City Council - Regular Meeting

let's have him here Thank you. Stay at home. Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good.

All right, Mr. City Manager, I got the all clear back in the back. Are you good, do you need anything? Okay, Mr. City Secretary, everybody ready? Okay, officially call us a lawyer here, recognize the quorum and put us into this part of our meeting. So thank you all for attending here today. We've got some business to attend to. We also have some ceremonial items. You'll notice some of the best examples of seated here in the room with us. And so we're delighted to get to honor some of those people who honor family after family in other ceremonies that need more than we can probably ever know. So if you guys would, we will move forward with Chief Jason Mays offering the invocation. If you guys stand for that and remain standing for the pledge of

Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for the honor of praying today. Please bow. Heavenly Father, we just thank you for this opportunity to be here to carry out the city's business. Lord, we just ask for your guidance and your direction with everything that we do, Lord. That in all the matters, Lord, the areas where we all agree, the areas where there's disagreement, Lord, that you would just help us, guide us through that process to handle that, to get to operate in a manner that focuses on what's right, not who's right. Lord, we just pray for those that are on the streets within our communities and taking care of us, Lord. We ask those for your protection and your guidance for the families of those types of folks and those that are overseas fighting for protecting our country, Lord, past and present. We pray for those, Lord, that have been presented this folded flag and what all that represents, Lord, and whatever capacity they're serviced for, that you would be with those that are grieving and that have suffered loss. Lord, we ask that you be with those around our country, especially within our community, that are still trying to rebuild their lives after the fires. Lord, all that we do, may we shine your light in our words, our thoughts, and our deeds. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thank you very much, Chief.

of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to the city of Texas, one state, under God, one and indivisible.

All right, please be seated. We have two, well, one certificate of recognition and one proclamation we're going to read down here. Gentlemen, if you'll join me downstairs.

Good afternoon. April Davis. Do you have any others with you?

Thank you.

City Council Proclamation. Whereas abuse of older adults and persons with disabilities is a tragedy inflicted on our vulnerable segment of the population that crosses all socioeconomic boundaries, and whereas our population lives longer, we are presented with an opportunity to think about our collective needs and future as a community. And whereas combating abuse of older adults and persons with disabilities helps improve the quality of life for seniors and allows them to continue to live as independently and as vibrantly as possible, and whereas ageism and social isolation are major causes of elder abuse in the United States, and whereas Amarillo seniors should be treated with respect and dignity as they continue to serve as leaders, mentors, volunteers, and important and active members of our community. Now, therefore, we mayor and city council members of the city of Amarillo, Texas, Do hereby proclaim the month of June 2026 as Elder Abuse Awareness Month in Amarillo and encourage all citizens to work together to help reduce abuse and neglect of the people who are elderly or have disabilities. Given under our hands in sealable office this Monday, June 2026.

Hello, everybody. I'm Ava Hernandez, supervisor here in Amarillo for the Potter-Randall County. This is Cheyenne, one of our investigators. So the rest of my team is out in the field fighting a good fight. So senior are seniors. So just want to let you know, in the top 26 counties last year, we investigated 3,500 cases of abuse, neglect, and exploitation. So most of the cases we see are for physical neglect of self, where they need air conditioners, help with medications or groceries or things like that. So that's one of the more simple things we do, but we're out checking on everybody, trying to help them. So if you have a concern, our hotline is 1-800-252-5400. So if you see something, please say something so we can get out there and see what we can do to help them. Thank you all for this honor.

One, two, three. Thank you.

Next, we're at the reading of a certificate of recognition presented to our Volleys for Veterans. We have quite a few veterans here today, so as I'm reading this, if you men and women will come up here, and I'll read the proclamation, and then you'll have a chance at introduction, and we have a short special item for everyone here today as well. In grateful recognition of this distinguished service, the City of Maryland hereby recognizes Volleys for Veterans for his steadfast dedication to veterans and their families throughout the surrounding region. As an Amarillo-based honor guard organization made up of volunteers from all branches of the United States military, Volleys for Veterans provides military honors for honorably discharged veterans of the United States Armed Forces at the request of families, funeral directors, and clergy. These honors may include the folding and presentation of the flag of the United States of America, three rifle volleys, the playing of taps, and other solemn ceremonial tribunes. Volleys for Veterans provide these services at no cost to families, thereby helping ensure those who serve our nation are remembered with dignity, gratitude, and profound respect. Through their continued service, the members of Volleys for Veterans provide the time-honored tradition of military honors and remind our community of the sacrifice, commitment, and patriotism of the men and women who have worn the uniform of the United States. The Amarillo City Council hereby extends a sincere appreciation to Volley's for Veterans for its exemplary commitment to honoring veterans and for its compassionate support of the families during times of remembrance, presented this ninth day of June 2026 by the Mayor and City Council of the City of Amarillo, Texas.

Hi, I'm Commander Jim Elba, U.S. Navy retired. I'm the past commander of the Bollies for Veterans. Our troop commander, Major John Pace, could be here in the Senate for some medical issues. Councilman Simpson, pretty much told you what we do, but I'm here to tell you we do it 300 times a year. Throughout the Texas Panhandle, anywhere in nearby areas of New Mexico and Oklahoma, we'll go 150 miles, up to 150 miles from Amarillo. If there's anyone here who has a family member that ever needs military honors, or maybe needed them in the past and didn't get them, we're here to fix that problem. Get in touch with us, get in touch with your pastor, get in touch with the funeral director. We'll be there. The veterans deserve those honors, and we intend to provide them. Thanks very much. What we're going to do now is similar but not the same as what we would do at a military funeral. At a military funeral, the event is conducted in complete solemn silence. We're going to unfold the flag, fold it, present it to the next of kin, and play taps. Today we're going to fold the flag and we're going to talk about the meaning of each of those 13 folds. There's an unofficial tradition that's developed not sanctioned by the U.S. government, but in our traditions developed within the military, that each of those polls have some meaning. Listen as I read. This is the point at which we would play Samson. After which, the honor guard will fold the flag. The first fold stands for life. The second fold signifies our belief in each other life. The third fold was made in honor of the veteran who has departed our ranks and who devoted a portion of his or her life to the defense of our country to attain peace. The fourth fold exemplifies our weaker nature as American citizens trusting in God. It is to him that we turn for divine guidance. The fifth fold. It's an acknowledgement of our loyalty to our country, for in the words of Captain Stephen Decatur, our country, in dealing with other countries, may she always be right, but it is still our country, right or wrong. The sixth pole is where our hearts lie. It is within our heart that we pledge allegiance to the flag and to the republic it represents. The seventh fold honors the currently serving members of our armed forces, for it is they who protect our country and our flag against all enemies, foreign and domestic. The eighth fold is a tribute to all veterans who one day will enter into the valley of the shadow of death, that they may see the light of day. The ninth fold is an honor to mothers, for it has been through their faith, love, loyalty, and devotion that the character of these men and women who have made this country great has been molded. The tenth fold is a tribute to fathers, for they too have given their sons and daughters for the defense of our country. The eleventh fold, in the eyes of a Jewish citizen, represents the lower portion of the seal of King David and King Solomon and glorifies the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The twelfth fold, in the eyes of a Christian citizen, represents an emblem of eternity and glorifies God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. After the thirteenth and final fold, the stars are uppermost. reminding us that for a natural model, you've got to trust it. That concludes our 13-fold ceremony. Mayor Stanley, members of the council, thank you very much for this honor.

One, two, three. And... so so

Ladies and gentlemen, it's not every day that we get to honor those people that bring honor to those families. And so thank you guys for your standing applause and the respect. Thank you, Councilman, for bringing that one as well. That concludes our ceremonial items. We've already been called to order here. I'm going to move us along the agenda. Item number three, do we have any announcements today? No announcements, okay. We'll move on to item number four. We'll move into discussion items. And so we're going to start with Mr. Nelson. Are you running this one or is it Dr. Eckstein? Dr. Eckstein, if you don't mind coming up here, you're up on potential agreement. Good afternoon, Mother Grace. Good to see you again. Where is your cowboy hat boots and your revolver? Last Friday, he shot me good over there at Kickoff Farm.

You did great.

Well, we're thankful to have you take us into this research.

The mayor and the council members are glad to be here and talk about Project Horizon. The company approach. Owls Corning established a company in Amarillo nearly 50 years ago. It has been one of the mayor employers. Owls Corning was purchased by an Indian multinational group just recently in May 2026. And now they're deciding or considering to bring more jobs and more investment to Amarillo. So that's the opportunity we'd like to showcase them today. The change of ownership is doing good for us. They want to invest up to 11.6 million, create up to 165 new jobs. And we are very excited about this project. would propose, because the salary's high, it's a good amount of jobs, the company has been in a memorable era for nearly 50 years, so we would propose a job creation incentive of $15,000 per full-time employee paid out over five years.

And, yes, we're happy to answer any questions on this project. Dr. Eckstein? Dr. Eckstein, thank you for that. Council, do you have any questions for Andres? Well, I didn't know they were going to let you off that easy. So this incentive agreement owns COIN. A stakeholder in the community, been there for a long time. This is an expansion and it will create 165 new jobs. Correct. So not all incentive packages are, you know, I would say, home runs, but this one's as close to one, I think, as you did. We love seeing this kind of expansion, growth, retention, and everything you're doing. So welcome aboard. This is your first time to be able to present to this council. I've got nothing but good feedback from everybody, the staff. I think you guys are clicking and working well together. And so we just appreciate the leadership and the board and everything you're doing. Unless council is going to just let you sit down, we may.

I think an important point to bring up, this is a competitive, right? I mean, they're choosing which side to invest in, is that correct?

Yeah, I didn't bring it up because they're a multinational company, and if they don't choose them, they will choose to be in Brazil and run their own in Brazil. So they have choices, and we're very happy with that.

Yeah, I think that's important to point out what you guys do is this is competitive, and you're bringing up, like Mayor said, a home run here to create 165 new jobs. I think that's important. Y'all have done a great job to get them, you know, hopefully getting this. So good job.

thank you very much thank you doc appreciate you sir thank you have a good afternoon um council we look forward to getting that one back for action later time item 4.2 it's listed as chapter 551 of the government code what that really is is just public comment and so we had opportunity to engage in executive and kind of hear some things from our city attorney making sure we're operating and listening to you guys as much as possible but then That's just kind of the legal framework. What really matters is how we treat each other. And that you guys realize, and we don't forget, that there's not a they and an us. There's not a government and then kind of those that are ruled. We are your elected representatives. And I know that there's plenty of criticism that we can wheel around and performance evaluations. One thing that you see in this council and you've seen in previous councils is we try really hard. We are listening and we're not afraid to try. We actually do try. We meet people, we give them opportunities to do things and it doesn't work out. And so I'm okay with trying different things. This is the first time on an agenda that I remember that we flipped public comment down below discussion. You know, the concern there is, are you making people sit and wait and listen to what you have to say before you let them come up and talk? Well, I think I'm allowing those people to sit and listen and understand more. so that when they do come up and speak to us, they can be more educational in what their concern could be because then you have a greater education. I don't know anybody that says talk first and it's better. I know everybody who says, well, let's talk last. How about we give as much education? How about we hear from the experts before we try to weigh in? And so public comment is the opportunity during a meeting Even though you may have emailed us or you may have called us or we may have met with you individually, it's the opportunity during the meeting for your voice to be heard with concerns before we take action. And so as long as we bring public comment to you, we don't put it at the very end of the meeting, sometimes like 9.30 at night, after everything's already been voted on, what good would it be for you to be able to speak your mind to that comment, wouldn't it? But I think it's very fitting in trying this, and it doesn't mean that we can't change it back. Maybe this is a try hard and it doesn't work out. And we put it back. I'm not trying to put anybody here longer than they need to be or want to be, but I think that most of our meetings run timely enough that we get through discussion items and we can have a good, healthy public comment. And I've had multiple individuals that have come up to me and said, you know, it would be more helpful If we got to hear, you know, Donnie's presentation or Alan's presentation before I came up and spoke, you know, I had to get up and theorize or guess at what I thought you were going to do. And then after I heard it, I really didn't get the impact that I wanted. So in an effort to do that, that's why we switched that. And then in an effort to be as transparent as possible and as outward facing as possible, We had a meeting to talk about all this with the city attorney and exec, and it really isn't any different than the opportunity for us to speak to you guys here. And so it gives council an opportunity to talk about how much we believe in public comment. And so I wanna go first, but I wanna give council a minute to speak. Public comment and the ability to criticize your government is what separates to radical dictatorships from a republic. As much as you have elected representatives, and not everything is just mob rule, and we don't have a 100% democracy, we have a republic with democratic boundaries. This is so key to us. We are not trying to get away from public comment at all. If anything, we've leaned into it more. This is another opportunity for us to lean into it more, to be able to listen and try and see if this works. We want to run an official, effective, professional, safe meeting. And we understand that it comes with some criticism. We also understand that you guys know in our public that you have a personal agency and that my words matter and your words matter. And so we advise you, once again, to use the professionalism and respect everybody in the room. We do this about 99% of the time. So at three minutes, your time is up. At three minutes and 15 seconds, the microphone automatically goes off. That's not staff cutting you short. That's just a mechanism that we've had to implement in order to make sure everybody's treated fairly, right? There is a member that I remember, a member of our audience out here, he said, rules for everybody. And I think he meant it. I think he was tired of being treated one way, and then those guys over there, those old guys, they got treated special. And so he just wanted rules for everybody. Well, rules for everybody here as well, right? So we all have to abide by public comment rules. We all need to hold the same decorum. We need to respect people. And if I could ask just one thing, the only thing that I would really ask, if you guys can continue to separate it, Criticism of policy from criticism of persons. So much like I will never come to your business and tell you in front of your staff what an awful father you are to your kid, right? Like if I'm your customer and I have an issue with your company and I want to talk to you about my bill and I want to complain about your performance on the job site and all of those things, that's totally appropriate. But I am going to separate the difference from a personal criticism, from a policy criticism, or even a performance of the city criticism. Those are helpful, they're healthy, and they are taken rightly. Now, sometimes I think we do get on the personal side. And it's not that we can't point the finger at somebody, because sometimes there's an individual responsible. And we need to acknowledge that and say, well, this is your department. This is the issue. But from anything that becomes accusatory to that individual's character or who they are as a person, this is not the forum for that. And ultimately, we all see that and we don't like it. I know I don't like it when it's done to me. I know you guys don't like it when it's done to you. And so if there was one little change that we could make in here so that we don't look like the rest of the world out there, It would be just to ask that you guys would continue to elevate your respect for the people that are trying to serve you and just offer as much criticism as you have for actions and performances and policy decisions that were made and why. But then to hold back on your personal criticism of a person. based on whatever you've deemed their character to be or what you think they may or may not have done. And that is my only request because I really, unfortunately I do watch public comment online and I see how it's going around the nation. And I see how angry people have become and how hard it is to reason together. And you know, that's what makes our society better and different from other places you can live in the world. We want to reason with each other, right? And that involves debate and that involves conversation. This will never be public argument. This will never be public debate. We're not going to get into a back and forth. We will engage with you. We're going to listen to you. And then if you have a request to put something on the agenda, bring it. That gives us the opportunity to put you on the agenda. You're our boss. Now, it doesn't always fit an item, and we can't deal with just your one leaf issue on your tree, right? So if it doesn't work within our criteria, it won't work, but you will get that engagement from us. So, Council, I know we had a good discussion back there. There's improvements that we can continue to make, but the one way we'll never get better at this is pretending that, you know, it's not a problem and we shouldn't talk about it or not putting it on the agenda. When we reason together, we improve, and I think that's where the respect comes from. So, Council, I'll hand it over to you, but citizens, I want you to hear me say, it's out of great respect that we are trying hard to serve you. And we are listening, and we are doing what we know to be the best thing at the time with what we know. And so counsel, over to you guys. If you have anything, Mr. Reid, I'll start with you.

