City Council - Regular Meeting

I'd like to go ahead and call our meeting to order. We'll recognize a quorum here today, 1pm.

Thank you, Mayor. Pursuant to the Texas Open Meetings, I have to close session. The Amarillo City Council was announced on August the 11th, 2026, at 103 p.m. under the following authorities. Section 551.087, discuss commercial financial information received from an existing business or business prospect from which the city is negotiating for the location or retention of a facility or for incentives the city is willing to extend or financial information submitted by the same. Council has completed the executive session times 1.48.

We're going to go ahead and recognize a quorum back here, and we will continue an open session here. Thank you to everybody who's joining us here today and kind of rejoined. We've been here the morning as well. So ceremonial items. We have our invocation. The one and the only Remy Allen, hereby noticed as the Hillside Christian Associate Pastor. Welcome, sir. If you'll come on down, everybody please stand while he gives the invocation and then remain standing for the pledges.

All right. Well, hello. Thank you. I'd love to pray for us as we begin. Let's pray. God, as this room convenes to talk about matters of the cities, God, I just simply ask that these matters would be handled with grace, clarity, respect, and honor. God, that these people in this room, the people that are in authority in this room, and the people that are listening and taking in, God, I just ask that we would ultimately have the same mindset of you, God, of humility and of grace. And God, that we would recognize that these things are temporal and that ultimately you will make all things right in the end. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.

Please be seated.

Item number three here, as we've been called back to order, would be announcements. Do we have any announcements today? None on the discussion. So moving into discussion items, we have item 4.1, AEDC quarterly update. Do we have the good doctor? Andreas, how you doing today, sir?

Wonderful.

Welcome back stateside. How was your trip?

It was good. Good. It was very successful. Came back with some leads in the aerospace business, so very happy to be here.

Love it. Well, we appreciate you coming to give us an update.

Yes. Today marks my 100th day here in town, so the quarterly report is pretty special to me. I came to this town to, yeah, and to the team to build stability, which is one of the big things. But I think we've done more. We've been working on a strategy how we can attract more companies to Amarillo. And that brings me to point number one. So that's our goal, high-paying jobs. That's what we want to have for the community, and everything else supports that goal. We want to attract companies. We want to help companies who are already here to grow. We want to improve our market readiness and competitiveness because we are competing on a global basis. So there are hundreds of economic development organizations who try to bring business to America or to Texas, and we are just one of them. So we have to be very specific what we can offer and how we compete, so where to play, where to win. So that's what we think about. And another point is also we would like to strengthen entrepreneurship and innovation because we always need new ideas. It's good to have existing companies coming here, existing companies expand, but we need new ones. So our pillars are pretty straightforward. We need a clear value proposition for investors. Why should they come here? I'm talking to CEOs in Chicago or Washington State all the time and they say why should I come to Amarillo and I think we've got some points which are very promising which I'll come to in a minute. Then from a strategy we are shifting our approach from fishing, I'll explain what that means, to hunting and we have to have the team to execute what we think we dream of. So first of all, we get our mandate. We need to recruit firms. We promote Amarillo. Then we help the business who is already here to grow by providing those capital, the human resources, and what we added new is export assistance. So Texas has offices in the UK, in Israel, and in Tokyo. So if any of our companies wants to go export to one of these target markets or the European Union, we help them to drive these exports and we promote innovation. And when we were talking to companies, we figured out we've got a good value proposition, because when we had the German defense company coming over, they said, yeah, we find an emerald something which we don't find in Dallas or Houston. So you've got land, you've got a good logistics standpoint, and you've got people who still want to work. So sometimes in other cities, people like to work from home. Here, people still come to the office, still come to the factory. And I think that's one big pro for us, that we can things done and we offer quicker wins to Amarillo. We figured out our target industries because we can't compete everywhere. So we were looking at industries where we've got strong clusters which might fit our schedule and we try to go to trade shows, conferences and attract in these target industries with partners. Our target markets are very easy because we are going to cities or states where the land is pretty expensive, where labor is expensive, and which are highly regulated because we have got this value proposition that we are super business friendly and we get things done quickly. And this was the big shift in our strategy because traditionally economic development organizations wait for government leads so that the government says this kind of industry would like to expand to you and then we send out RFI and work on it. But we said why should we wait till the telephone rings or we get an email if we know which companies should be in Amarillo. We've got aerospace companies, we've got defense companies, we have our top 25 list for every of these industries now, and we are calling them up, we are ringing them up, we are going to trade shows, we are going to conference, whatever it takes to knock on them and get them to Amarillo as easy and soon as possible. So we are getting our message out. And I'm very thankful. I've got a great team. And that's not normal, because in economic development, people switch their jobs mostly every two to three years. So here in my organization or in our organization, everybody has five years of experience, which is very helpful, because we know the processes. We know how to win. And we are trying to get our team back on track. We were more people. So we are hiring right now a director of business recruitment. who is in contact with all the companies and if we got this hired, Dan will be more active and maybe hire another person next year. then one point is also always important in economic development 80 of the jobs created come from business who are already in town so we are talking actively to all these companies how can we help you export how can we help you grow and we'll organize an event this year just to mingle with them tell them more about the services which we can provide and help them to create more jobs and i think we've got a great value proposition here we've got our target industries And, yeah, now we're building our entire pipeline of companies which we're going to attack, and I'm pretty sure we'll be successful. Thank you very much. Open for any questions.

