We want to make sure as I said this isn't with one-size-fits-all plan so thinking about neighborhood low which would be a little probably most reflective of Some of the newer development that has occurred more recently But ideally with some uses mixed in
which I'll show you on the next slide neighborhood medium which would be a little larger scale and maybe some missing middle housing, so attached single family housing, smaller apartment buildings, things like that, condos. And then neighborhood high, which would be sort of the higher density housing concentrated in one area. Usually neighborhood medium to neighborhood high, just as sort of a guide or a rule of thumb, is probably when you're switching from surface park to structured parking, kind of going between those. In the play category,
kind of our mixed use designations, we have a neighborhood, community, and regional mixed use category. Again, scale in terms of kind of the height of buildings and how much is happening in that sort of square footage, but then also the footprint of those places too. So neighborhood mixed use center being the smallest, usually a couple of blocks. Community mixed-use center, usually three, four times that, and then a regional mixed-use center. Really, our best example is downtown today of a regional mixed-use center.
And then we have some work categories as well, or place types, commercial, campus, which include educational, institutional, medical, Innovation Flex, which is a kind of creative office, light manufacturing, production, and then manufacturing logistics, more of our traditional industrial. And then two different types of kind of green space place types, preserve and conserve, which are places where we really sort of discourage development over the next 25 years, kind of save it for further out. And then regional parks and active
spaces where we're formalizing that as a usable open space of some sort. And then we're developing graphics, guidelines around these. We just wanted to show you a few of the graphics examples. This is a neighborhood low example, aspirational. So you can see in the middle there, access, we have some civic and institutional uses as well as a few small commercial uses, really trying to convey that idea that we don't want to see just, I guess, yellow boxes. all across a neighborhood low
place type or place. And then showing how that's connected from a pedestrian perspective, from a roadway perspective, and also could accommodate other modes like transit. Examples would be Alamo Heights, Fairmount, and Vintage Riverside. One from that middle category of play, the mixed use, we looked at the kind of the middle density community mixed use. So here we're talking mainly three to maximum eight story, but three to
five story development. Typically those magenta buildings are representing the kind of mixed use concentration. But mixed use doesn't just have to be vertically within a building. with retail on the ground floor and office or residential above, can also be horizontally mixed use. So that's what this is representing as well, where we have some multifamily development, commercial development, office development, all mixed in, and institutional development, excuse me, all mixed in in this community mixed use place. An example would be the South Main
Urban Village. And then, manufacturing logistics, we called out in that work set of place types, You can see here a lot of it is light industrial logistics manufacturing, but even these people are looking for greater amenitization when they're deciding where to build these types of facilities. We did and we need to do much more kind of digging in this front. or on this front, but I'm sure you all have been hearing a lot about data centers in your meetings and dialogue you've been having with
your constituents. We heard a lot about data centers and concerns last night. So something we'll definitely be thinking about which place types do data centers, would they fall into and be appropriate and how, what sort of, at least design considerations, there's a lot of other considerations, but design considerations would we want to kind of put forward in the comp plan to help guide that conversation? Example here would be Alliance Texas. Also, I wanted to show the innovation flex, since that is a newer concept,
so another from that work category. Example, Foundry District, north of Montgomery Plaza. But you can see, while there is light industrial within this, there's smaller kind of layout space, the idea of having mixed use, even some residential we're seeing in these kind of industrial mixed use or innovation flex areas. And the trick is sort of striking the right balance, but it is achievable with form-based code sort of suggestions with different approaches
to parking, loading, unloading, transportation, particularly coordinating with the master transportation plan to achieve this sort of mix of uses. And preserve and conserve, example being Oakmont Linear Park. Not a whole lot to say there other than it is a opportunity to preserve and conserve. A couple of slides on economic and transportation trends. I think you all know, Eric hit it well in the intro, we've surpassed a million people, likely the
10th largest city, at least at this point. And expected to grow to over 1.3 million by 2050. With that, we have seen a lot of job growth as well. You can see in terms of just the new jobs added on the right side of the screen from 2015 to 2025. We're a little behind Houston and Austin, but have surpassed actually Dallas in terms of the number of new jobs during that 15, or excuse me, 10 year period. With that said, on the next slide, the