I agree with everything that the mayor had to say, with a few additions. Civility is an important thing in our society. And how I treat you as one of our citizens is extremely important. But it's also important how you treat me. especially with responses that you would like to get. This isn't a public forum necessarily for us to get up and tell you what we think. I think all of us have public phone numbers and addresses. And there have been a lot of citizens who have visited me at my office, walked in and asked if I had a moment, as well as calling me. And there's nothing wrong with that. Citizens, when I decided to run for this office and was elected, I opened myself up to those opportunities that you had to walk in and speak to them. And I think everybody would feel the same way to a certain degree. That's where we have the debate. as to maybe our differences and similarities, how we see a problem and how we address that problem. That would be the appropriate place. But here, you get a chance to speak. We're not always going to respond to what you have to say here, nor would it be appropriate. And so that's just something I think As citizens of Amarillo, even though we're elected in these positions, we are still citizens of Amarillo. And like you, we want the best for this city. That's the objective. And how we get there, there are different paths to it. And we won't always agree on everything. There'll be many things that we agree on. It's how we get to that that we may have differences. It's our job to listen to you. Then it's our job to take those thoughts and comments to our city manager who actually runs the city. And hopefully implements those things that we as council find very important. So I hope you take that opportunity. I'm offering it to you. Come see me where I am. Make a phone call. It's a public number. I'll answer that phone myself. I don't have a secretary. I put myself out there to you and hopefully you'll accept that.

Thank you, Councilman. Any other comments on public discussion from council? Councilman Prescott.

I think it's important that we continue to look at what the cost is of a city council meeting. I think there is a lot of staff and a lot of time that go into these meetings. And I recently asked the city manager to provide a rough estimate of the personnel costs associated with city council meetings. Based on this preliminary analysis, direct payroll costs for employees attending a typical council meeting are approximately about $1,500 per hour. When you add employee benefits to that, It goes somewhere north of $2,000 per hour. In addition to the time spent physically attending meetings, there are significant organizational costs associated with agenda preparation, staff coordination, executive review, legal review, presentation development, and post-meeting follow up. To account for these impacts on staff, a reasonable organizational cost multiplier of 2.0 results in an estimated total cost of almost $4,100 per hour. for council meeting operations. So using this estimate, a three-hour meeting is approximately $12,150. A four-hour meeting, approximately $16,000. A five-hour meeting, approximately $20,000. And as we often go, six-hour meetings cost approximately $24,000. Assuming 24 council meetings annually, total organizational cost could exceed $580,000 per year. These figures are not intended to discourage discussion or limit transparency. Deliberation is an essential responsibility of elected officials and with the folks that elect us. However, they do highlight the importance of conducting meetings efficiently, focusing discussion on decision making, and ensuring that valuable staff resources remain available to serve residents and advance city projects.

Councilman, thank you for the comments. Unfortunately, I think I do hold the record for holding the longest meeting and probably like the longest three, you know, and that is a good thing and a hard thing, right? There are circumstances that require us to just stay late. I think the latest we got out of here was 11, 1030, somewhere in there. And that's from starting at 1. But our days don't start at 1. My day starts around 6.30. So once again, we try hard and we're working hard, but efficiency is appreciated by taxpayers, right? So we want to look at efficiencies not only in the standard we set here as we run your needs, then the standards that we pass along through policy for staff, and then it flows down to department heads and from there. So we hope you see that, that we're never trying to cut anybody short, but that we are trying to be efficient. Any other council have comments on public comment? Okay, we'll move on from here. Thank you guys for listening. I hope that lands well. I have no idea if you heard my intent, but I hope you did because it's a true intention for keeping you first and prioritizing you as our ultimate boss. Item 4.3, Center City Tax. increment reinvestment zone. Mr. Freeman.

Yes, sir. So here today, just to give a brief historical background on tiers number one and also get city council's awareness and input into the upcoming plan update process for our final finance and project plan as well as our strategic action plan in tier number one board as currently pursued. So just a little background on tiers or tax increment funds, TIFs. They are used as an economic development tool to capture tax revenue within a certain geographic boundary in order to reinvest into that area and spur growth. Basically, anything we can do to invest in that zone over time is an investment like a savings account would be. You can't really touch it for citywide services. It has to be spent within that zone and continue to grow until ultimately the zone terminates and then all the tax agencies that participate are able to benefit from that growth and investment that takes place. We do have a 10-member board. It's made up of three from the city and three from Potter County and then one from each other tax agency. And then we have two currently in Potter County and one in Randall County. This one today we are talking about is the Center City tax increment rate investment zone. That was established in 2006. Board decisions made by the zone, they do come to city council for final approval. And the interiors has authority found in two sections of the code, chapter one of the tax code, and then they also can utilize chapter three of the agreements found in the Texas local government code. So as I mentioned, it's a special fund called the Tax Income Fund, and you basically invest into it. It can be used for infrastructure. It can be used for economic development. But it all has to take place within that zone, and it builds upon itself over time. Typically areas that are either slow, dilapidated, not growing like the rest of the city, or it might be a new greenfield development that just is lacking infrastructure or the tools needed to get that project off the ground. It is not an additional tax or fee. It is really a deferral of the tax that would usually come to the general fund and invest it into that zone. This is just a graphic representing how it works. The blue down at the bottom is the base success value. Once you log in for downtown in particular, it was 2006, so any tax base in 2006 was your base value. All the tax entities that participate continue to receive that base value. As it grows, you see in yellow is the assess value, that is what is captured by the zone and invested and continues to grow over time. And then in this example, it goes through 30 years, terminates, and then in orange, you've got that post-project assess value, so all of it goes back to the taxing entities once it's grown fully over that 30-year term in this example. This is just a dollar a night example that shows an example project. Say you have a property value of $202,000. creates 4,600 revenue. That's the current base value in this example, still contributing $4,600 spread out across the tax entities. You have a major investment, grows to 4.5 million, that's collecting 102,000. But in this example, the school district doesn't participate, so they still get all that growth of 44,000. But then you see the breakdown of that additional 55 spread out by Potter County, Amarillo, Amarillo College, and groundwater district. That would be what's reinvested into the zone to continue to spur that development. Background, Texas. This is a very popular tool. There's 477 active as of 2023 and that's in 205 cities across the state. There's a combined acreage of 521,000 acres. Average size is about 1,100. That's pretty comparable to the zones that we have here in Amarillo. But they do range in size. We found one example of one acre. I'm not sure what they use that for, but there's one acre up to the biggest I found was 15,000 acres of temples. So there's quite a wide range depending on the needs of the various cities involved. these are just some of the projects that you might see focused in the zones public projects the the top three were water sewer drainage road work and then followed by economic development the covers a wide range depending on how you build out the plan and what the goals and objectives are or what you'll ultimately have for qualifying projects This is the type of property that you see in these zones. You've got some that are combined similar to our downtown zone, some are industrial commercial only, some are residential, but the majority are mixed. These are the fund balances that you can see just for a little history back in 22-23 as far as the growth that they've seen over the last few years in those zones. Now I just want to get into a little bit of the history of downtown and why we're here today to talk about why is it time to update it and get more input. So historically, the downtown strategic action plan was the first planning process for downtown that started in the fall of 2006. That was the exact same year that the tiers was established, mainly because you wanted to lock in the value in 2006, but this plan was not actually finished until 2008, so it was a multi-year process. Five public meetings averaged about 45 to 70 at each meeting. It did include the citizen downtown development committee, 21 members that helped oversee that process. It included citizens, center city representatives, elected officials, a mix of folks that were interested in working on this committee. There was a consultant hired to help facilitate the process, did all the background research, market studies, conditions analysis, and ultimately drafted the plan, which was brought for adoption in 2008. So at the time, growth in downtown was very limited compared to citywide values. From 85 to 2006, it was 2.95 in downtown growth compared to 102% across the city. 2006, you saw that at 2.11 compared to 14.7. So it fell behind in comparative to the entire city's growth. The plan research, the workforce, residential, hospitality markets have developed the goals, which include specific goals for housing, hotels, office commercial, restaurants. Family friendly venues, which include ideas like cinema, ballpark, higher education, urban design standards, and then historic building or rehabilitation amongst others. These are further defined as you go through the planning document and geographic zones within downtown. You've got a warehouse district, you've got a banking and finance district, government district, So they would have specific goals and objectives included. And then the last in the document would find economic development strategies, that's staffing, long-term committee focus, public improvement districts, public-private partnerships, some of those initiatives like the tiers that was adopted to Ben 6. So this is going to be the first time that we've updated the plan. We did take a shot at it back in 2018 and 2019 through the internal process. No consultant was hired at that time. We had a committee made up of 11 members. That time around it was just basically a city council member and then we had two representatives from all the various boards that kind of touched downtown. It was the tiers number one, downtown number 11, planning and zoning, our downtown design review board, and center city that all participated. It was basically a kind of progress review of how things were going so far and refresh the goals and objectives. So throughout the document we updated the maps, the data, the market data, and then also captured the key accomplishments and really what remained for the goals and also refined it a little bit more. The growth increase from that time did see 70% compared to the city overall, 63% from 2006 to 2019. So you can see it starting to perform at a higher level compared to the city. Some of the refined goals still had diversified restaurant and retail included. Wanted a downtown grocery store. That one's still outstanding. Relocating the bus services at the time that hadn't taken place. That's one we can check off the list now. Wayfinding program was discussed. We've had some work done on that. Civic Center complex renovation. Rehabilitating the San Antonio Depot campus. And then creating urban design development standards. for each zone, that's something we still have kind of outstanding because not all the downtown standards maybe fit each district, so if there's an ability to make certain concessions and changes depending on the makeup of that zone. And then we also, at the same time as updating the strategic action plan, we looked at the urban design standards and made some improvements on Required walkway improvements, the street lights, sidewalks, trees for new parking lot projects. They in the past did not require pedestrian lights, so that was an important change. We made an extension process for the light pole requirements to allow different options. We have a few different color lights now and a different style light for one particular business. Delineation materials for intersections, then we added skywalks to be more flexible where those would be allowed throughout downtown. So as I mentioned, TEERS was created in 2006. We started with a base value of $139 million. We had basically full participation from everyone except the school district. It was extended in 2022. It had 20 years to the plan, so now it expires in 2056. But the difference is that it drops down to 50% tax rate of participation instead of the current 100%. So I'll touch on more on that and what the impact will have on the slides. And then in 2025, we have grown to $327 million, or an increase of $187 million from that original base value. So it is performing very well. And then as I mentioned, the tiers number one goals and the progress so far, these were the adopted goals in the finance project plan for the tiers. Hotel development, urban residential, office commercial retail, ballpark. We're making good progress on hotel development. Still need the room counts, but we definitely have the investment numbers. Keeping in mind that the investment numbers were established in 2006 and things are a lot more expensive now that made us meet that target a lot sooner. We're still very short on urban residential, so that's a key priority still. We'll be evaluating through this planning process and then we've got office commercial and retail that are still outstanding goals. These are the current long-term commitments. So tiers number one getting established did focus a lot on just trying to get deals made and get construction started so we can grow that tax base. So you've got quite a few of our rebate agreements still listed. These are the projections at the time of this presentation which was last fall of remaining payments for those zones. So there's about 5.7 million left in rebate payments. There's also debt payments for streetscape projects around the Potter County Courthouse and throughout the downtown area, as well as the parking garage and the hotel, to the tune of about $2.4 million. And then historically, there's always been annual funding that go toward community projects, which are usually the streetscape grants. It's helped support the Center City Facade Grant Program as well, plugged into their budget. This is just an aerial overview from back in 2006 that had a few starts to it to show where development has occurred. We've got, of course, Hodgetown, City Hall, Potter County, Happy State Bank, Tutankhamun, quite a few that took place as new development. We've also had renovations like the WT campus. We've had pulitzer improvements with Barfield and the Fisk Hotel. just as examples of how things have changed. This is the latest aerial, 2025, so you can see the differences. One thing to point out, and I'll touch on here in a second, is it's fairly contained to the core of the downtown. So once I show you the map here, you'll see there's still quite a bit of territory that hasn't been touched. The main progress we've seen is in this core area and also our kind of retirement religious church district is where you've seen the most of the investment recurring. So this slide here is an older map of walkway improvements. Focusing in on the green and the yellow is the new standards. The blue is basically we had some walkway improvements that sort of met code, but they were developed in the past. The green and the yellow really highlights where the investment is taking place with new development, we're investing in facade and street view scale improvements. So everything in white or in gray has still yet to be touched. So that's areas that can be improved either with infrastructure, new buildings, rehabilitation, those sorts of projects. as far as the entity participation so we are currently at 100 this is the projection out to 2036 of what that tax value coming into the budget equals when you combine all those tax rates you can see we're growing from currently we're bringing about 2.3 million revenue growing 2036 will be about four percent and then you can see the various tax entities and their share of it in 2025 i did look the city of mayoral contribution is about a quarter of a percent of our general fund revenue and then potter county is about 1.52 so it's a small fraction of the overall budget for our two two largest entities that participate but the important part is seeing how that's going to grow based on this investment is gonna allow them to have basically a windfall in the zone terminates it. May or may not have been there if this zone wasn't there to encourage that development to take place. So when we look at 2037, this is where we start the new 20-year clock at 50% participation. You're basically cutting it in half so the city It's going to be brought back down to about $687,000 in 2037, the county at $1 million, Amarillo College at $382,000. And then, of course, knowing that, that is the exact same amount that will come to the general fund of each entity starting that year. So the city will get $687,000 a year on any general fund purposes. and then it continues to grow each year these are just based on some conservative projections through 2046 the city's portion grows to a million and then by 2056 it's 1.59 counting 2.3 so it's basically growing back to how we would get in 2036 it just takes us 20 years to grow back to that level and then in 2057 when it's all said and done the zone expires this is going to be the results so You'll start growing that in 2037 up to 1.6 million by 2057, and then you get to double that because you'll start to capture the other half of the share. So, sitting in rural in 2057, we'll start to bring in 3.2 million of additional revenue combined from the results of that. Potter County, 4.8 million, Emerald College, 1.8 million. So, it's that long-term look, and that's when you see that tax revenue grow. As far as the upcoming planning process, the tiers number one board has met a couple of times and given direction to staff to issue an RFP and RFQ process to select consultants. That would help update not only the tiers finance and project plan, but along with the strategic action plan. They may be combined. They may be separate documents. We work with the consultant to see what fits the best. compared to when we first did this, we kind of took them parallel to each other, but one had to adopt before the other so they couldn't be really combined. Knowing that we still have through 2057, it might make sense to keep them combined because after that, then you could just have a standalone downtown plan, but up until that point, they're gonna work in tangent together. So the details are gonna be further refined with the chosen consultant. We do anticipate about 12 to 14 months mainly because of the public engagement process, and then the full consideration through tiers number one, Potter County, and city council before it's fully adopted. So we're here today just to get any feedback council might have with the process, and then as well, is there any thoughts that y'all might have on how we want to make up the committee or make recommendations to the tiers board on how that's handled this time around? Discussion on Tiers 1 council.

