City Council - Regular Meeting

We have a thumbs up. Um,

welcome online. At this time, I will officially recognize a quorum and ask our um, legal department to read us in. Pursuant to the Texas Open Meetings Act, a closed session of the Amarillo City Council was announced on April 14th, 2026 at 102 p.m. under the following authority. Section 551087. Discuss commercial or financial information received from an existing business or business prospect with which the city is negotiating for the location or retention of a facility or for incentives the city is willing to extend or financial information submitted by the same.

Okay. Okay. The close session is reset or is uh completed at 2:12 p.m.

Okay, I see Miss City Secretary moving about. We'll give her one minute.

You got everything you need? Okay, perfect. We will go ahead and uh recognize a quorum out here and call ourselves back into session. Um, formally we are at 3:00 on a uh regular schedule meeting here April 14th. Welcome. Appreciate everybody who's tuning in and watching and and participating today. Um, we have several items we'll work through here today. Uh, we will start with some ceremonial items. So, we should have Murray Gosset uh here to lead the prayer, do the invocation. Afternoon pastor, if you guys wouldn't mind standing and remain standing for the pledges. You want me to pray now? Okay. Okay. All right. Just real quick, I just want to mention again, thank you for your work. Uh that you all might continue to work together. Just a couple little scripture verses before I read, before I pray. This is this. If anyone will not work, let him not eat. We command and encourage in the Lord Jesus to work quietly and earn their living. Whoever does her work, do it heartily as unto the Lord. So whether you eat or drink, whatever you do, do it to the glory of God. and thank you for what you guys do as you work together for the kingdom. And uh thank you all so much. Let's pray. Lord, we do thank you again for our time here. We thank you for the leadership of this community. We're grateful for Cole, for Tim, Don, David, and Les. We ask, Lord, today that you'd give them wisdom and direction. We are grateful, Lord, this is the week of the young child, and we thank you for those in the in this uh gathering that work with young children, how valuable they are as they love children for your sake. So Lord, we again pray for wisdom, direction. Thank you Lord for again the people you've called into these leadership roles. Thank you for the work that they do and may they do that to glorify and honor you oh Lord. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Amen.

To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Texas flagged the Texas one state and indivisible. Thank you so much. Please be seated.

All right. We've got a few proclamations to read here today and a few people that we'd like to honor and acknowledge. Council, if you don't mind to join me downstairs. Um, we'll start with alcohol awareness month. All right. Alcohol awareness month. Whereas the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration says that alcohol is the most frequently used and misused substance in the United States, especially among people who are college aged and younger. And whereas according to the 2024 National Survey on drug use and health, 134.3 million people in the United States aged 12 or older currently use alcohol. And whereas alcohol is the largest contributor to the leading cause of death among young people in America, alcohol misuse strains health care, criminal justice, and substance abuse

treatment systems. And alcohol misuse impacts educational and workplace productivity. And whereas social pre pressures and cultural norms have contributed to excess alcohol use and that with commitment and support these and other substance use and mental health issues can be prevented. And whereas the focus of alcohol awareness month is to assist in the prevention of substance use and provoke promote mental health. And through alcohol awareness month, people from all walks of life are encouraged to become knowledgeable about what they can do to create a healthier tomorrow for themselves and others by helping to prevent these problems today. Now therefore, we the mayor and council, city council members of the city of Amarillo, Texas, do hereby proclaim the month of April 2026 as alcohol awareness month in Amarillo and join the Andreas Project and others across the United States to recognize the seriousness of substance abuse and mental health issues in our communities, the power of prevention, and the tireless efforts of those working to make a difference. Good afternoon. Thank you, city council, for the plammation. I am Dr. Shana James, the executive director of Andrea's project. Andrea was a vibrant 17-year-old. Before one month before getting to graduate high school to ever walk that stage, she was killed from a drunk driver. Alcohol impacts so many lives, probably many in this room today. Alcohol is one of the leading causes of death and over 178,000 individuals a year. But what is very concerning is one

in four youth say that they drink alcohol. A lot of us know of Andrea's project for impaired driving, but we also work on youth prevention. We are zero tolerant becomes to youth. If youth start drinking, they're four to five times more likely to have an alcohol substance use disorder as an adult. Andrea's life could have been saved if somebody would have stepped in. So many people that have an alcohol use disorder get behind the wheel. It's not if they're going to, it's when they're going to. So we are happy to partner with places like Cyn, Northwest Behavioral Health, Oceanceans Behavioral Health who all provide assistance for people that are struggling. If you or somebody you love is struggling, there are resources out there. But we're also not the only ones working in prevention. Core also has a separate prevention program. When we come together, we can change the culture. Andrea's Project has also partnered with Debt Title to provide free Uber vouchers for any event. Let's change the culture. Let's save lives. Alcohol is not something to use to self-medicate. Thank you.

One, two, three. For those here uh for child abuse prevention, This is a a special group of of individuals uh men and women for me because I'm a product of this. I grew up out in a a family of child abuse and in foster care and uh through my through my life a lot of you I've come in contact with which is fantastic and I'm glad you're here. Whereas the cities citizens of Admiral recognized the crucial need for efforts by both individuals and groups to promote awareness of the plight of abused children to work towards prevention of violence against children and to provide services and treatment to

these small victims of their families. And whereas Emerillo Area Courtappointed Special Advocates, the Bridge Children's Advocacy Center, the Department of Family and Protective Services advocate for children of abuse and neglect. And whereas Potter County and Randall County combined confirmed 510 children suffered from some form of abuse or neglect in 2025. And whereas our society has a responsibility to protect our children and help them thrive in a safe environment as every child is entitled to be loved, cared for, feel secure, and be free from all types of abuse and neglect. And whereas effective child abuse prevention and intervention programs succeed because of partnerships among a variety of entities including but not limited to schools, religious organizations, law enforcement agencies, CASA, child protective services, the bridge, St. Francis and family support services, prosecution agencies, medical professionals, mental health professionals, victim advocates, and other community-based nonprofit organizations. Now therefore, we, mayor and city council of the city of Amarillo, Texas, do hereby proclaim the month of April 2026 as child abuse prevention awareness month in Amarillo and all urge all citizens and institutions to support the Bridge Children's Advocacy Center, Amarillo Area CASA, and DFPS and other partner agencies in their efforts to increase awareness of the service uh for abused and neglected children in our community given under under our hands and seal of office this 14th day of April, 2026. Hello. First of all, we want to say thank you to the city council for being a partner with us and bringing awareness

to child abuse. Like it was mentioned, there are over 510 children in foster care in Amarillo and Canyon. And without partners like those standing behind me, The Bridge, DFPS, St. Francis, the Rainbow Room, we cannot combat child abuse. It also takes our entire community. So, if you're interested in getting involved, please do. Um, I'd also like to introduce Judge Carrie Baker to tell you a little bit about the prevalence of child abuse and why it's important to get involved. Thank you all. Thanks to the council. Wait a minute. You're tall. I'm not. Thank you all. And thank you. You're a shining example of where our foster kids can end up. Um, so, anybody want to take a guess what the number one problem is for why we have so many youth in care? Drugs. Drugs. Yeah, drugs. uh overwhelmingly. Uh but that's a sign typically of other problems. It could be just poverty. It can be mental health problems. Most often it is, you know, coupled with mental health. But we have way too many children in care. We we want to find forever homes for all the ones that we do have in care. Uh we need more foster homes. We need more people like our CASA volunteers. Um, we've got various representatives of CASA here today, but there's a whole army of people that you don't see here today. And those are the advocates that come from our community just like all of you. Those are your next door neighbors and your teachers and people who are willing to give their time to advocate for a child or a sibling group. And uh if you ever really want to spend a few years doing something extremely worthwhile and something that you could go to bed every night and think to yourself, I really

did something good today. U being a CASA advocate is it because these children, they so need the extra eyes on them. You know, I'm I'm I'm their judge. I try to have eyes on them. I try to make sure they're taken care of. But, you know, I'm not there every day, day in and day out. I'm not holding their hand. I'm not walking to school with them, you know, I'm not talking to their teachers all the time. So, you know, uh they they need those extra eyes and those extra helping hands and that guidance. Many of them are older kids. They desperately need a mentor. So, I encourage you uh talk about it with your family. Uh it's not a decision to make lightly because it will take time away from your personal time, your family time, your work. Uh so it's a huge sacrifice, but it's one well worth the making. I can't say thanks enough to the folks at the bridge. Uh you know, we have lots of children that that unfortunately have to go through for forensic interviews for for differing reasons, but uh they do a fantastic job out there and you know they are a great model to other communities of what a children's advocacy center could look like. Obviously, our law enforcement, you know, they they do so much. They're they're our teachers and our law enforcement are really our front line. You know, we get we get lots of information from those folks and and you know, they are single-handedly responsible for saving who knows how many children's lives every year uh because they intervene and because they show up to work and they do their job and they do it well. So, uh, I represent 13 or excuse me, 10 counties in the, uh, upper Texas panhandle. So, Potter is probably my biggest, you know, county and I have most kids out of Potter. But, but I serve, I'm here to serve children that are in all of those counties. And, uh, I just can't encourage you enough. Get involved. Whether it's CASA,

whatever it is, try to get involved because our kids really, really need you. Thank you all so very much. I appreciate it. And one, two, three. Thank you. Carol Lee. There we go. Yo, bring your group.

Okay. Whereas reliable child care is essential to workforce participation, business stability, and the healthy development of young children. And whereas the first years of life are a period of rapid brain development that lays the foundation for future learning, health, and success. And whereas highquality early childhood education helps build the skills, stability, and school readiness that support long-term educational success, and a stronger future workforce. And whereas the Texas panhandle is home to 52,870 children ages 0 to 8 in 214 ch child care providers across 24 of 26 counties with shortages that continue to affect families and employers across the region. And whereas the strength of the child care system depends on the early childhood workforce, yet panhandle educators earn an average of $11.31 per hour, well below the $1841 living wage estimate for Potter County. Now therefore, we mayor and city council of city of Amarillo, Texas, do hereby proclaim the week of April 11th through 17, 2026 as week of the young child in Amarillo and encourage the community to recognize and support the educators, providers, and families who help young children thrive. Thank you all. Um I'm just the the loud ma mouth behind this uh this need. The people back here are the ones doing the work that is so tremendous. As the proclamation said, um this is not just about young children, ages 0 to 5, which is 90% of our brain growth happens before we turn 5 years old. So that first five years is critical for the success, but it's also about our economy. If parents can't get to work

and stay at work, then we can't have a thriving workforce and economy. So, it's about today's workforce and it's about our future workforce. But really, it's about those kids who need a a safe place to start and it's about these educators that are doing and they are professionals doing professional work and they're being paid less than $12 an hour on average. So, there's a system change that needs to happen around here. So, we're hoping we can start the conversation. If anyone is interested um working with Early Matters Panhandle, we're a collaboration that is working on this project and on this trying to tackle this in systemic way across the 26 counties. We're particularly interested in business owners who know how this affects your workforce. So, join us. We want to be able to advocate, lift these this profession up, lift these people up, and lift these babies up so that we can all succeed into the future as well. I don't I don't really have anything to add except that um I've been at Opportunity School as the executive director for 15 years and over that time I've seen a lot of changes in our workforce, a lot of changes in the needs of our area businesses and a lot of changes in our kids. And um it takes all of us uh coming alongside parents and families to really make a difference for our for our children. Just like the proclamation about child abuse, it takes all of us coming around children and families. Um and if we can do that well, um then our kids are going to turn out uh better. And we uh and we can't put it all on the schools or the childare programs. It takes all of us. So, thank you. One, two, three.

Our next proclamation is for National Telecommunicators Week and we're specifically recognizing our public safety telecommunicators. So I know Max and part of his team will be here. Whereas the second week of April has been designated as National Telecommunicators Week to recognize the vital contributions of telecommunications personnel in the public safety community. And whereas these dedicated professionals are the first point of contact in emergency situations, serving as the critical link between citizens in distress and the public safety services they require. And whereas their commitment to excellence, calm under pressure, and Tyler's service play an essential role in ensuring the safety and well-being of the community. And whereas it is fitting that we take time to express our gratitude and appreciation for the invaluable service provided by our emergency dispatchers who work around the clock to support law enforcement, fire services, emergency medical personnel, and the citizens of Amarillo. Now therefore, we mayor and the city council of the city of Amarila, Texas, do hereby proclaim the week of April 12th through the 18th, 2026 as National Telecommunicators Week in Amarillo and encourage all citizens to join in recognizing the outstanding service and dedication of our public safety telecommunicators. Thank you so much. But unfortunately, more of our team can join us today. But I do I do just kind of want to give a shout out of what our team does on a daily basis. But to put in context, this year we've we've processed over 300,000 calls. When you compare that to the actual population of our community, that puts it into perspective. Uh public safety is is something that goes without question is a must for any community that is growing to any community that will thrive. Uh, our telecommunicators very much work in the shadows, but they

are the calm in the darkest of days for anyone who calls them. Not just for our community members, but they also are the uh the glue that holds that communication from our community member to our first responders in the field as well as that ability for our first responders if they need help. They are that conduit. So, our I know our dispatchers and our telecommunicators, they they work in the shadow, but they are some of the truest first responders, public servants that you will never see, but they know that their voice is the one that you will hear in your darkest moment. and that they will always be there to serve you with honor, distinction, and timeliness to ensure that the help that you request will always be there for you to ensure that we continue to serve this great community of Amarillo. Thank you so much all. All right. Appreciate you guys uh for coming and letting us do that and just the acknowledgements. So, um we will move ourselves uh into item number three, some announcements. Uh Mr. City Manager, do you have anything?

I do not. Donnie, do you have something? Yeah, sure do. Mr. Hooper.

Yeah, thank you very much. I'm going to spend a little bit of time on this because I think it's worth uh telling a bit of the backstory on this. But today, pleased to announce that we're formally promoting William Johnson and Shannon Tolson to permanent director level roles within the utilities department of the city of Amarillo. This promotion was official as of April the 2nd and they're here in the audience today. But following the departure of Michael Price, who was the director of utilities, uh left us to go uh back overseas. That was back in November. William and Shannon have stepped up into that role into the director's capacity and went with a split model, if you will, to take all of the operations and some of the regulatory items and put that over on one side of the house, take the operational uh stuff and put it on the other side of the house. And they have done a great job uh during that time. In fact, it was about six months that they stayed in those positions as we evaluated what we were going to do moving forward. And I can tell you the interim period was very intentional because we really wanted to see what we were up against. We had a lot that we're working on right now. We didn't want to break the continuity working on the wastewater treatment plant and all those things. And lo and behold, as we were going through that, it did nothing but exceed my expectations. I think I can speak for Mr. Path as well. It exceeded all of our expectations on the job that they were doing and performing there. So that interim period was very uh much uh insightful. We saw faster decision-m processes, saw fewer bottlenecks in our operational things, and more than anything, we saw a collaborative spirit that worked across the organization, working with the planning department, working with CPND, working with parks, working with public works, um that we hadn't seen in a long time. In fact, the staff will tell you that they haven't seen that. So, both William and Shannon play an extremely critical role coming up in the wastewater treatment plant project as well. As we start down that path for the next five years, it's important to have people in place that have historical knowledge and understand those processes both on the regulatory side and also on the side of the operations as well. So, uh we were able to implement this structure uh that we're going to which is now a split

model. We'll have a director on each side of that house permanently. Now, we were able to do that in a budget neutral manner which means that we eliminated an assistant director position to make this happen. So, that budget is totally neutral in that department. So, if I I'm going to ask William and Shannon to stand up. I'm not going to ask them to say anything, but I'll tell you a little bit about both of them. They're here in the front row. And uh William oversees the operational side of the city's water and wastewater systems will help us guide the design and startup of the new treatment facilities. He has more than 15 years of experience in operations, engineering, and people management in both public and private sectors. Has a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering from Florida&M University. William is particularly passionate about the operational safety compliance and has already driven down the cost of claims across his organization. We recognized them recently here because of that massive reduction they had in incidents, accidents over the past year. Very proud of those efforts there. He's a collaborator. He's a team player. Uh he's exactly the type of person that I was looking for in this role. And so that's William Johnson right there if you wouldn't mind giving him a hand. William William told me yesterday, he said, "Hey, I'm bringing people from my church and everywhere up here." So, apparently that happened. We heard it. We heard it. And I will I will say one other note about both of them. And that applause reminded me of something. Grayson caught me a couple of weeks ago. Well, last week when we announced it to the management staff of water and wastewater, we had a a meeting up here. We brought them all in. There's probably about 13 of those uh executive level positions in the management. I told them about the change and without prompting them, you heard the same amount of applause that come from their employees. And that tells me a lot about both of them that they're wanting to work for them. They enjoy working with them. Shannon Tolson will be leading the regulatory compliance administration side of the department, including environmental permitting, reporting, lab operations, coordinating with state and federal agencies, as well as internal policy and oversight or ordinance

oversight. Uh Shannon is a certified environmental scientist with a bachelor of science and environmental sciences from Oklahoma State University. Go Pokes and UN an associate of science and biology, zoologology from Northern Oklahoma College. She has extensive experience in laboratory management, environmental programs, and utility compliance. She's also a collaborator and a team player as well with a vision that's really impressive. If you ever just sit down and listen to what her vision is for that department, it it will it will knock your socks off. Uh Shannon is a is a uh has a well-developed relationship with our regulatory agencies. I've sat in meetings with her when we're meeting with TCQ or seen the correspondence coming back and forth which is a very critical part of what we do and she has a great relationship with them. So uh excited to have her and that's Shannon Tolson if y'all wouldn't mind giving her the same round of applause. very proud to recognize them today, mayor and council, and look forward to what we have in the future in front of us.

As do we. Thank you, uh, Mr. Hooper. Thank you, Shannon. Thank you, Will. Appreciate you guys. And then, um, excited to have the the strength. I know since I've been here five years, I've I've seen a lot of change and that is organizationally kind of correct. It's it's normal somewhat, but then I don't know that it is normal to have the the strength and the depth chart that we see here. And so you guys continue to pull people forward and we look forward to working alongside them. So, thank you for taking a minute to announce that. Um, I would like to Yes, sir.

Yeah, mayor. I I apologize. I I neglected, but I'd like to like to announce I know I've talked to you all individually, but like to announce that today is our first council meeting with us for Dr. Lola Remy. So, she has joined us at our chief financial officer. She started last Monday with us. I know she has been busy busy busy reviewing everything, talking individuals. So we are so excited to have her part of our team. So glad to have you with us, Lola. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you.

I would officially during a formalized meeting like this where we we can enter this into the minutes. So, uh, if you share in the same level of dyslexia that I do, uh, her last name, um, you know, may just be Miss Lola O for a minute. O Orangami Oen Remy. There's a couple different ways to to move it around. And so, we're we're super excited. This uh, this lady is a doctor and and a um, an expert in her field. She's got a lot of expertise. We're looking forward to working alongside of her. And so, thank you. Welcome to the organization, ma'am. and we appreciate you and look forward to working alongside you, Miss Lola O. Okay, thank you uh staff. That that concludes all of our announcements unless we got anything else. All right, we're going to move into public comment. Would ask Miss City Secretary to read us into that, please.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you for participating in today's city council meeting. We value your input and appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts. Each speaker will have three minutes to address the council during public comment or any public hearing. At two and a half minutes, the timer will begin flashing to signal you have 30 seconds remaining. When time is up, it will beep continuously. Please stay within your allotted time. We have multiple public hearings today. If you wish to speak on an item with a public hearing, please speak on that item either during public comment or during the public hearing, but not both in order to ensure accurate records. We will be using both podiums today. When your name is called, please make your way to the open podium. When it's your turn to speak, state your name and whether or not you live within the Amarila city limits before beginning your comments. For topics not on today's agenda, the Texas Open Meetings Act limits how council may respond. Council may provide factual statements, ask for the issue to be added to a future agenda, or refer you to the city manager so staff can visit with you about your concern. If you would like to speak today but haven't signed up yet, please come see me now to fill out a form so we can add you to our list. At this time, I will invite up Matthew Alexander and on deck after Matthew will be Hezekion.

You can pick either one and you may begin when you're ready. Good afternoon y'all and thank you so much for hearing from me today. Uh I want to start by stating that I'm not an expert in policing uh but instead am approaching this as a citizen with observations. Modern-day policing is extremely complex and I know that there is far more that I do not see or understand in how this is accomplished in our city. Policing is vital to the safety of our community. But for APD to be successful, we need to support them and provide the tools they need to accomplish their mission. While I can't speak about the accomplishment and goals of our Amarillo Police Department, of which I know there are many, I do drive on our roads daily, like many here in Amarillo. I believe that a department's traffic policing effectiveness can be measured by the driving habits of the citizens in their jurisdiction. After all, a person is more likely to run a red light or skip a stop sign if they feel confident that there is no consequences for their actions. Deterrence is the most important factor here. In recent years especially, I have noticed that these unsafe behaviors on our roads are on the rise. This change has slowly occurred and it seems to be progressing as accidents are more and more common. Even on my commute, I have never seen so many incidents of speeding in school zones, running red lights, rolling through stop signs, non-use of turn signals, driving in oncoming traffic, lane changes in two turning lane intersections while turning, and general driving without regard for safety, as I have in the last year. These are mostly small infractions, but they lead up to accidents when others can't react to the traffic violation fast enough. Just from these observations, I am left to con conclude that the deterrence to these actions has fallen to a point

where drivers feel comfortable in making these reckless decisions. Just the other day, I was driving home on hillside just before the construction zone going west. I watched as a car entered the turn lane to attempt to merge into the lane of traffic I was in, the only lane that is going straight on that road. They put their blinker on to signal the desire to merge and came to a stop. This created a gap between that person and the line forming to turn left at the light ahead where the center lane becomes the turning lane. I then watched as multiple cars entered oncoming traffic in order to skip past that merging car and reenter the turn lane just to line up at that light. The last car to do this came less than 20 feet from going headon with the now oncoming traffic from the light that had turned green. This was a narrow miss that had the potential to involve more than just two cars or god forbid lives as head-on collisions have greater potential for harm. I'm left wondering why did these drivers feel it was okay to enter the oncoming traffic lanes for any reason? Why are people driving whole blocks in the turning lane which should never be used for driving significant distances just to reach a red light sooner? I can see no other explanation outside of they just didn't feel there were consequences for these actions. The deterrence wasn't there. In closing, I would like to thank you all for giving this time and listening to my concerns. My hope is that part of what I had to say today opens an idea for someone that can positively impact the road safety of our community. With enough deterrence, we can reduce avoidable accidents, prevent property damage and bodily damage and reduce the workload on our highly capable officers who have who are having

to spend hours cleaning up and documenting after these incidents. Thank you so much. Thank you, sir. We appreciate your concerns. Um, glad to take that information and connect you with some of our staff if you have some additional suggestions that we could implement. Absolutely. I I ran out of time, but yes, I have copies for everybody. Um, you can hand it to Miss City Secretary. So, we've changed the format. Thank you, sir. Changed the format a little bit. So, I'm just curious if we um the original beep, was that the three minutes or was that the 30 second notice? That was the three minutes. Are we still offering the 30 second notice? Yes. The light turns from green to yellow. It flashes to yellow whenever you're at 30 seconds. Does it beep still or no? It does not.