Questions for Dr. Andre, or Dr. Eckstein? No? We appreciate what you've got going over there. The planning, the strategic plan, hunting and fishing, right? I think that's a really good way to kind of capture that. Can you give us just a little bit of maybe

the size of animal that you're hunting down are you guys targeting that differently you know so like you can go hunt rabbits right yeah no we're targeting deers i would say so we're not going for elephants or rhinos so for example in aerospace most economic development people are hunting airbus or boeing the big ones but we know we are good in helicopters helicopter parts and

drones so we are in the medium size that's our target market you're not hunting elephants right but you're out deer hunting and those are that's a good game to bring down right do you have and will you when you bring your budget to us do you have everything you need to have the size and caliber rifle that you need so do you feel good about your budget ready to bring it forward here

We've been working for two weeks on it and we're ready. So I think it's our needs what we need We need to market ourselves. We need a good team. And yeah, we are in a good position.

I think okay council any remarks before we let the good doctor go I

Two things. One is you and I had a conversation and one of the things you mentioned that's important for a community on economic development, I guess, is service to the airport. Yes. Why is that important? And if you had to pick a city that we should be targeting or have you had any experience of trying to grow destinations. So why is that important? And if you could pick one destination that you'd like to see Amarillo have direct air service from, what would it be to help us with our economic development?

That's a good question. It would be Chicago or Atlanta for me. We've got many requests of companies who say we just want to have one stop to Europe. We get a lot of requests in the helicopter business for direct flights. We got a request today from Turkey, and they say we want to reach most destinations with one stop in America. So, yeah, if we don't have enough long flights within the state, it's limiting us. So anything we could do to get flights to Chicago would help us a lot.

Okay. And then you mentioned, is it pretty much standard that in economic development as you're creating new jobs, you said on average about 80% of new jobs come from someone that's already in your community?

That's correct. It's an interesting number because we are hunting a lot, we are fishing a lot, but it also makes very much sense to cater to all the communities and appreciate them who are already here and help them to export and to grow. So we'll work on that.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you very much for your time.