Would you not want that committee to be made up, I mean, do you want to keep it from being the Tiers board members?

It could be the Tiers board. It could be a mixture of city boards. It could have city council citizens. It just depends on how we want to structure it. So how are we going to do it? Tears is going to fund the consultant to pay for it, but ultimately, council's got to approve that consultant, and of course, ultimately approve whatever that meant, so we wanted that buy-in and feedback, but I think ultimately there's a number of ways that we could get a successful committee to work with.

Have they gotten to the point where they talk about the conflicts of interest that could possibly arise Whether you're on TIER's board or you're on this new committee?

Oh, yes. Yeah, we've had a complimentary session a couple of times with TIER's board. So they're aware of that when it comes to voting on projects and make sure they abstain and are involved in the vote.

So is the committee going to be Or is this something completely separate? It's not really that it reports to anyone.

It's just part of the plan process to provide feedback and direction to the plan. But ultimately, the tiers board is going to have to vote on it. So they've got to bring those recommendations to the tiers board. But it's not like they really have authority to say yay or nay to the plan process. Just help to guide it. participate in the public meetings, provide feedback based on their level of expertise in downtown and all that.

Do any of our other boards have committees that report to them? Well, at least they didn't report, but at least you can find these?

Well, the neighborhood plans each ended up having a committee. We kind of self-selected them as we started with Barrio, Eastridge, North Heights, and San Jacinto. We had kind of a kickoff meeting based on the the folks that came and we kind of gauged their interests and they basically self-selected the committee that helped us work on it and then ultimately developed from there to become the Florida Recognized Neighborhood Association. Thank you.

Andrew, what's the benefit of forming a committee versus letting tiers one board just handle it all? It sounds like the committee's going to answer to those guys anyway.

It could be either way. Only if you think there's maybe a voice that's not on the tiers board based on their makeup. But I think now we've got a pretty good mix on the tiers board with the layoffs from the city and the county. As a whole, so I think we've got pretty good coverage there, but if a council member wants to be on it, since it ultimately comes to the council, that's something to consider as well. Thank you.

Did the Tears Board have any recommendation? I mean, do they want to do it, or would they prefer us assign people maybe with some expertise? in this area that could be .

I don't know if they have a preference at this point. I think they're going to wait until we've got a consultant on board to kind of further evaluate what their recommendations were. But I think they'd be happy to be involved.

And the purpose of the committee would be to give direction to the consultant? or feedback or?

It's basically feedback and being involved in all the public meetings that we'll have and just give input, just having a sounding board that they can meet on a regular basis, maybe a little bit more invested than just the general public when they come to one or two meetings. They're there from the start of the process to the end to help digest everything and make sure we come to a good recommendation for the bottom line versus just staff trying to digest it all. It's a good sound board to make sure we're all hearing similar themes and recommendations.

And then one question I had back in the presentation. So from 1985 to 2006, property values in the downtown area, to kind of mirror the tiers, increased by how much? Less than 3%. So the value of property in downtown at that point increasing less than 3% during that entire 31 year period. Yeah, they had many years where it was declining. And meanwhile, the property and the balance of the city was increasing at 103%. So the city was paying, I mean outside of the area was paying more than its fair share of property taxes, I guess, when it relates to downtown. Because even though, I mean, we still had to replace sewer and other things in downtown, but there was no increase over that time to be able to do that. And then, so really, during that period of time, outside of downtown because it was generating more money was having to subsidize downtown because it wasn't able to generate enough property tax to even keep up with inflation. And then since then, it's actually outperformed that. And realizing that the increment of that does go, it goes to help that, but it's investing in that. And at the end of this, the city will get about $3 million a year. You said that if we had stayed on that 2% projection, I mean, if nothing had ever happened or improvements would be made, we wouldn't be getting any improvement out of it. And the school district's getting it all the way up in the state. Assuming that downtown had continued at a 2%, which I guess if it had done that for 31 years, I guess it would have continued. I mean, I guess that's why you do things like this, to make sure that it's paying its fair share and the values are being able to do that.

Councilman, you got anything? No, okay. Just one quick, so a lot of times tears are created to effectively help with the blood, right? So you're capturing all those and you're keeping them right there. Describe to me quickly, when do these go away, if ever? So what our citizens are seeing, when we extended the tiers, when we cut it in half. And so do you graduate out of this program? When does the money go back? What's the standard for showing we've effectively taken care of the blight? We're now healthy here. What do you guys typically see across the state of Texas?

I think, from my experience, you do see those 30-year zones. So that was pretty typical of why they probably chose that length of term to give enough time to see that investment grow. But it's not unheard of to see 40, 50 years. So I think that's why Council at the time determined it was worth at least extending it out at half the value because We touched a lot of the downtown area, but there's still pockets throughout that are still lacking in growth and investment that might benefit from more infrastructure. And then something we want to talk about in this planning process, while we work with a lot of incentives to just invest in new property or rehabilitated properties, what we haven't really considered is infrastructure investing in. parks, or maybe it's the Santa Fe Depot, or some of those that have sat there not seeing the level of investment that's needed to really move forward. So there may be particular public infrastructure projects that we haven't been able to consider to pass because of the agreements. This was passed in 06?

Yes, sir. And so in 08, it's enacted, and it's a 30-year plan, right? So 2036, if no action had been taken, but then it's been extended with a reduction. So what happens if those board members just decide Like, we're against incentives in this area. We don't want to approve any projects. You know, we don't like the fact that, like, people are coming downtown and getting, you know, infrastructure paid for or reimbursed or anything like this. Tell me what happens to the money that is legally held and constrained in that tier. So that money is restricted. And for those areas and those types of incentives, it can't come back into the general fund to pay for police and fire? No.

Now, potentially it could be used to pay for police and fire, like extra patrols now? In that area.

Overall, if you have healthy tiers and it's revenue and it's growing, those board members are basically directed by previous vote from other representatives that those monies are constrained within that area and there to be

utilized to promote growth. And really the ultimate goal being to grow that tax base as much as possible before the zone expires so all the tax agencies can benefit. It's okay.

Thank you. Any other questions for Mr. Freeman? Appreciate it, sir. Don't go far, right? Correct. That takes us through item 4.3. We're now moving on to item 4.4, our community investment program.

So to start this one off, as you all know, Donnie, of course, gave an update back in December, touched on a lot about the improvements in the CIP process, including a new oversight committee, how projects are vetted, how they're closed out, how we're proposed moving forward. Also touched on the funding constraints as far as our five-year-plus plan of need improvements and everything, we try to prioritize when we come to you annually for a CIP plan to be considered with that one year funding source. What I was asked to do by City Manager Pat was to take a higher level look at all the data available to try and digest it in a way that would give you all the best information of the current state of affairs of the funding, looking at various things. As far as the 24-25 that you're about to hear our audit presentation today, all closed projects for that fiscal year and what happened to the remaining funds. So those are audited numbers based on our annual audit. I've also looked at fiscal year 25 and 26 as far as what's been proposed to close out is basically going through the process. Some are closed out, some are still being finalized, and what would happen to those remaining funds. And then looking at fiscal year 25-26 as far as all our active CIP projects. And also giving an update on some of those that may be ready to close out. So basically taking everything, digesting it into a way that tries to make sense and showing the overall numbers. what funds are available, what's still outstanding. Also identifying how many are city projects versus developer projects that we don't even really have money for because they've been taking an asset. Showing those differences because in the past we'd say we have 500 to 600 outstanding projects. Well, not all of those are city as far as responsibilities. And also tracking a little bit on the history of the fiscal year outstanding projects. Are we catching up? Are we staying more current as far as those go? And then ultimately, what's different from Donnie's presentation is you've got a stack of papers here of all the backup data. So you can drill into it later. The goal of the day is not really to dive into a particular project. It's really just to provide the data and give you the high-level overview. And then if there's certain projects you want us to take a deeper dive in or track a little bit more in detail, we're happy to do that. As far as fiscal year 2021 annual closeouts, we had 159 closed projects in the annual audit. The makeup of that is 46% or 73 projects being C projects. The remainder, 86 projects, or 54%, were non-city developer projects. That could be a water tap, it could be a hydrant, it could be roads or water and sewer in the subdivisions being developed that just so happened to come online. They gave us the final value and we capitalized it and are now depreciating that asset of our books. And dollar amounts paints a little bit of a different story of the breakdown. 85% of the dollar amount of closed projects are city. So we closed, budget-wise, $104 billion worth of projects in that fiscal year. Now those may have taken multiple years to get to that point that they were ready to close out, but that was the final number of the budget overall of the completed projects. Now on the developer side, it was 18.3 million or about 15% of the pie. So with those 73 closed projects that are city only, this is the breakdown by fund. So we've got drainage utility fund, water and sewer, airport, fleet services, IT and general fund. General fund is not as clear as it might seem. It's actually got Civic Center hot tax in it. It's got our solid waste program that can have bond dollars that are restricted to solid waste. And it could also have other restrictions that we have to take note of. So that's why you see little asterisks up and down my chart. If you drill down to some of those numbers, you'll see the breakdown on the spreadsheets. Drainage Utility Fund had an overall budget of $7.7 million. No funds were transferred to other projects, but we did have a little bit released to reserves of $180,000. And then the last column is also released to reserves, but those are the more restricted funds. It was either debt issued or a particular tax note or certificate of obligation that those funds applied toward. So it doesn't mean we can't use it. It just has to be a qualifying project depending on those bond covenants and what it was issued for. Water and sewer system fund had an original budget of $41 million. Release to reserves fund balance of $9.4, and then just shy of $12,000 to the restricted reserve fund. Airport fund, $2.7 million original budget, and then transfer to other projects of $173,000. That's mainly just transferring from one priority project within the airport fund for another. We'll actually have an item today for consideration to do similar transfers. Police services fund, 5.8 million, only 12,000 in restricted reserve released. IT loan, 3.1 million, 41,000 released reserves. And the general fund had an overall project budget of 42 million. They released 718,000 reserves and 3.5 million to restricted reserves. And then we had funds transferred to other projects of 1.8 million. The majority of those were parks, P&I accounts that were transferred. So they started an E&I account and went out, whether it's a play state or parking lot project, and they take the money from E&I and transfer it to those particular projects. As far as closed-out city-only projects starting in fiscal year 2026, that's the year we're in. That's the work that Donnie and his team has been working on. What we've taken is we've updated through April 2026, so the numbers look a little bit different. We've identified 77 projects to close and then a budget of about $77.3 million. In addition to that closeout number that you'll see in my dollar amounts, we had two projects that were able to release partial funding because they're still active, but we know we have a better idea of what that expense is going to be. So we had $4.03 million released to water and sewer and then $1.57 million released to drainage. These are the breakdown of the four funds involved in this one. Drainage Utility Fund had an original budget of those projects of $9.9 million. $5.5 million relates to reserves. $1.5 million relates to restricted reserves. Water and Sewer did have one transfer of $200,000 to a project. $16.1 million relates to reserves and $1.6 million to restricted reserves for that line item. IT, just a small amount, $5,500, and then General Fund had $2.7 release through the years, and then a negative $889. That was closed-out projects that had a deficit. I believe the majority of that one was actually a hot-tech city center-related project. moving forward you've got our currently active projects so through march 2026 we still identify 441 active cip projects but when you break that down we have 266 or 61 of it that are city only projects that are currently active in various stages and then some of those are actually ready to be considered for closing as well The budget involved of all those projects for the city only side is $631 million, or 91% of the overall dollar amount. So in this breakdown, I did go ahead and show you the breakdown by department, so you can see kind of where all the projects play out. Our biggest projects, of course, by quantity is the water and wastewater department, 61 projects. Airports got quite a few, 31, drainage at 15, and then it goes down from there. But what this shows you is our original budgeted expense to go invest in those areas. And then we do have a few that are older utilities projects. We do still have the street geogon for Georgia Street that's actually being worked on as some other examples. And then this is just the next view. Another good example, 2019-2020, the AMI project, still active. It should be completed this year, but we knew that would be a four- or five-year project just based on the scope and cost involved. So that just gives you a little more information on some of those that are longer-term active projects. As far as some upcoming changes going through the list, you'll see in the spreadsheet the ones highlighted blue with the updates from staff are the ones that I've identified that are getting ready to close or proceeding down that path over the next few months. General fund has another 33 ready to close and I identified some potential funding there that can be going back to fund balance. Streets has three, solid waste and civic center both have one, police have one, water utilities six, airport 11 that are actually on today's agenda for transfers, drainage three are ready to close with 1.19 going back to reserves, and then IT has one ready to close. Just up to date now, we've got 60 that are very close to closing. That means closer to 206 outstanding, so a much more manageable number. It is showing that the improvements that Donnie and his team have put in place are showing progress, that we're really vetting all our outstanding projects, seeing what's still needed, And of course, historically, they would sit there, maybe they didn't have enough money to complete that project, so it would be transferred to another one. Now, all of them closed and come back for another buy at the Apple, going through city council for consideration, either through the CIP process or as something comes up that needs to be addressed more quickly. So the final slide is just the final takeaways of all the information I've shared as far as the remaining numbers. I've got them sorted by 24-25, 25-26 pending, and then the 25-26 active that we're still regularly evaluating to see what's upcoming and ready to close. The 24-25 is a very solid number. The next two are, of course, pending the closure process, so final payments coming through, going through the final closeout process. But ultimately, we're looking at $8.6 million potentially in drainage utility funds, $27 million in water and sewer, fleet services $12,000, IT $46,000, and general funds $7.5 million for a total of $43 million. With the caveat of going through the budgeting process, you of course have to calculate reserves. and your cash flow each year, which we're coming up on getting that done for the upcoming budget. So we'll be able to identify how much of this funding is contributing to maintaining our minimum reserves versus what's the excess that you'll be able to plug into CIP projects going into next year. For example, water and sewer system fund, 25, 26, and 17 million. Our typical reserve requirement for water and sewer, I believe this year was close to 21 million. just for comparative purposes and then as i mentioned i didn't put the asterisks on this one but like the 7.5 general fund a few million of that's restricted either solid waste or other other components so it's not necessarily unrestricted general fund like we typically speak on so that is the final slide i'm happy to answer any questions or try to answer any questions questions