Do we have a new system? Uh we've got a new one that's that's wireless and we can look and see if we can add a beep for next time. Okay. Um do we still have the ability to put the clock up? Not on the screens. No, it's just over there. Okay. So you guys can see it. Perfect. And there are lights right here that council can see on this little Okay. Well, I know that we we have people that um you know attend regularly to give public comment. We're trying to hold everybody to the same three minutes. So, u forgive us for going over the time. We do appreciate everybody for respecting everyone's time and trying to hold your comments to the three minutes. And and we appreciate the gentleman that spoke, Miss City Secretary.

Okay. He and after Head Dashi would like to come to the empty podium, you may speak next. Afternoon. Nice to meet you. All of you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor and dear Councilman. I am Hazik Ayan and I attend Amarilla High School. And I want to start today by thanking God for this blessed day. And I want to thank you guys for letting me speak to all of you this afternoon. I grew up in a smogfilled city. So when I moved to Amarillo for the first time, I absolutely fell in love with the clear, never- ending blue sky and the freedom it exudes. And I think I'm not the only one because when I interviewed Michael Wallace, the sheriff from cars for the 66 stories from Route 66 project, he had much the same to say about Amarillo. This distinctive characteristic of Amarillo and the Texas panhandle, the blue skies are currently being contested under y'all's very leadership. Mr. Mayor and Councilman, I urge you to terminate the city of Amarillo's partnership with Fermy Incorporated on the Donald J. Trump advanced energy and intelligence campus. While you tell us residents to and tell us that every drop of water counts, behind our bags, behind our bags, you sell us out literally by selling this water of the exhausted Ogalalo aquifer and the drying Lake Meredith. Our water is for our people. Mr. Mayor and dear Councilman, they are not for the profits of Wall Street traders in New York City. Mr. Mr. Mayor and Councilman, the people of the panhandle are some of the most kindest and forgiving people I've ever met. And while the water deal has already been made with the city of Amarillo and Fermy, all of you sitting up here today still have the power to stop it. In late March of this year, the city of Amarillo applied for a subzoning to help Fermy avoid paying tariffs. Please withdraw this application while there is still time. Please prioritize your constituency while there is still time. And please prioritize America when there is still time. Because no matter how much you name the data center under the current presidency and no matter how much you advertise the data center is America first, America is not as dumb as

you think. Don't let Fermy get away with not paying tariffs on foreign imports. Don't let Fermy get away with buying South Korean gas turbines. And don't let them get away with cheating hardworking American manufacturers and not buying from them. But the most pressing reason why you should stop this partnership with Fermy is because your legacy is on the line. The facility is projected to emit harmful contaminants that can significantly increase the risk of heart disease, chronic lung disease, asthma, and even cancer. Under your watch, under your inaction, Amarillo's clear, beautiful skies will be no more. They will be the pollutant filled airs of Chicago or LA. In a survey I conducted last week at school, 58% of students said they knew about the negative outcomes of the Fermy project. Mr. Mayor and dear city councilman, the future of Amarillo are watching and they will give you a hard time if Amarillo is ruined because of this project. Please back out while there is still time. Please side with the people of Amarillo, the people you took an oath to serve and the people who generously voted for you. Keep Texas for Texans, not elsewhere.

Thank you, sir. Appreciate your comments. Adam Dashi. Thank you. I get a copy. And after Adam will be Allan Fineold. Adam, you may begin. Afternoon, sir.

Good afternoon, uh, Mr. Mayor and Councilman. Uh I'm Adam Dashi and I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak here with you today. Unlike my friend who uh immigrated here, I am but a child of an immigrant and Amarillo is the America that I've been surrounded with my whole life. Whenever I was first approached with these ideas of the America first and you know boosting the economy of America, I was all for it. But working with notable figures like Dr. Butler from WT, I've been able to see that the environmental damage that it will cause to this city and its citizens are not excusable with uh the advantageous of money. And along with already knowing people in this area who have been affected by the air quality, especially with the amount of uh cows that we already have, we already sacrifice a bit of the people's health in this area for economic profit. and I urge you to prevent this deal, to back out of it for the people of Amarillo that are much more precious than any money could ever be. Thank you so much. Thank you, sir.

Allan Fineold. Uh while Mr. Fineold makes his way up, I will give a clarifying uh statement of fact. The Fermy project does reside in Carson County. Uh it does not reside in Potter nor Randall County nor within the city limits. The city of Amarillo has no jurisdiction over anything in regards to that project. The only thing the city of Amarillo has in regards to that project is a 2.5 million gallon uh per day allowance for a water cell. So just a simple statement of fact. Mr. Fineold, how are you today, sir?

Invite Tanya Winston up to the open podium. And Mr. Fineold, you may begin. I wish to address you when you get to the discussion item 6.1 if you will willing to do so rather than now. Mr. Fineold, I don't believe we're going to have uh audience interaction. I would request you to go ahead and give your comments here and then let us engage with you after the meeting, sir.

Okay. You are going to uh discuss the water rate and the wastewater rate. There is a sort of standard way by which this is usually done and it is one that I disagree with. There is a use of what I call access fees and what most of the uh individuals working for the city will call uh meter fees. I've gone over this before with you. I just want to say again, I do not think there should be any access fees and the meter fees should be drastically reduced. I can give you a formula for that, but not at this time. What I will suggest is that you have a base rate and that base rate be $4.40 per thousand gallons of portable water. and that every consumer of water, whether residential or industrial or commercial, pay that base rate or something higher. You already have a commercial rate of $4.36 per thousand gallons that is per unit. So essentially I'm just asking that you make sure that the residential users will pay that and the industrial users and the commercial users so that everyone is paying the same rate unless you decide that the residential users who use more than say 20,000 gallons or 30,000 gallons should pay a greater rate. That is a separate discussion. But what I'm asking is that you no longer

have special privileges to have a to have an industrial user pay less than any other uh type of user. There are a few legacy contracts that you will have to update and the uh new rates for an industrial user would not have to be imposed immediately but they should be imposed over say the next three years so that every user pays at least the base rate. I think this is the only fair way to treat the residential users. And I think you will find that the residential users who are most prudent in water use will have their bills considerably reduced, but the city will actually obtain the same amount of revenue or more than it has now. Thank you very much. We invite Mike Fischer to the open podium. And Miss Winston, you may begin.

Good day. My name is Tanya Winston, also known as Lady Butterscotch. I live here in Potter County. The reason why I'm here today is because something that just moved my whole everything yesterday. Um, today y'all talked about substance abuse, um, alcohol, but we all know that our whole nation is dealing with crack cocaine, uh, fitnol, uh, meth. And pretty much in just about everybody's family may have dealt with someone in their family with some type of substance abuse. In my family, I have a relative that dealt with crack cocaine and he had to live with me because no one else in the family wanted him to come home and live with him when he was parrolled home. So, I allowed my uncle to come and stay with me. he violated um his parole. And uh usually when pro par parole violators violate, it's usually because uh failing to report, failing a drug test, failing to pay fines, leaving the county, or being arrested for some type of different offense. Now, you all know that a month ago, North Heights had this massive shooting. About six people got killed. Ever since they had that massive shooting, police department have been on a mission. They've been investigating trying to

figure out who's connected to what, how all of this all came together. Just last week, there were several um bus um involvement with the police uh picking up paroleies, picking up people. Um last week, uh a a man had made a U-turn in the middle of the street. He got pulled over. Um, and this is the the area that I live in that I was raised up in. I moved away from the North Heights, but I moved back because I've been remodeling my grandparents house. That's where I reside now. My uncle moved in with me because no one else took him in. He violated his parole. But what I didn't like, I'm sitting in the house yesterday. Normally I lock my glass door. The wind was high. I kept looking and I said, "I need to I need to lock my door." Well, when I look back the second time, my door is black and I have a shining light shining into my house. I said, "What is that?" It was SWAT or Emerald Police Department. They said it's the police department. I said, "Come in. The door is unlocked." They all came in. Now, you all know that I'm usually on the scene when there's a fire.

Yeah. But I got to get it out. Miss Winston, I'm sorry. I'm going to have to stop you. I'm going to ask you to um step aside. I would love to connect you with our chief of police and let you continue with him. He's right back over here. Okay. Glad to glad to work on this specific resolution for you. Thank you for being here today. If we can direct you back here with Chief Hover be great. Thank you, ma'am. Mr. Fisher, good afternoon. We invite Craig Gautier up to the open podium. And Mr. Fiser, you may begin.

Good afternoon. My name is Mike Fiser. I of Amarillo. I've been talking about the traffic situation for several years about the traffic lights and um we had like two years ago two barely graduated kids uh died at 45th and Sansi just barely graduated from from high school. Four days ago, we had two people die, 26 years old. And um I mean, back to I've been talking about this for a few couple of years. When I talked to Mr. Freeman, Mr. Freeman, me and him were kind of cool. We went to lunch and then when I when those two people died, I said, "Man, how do you how do you look in the mirror at night? How do you how do you go to sleep?" And he he said, "I had some sort of narrative." And that's when we went south and that's what that was the day that he he got in my crosshairs. So today we're talking about an accident that just happened four days ago. Gabriel Ayes 26 years old. Caitlyn Wallace 26 years old. I've given you the facts. The intersection is formulated based on curb to curb but doesn't from what I see it doesn't include the access roads or the on the side. If you do that formula I gave you the formula on how you figure it out the if you base it on just the four lanes with the turning lane in the middle. The two second all red delay seems kind of like generous because the formula says we only need 1.2 seconds. But when you factor in the rest of it, the two access lanes and the the stop line and the

length of the car, you've got 120 feet or it's actually 128 feet, I believe. But when you do that, it's 2.3 seconds. So if you added.3 seconds to that, that accident would not have happened. So when are we going to do something about it? I mean, seriously, guys, what if what if this was your kid, Cole? I bet you I bet you all hell would break loose in here. What if it was your kid? What? Somebody talk, man. People are dying. But we have this optic crap up here where we get up here and we talk. We've got Andrea's project, drunk driving. Oh, we don't want anything to happen, but nobody's done anything about this. And you had your warning, but now TWO PEOPLE ARE DEAD. I MEAN, COME ON, MAN. all this optic crap up here where you guys, oh, drunk driving, no drunk driving, but then this happened. We don't know if it was a drunk driver, but we do know two people died. We don't know if it had anything to do with with uh who ran the light, but the formula says that if this happened the way it probably did, this could have been avoided.3 seconds. This guy was doing 100 miles an hour. It would not have happened. this accident would not have happened. Somebody please talk about this. Put it on the agenda. I gave you a letter. The beginning, the first page is a formal notice of hazard and all these intersection needs to be looked at. Somebody asked me some questions. I'd love to to explain the formula if you guys don't understand it. But I had I have no doubt.

Mr. Fisher, Mr. Fischer, we That's okay. Mr. Fischer, I have a question for you. I know that's what you're requesting and you'd like to engage. So, uh, let's take a breath. I I understand your passion. Um, I appreciate it. I understand your concern. We all share the same concern. We are in no way in opposition to having safe or safer intersections. What we're looking for are the abilities to evaluate, analyze that, implement that. Okay. So, this is one intersection that you performed a personal study on. Is that correct? Correct.

Okay. And then um let me ask Mr. City Manager, how's the best way to take this one intersection um and go and and proof it out more or less proof of concept to see like what does the experts what would the experts say? I know that if I just said, hey, let's just extend the delay time there. There's a cause and effect to every action, right? There's a side effect to every effect. So I don't know that to be true, but I'm willing to engage. Mr. um path, what do you Yeah, I can turn to Donnie. I know we do do we do intersection studies and so Donnie can you speak to this? Yes, we can. Can we do we have a current study that that has come back in its completion or we still

we we we're currently analyze all the intersections with MUTCD as we've talked about before, but we'll make sure that this one is included in that study as well to go out and look at the timings of that. If you'd like us to bring it back, we certainly can. I I would. So, let let's do this. Mr. Fiser, you uh recognized several accidents over the past several months. Um years. Let's go back um is is it convenient to go back maybe six months, pull any intersection accidents and just reanalyze all of those timing signals? We can do that. And we even have some past uh associated with those accidents where we went back and looked at the timings on those as well. I think we presented that to council at some point in time.

I know last time you presented it, it didn't have an action item for us. there wasn't anything else we could do further other than just kind of air on the side of let's just make all the intersections, you know, have a longer delay and that was not recommended. Can you remember anything further in that discussion? I would have to go but look at the report and look at what we what we brought to council. Okay. So, Mr. Fischer, I understand where you're coming from. Appreciate the concern. We we will go back um at least 6 months. Maybe it's easy enough to go 12. Pull those accidents, especially the fatalities. um reanalyze those and we'll bring it back to a council meeting.

I'd like to make just one statement. I can't imagine the effect of adding one second blanket to every intersection. Can anybody think of the wildest scenario of what that would what the effect might be on a negative? Let me get an answer to that question by an expert. So, uh, I'll bring that back and and and if there is no good answer to that, then yes, the solution could be to extend those delays. So, yes, sir. All right, Donnie, I would ask also al also as you look at those accidents, would if it's easy with APD, what check to see if there's contributing factors as well. I mean, I think that that plays a huge role.

Check to see if what if there were contributing factors. Speed, uh, alcohol abuse. We do have that in that previous report that we gave to council. So, we can dig that data back up as well, but we can find it. I think it'd probably be more beneficial for us to go back and look at maybe all the fatality accidents that have happened in the past three or four years because we have data associated with that as well. That's excellent. That we can bring back. But we have to consider when alcohol is a contributing factor because he brought up an important fact. We do. You dismissed the the fact that the one that happened in front of United, you told me yourself. You said, "Well, that guy was drunk, Mr. But the guy that was not drunk, Mr. Fischer, as productive as I can be right here for this purpose. Thank you for speaking and and I appreciate your concern.

All right. Thank you, sir. All right. We invite Ruben Rivera up to the open mic and Craig, you may begin.

Uh, excuse me, Craig here. Uh, gentlemen, uh, I guess you always hear the bad um, from people like me and so I do want to give a compliment. I know that's gonna rock your world up there, but there was actually three I've been on this parks as all y'all know. I've been on the especially the park school park restrooms for over six years. None of you were on council when uh Jared Miller and Ginger Nelson closed all our school park restrooms. Uh I would wish I just wish that you would finally, Mr. Mayor, put it on the agenda to let us talk about it. You talked about it on the radio the other day and you really kind of misspoke. You said that the schools own some of these restrooms. They don't. The city of Amarillo built those. We own those school restrooms. Uh I would love for and also as you shake your head, three members of this council asked, ordered, demanded your city staff, that being Mr. uh your city attorney and city uh manager to rectify this whole situation. Who owns what? You guys made that request. Your city staff once again defied you. They have not done their job what you told them to do. Mr. Simpson, you Mr. Stanley, you Mr. Tips, they are doing you a disservice. And then in turn, you do your citizens a disservice. You need to start holding these people accountable for how they how they not only treat their citizens, but how they treat you. And on top of that, I've also talked about parks. I've sent all of you messages about all the pictures that I found recently. And my compliment is to you. Three of the five of you actually responded. I got text messages. I got phone calls. And Johnny on the spot,

boom, like that. There's city staff out there cleaning up our parks as we speak right now. Mr. Reid, Mr. Tips, and Mr. Simpson all responded to me, as they should. As you should have, Mr. Stanley, as you, Mr. Prescott, should have. And you should. And this is where the complaint comes in with your staff. You should, all five of you should not be taking phone calls from idiots like me. Your staff should be taking care of this. I brought this up to your city parks at the last board meeting. And what did Mr. Kosuba and everybody do? They blew me off and in turn they're blowing you off. They're doing you a disservice. And you guys should not be taking the hits for this. This is years of neglect by your city staff. This isn't this didn't happen in one dry winter. This has happened over years. In no way should any of you five should be taking the hit for how crappy our parks look. What I'd wish you to do, Mr. Mayor, is not only have it on the agenda to talk about our school park restrooms so we can have more than three minute discussion about it. Let us let us talk about our whole parks and let you talk and let us uh contribute to what we've been experiencing. People like me and other citizens who are the only ones who are showing up to these parks board meetings. So, I would love that commitment before I walk away from this podium, Mr. Mayor, that you'll make a commitment to put it on the agenda. I'm not saying the next agenda or sometime, but please put it on the agenda for us to have a parks discussion and not just a threeminut back and forth.

Thank you, Mr. Gier. Um, as a statement of fact, I requested information from city manager earlier today and we're working on it. Thank you, sir. Can we have it on the agenda? I will definitely wait until I get the information back and then we'll take appropriate action. Thank you.

Yes. My name is Ruben Rivera. This is the 2019 assessment book. If you want to see it, you see it. Okay. We haven't done anything. Well, now we're in the process of closing parks, bathrooms, and this and that. Matter of fact, Mr. Simpson, you were supposed to have gotten back to me what, a year ago, year and a half ago. We had a meeting at the fairgrounds. You never did. Mr. Stanley, when you came on in 22 23, you you said for Michael Kushuba and I to step out of the room. I gave him all my information and everything else cuz I wanted to go over with him on some of the stuff. Not a phone call, nothing from nobody, not even Grayson Path. You know, when you talk about these issues, I bring you pictures. I provide you pictures. I give you a CD, which I have when I have I have before. This was farce. This is a farce. $170,240 we paid for this Tanker Lake. Tank Anchor Lake. We have what two over close to 300 uh fire uh police reports to that lake. Six deaths approximately give or take. That project didn't come to fruition because the parks departments Larry Orbend said that they had found some uh indigenous bones there. Well, you know what? I've done my research. I don't think there's any there. I done checked with the High Plains Historical Museum, the historical uh Texas Historical, what is it? Commission. They haven't come up with anything.

So, where are they? I challenge all of you to go look for him. All of you, this underpass on Third Street, Blair Sha, our our commissioner, our precinct 2, he said that they're supposed to start something on it the fourth quarter or the first quarter of this year. What's going on? What's happening? Y'all know the disasters. There's already been two deaths at that underneath that underpass. Why do we not get off our asses and do something? I mean, really, you know, parks, you're all going to get old. You're already there. We're going to need parks. Look at South Southeast Park. All them sidewalks are all cracked and everything. Y don't y don't y don't treat all all all all all sides of the city the same. Y'all don't period. I'm here to tell you the truth. And I've walked it cuz I put boots on the ground. I don't just talk about it. I walk it. It's a disgrace for some people sometimes come over say, "Look, nothing's happened." And it's true. Not a damn thing's happened. We redid our underpasses and I mean our our streets on 10th Street.

Mr. Rivera, thank you for speaking here today. But it's just more attention to people. Miss City Secretary, you have anybody else? That's all that signed up, mayor. Okay. I'd like to thank everyone for speaking here today. We'll ask if I have anybody else here that would like to offer public comment.

Thank you, Mr. Rivera. Do I have anybody else who would like to offer public comment? Okay, I'm going to start right here with this gentleman in the black shirt and then we'll work our way back. Since you didn't sign up, sir, what I'm going to ask is if you'll give public comment and then see our city secretary and give her your information after.

Uh, thank you all for hearing me. I honestly wasn't planning on speaking today. I just moved from Dumbus a few months ago. You know how it is if you're from a small town here in the panhandle. You come to Amarillo often on the weekend and whatnot. So, I'm very familiar with the roads here in uh Amarillo. And I wasn't going to speak until the previous uh people who spoke about, you know, um the issues with our public roads. And um I serve on the uh panhandle regional planning commission board, uh the prompt committee, the uh public transportation board. And one thing I'd like to do is engage with local officials about the cost of car dependency because all these people who previously pointed out uh the issues with our roads all these are band-aid solutions. They don't get to the root cause of the issue of car dependency. For example, that uh road he was talking about bell or western whichever it is it is just too wide. When everyone is forced to drive a car, our roads have to be wide. You know, people talk about older people reminisce about Earl back in the 40s and you look at a picture of Amarillo downtown and you see everybody walking around shopping and then what happened? Well, the auto industry, the oil and gas industry, decided that what's best for us is for everyone to drive a car. And it's sad because, you know, there's a lot of old folks here in the panhandle who don't have a reliable way to get around because why? Because we force everybody to drive a car. So, it's funny. I talked to um textile area engineer Dumas a few years ago, uh Harms, and he he told me that, you know, people here in West Texas, which I take offense to that. I don't consider as wax te Texas. This is the pan the panhandle. Anyways, he said, "People in here in

West Texas, they love freedom." In response to my suggestion of passenger rail from Dallas to Denver with Emerald as a stop, I responded and thought about what freedom does car dependency provide us when we have one of the highest traffic in incident rates in the country or in the state. What freedom does car dependency provide us when so many children, elderly, disabled, immigrant people don't have a reliable way to get around. And it's not expensive. What is most expensive is car dependency. When everyone is so spread out, you have to build further further out. I love using this example. Amsterdam is it has 800,000 people and the uh it is 100 square miles. No, Amarella is 100 square miles. Amsterdam is 90 square miles. Amsterdam has a population of 800,000. Emerald has a population of 200,000. Just think about the implica implications of that in terms of the city uh finances to support every service.