Really good. We appreciate you. Have a great day. Thank you. Thank you. Item 4.2, Mr. Diaz, we've got our city marshal coming up here to talk about some of our municipal code as it relates to streets and obstruction.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about the Emerald Municipal Code Section 4-6-15. This section of the code speaks particularly to the obstructions of streets, alleys, and sidewalks by trees and other vegetation. What does that mean? Let's just dive into what the code says. Our current ordinance says it shall be unlawful for any owner, occupant, or person in charge of any premises to, One, allow the branches of any tree to extend over or into a public street or alley at a height of less than 14 and 1 1⁄2 feet. What that means is in both the street and an alley, from the pavement to the bottom of the tree branches and canopy, there has to be a clearance of 14 1⁄2 feet. Item number two, allow the branches of any tree to extend over the public sidewalk at a height less than seven feet. What that means is over a sidewalk, you gotta maintain a clearance of seven feet. Item number three, allow any shrubbery or similar vegetation to extend into or over any public street, alley, or sidewalk, blocking or hindering pedestrian or vehicular access. In those cases, that's when you have your brush, trees, vegetation, whatever growing onto a sidewalk that prohibits or limits access from people trying to utilize the sidewalk. That also happens on streets and alleys on occasion. Item number four, the city may cut, trim, or remove any trees, shrubbery, or similar vegetation that encroaches upon a public street, alley, or sidewalk in violation of this section to the extent needed to comply with this section. This remedy is in addition to any other remedy provided by Section 1-1-5 or other law. What that's saying is if there is a violation, that gives the city authority to remove that violation. Section 1-1-5 talks about how we notify them item number let me let me back up our current city practices item number four that I just talked about is only enforced by the city when there is a site restriction such as at an intersection that requires the immediate removal or when the city is conducting road maintenance and it is necessary for equipment access MANY TIMES YOU'LL SEE AT AN INTERSECTION THERE'S TREES GROWING INTO YOUR SITE VIEW, AND SO WHEN YOU'RE TRYING TO ENTER THE ROADWAY, THAT TREE'S BLOCKING, MAYBE BLOCKING. THAT'S WHAT THAT'S REFERRING TO, AND THAT'S TYPICALLY THE ONLY TWO TIMES THAT WE'LL REMOVE TREES, THE SITE RESTRICTION AND ALSO WHEN PUBLIC WORKS IS DOING ROAD MAINTENANCE. Property owners are notified of any upcoming street maintenance. They put out hangers and social media, et cetera. They are notified of that upcoming street maintenance. It's important to note that our team does not proactively seek out this type of violation. I want to be clear that we're not out measuring tree branches just on an everyday basis. That's not part of our everyday role. However, if we receive that complaint, we will follow up on that. This violation is primarily complaint driven. Over the last two and a half years, we've averaged two per month. We've averaged about approximately 60 complaints. What happens when we receive a complaint? Our office will initiate a case, our code enforcement officer will investigate, and if there is a violation, a notice of violation is sent to the property owner. That property owner is granted 10 business days to come into compliance. Our code enforcement officer will then re-inspect after the time allotted. And if the violation has been resolved, the case is closed and no further action is taken. In the case that the violation still exists, then we take a different path. And that path consists of us sending a summons to the municipal court for prosecution. That cost is typically $350 per violation, but it can range from $0 to $500. And that's going to depend on the circumstances and the judge will make that decision on that fine. It's important to note that each day that it is not in compliance is a separate violation and can be a separate summons or citation. The city currently does not have a method for abatement as we do for overgrown weeds and junk and debris. I want to talk about this specifically because it's important to know that currently when we have overgrown weeds or junk and debris, we'll send the notification just like we do for the overhanging trees. But if they don't come into compliance, then we're able to mitigate that nuisance with a city contractor. So that process that I just identified does not allow for the abatement of violation. In other words, because we don't have that program in place, we don't have a way to mitigate that, does it not matter how many citations we send or how many court summons we send, the tree overhang can still remain there because there's nothing to make that go away. What are other cities doing? There's a snapshot of six other cities. As you can see there, as far as overhang over sidewalks, their ordinance is pretty close to ours, between six and eight feet. As far as overhang over streets, it's a much broader range, between six feet and 16 feet. And that last column just simply says whether there's an image provided in their ordinance or not. I think it's important to note that every one of these cities has a similar process. They notify the property owner, tell them there's a violation. But every one of those, except Amarillo, has a way to mitigate the nuisance. They also all then bill the property owner for the associated cost. So I figured this would be important information for you all. Some equipment and apparatus sizes. Our fire department, their tallest vehicle in their fleet currently is 12 feet tall. Public works departments, you can see they range from 12 and a half to 13 and a half feet. And then our common delivery vans and trucks between 7 and 10 feet. Those are going to be your Amazon, UPS, etc. I found these two incidents. You can see there the photo on our left is a semi truck parked in residential area. I know they're typically not allowed there, but in this case it's a moving truck and they are unloading. But my point to this picture, as you can see, I talked to the driver and he told me his vehicle is 13 and a half feet tall. You can also see the branches that he knocked down when he was parking there. And then the photo on the right, That's just a regular everyday vehicle. I didn't get out and measure that. I just Googled that average height of those vehicles. But the importance of this photo is you can see the tree branches go right on top of the roof of that vehicle. Our recommendations, of course, it's going to depend on the direction you all want us to go. But based on the findings, here are some recommendations. First one would be to change the height over a public street. and an alleyway i didn't include that on the text but it should be also for the alley from 14 and a half feet to 12 feet that'll give be less restrictive for our citizens and then in section four we add a sentence similar to uh that text shown there in red that states for the purpose of street maintenance we're already able to do that but this will just make it a little more clear I think it'd be important to add a paragraph that allows the city the authority to cut and trim and remove without a notice. And those would only be the time when there's an immediate hazard, like I mentioned earlier, at a intersection for a site restriction. One thing that we have learned is a lot of times people will run into that intersection drive by there and they see the violation but we don't hear about it until it's very very significant so that's the time that we would use that we wouldn't use that any other time unless it's just immediate threat to safety and then another recommendation would be to establish a fee schedule similar to what we already have for the lance for the mowing the overgrown weeds, and that would allow us to abate the nuisance. We wouldn't be sending out summons. We'd just do the same process that we're already doing with the overgrown weeds and junk and debris. And then my last recommendation would be just to add an image on our ordinance or in our ordinance and show up on our website. I think it would simplify what we're asking our community to do or what their responsibility is in regards to the tree height clearance. That's that's all I have. Thank you for that time and I'll be glad to answer any questions. Questions Council.