councilman read anything for me sir okay um let's let me go back with you here mr freeman on a few things so when was the last time that you guys did this that staff went through and closed out projects identified savings brought it back to council for reappropriation so i think we regularly go through and close projects but i think as far as bringing like a full full look it's only really been the last

six months because typically it would just flow through the budget process we wouldn't really identify which projects are closing or where savings took place but it would ultimately come back for a final vote but this this is a more intentional process now identifying the when and where it takes place and bringing back more product okay so council comes together and they appropriate the budget they take the fund balance that you guys help identify and they say

Project X, million dollars, and it would go over there. That project would go and get performed. Those monies, let's say, had a savings of, say, $250,000. Instead of that $250,000 coming back to council, this previous practice, right? It would just be identified as savings, and then staff would know it was there. They would then utilize it for whatever the needs were, bring a recommendation to council during an existing budget, and ask for council to approve it, but not necessarily appropriate that money, or really not go into detail where that money came to be. It would just be identified funds saved from somewhere within the system. So there was really no tracking of those money specifically, except for when you close out those projects. And then when you close them out, you capitalize them, so they end up on an audit. Right. So the point that I'd like to establish is what this current staff is doing hasn't been done before. And what you're doing right now is kind of above and beyond, you know, and I don't know, Mr. Paff, do we have a policy for reappropriation or are we just working underneath a procedure now of reappropriation?

Yes, Mr. Hooper actually drafted a policy that I approved, yes, so Mr. Hooper can speak to that.

Okay, and we don't have to jump into that, but that's great to know it. So now we'll actually have a policy that formalizes that council's duty is not just to appropriate a budget, you know, and then forget about the money. Council should be requesting staff to run those numbers, bring back the actuals. take the net savings or the cost savings, depending on what it does, and then for council to re-appropriate that money so that it comes for an approval, and then we have a very healthy CIP at that point, right? So I know you guys, council looked at me weird last meeting, like everybody's body language was kind of leaning back, and I didn't realize, like I've been here swimming in this, you know, these weeds for a minute, And so forgive me for being passionate, but I remember sitting through meetings. Hey, guys, we have monies that are going to be available if we'll close out all these projects. Mr. Path took the initiative and said, yeah, we've got a lot of projects we need closed out. Mr. Hooper dug into it. But the whole time, I think we were stating, like, there's no money left. We have $43 million identified on this sheet. Is that correct? Yes, sir. Okay, and that doesn't include, how many are ongoing that will go into, that are included in those projected closures? We have another $631 million worth of projects. How many of those are- 240, 240 million are remaining city funding.

So once those projects close out, there might be remaining funds. Right.

So did anybody run a percentage average of how we're doing in managing these dollars? That actually is a big win. I know on the government accounting side, you tried not to ever say this, but we private citizens, we greatly appreciate when you bring Mr. Danforth When you bring a million dollar project in for $750,000, it says, there's a guy I want on my team. He knows how to run the project. He makes sure those guys are cracking the whip out there. They're bringing it back. They're not wasting money. But we have neglected to kind of do that. So in a good way, I'd love to say, does anybody know the percentage of that $240 million that we would project conservatively that we've been bringing these projects in on our budget?

I think based on our past history, that'll be a tough percentage to come up with. A lot of these closed out projects were Some of them we just had to cancel, the Detroit Reserves, for example. Some of them were under budgeted to begin with, so maybe didn't start. I think we'd have to identify actual completed projects to compare how much savings had to work, but it'd be a longer effort to identify that. But I think moving forward, our goal is to not have as many CIPs sitting there underfunded or not moving forward, so you're gonna have cheering on top of, All these projects, making sure they're progressing just like you did in this update and moving forward. So we more quickly know how the project's going to end versus some of these that are sitting out there for multiple years.

So the task I give the staff is to try to, as the council gives us opportunity to do CIPs each year, my goal for staff is to get those done within 12 to 18 months. And so instead of us accruing them over the years, so they're getting done rapidly, while they're going backwards in time and getting the ones that are still out there. So we don't want an accruing list of projects. We don't want to keep them rolling out. Yes, sir.

Mr. Pat, I think the first number I got, and it may have been more than this, but 453 open projects when you got all of this. There were 453. Now, a lot of those were developer tasks, things like that, but still a tremendous volume for you guys to go through. So we love what's going on. We also love the good news that we can verify and report that there are some monies left over here that this council will be able to push forward into infrastructure and city needs. So in that way, I think what we're trying to say is those monies that you've identified, those aren't sitting somewhere in a reserve balance and they're not calculated in our reserve funds. Those monies have been set aside for a CIP as if you were going to potentially spend all of that. Those are now savings that will come back in addition to existing reserves that already meet minimums.

Right, with the exception of our utility fund that has to be further evaluated because we did have that error in basically funding a project that we shouldn't have funded, so it messed up our calculation. But ultimately that will be fleshed out in the next couple of months through the budget process.

Okay, and I love the fact that our Our audit monitor can speak to some of that and so that will help us in the sewer and water whether or not we have a trail.

I did want to carry out the 24-25 close, that 14 million. Technically that would have been what we were estimating to go into current year CIP. So more realistic is the 26 million, the 2.5 million available for this summer's discussion. unless it shows differently once we calculate our reserves.

Okay. Yeah, and I think that that's something that we can get down to and have confidence in knowing what was there and how we finished at a net position for cash. So we have a reappropriation policy coming. Love that. Thank you, Mr. Hooper. We haven't been doing this historically. We're not doing it. The net difference was something that I got, and so I don't know. Maybe this was the... Okay, so where you're looking at, this was a report that was just general construction funding, and you had your budgeted expenditures, and then you had your remaining city funding. Can you get to that page, 32 million? Yes, the 32. There we go. Y'all put on your readers so y'all can see that. That 32 million, if I look at, see, you're tracking the actual expenditures today, right? And I know that Mr. Danforth bringing in e-builders and other software greatly helped us track these projects. But on this particular report, just to keep it simple, you had $129 million in budget expenditures. And then the actual expenditures to date were 71 million, which would give us a net difference of 58. And I know what you're saying there is remaining city funding of 32, that's accurate. However, what that doesn't bring in is the portion of outside funding that we already know we're gonna get. So we are going to have additional monies in addition to that $32,000. So I just want my public to hear that we are down into the weeds on this. And we are making sure that we're watching these monies. The staff has a clear directive on exactly what they need to be holding the line on. So that net difference... will be verified, right? But it actually calculates to 58 million in that general fund. Now, even if we only run a 10% That's $5.8 million. I have worked a budget to death over seven long days to find a few part-time positions for us to come up with a million dollars worth of efficiencies in the general fund. And here, what we're able to see is you guys have good amounts of healthy dollars to go and do projects. We have good healthy budgets. We hope we can manage those and then get to more projects. That is just the CIP. That's your continuing improvement projects, right? Or your construction in progress. That's not even talking about the general fund recurring balances that we've addressed previously with Ms. Katrina, so I'm thankful for everything that we're doing. Now, you had said that we have a few other projects that we want to dig deeper in, and I definitely do. So one is the proceeds from the lawsuit on that revenue. And Mr. Freeman, none of these are surprising because you and I have talked for months. Not that I need to get there today, but we have proceeds that came into the entity from a lawsuit that we had already mitigated in our existing funding. so whether we set up a project and we paid for it along the way or that we didn't have it set up but we paid it out of cash we ended up getting monies in and i don't have the numbers so i won't throw it out there but it's you know you know worth of 16 million so that's a that's a number i want to see do we still have that money sitting somewhere does that come into a reserve balance the other thing is those arpa monies and we we have those classified as revenue recovery And so that was somewhere around $24 million. And so we need to know, where are those monies utilized during the time after COVID? And then did we steal revenue money that we haven't pushed into a fund balance? Or is it part of these fund balances that you have? So I need our public to hear that there's several projects that we want to sample and get into. i think there were 10 that i pulled and you know i appreciate staff's willingness to meet i appreciate the uh the productivity you've had on it i feel like we've been here way too long but um at this point i want to keep it simple the the city is looking at a reappropriation process that hopefully will bring close to 50 million dollars back to council in addition to existing reserve balances, and we need to go put that money to work. We have reserve balances for a reason. We don't have three extra reserve balances. We don't park money on the side. We even have an arbitrage issue, which for those that don't know, that just means you've got money parked that's an accruing interest greater than what you're legally allowed to, and then we have to make a payment to pay that money back. And so in my current audit, you'll see some arbitrage that we may ask Mr. Kirshenick about. And so we can't park the money. It's your money. We have nothing. The city staff and the city council, we don't have a dollar. It is all your monies that you've entrusted into the system for us to steward you. And so we have a great responsibility of stewardship, and this today is a good example of what stewardship looks like. And I'm thankful for it, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak to it, but I want to keep going and really get nuts and bolts down on every dollar and make sure we're pushing it back out.

So previously, when we had CIP projects, capital improvement projects, community improvement projects, we completed those and monies were left over. How did that, in previous, before we started this process, what happened to that money?

So what happened previously is that many times it would be transferred to another existing project instead of going to reserves to basically be brought to council to, in the annual budget process, to determine what the particular project would be. and they would just come to the city council meeting and get voted on like a normal project without maybe necessarily knowing who transferred money.

So it would go to a project that was not originally in the CIP project list?

Possibly not in the list, or it's another one that was underfunded.

OK, so that project could have already been approved, but then we looked at it, and it would come back to council for that. Correct. And so I'm trying to follow the And so now what we're proposing is we sweep this out once a year, we sweep it out quarterly.

As projects close, we won't do any transfers. It goes straight to reserves, ultimately to come back in the annual CIP process, but could come in the interim if there's a need or a major project that we need to find money for if we know our reserves that we closed could be potentially used we've got the 58th street design project today a portion of this could cover cover that for example i'm going to add to that too so we're already meeting in our oversight committee we've had three different meetings where we've actually taken projects into consideration where departments are asking to transfer

excess money that's left in the CIP into another project that they already identified. They go through that process. The committee has to look at that, have discussions about that. Then it goes, of course, to Grayson Papp, as we described before, for his approval, and then would come to council, just as you're going to see today on some of those items that we went with two months ago in the airport with some transfers that they're going to do there. So I think the system is very, very refined now.

and so what we do so in the general fund when we have money at the end of the year which we have not spent historically we have swept that money into cip projects for the next year correct is that correct and so what we're saying now is we're going to true up on a regular basis and basically do the same thing with this with the active cips yes yes you have the active cips that are kind of like set aside and then you

You have your extra revenue and less expenses that contribute some $1,000 that can also go to, yeah.

But then I guess if we're six months into this, And all of a sudden, to me, what I can't understand is how we're going to have this money and then do it in the same year if we didn't budget it up from six months ago or whatever it may be. I mean, to me, I'd like to, if we have extra money in one year, just like we do, I'd like to let all projects compete for that money, necessarily the dual one-off. It sounds like in the past, the one-offs would come through this process.

They would occasionally. Just knowing that we had so many needs and things, particularly water and wastewater, Like you saw, they had 60-plus projects. Not all of those were fully funded because they were plugged into the CIP three years ago, and now it's time, and it doesn't have enough money in it. So sometimes you just see a transfer from one to the other. Or we had many cases that something just broke down and had to be replaced, and how do you fund it? And they go into the CIP and see, is this project stagnant? Is it underfunded? And use it for that emergency situation.