Thank you, sir. Please see our city secretary. Um who did I see? Mr. Jones, you have your hand up. No, you're pointing to this gentleman back here. Yes, sir. If you'll come forward. Same request. if you don't mind seeing the city secretary after you speak, sir.

My name is Trent Roser. I live within the city limits of Amarella. Um, I don't come here very often, but I think y'all might remember it. I came up here before and I talked about having a gun to a guy's back of his head when he tried to rob my truck. Uh, then I spoke about how the uh we had to call the police uh for the neighbors and they never showed up. the 911 call. After that conversation I had with y'all, I met with officers outside. They said they would look into it. We'll go from there. I still haven't heard word back from them. I don't want to say I told y'all so, but I told y'all so. I told y'all these guys need more boots on the street. They need more help. They don't need $250,000 computers. They don't need new bicycles. They need officers out there showing their face. Maybe if we had more officers, there wouldn't be all this speeding. We wouldn't have accidents. I don't know. I'm not psychic. But I do know we need more officers. We need more help. March 22nd was a bad day for Amarella. How much if we had more officers, how much would that been affected? I don't know. I'm asking y'all one more time, help the officers. Get more officers. Instead, instead of spending $250,000 for computers, how about we hire two or three new officers, have them walk the streets, maybe knock on the door, introduce themselves, get public input with them, help them to do their job. That's all I have.

Thank you, sir. Um, Mr. Adair, if you come forward, sir.

Um, I was wanting to bring up something that I brought up last last week. Um, in light of the sod poodle or the prairie dogs, um, we learned that our boards can spend money. And I asked y'all if we could have some discussion about that or see about that because that seems like a situation that can put a budget in jeopardy. Um, and the next thing I wanted to talk about was the streaming of board missions that y'all have on the agenda. Um when we we moved into this new building, I remember when we were in the old building, um we were all told and one of the big promoting factors was that we were going to have three or four rooms that could live stream and here we are. How long have we been in this building? Two years.

Little over a year. Yes, sir. A little over a year. And we're still talking about why we're not getting uh board meetings streamed. So, when you all talk about this, um I hope that something will um something's been done to get this done because for transparency and everything else, we really need people need to know what's going on in these board meetings instead of last minute when it comes to y'all and we're like, "Oh, we this been in the works for how long and we've never heard anything about it." It'd be nice to have all these meetings streamed. So, thank you.

Thank you, John. Appreciate it. if you don't mind. We know your name, but if you'll fill out the form, that way we keep some uniformity with everybody. John, thank you, sir. Do I have anyone else here who'd like to speak? Okay. Thank you guys for speaking here today. Um, as a very wholehearted um, sincere statement of fact. I know the gentleman already left, but y'all do realize we are hiring every police officer that we possibly can and are training and equipping them in the best ways we know how. And we run some of the most successful CAMmies. Um, and and we we have a pretty thriving uh local, you know, I'd say force of of crime fighting local heroes that do a fantastic job and I'm extremely grateful for them. and uh and you need to be as well. And so um yes, we need to prioritize our money, but that money that goes towards those computers and some of that tech uh doesn't go in place of three additional officers. So if I've got three more we can put out there, we're we're putting them out there. And so uh we hope to graduate um the these next couplemies and be as close to fully staffed as possible. And Emerald is going to continue to grow. So, thank you for your support um of our local heroes. We will close public comment at this time. I'll ask council if you have any remarks you'd like to give today. All right, we're going to move forward with the rest of the business meeting. Um before you, we have your consent agenda. Council, do I have anything that you need pulled off of the consent agenda? Would entertain a motion on item five, please. So moved.

Second. I have a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda uh as presented. All in favor, please say I. I. Any oppose? Motion passes. Let's move into some discussion here. Um we will start with item 6.1, a waste and wastewater I'm sorry, a water and wastewater rate study. Uh Mr. path.

Yes. Uh we are we're pleased to have tonight with us Chris Erit representing New Gen Consulting. Uh we have hired their services to help us uh analyze our our rate structure in preparation for our upcoming wastewater treatment plant project. And uh as the council knows that that there is a serious cost to that project. And so we are looking at looking at options for for getting our community ready uh for those rate increases. And so Newen is is a is an expert in this field. uh they they they study our they study our our our our portfolio, they study our our future our growth and they help us design a a future rate structure to get us into that. So with that, I'm going to turn to Chris and have him introduce himself and his and his firm and take it from there. Thanks, Chris.

Good afternoon, Mayor Council. Chris Eert with New Gen Strategies and Solutions. Pleasure to be with you this afternoon. Afternoon, sir. Thank you for being here.

So, as we jump into the presentation, I do want to be respectful of your time. However, I don't want to commit what I refer to as death by PowerPoint. So, as I go through this, if you have questions, please feel free to stop me at any point. I will start with a disclaimer this afternoon. What I have for you today is really an update on where we are on this study. Uh when you go through a water and wastewater rate study, there's a process to this. And so, what we have for you today is really the revenue sufficiency side of the equation. I'm going to be back with you throughout the summer a couple more times as we go through and look at the policy side of setting rates. We are still working with your staff looking at this forecast. I know you're still going through engineering. You're still finalizing your capital improvement projects, still finalizing funding. So, this is likely to change as you move towards rate action. So, I do want to make you aware of that. Again, this is an update today. I will be back with you again as we make policy decisions going forward. Whenever we talk about a uh water and wastewater rate study, we're talking about the water and wastewater utility. I remind every council that I'm in front of that when you think about a utility, it's tracked in what's called an enterprise or proprietary fund within governmental accounting. What that means is this is a business type activity of government. So we need to run it like a business. For a business to be successful, we have to do certain things. First and foremost, we have to make sure that our revenues match or exceed our expenses. Yes, we're providing service to citizens, but we are running a business. So we have to look at the sufficiency of our revenue stream. In the water business, we also have to look at our reserves. Uh when you think about water, when it rains, which hopefully it will rain at some point, when it rains, people use less water. We sell less water, we earn less revenue at that time. At the same time,

we still have expenses coming in. When you think about utilities, we're really about an 80 to 90% fixed cost business when you when you uh dig down into the cost structure. So, we have to make sure that we don't run around with zero dollars in the bank account. We have to have adequate reserves. Third thing we have to do, as any business does, we have to reinvest in our business. We have pipes, plants, pumps, all of these things break down over time. They're out of sight, out of mind. We don't think about them until they break. But we need to make sure that we are adequately reinvesting in our business so our business can last for years to come. So, as you sit here today, you do sit here as the board of directors of a business. And so with that in mind, let's look at some key business issues. You're very aware of these. Number one, we've got the wastewater treatment plant right now. The working numbers, $1.5 billion. We know engineering is still ongoing. Within our analysis today, we have worked with your financial advisor, looked at the potential funding for this going forward. Um, at this time, we are anticipating that we will need to use some debt to fund this project. By using debt to fund longived assets, we achieve what's called intergenerational equity, we spread out the cost of that project over the individuals, over the rateayers that are using that project. And so you're going to see some numbers on that today. The second key business issue that we factored into our analysis is your future water supply from Canadian River Municipal Water Authority, uh, CRMWA2. Right now we're anticipating this around I believe it's 2033 2034 but uh Cremois has already told us we will start seeing some cost increases as soon as 2027. So we have to factor that in as we look to

the future in order to make sure that we have adequate water supply. So those are two key issues that we're going to be visiting about and looking at in numbers today. Backing up on that capital improvement plan, what you see here again is that anticipated future debt coming online. We start in 2728 with some design, some higher issuances in 2930 when we are under construction with the wastewater treatment plant, but you see there are some anticipated needs there going forward into the future. We need to start planning for those now. As we look at that anticipated debt service overall, the gray bar here, that's your existing debt. You will have a little bit of existing debt falling off, but it's that orange bar that comes online as we look at that wastewater treatment plant going into the future. That's a that's quite a hit as we go forward. We have time to plan for it if we start taking action now. And so you're going to see that in our forward-looking forecast here in just a second. As we talk about your water supply from Cremeo, you begin to see that forecast going out into the future. Again, right now 6% overall increase anticipated in 27, 9% annual increase in 28. You start seeing some double-digit increases further on out. What this does is begin to increase the amount of your water budget that we anticipate will be going to water supply. When you think about purchased water from Cremeo, again, going back to our business analogy, purchased water is part of your cost of goods sold. If you don't pass through your cost of goods sold, what that does is it reduces the amount of money you have to run your own business. So we want to make sure that as we experience cost increases from our wholesale provider that we pass those on to our rateayers as well.

We have built in new revenue sources. Uh there was some discussion earlier about the firmy contract. We have built in a projection a revenue projection under that contract going forwards. You can see that net income position overall. uh without this, had we not factored this in, then potential required revenue increases would be even higher into the future. Uh but we did bake this in. I will say, I know that there are still some ongoing discussions here, uh but we did factor that into our analysis. One of the things that we need to look at within our business is we look at what's called debt service coverage. So, we make promises to bond holders when we issue debt. We need to make sure that we can adequately pay that debt and maintain a margin on that debt, maintain coverage on that debt. We've worked with your financial advisor. They're recommending a target of 1.5. And so that's what we have tried to hit within our analysis. What you see here on the screen right now is what debt service coverage looks like under existing rates. Were we to not change rates but go forward with these projects, you you very quickly see we would not be able to hit that debt service coverage requirement. There is an uh a relationship here as we think about debt service coverage. If our debt service coverage falls, we become a riskier borrower. As we as our risk increases, uh then our interest rate also increases. So, we want to make sure that we maintain a good credit position going forward. Managing rates as part of managing that credit position. In terms of cash on hand, you do have some reserves right now. You see those quickly run out if we were to not adjust rates uh but move forward with these projects. We simply can't do it. We don't have the cash on hand to do that. Uh and so again, this points to we do need some adjustments going forward.

So this is really where uh we come to at at our analysis at this point. The gray bar you see here, this is really what we're looking at is revenue sufficiency. That gray bar, that's our projected expenses from 2026 all the way to through 2036. That solid orange line, that is your current revenues under current rates right now. That's what's projected. Anytime that bar goes above the line, that solid line, we are in a revenue insufficient position. If we draw a straight line from 2026 to 2036, what we're looking at is about an 8.4% overall revenue increase every year from 2026 to 2036. Now, I want to stop right there. I said revenue increase. I'm not talking about rate increases today. This is the overall revenue increase in the utility. The next step in this process is to go in and take that revenue need and divide it between your residential, your commercial, your industrial customers. We'll be back with you with that result once we've finished that analysis. Then it ultimately comes down to how do we design rates to recover that amount of revenue. As much science as goes into this process of allocating revenue to classes, there's an art to rate design. There's policy to rate design. There are competing goals and objectives. And so we will need the council's help in establishing those goals and objectives to determine how we should price service going forward. So again, right now where we're at is about an 8.4% annual revenue increase from 2026 to 2036. We understand this number is still being worked on. As I said, this is draft work product right now. Uh we are hopeful that maybe with additional engineering, we might be able to bring this down a little bit, but this is the picture right now.

So with that, let me move into some comparisons for you. Every city council that I stand in front of wants to know how do we look compared to everybody else? And so we have some of those comparisons for you today. That said, I will tell you that comparisons like this are not an applesto apples comparison. Every community is different. Every community is has different growth patterns. Every community has different capital improvement plans. They have different water sources. They have different methods of treating wastewater. And so you have to recognize uh that you need to do what's right for your business, what's right for your community, regardless of what others may be charging. Within this comparison, what we've done is we are presenting an average residential bill. Right now, if you take all of your residential use, divide it by all of your residential c customers on a monthly basis, that average bill 9,000 gallons water service, 4,000 gallons wastewater service. That's done on a winter average uh on the sewer side, but 9,000 gallons water, 4,000 gallons of waste water. A customer within the city right now pays 6536 for 9,000 gallons water, 4,000 gallons waste water. This comparison, with the exception of Dumis. I'm not sure how we snuck Dumis in here, but what you're looking at here are comparative cities in terms of overall size throughout the state. So you see starting at the the top there, Mosquite in the DFW area, Irving at the bottom, DFW area, but this goes all over the state from Brownsville, Corpus. So this is comparative in terms of large cities within the state of Texas. You'll note your position. This is not necessarily where we want to be. This I'm sorry. Okay. Uh so again, as we look at that 8.4% 4% though an 8.4% increase

were we to take that 6536 and increase it 8.4% that's about $5.50 a month that would take you to about $71 on that bill. Again that's not what I'm saying needs to be charged for your residential customers. That is yet to come. I'm using that as just a a number just a just a data point within this comparison. But if you were to go to $71, you see you would be right between Macallen and Irving, still at the bottom of this list. That said, we are working with other communities on this chart. Cities throughout the state are going through this same process right now, looking at what their rates need to be going forward. So, this is a snapshot. I'm looking at everybody's rates today. Even if you adjust your rates, other communities will also adjust theirs going forward. So, that's one comparison. Another comparison I have for you today is other cremeis communities. These are other cities that take water from cremeis. Again, you see where you fall in this. My final comparison for you is a larger look as we look really around the nation. What we did here is we took the cities right above the city of Amarillo in terms of population, the cities right below the city of Amarillo in population and compared uh compared comparable bills, 9,000 gallons water, 4,000 gallons wastewater across the country. And again, you see where you fall on that comparison. So with that said, again, this is the first time I'm with you. I will be back with you again as we look at that overall revenue requirement. we allocate it to those customer classes and ultimately work with you to determine what rate should look like going forward. But I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Uh for me today,

questions, council, I would specifically be interested when you do the regional bill comparison if you can do the comparison with aid cities, cities that are aid. Most of these uh are east of the 100th meridian. And so that's a a little even though they're higher than than we are. It would be interesting to see what other cities in aid and and restricted resources such as our groundwater pay. More than happy to do that. Yes, sir. Councilman, so couple questions. So, uh we've we've heard varying figures of the 1.5 billion. Yes, sir. Uh and and Donniey's doing his best to get that

down. At what point are we in this process are we going to be able to commit to a more specific price tag? Because I'm guessing we need that information to really then come up with with what the rates need to be.

Sure. We're working closer to that. Um we are looking at putting a design uh contract together soon for engineering. We're we'll start on that process probably in June uh when we'll have the engineer on board. And then that's about a two-year design. So somewhere along the way at around 30% of that design, we're going to be able to have a better number. We used the 1.5 target number in this one because that was really the max number we came up with any estimates and we needed something for Chris to plug into uh his system to be able to use. So and as you mentioned, we are doing everything we can value engine value engineering wise now to get those numbers down as far as we can. But I would say you're still looking at several months before we have anything even close to a 30% design number that we can use. And then it's going to get tighter. That number is going to get better and better as we go and get to 60 and 90% on that design. That's just the nature of it.

And so as as the price goes down, which we hope it will, that's going to lower that 8.37%. Yes, sir. That's correct. According to Correct. Can I can I make one other point on that? And I want to say too, you have to realize too that 1.5 we're considering all the infrastructure along with that. That's not just for two wastewater treatment plant facilities. That's also for interconnections if there's any interceptors that that are required for growth, things like that that we're plugging into there as well. Okay. So, but if we stick with the 8.37 and check me if my math is right for a 10-year period, basically we're we're going to we're going to have to have double the revenue that we do now in the 10-year period. Not quite there, but it's going to have to be double. And we've got to figure out how to roll that into the rates

based on what we know today. Yes, sir. But again, as we look at that forecast going out into the future, rate setting is not a onceanddone exercise. We don't adopt a 10-year rate plan. We adopt rates for the next fiscal year. And then we compare what our future-looking projection, what those assumptions are with what actually happened. And this is this plan will have to be adjusted. it will have to be uh modified as these assumptions become better known into the future. But based on what we know today, your your conclusion is not wrong.

Okay. And then the rate increase is so when we when we bill out, there's a separate bill for the water you use, portable water versus what you uh versus waste water. So there's a separate line item for waste water, but this the rate increase will be factored into both of those rates, not just the waste water, but the portable water. Well, so that that's where policy comes into play here. So, right now, your water utility is actually in really good shape. If we were to look at just the water utility, u you're in fantastic shape. On the wastewater side is where we struggle. And that is not atypical for most communities, frankly, in the state of Texas and really around the nation. And that's because when you think about wastewater as a service on a perunit bas uh on a perunit basis, wastewater is actually often more expensive than water. But as we think about how we recover cost from customers, think about a rate. It's dollars divided by billing units. Customers and volumes. On my water side, I have more billing units. Whereas on my wastewater side, I have less billing units. And so when you increase rates on water, you get more of a revenue increase than you do on that same percentage increase on wastewater. And so this is where some of the policy comes into play. Ideally, we want these two utilities, water and wastewater, to stand alone. We don't necessarily want them to subsidize one another. However, we also have to look at overall affordability to customers. What's in the best interest of customers and how do we keep that bill as low as possible? That may be a policy decision that this council makes to come in and potentially at least for a time have the water utility help subsidize the wastewater utility while you're going through this treatment plan process. So again, taking more time to get the wastewater rates where they need to be. So that's that's some of the policy we're going to be talking about in some upcoming meetings.

But that's really not going to affect the overall bill. I mean, how would that make the bill? It can. It can because if I did 8.4% 4% on water versus say 10% on wastewater or 12% on wastewater, that may produce the same amount of revenue I need. If I I'm going to have to go up more on wastewater to get the same revenue gain than I can on a smaller increase on the water bill. Okay. Um do we know or anticipate or do we have anything? So, we're looking at having to pay for the wastewater treatment plant and then also today we're talking tangentially about cremeaugh. Do we know when we're looking at rates what the price tag on that will be? Because that's going to kind of unfortunately have to go on top of this, I'm imagining.

Yes. So, the Crimo board met this last week and they've approved anou uh across as a board, but we'll be bringing back to you here very soon for council's approval as well. All 11 member cities are being asked to review and consider approval of this. that we were all working in unison. Uh that information does include some some rough estimates as Crimwell is working towards design of that project. We gave that information to NGen and so they've been working that into this process. Well, but I don't have the numbers in front of me to today, but we'll be bringing that back to you here in another month or so once once uh Crimo can be here to uh talk to you all. So, the the report you'll come back with will factor in not only the wastewater treatment plant, but Crimo,

that's actually factored into our numbers today. So, that 8.4% 4% includes both the debt for the wastewater treatment plant as well as those anticipated Cremeo rate increases. That is all in our numbers today. Yeah, we tried to give them all all the known growth and factors we could think of whether it's firmy creme our our typical industrial growth. We tried to give them everything we we can plus they looked at our history, looked at our trend lines and so that's was factored into this. What do we have a current analysis or or or do you do the analysis to show whether residential and commercial and business customers are kind of paying their fair share.

So that'll be our next meeting. Again, we've got our overall revenue pie. The next thing to do is slice that pie, determine how much residential should pay versus what they are paying today. So, I will be showing you that in our next meeting, looking at what we call the interclass subsidies, determining is each class paying their fair share. So, I'll be bringing that back to you at our next at our next get together.

And in general, what does that what does that look like? I mean, is it is it uh because I'm sure I mean, on one hand, you know, we've got we've got residential customers that are watching their pennies. We want to be cognizant of that. On the other hand, some people think businesses have all this money. it's not going to hurt them, but they're trying to run a profitable operation, hire and employ people. So, I just wonder where the balance usually lies on that or is can that vary?

Well, so that's why you make the big bucks and you get to make that decision. Uh, ultimately, you know, I will bring I will bring back data points for you. I will show you where you are based on the textbook answer, what the textbook says the answer should be as we apply all of our all of our different formulas to this. But this is where the policy side of this comes. You may look at the results I bring you and say we simply can't ask that of our residential customers or that's too much for our commercial customers. That's where the policy side comes in. Cost of service is a data point. I bring you the technically correct answer. You tell me what is right for your community in your city. And then beyond rate increases, what what options have we evaluated again to reduce the cost? What future uh what future things will we evaluate to reduce on the on the rateayer side?

Go ahead. You want me to take that?

Yeah. As we've mentioned to you before, Councilman, we're first of all, we're evaluating every opportunity that we can where we find grant funding, low interest loans, those things like that. We're still doing that on a constant basis. In fact, we had two or three meetings in the past two weeks about that subject. So, that's one avenue. And then the second is going back in just like we did with the pivot uh in the design and finding everything that we can technology-wise. We're selecting equipment uh when we're looking at the way we're designing the footprint of those plants for maximum usage. We just went to a a presentation last week about new energy efficient VFDs that don't require uh so much air conditioning and control. There's just so many things that we can look at as we go through the design of this. Once the Seymar gets on board with us along with the design engineer, that's when that rubber will meet the road and we'll start looking at those uh measures that we can reduce every cost that we can in this project. And trust me, we're going to be looking at that hard.

Yeah. I'm just when you look at other communities when they're doing this, I just wonder because every what everybody says, oh, there's got to be grants for that. There's got to be things for that. You know, we don't want to, you know, to alleviate that on an average project. I mean, is it even a percent of the total project that comes from other sources?

You'd be very lucky to get that. Honestly, when we look at all of the infrastructure demands that are out there, there are not there's simply not enough available dollars to invest in infrastructure like we need to right now. One thing I can tell you, and I'll point back to this chart again, I work with communities all over the state. I work with uh communities all over the nation. And when I see charts like this, this tells me that your staff is doing an amazing job right now running your utility, providing continuous and adequate service to your customers um at a very very cost effective level right now. Again, every community is different. Our cost structure is going to be what our cost structure is. But when I see a community that's at the bottom of this list continuously throughout, whether it be within a region, whether it be within population, whether it be within a state, this tells me that you are operating very cost-effectively right now.