Jacob, appreciate appreciate this. A lot of this stemmed from a complaint that was filed that I drove out there and you know, did my thing and yeah, parked my truck underneath it, which is pretty big truck. I think it's over 6 feet tall and there's plenty of clearance. I mean, it was. I mean, plenty of clearance, but. Technically, according to our current ordinance, it didn't meet the ordinance. It wasn't 14 and a half feet. That's correct. So that's where this thing started, a lot of it. So my point is, a great job on this, and I agree. You and I were talking before. I think the picture helps illustrate to a homeowner exactly what that means. I would say one other item to maybe include, and we talked about this because we have a stick, right? Yes, sir. 14 feet tall or whatever it is, and if the branches hit that, then it doesn't meet. I think there needs to be some guidance on where we take that measurement from, because if we take it at the curb, a lot of the newer housing developments, they have a requirement to plant trees along the side, and so they're right there up against, they're really pretty close. But where we take that measurement from, because I think you and I talked, when we do it at the curb, It's very, I mean, it's gonna get almost every tree. I mean, really. I mean, at a current 14. At 12, that'll help. But most emergency vehicles and bigger trucks, they're not going to travel. They're not traveling up against the curb or even a foot away from the curb. Typically, if there's no traffic, they're going to be almost in the center of a residential street versus on the right or the left. I would say that maybe just throw that out for discussion of maybe we take that measurement. I don't know. I have no idea, six feet, eight feet from the curb so that it allows, if that tree's growing properly, it's everything is out and up. So they may have some branches that are below that 12 foot level close, but as long as they're growing up, if we go out six or eight feet, well, they've met the 12 foot. It just makes sense for the 14, whatever we're going to choose to do. So that's the only thing that I would suggest is maybe we decide where are we taking that measurement from. I know the ordinance reads just overhangs the street. So, I mean, I think if we could be a little bit clearer of where we take that measurement, that might help as well. Yes, sir.

That's a great idea. We can change the image to depict that. Okay.

And maybe not affect as many homeowners as well. Because there's some pretty trees, and up here in the panhandle, we want our trees. Yes, sir. and you know there's some that are definitely not in compliance like that one you showed that picture of that small vehicle with the limbs on top well that clearly needs you know needs to be trimmed it needs to be trimmed up but there's a lot of nice trees that are maybe below this but are at least the right direction and if we took that measurement out it would be better we can do that but yeah but thank you thank you for this councilman one thing i've noticed as the uh

Maintenance on the streets is occurring. We're seeing a lot of these trees that are being trimmed right along the curb. If we're going to charge the citizens to trim these trees, can we trim the trees correctly? As we know, trees, especially residential trees, are hard to come by. And so many times you see these trees, they just go straight up from the curb. And there's right ways to trim trees, and there's wrong ways to trim trees. And I mean, you don't cut your arm right in the middle. You cut it at a joint, right? If we're going to charge the citizens to trim these trees, we at least need to trim them correctly so the trees don't die from disease.

Absolutely. That's a great idea, and I agree with you. And I think we can easily incorporate that into our schedule when we establish that, where and how we're going to do that. And we'll work with landscapers here in town that can help us out, be more specific with that.

I noticed we recently, because I heard from a few people, but we were recently doing some, I guess, road work in Bucket. How many do we know approximately how many trees we had to trim in that particular project?

I do not. I don't have that answer for you. I know that was part of the actual project that was incorporated into the project where the contractor would go out there and do that, but I don't know that number. I can get that number.