Otherwise, the intent is to bring it back to the budget process as more of a pool, but the council could have many options and decide on those. We'll bring recommendations, but the council could then say, you know, I like this one instead.

Yeah, I mean, I understand that there's an emergency, but the perfect scenario, what I'd like to see is and let it compete, let all the projects compete for whatever we're trying to do with the money that we have left over instead of in the middle of the year, cherry picking or hand picking if you just, because, you know,

One of the things you'll see different in the CIP this year addresses that a little bit. One of the things we talked about several months ago was that when we were estimating the cost of a project in the CIP, it's the reason that some of them were underfunded. When we come and ask for the full amount for the project, not having a PDR, an engineering report on that to know exactly what those costs were going to be, or a more refined look at what the costs were going to be. Now we're actually going to be bringing you CIPs in year one that are for design only. And we'll only be asking for money for design so that we can have a better idea once we get into 30%, 40% into that design of what the true cost of the project's going to be. Then come back at a later date to ask you what the true CIP amount for the project for construction is going to be. And I think that's going to help us to not underfund projects moving forward ever again. And as he mentioned, there are some emergency projects that come along, though, that we do have to address. And it's nice to have the reserves there to take care of that. We would take the excess money that we had in some projects or the project that was underfunded to address the emergency. This is just a better transparent look at how we're moving all of it.

So where we got through all this is the same thing we do on the general fund at the end of the year, we're not going to do on capital fund? Correct. Okay.

Really our goal is to never have this amount happen again because we're on top of the project.

And the amount is $50 million?

over the last over back to 24 25 it's approximately 43 million that we've identified and that's 10 million more than what donnie presented in december so that that means we've identified more projects since december okay so those are just projects that we'll be able to do okay thank you any other questions no i mean i think just clarify i think this process allows uh council to reprioritize what you're saying that's other than that like you said

maybe we've chosen that this has become more important or needed, and this allows us to do that.

Particularly the projects that are maybe five years old and are under budgeted. So instead of just sitting there, staff bring it later, council decide on that.

Specifically, it's your legislative authority. And so you appropriate only one budget at a time. It's a one year budget. So those CIP projects that you're approving, even though some of those carry on and continue, That CIP project was being not done or not completed or completed to a lesser scope. Staff previously was taking that legislative authority and appropriating those monies where they felt like it needed to be best spent within the city. So none of the monies left the organization. Nobody benefited personally. But then those legislative appropriation authorities didn't come back to council except it was just an approval for an award. So we may get a $500,000 project to go put a pipeline in. We didn't know that it was a saving from project X and that it had a million dollars worth of savings on it. There's still another $500,000 left. Lest you may be aware of more of an emergent condition that's a million dollar project, and if you were aware of that, you weren't updated that you had that money to spend. So I have a great example. Construction costs have doubled. to a couple of our developers for the most important housing market that we have, which is affordable housing. Their houses right now are $240,000 roughly, right, for that average tree level. What could have been maybe a million, million and a half dollar, you know, mainline extension that would have benefited that entire area for future growth, now maybe $4 million. And if we wait another five years, I don't know that it wouldn't be six to eight million dollars. So it's very important that council is working hand in hand with staff. Those monies are coming back. So that's wasted money and wasted time from 2016. That's an example that's sitting here with you today that we are trying to do right by growth and letting growth pay for growth and get that infrastructure into the ground. the longer we sit and don't know these are here the less capital we have to work with the value of that dollar is going to continue to decrease construction costs are not coming down for a long time with what we're seeing so the faster we act the better and that goes to stewardship which is our responsibility so anything else council man great report thank you mr freeman okay um That concludes 4.4. Do I have a request for any future agenda items?

Yeah, Mayor, I want to talk about an ordinance that we got on the books. Let me see here. I'll get the ordinance number. I had a meeting with... City Marshal, we've got an ordinance about high interest. I think it just needs to be read. The debt needs to be re-evaluated. So I'm going to request that it's open July 14th meeting. Because I'm going to miss this next meeting. But open July 14th. Okay. Yeah, I'm familiar with what the issue or concern was. You are? Okay. It's section 4-6-185. Mr. Pat, we're hitting up today to come up with what that's the

wondering is maybe uh over this week if he can get the update that i got and then we'll see if this is a needed ordinance to look at so like um i'm not sure if the update you received the same topic as mr Okay, so your request is to look at the order.

Yeah, it's in the landscaping ordinance. This is regarding trees. We looked at it. Okay, real good. We'll get it on the 14th. Is that what you said?

Yes, sir. Okay. Anything else, counsel? Okay. It's almost 5, but I would like to give public comment, and then we'll take a quick recess, and then we have our auditor here, Mr. Kirchnick. I'm sorry. Go ahead. So I can't take up his item without doing public comment first. And I don't know how long public comment will be.

The option you could do, you could do public comment for that one item itself. If anyone wishes to speak on the Axford item, the number there, we could do comment on that item, then do the Axford, then come back and do a public comment.

It's not on your agenda.

Yeah, so let me ask, how many people do I have here? Raise your hand if you'd like to give public comment today. Has anybody signed up or not signed up? We only have two sign-ups. Okay, let's push and let's see if we can get to Mr. Kirshenak here. So we're going to move quickly into public comment. And the city secretary will read us into that. And let's go ahead and take as many as are here.

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 today will have three minutes to address City Council during public comment or any public hearing on the agenda. At two and a half minutes, a single beep will signal 30 seconds remaining. When time is up, the timer 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 hearing, please do so either during public comment or during the public hearing, not both, in order to ensure accurate records. We will use both podiums today. When your name is called, please make your way to the open podium. When it's your turn, state your name. and whether or not you live within the Amarillo city limits before beginning your comments. For topics not on today's agenda, the Texas Open Meetings Act opens 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 have not yet signed up, please come see me at the front table now to fill out a form so we can add you to our list. At this time, our first speaker is Charles Little, and for the empty podium, Tim Benson will be next.

I live in the city of Amarillo.

I'm here today kind of fast talking about the past water bills. I had Rich call me on a Sunday and he said he had an emergency. He was going to turn it over to his assistant and I haven't heard back with a question from the water department. Another comment on the aquifer, the cellular water for the Fermi America project. Out of 809 data centers planned, 517 of those are in an aquifer that has had drought problems in the past year. So that's two-thirds of the projects. So I don't know why these projects are coming to areas that are short on water. And I don't think just because they asked to pay double the rate for this water that we should just jump on board with it even though they're putting in the pipeline, all that good stuff. The old saying, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And Fernie America is having very hard financial times right now with their leadership and all that stuff. So I think, in all honesty, we should cancel that project and at least put it to a vote of the city people that it's basically their water. It's our future. Once we run out of water, we're done. So we need to save that water for people and agriculture that is the heart of this community.

Okay.

Thank you, sir.

We would invite Michael Ford to the empty podium, and Tim, you may begin.

First of all, I'd like to thank Karen Locklear's office for opening up her office for the citizens to come, learn about the 211 program that had been affected by the fires. She had everybody there to answer questions. Now, one thing I'd like you guys to consider is taking off the agenda 6.8. $35,000 for assessment of the landfill. I think we don't have qualified people here to figure that out. They don't need to figure it. You know, you need to look at the TCDC report. There's a problem. Look at the gas management system. That's a problem. Can we not figure that out on our own? Instead of paying $35,000 from another, you know, firm? The other thing is agenda 4.3, the downtown tiers. You guys want to do a study? Hell, I'll do it for free. I think that tiers, the downtown tiers needs to go away. I think somebody needs to do a study on, okay, Mr. Freeman stated that In 2050, whatever it is, will we make $3 million? How much money, let's do a study on how much money we've lost in tax revenue from these downtown hotels. And we'll do a study on that and really figure out what the ROI is on that. You know, 30 years from now, I don't know how many people come here in 30 years from now. I think you guys need to really consider getting rid of the chair sponsor. I think it's done its course. I think it needs to dissolve. The other thing is, one more thing is, we've got the budget coming around.

I hope you guys start with your pensions.

It's gonna be a doozy. You know what I'm talking about. I can tell you, If we come back, let's say we're $15 or $20 million in the hole again, I think I'm going to join Craig in putting up some billboards.

That's not a threat, no way at all.

I'm just telling you facts. We can't keep coming up $15, $20 million short at the end of the year. So I hope you guys will try. Thanks for your time.

We will invite Mike Fisher up to the open podium and Michael Ford and we begin.

I had no intention of being here, so I apologize until I heard the Mayor talk. So I was not going to speak today until I heard your comments on open meetings. Mr. Mayor, when I met you the first time at Roasters, and you were thinking about running for place one, I explained to you what animated me. The reason I showed up here, the reason I showed up to Kendra Nelson's council meetings, over and over and over again was because the fact that ginger nelson in concert with this attorney over here were robbing the public with their voice you can only speak the same attorney for all those years said that you could only speak during public comment you can only speak on items on the agenda and we the mayor mr mr city attorney is that correct oh yes ma'am that is what the law says the same attorney The same guy who's telling you in executive session that it's okay in 071D to talk about the entire Texas chapter 551 of government code. Not 007, not the public comment provision, but the whole freaking thing, 55 pages. That's a nice public notice on that. but gentlemen i don't know how many times have i handed you that document that paper what does it say you should have it committed to memory by now the public shall have the right to discuss items and item on the agenda before or during the agenda item right that's what it says There's not any interpretation or wiggle room at all. You can't, like, play around with where you're going to put that on the agenda, Mr. Mayor. It says before or during, so your decision is before the executive session or during your agenda. And you can't even open the meeting properly. The charter says you're going to follow, you shall comply with Robert's Rules of Order. You have to call a meeting to order for it to be open. The law requires you to be in open session before you go to the closed session. You don't even call a meeting to order until way later than meeting. And so there's this problem with, you know, apparently with us, you know, being angry about things these days. Okay, people, I'm upset because There are very few examples within this city and with other cities of elected officials who want to follow the law. And I would say, just in respect to Mr. Prescott, he and I had a great conversation. I thought it was a good conversation. And when we're allowed to have conversations, two things can happen. But don't rob the public of their rights, which you're doing right now. Thank you.

We invite Alan Feingold to the empty podium, and Mike, you may begin.

My name is Mike Fisher. I live in the city limits. I do have a compliment, but I'm going to save that for last if you guys cut me off. I'll wait for that. Got some questions. some policy suggestions, like on tiers. You know, tiers, every one of them I've seen, they get 100% of that tax increase and it stays within that zone. But I'll give you an example where it probably hurt us, hurt the rest of the city. Right after that toot and tell them that opened out there on Lakeside, you guys might remember there was a murder in the parking lot. So let's just say that was a capital murder case. It wasn't, but it was. I think there was a mother bee that was murdered in the parking lot right after the elephant, a few months. If that was a capital murder case, that would cost the citizens $2.3 billion. I was looking that up while we were at our little extended session before public comment. So guess where that money comes from? So all those taxes freeze. And then if there's some extenuating circumstance that costs a lot of money, like a capital murder case, the rest of the city gets to pay for it. So I want you guys to think about that. Maybe change that percentage. Maybe make it to where it's, at least give something back. Like only give them 90% of those tax increases to stay there. Something to go back in the coffers to help when there's something crazy that happens. So at least the city doesn't have to absorb infrastructure costs or fire department like they're gonna have to do with Southgate tears. The CIP stuff, It's interesting, we started out at 16 million, 30 million, now 58 million, I think those are the numbers I heard. But we took out 30 million in CEOs early in the budget. So now we're acting like we got some extra money, but we really don't, because those CEOs, remember the credit card, We spent credit card money. And so we're not ahead because we borrowed money. And I think that the policy should be said, if you find extra money, because you have to set the budget before you do the audit. And so we should have a policy that says if we take out COs, Any extra CIP money should go back towards CEOs to pay those off. I think that would be a good policy change. I'll end with a compliment. I really believe that it looks like the police department, I feel like it from a citizen, I don't know how the police officers feel, because I don't work there, but as a citizen, I think things are headed up. I think when this town is being disarrayed with all these shootings and all this stuff, but I've still seen policing happening on other sides of town when there's bad things happening. So I really want to applaud the new police chief, and Grace, I think you made a good pick. Mark this day. It's the first time I've ever commented. I remember that.

It's so, so marked on the record. Thank you. Thank you.

Mr. Butterworth, you may begin.

My name is Alan Feindold. I live in the city of Amarillo. Very often when I address this council, particularly today, I feel like a guy who's playing a casino game, and I'm addressing the house. You guys are the house. And one of the evidences of this is that you know perfectly well you could be meeting every week, as councils did for decades before you. But now you meet every other week, so that if somebody is given three minutes to address you, it would be the equivalent of, oh, six minutes if you were meeting every week. But you don't. I hope you will change that. I also hope that you will give due consideration for meetings where an enormous amount of money is at stake and you haven't made a public commitment yet, such as on the proposal for a new wastewater treatment plant. Being as the amount of money being discussed is around a billion dollars, give or take 250 million, I think it would be appropriate if this commission This council decided to hold several meetings, say four meetings of two to two and a half hours each to discuss all the aspects involved in a project that would eventually take up as much as, say, $1,250,000,000, or maybe even more. If you can't manage that, let me remind you of the consequences of delayed responses to necessities. You have on today's agenda item 6.4, which is a revision of the amount of money which is to be appropriated for the Northeast Interceptor. I'm sure you all remember the Northeast Interceptor, which was scheduled to begin at around 2019, and the cost was to be $25 million. Unfortunately, it got delayed, delayed again, and delayed again, and when the whole thing was finished, The cost, if you include this item, was more than three times the original estimate. I'd hate to see that happen with a wastewater treatment plant. So I think we really need to have a series of public meetings to discuss that and to discuss its relationship to other projects for the water and wastewater sewer system. Thank you very much.