Thank you, Councilman. Chris, how long have we engaged with you and New Jen? Uh so we we have been engaged since last year that this engagement will run all the way through the end of this fiscal year. So my job is to be back with you and get you in a position to adopt rates as you go into next fiscal year. So that's that's this engagement and then we're done.

Well, it's up to you. So u at that point your staff can look at this analysis, continue to keep this analysis up, continue to look at it as part of the budgeting process. There are communities I work with every year. We look at rates every year and go through this process. That's completely up to you. But this engagement for me gets you ready for next fiscal year. So you're the outcome that you're trying to get to is to see what rate what rate adequacy would be to build a $ 1.5 billion wastewater treatment plant. Is that correct?

I'm I'm trying to provide you a plan, a long-term plan. So we will provide a rate plan in the going into the future to get get you the funding for the wastewater treatment plant, get you the funding you need for creme, take into account inflationary pressures on your on& and m expenses going forward. All of that comes in and we provide you that plan.

Okay. So our goal is to take his plan, figure it out. He gives us a formula and we just decide what we want to do with our rate payers. Is that correct? Well, my the plan I was planning to present to the council is to continue to work with new gen on retainer or so forth for the years to come because this this is going to be an ongoing process. We're not going to we're not going to increase our rates in one shot to get where we got to go. This is going to be a revolving evolving process here um uh that that we need to be watching each year. year. Now, I don't know if we use them every year, but but maybe every other year, but but we're looking at multiple phases of increases in order to in order to stair step our citizens into this. And uh whether it's Crimo 2, whether it's this waste treatment plant, and eventually Osage way down the road, uh I think I do think it's it's well worth our our our while to continue to work with new gen to monitor this every year.

Okay. So, we know we're short. We know we don't have the money to stroke a check for this. So, the sooner we look at this adjustment, the better. Is that so what we're I mean, the longer we wait, the bigger hole we're in. Yes,

that's that's fair. One thing I will caution you is I generally don't recommend communities raise rates in the summer. Uh ultimately, you've got people that are irrigating. They're trying to estab establish yards. And so, there there's quite a hit to uh rateayers if we raise rates in the summer. My recommendation to you is that you target October of this year, commensurate with your budget adoption, commensurate with the new fiscal year, that your next rates go into effect October of this year, and you continue that cycle going forward. I always recommend that communities make small rate adjustments every year. That makes it where it there's less of a impact on rateayers pocketbooks. They're they're coming up and resetting their budget every year just as you reset your budget every year. And so if we keep those rate increases smaller but more frequent, we can get you where you need to be but try and mitigate some of that rate shock on customers.

Okay. Thank you, Councilman. Back to you. Yeah. A couple questions. Um, on page 23 of your presentation, I think a debt service uh coverage discussion would be would be relevant and what you're predicting on page 23. Well, it might be page 12. Okay. Yeah. Um, I I think my numbers are off. They're different from mine. So, let me looking at combined financial performance debt service coverage. Okay. Let me There we go. There we go. Okay. Just in layman's terms, what what are we seeing here?

So, what debt service coverage is is basically a metric. It's a calculation. We go in and we look at overall rate revenues. We back out O&M expenses. That gives us what's called net revenues available for coverage. We then strike a factor where we take net revenues available for coverage divided by our annual principal and interest payment. We want that metric according to your financial advisor to be 1.5 or higher. If we can get that to that 1.5 or higher, it maintains our credit quality. If we maintain our credit quality, we get a better rating from the debt rating agencies, that helps keep our interest rate low. And so what you're seeing here in 2027 because we factored in your new contract uh the the 2.5 million uh million gallon contract that's you see that revenue bump without any without any rate increase. And so we get above that target in 2027. However, as we issue more debt going forward and we did not adjust rates, we see that coverage factor fall

which in turn cost us more money because our rates exactly higher. There is again there's an inverse relationship between your borrowing cost and your credit rating. The lower your credit rating, the higher your borrowing cost. So it is in your best interest and in your rateayer's best interest to maintain your metrics, follow your financial metrics and maintain your credit quality. And again, the reason for fiscal year 27 to be above that is because of the the deal we struck with Fermy, right? Yes, sir. Okay. Can we look at the next slide, please? not the the cash on hand. Would you explain this one again?

So again, this is reserves. So right now, again, this was an estimate. As of the beginning of this fiscal year, we were estimating you had 41 days cash on hand in the water and wastewater fund. Ideally, you want to maintain 90 to 120 days within your reserve fund. Now, if you talk to the rating agencies and they look at utilities all over the nation, the highest credit quality uh utilities out there maintain 360 to 3605 days cash on hand. While I appreciate that, there's a balance here because if we're trying to increase reserves, we're asking our rateayers to fund that. So, we have to balance our reserve position with the affordability of service to our customers. That's why we're maintain we're recommending and targeting maintenance of a 90day reserve fund policy. But what you're looking at here on this chart here at 41 days cash on hand right now. We do need to get that reserve position a little healthier than what it is at the moment. Uh you see it bump up here in 2027 because of the additional revenues that we're anticipating from the contract. But were we to execute on this capital plan, we quickly without adjusting rates, we quickly drain through that cash position, you simply do not have enough cash on hand to be able to execute and do what you need to do relative to the wastewater treatment plant, relative to Cremeo 2, relative to all the capital improvements you have. You can't run your utility going forward without some type some type of increase in revenues. and we're we're assuming that Fermy is going to come online in 2027. It would be interesting to see that if it did not. So I would ask another question for you. We we're basing a on the debt service coverage. We're basing an increase that we have not seen any any utilization on yet. Correct.

And also we're basing a day cash on hand with an increase to 63 versus 41. What does that look like if that firmy they don't use any water from us? likely what you'd see is actually a reduction in your reserves without an increase in without an increase in revenues. And and last, would you go to the next slide, please? Thank you for going over this because I think this is really where the the heart of the matter lies if you would look at this. So what we're seeing here is an estimated 8.37% average annual revenue increase just to keep up with Creme, right? And the cost of all things. The this is Cremeo. This is inflation on your O andM expenses. This is the wastewater treatment plant. This is everything going forward. Yes, sir.

And so when we look at these regional bill comparisons, regional criminal comparisons, population comparisons, and we're at the bottom of the bucket, it's pretty indicative that that's why our bank account is overdrawn. Yes, sir. That's it. That's it in a nutshell. Yes, sir. Thank you. Um, Mr. Ecker, good to see you again. You as well, sir. So, didn't recognize you in the hall back there. Welcome back to Amarillo. Thank you. Um, couple quick questions here. Uh,

Donnie, I guess I would ask you, what is our current plan right now as far as uh water and sewer enterprise? Have we been consistent over the past four or five years increasing that on a 5% average? is that I we did that last year uh at budget time to prepare for exactly what he's talking about an incremental increase. So that's the only one that I'm aware of that we've we've done over the past few years. Okay. Just just specifically for this cause, right? But just not not specifically for this cause, but I I'm being on council for five years now, I believe. And and Andrew, you could tell me. I think we had kind of a a spoken policy of 5%.

Yes, sir. I believe that's correct. That was Floyd's plan. We were doing it basically, I think, three or four years in a row. And I believe we've held to that pretty well. And and Chris, you're you're familiar with that, right? You know, you can see those numbers. Okay. Um, so I do want to talk about the health of our organization. Um, and and I'll defer to uh our our expert here to my left more on this side, but like the appraisal question of of water rights. Does your company do appraisals? like if we wanted to know maybe how much we have and own in water rights. Um does your company do that? Yes sir. Councilman if you have something to ask.

So currently we um we have a tremendous amount of of water rights acre feet and it would be very interesting to see what the acre feet value today's value is over time. So, if we have a a purchase price that's depreciating, what we paid for the water rights versus what the market value of those water rights are, I think that's a very interesting uh and and reliable source of information. We talked to CLA about it a couple weeks ago. And I would um Katrina maybe um what we have it listed what is $71 million with depreciation what our water rights are. Yeah, that I know that's unfair to throw that out at you, but in in all reality, if you look at it, the standard rate, it could be somewhere north of 60 billion

in water rights. So, it would be very interesting to see that amount forecasted as we see creme criminals horrible, the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority. Um, if they're going up 8 5% a year, we should do the same with our water rights. And how is that asset growing in comparison? and how is that being listed and put into our uh financial strength as a city? I think it's that's very important that we're looking at that

and completely understand one thing I will note when we're looking at rates, we are looking at cash. We're looking at cash in cash out because we have to make sure that we have sufficient cash to pay our bills. And so while you may have value in water rights, value in water rights doesn't generate cash unless you sell those rights to someone else. So that's one thing I would note. We can we can put billions of dollars in terms of value on water rights, but that doesn't generate cash to pay bills unless you sell those rights.

Have you seen other entities use the water rights as collateral to fund projects? Um, that's a very good question. Off the top of my head, I haven't seen that, but I can't say it hasn't been done. I don't think that there we're going to see water getting cheaper. Guarantee you will not. You will not exponentially. Yes. I mean, so if we have $80 billion in water rights, what does that do and help us with our consumer that's having to pay this bill? I think that's where we should be thinking. Understand? Thank you.

Understand? That's very, very helpful. And I I know you brought that up in our audit committee meeting and it got me to thinking about uh you know Chris if your company can do an an appraisal and evaluation we want to posture ourselves in the best possible way to take on a large amount of debt. And so um if we are talking about let's say it's 600700 million to take on for a phase one and we can equate that with I'm I don't know what all we've got there. He's giving me the nudge. So, um, phase one, the the first water treatment plant, and then phase two, second water treatment plant, infrastructure in 1.5, whatever that looks like. So, so let's hope that this thing goes from 1.5 down to 1.2 or whatever. But then you're also factoring in $300 million for a Creme wall buyin for our percentage in order to have more water rights. And so we're going to go out and we're going to leverage an additional rate pay increase when we we don't necessarily if we have a 70 to 80 million appraisal value on the balance sheet, what can that do in borrowing power and and uh business enterprise ability? If it doesn't do anything, then it at least communicates to our constituents that we're very healthy. Um, so we've done a really good job as a council, this council and previous council, to increase water rights and go and put those monies in and build that into our rate pay uh system. And so we've we've continued to buy those. Um, I'm not saying we would ever sell them, but I do think you have to look at what that looks like from a business enterprise position. Councilman, you had one other thing.

I think just for clarity that we we have 71 70 to 80 million is what we have it listed as and that value is 60 billion. Right. I heard you say 60 billion, but then if you project to 2036, you said 80 billion with a B. Yeah. The increase. And so I think with everything that has come to our region and everything that we're trying to evaluate, council, I would be interested in seeing if you guys could uh could potentially approve with me. Um maybe we direct uh staff to to engage with Chris to bring back a number for what he would charge us to do an evaluation appraisal. Um, is that something you guys be interested in knowing?

I think it would be I think it may be an RFP to go out and Oh, is that right? Professional services. Can we keep that within our existing agreement? I believe I believe we can. So, okay. But I would I would add a hydraological component to that to really get the acre feet and the financial piece. Maybe it's a twofold type deal. To be fair, I am not a hydraologist. I'm a numbers guy. So, so maybe maybe uh Mr. path, if you could look into that and see what that looks like to get both of those uh pieces of this puzzle figured out to bring that back and maybe it is an RFP, but council, I would I would just see if you guys are encouraged by that and and inclined. I think that we should have Mr. Path look into it. Yes, sir.

So, help me. So, we're want we want to get an appraisal on our water values. Yes, sir. Okay. What What is that going to do for us? What is that? What does that do? I mean, I can get an appraisal on my house, but I don't get any cash out of it to pay for my next house until I mean, I'm just trying to figure out what what's the return on investment for getting the appraisal on. It's an asset on your balance sheet, first of all. Okay.

It's a communication piece to not only your your lender who is looking at your overall health and and your ratings, but then also to your constituents who understand. We just represented that we weren't pulling our reserves. So, I want to talk about that because I I don't agree with that, but um we don't want to walk out of here feeling like the organization's not strong uh in that enterprise. It's very strong in that enterprise. And so, um it's it's same as going to the doctor and knowing how healthy you are. I mean, like, yes, you you you still walk out the same way you walked in, but you have another bit of knowledge. I think it would be something that could potentially help us.

So, so we can get better interest rates. Well, so there's there's two there's two pieces to this because ultimately this involves your financial advisor determining can you collateralize debt with water rights. So that's a that's an outstanding question if we could even do that. The second question is to your auditors. You're talking about water rights, you know, looking at a market appraisal versus what goes on the books of the enterprise fund. So you almost have an intangible asset in terms of water rights. I don't know what your auditor is going to allow you to book on your balance sheet relative to water rights. So, there are a number of questions here when we're talking about financial health and we're looking at, you know, debt to equity ratios and we're looking at current ratios and looking at the health of the balance sheet. Uh there's there's other advisors that need to be in this process. You you you had a a very good analogy there, Mr. Simpson. I can own a five, you know, $5 million house. that doesn't give me cash unless I sell that house. And so when we're looking at rates going forward and how we come in and service debt, how we pay our day-to-day bills, we do have to look at cash for that.

Well, those questions we can ask our outside counsel and auditors to determine. I mean, I don't have a problem with doing it, but I just don't want to do something just to say, "Okay, we've done it." Unless there's a real tangible benefit coming back out. Yeah, I can speak to our financial advisor. I've never had a financial adviser say that's an idea we can ever use and but I I can see if that is maybe possible that no one's using that if we don't do it is it making a difference and is it is it is it worth doing it is what my question would be just like he's what what he was talking about.

So for us to make a uh educated decision on that we need a few more pieces of information. So um what I would like uh Mr. Path is for you to to to look into that see what those two components could run. Let's put a dollar value on that. see what the uh the return could be and then especially if we can get some commentary back uh from a financial standpoint our our adviser letting us know that could be very helpful.

So two so two things I think I understand is one is to talk to financial advisors to see if this is this is a an opportunity for us to collaterize but then secondly is is to work with Chris Eard get a scope of service and see what that would cost. We would we would compine that with a hydraology study uh for saturated thickness is what I'm assuming ac also recommend you talk to your auditor relative to yes you can do an appraisal on water rights but what are they actually going to let you book on your books and records relative to that balance sheet and so in conversations with CLA it they said that they're going to start putting it as a footnote in all of their locations because they had not looked into it perfect

so going back to the analogy of the $5 million house. We might be assuming we have a $50,000 house, but in all reality, we could sell it for 50,000. Yes, sir. Or we could put it on the books at 50,000, but really that home is worth5 million. Yes, sir. So, that would be that would be the analogy. Sure. And and I'm I'm fine with that. I just don't No offense, I just don't want to do a study and something and it it's on the shelf and we said we did it and we did. I'm not trying to talk myself out of a study. I understand. I understand. I appreciate it.

No, thank you. So, uh, to recap, we are currently working on a 5% increase plan. We have been for some time. Uh, we want to make sure you're aware of that so that as we communicate this potential 8.4% increase, what you're really netting out there is about a 3.4% increase from the change in what our uh, payers are used to seeing. And so, um, I I just wanted to communicate that. And then I would like in the ability to stratify this potential policy. So have we directed you with a tier system and and what I'm talking about would be like minimum water users, median and then large and then to uh bifurcate this into um let's say residential, non-residential I think is the terms you would like to use. And so uh in that rate pay study is that something you're already working on? And the reason being, what we would hope to drive home is the ones that are most affected by a $5 per month increase are the ones that that $5 every month is already spent. It's budgeted, right? So, when we look at a large water user, uh, ABC uh, Enterprises and their bill is $10,000 one month and $18,000 the next month and back down to 8,000. their potential increase is not going to hit their pocketbook in that enterprise quite like we would have our concern for that single mom with three kids. Correct.

So, are you working on that already?

Yes, sir. So, what I've got on the screen right now is your current rate design. You do have a two-part rate structure, a fixed charge. Every customer pays every month regardless of use based on meter size. You then have a volutric or variable rate. uh this is under what's called an inclining block or conservationbased rate such that as you use more water that unit cost of water does go up. We will be looking at this very closely. One of the things I would note right now you include 3,000 gallons within the minimum bill. So for $19.15 you get 3,000 gallons. At the same time, you're not encouraging any resident to conserve less than 3,000 gallons because they're getting that within that minimum bill. Many communities do this because it's a protection for that low volume user, which is sometimes the fixed income customer. But if conservation is one of our goals and objectives, one of the things we may want to do is pull those 3,000 gallons out of the minimum bill, start charging for that. Again, just some considerations in terms of policy as we go forward. So, we will bring different options back to you. We'll talk about the strengths and weaknesses, the pros and cons. This is the art side of what we do and we'll need your policy guidance on that.

So, Chris, you're an expert in your field. We appreciate um that expertise. We are going to want um the data to be reflected where we could stratify that or tier that uh and and give us as many options as possible. So, I think we're communicating that well to you and we look forward to getting that back in that way. Um, the the other issue that that I would want clarification on is just to make sure your numbers are correct. Okay.

So, you had a cash on hand and you had an analysis there. So, um you know been going back through the audit uh you know we we ran this enterprise for roughly $und00 million in total revenues. We have a total expenditures somewhere including debt service and everything else of around 80 million. So we have a a net profit there or a cash basis uh of around 18 million if we're being critical, but let's call it 20 in in an average. And so uh our cash on hand um you know was at 36 million last year. uh we have a discrepancy there that we're going to work through over the next couple weeks and and we're looking into, but unless we have some sort of a shortfall, uh I don't I've never seen this enterprise uh with a 41day cash on hand stance. So, where did that number come from, sir?

So, again, we've we've used your cash and cash equivalent position that was provided to us. It could be a dated number. I'll go back and double check my numbers uh to make sure that I'm accurate here. It's possible we're working with some some outdated or bad data. I'll check it and bring it back to you if you don't mind looking into that because I think the the the aer and the audit will be you know concluded. We'll be able to have that on the shelf. That'll be the hardest data you could have that everybody's agreed on and we've put on the shelf. Uh I hope that um the one thing that we had caught I think was depreciation. You're looking at a cash on hand. You're not

I'm looking at I am not looking at depreciation that is a non-cash item. What I'm looking at is uh O andM expenses, PNI, cash out the door. So that's the other thing to note when you look at your income statement. Principal does not hit your income statement. That's a balance sheet item. So I've taken out depreciation. I put principal back in. But again, I'll double check our numbers and make sure we're solid before we come back to you. if you could. I think we're going to rely heavily not only uh on your documents and your data for policy, but also as um our consultant, lead consultant on on how we're going out for for borrow. And so I don't want to hand anybody a document that's inaccurate that, you know, has them look at us in a way that's less healthy or or that we're not as strong as we are. So um that that would be great, I think, if we can get that. And then um I would ask if we had any other comments, questions from here. Councilman,

let me just ask you a question. I'm sure you'll give me a good answer because it's your job. But you know, some people may be saying this can't be that complicated. I mean, we got this cost. We got to figure out how much to raise. But but I guess my question would be what is the downfall of not doing this correctly? And why is this really a complicated thing that that we really need to be sure to get right when we're looking at all these factors? Well, I I will tell you what we do is not rocket science. It is fractions, dollars divided by units. Uh when you come into your rate design though, there's different ways to slice this pie. There's different ways to determine uh which which class should pay what. Ultimately, what we're trying to achieve in this is an equitable rate structure. It's important that we price service appropriately so that we're sending the right economic signals to our customers because that's ultimately what we're doing in pricing. We are sending an economic signal. What is the behavior we seek from our customers? How do we seek that behavior while also balancing the financial condition of our business? Uh I'm working with a client right now. They went in last year and and had a rate study done and and the consultant there actually recommended lowering the rate at the at the at the at the lower tiers. So, in in the example here, let's say we took the 3,000 to 10,000 gallons of bill and we lowered that. Well, the problem is now you're relying on those upper tiers to make up for that. If you rely on those upper tiers, we're getting into an economic concept called elasticity of demand. Meaning, as you get up to that point, there's a uh there's a customer behavior differential based on that price increase. And so if I push more revenue recovery to those upper tiers, I'm destabilizing the revenue stream. I'm putting more volumes at risk of conservation, at risk of weather variances. And so what that does to you for your business is you now have

a destabilized revenue stream. You may not be generating sufficient cash to run your business. That's where the complexity comes into all of this to make sure we're balancing all of these factors. Anybody can put pen to paper and do a fraction, but at the end of the day, we have to take into account all of these different elements and potential customer behavior to make sure we can still adequately run our business, that we can pay our debt, that we can provide what the state requires, which is continuous and adequate service.

Well, you mentioned equitable, and my definition of equitable as long as I'm paying them more than everybody else, but I guess equitable is going to be a policy. I mean, and it's going to be up to us to determine, okay, we're going to have all these variations and and how is it going to be equitably distributed that we think is fair to pay for this and factoring in the family with with children and and and all the rest.

Yes. And it's not just equity, it's perception of equity because everybody's perception of equity is different. But we look at innerclass equity between residential, commercial, industrial. We look at intraclass equity. That's the difference between a small house or a large house or a a a small volume user and a large volume user. We're never going to achieve 100% equity. That's not possible. But that's why we work with you as the council to tell us what is right for your community. What does equity mean here in the city of Amarillo? Mr. Eert, uh really good, you know, um proposal and presentation, uh very helpful, uh in depth, but you covered a lot of ground.

Yes, sir. So, what you didn't cover was when will you be back? So, we hope to be back very soon with you. We've actually gone through the cost of service analysis. It's a matter of looking at the schedule and seeing when can I get back here. So, again, it will be as we go through this summer. I'm anticipating we'll at least have two more two more presentations with you uh to go through this information prior to taking action on rates. Again, my recommendation is that you take action on rates, commensurate with your budget, implement that next rate increase in October. If you want to wait, you could certainly push that to January. Okay. Really good, sir. Uh council, anything further?