left-hand side shows the total jobs. I know those bars are a little shorter, but we're using a different scale there. Fort Worth, when you look at the total jobs, even with that addition from 2015 to '25, is trailing Dallas, Houston, and Austin. And to take that a little step further, we're also trailing not just in the total number of jobs, but the total number of what we're calling white-collar jobs or higher-paying jobs. And so while we want to ensure that we continue to have a diversity
of jobs covering that white-collar, blue-collar, and service sort of spectrum, the greatest opportunity to increase, we think, is in that upper echelon. So not only do we have fewer jobs, we have fewer industries, which would sort of correlate to each other in those premier industry sectors. So only having one as compared to three in Houston, four in Austin, five in Dallas. Because of that, we also have lower average earnings at large companies than the other three large cities in the state. Looking at the development
pattern, particularly on housing, Well over 70% of Fort Worth's housing is in some sort of single family configuration. So multiple bedrooms, most of those are single family detached housing, a small percentage is attached. And when we started to look at this, there's two different ways we looked at it. One was in comparison to pure cities. So most of the pure cities are more in the 50 to 55 or 45 to 50 percent I guess what we say or 45 to 50 percent excuse me
on the slide Compared to the pure city, so we're well above that in terms of a supply of single-family detached housing So it's not to say that that is bad in of itself But we're hearing from community members is that they want more diversity one of the reasons that we think that is is In addition to just different price points and affordability is the types of households that we have so if you look at That's actually on my next slide, I'm sorry. So let's shift gears. We'll focus on how you get around. So the costs associated with
having single family detached housing in large swaths across the city, that means generally you need to drive further to get what you need if we're not creating mixed use places or commercial centers supporting that development. And so while Fort Worth's average housing price is actually slightly lower than the larger, or the other three large metros in Texas, the transportation costs actually end up being higher. And so the total cost, when you think of housing and transportation together, are not as competitive as
it would seem when we look just at housing price. And maybe the most notable on the right there is that 10% only of our neighborhoods are location efficient, meaning that there's opportunities to shop, opportunities for employment nearby, in comparison to 22 to 57% for Houston, Dallas, and Austin. Here we get to the mix of housing again, sorry. So the housing supply, as I pointed out, is nearly 70% overall. And really designed for
families, families with children. Not to say it couldn't be multigenerational families, couldn't be households with multiple adults that are unrelated, but generally speaking, kind of built for families, which has served Fort Worth really well for a long time. But as you can see on the chart on the right, the household mix is shifting. And so while we had less than 60 percent of families in 1970 or households in 1970 that were adult singles and couples without children, that has grown to 68% now. And
so the need has shifted. And so I think this housing stock that we have currently can serve Fort Worth extremely well. But as we move forward, we want to ensure that we're diversifying that housing stock as much as possible to be competitive with these other larger metros, not just in Texas, but across the country. Which brings us to my last section, gross scenarios. Right now these are at sort of a sketch level for this meeting last night with the community and we're creating an online
version of that that will be live within the next week, week and a half. We wanted to ensure that these were accessible. We weren't getting down to sort of mapping every parcel. so we looked at different types of growth residential growth employment growth regional mixed-use center growth looked at where that might be concentrated starting with a business as usual scenario which is kind of using existing development patterns existing policy how might the city grow through 2050 you can
see you know downtown continues to kind of be a stronghold for mixed use development, but then a lot of separated blue and yellow circles or bubbles on the map, meaning that those are primarily housing developments and employment developments, again, separated, requiring a car to get from place to place, lower density development, really relying on the ETJ pretty extensively to accommodate growth through 2050. We
created three alternative scenarios which we're calling scenarios two, three, and four. Scenario two is monocentric core, really thinking about downtown again being that mixed-use center, but can we build upon that with the peripheral development with Panther Island, continue with the medical district development, so on and so forth. So a single dominant high density regional center, which is efficient in a lot of ways. You concentrate a lot of employment there. Hopefully we get more people back in office. thinking about transit connectivity to that center. But
it is a great distance from a lot of people in Fort Worth. We've heard people even from our, well, last night, people on our advisory committee, they're saying, if it wasn't for this process, I wouldn't even come close to downtown. I'd kind of stick in my portion of town. And so what do you have for me? So that brings up two additional scenarios, scenario three and four, Scenario three, leaning into the idea of the urban village. A network of villages, identifying new opportunities for