Okay, I greatly appreciate everybody speaking here today. Um, we do have our auditor here who's been working on the audit and we've got. Around 22 minutes to get you out. That's plenty of time. So I'm going to take the agenda item 7.5 up out of order. We're going to work through this one. Once we complete this item, we're going to take a recess. I really appreciate you guys for hanging in there with me. Okay, item 7.5 from Mr. Scott Kirschneck. from Clifton Larson Allen will give us a presentation on the current audit or what he calls, excuse me, the act.

Everyone received an electronic copy of the annual comprehensive financial report for the year ended September 30th, 2025. this is the signed copy here it's a very large complex document so there's not a whole lot of time to go over this but i do want to offer the next council meeting Once council was that time to go through this document. If you all like me to come back to answer questions, or I believe Mayor Stanley provided you all my contact information. You can definitely call me in time prior to that to ask any questions. Some of the main things I wanted to point out in this document in the time we have, if you could go to page one of the report here. Page one is the independent auditor's report. It should be on Clifton, Larson, Allen letterhead. It's not a Roman numeral or other type number. It's an actual number, page one. The second paragraph of that report states that, in our opinion, that the financial statements are materially correct, and it also references who audited the Fireman's Relief and Retirement Fund as of the year ending 2024. So our opinion as a whole, in addition to this, render an unmodified opinion, which is clean opinion, the best opinion you can receive on a set of audited financial statements. I did want to just cover a few Highlines here with the amount of time I wanted, first of which I would like you all to go to page 30 of this document. And on page 30, this is the balance sheet of the government funds, general funds in specific. The total fund balance as of September 30, 2025 for the general fund was $47.8 million. $44.7 million of that is unassigned. Still referring to the general fund, if you go to page 32 of this document, That is the statement of revenues, expenditures, and changes in fund balances, basically your income statement for the general fund. And you can see near the bottom of that page, near the bottom, the excess or deficiency of revenues over other expenditures for the year for the general fund is $2.8 million. And then there were some transfers, the net of transfers coming in from the other funds and transfers to other funds netted to $19 million going out for a net change in fund balance of a negative $21 million there, which added to the beginning of year fund balance of $69 million. gives you the $47 million there. So that's an overview of the general fund for the year. I also wanted to go to page 34 and 35. This is the statement of requisition of the proprietary funds. in particular the Water and Sewer Fund. And the Water and Sewer Fund, as of September 30th, 2025, you can see the cash and cash equivalents of $19.2 million, investments of $57.6 million, and also restricted cash and investments of $78.9 million. So there is a large amount of cash and investments in the water and sewer fund. I want them to go to page 36. This is basically the income statement of the water and sewer fund. And at the bottom of that page, the water and sewer funding column, the income for contributions and transfers was $2.2 million, positive $2.2 million for the year. And then after capital contributions and transfers, there was a change in that position. of the water and sewer fund of $5.4 million, which is basically the net income of the water and sewer fund for the year, which would leave a net position at the end of the year of $606.1 million in the water and sewer fund. And one thing, just to make you aware of where this is in the financial statements, the discreetly presented component units of the city, those amounts begin on page 42 and go through page 44. The discreetly presented component units Amarillo Hospital District, the Amarillo EDC, the Amarillo Potter and Ben's venue district and so forth. Even though not the city itself, they are based on their structure and so forth. They are considered part of the reporting entity of the city of Amarillo. That's why these are presented here. And Mayor Stanley, I know you just previously mentioned arbitrage, for example. And on page 58 of this document, you can see a paragraph there specifically for arbitrage pay and as of september 30th 2025 there were in governmental activities 2.5 million dollars in estimated arbitrage liabilities that was calculated by hilltop securities and i provided mayor stanley with that report And another $8.7 million in the proprietary funds, business side activities of that league. Approximately $7.5 million or so is in the water and sewer, with the main amount being in the drainage fund. Subsequent to the end of the year, a certain amount of those liabilities have actually been paid, I believe, in April and May of this year. A little more on arbitrage when the city receives bond proceeds that invest those unspent funds. Any amount of the interest earnings in addition to the rates in the bonds. The city actually is not allowed to keep those monies and those monies are required to be refunded to the federal government. And just for reference, Note 7 is a detail of your capital assets of the city for both the governmental activities and then each of your enterprise funds goes in great detail there for your reference as you're going through this document. Note 13 is a detailed note on the long-term obligations of the city itself which kind of summarizes or concludes beginning on page 121 through page 123 And I made reference earlier to some transfers, especially as they related to the general fund leading to the deficit for the year. And there is a detail of the transfers. to and from funds on page 128, as well as amounts still owed between funds on that page. And another item that I wanted to bring up, actually, I know Mayor Stanley had mentioned the budget previously, and Katrina, if you could go to page 159 of this document. This is the budgetary comparison schedule for the general fund. and the very last column is the variance with final budget positive or negative and prior to transfers from the other funds you can see the road titled excess deficiency of revenues over expenditures i did want to point out the city as a whole there was a positive variance of 1 million 473 000 But some of those amounts, you had positive variances. But in the expenditure categories there, there were actually four of these categories that exceeded budget. One of which was fire protection. One was police protection. One was street traffic in the engineering, and one was traffic. So I just wanted to give reference to the page where the budget to actual comparison is. And these amounts are further broken down, at least for police. That's on page 215 of this document. And page 217 also has further breakdown for the four line items I mentioned there just for reference there. The page 159 is just a summary of those. those are some of the key items i want to point out to the mayor of the city council just due to the amount of time for today but with the amount of time remaining sure any Any other items, Mayor Sam, your council members, that you would like me to touch on?

So we've got eight minutes, Scott. Yes. Let me summarize real quick for council, and then I'll see if council wants to go a different direction. But these were printed perhaps yesterday. They were given to us today. $351. I have your previous draft, but I'm not sure that the rest of council has it right or has become familiar with it. So I wouldn't imagine that council's in any position to take any action on this. I think that it was important to get you here and let you at least speak to it because it is an important document. We didn't want to have it on the agenda and then not at least have a minimum presentation. But if we get two weeks, For an example, this would just be something I would drive at. If you go back to page 159 right there, you're recognizing, let me let the city secretary get there, 159? Correct. Yeah, you're recognizing the additional costs that we incurred in our public safety divisions. And it says actual on a budgetary basis. If you go down, it says fund balance into the year, $47.4 million. They're in that second from the right column. But then, if you look fund balance with final budget positive negative, it's 52 million, which is really pretty close to where we wanted to end up. That recognizes additional revenues that we had that came into the budget. So if we go back to, I think, was it page one where you showed that 47 million? Yes. The point of stating this is this is a complex document. It's easy to get lost because there's so many different entries. So for us to have a clean audit where we all accept it and everybody moves forward, I'd love to have an hour with you back here on the 23rd and let council digest this over the next two weeks, let everybody ask all their questions. Sewer and water, net cash position, you've got it at 5.5 million, but that allows for roughly $18 million worth of depreciation that doesn't materialize in an actual cash you know, stance. So it's good to hear him say it. I don't want to tell people that we've got, you know, let's say $22, $23 million at the end of the year after we did business. I need Mr. Kirshnack to say that. So, council, I don't know if y'all want to go after anything specific. I know the timing's not good and you really haven't had any time. But we can table this and bring Mr. Kirchnack back to really get into the details. Or I can quit talking and let you guys speak to where you are.

I'm fine with coming back because, yeah, we just got it. But I do have one question. So we now, so we now, municipalities face deadlines to have these completed, correct? That is correct. And what is that deadline? The deadline?

It was March 29th on our process, if I'm remembering correctly. March 27th was the deadline with the new So with the city secretary, March 27. And what was actually filed with the city secretary on that day was a draft of this document. So there was a document filed with city secretary on March 27. And on that day, I went through the draft virtually. I was still in. Austin, but that draft was filed with the city secretary by that deadline. This final document, which has our signature on it, should replace the draft that was filed with the city secretary, in my opinion.

So. But going back to it. We're, as I counted, we're 67 days late from when the deadline to get the final version. To get the final version, that is correct. And so, and that newly subjects us to potentially having problems. That would depend on... the attorney general and we don't have any court release yet to say hey it's okay to do this i mean my concern is how do we get to the point of because as i understand it you had told us that your firm had told us on several occasions you would have this and it kept getting pushed and pushed and pushed through i don't think any fault of our own and now we're 67 days late on filing no fine you know i hope the attorney general will look kindly on this That's a concern for me. And I think we all knew what the deadline was. And then, with all due respect, as I understand it, you told us what we were going to meet. We kept having deadlines. We meet and we kept having to delay those. So it just causes me a little bit of concern. I know this is our first year in the relationship. but just you know i don't know if your firm can't handle an organization our size i thought you were pretty large but you know as a fiduciary responsibility and making sure that things get done on time uh you know that was just that was the concern that i had yes and i guess just a couple of comments on that clinton marx and allen definitely is large enough to

Other examples of clients we have in the state of Texas would be, we audit Dallas County, we audit Bear County, we audit Texas Department of Transportation, we audit, do the single audit of the federal grants for the entire state of Texas. Just in this With the implementation of a new ERP system this year. And city staff working through that. Us requesting reports and drilling down to get to the level of detail that was needed. that caused delays in getting the information required to actually complete the audit. And you had mentioned the new audit card, just getting familiar, really getting into the details of the city of Amarillo, which we definitely did. And there was also a turn over and a key member of the finance department, the chief financial officer, was titled around Christmas, which was right about when the audit was really about to begin in full force so there were a number issues that led to the delay or the final issuance of this document that you have now. Okay. Well, hopefully next year we'll be able to meet the deadline and continue. Yes, we would definitely meet that deadline. There's no other option not to meet that deadline.

Mr. Kirshen, I just want to make sure everybody hears it and that I say it plainly. And if you'll answer this 100%, you know, honestly, did I hold you up in any way in performing this audit? No.

there was you did not hold me up in any way we had numerous very productive meetings throughout the course of the government and i did want to compliment katrina owens her staff bracing that mr mcwilliams for certain items need to be audit the city was did everything they could to get this art complete and I don't know how many additional hours, lots of overtime to get this audit complete. And I just want to compliment City Staff and all their help with this document to where it is now. Well, we appreciate the hard work.

I just want to be clear. I did not say that anybody here caused it. As I hear you, our organization did a good job and did what they were asked in a timely manner. I guess my question is, where did the breakdown occur?

I guess the breakdown, the best way to describe it was the impact that the new workday system had on the financial reporting not capabilities, but understanding how to get the information out of that system in a level of detail that's required for us as your independent officers to then audit. I guess it was a learning curve, if you will. not only from city staff who is learning that new system, but understanding what Clifton, Harts, and Allen would need in terms of detail and getting that level of detail out of the system. I would say that would be, if breakdown is an accurate word, that would be the primary reason for the delays. the final issuance of this document.

And then, but as I understand it, there were previous times to today that you felt you had completed it, and there were talks about putting it on a previous agenda, but then we had to keep delaying it. Yes.

Was that due to getting the information out? To get the final information out, to get all final questions satisfactorily answered and resolved, for Clifton, Harts, and Allen to feel confident to put our signature on this document, this is a quality product that you all know. Thank you.

We appreciate the additional explanation and appreciate your time here. I know it's a little past 5 30. We're going to get you heading back unless council has anything further. We're going to have ample opportunity to digest this and ask a lot of questions and dig into it on June 23rd.

And city council wants me back here on the 23rd to answer any and all questions, or maybe just

i did not touch on because it's a very large complex document i know we can do zoom and virtual i think it always helps to have you here and i know you've got a lot invested in this and we're an important customer so we appreciate you coming back and being part of the meeting and then i mean you even heard we still have some reconciliation of the sewer and water balance to make sure that we know where we are moving forward. So I think it'd be helpful to have you part of that discussion and we look forward to getting you back here. We appreciate you getting it to us and we understand the constraints. Thank you all. Thank you, Mr. Kirchner. Council, before you is item 7.5. I move that we accept the comprehensive model report as

so if you'll hit your microphone are you are you good are you still going to table the item i want to table it but don't we have to accept it today um no sir we can table it um i would hate to accept it without you reviewing it okay i thought that we had to accept it by uh no surprise because then i would move it to the table okay have a motion to table item 7.5 to have a second

Second. Motion and a second on 7-5. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. If you guys give us and yourselves a 15-minute well-earned break, we'll be back and run the rest of the meeting. Thank you. Okay, thank you guys for keeping us seated. We're going to go ahead and call ourselves back in session. Let's see where we're at here. I hope the comment is done and we have a consent agenda.

Gentlemen, consent agenda is before you. Mayor, I would like to request that 6.9 be taken up just for a little bit of discussion.

Tell me which one 6.9 is. That is a- Eval. A firefighter medical or fitness eval, yes. Okay. Request to remove 6.9 for additional information. Any other requests? Yeah. May I just make a comment on one before we .

I already had a discussion with the assistant that brought this up. It was 6.8, the professional service agreement, cooperation assessment . I just wanted to address that everybody else is paying attention or listening. City staff did this in our direction. We requested that at the press conference. It seems like a lot of money to ask a third party to come in and check our landfill. Don is doing a great job out there. He's already made several changes and is in the process of making changes. But we felt like for transparency and for just a complete look, we wanted somebody, a third party, We just want third party houses to come in and take a look at it. I was talking to Michael J. back there as well. We just want to make sure that we do have somebody outside looking at it. Yes, it's a lot of money, but we're going to get an honest look at our landfill, which we all know when it's going to happen. That's the reason that they're just following our direction and doing what we ask them to do. So just wanted to make that point.

I greatly appreciate that. I know that is within the $50,000 allowance that the city manager could have just moved forward on. And so not only was I asked, you know, came back at 34, Mayor, you want to put it on the agenda or you want me to just go do it? I said, no, let's put it on the agenda because of what's gone on and the disaster relief that is taking place out there. Everybody deserves to know as much as they can know. about everything that happened and, you know, the good and the bad. And so, you know, Mr. Hooper's doing an internal evaluation, very thorough. I think we're going to be pleased with it. But if we don't do an external, I think that's what we would hear. It's like, well, that's just him, you know, looking into himself. Like, who's overseeing this? And so the $34,000 is money we'll spend because of the circumstances that are presented. We wanted to put it on the agenda so you can see. So I hope you guys see that.