Yeah, I do have one one question on clarify. When you when you talked about the 8.37% increase, that was including the 5% we already do or this is going to be in addition to So this is this is not considering the 5%. This is you would do 8%. So if you're if you were already going to do 5% then the incremental difference is the 3.4. So it would be 3.4 on top of your policy of already doing 5%. We're not looking at a 13%. No sir. No sir. No sir.

That's a great way to clarify that. So, it's a net difference of an additional $3.5%, but that also includes $300 million uh assumption for Crimwella, right? And I'm getting that number from you on the 1.8 versus the 1.5. We know those aren't hard numbers, right? We're we're not we're waiting to get that data back, but we just want to know that's that's the entire taco.

Yes, sir. That's the that's the entire taco. And when we look at the nation, as we look at water pricing throughout the nation right now, uh you're it's the National Association of Clean Water Agencies, they they run an index and we see that index vary all the way from 4 to 6%. So if you're running right in the middle of that, there are some years you're good, some years you're off a little bit, but we are seeing water pricing increasing on average more than 5% across the nation. So, keeping you know that 5% that's that's a keep up or let's say that's a it's it's not a catchup. It's a keep up if you would. Yes, sir. Well, uh thank you very much.

Just just as a matter when you realize in 12 years our bill doubles. I know that. Yeah. And in and currently the plan that we're on, our bill doubles in 20 years. And and we've been on it, I know, for at least five or six, maybe longer, but but um we are keeping pace with additional cost in lots of areas, labor included. The commodity is going to more than double. So are you going to drink water or you not? The bottom line is we can't control the pricing. We can't control things like that. The the reality is is the commodity will more than double as the state continues to get influence of population pressure.

Well, and right now treated water in the state runs anywhere from $8 to $11 a thousand on a retail basis. The next increment of water supply that we're looking at in various parts of the state. That's 24 $25 a,000 for the next increment of supply. That's what you're seeing all throughout the state, all throughout you mentioned the aid parts of the nation. Uh unfortunately that's the reality that we're we're facing here if we want clean water sustainable service. Yes sir. Um thank you Mr. Eert. Really appreciate you appreciate the time today. That that'll take care of item 6.1. We're going to take a 15minute recess. We'll come back and take a streaming of B

Everybody getting settled back in? Welcome back. We'll officially call ourselves back into session. Um, we are on 6.2. Miss Kristen Wach, do we have you running this one? All right, we'll we'll ask you to start heading this way. uh live streaming capabilities for boards and commissions and hoping for kind of an outline of um which are the most important.

Good afternoon. Evening. What is it? We're kind of evening now, huh?

Um hey, thanks uh mayor and council. I hope to keep this one pretty brief. Mostly what I'm going to talk about is the existing scope of the space that we have here at city hall. Um go through a little bit of our analytics of our existing live meeting which is city council and special meetings and then just throw out a couple of options. But really I just want to get get an idea of what you're kind of hoping hoping for. Um existing scope obviously right now the city of Amarillo is comprised of about 42 boards and commissions. Granted, 10 of those are PIDs, so we kind of facilitate those, but a little bit different. Um, and we host about 20 plus meetings per month on average. Those vary, but generally it's about 20 plus meetings. Um, as you probably know, most of our meetings occur across multiple locations and times. Most notably, those those include city hall, SIMS building, and also uh parks building, library, some of those facilities. Uh with the exception of council meetings specifically, we don't have existing staff that's dedicated to streaming or recording any additional board or commission meetings. Uh this just gives you an overview of average engagement. So I pulled this from our existing YouTube channel. What I don't have engagement numbers for is if anybody's watching it directly from the website. I don't anticipate that a lot of people are unless we have some technical difficulties. But this gives you an overview of our existing YouTube channel. So for live meetings, anything that's live streamed today, those council meetings, special meetings, some of our budget meetings, we have 34 live viewers. The expectation is that most people that are viewing live are probably in the room, but we do have on average 34 people watching these meetings live at any given time. 150 average unique views. What that means is 150 users. So if you look at a a meeting right now, some may say 500 views. That usually indicates that some

people are watching the meeting multiple times over. So we're only getting those unique view numbers. Average duration is about 8 to 11 minutes and a percentage of a meeting watched is 5 to 10%. And so what that tells me generally is that some people are tuning in just for a specific agenda item that they're they care about. Um, and they're also watching those within the first two weeks of a meeting. And we sometimes get some views well beyond that two weeks, but generally it's about two weeks after a meeting has been posted. Uh, what the law requires, obviously, we're a home home rule municipality. So, because we're a city with a population over 50,000 or more, we are legally required to uh post council meetings. Um, anything where you guys are present and there is a possible quorum, we're required to post those meetings by law. And you have up to seven days after that meeting to post that on a public website or forum. Um, and then we are required by law to keep that archived online and available to the public for at least two years. uh from a communication perspective. There's also accessibility and technology considerations that we should be aware of when we talk about uh either a live streamed meeting or a posted meeting. This is both uh one that's synchronized so it has video and audio or just audio is we have requirements by law to be accessible. Uh these are DOJ guidelines. We don't get to decide if we abide by them but we have to. And so if we post anything um and this exists in documents, this is pretty much anything we post online uh has to follow some type of legal requirement. So if it is a synchronized video, if it has video and audio, by law, we have to have captioning. If it's audio only, we have to have text alternatives, which basically means a transcript of that that meeting or that recording. Uh we also have some legal restrictions that

you should bear in mind is there's a recent well it's this one's not a recent Senate bill but they've made a recent update to 1893. It initially was the Tik Tok ban. So the state of Texas had the Tik Tok ban. Well they've now added um to that ban and it limits use of certain technologies. So essentially if that technology ties into uh Chinese technology, we as municipal governments cannot purchase or utilize that on a city network. That becomes important with some of the stuff that our technology in 1500 potentially ties into. Um so it limits what we're able to put like our city credentials on. It opens us up to foreign cyber security impacts. Uh I wanted to pull just some pure city examples. These are the ones that we use as far as comparables. I will uh call myself out because I I I lied on this, but I'm going to tell you what I lied about. Um these are just cities that generally were compared to uh both in in size and scope. Um when somebody posts anything outside of just that common city council meeting, a lot of times it's your PNZ meetings and your TIE meetings or or those similar entities. Um, Kylen is closeish to us, a little bit less as far as population. They are council meetings only. Leach, they actually I said council only. That's a lie. They actually do stream their P&Z meetings as well, and those are held in like their council chambers. Uh, McK Mckin's in the same boat. Frisco is the same. Kyle, surprisingly, is the only one that I could really find in the state of Texas that went above and beyond. and they actually stream almost every single board. Granted, it's a smaller municipality. They don't have as many boards or commissions that they manage, but I was able to find around nine different um boards and commissions that they stream regularly on their YouTube site and using their council

chambers. So, just wanted to share that from a best practices standpoint. Currently, council chambers is the only turnkey space that we have for live streaming boards and commission meetings. Conference room 1500, the one that we're familiar with downstairs, is limited both to some of those technology restrictions that I noted. Basically, what it forces us to do is in order to um use the presentation screens in that room, it forces us to basically go through uh foreign technology in order to log in. So, presents some sec some security concerns for it. Uh what I will say is we've recently had an external um AV um sorry an AV organization and they are evaluating that room right now to see if there's some technologies that are available that we're not uh taking advantage of in that space. And so I hope to have that information back to from them soon. But um currently council chambers is really the one that has the the most production value for what I would consider a live streamed meeting. Again, these are just options to consider. This is either stuff that I know exists currently um within the the capacity that we have or would be relatively easy to get on board. Again, this is not a suggestion. I I'm happy to hear um and talk about any recommendations that you've considered. But what I would recommend probably if it was me today is to expand a pilot streaming option. And that's to expand out to those boards that I know have public concerns. So your planning and zoning tiers boards I also know that from a public perception parks has been one that a lot of people have have recommended and said that they want to see those. What will that that will allow us to do? I I I operate off of not necessarily opinions but data and so that gives us that opportunity to collect that data to see the public

impact and to consider operational impacts. As I said, a live stream meeting this like this setting multiple hours, we don't have a person dedicated to it. And so a lot of times you'll see our team back there kind of switch hitting that responsibility. Expanding that out to multiple meetings just obviously is an operational impact. Uh one that I think if we expanded it would give me the option to kind of evaluate both the metrics online and consider those operational impacts for long-term decisions. Another one, this is this is something that I have seen other people do. It was one that we've talked about as a team and it's developing basically a meeting kit. And so this would be something that would allow people to take um probably more rudimentary uh meetings. So like your I don't know if you've seen like an owl those conferencing uh devices, it has some video, it has some mics. Is it the best scenario? Probably not in regard to production value. But if you really just want to be able to see the room and get some audio, um that would be the best case scenario. It would be the cheapest way in order to allow people to still meet when they're meeting, to still uh meet in the spaces that they're comfortable with. Um and so to me, those best uses are probably those advisory boards with maybe limited engagement, but it would give them and give the public an opportunity from that transparency perspective um to both hear and see some of those smaller meetings. Um, again, the considerations is inconsistent quality. I think the production value in uh council chambers is something people are pretty used to and so I'm always a little nervous about backstepping. Um, accessibility requirements, we'd have to tinker with that to make sure that we were we were maintaining that accessibility requirement that the federal government requires. It also relies on staff. So, this is staff that maybe isn't used to streaming or or running some of those recordings for meetings to to get that

training. So that would just be a learning curve. Um and then there would be a limited to zero capture presentations. So when you have some of those that are presentationheavy uh boards that that would be a limit that I could see for those. And then of course this is the one that I think everyone's you know kind of suggested is just centralized recording everything in city hall every single meeting. Um that would require upgrades to the spaces to to 1500. that would require some additional technology uh that we don't currently have down there to live stream or um video and audio record well in that space. Um I do think it's possible. I just think it would take a a little bit of additional technology. Um the other thing to consider is that 1500 is currently a multi-purpose space. It's the largest multi-purpose purpose space in city hall. So a lot of training and orientation happens in that space. moving most of our meetings to that space would push some of those other multi-purpose functions out of that space. So, scheduling and coordination would be a consideration. Again, production value would be a little different than what people are used to and reliance on other people for their technical expertise. Um, and again, once we have that AV evaluation completed by Ford AV, I'll have a better idea of kind of the technology that exists down there and how we might be able to improve on its current functionality. But like I said, I mean, this is just some recommendations based off of the space that I know is available. Um, and happy to take any questions, recommendations.

Can do we currently use like teams for recording? Yes. I mean, do we have transcripts for each of each board meeting? Now, we do have that. Yes. So, that's that's actually the benefit to Teams. However, so the MaxHub TV that's downstairs, those two presentation screens, whenever we go to log into Teams, it forces us to use basically, and Rich can probably attest to part of this, it has some concerns because of the legal acknowledgement through a Chinese company that it forces us to sign into. So, I personally don't really want to use my city login credentials to do it. Um, so we would just have to do some additional testing on those screens, those Mac tubs.

I mean, everyone had I mean, most everyone has Teams on their phone. Y and you could record it and instead of having 42 out kits, I mean, which is a great idea. Yeah, it's I think anything is possible, right? I think it's just the pallet of of citizens and you guys really is that something that we're comfortable with? Do people feel like they're getting the the correct audio? And I think piloting those out to see if it works is a fantastic option. The owls the owls work really well. Oh, they can go ahead. I think they they had their lights on first.

So, let's go back to um government code that requires us is only to video and audio, right? The recording and make that available for the council meetings. Correct. for the C for for council meetings or for any open meeting. Uh this is for council specific. So if as an elected official if it's for elected official meetings essentially.

Okay. So um then the other thing that you mentioned was space. Um we have a lot of space in this building, don't we? And we could pick a room that we could put the equipment that we need into it other than what's down in 1500. uh to do what we need to do for for recording meetings, right? Or to Yeah. I mean, in theory, I think it would take just some coordination on determining how many Yeah. Okay. So, space isn't an issue. Uh in theory, no. I guess it depended on what technology we decided was best best case, but I think that yeah, anything's doable. Okay.

Yeah. Do we have any idea what's that? What's it going to take to upgrade? I know at the time that we built this, this didn't this wasn't in place as far as connecting to a Chinese device, right? So, we thought that we were good and at the time we were good. Yeah.

So, what what would it take to upgrade that? Is it ridiculous? I mean, what that's why we brought Ford AV in to do an assessment on what we could do to upgrade. And just bear in mind this in this particular space that's actually a problem. It doesn't matter where the company is headquartered. I can think of one company that doesn't have Chinese technology deeply in their supply chain whether it's hardware or software and we can't afford that company. It would be 8x the cost of what what we did here. So it is just in an abundance of caution being very careful testing the software and that particular software required us to give rights uh per permissions outside of the outside of the city that they're not comfortable with.

Okay. Well, again to like to your question, I think as far as just doing like a general look at technology that exists, is it a tremendous amount? I don't think so. I think it becomes a tremendous amount when we talk that's a different conversation between 32 board meetings versus, you know, if I had it my way, it's it's a handful of meetings that I think have specific public interest. I know that they all do. You know, I think the biggest question is, and it's one that we have as staff, right? um I don't know action items unless someone tells me from a public meeting, right? I'm not attending all of them. And so it's for the sake of transparency, I think it's great. It's just comes down to production value and coordination. And so um I think if we could coordinate like a singular space and we felt like we could make that work. I just don't I think the question comes at 30. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So

because then it it is more expensive. So is it do these laws apply or these this code apply only to live streaming or is it recordings as well? So my and my thought is so the benefit to the public is not necessarily watching live because those people are not at the meetings. So they can't interact, right? They can't interact anyway. But what would prevent us from recording the meetings fairly good quality and then uploading them to our YouTube channel? So we're bypassing the Chinese. I mean, am I simplifying that too much? No.

Seems simple to me. I think that's the point Kristen was making with the media kits is, you know, we we'd like to pilot a kit that you could give to a board leader so that, you know, they could record audio, video, and then and then it get posted to to an archive later. It doesn't have to be immediate or live stream.

Yeah. I don't I don't think we have any concern. I mean, as far as my team goes on being able to take that recording and be able to play it. And to to Councilman Prescott's point, I think using the technology that we already have like Teams that's going to provide that transcript already, that's fantastic, right? I don't have to do the leg work. YouTube's going to back that up even further with their caption. So, I think Yeah. And I think my concern is always, is the public going to feel like we're downgrading the production value because they can't see the presentation or they couldn't quite hear what someone said? Sure. You know, and having to work out some of those, but it's an upgrade because at least they can watch the meeting. But again, I don't think we lose anything by not streaming it because those people that are watching

whether it's live or not, they can't do anything. They can't interact. So if it if if we had a you know, the recording is finished and this would be uploaded within whatever however long, you know, an hour, whatever it takes. Yeah, it seems like that that would be a good solution. Uh maybe and and avoid some technology, but not all of it. Yeah, I think it's a I think it's a good um thing that would be worth triing. Okay. To see to see how it worked and how everyone felt with it. and then determining like how many days do we feel we're comfortable with and being able to get that uploaded and sure and produced. Okay. Thank you. Uhhuh. So um the technology in here so we already have the technology to live stream and broadcast. It's in here

in the space. Correct.

So my question would be you know to me it's number one we have to figure out the template to be able to do this. Well we've already got the technology in this room. So I why why and why could we not just use the technology we have in here to have the board meetings uh and then then we don't have to buy any new technology it's already here and then uh what's the complexity of of being able to operate what they're operating back there and and and the third thing I would say though is uh I I would not want to have meetings if the people viewing it couldn't see the presentations. I mean that's kind of defeating the purpose. You can you can show the presentations in here. I think on the part of it I think to me the key part of uh of any meeting is I mean I understand the production value of being able to cut to the speaker and cut over here but I think the clear here you know more importantly than seeing everything I gota I got to hear everything what everybody's saying. I've got to, you know, see the presentations if it's a static, you know, if it's a static camera shot because we don't have someone that can I don't I see that as a a pretty easy tradeoff to be as long as we're showing everyone the information that they have. So, why why can't we use this room?

Um, so I I think that that's a kind of goes back into that first option recommendation that was made. Um, the only concern I would have, and I think you know Stephanie probably would agree, is as you start to expand that out, there's only so much coordination involved in some of those u different board meetings. But I think it's again just determining which ones do we think have the most public value. Um, but I personally don't have any issue with that. I think it's just the coordination of the space, making sure we could coordinate all those different meetings. Well, I think that's another question to, you know, of time, energy, effort, and resources because if we are going to do it, I think we need to do it right so people can hear and see and keep up with going on there. I mean, apparently we're not not the hit of YouTube. I mean, it's not like we're getting, you know, all these people coming in and viewing and at the city council. I think one thing, you know, I wouldn't mind seeing a, you know, a template for, you know, ideally if we can do it in this room and pick out some of these highinterest ones to start with and figure out the template to work with, it would be the easiest. It's the quickest. We already have good production value in this. And then to me, it would be a matter of uh judging, you know, are people are, you know, are people do we have people that are taking advantage of this? because, you know, the more people that take advantage of it, the more I I would see investing in others to be able to do it. But if we start off with, like you say, a couple to kind of figure out how it works and then if we can roll it out, you know, to more.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm always great at looking at it, evaluating it. Is the juice worth the squeeze? You know, that's the thing. Um, but ultimately, I understand it's also the goal of of council and I think citizens like what is a good number that of people watching? I I don't know how to define that. I think the other key thing is to make sure and and I don't know how the technology works, but as you as you've noticed, a lot of people are not they're not watching it all the way through. They're watching it on agenda item. Is it easy to incorporate that agenda item for the parks board and the other boards? Would that be because that's another value it would seem to me being able to use the existing technology if I just want to go look at that item as opposed to using other technology where I may have to figure out where it's coming up

as far as like timestamping it similar to how it's done. But here it's already built into it that I could go in. That seems to be where people are using it is to go to looking at something specific.

Yeah. And that would be one thing that I actually didn't think about um that I can follow up with you guys on is I know Swaget, the company that we currently use to stream those live meetings and if you go back on the website and you see the archive videos and it does have those nice minute-to-minute timestamps, I think we are charged based off of the amount of meetings. So that might be another thing to consider, but that's certainly information I can find out. I mean, I I would see if we could roll out a couple of of areas that we know are of high interest to the public, work out the kinks, and then at the end determine what kind of traffic are we getting and, you know, is it the type of traffic that says, "Okay, there's an interest in this. People are using it. What additional ones we you know, we would want to offer."

I would I would ask, do we need 42 commissions and boards? Is that I don't know if I'm equipped to answer that question. I'm just curious. That's a lot. Yeah, that's not what we're having. I'm just curious. We can we can talk offline about that part if you want. No, I think it's great.

Do we um do we have direction from council on appropriate a method and and get a plan, a template together for all boards and commissions or uh let's identify the ones that are most relevant, most needed and then appropriate that. So that's what I haven't heard yet. I would like to know where council's at so we can give good direction. I think it's important that we uh that we start somewhere. I don't think we do all of them. Um because number one, I don't think we could put all the meetings in here over a two-eek period uh that are happening in the city. But I think if we if we do kind of a hierarchy of our our uh committees and and boards that um that have more of a an importance for people, you know, the two you listed I think are are important ones. The AEDC um parks and wreck, you know, as we go down there. I think we can come up with that list. Um and and then we have to just schedule them in in this room.

Yeah. And one thing to think about, we would need to visit with AEDC a little bit because I know they have their own board meetings. They post their own agendas, right? Um but we could definitely have that conversation with them and add them to that list potentially. There's there's also a couple logistical issues, too. Um parks board has 11 members on it. Seven seats at the dies, two at the wings. Well, I mean, I think they could sit down there. Yeah, we could. We could do something like that,

but I think is is if we do it in here is the technology starting off with one or two. I mean, we could probably have staff doing it. But I would say, you know, looking at at doing a template out of it in here where there's no additional cost and then if we do go to others and to but to me if we get a lot of traffic on this and then people are looking at it then maybe we could have some more meetings in here. But if if people are looking at these things then I would say well maybe we buy the a couple of these kits to roll out to the other ones. Uh I I just don't know how much traffic or what they're going to you know there's a if there's a large consumption for this. I think it's it's worth the investment if they're only consuming the top few then you know Kristen resource-wise for your department. What does it take to run this?

Um so I will I will be honest city hall this city hall is a little bit more complex. Obviously it's a little bit more updated than the old system that we had. Um confidently usually takes about two people to to run both the sound and to switch view. However, if it's more of a static view, one person could easily probably do it themselves if we're not doing a lot of camera transitions and things of that nature. So, big adjustment for for your department.

It's a it's it would be something to consider. It's why I think piloting it out and really seeing like operational wise what that would take if it requires an additional person. You know, some of those cities that I know have expanded streaming capabilities have a person that's dedicated to that. I think in the short term as we look at, you know, five to six boards, I think my team and I can take that on the chin and try to figure out how to coordinate that amongst ourselves. Yeah, I agree with Les. I mean, if we're having 34 people watch, you said 34 people watch council

a lot. They that's what they're watching live um I would say on average um and I looked over the last the the last year. Any live meeting is about 150 unique viewers per live meeting. Okay, perfect. Thank you.

I think that all should be recorded and have a transcript. I think that we would go back to staff and ask for a tiered approach to the ones that seem to get u more sizzle for a better word that are a little bit more hot topic. And then we figure out some way to use a team's effect. We don't want to have a a huge cost, but we should have the ability to see the transcripts of each of the meetings at a minimum and then build a tier system. So that might be tier three, tier two is at a certain level and then tier one would be in this room.

So we could we identify because that's simple uh advanced technology, right, Rich? like just to record a meeting and have AI transcribe it, you know, can be done real easily if you're not trying to record with video and audio. If I'm if we're talking like audio on like a team's like you basically like your team's meeting is is another attendee. Yeah. Let's say um you know one of the lesser viewed lesser critical uh boards and committees is just using a device to record and it'll transcribe and you guys are posting that. Is that simpler for you that way there's a recording of those meetings but then

yeah in theory again I would need to like check and just make sure that it was good. I mean, the biggest thing is making sure accessibility wise that the transcript it provides is is good. And it would be the responsibility it' be the responsibility of the chair. That would be one of the responsibilities of the chair is to get the transcript done and uploaded and then as we as we move forward, then you're in you're in a good spot on the ones that that have higher impact. Well, we're already retaining minutes at every meeting, right? Correct. Is there any board meeting that doesn't have minutes? Uh, okay.