I didn't know if it was a lot. My only thing would be, and I agree with you, if most Because that seemed to be where the problem or the issue came from. Some people that I heard from was that if the equipment is going to, because the equipment to repair the road is going to probably go right up to the curb. And if their tree was too large and our equipment comes through, it could tear down their limbs, trees, or those types of things. It could not only damage our equipment, but it also could cause further harm to the tree. So I didn't know if that came up that often and whether the equipment that we use to work in these residential areas, will the 12-foot work for that equipment?

Yeah, so to answer your question, it does come up quite often when we're doing a street project, especially if we have dump trucks or something that has lifts on them or hire trucks like that. So I'm not sure what the number of that was. But back to your question, too, the reason that they trimmed them straight up at the time, I think they were given a notice and the homeowner was given an opportunity to trim those as well. but going on private property and doing work is a whole other issue as well too so a lot of that getting on the private property where we'd actually be pruning the tree at the at the trunk of the tree would be doing work on private property so i think working with them this is going to help us to answer your question mr simpson is that this would help us greatly with the construction projects to be able to have that that height change

But I guess my question is, when we're doing road work and repair, are those vehicles, would that fall under the 12 feet? And then even, again, if it goes close to the curb, which on truck repair, on road repairs it would, is this, I mean, if it's 12 feet in the center, is it still, I'm just wondering how we're going to work out, if we've had many problems and how we would work that out, if, I mean, if, if we're trying to get through to pave or repair, but our truck is higher than that, it's going to cause damage. I mean, just how that would work.

Sure. I understand the question. We'll go back and make sure that that fits that equipment height, but it should. But I don't have the measurements here with me, or I haven't been thinking about the height of those trucks. But we can go back and look at that and make sure that it fits that as well and get back with Jacob and his team.

OK. Thank you.

I'm just trying to figure out, based on the picture that you give as an example, and that truck is 13 and a half feet, what was the rationale to go down to 12 when that truck obviously is hitting branches? Why wouldn't we stay at the 14 foot?

Typically, those types of vehicles, for instance, your semi-tractor trailer isn't going to be in a residential area. Your solid waste vehicles, those are going to be in the alley most of the time, other than the polycarts. A lot of times with the polycarts, they'll put them in a place where there's not a tree there, so they'll be able to lift it anyway. So that's not really a bigger issue. And I think it's important to point out, and I spoke with Alan Harder, our public works director about this and and it's not that it's not an issue it's not that the tree branches aren't there creating an issue it's it's more along the lines that their drivers are really good about maneuvering around that just like anything else if there's an obstacle they'll go around it and i spoke with uh chief kyle joy He had a similar response. It's not that those issues don't exist. It's their drivers are just good about going around and avoiding those hazards. But I think it's important to point out that's not as easy to do in an alley where you have very much more narrow right of way to get through.

Any other questions for Mr. Marshall? No? Thank you for the presentation. Thank you. Appreciate you, sir. Okay, I'll keep us moving on item 4.3, North Heights Community Air Quality Monitoring Effort. Mrs. Tolleson, how are you doing?