Let me just ask a question, too, for clarity. So what is the... Is this going back and investigating the past? Or what exactly are we charging them and what are we... Yeah, really good question.

And this is not to go back and investigate the fire. So the state farmers and TCP have been a part of that. This is to do more of an assessment of our operations. And as I put in here, put in my notes here, you get an outside expert come in. There's not a food for landfills. There's not been a part of the process here to examine our site operations and make recommendations on any adjustments needed to make TCP apartment parks the best state of practices. everything from fit sizes to bulldozers to staffing to working face to everything, examine operations and make recommendations on how we can improve things if possible.

So, I mean, Donnie, right now you're doing something similar to this internally, correct?

Absolutely. We've already started and have completed some of those things as far as the internal operations look, but there's still some work to do there. But yes, doing basically the same thing that the external uh consultants going to do looking at staffing looking at equipment looking at equipment sizes looking at how much waste we took in previously in the past is how much we've increased that biosecurity increase in that everything all landfill operations just a deep dive into that okay well it looks like because i think there's some confusion about whether we were investigating but you're saying the state fire marshal is investigating that legally and they'll they'll come up with a report to say what we found and what that may look like this seems more like it's uh

almost like what we just went through. If you're doing something, and then a third party is going to come in and audit what we're doing. I mean, actually, maybe not your report, but all your report could be. So just like in our financials, we're saying, OK, we keep our financials. We return a lot of them. We look at them. But this is just an extra layer to say, OK, let's make absolutely sure from an independent third party that we're doing all the things that we need to do. OK, thank you.

Thank you.

OK.

Council, if you understand what's before you, request to remove 6.9. The rest of the consent agenda is ready. I move to approve the consent agenda minus 6.9 as presented. Second. Motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Let's take up item 6-9.

Just a couple of questions. I do support this program. I just want to get up to speed on where we are. So we're looking at it. So this is a contract with the company to do health scanning for firefighters. Yes, sir. This is our second, this will be our second year of using them. Correct, our first renewal. And then, but we used to do some similar type things, and then there was a request to do more. And I understand that the original, for a while we were spending about $100,000 a year, probably less than that, we give or take that. And now we're up to about $250,000 or so, I think we're budgeting $263,000.

kind of walk me through what what the what are we getting for what are we doing now in addition you know for the extra investment so the biggest component that was added to it was cancer screening which is a new state law for for firefighters that are in their fifth year of service we actually started this process prior to that state law and are actually providing to all firefighters so it's their Their normal manual exam still has all the blood work, the normal physical, but it has additional cancer screening and some additional analysis that we weren't receiving previously.

And so the increase in cost is primarily due to more screenings, testing, those sorts of things, I guess. The current vendor, Life Extension, LifeScan Wellness Center, that company's based in Tampa? Tampa, Florida, and then most of them are basically remote workers that kind of set up where they are and they travel and do on-site screening. So the people that come into this area to do that scanning, are they using local resources, or do they have to come from elsewhere? Ours are coming from Luck. Okay, so they're coming from somewhere else. Now the other thing I looked on Summit, because you provided me a lot of detail on this, and I just noticed on some of the areas, on some of the billing that LifeScan had provided. But if you look at the previous contract we had locally, there were like chest x-rays went from about $55 to $103. So like checks x-rays, we're paying more, almost double than what we were before. There was a blood test on there that went from $30 to $56. So we're paying more for these services than we get locally?

Yeah, and those are the couple that we actually could be able to compare line item costs. The way this one was put out, it was not price-based. We didn't have line item comparisons like we had in previous years, but those were a couple we were able to take.

Yeah, and then we really don't know, to factor in, how much more it's costing us because we're having to bring staff here instead of using local staff or local resources to be able to do this. It's all just a comprehensive proposal cost.

It's all baked into one amount.

Well, I would say this. I'm glad we got that on there, and I'm supporting it and committing it. I will vote for it today. But just based on some of this information and, you know, with some of the individual services appearing to cost more, you know, I don't know whether it's probably going to cost me more. And as I understand it, the cost when we initially did it, I would think, it was who would who could best provide the service but how much they charge really wasn't it correct thanks for your expertise in the field yes well i would just like to say i mean if we can prove this today but maybe staff can evaluate this and kind of bring back to council before next year's renewal you know whether it's possible to look at you know whether this could be done locally at a it just seems to me if you're bringing people from other places it's naturally going to cost more and if we can you know look at the opportunity to to save taxpayer money, and on top of that, be able to do it locally, I think that would just be something for us to be able to look at without compromising the services, the testing, and that type of thing. So maybe if we could just kind of take a look at that. I know there's a renewal of that. Maybe we say, no, there's nothing we can do. But if there's a chance to get those services done locally, and maybe it seems to me that we could get it done at a better price as long as we're not compromising service, something that I'd like to say maybe we could get that in for next year, whether that's a possibility. Yes, sir. We can definitely do that. Any further discussion on that?

Okay. Is that item 6-9? So I'm going to bring item 6-9 as presented. Second. Motion and a second on item 6.9. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. All right. We'll just take a minute to order. Our favorite presenter is here today, Hendrick. We're going to have a public hearing here in a minute. Good evening, sir.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I've got a couple for you today, just as a heads up, they're both now related to each other, so I'll cover most of the content for them in the first one and kind of breeze through the second. The first one is a public hearing and consideration of ordinance 8247. This is the rezoning of 2.39 acres of unapplied land located within Randall County, Texas at the intersection of South Osage Street and Freedom Drive. The applicant is proposing to rezone this property from Manufactured Home District to Residential District 2 is the request. And this is simply the continuation of the South Haven subdivision. They're located to the north. They're just moving on to their next phase and this is one of the pieces of that next phase. the planning and zoning commission did find that it conforms with the city plan and given the existing zoning and development patterns in the area they believe it's a logical continuation of the patterns in that area ultimately the developer just wants to ensure that home builders strictly follow the residential district 2 standards with setbacks and such and is ultimately the reason for the request we did not receive any public comments on this item as of the meeting today and the planning and zoning commission did recommend approval with a 6-0 vote Very good, Mr. Kendrick.

Counsel, do you have any questions for Bray? No? Okay, at this time, I'll open the public hearing. Do I have anyone who would like to speak for or against this item? Okay, we'll go ahead and close the public hearing. Item 7.1 is before you, gentlemen.

Move to adopt. I move to adopt. Ordinance number 8247 as presented. Second.

Motion and a second on 7-1. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Let's move on to 7-2.

7-2 is Lorgans 8248. This tractor land is a 7.56 acre portion of Walk 1, southeast place unit number 2 in Randall County, Texas in the vicinity of Livingwater Drive and Setwood Drive. They are also requesting the rezoning of this property for Manufactured Home District 2, Residential District 2 for the same rezones. And the applicants are OJB Engineering LLC, GASCOM Group, LP. And like I said, just the other part of that next stage of the South Haven subdivision. also performs a city plan 2045 and logical continuation of zoning and development patterns in that area. We also did not receive any comments on this item as of the meeting today. The Planning and Zoning Commission also recommended approval of this rezoning with a 6-0 vote.

Questions for Mr. Kendrick? Okay, at this time I'll open a public hearing. I have anyone who would like to speak for or against item 7-2. Okay, we'll go ahead and close the public hearing and we'll entertain a motion. I move to approve ordinance number 18488. Second. Motion and a second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any vote? Motion passes. Thank you, Mr. Kennedy. Have a great week. Item 7.3. Mrs. Cole is coming up here. Take us into that one. Financial policy amendment. Good evening all.

Good evening.

So this is the first reading to consider resolution number 06-09-26-1, which is a resolution amending the City of Amarillo's financial policies. Financial policies are tools to ensure that and future service needs. Financial policies guide city council and management policy decisions that have significant fiscal impact. They also provide accurate and timely information on the city's financial condition. Finally, financial policies establish and maintain effective long-term management of city financial resources. We are specifically amending the budget process section in the current financial policy. And this resolution specifically amends resolution number 09-09-35-1, which was passed on the 20th of October, 2025. The amendments are as follows. Expenditures may not legally exceed appropriations at the department level or in total for each fund. Secondly, a department may not exceed its adopted appropriation even if the fund as a whole has sufficient capacity. In such cases, a budget transfer or amendment is required. The next The thing we're amending in this resolution is that the city manager will notify the city council of any overages in departments and proposed plans to mitigate it, including any necessary quota transfers and amendments. Finally, the city council must approve revisions that alter total expenditures of a fund or increase the total appropriation for the department. And that includes the amendments we're making to the current financial policies. Would you like to address any questions you may have?

Questions for Lola? So, Lola, when we, with this policy, by following this policy, basically what we're doing is we're making an amendment to the budget to basically true it out, right? Is that correct?

So we are making an amendment to the budget tonight, but the financial policy as it stands has been amended to indicate that appropriations have to be at the departmental level. So any overages at the departmental level have to be appropriated by city council.

Okay, okay. it's a great question so keep going with that so so at the end so we're gonna that way we're operating within a balanced budget correct yes sir okay so at the end of the year if we want to look at actuals which is what we've been wanting um we can see what the budget was i mean sorry i'm gonna pick on police because that's what we almost do Over time, it's an issue, or has been an issue, and we know that. So we make an amendment to true that budget up because we know the numbers. But at the end, it looks like we have a balanced budget, but in actuality, we really didn't. It was only because it was amended. Is that fair to say? That is correct. So if we were to come to you and say, well, I know that this says that we have a balanced budget, but we really didn't, we can ask you to say, go through this amendment list and every department that we had to amend, the fund that we had to amend to show where we were actually short or long, we would need to do that. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. So we will have a balanced budget where before we didn't have a balanced budget, but we had those numbers already. Does that make sense? Yes. Okay. But according to policy, we're going to go ahead and make the amendment make everything a true rally. Is that, am I putting it in plain language?

That is correct. Ideally, before expenditures are called, we should have amendments. However, overage is sometimes a quarrel, and we amend after the fact, so that's the situation right now. Okay, okay.

Thank you. Thank you for clarification.

Thank you.

Councilman Green, did I see you? No? Okay. Ms. Lola, any other changes to the rest of the policy? No, sir.

We're only amending that particular section, the budget process section, and that specific clause number four.

So just number four there on what is page 15 in my backup? Yes, that is correct. All right. Any other questions for Mrs. O? Okay. Gentleman, item 7.3 is before you.

Thank you, ma'am. I move to accept resolution number 060926-1 as presented. Second. Motion and second.

All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. Motion passes. Thank you, ma'am. Ms. Lowley, you're up for item 7.4. Yes, I am.

So this is the first reading to consider Ordinance 8249, an ordinance adopting budget amendments pertaining to the fiscal year 2024-2025. This is the last step to close out the fiscal year 2024-2025. Revised financial policy does not allow for transfers within departments of the same fund for those departments that are over budget. So this illustrates the city of Amarillo's organizational chart, which shows the city of Amarillo residents at the very top, to which we're all accountable for. Amendments are being made to departments that show as being over budget on the fiscal year 2025 annual comprehensive financial report, which was just presented. Our process was that the finance department extracted the non-cash items such as depreciation and amortization as well as non-budgeted capital outlay items that were charged to departments that were over budget to reflect the actual departmental costs. And we are amending departments in the general fund in these amendments. Those are the departments that were over budget. Starting with the police department. The police department's budget is being increased by $2,887,800 because they paid out more and we put them budgeted. Next department to be amended is the fire department that is being amended by $1,839,300. They also paid out more and we will then budget it. Next department is the Capital Projects and Development, which is part of the streets department. That budget has been increased by $154,600. They also paid out more in labor than budgeted. Next we go to the Golf Division of Participatory Recreation Department. That's the grouping for this particular division. Their budget has been increased by $214,800. They paid out more in supplies for ground care than budgeted. Next, we're amending the library department for $33,500. That's an increase that goes to them. They also paid out more for labor than budgeted. Finally, we are amending the transit department for $227,000. They also paid out more than what you did. Would you like to address any questions you may have at this time?

Any questions for Ms. Lowell? Yes, on the more labor, is that pretty much across the board in all those departments, was it pretty much just overtime? Yes, sir. Okay, so all those together with the overtime. So most all of the budget amendments we're doing are related to overtime.

Overtime and salary costs to salary time in other cases, but all the work costs in general.

Can we go back on a couple of those slides? Great. OK. So police and fire, I understand, because we don't budget for the overtime, which I still don't get. If we know that we're going to have the overtime, why don't we just budget that and make it a true budget? And I guess that will be a statement that we'll have a discussion as we go through the next year's budget. But the library. The library has certain hours. Why would they have overtime at the library?

So these are actually labor costs. So they paid off the labor for salaries.

So for legal costs? Oh, no, I'm sorry, labor costs. Labor costs. Salary costs, yeah. So labor costs, did we hire more librarians than we thought we were going to need, or what's the reason for the $33,000?

I could look into the details for that and get back to you with that question.

All right, thank you. Any other questions for Lowell? So Ms. Lola, I need to get an updated clean accounting in my head for where we're at. So previously we had had some numbers that were brought to us that we had a total revenue increase and then we had an expenditure decrease overall but then we had these areas that were over budget and what i remember was fire was roughly 3.5 something or maybe it's 3.7 but now it's down to 1.8 you said you took non-cash items out of that equation yes sir give me an example of a non-cash item in fire so we have amortization costs are known cash items and those are for leased computers so we

amortize those expenditures, but there are no cash expenses that go out.

So when we are saying, like, what's the hard cost total to run that department, I know we get depreciation, maybe they amortize a few things, but those are just government accounting practices that we can implement, but they really do not hit the balance of that checkbook, correct? That is correct. Okay, so these balances that you've now ran are hard cost, cost overruns for these representative departments. yes so police is not over six million dollars they're over two point eight eight seven in actions yes I don't know because I haven't had time to look at the audit does the audit reflect that same two point eight eight seven number so you will see a difference in

The auditor, Mr. Krishna from CLA, used the numbers as of the last approved amendment by council. So even if you were to use this amendment, you would still see a difference, which reflects those non-cash items, because the aggregate total is shown in the audit. However, for budget purposes, we don't budget for these numbers, but the audit has to reflect the total numbers.