No. So they're they're all they're all retained. I just think that's an easier version of minutes honestly. But like um let me go back one half step. Do are we okay with a consideration today of just a pilot on this? We pick our top five versus trying to start with all 40 boards and commissions. I

I would say let's I mean because again and here's the ideal situation for a variety of reasons. I don't know on the teams part of it. I'm trying to have it figure out. I don't know if everybody has their own teams that is I'm having a hard time kind of figuring out how that's going to be, you know, that beneficial and effective. I think you are balancing. Okay. Yes. But again, if you're in a teams meeting and somebody has a presentation, I I don't know. I just say we we let's start with something to get something rolling to be able to start it and again see, you know, I mean, I don't know if it's getting three live views on planning and zoning, do we say, "Wow, we we need to do every one of them." But if it gets I don't know if it's getting 150 views at each meeting then we might say okay there's you so to me the amount of demand that may be for it I think would be commensurate with the investment.

I think my recommendation would be to pilot PNZ and parks and wreck in here and work and have Kristen and her team work on on on on doing that. And I think we I think we should look at exploring options for audio recording uh for transcript purposes for all meeting. We can look at that as well. And uh and but I I think I think a good first step would be to pilot those two more visible boards and then and then we can bring that back to you off to a certain point point of time. You can look at what's the data showing and then you can start deciding we want to expand that. Do we have the capacity to expand it to a few more like maybe AMW or something like that and go from there. But I think maybe starting easier, smaller with those two boards and then getting some data and bring it back to you.

I would agree with that. I I like that plan. Okay. So, good direction there. I think um if you can go ahead and start taking steps towards PNZ Parks and Recreck in here and then maybe bring something back to council on the uh audio and the transcription. Sure. The easiest way for y'all to do that before we we enact that. So maybe um for our audience that's that's hearing this may maybe we work through this over the summer months kind of see where it's at re-evaluate there uh into summer fall uh have something in place at that point. Is that good time frame? Yeah, I think that's very doable. I I imagine we'll be able to do that probably sooner.

Okay. I would I would just like to add one point if any of these boards have spending authority. We we need them all so we know where the where the dollars are. So, let's clarify the spending authority of a board. So, um council is the appropriations committee. Council appropriates money once a year. Uh that's the it's just a smaller look at bigger government. So, we watch our big government not pass a continuing resolution and they don't they don't get to continue to operate if that body doesn't appropriate the money. So, here it's the same way. So once a year we appropriate a budget. That budget then is departmentally held and and implemented at the department level. Now action can be sought out through boards and commissions and recommendations can be made by boards and commissions, but that staff member who is working within that budget that's already previously approved has the autonomy, the authority, and the capability of spending dollars within that budget. So uh Mr. path. Correct. Any of that that that needs further clarification.

No, I think you nailed it. And um yeah, I think you're correct.

So, in that I want to make sure that we don't think that a a board and commission of say 10 people can come together and that they are somehow like our city manager, it's under $50,000. So, we just hired the consultant and and we spent it. They don't get to they could make a recommendation go and spend $10,000 hiring a consultant that comes all the way up the chain and he ultimately is the one that is approving that if it's a professional services or there are assistant city managers and and directors that are working within those um communications. So I don't feel like we have a spending issue. I don't feel like we have anything that works outside of that once a year fiscal budget. Um, I think the example of maybe the um, you know, the parks and wreck item that they were going to solve a problem within a certain budget. I know that that was communicated to city manager and and deputy as well. So, uh, I just need to communicate that to the public so you guys hear that. And then if anybody's aware of something where a board and commission is spending money, please let us know because we we don't know anything about that. So, uh, staff, if you want to give any further remarks on that or we'll move on.

Okay. Uh, do you have good enough direction? Okay. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate you doing it. Appreciate it. All right. We're going to move into uh 6.3 CIP, construction in progress report update. I put this one on the agenda here today. It has my name next to it, but I am not necessarily running a presentation. Uh, I am hoping to receive a report. So, Mr. city manager, who do I have that will uh pre present that?

Uh, sure. Yeah, we didn't come with a presentation, but we can to answer questions. I did ask staff to be ready to provide a status update on CIPs. And so, I think the first thing I do is I'll pitch it over to Donnie and talk about our CIP sync committee and some of the work they've done in the last several months and some of the work he's doing now to put some things in the policy and to reorgan reorganize that that committee. So, Donnie and Mr. Hooper, don't feel like you've got to go back and and rehash the details like in the history of it. Uh I I am looking for an update and so if we can start with you, I think that's great.

Sure, we can do that. Yeah. Without going back over the history of it, just started in November 24 is when we started going down the path of changing the way that we were evaluating and looking at CIPs and the way that process took place. There was also a time period there that we gave you presentation on on how we went through and we closed out certain projects and I think everyone's aware of of all that. Where we're at now is we have now transitioned that CIP sync committee and let me explain what that is. We had what we called our sync committee and that's just what we named it when we formed that and it was so that we had a group of people that could brainstorm most of the CIP heavy users, utilities, public works, things like that. brainstorm ideas, find out why, what the issues were in the past, things that we could fix moving into the future, how we get that ship going in the direction that council was was guiding us. And so, we spent a lot of time doing that. In fact, several several months uh going over that. We're now transitioning that into a CIP oversight committee, which will be much narrowed down to all of the assistant city managers, deputy city manager. Uh it will also have finance components, the audit, our auditor, uh uh Sandra who works down in accounting and and puts all these CIPs together uh in the systems so that we can evaluate any request that comes forward for a transfer of funds from one project to another. Also to evaluate a project that's going to be closed out and capitalized so we can all discuss that as a group. We'll take all that input at each of those meetings, invite those departments to come to those meetings if there is a need that they have so that we can look at that as a group. Um, our new CFO of course will be a part of this process as well. And then we we can all look at everything associated with that CIP, its history, what it was originally designed for, uh where we're looking at another project, whether that's closing back out to reserves, whether that's closing back out to bond reserves. So that we have a really clean process that we can take that recommendation then to the city manager and tell him here is

what we want to do. A good example would be we have a project that has $50,000 left in it. We have another project that's short by $63,000. We would like to move that money plus 13 from our ENI account into that. We would then take that to Grayson uh as a recommendation if that committee approved that. And Grayson of course then would give instructions for us to bring that to council if that's so what he wanted to do. Uh you know we've had some that we've evaluated that have had a couple of projects that were really identified as the same type of project and so combining those would be a discussion that we would have. Then we would bring that to council. Council would get a chance to look at where that new project is and where that money is being appropriated. Also would be able to look at was that an existing CIP? Was that an emergency purchase that we had to make? was it something that broke that we were not expecting full evaluation of that then would come before the governing body so that you could look at that and make those decisions moving forward and that's really what our focus has been on our end uh we had a large group that was participating in this all along and uh we had some really really good ideas that came out of there and I think you know for me my my role right now is what are we doing from this point forward how are we moving the needle forward to have a better process where we have better accountability uh and we really like the product that we produce. So, we're really proud of the work that we've done and I think now that we're shifting that to an oversight committee that has a has internal policies attached to that on how we're going to go through that, internal procedures on how we would evaluate each of those requests, etc. So, that's that's at least my update on where we're headed with all the CIPs.

I think that's great. Um, and everything you you're saying, uh, not only am I thankful for like I'm in total agreement with it and and I I'm not pushing back on any of that moving forward. I think the process was identified in a way uh previously that you've greatly improved upon and I don't know that you got to say much more than that. Right. I I know the auditor spoke to it in you know maybe a more timely and accurate statement and that'll be included but that is exactly what we'll have moving forward and and hopefully it would give kind of that dashboard look which would be very helpful for staff but then also for council to see like where we're tracking. Do you expect that dashboard or CIPs to be updated maybe quarterly? Are you saying semianual, just once a year? What what do you think would be healthy?

What we have in our document now that we're reviewing at the next meeting on the 21st with that committee uh states in there that we would have a monthly update that we would provide and we can do that either way. We can either provide that in our weekly management report so that all the council members could see that or we could provide a and then combine that into a quarterly report at council meetings. It's what really the council desires for us to do. But the idea for us internally is to have a running dashboard that's completed every month where we've evaluated every transaction that's taken place. We also uh in addition to that, we'll also have and you'll see a presentation from Mr. Danforth coming up the next council meeting of where are we at with the existing CIPs that we have issued funds for the current year. The ones that are already uh underway, if you will, and may include some from the past couple years have been in design that are now underway. what's the status of those, where are we at, and and when do we expect to complete those? And that's all related to the arbitrage uh uh communication pieces that we've added to uh to protect the item as well. So, I think you're going to be able to see that for sure on that dashboard at least in a monthly uh presentation as of now. Um I envision that being in the weekly report. That's probably the easiest way to do that, but we wouldn't mind coming back quarterly uh and presenting that to the entire group as well on where we're at and where we're going. Obviously, there'll be a bigger discussion when it comes to budget when we're producing the next year's list of CIPs and you'll have some presentations in as well. So, multiple times a year is when you would see that.

Okay. And I think, uh, council, if we can give clear direction here today, these guys are working really hard to to keep us in the middle of the road. Um, you know, you get your quarterly investment or holdings report uh, every quarter. I think this could go right in line with that. And, and if we could get the dashboard, the printout. So, um, what I would like to do is transition the the conversation a little bit more towards the template. So, like what I'm in possession of, what council has is is just the existing CIP work product that goes back and grabs all of those projects that we had um, you know, potential transfers and and we had original appropriations from you know, years and years ago. I think the one that I looked back that was the furthest was maybe 2014. I'm not going to swear to that, but you know, so we've got some older projects and then these projects are cumulative. So it's important everybody hears these projects continue forward. They don't just come up once a year on budget and then it was done. They they carry over into the next year. So financially, we need to be tracking those appropriations to make sure one we're running in budget and two we've got those monies sitting aside so we don't realize any kind of shortfall. And so, um, on that council, very clear direction on, um, maybe a quarterly update. Are y'all comfortable with that? And it could just come to us at a council meeting. Um, so that we could see that. And then it could also be given same time that finance uh, puts out the holdings report. Council, I would ask if that's too much, if that's enough. I mean, do you want more or less? Would you clarify the ask again?

So the the ask would be quarterly the CIP dashboard would be communicated on a report that will track you know here's the amount that was appropriated. Here's the project name description. Here's the amount that's spent. Here's the amount remaining. And then in a in a good scenario project's ready to be closed out. So you're going to see it on your report. So we appropriated $10 million. We spent five. You're going to be aware, okay, we have a $5 million savings that's going to come back to council. It can't be spent on anything else. It's got to come back to council to be appropriated to the next project. It'll come with recommendations from staff. Uh staff may say, "Hey, we we don't have uh you know, project came back bid at 4 million, we budgeted two, we need an extra 2 million. This is some of the savings on that other project." So that CIP report is going to create a good teamwork environment uh as we move forward.

So it's like a financial gant chart on each CIP project is what pretty much and and I mean the way we envision and and you got to remember too you know we're building all that into Ebuilders now and Ebuilders has the ability to create uh running dashboards that's going to lessen that workload for us too. So when now we've got to get that input in and we're working on that and it's going to take a while to get that finished up but I think once we do that uh there's even a possibility that we could have something that live that you could look at all the time but we would love to come back and give a report show where we're at on that. I think that's great. I mean I think yes is that something we can do? I mean the request on quarterly is that

Sure. Oh yeah it is. And I don't know you know how soon we'll have all that data in. It's going to depend on that but we can definitely do it as soon as we get all the data in. Something else that we'll we'll be looking at is just as I mentioned every aspect of all these CIPs, but we're also going to be looking at uh those specific projects you just talked about. We have a list of CIP projects not only in the two to fiveyear plan, but we also have some that are beyond that as well. Some of those get moved up, some of them get moved around. It gives us an opportunity to discuss those with you uh as we as we move forward. Do we would would there be any reason we wouldn't have access to the dashboard? We're we're still working through that. We need to get all the data entered first, but there may be a possibility that you could have access to just see that that not to enter data just to

Yeah. the dashboard itself. Just to see the dashboard. Sure. And so that would would save the time of if we have access to the to the dashboard. Sure. Then only when questions came up that would be easier than reporting out on the whole thing every quarter. We will uh we'll look into that and see what the capabilities of for doing that. Does that seem logical? I think so. So, I think if if we had that ability, I think it'd be great to give you guys access you because you would you would have access if you were asked for it anyways. And so, yeah, if we can get you guys viewer access, it'd be great. Really powerful. That would solve a lot of the the reporting. And so,

the part of all this has been is just is just the the it'll take some time to tune to build it out. And so, again, the focus this year has been let's do this year's CIPs. Let's get that let's get these CIPs done so I don't keep adding CIPs to the list. Then as we can we're starting to work backwards on other CIPs all while doing waste treatment plants and utility billing projects and and tiers all those kind of things while doing all that stuff. So this is this hasn't been the priority for us. Councilman Prescott we also uh really would like to have if it's capable of doing it a forward- facing dashboard that the public could see as well. I was just going to ask that. Why would if we've got it, why wouldn't we want everybody? That's that's what we're working toward.

Eliminate all this accusations. Agreed. That we get. Yes, sir. Oh, that won't stop it. Come on. Be optimistic.

Councilman. Well, I I just what I want to make sure is, you know, and and actually Kristen, you know, I think put it, you know, this sounds like I mean, the thing that I see us getting into sometimes, and I had a boss like this one time. He said, "Oh, do this." And he thinks it's as simple as just doing it when when you've got to implement it and do it. It's far more complex than that. And it takes a lot more manh hours than he realized, but we figure out a way to do it. I mean, is this is this something that we can, you know, I I just as a council, I think we've got we have a good duty for oversight, but I think, you know, but we don't want to bog the staff down with coming up with these unique reports over and over again that are taking all this time to complete them when I would hope that we would have something that could be produced relatively easy out of whatever system that we have. So, I'm just wondering, you know, is this something that is going to be I'm not going to say easy, but but but is not going to require 5,000 man-h hours of somebody to be able to figure out how to use the system and to be able to manipulate it in this way.

Great observation, great question. And we think that the system can do that automatically. It's one of the things that we liked about the demo of Ebuilders when we had them come in and show us the automatic dashboards that are created. if you've got the data in there, it's just a matter of setting up that dashboard a couple of times and it will automatically autopop populate that. So, I don't think we're going to have a lot of labor involved with that. Now, Jerry may be back here ready to throw darts at the back of me, but uh from every discussion that we've had, I don't think it's going to be labor intensive. The labor intensive part right now is putting all of those CIPs manually into the system. You got to remember, we've been working on this since November of 2024. And I would say the ebuilder is part of that probably for the last six or seven months to try to start going down that path. So that once that part is done then I think every year just adding the additional CIP for the current year that we're in for year one uh is not going to be that huge of a challenge for us. It's just getting there.

But my my goal that I have for the team from the beginning is getting us to a point where council has more viewer access to the CIPs. just this is a big big project goes back years and years and trying to again like I said before I'm not trying to make excuses but doing this while doing everything else today is just to balance our priorities and so but uh but my goal my expectation is for us is is to get the council better access to whatever data you want in there you want to know percentages you want to know actuals you want whatever it is and so part of my task here I I've tasked Andrew with looking at this from a council perspective and so and I know this the team continue to focus on on on on the on the logistics and grind of the CIPs. I've asked Andrew to look at it from your perspective. Okay. What would what would the council like to see? And then then and what what kind of perspective would the citizens like to see? And so what because we can give you tons of data, but what drill down more would would you again a dashboard is meant to be summarized, not a thousand dials, but like three needles kind of a thing. So what does that look like? And so that's one thing we're trying to work through. I think you once you get the data then you'll it will present the questions to ask and then we'll we'll just work the process.

Exactly. That's that's been our process is is trying to get our head wrapped around the whole thing. So we start figuring out what does this best look like? Is it an ebuilder? Is it is it a is it an automated sheet out of workday? Is it a is it a a spreadsheet? Is which columns do do we want to enter? That's this trying to get our heads wrapped around the whole thing so we can figure out what is the best summarized way of getting it to y'all. I think financial transparency would be the well and I think also I mean for us I mean being able to you know easily see at a high level the major things that we need to be seeing and have access to and that's going to naturally

you know draw conversations or questions where we may need to drill down in something or you know so I think not only just having the information but make sure the information is something that's useful and and can be able to do that both on the CIP and I'm hoping also as we kind of reformat the budget a little bit that it'll put it in a format that boy, it just allows us to much easier gauge where we are as an organization instead of having to have a 800page notebook that's full of all kinds of details.

Sure. Yeah. And Jerry just reminded me that in his presentation on the 28th, he's going to give you a little bit of a look at this what it's going to what we're putting what we're working in in Ebuilders and uh get a good idea of that as well. So, look forward to seeing that. He said he's probably going to answer some of these questions that you have next at the next council meeting.

Real good. So, Councilman Simpson, I think it's it's real excellent questions and really good to know moving forward. We're not we're not burdening the staff with additional requests. Create a different different document. Let me see it this way that way. They have a lot um that they can work within and eBuilders I'm familiar with and I know that's going to be a huge tool. Um, I think what I what I would like though is like in the template if we could at least give kind of the outline of what I think we're looking for. So, um, you would want to separate closed and open projects. I know that can be easily done and and that'll help us because if we see an open project and it's it's in a different color, then we won't immediately feel like, oh, there's money left there. You're going to know, okay, we're not finished. We don't know what the the the total balance could be. But then um next would just be project number and uh the name or the description and then I would like the report to show the appropriated amount. So if council appropriated a million dollars for project X then then we can see that then we would have um any additional funding. So let's say we appropriated a million but we were expecting you know say it's a 10% match for airport and they've got a $9 million grant fund that's coming. we'd be able to separate that so we would know what was coming out of that enterprise or coming out of that fund and then also additional funding and then the actuals to date are going to be very important. So even if they're not the actuals to date of like what today is maybe we have a roll back and we're a quarter behind whatever that looks like we would need to see wherever that reports updated those are the actuals. Um then the amount uh remaining or the amount projected uh would be nice and then another line item that just would show monies available. So let's assume we do project X for 500,000. It was

appropriated for a million. Now we know to expect that 500,000 to come back and then that is everything that we're talking about moving forward and I think we've had a good discussion where we're all in alignment. Is there is there any reason that that wouldn't be the way staff would have already kind of

No. In fact, I think all of the above uh actuals to date, the project number, description, appropriated amount, amount remaining is already built into that. We're building it that way. The only one we wouldn't have is like money available, but that would just really that's the amount remaining. Uh we there could be a cumulative total that could go along with that, but I think what we're doing now, Jerry, am I right? It pretty much covers all of that already.

So, I'm I know Dan Fors on it. He's working forward. So, here here is my uh my request here today. I know that we have lots and lots of closed out projects. And I know in in the discussions with the auditor, you know, we're we're asking for a detail sheet that agrees with page 70 in his audit, right? And so, those have to agree. And so in a previous meeting, you know, I I had said this report doesn't show actuals. And so what we did was we listed 188 projects in the general fund and we gave budgetary amounts, but then we we didn't show one actual on any of those. And so council, is there any reason that we wouldn't want to see all those actuals on those closed out projects? Because what I would be asking for is don't do one thing different, Mr. Hooper that you and Danforth are planning on going forward with. Uh, agree totally. But then, um, this truck has a rearview mirror and I've got to be able to look backwards to the fiscal year 2425 and be able to see that the detail sheet matches um, what the audit shows. And then if we do have savings on these projects, um, where is that money sitting and do we need to reappropriate that? So that has been my request the entire time in looking at some of these old projects and then if we have a problem somewhere I want to take that problem on as it comes up. But I'm asking for the report to include all the actuals and then once again council I want to make sure you guys understand that work has already been done. So I'm not asking for any documentation to be given to me in this template that you and his team or finance hasn't already provided um and done the leg work. uh to to accomplish the audit and and so Mr. Path, tell me if I'm saying that.

Just for clarification, are you talking for the pri prior fiscal year 2425? Are you looking at going back further? Well, the the issue would be the closed out projects that that did come in from previous years, but were closed in that fiscal year 2425. And yes, we should be closing out all of those projects, right? So, every open project that we've identified, um you have the intention of closing it out. Yeah. No, I think what I was just trying to understand was if we closed that project three years ago, you're not asking us to go back three years and figure out where the money went three years ago because we we've rebalanced the budget since that point and so doing the research I think to figure out three, four, five, 10 years ago. I don't know if

that's a that's a great clarifying statement. So, let's say let's say it this way um because I think this is a good point uh of consideration. Let's say in 2020 project X was completed and it wasn't closed out ever, right? till 2425 then yes even though its previous year it wasn't closed it was still on this report as an open project so yes I think we should capture that money and see you know did what did we spend what were our actuals however let's give the the other scenario project X in 2020 was closed out in project X I'm not trying to go back and pull any data from projects that weren't identified on the internal auditor's report

yeah no I think I understand yeah I think yeah what you're saying is a project completed four years ago but closed out last year looking at those but projects closed out four years ago not looking at those

correct I I think we're saying the the same thing so I'm unaware of projects that would have been closed out prior to this report and this report that came up in the CIP committee and everything y'all are working on identified let's say 400 plus open projects. So, those are the ones that I'm aware of and I want to make sure they're they're all closed out with actuals with the hope that we can identify some of those actuals. Um, like we have a an item today, right? We we had one where we were able to fund it with previous CIP projects that had remaining balances and so he, you know, Donnie was able to identify those, but council doesn't necessarily know that that's how that went. So, um, in in tying up that that loose end, this this would just be going back to clean up all of that, bringing forward in one pull all of those remaining monies to then be appropriated moving forward and then we wouldn't have this look back really anymore because our our solution is the new policy and procedure.