Doing well, thank you. Good. GOOD AFTERNOON, MAYOR AND COUNCIL. MY NAME IS SHANNON TOLLIS AND I'M THE DIRECTOR OF UTILITIES FOR REGULATORY COMPLIANCE. I'M HERE TO TALK TO YOU TODAY ABOUT SOME CONTINUOUS AIR MONITORING THAT WAS DONE IN THE NORTH HEIGHTS COMMUNITY IN THE 2025 CALENDAR YEAR. so i want to start by giving you a little bit of project history in october 2024 not long after mr path became the city manager the community leaders of the north heights approached the city of amarillo with concerns regarding potential exposure to hydrogen sulfide gas from the aging sewer infrastructure in the community One of the outcomes of that meeting was that the City of Amarillo optioned to perform an air quality monitoring effort in the community. So we went out and obtained quotes for an air quality monitoring program. On May 2nd of 2025, Trinity Consultants was selected to perform the air monitoring. THE PROJECT WAS ESTIMATED AT 43,000, THAT'S WHY YOU GUYS DIDN'T SEE THIS BE BROUGHT TO COUNCIL BECAUSE IT WAS UNDER THAT 50,000 THRESHOLD. THE PROJECT TODAY IS TOTALLY COMPLETE AND CAME IN UNDER BUDGET AT $38,631 AND SOME CHANGE. THE PROJECT IS CLOSED AND CAPITALIZED AT THIS POINT. So, following the selection of Trinity consultants, we had a public meeting on May 20th of 2025 at the St. John Baptist Church, and the discussion topics included during that presentation was that, number one, hydrogen sulfide is a natural process of decomposition. If you have wastewater, you're going to have hydrogen sulfide production. Another point that we discussed is that the odor for hydrogen sulfide is actually detectable at extremely low levels. And I want you to hold on to that idea because I'm going to come back to it here in just a minute. Another item was that we proposed the selection of four monitoring sites to put the monitoring equipment based on the underground infrastructure in that area. And lastly, the selection of the consultant and the details of the monitoring plan. Okay, so I want to take you back to that odor detectable at extremely low levels. I need you guys to all do me a favor and imagine for a second that you have a grain of sand between your fingers. One part per billion is the equivalent of being able to detect that one part of sand from an entire dump truck full of sand. So I like to use that analogy to give people the context of the numbers we're going to be using in this presentation. So hydrogen sulfide is detectable by 83% of the population at a half part per billion. So half of a grain of sand out of a dump truck full of sand can be detectable as a different thing than the rest of those grains of sand. So I like to just give people that point of context before we go into some of the data that came from this monitoring plan. So I told you we selected monitoring locations. This is the map that we provided at that public meeting on May 20th of the four sites that were selected in the North Heights community. And again, they were selected based upon the infrastructure in that area. So I did make note of the infrastructure and I will explain why the infrastructure we selected was important. so at northwest 19th and north rusk at that location we have an eight inch sewer main going into a 10 inch sewer main at 20th and north hughes we have three sewer mains connecting two 10 inch two remains in a six inch sewer main at northwest 13th and north north mcmasters we have two six inch sewer mains that connect in that location and then lastly at northwest ninth and north washington that is where the big gravity lines are so there is a 24 inch line that connects to a 30 there's a 15 inch line and there's a 24 inch line so there's a lot of infrastructure at that intersection so we selected those locations because whenever you have sewer water flowing through a pipe when that sewer water kind of hits an area where it becomes more turbid that's a situation we're going to have more gas released from that sewer so we've selected those monitoring locations because realistically THE INFRASTRUCTURE IN THOSE AREAS, IT GIVES US SOME CONTEXT ON WHETHER OR NOT THERE'S MORE GAS BEING RELEASED FROM THOSE LOCATIONS THAN OTHER LOCATIONS THROUGHOUT THE COMMUNITY. SO JUST WANTED TO GIVE CONTEXT ON WHY WE SELECTED THESE FOUR LOCATIONS. AND AGAIN, I DON'T REMEMBER IF I SAID THIS, BUT THIS SLIDE, THE MAP WAS PRESENTED AT THAT PUBLIC MEETING ON THE 20TH OF MAY IN 2025. The continuous monitoring effort, what we did is we installed continuous hydrogen sulfide monitors that were calibrated by the consultant at each of those locations. So each one of those locations had one of these monitoring devices. Each one of them were placed at 40 inches height from the ground, which is considered breathing zone. So that's where you want to do air quality monitoring at is the location where people are going to be breathing the air. That data was transmitted cellularly every hour and each unit took a measurement every 10 minutes during the entire duration of the sample monitoring effort. Additionally, we elected to have canister sampling. On the right-hand side, you see there's like a silver dome right there. The canister sampling was a little bit different than the continuous hydrogen sulfide because what the canister sample was designed to do was to capture other species of air that can potentially cause similar odors. So there's hundreds of hydrogen compounds that can cause similar odors. So we selected to also do some canister monitoring just to be able to say, like, is it hydrogen sulfide? Are there other constituents that could potentially cause odor complaints to come from the community? Lastly, these samples were sent out to an accredited laboratory for analysis. There's not a laboratory in our region that does accredited air quality monitoring, so these were sent out to a third-party laboratory. The duration of the monitoring. So we monitored, the project was actually selected to be for 30 days. We monitored for 39 consecutive days from June 16th of 2025 and ending July 24th of 2025. We took instantaneous readings from each location every 10 minutes during that entire period of time, totaling 930 hours of data collection during the monitoring period. Those canisters that we show you were deployed from July 21st to July 24th, and I do have a slide where I kind of discuss what the difference between those monitoring periods were. Also, just any time I'm dealing with data, I like to give integrity statements if anything happened during the duration. We did lose the batteries on the unit located at 9th and Washington at 1 a.m. on the 18th of July. That system was back online by the 22nd of July. So what were the monitoring results? So first I'm going to show you the hourly, or I'm sorry, the instantaneous averages, and then we'll go into the hourly averages. There were 24 instances of non-zero H2S results observed during the 10-minute data collection. The highest reading observed was 10 parts per billion. So again, going back to those grains of sand, it was the equivalent of 10 grains of sand. I just broke this. the equivalent of 10 grains of sand for that entire dump truck full of sand. Now, each one of those instantaneous results was utilized to obtain the hourly results. 