urban villages, and introducing potentially a new concept using that kind of neighborhood mixed-use center idea or development pattern that I showed you in the place types. to create suburban villages as well. So how are we kind of retrofitting in existing neighborhoods as well as equipping new neighborhoods with those places to walk, places to visit, places to shop, places to go out and eat and recreate and socialize. opportunities for missing middle housing neighbors neighborhood scale development around that and then obviously some
of our existing employment centers and Residential centers would still exist or those that are already approved would you know kind of be implemented Which brings me to the last scenario and one of my last slides the polycentric city the idea here would be not to not to compete with downtown by any means but to think about is there an ability to create multiple centers of a scale approaching downtown that could be complementary to downtown and its sort of cultural hub
and significance that does have employment that does does have hospitality that does have residential maybe there's others that are more entertainment focused more employment focused more residential focus or have other aspects of their identity but creating three four or five of these sort of regional centers around fort worth And that would be complemented and connected to by community centers, transit, and focusing a lot of the new housing growth, which would help swing that pendulum a little further away
from that 70% single-family detached housing towards medium and higher density housing. We've been in meetings basically since eight o'clock last night when we wrapped up the open house. So we need to dive into the feedback a little bit more. But generally people have told us that they like the alternative scenarios more than business as usual, that they like downtown but want to see opportunities for maybe at least one or two additional larger centers within the community. And then a lot of excitement around
this kind of village idea that would maybe expand beyond the existing urban villages. But again, it's early in getting the feedback on these, but wanted to give you a little taste of what we've heard thus far. And my very last slide, I promise, is next steps. So we had the open house yesterday evening. We're going to be synthesizing that feedback. We're creating that virtual open house. Folks can actually access the Connect Fort Worth site now. or in the
next couple of days and see the boards at least that were presented last night. But the virtual open house will allow people to actually be in a virtual space just like upstairs in the lobby, interact with the boards that we had and provide feedback and input. That'll be live through May. The Reimagine Fort Worth personality quiz is still live, which the QR code that I promised is there on the screen. And then we'll concurrently, while we're sort of digesting and synthesizing all those inputs and creating a draft preferred scenario using the place types, we'll
also be developing policies, priority actions, looking at the return on public investment and fiscal considerations of these different development ideas being in June. Again, aiming towards a public review draft of the plan by December or so. I was prepared to do that in 10 minutes, but I was told that I had a little more time. So hopefully I did not go too long. Apologies if I did. - Very helpful.
Questions or comments from council? Council Member Beck? - Yeah, I just wanna take the opportunity to really thank staff for the public engagement piece of this. As we went out through that and I was moving about the city, I noticed staff in places that we don't normally see them. I think often we rely on our emails and our social media to get the word out, but we did a really great job of meeting the people where they were. I noticed in some of those pictures, I saw La Grande Plaza there. I know you were out at Arts Goggle and different
fairs and festivals around the city to get this input. So what What is exciting about that to me is that we're not getting the usual suspects. We are really getting a good cross-section of the city to see what they want. So thank you for that. And I know David Cook is not here, but this took a lot of doing to get David Cook on board with updating this and finding the value in it. And by the time it's not over, but I think he got on board and I can't wait to sit down with him. I know he's just itching, but to go through it and see really how... we can be better informed as
elected officials knowing what our residents want. - Any other questions or comments from council? Great update, very much appreciate it, thank you. - Thank you so much. - Council, before we go to future agenda items, I think council, I mean, assistant city manager, whatever you are, who are you? Jay Chapa. - I did, I just wanted to, I did leave one thing out of the announcements and it's really good news. SMP has rated our water department's bonds at AAA. It's the first time. it's the first time that um as far as i can remember and probably a
few up to 10 years before i came on board in 1994 that the city has had a triple a so i don't know if we've ever had triple a in any part of our finance side and so i think it's a great start to hopefully over the next few years we can maybe achieve that on the general fund side but i just want to let you know because smp made it public and we're going to go ahead and put out an announcement about it thank you jay Okay, council, future agenda items from any of you? Carlos? I'll articulate
it again. I think we said, where I said this earlier, Jay, I think you took it down. I'd like to get some information about the call volume to the assisted senior living centers when it comes to fire and EMS so that we can assess whether or not there's a potential, you know, there for not just cost savings, but maybe some appropriately, you know, ascertained fees. Anyone else? I'm gonna gavel out before anybody else says anything. Meeting adjourned.