Yeah. No. Yeah. I think the goal is is is to do what you said. I just don't know about the timing of doing all that. So, I think that's what we're working to. I think that's what I'd like to task our committee with. Donnie, Andrew, Jerry, Lola, I think I'd like for you all to take these things back to your committee on the 21st or so and and start and start seeing what what what does this mean, I guess. And so, how do we do this?

Okay. So, let me let me consider some timing. Um, everything that I'm asking for in the closed out projects that's been represented on the the worksheet um should be included in the the audit that was that's ready to be signed, right? Yeah, and I and I know I learned about 30 minutes for the meeting. Yeah, we do owe you a couple documents and so I've Lola's working with Katrina and the team that they've still been answering questions from the auditor. We've been focused on getting the audit done. And so even today, we're still answering more second review, second review questions. And so, but um but yeah, we still owe you some documents. I'll get to the whole council and uh well, yeah, we'll get you whatever we give the auditors.

Okay. So, so I I would say it in in two parts. One, we have some time to work on the things moving forward that Donnie and and Mr. Danforth are working on, but I don't believe we have any time to work on these these items that are in red that are already closed out that have been represented in the in the audit. I I do want to be able to verify that they they align with that audit and then I would like to get that amount of data, the actuals specifically, so the appropriated amounts, the actuals on the CIP report for all the closed out projects that you guys have already completed. So, is there something I'm missing in like I'm not asking you to go do any additional work. I'm just asking you to give me the work you've already done.

I Yeah, I think we can give you whatever we've given the auditors. Okay. And then um on the internal audit and and I want to make sure I I I speak clearly to that. the the audit itself as a CIP recognizes additions, deletions, and and he's in no way, shape, or form trying to look at a project and and identify those monies. So, um what I'm asking for was more of the internal auditor's report uh that you kneil would complete this. So, everything here that is missing and actual, I just want that line item filled in.

And I'll have to talk to to Lolan Katrina. That's actually a finance department product. internal audit doesn't create that sheet and so their their job is to is to take finance documents and audit them. So I know I know been trying to assist them with that but it's primarily a Lola Katrina department thing. Yeah I can I can defer to them have to get with them about getting you that information. So okay so the the the document though it came from you it may not have been produced in Neil's office. Correct. Okay. So, finance needs to put the actual amounts next to the projects as listed on a template that's already created and then you could give it to me.

I have to I again, I don't know what you're looking at. I have I have to talk to Katrina and Lola, see what what that entails, but yeah. Okay. Well, I don't know how we would be comfortable approving the audit um without knowing that our CIP's match on the detail to what he's closed out. Well, obviously that you're you'll be proving the audit based off the audit's opinion. So, the auditor has received what he's comfortable with and so that's what you're proving it on. Whether again it's his product, you're proving his work product, not our work product.

Okay. So, I want to make sure that that we're all looking at it the the same. You guys have your work product. We have our oversight. The auditor has his role. Uh, am I overstepping? Am I not supposed to exercise oversight on these closed out projects? Am am I am I asking and council? I' I'd offer that up to you guys. Like if I need to take a step back because we have identified projects here that are represented as closed out with no actuals next to them, but I know the work has been completed.

I would I would just say from um we've we've asked the auditors in audit committee, is there any discrepancies? Is there any red flags? And we we we don't have any. Um we've had good clean audit reports year on year previous councils. what are you looking for?

So specifically it was the detail sheet. So in the conversations with the auditor what he said was is I just took your number that finance gave me and I recognize that and so you should ask your staff for the detail sheet and it should agree with page 70. So page 70 gives an amount of additions and deletions and then he's telling me that there is a sheet that that is the detail and it shows the detail of all the projects with the actuals um that we should be producing to give you know this is CLA. This is CLA. Okay.

And very specifically we've had multiple conversations and I haven't changed verbiage vocabulary at all. I I'm just restating what what I am being directed as you know um an elected representative who who is in charge of and one of the body that's in charge of the oversight that that's part of the audit and so yes I I want to make sure they agree. Yeah, we'll get you what we have. Yes. And so I'll have to give Lola and Katrina and uh but I'm not sure what the detail sheet is and uh but we'll

let me say it a different way. council, if y'all were good closing out several hundred projects with no actuals and just putting it in the rearview mirror and telling your staff, "We don't know whether you spent all the money or not. We don't know if all the projects were closed out accurately or if there could be a problem down the road. We just want to move forward." And if you guys give that direction to the staff, then that is exactly what they'll do. But if you don't give that direction, what you are saying is no, we do care about the actuals as it relates to the CIP and we do want to know if there's any monies remaining on any of the projects that have been closed out. You have a whole committee that's working on this and has since 25. So what have they identified? And if so, like can we have it? So council, that that's as black and white as I can make it. If the actuals if there's money because I know this is what you're going for

driving it. This is if there's money left over where is it that is that's what you're asking. So what you're saying is that money should be still sitting in the CIP. Correct. But so you want to see if a a project was 80 million that we actually spent 80 million or did we close it out and they spent 75 or did they spend that's what you want? We just said that in what we said we liked what Donnie and Mr. Danforth are doing. We just said we want to create all this. We want to dashboard it. Not only do we want reports and updates, but we want the public to see it. We just said all this moving forward.

I I think I think Katrina, she's asked she can come speak real quick. I think she can clarify. Hold on one second, Miss Katrina. Thank you, though. Why would we not want to go backward since we're closing out several hundred projects and identify potential cost overruns and potential cost savings as those projects have now been closed out? You're wanting to do what we're requesting the dashboard to be, but go backwards however long you have.

We shouldn't imple We shouldn't implement the new system with the dashboard as the better way forward if it wasn't the better way forward. and and then we don't have a problem in the past that we can't go and and look at because we've already had to do the work in order to do the audits. So like why would we not go back and just identify the money's either remaining or not? Katrina, what what is forced to happen in our general accounting when there's money left over? If a CIP is budgeted at 80 and we spend 75, what happens to that five? It just stays there and then you rebalance it in your next budget cycle. So y'all would do that automatically.

Yes. And then where would that money go? Would it come back to council? It would. So that what you're saying is that's already happened. If these projects are closed and they came under budget, then that money would have been this next cycle. We would have seen it that next cycle. So let let's talk about that. You can't say it's already happened because we haven't done it yet, right? So you just said it's going to come into the next right cycle, right? And then you used the term rebalance. I'm curious what what does that mean?

So when I keep mentioning the budgetary cash flow that just a 90-day projection that we talk about that 90-day cash reserve on that cash flow that you see on Water Sue or all the enterprises general fund that's the rebalancing every year. You have your prior year, you have your revised year, and you have your next year budget. You have your cash, your investments, you take out your debt, and what's left in your CIP, what's left over, you have the opportunity to do one time.

Tell me if I misspeak at all, and I I have to be 100% accurate in this to make sure we're communicating accurately. You rebalanced previously. You took uh all of the enterprise money. Let's just use an example as the enterprise fund of sewer and water. So you took the enterprise money and you you took the the reserve balance that we need to hold and you pull that out of the total. Then you took the existing CIPs that were continuing on and you took the total amounts that had been reserved in there and you pulled that out of the total so that you could hold both of those aside. Right?

That is rebalancing, right? because then the net effect of whatever is left over you would bring to council so council could appropriate it for future CIP projects. Okay. So council we just identified over you know hundreds of projects that are closed out that have not been rebalanced but they have been rebalanced every year. They have to be rebalanced. It has to be rebalanced. Didn't close them out until this year. You will see it in this next budget when we bring it to you. That's what I mean. So you found CF projects, old ones, one of 2014 that are closed, not closed out that were closed out in 2425. Correct. Yeah. So now now they're closed. Yeah. When when were they closed out? Current budget year.

I I'd have to look at the details. Some of them were after in 2526. Some of them were 2425. I'm not specific on which states went where, but we'd have to look at but we shall see them in the in the following budget. Absolutely. You'll see. So now as far as what we provided the auditor, we have the exact detail of actuals. We have budget in another place. So what you're asking for, we will have to take that and combine it and get you that data. It's not already built. We have What does it look like currently? It's just a list of projects and this is the additions. This is deletions. Are the projects are the projects listed numbered with the actuals next to them? And it's just actuals. There's no budget. There's no

right. Yeah, it's just actuals, but that ties to the act. Okay. I mean, we're making progress. Yes, sir. So, what what do you expect the when we rebalance this year? What do you expect the surplus or deficit to be? I I'm I'm misspeing if I answer that question. Okay. Okay. Thank you. I know you can't I know I know you can't um you know project like what you think that is, but there are several hundred projects that are closed out here on this report that I'm looking at. Um they weren't closed out and rebalanced prior to uh fiscal year end 2425,

right? Because it would be a next budget that you brought that to you, right? So can I see it in August? Let me so would and I I hear what Cole's saying is it how many are there? There's 200. Well, just in general fund there's 188. But then like let's take sewer and water as an example. Go to what is that 4500? What's that number? 5200, right? Oh, they're not listed. They're not broken out that way. I don't know. But I'd say roughly 50% of well probably not 50%.

I believe on general fund we closed and transferred 90 million on CIP. Now I didn't really look at enterprises. I didn't hear that. Say that again. We had 90 million that moved out of CIP to assets. So they were closed project. So the the real simple question here is if if staff has already done the work and they gather up 188 projects that are $90 million worth of closed out just add up those same 188 jobs for the appropriated amount and if we appropriated a hundred million then we net the 10 and that's what we would expect coming to uh the rebalancing of of moving forward potential. Yeah.

Okay. What if you what if you just take instead of doing all of them just statistically look at a random number generator on 20% of the projects which would be 30 projects and just see how they matched up. Well, we could that give you we could even make it easier. We could just cherrypick 10 projects that are the high value high dollar projects and just pull those just just you know you already have the actuals. You've already represented it. They're closed. All you would need then is is just the appropriated amount. We could do that. That would save a lot of FTE time.

Okay. So, here's my whole point for this discussion. And I wouldn't have put this here had I have been given the ability to have a productive conversation with staff uh in a one-on-one. So, I've had this conversation with the staff uh individualized in a couple different ways, but all of you guys together here have recent. And and what I was told was like, well, mayor, you're the only one asking for it. So, like, I don't know if I need the council's direction here or not. I assume that as an elected official, any of this information that I say I need in order to do my job, you guys would provide for me. But then there's this issue of like, well, that's a lot of work or or we don't have all this together. Even though we've been working on this for over a year, I still don't have one actual. I mean, there's not an actual on that report, and I don't know why you would bring a report that doesn't have an actual on it, but it shows a column of actuals.

So, council, I I'm not willing to to move anyway, but forward. This is the only way I know to go forward, and I'm asking for help here. I I just want the data and I would like to be able to get it from staff but but they they have needed I guess maybe more of our direction. So that is the whole purpose here today is I am very interested in asking for you guys to support me in getting the actuals data on all of these existing projects. And I'm I'm not asking for any work to be done and I'd be happy to send you all of it but it's only actual. It will not have the budget. We we

Why was that not already included? That was a different product just for the auditors. So you have them all and then you just didn't put them on the report. It was built from the but the ongoing projects show the actuals. So you did include the ongoing projects. I I haven't looked at that that one. Well, the ones in black all show, you know, like here's fire apparatus equipment, you know, here's the amount, here's what we budgeted, here's how much we've spent so far. So those are easy to follow and I can see where those are. But then every one of these in red is blank. So you had a question I guess. Well, I was going to say if you have the actuals and and it's just the actuals. We don't even need to produce a new report. You can just

Well, you or you can just give it to him, right? And he can fill in that column of actuals. Yes. And we would be happy to fill it in. It's just going to take a minute. Yeah. And I actually have a previous report from IIA that shows all of the appropriations amount and then some of them I remember but then other ones we could go back and pull a minutes and and see what was what was put there. But but the the math problem needs to be done council in my opinion. Now if there's three of us here that say do not do math. We do not want to know if there's any money left over on these projects. Then tell me that mayor you're putting it. I'm black and white as I If you want to kill the baby, go ahead. But I'm not going to kill you to throw the baby off the cliff.

I I would say what what I think I hear after listening to this is you you believe that in projects that were closed out in 2425, which is our most recent year of closeouts. Mhm.

And that's could be several hundred projects that were closed out in that year that there could be for whatever reason, I'm not sure what that reason is, is you know, incorrect accounting, whatever it may be, that if we reconcile that, there is the possibility that there's unspent money on those closed out projects that we that that is out there somewhere that we just haven't identified that could be used for future projects. I I believe I'm saying that just like you said it and that they're agreeing with me that they're expecting those monies to come back for a rebalancing. Okay. That we will realize them this year that there's not fraudulent activity. Yeah.

So then I guess what are we what are we what are we looking for if that's coming? I mean my thought was I mean like you say if we go and randomly select 10% of these projects just to uh you know because that's what the auditor does. The auditor doesn't go look through everything. The auditor no they don't do the budget aspect. They just

Yes. But I'm just saying when they're doing the checks and balances, they pick random samples. They don't go look through all of our finances and really they just check to make sure that we have controls in place to that people that are approving that. I'm just saying if if we if we look at a finite number of samples to begin with and we just go through those and then we say there's nothing I mean it's all lining up then then we can look at is it worth doing the rest of it? uh and but if we're seeing a lot of variation where we say wait a minute this could add up to a couple million dollars then maybe we proceed and go through the rest of it.

You know we're not living in a time where these things are kept in ledgers. There's thing called uh computers and data is very easy to get and and merge. Uh all the mayor is asking for is a complete report of all of these things. Uh to do 188 projects to do 2,000 is no big deal. Technically you're just merging data. So, we spent all this time talking about this and that's all the mayor is asking for is a complete report with the data that he would like to see. It's not a it's not a difficult thing. So, correct. Yes, sir. That's very well said. And I would I would just remind council that we've we've we have discussed this and it was our primary focus is for staff to get the audit done.

Correct. And we all talked about that and the audit is still not done. We are lagging behind. And our entire intent was to get audit done first and then we would revisit this. So to to perceive or to confer that we have not moved forward while they're doing everything they can to get the audit is not fair to staff.

No. And they've worked excessively and exceedingly hard and and done a lot of work to get the auditor what he needs. Right. The work's already been done. I'm not asking for anything other than the actuals. And then I believe these to go hand in hand. So council, you have a role in this and um once once you vote for that audit and you file it, I think it's easy to say, look, we're not looking backwards. We're not we don't want to do a math problem anymore. Right now, we're saying we want to do the math problem. Let's just resolve this. Let's just get the actuals and we're done. Right. Correct.

That's it. Let's just get the actuals. We don't have to have this talk. Now that the audits is nearing completion, we have the information available. We didn't have it two months ago. We didn't have it 3 months ago. We didn't have it four months ago. We have it now. We can now give it. And so we we have given the council and the mayor everything that we have available when asked. And so we will continue to do that. There's a lot of context. We've skipped over on this whole situation. And but yeah, we will get the actuals to you all as fast as possible. And and when we when we're looking at the audit, we're we're not voting that that audit is accurate. We're accepting it. That's correct. Yeah, that's it. So,

you know, what you ask for there they're they're two different things. The audit and the CIP reports are two different things. And um I I don't see what the issue is. So, so just get the I think the the only issue is is that the the auditor needs to agree with what we've what we have to back up the supporting documents. And I don't have any supporting documents. and he he said these are the supporting documents you should ask for. So like to carry that out prior to the audit being closed is my intention. That's totally fine. I can get those too. Okay. So um we've killed the baby. We beat the dead horse, right? We've we've got it all out there. Let's kick the dog one more time.

Okay. So thank you guys for the conversation. Is is that clear enough for staff? Like no no questions from staff on direction from council. I think we're good. Okay, thank you. So, we will move. Can we clarify one thing on that? After the audit, we have to get the audit done, guys. Got to get the audit done. Well, the audit is complete. It's in secondary draft. I see it done and we and we're waiting on him to submit it back for our review. No, I'm answering questions actively for like the last week. Um, we are through through second review. We are cleaning up second review questions. There's three more topics and two more footnotes. Okay. and then I will be done. Can I ask a question? Yes.

How long would it take to mayor's point with the data is there? You're all It's just boarding foot some like I'm just saying you probably don't even have to import it into this. I can get it. I mean, if we have the 188 projects, which you do that he's talking about, right? The red ones on this report, whatever they are, you can easily just I can tie it to the acter because I've seen that workpaper. I know for a fact those numbers tie. So that's easy. Yes. Then just get it to Yeah. So, but it's not going to take much time. It's just forwarding an an email. But when we get Can we please get the audit done, guys? Like finalized. Yes. And then then go to this. Yeah. Or she can. It sounds It sounds like we can get the information like tonight.

We don't have control over the audit right now. That's it's in review phases. So, it's not like we can get it done. So, in the meantime, taking their time right now to answer questions and continue. She said it's pushing. It's sending an email. I think we got a resolution. Okay, Miss Owens. Thank you, staff. Thank you. Um 6.4 future requested items. Anybody?

I I have a couple that I would I would like. I would like to continue. Uh I would like to have some definitive answers on getting all of the uh um boards uh how how that's going to look forward. I didn't see resolution like true resolution in that. And then also I would like to have a um a report out on the U TCQ um uh what would be the right word Donnie? The uh agreed order.

Agreed order. Yes, sir. On the wastewater treatment plant and how we're moving forward. I think that's very important for the citizens to understand that and the headwinds that we have if we don't do something at the wastewater treatment plants. I think that's very important to understand that process. Absolutely, we can do that. What was the first item again, Councilman Prescott? Uh just to get clarity on how these boards and groups that were the 42 boards and groups, how we're going to get those guys. I know we have the tier process, but what does that really look like? Well, I think I think we did resolve that. Did we? I didn't hear resolution.

We're going to work on a couple of the major boards. We're going to look on use the technology in this room and do it in this room. See how that goes. and then depending, you know, if it's the biggest hit and people are watching it or we think there's enough value in continuing to roll it out to the other boards. But I think doing something in instead of going for the perfect model, we're going to go for the good model to begin with and then then we can work out the technology bugs. I think that will help us determine if this room is a good room to do it going forward. They may do it and say, "No, this is not a good room. We need to do it." So, I think we're going to do a little bit of test and then, you know, hopefully we can get that up as soon as possible. And then at the point that they do it, they come back and say, "Okay, here's what we think would work best going forward if we want." I just felt that I Okay, I I agree with that. I just felt that it was kind of open-ended.

The second part was evaluating technology to record and transcribe other boards. Bring that back once we have a solution. Clean up a lot of misconception. Thank you. That's my two items. That's Yes, sir. We got one over here.

Yeah. I would like to uh put something on the agenda concerning our our parks and recreation. um and not an overview of what the parks do, what Park and Rex does as far as activities and everything. I think we have to have a a very frank discussion on the state of our parks and uh and where we are and you know kind of how we got there and where we want to be um in the next 5 10 years in in our parks. Um I had a I I don't even know how to explain it. Uh I was up at the zoo uh this weekend and the way we left that and how it has been operated over the last who know knows how many years. Um I I went from uh shock to anger to disbelief to embarrassment for the city in the way that that zoo was turned over. And I think now we we need to take a look at all of our parks and how how we uh maintain them um and h how we're going to uh answer for that down the line because I think all of them are in in pretty bad shape and I think we need to have that discussion

and I would I if I can add to that I would say an evaluation I know that we've already talked a little bit but maybe an evaluation from parks and recck so maybe it's not next meeting but maybe the that they could go and which I think we're already tasked is right to but maybe an evaluation of each park. Okay. Can I add on to that as well? Can we review the amounts of money that we've given them each year and the expectation with that that small amount of money? Yeah, I think I think all that needs to be but but do do that department justice and go back several years uh and see what was withheld or or pulled from their budget

and then tell me uh in one summer of not maintaining your own yard how many summers it takes for you to put it back. So, so go back to 2020, uh, if you're going to do that because there's still, um, there's progress over there. And I'm not disagreeing with anything council's pushing on, but within context of, uh, we need to we need to have reasonable expectations moving forward. And, and yes, this didn't happen overnight, but let's at least go back to 2020 if we're going to look at budgets. And just so you know, we were already planning on putting something on the schedule to do that. Can't give you a time frame for it yet. need Michael to have a chance to put all that together, but we'll work and bring it back to you. I I would Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Yeah. Can we add one one other thing on this? When was the last time we passed a bond for parks in this city so we could have some some real real clarity?

Yeah, it's been a while. I I I would say and and I I don't think I imagined this, but I think uh was there not a recent video produced quite an in-depth video and I don't know if you've seen it about just in the last year or the last several what what our parks has done. So I think I I think let's let's be let's be sure to to yeah I I mean at the end of the day it's just money that's that's probably what's preventing a lot of what's going on. But let's don't let's don't short change, you know, just like we heard today about u you know, I mean, we're operating wastewater treatment plants and water facilities on the lowest rates in the state shows we're pretty economical at being able to, you know, to do that. I think, you know, and we're not giving near as much money to parks and recreation, but I would encourage you if you haven't seen that video to take a look at it because I I think it does highlight a lot of great things that the parks and recreation department are doing. We can do that.

Okay. Uh, additional requested items. Anything further? Moving along. Um, public hearing. This is our non-consent agenda. Bring up our all-time favorite presenter, Mr. Brady Kendrick. Item 7.1. Sir.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Um, this is a public hearing and consideration of ordinance 8243. Uh this is the reszone um lots 1 through three and 9 through 12 block 46 of amended plat of Saneno Heights edition. This is located in Potter County, Texas in the vicinity of um South Alabama Street and Southwest 5th Avenue. The applicant is requesting the reszone from residential district 3 to residential district 3 with specific use permit 209 for a daycare facility. And the applicant is Joela Morgan for Yellow City Academy Land and Equipment Limited. Um they are proposing to repurpose an existing church on the site that is vacant that was built in the 1950s to a daycare facility and an associated playground that's located on the property. Uh the planning and zoning commission found that this request would conform with city plan 2045 and shares many similar characteristics in terms of use with the church that was previously there. So um when we look at specific use permits often it's because it shares characteristics with something that would be potentially appropriate in that area but just needs to be assessed on a case- by case basis. They will employ approximately 20 people and will operate from 7 a.m. to 6 pm Monday through Friday. And the planning and zoning commission also did note that this um proposal would place a critical um service for residents in the neighborhood, especially one that's been seeing a lot of redevelopment efforts. So um that would also meet another goal. City plan 2045 trying to locate those core services within neighborhoods. There were no public comments on this item and the planning and zoning commission did recommend approval of the request with a 50 vote.