21 hourly averages using the 10-minute data was compiled. It is important to note that one of our monitoring locations, Northwest 20th and North Hughes Street, had zero detections of H2S during the entire monitoring period. The highest hourly average detected was 2.3 parts per billion. So why do we need the hourly average? There are state laws pertaining to any release of hydrogen sulfide gas and any cause of those releases. The state average is the equivalent of 80 parts per billion over a 30-minute period of time. So for us to do the monitoring we did using the hourly averages, we want to kind of show the comparison of what those results came back as and how they compare to state requirements. So on this next slide, this is the exact same data, but the chart on the right is the hourly concentrations The chart on the left, from where I'm standing, is the concentration, I'm sorry, left and right is terrible with me. The chart on the right is the hourly concentrations against that state limitation. So the red line at the top is that TCEQ limitation associated with H2S in any community. So well below any of those thresholds during the entire monitoring effort. So I said we also did canister monitoring. The purpose of that canister monitoring, again, to show whether or not there are any other constituents that could have potentially been causing odor complaints. All of the sample results came back from each one of those as non-detect. What that means is just that any reading in those samples was too low for the laboratory instrument to actually be able to detect and quantify. Now, this does not make this useless data. What this does confirm to us is there is H2S gas present in the community, and it confirms that what is being smelled whenever we are getting odor complaints from the community is H2S gas, or H2S odors in general. So the final conclusion of the H2S monitoring effort was that, again, the continuous monitoring occurred and was carried out for those 30 consecutive days at the four locations that we told you about. Out of those 930 total hours of data collection, only 21 hours of non-zero H2S levels was recorded, the highest of those hourly average being 2.3 parts per billion at one single site. There was no instantaneous or hourly average that exceeded a state of Texas ambient air limitation. So what did we do next? After the completion of the project, we met with the North Heights community leaders on February 4th of this year. We included Dr. Todd Bell in that discussion to present any health impacts of hydrogen sulfide gas at the concentrations observed. During that conversation, community leaders expressed concerns that the sampling was not performed in the primary location of concern. So in the locations that they would recommend, they would recommend locations further to the east than where we originally monitored. So the community leaders also expressed interest in additional monitoring further to the east. So at this point, we kind of need council input on what the next effort should be and what the next actions we should take associated with this. So what we tried to do is put together just some general discussion points for you guys, but not necessarily. Whatever direction you provide us with, we will take that direction and come back at the next city council to make that next step forward. So first option is that because we hit no regulatory requirements and we performed air monitoring under the approval of the project that we had proposed, there is no requirement that we continue monitoring. We have data, we can reference back to stating that we perform monitoring for a duration of time and these were the results from that monitoring. Another two options and I put them to the two side by side so that I can show you the next two slides to kind of give you context of where these locations are but we can perform additional monitoring at locations requested by the North Heights community leader. Or we can perform continuous monitoring at the locations that the consultant has recommended for us. So I'll give you context on why those two locations are different from one another. Lastly, we do have the option of performing continuous citywide monitoring for a period of anywhere from six months to a year. The point of this would be to get a whole city background. The North Heights community is not the only community we get odor complaints from. Now, there's not a cost associated with this because it's just if you direct us to go and look into this project, we absolutely will. But we didn't put a cost associated with it for this initial discussion point. So to kind of discuss those locations of the proposed monitoring by the North Heights community. So these locations with the red tacks are the locations that have been requested by the community. One of those locations, the location that is called lift station 17 is actually the location of an odor control unit or a lift station in the area. So that is some point of infrastructure that we could have an impact on. From the other locations, The location at 24th Avenue in North Washington is from, you know, a stone's throw. It's 792 feet from that location at Northwest 20th and North Hughes, which we detected zero instances of hydrogen sulfide in that area. Also, there's just no actual infrastructure at that area. There's not necessarily a sewer main or anything in those areas that if we did find hydrogen sulfide concentrations in that area that we could actually do anything regarding the infrastructure improvements, repairs, whatever the case is. So we took the same data and we presented it to the consultant that did the monitoring and they provided us with some recommended site locations. Their site locations first and foremost selected the Northwest 9th and Washington location as kind of a control point. That's the point where we had the highest number of non-zero readings during the monitoring period last time. Also, predominantly during the entire monitoring period, the winds were from the southwest traveling to the northeast. So they've recommended that you take monitoring points that are both downstream and upstream of one point of concern. Additionally, all of these sites that were selected, there's infrastructure at those sites. There's a lift station at each one of the remaining three sites that we would monitor. So all of those locations again help us provide some additional data associated with what the next monitoring plan would be. Additionally, we don't have a direct funding source. If it's selected that we need to do additional monitoring, we will also have to come back and request a transfer from either CIP or one of the existing projects in one of those situations. So I wanted to take that opportunity to kind of give some discussion points, but at this point I'm available for any questions.