OK. If I could ask, if you wouldn't mind bringing back for the next meeting, run the totals again like we had with Ms. Katrina where she ran here. Here was your total. Revenues over expenditures in net. In that scenario, it was $19.8 million, and then we had so much that we were over budget, we lessed that out, and we thought we were gonna end up with 11 million left.

And if you can run that again with these numbers,

reflective of only cash items with no non-cash. That would be very helpful for us to see what is our actual cash position in the general fund at the end of the year. For all the departments in the general fund, Yes, ma'am. And I think it's already done for you here with the overs. What we wouldn't see is the unders. How far under budget are we on those other items? Now I'm assuming we can see all that in the offer, right? Yes, we can.

It's there.

I'm just asking you to make a summary sheet. Okay. If you don't mind.

Okay, that's fine.

Okay. And then just to counsel and read, you know, a while back you had come in with a request. You really wanted like zero base budget. and i understand the benefits to that i also understand the complexities to that in government and efficiencies and running a lot of large labor departments and things like that so maybe zero-based budgeting is not something that we can actually stretch to but this right here with the updated financial policy And with everything that you guys are implementing on all the CIPs and all that, this is as close to zero-based budgeting as I had ever hoped to get. So I'm very satisfied that we could run it this tightly. And to have actuals that are forecasting that we think we need to come back and ask for this amendment or we just went over we now we now have an amendment i don't know how the rest of the municipalities work around texas but i bet you they're not running that quickly on average so i think we would be performing uh very well and i know from a council position that's exactly what we've we've wanted to see so those actuals and these amendments are Very helpful. So I think this gives me everything that I hope for. And I just want to commend you guys for getting it done. And so Ms. Lowley, you've only been with us what now? Two months. Two months. Well, heck of two months. Welcome aboard. Thank you. Thank you. So I appreciate you and your staff.

Thank you.

Any other questions from Ms. Lowley? Okay. Gentlemen, item 7.3. Is that right? No, 7.4 is what it is before you.

I move that we adopt ordinance 8249 as presented.

Second. Motion and a second, all in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. So before we move on to 7.5, Mrs. Lola, This tax statement, this tax impact statement, is that material to anything that we've done? We didn't change any kind of tax rates or anything like that. Why do we have that here, I guess, in the outline?

I can speak to that if you don't mind. Yes, ma'am. So the tax impact statement is something that we have to add based on legislation any time we adopt a budget or discuss that budget. And so this impact statement that you see on your agenda today is the very same one that you saw on your agenda back in September when we adopted it. Okay. And so we haven't changed any tax rate or anything, and that is just information for the average tax bills or median tax bills for the budget that you have adopted.

So like a ministerial procedural requirement.

It really is.

Just to include it in there.

It's part of your truth in taxation and that transparency on taxes. Perfect.

Well, thank you for speaking to that. Okay, gentlemen, item 7.5 has already been taken action on and is tabled. Item 7.6, airport capital. Mr. Conner.

So this particular item talks about our bucket transfers and I think this is probably the first time that we've gone through this whole process with the new CIP committee and so we were just kind of going through the entire thing and so you let me know if you want, you know, how you want this to go. I have a few notes at the beginning here. So we did take all these items through the new CIP committee and they were approved there. We've been working on these transfers for several months basically to ensure that all of our planned projects are fully funded. Many of the projects we're looking at to transfer funds from are grant funded projects that originally had a 10% match because most of these are, or all of these actually are grants with the FAA. And then, so that was the 10% when they were budgeted. So afterwards, then we went through the actual grant process. The FAA decided they were just going to require a 5% match. So we had those 5% numbers that were left over in our budget. Most of the other transfers are from completed projects that have funds left in them. But basically we're just trying to make the best use of the funds that were approved and allotted for the airport. And so we have 14 transfers within the CIP program and then two transfers from CIP to a couple O&M projects. And if you'd like me to go through the entire list I can, otherwise I'd be open to whatever you'd like to do.

Gentlemen, I know you've had that list and you can look into it, but specifically if you have any questions on any of those items, we can talk in depth about it. Not hearing anything, do you have any questions for Mr. Conner and what he's doing out there at the airport? Okay. No, I think we're ready to entertain a motion.

I move to approve item 7.6 as presented.

Second. Motion and a second from place one. All in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Mr. Conner, thank you for doing such an excellent job out there at the airport. It looks great. Thank you. Okay, engineering services contract here. We've got item 7.7. Mr. Danforth, you're up.

Mayor and council, thanks for saving me for last. That's the answer. That's twice, isn't it? I'm pretty sure you have some influence on my position on this.

We're not sure how you keep following the end of the agenda. I'll look into that.

Exactly. This is an interesting item that's coming to you at the proper time with Mr. Freeman's presentation. This kind of rolls into that conversation quite a bit. And what we're talking about here is City staff previously had made a commitment to the Williams Group that they would do a project for them as far as engineering for a cemetery sewer line for future development. That commitment was made, and a CIP was created, but it wasn't funded properly. Conversations have been had with the development group about this, about the commitments that the city had made to them. And going forward, we felt like the best scenario for us would be to move forward with Making a change or an amendment to a project that we currently have going, which is the reconstruction of the street on Osage. That project is currently at a little over 70% complete, but all of the utilities that are located within that street for that reconstruction would tie to this project. The reason for us bringing an amendment to that existing contract allows us to take that knowledge that currently exists on that project instead of starting from ground zero with a new engineer coming up with a new scope because technically the two projects play together. So what we're bringing forward to you today is basically your permission to move forward with this, but understand that this project is currently not funded because it's no longer in the CIP list. This forces us to get to the point to where we sit down with the CIP committee again to look at a potential funding source to move forward with funding the project. So what we're looking for from you today is direction to move forward with this process. We're going to be happy to answer any questions as it relates to this project.

Mr. Danforth, do you have any idea what do you think that totals in the cost of the mainline extension?

Yes, we're looking at around $220,000. I believe it's $225,000 on that project. Well, for the engineering, what do you need? For the engineering. For the construction. Now, this ties into, once again, what Mr. Hooper talked about. We want to do the engineering and get an opinion on the probable cost before we build the CIP in the next year's budget. for you to review and approve. We will also go through the ROI process, seeing what the impact of that development would be to see what the city's participation in that would be. You have several options. The developer has several options in this scenario. When we talk about a development project, we could be talking about developer participation. We could be talking about city funding. We could be talking about developer builds out. But all of those things are built into that as we develop the future CIFEs coming forward.

So just to make sure council can have confidence in spending a quarter million dollars to go get engineering, we should have confidence that when we get this engineering projected cost, along with the CIP update that you've had a good hand in, that this project meets all the criteria that we look for. It's something we will find the affordability in if we get it approved. But once those funds are identified, towards affordable housing, improvements in that area of town, additional real estate development over there. Would there be any reason you would have any concern, once you get this engineering, to prioritize that project, seeing as how it's back from 2016?

Truly, that's going to be a decision that you as the council will make. The project will be loaded up. The supporting criteria that all the projects go through We will take it through that. So you're truly looking at an ROI for what's the cost to the citizens of Amarillo to participate or fully develop or to turn the set of plans over and to let the contractor build it up. All those options are on the table.

Really good. Well, good presentation. I appreciate the answers and the direct answer as well. Council, any questions for Mr. Gansler?

I guess, I mean, So is there a plan to target CFP money for the rest of the project?

It will be, all CIPs, when we build a CIP program out, and you'll see this at budget time, we do a five year look at it. So Mr. Simpson, when we do it, it might be a priority year one project, or it could be a future project that you know is coming. In each of those scenarios, it could be year one, two, three, four, five, all the way up to there. As the priorities change, and we can stay on this conversation as far as this developer, if they are in a position to where they're actually going to start building that development, then the priority changes for us as far as bringing it in front of you as council at budget time saying, is this a project that you want to fund once we've done the ROIs on this to show what the return on investment to the city of Annabelle is. At that point in time, you will have all the information needed to make a business decision as to what level of participation you want to be in.

So to say that it's a priority as far as the CIP goes, that information is truly driven by the developer.

If he is in a position where he's developing that property, then we need to be talking about escalating. If he's not in the position, this project as an example was In the CIP process previous to 2016, the funds were taken out of that project and moved into another project, which is one reason we feel it's appropriate to approve this at this time, because a commitment was made to them for the engineering. the commitment for installing the line, we haven't found documentation that exists. So it would have to go through the process that we would go through in any kind of developer agreement going forward. But once we go through that process and you as a council get to see the value of it, at that point in time you make a decision whether it's a priority or not.

But this isn't, it's not an emergency.

No, it's not. The true value for this piece that is in front of you is consideration to get the engineering done so we can actually have an OPC. It falls in line with what Mayor Stanley said earlier for the construction price. When you do it, the number to do that kind of construction this year is not going to be the same number that we're going to have next year. So it really comes down to you assessing when do you feel the value is to move this forward. And it can be a robust conversation with you as council members and city staff.

Well, I appreciate the work the staff has done on the project, and I do understand the history behind it. And I wish we could go back 10 years and redo it and do it to keep our word of the last time. But I have no concern about the project. through this kind of about fairness and consistency. And I just, in my mind, I question, I mean, I understand, but should a project move ahead simply because conversations and expectations existed under previous staff or previous councils? None of those people are probably still here. So my thought is every request should be evaluated based on today's priorities, today's needs, and today's budget, and I understand that. But I don't see this the same thing as we talked about, hey, we have an emergency or something comes up and we're reallocating this. I see something that just happened to come back on our agenda. So my question would be kind of where do we draw the line? I mean, I don't know who else out there. We don't know who else we may have made. And so we're kind of going down that. My preference would be, so we're working on the FY27. CIP right now. That's correct. And that will be October 1st that we'll finalize that. So that's less than four months away. Correct. Yeah. My preference is, you know, I'd like to look at putting this up with everything else for the 27 community investment program where it can be considered alongside our other projects and priorities. I really believe instead of one-offing things that happened 10 years ago, let's put it in the mix. And also, it sounds like there may be a larger conversation on the whole thing, which may influence what we do. So I believe the best way to ensure that we are kind of being a vocal approach is kind of treating all applicants fairly and kind of making decisions consistently. to the regular community investment project, let it go, and then we can make the decision at that point with all the other things that we're working on.

Can I ask a procedural question? I just want to make sure I heard it. So in applications, so the applicant applied back in 2016, you're not asking them to reapply, right?

No, I think it would be, I mean, I guess we can all, I mean, staff brings things. I don't think we need to reapply to it. I just think let's just so that we say, well, somebody else wants us to come in and do one thing for them. And again, I have no problem with the project.

That's a new advocate, right? And then I love what Mr. Danford said. And so I think that's where we could look at how it gets prioritized. So emergencies definitely take an urgency priority, but then if they bring back the cost and that eval shows, let's say it's 1,100 houses, that's 1,100 new water users, 1,100 new sewer users. Those are the potential build-out properties, and those are property taxes. And then if we are seeing commercial corners that are updated, then you could even see real estate from sales tax. But in that, I definitely want to make sure I'm echoing what I'm hearing you say. Nobody's asking for them to be put into something. They're already in the CIP. They were in it long ago. the city at the time had appropriated money and re-appropriated to another project without their knowledge. And they've built out their development thinking that once we hit this level, we've got this And then they fought for well over three years, I think, to try to get somebody to listen. And we finally got really good productivity. I know Mr. Hooper's had a good hand in it. So I just want to make sure that this particular instance is accurately represented. But I also, at the same time, understand your concern. We don't want to just take projects on one at a time. We've got our CIP for a reason. And I think staff is set up in a way to field those now better than ever before.

Yeah, I mean, again, I would say it wasn't the budget until it wasn't. And so that money's not been there for a long time. Again, I don't think we should talk about it. To me, it's not about the project. But I think it's about what kind of precedent we're setting when we're only a few months away from saying, okay, let's just put it, let's approve it all.

Well, the good news is we're only a few months away. So if we award this today, we could get these engineers teed up and get some cost analysis back so that when you do bring it for the 27 CIP, you know how much the budget.

Yes, and I think the point of clarification, and maybe I've stated it on Mr. Simpson, that this is only for the engineering services for us to get a true cost.

It's not the amount of the project or whatever. It's just, to me, it's It's a unique situation, I understand that, but I also think, you know, we just, we just need to say that we're, you know, obviously they weren't treated right and we didn't follow through on what they, what they did again, but I think that they advocate that the money's gone, it's not there, and I would say let's consider it with everything else that we consider on this year, and it's, it's less than three months now.

Just so that everyone understands this, there's two different kinds of mains that are identified in the development policy manual. One's a programmed main, one's an unprogrammed main. A programmed means that it has current funding, and that's the only ones that we can approve in a developer's agreement is a programmed main. There is no funding for this bigger project that's out there, and that's why Jerry was saying we have to go through the CIP process first. to see if as it competes against the other CIPs that it would be truly one that is funded in year one before it can become a program name that you can enter into a developers agreement. So even though it was a CIP before, it's not now and you're supposed to evaluate, as we talked about last time, every year the director of utilities evaluates all the CIPs and they do change from being funded to unfunded, so that's not uncommon. But it would have to go through that CIP process first, which you would see, and what all that's competing against as far as other needs in the CIP, especially in water pursuit.

Yeah, I appreciate the clarity, and then really appreciate you know, staff, Mr. Danforth, and you, Mr. Hooper, for jumping in this and going back through it and kind of digging through everything to make sure that it is represented accurately. So I don't have anything further, but I don't want to cut council if you've got anything else we need to discuss or add. Okay, thank you, Mr. Danforth. Item 7.7 is up for consideration.

I move that we approve 7.7. I have a motion. Do I have a second?

I'll second. Motion and a second on item 7.7. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. Item passes with a 4-1 vote. Okay.

Gentlemen, not quite 6.30, but close.

Can I get a motion to adjourn? So moved. Thank you.