Okay. Hey, I'm going to test my mayor pro Tim's skills in running his first public hearing here. So, I'm going to abstain and step out in uh being a business partner with um this business owner's husband. So, based on that, I'm just going to step out, ask you to open a public hearing. Let's open up public comment. Public hearing. Public hearing. Does anybody have anything to say? Hearing none, we'll go out of public comment or hearing, right? Okay.

All right. Do we have a motion? I move to adopt ordinance number um 8243 as presented. Second. All right. We have a first a motion and a second. All in favor? I I. Any opposed? All right. 40. Let the record show that the mayor recused himself. Thank you. How do you do? It was It was shaky. At the end of his term. There we go. Thank you. Item 7.1 in the bag. Item 7.2, Mr. Kendrick.

Yes. Item 7.2 2 is a public hearing and consideration of ordinance A244 to reszone of 4.11 acres of unplotted land located in Randall County, Texas in the vicinity of Ros Street and Southeast 34th Avenue. They are proposing the reszone from General Retail District and residential district 3 with SUP 2 to multiple family district 2. And the applicant uh for this case is Omar Serig for the Lano Cemetery Association. and they are proposing to develop the property with a apartment complex and is the reason for the request. This would conform with the city plan place type of neighborhood high identified for the property and the planning and zoning commission believed that this request would fit existing zoning and development patterns found in this area and would be a logical zoning and land use to establish um in this area. We did not receive any public calls on this item and the planning and zoning commission also recommended approval of this one with a 50 vote. Okay, at this time, uh, do we have any questions for Mr. Kendrick on this item? We will go ahead and open a public hearing. Do I have anyone that would like to speak for or against this item? Seeing no one, we'll close the public hearing and would entertain a motion.

I move to adopt ordinance number 8244 is presented. Second. Second. That was nice. Thank you. Second. Motion and a second on item 7.2. All in favor, please say I. I. Any oppose? Motion passes. Mr. Kendrick, let's do it one more time.

All right. This is a public hearing and consideration of ordinance 82 uh 45. This is to consider the reszoning of a 27.48 acre track of unplotted land located in Brandle County, Texas in the vicinity of Southwestern Street and Beacon Road. The applicant is Ferman Land Surveyors Inc. for PETA Land Holdings Limited. Um they are requesting the reszone from agricultural district to residential district 3. And this is um simply the continuation of the Beacon Point subdivision. Uh this is their next phase of their master plan that they're um going to be under construction on soon. So this is the first step to begin that. Um the request would conform with the existing master plan on file and planning and zoning commission found that it would fit existing zoning and development patterns in the area. We did receive two phone calls that were general inquiries on this one when they saw our signs we posted for the request. They did not express any opposition and the planning and zoning commission also approved this one or recommended approval of this item with a 50 vote.

Okay. Any questions for Mr. Kendrick on item 7.3? Okay, at this time we'll open a public hearing. Do I have anyone who would like to speak for or against item 73? Seeing no one will close the public hearing and would request a motion. I move to adopt ordinance number 8245 as presented. Second. Motion and a second. All in favor, please say I. I. I. Any opposed? Motion passes. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

Item 7.4. Uh, Mr. Path, you want to run with this one? Yes, sir. Thank you. Um, so before you tonight is a resolution. This is to follow up on the pre-budget workshop we had about a month ago. Uh, as you know the typically the budget process is run through my office with the CFO, but the city council did request a specific discussion on cost recovery measures. And so we brought a report to you all, brought a presentation to you all. That presentation included number of recommendations that that I made. Some things that I did not recommend we pursue. There was some council discussion on a few items about possible yes, possible no. So the goal here is given this was a city council initiated topic for cost recovery, it makes sense that we capstone this and make sure that I have clear direction on these specific topics before we go into the budget process. And so again, in the resolution, you will see that I've identified those that I believe we that that that I I I I believe I received enough nods to the head from the council and the workshop that these are ones you'd like for us to study and work on. And so before we do the work here, I think it's good for us to just make sure that that the council as a body staff with council, we're on the same page so that before we do this work here, we know what we're bringing to you all this summer. And so and and so with this, of course, there's topics here about animal management and welfare. I won't go through the whole thing, each one of them because I know the council has been through this numerous times. The city marshall, environmental health, fire, library, uh, parks and recreation, uh, planning, police, solid waste, transit, vital statistics, and of course miscellaneous section for things that I typically do anyways. And so with this, we would seek council approval of the resolution so we have clear direction on the on items to be discussed for this coming summer. And this is not this is not lock you into approvals or denials. This is just saying, "Hey, Grayson, uh, thank you for working on the cost recovery. Uh, you guys got uh, this is good information. Work on these so we can decide the summer." So, I'm happy to answer questions.

Questions for Mr. City Manager?

No, but I really appreciate you. I think uh, putting this in a documented form, particularly on these types of things, which are fees that are going to be involved is a good thing for us to do for a variety of reasons. Number one is to make sure we're all on the same page. I remember last year's budget session being a little rocky there for a time or two because maybe we we we weren't all on the same page and we don't need to rehash that but uh I do think this is good and also to be transparent once again we'd have a discussion we're proving this today not saying that we're doing anything just putting in writing that these are things that we're going to do and I think you know I think having things on these high level issues particularly when you're looking at fees and adjustments is a good thing for us to as a council one more um give our blessing uh to say that and have it documented. Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you. So, I do have a few questions and I I I need to probably drill down in it, make sure I understand what we're agreeing to. Um so, this is a list of items. We're not going to list these today. We're not going to list these are all cost recovery departments. The resolution does identify specific things that we discussed at the presentation on March 10th. So like example animal management welfare higher daily shelter fees increase the bill surrender fees returning adoption fees and stricter penalties for repeat. So we go I go through that identified those that that we discussed at the at the last pre-budget workshop.

So I want to ask because uh sometimes within the wash here you've got different things that that you didn't account for and we don't want to get out something after walking this through that we didn't plan for. So I would take community development as an example. Mhm.

Uh it's a really well-ran department and it's totally grant funded and we can't really say that totally grant funded, but like a lot of our grant funding makes up the majority of what we're doing over there. And so if council appropriates say a $100,000 of uh let's say tax dollars, right, uh in the general fund to go to community development because we needed that money there for outreach and things that we were seeing a significant uh benefit for the community. I want to make sure that that doesn't get washed out in the wash of of like what would we would would we just categorize like these are the items that all have to be cost recovery and if not there's no additional funding that's going to them.

So I'm not quite sure how to answer that question but and in my report there community development was one that we identified $100,000. My recommendation was to keep that in there and so unless council tells me otherwise, my recommendation was to keep it there. So specifically, what are what are we authorizing here? What are we approving?

Yep. And so again, city council asked that we do a cost recovery exercise. And so with that, we brought to you numerous ideas uh for y'all to to review and discuss. Uh these are things that that are little again looking at fees. Again, the whole point is trying to trying to uh lessen the property tax burden on our departments there. What what are what are what are things that uh that users can pay more for? So, again, at the meeting, I identified a number of ideas that I recommended we do. I I took I I thought I had good consensus overall um about those list. There are some that I did not recommend. Like, for example, the tattoo parlor fee. I didn't recommend them, so that's not in here. So u uh but but those those I did recommend made it into this resolution and for you all to approve make sure that I have clear direction on those. But otherwise generally again um I have a miscellaneous section in here that again generally we will look at other things that weren't discussed. If other ideas come up either council has a good idea between now and then or we have a good idea from between now and then. I won't exclude those. We just didn't think of the time for this. So we'll bring them into the budget this summer. This resolution memorializes uh with specificity

the things that wi that we agreed on here as a body and told you these are the things we want to see cost recovery on and you did already consider community development. So those items that were carved out are not listed in this correct and we're only being specific about the things that we wanted to direct you on to like for example I made it clear in the meeting that that I was not going to do street management vector fee unless council said otherwise. And so that's not in here. So, we're not going to look at that. And so, because I I again I in a public meeting I stated we're not going to look at those unless you tell me otherwise. And so, I will not go back on that word unless I hear otherwise from you guys. These are ones that again we identify specifically that council seemed favorable towards to work towards. Can I Okay.

To be clear, if we pass this resolution does not restrict you if we revisit some of those other things. Absolutely not. It's not restricting you. I think that that's important to point out is that it we can bring other things up to you

and I I hope you guys do as well. And so again, this was uh this was our our best stab at a in a snapshot of time of ideas, but there could be more ideas that come up. And so and then as we do the budget process, we'll keep thinking more ideas, but again, these are ones that that I know council seen affirmative towards and each one requires some work. There's there's different legislation considerations, different impacts in the community. We got to go to some boards to talk about. So again, before I do all that work, I I wanted to make sure that Okay. Yes. Yeah. Grayson, we like looking at AMW's shelter fee and so go talk to the board about that. So, real good. Any further questions? Okay.

I move to adopt resolution number 04-14-26-2 as presented. Second. Motion and a second from the other right side. All in favor, please say I. I. I. Any oppose? Motion passes. Item 7.5. Mr. Riddlesberger, are you up on this one? TDHCA, tell us how that'll help our community, sir.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Uh, yes. This is uh our uh annual request for a resolution to allow us to apply for a continuing award through Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, TDHCA, for the Emergency Solutions Grant. The ESG grant uh provides uh roughly $100,000 uh give or take uh towards rapid rehousing dollars and street outreach. Uh so about half and half for that. Uh it it's been a great uh grant for us. We've done a lot of great things with it. We have been recognized as a high performing uh community uh with the ESG program that has allowed us to be included in the continuing award rather than the competitive award. Uh so doing such a good job with it uh makes it basically where we get this every year. We just have to have our resolution to to make sure that you guys are good to go for us with continuing to do that good work and to get our application completed.

Any questions for Mr. Mr. Riddlesburgger or gentlemen. Okay. Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Would I request a motion? May I real quick make a point? This is a recommended first and final. So, if you could include that in your motion language. Thank you. Okay. I'll move to adopt resolution 041426-3 as the first and final reading. Second. Motion in a second from the right side. All in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Motion passes. Item 7.6. Mr. Connor, appreciate you waiting patiently. Oh, no. We're handing it over.

It's It's Rich, isn't it?

Sure. It'll be me. Um, this is actually a joint project between fire and airport. It is for the aircraft rescue and and firefighting train firefighting training simulator. Um, in 2018, the FAA uh determined that our old simulator no longer met the requirements. This today, this is actually uh a request for the purchase of the the metal mockup as well as the propane system with inside so they can set fires in different places. uh wanted to note that we can actually do this um because of Congressman Ronnie Jackson's uh earmark grant which is being um put into the FAA uh airport improvement uh program in order to fund it. Um since 2018, firefighters have had to go to Levik to do their training uh because we have to be certified if you're going to fight fires on aircraft. So, we'll no longer have to do that and we might even be able to pull train uh trainings here.

Questions for Rich? We are containing all the firefighting water, right? It's not going through the gravel. We We are containing that correctly. Correct. Yes.

I think I can help answer that question. So, as part of the as part of this project, there'll be a new pit that is that is dug. Okay. So there's and there's multiple sections to it and everything. There's some retaining ponds and things like that. So all the all the water that comes off it and any other chemicals that are used goes into that pit and then into these other ponds. And so in fact we're building it we're not building on the same site as the current simulator because there's PAS in that area and we wanted to have more of a green field site where we don't have to remediate all that kind of stuff. So okay going forward. So all that stuff will be collected and then disposed of us accordingly. Okay. And our existing one will stay as is for now.

For now. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Connor. Any further questions? Okay. Item 7.6 is before you gentlemen. What do you say? I move to award the contract for the Air Force aircraft rescuing and firefighting equipment as presented. Second. Motion and a second. Any further discussion? All in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Motion passes. Uh item 7.7. Uh we going to do Mr. Johnson, Mr. Hooper, you running this one? Okay.

Yeah, absolutely. So this item considers a water construction services to contract and build, upgrade and replace the chlorine system that's at the Osage water treatment plant. That plant, as you know, treats our water and they have a chlorine system there that provides a disinfectant to ensure the water is safe for all of our customers. Now, this is a major capital project that's just not a simple replacement. In fact, this is a very complex uh project and that's why you see the cost is so high for that reflected then a high dollar amount uh designated as a capital improvement project. Scope of the work includes uh our tanks uh piping safety systems controls associated building work from an operational standpoint which is the most important to me. The existing chlorine feed system and supporting infrastructure within the chlorine building presents a significant reliability and safety challenge for our staff that's working out there. As everybody knows, chlorine gas is deadly and exposure to that can kill you very quickly out there. So, the chlorine feed is is very aged. That equipment is old, just like a lot of the infrastructure that we have and is no longer supported by the original manufacturer, which was called Denora. Uh they uh what that means for us is we can't replace the components and hardware of that system and we have to make a replacement there. The limitations uh have had some notable incidents out there as well. Uh in May of 2025, we had two chlorine leaks that occurred that required operational response and investigation. Then again on May the 13th of 2025, we had a chlorine leak within the feed system that required the operators to actually isolate the system and secure the area while the lease was addressed leak was addressed. And then on May the 29th of 2025, a second leak occurred. We actually had to have the fire department and hazmat team show up for that um and take care of that. So council is being asked to approve the construction contract awarded to uh Stoultz Mechanical Contractors LLC for 4.95 million. Uh this is funded out of the water and sewer fund revenues CIP 523440

and uh this item was actually initially approved in the 2324 CIP by councils. This is what man mayor was referring to earlier. They put a million dollars in there in 2324 because we didn't really know what that project was going to cost. uh there were transfers into that project in the past. Another 1.9 million was transferred in 2024 and then we also had 1.87 that was approved in our our CIP for this year to make that whole at the 4.95 million. So we have it fully funded. We're ready for this project and it needs to be done yesterday in my opinion. So we would recommend council would approve this item. Donnie, on on things like we're do, we're making the improvements, the necessary repairs and things that we're doing to our old facility. You know, we're spend $5 million on this. I mean, if if we're looking at a new facility, are some of these things can they will they be able to be reused in the new facility?

Now, this is water treatment. It's not waste water. So, yeah, easy to confuse, but yeah, this is water treatment. Thanks for saying that's easily confused. Yeah, he was just checking to make sure you knew, I've done it. Point well taken, though. We're looking at alternate methods for our wastewater treatment plant that wouldn't be quite as expensive to maintain. Okay, skip that question. No, it's I've done it. It's a great question though. Any other questions?

Okay, so Mr. Hooper, I appreciate you coming prepared and so I I want to go through this as a a good CIP exercise. You and I, we looked at this a couple weeks ago, decided, well, we need to go back and verify funding. And so in 2223, council said this is a priority and they put it on the um CIP projects list and they they appropriated $1 million 20 in 2324 CIP 2324. Correct. That was the 1 million. Correct.

Okay. So if I look at this CIP number though, 523440, it says chlorine system and it says expense budget 3.5 million over here. And then it has the actual expenditure of 410 936,000. And so this number that's on this doesn't necessarily tie to that original 1 million. Do you know the number for the the original appropriation the project other than the ones that I gave you? I don't. And I know there was 1.9 million that was transferred in 2024 uh from a project 522755 and that that was a prior closed reallocation project that was put in there.

52275 522755 and then 22755. So when you say it was closed, are we reappropriating that amount of money or was that already appropriated or or is it an example of like Mrs. Owen saying, "Well, it just sits there meaning was it rebalanced or not?"

I don't know that I can answer that. And and the reason that I can't is because I was not over utilities at that time. John Collins was the director. Uh he was the one that was making these uh different transfers. So, I would have to go back and pull data and get more information if you'd like to have it at a later time. So, this is not showing up. The 522755 is not showing up on this report here because it was closed out already. Sure. I I think that's correct. You think that's right? I think that's right. But then that money was never recognized for 1.9 million and you still have the ability to spend it. Correct.

And that's what we're doing here today. We're reappropriating that that amount of money. And so was that was that money for a different project like something that didn't have anything to do with this chlorine project? Um I don't remember. Will do you remember by chance? It's a reallocation fund. Yes. Yes. So there was so there was So John Collins has set up a reallocation fund that was a CIP back in those days. So anything that would close out would go into the reallocation fund. They would pull it back out of that and put it into a project. If that makes any sense. We no longer have that reallocation fund, but the but this 1.9 million is sitting in that reallocation fund, right? It was it's been transferred into this project,

but not yet. Like we're we're voting for it here today. It was transferred into there in 2024 from what I understand. Am I correct in saying that? That's correct. It's correct. And prior to this, it's a good it's good for us to understand. I I guess I don't understand like transfers staff transfers that or council transfers that staff transferred that. Okay. So that's not appropriated though. Correct. Like the the staff doesn't have the ability to transfer money from one project that a previous council said this is what we're going to do with that money moving forward. Now if we would have came to council with that project, council would have approved the project. We never came forward with the project.

So we're we're drawing a good line here moving forward. current staff doesn't transfer money from an old project to a new project. Correct. The way that that would work now is we is they would have to come to us. William or Shannon would come and say, "Hey, we don't have enough money for this project, but we do have these that we're ready to close out because they're underfunded." Just as I mentioned before, we would bring that back to the committee. It would go to Mr. Path and then it would come to council for not only the transfer, but also for uh the project itself. This one, since the money was already transferred prior to this process, is already in that project. That makes sense. Um, well, it does, but then the 523440 only shows 3.5 million in it. So, you still have another project for

the 1.87 that's going to come out of the 2526 CIP allocations going to be added to that that we already appropriated. Correct. So, we appropriated money. And what was that job for? Council appropriated 10 million. Well, there was not a job. Council appropriated 10 million to CIP for water and wastewater. Okay. We put 6 million of that in wastewater. forming of it in water so that we could take these projects as we brought them to you and put put that money toward it

and totally good with that and appreciate that. And so gentlemen, just an exercise in making sure we just did what we said. I you know I I'm hopeful for we said we are hoping that there's existing projects out there in red and it's good to go back and do the math project. We just confirmed you had a project that wasn't on this closeout form for 1.9 million that you had to go find and you're bringing it to this council to appropriate it for this project. Then you can go spend it. We didn't go find that. That was already put into this project when Mayor. I'd have to go back and get all that information again and look through it

because the only money that was put into this project was $1 million back in 23. And so it's short and so we're funding it today for 4.9 million. So I want to be real clear like council is appropriating this amount of money. We're also deleting that other project off of the system. So it's an exercise in showing I I have reason to hope that these red uh items over here, these projects that are being closed out have monies that are assigned to them that haven't been spent. And so I we just did exactly what we talked about the need to do earlier. Now, is this the appropriate way? I don't know. Um I I want to make sure we're comfortable in in appropriating this amount of money. We haven't done an appropriations request for us to to go and fund this CIP at this number, but we have an existing, you know, item that we can fund. So, can council take what you're bringing forward? Let's group these three together and let's go push that project forward. I believe we can, but I'd like confirmation that we can do that.

And we're really not taking three and grouping them together. We had the two that were already grouped together. We're adding the current CIP from this year to make that whole. Okay, then that let me let me uh correct my statement. You already had staff transfer money to this project when the other project wasn't gone. No, we're doing that now. The 1.9 from this current budget year that we're in is what's going to make this project whole. The other was done in 2024.

Okay. So, my uh Mr. Path, my my question moving forward um in keeping good books and making sure we're doing everything we need to, we're cleaning up all the CIPs. Can we clean up the process and procedure to which we as council appropriate? So, I feel like when we meet for a budget and we vote for the budget, it includes specified items with spec specified amounts for CIP. If we're going to bring items in that aren't listed in that, um, and let's say we're going to reappropriate, just like if we go back through here and we find out there's monies remaining, we need to bring all that back to council so it can be appropriated. Um, now what we're doing here, is that the appropriations that we're we're giving you today in this vote or do we need to have a separate item that appropriates that money and then the item comes for award of contract?

This is this is a all-encompassing action item. Okay. So, council, I think we can see what we're doing. And and I just use this as an exercise to make sure we understand we have to go back and we have to close out all 200 300 of those red letter projects and identify those funds so that we don't put staff in this position where they're constantly having to like, well, I I I needed this and so we're we're pulling from that. We can can work better with staff on identifying those amounts in advance. we can appropriate that.

Yeah. Which is which is what we're doing moving forward and again this was in 2024. So we haven't gone back to look at those. But I will tell you this, any projects we bring to you, we're going back and looking at the history of that project to see what funding was in it. If there was something that was transferred in 2023 or 2022 that made that project still exist and the reason it wasn't closed out is because it was still an active project, which this would be, then we would we would want to be transparent and tell you about it just like we have today of how what made that hole. Yes, sir. And it's greatly appreciated. I know you spent some time in another conversation with me going back and pulling those numbers, and I appreciate you being willing to to um communicate about that as well as you have. Glad to do it.

So, okay. So, we have before you a contract for 4.95 that we we have funded. Okay. So, council questions? No questions. Okay. I move ready. All right. I move to award a construction services contract for Osage water treatment plant chlorine system to Stole Mechanical Contractors LLC in the amount of $4,950,000. Second. I have a motion and a second on item 7.7. All in favor, please say I.

I. Any opposed? Motion passes. Thank you for uh sitting through a long meeting. We appreciate um everybody who stayed and would ask council for a motion to adjurnn. We get out of here. I move to adjourn. So moved. You're ajourned. Thank you.