Do we not, do we have, H2S monitors that we could go out to these locations very similar to what we would wear in the oil field or at a refinery location or any hydrocarbon location that would give us an indication if we're picking up anything before we initiated a complete study.

So we do, the reason that we started the study in general is that our meters are for instantaneous use and not continuous reads. So the ones that you carry around as a personal detection system are not typically sub-part per billion. They don't record values down that low as an annual average. So we elected to use the types of sensors that we have to be able to get those ultra-low detection limits associated with them. The instruments that we use, again, they're there to kind of notify people whether or not they're in a safe or unsafe environment associated with like OSHA working conditions. We don't have any that are specifically like the monitoring continuous operations every 10 minutes and sending cellular readings and things like that. We don't have any of those that we ourselves manage. We don't have an air quality department. So we do have those units, we do use those units whenever we're going to be entering a lift station or going into a sewer main, but they're not calibrated and they're not sub-park pavilion read.

The original four locations that we set up the study site, were those locations that the citizens were concerned about as well at the time?

We just got a general, there's a concern in the neighborhood. So we took that information and we developed a monitoring plan and we presented that monitoring plan to the neighborhood and they didn't have any comments or suggestions at that time of moving the site locations.

And we did basically six weeks and now we're going to go six months. What's the methodology behind that?

so a standard air quality monitoring you you by by the the standard principle and practice of a routine monitoring program to get a baseline you want seasonality you don't get seasonality well amarillo is unique you can get seasonality but realistically what the consultant is recommending is that especially in an area that you know our climate can be incredibly hot or incredibly cold And then you have these swing seasons in between where you have a lot of variables. To get a true baseline of what the community is experiencing, you need seasonality associated with that. This was done in June and July. Their results in November and December are going to be different just because the climate and the cold air is going to hold constituents closer to those monitoring stations and things like that. So that is a recommendation of the consultant is to do seasonal monitoring to be able to show those variables from the seasonality.

One final question. Do we have any instances of human health or adverse effects to human health that would push this study forward?

I invited Dr. Bell. Did Dr. Bell show up? Okay. I'll bring up Casey.

Dr. Bell is seeing patients today, so what he wanted to communicate was that the hydrogen sulfide levels measured are at 1,000th of the level in which we would have medical concerns, and while they are annoying, would not appear to be a medical problem.

Thank you.

Council, other questions? Okay. Direction?

I think at this time there's an adequate study being completed and I think there's no further action.

Comfortable with the study as it's completed until something could cause, you know, the need to drive one? One option the other option I think you're recommending would be like 64,000 dollars would be the recommendation if we were do something further you need the seasonality.

Yeah, so again to get a baseline for that community would be 64,000 dollars. That community is not the only community that has had odor complaints in the area. If you were going to do a full study to get a community baseline, you would need to expand this to many other communities and do it for the same period of time that is recommended, that seasonality, six months to a full year of monitoring. Which, again, we didn't bring you a price because it's going to be higher than what the $64,000 is going to come back at.

Let me ask a different question. If these results would have been different, what would the repair look like in that neighborhood?

There's a couple different options in terms of how we repair the infrastructure. There are specific manhole covers we can install that prevent the gas from being released. You don't want to use too many of those because hydrogen sulfide is combustible. So you don't want to turn your sewer system into with a sewer bomb necessarily. The other option is the installation of something called an odor control unit. We do have an odor control unit up on Northwest 24th in that location. The odor control unit basically is a scrubber that pulls the gas out, runs it through an activated carbon filter, and then just releases the gas as kind of innate gas. Those, I think the cost, the last we looked at, the unit by itself is about $80,000 with installation and all those things. They're typically $120,000 to $150,000 for any of those units. The more cost effective is the manhole covers, but realistically we can't install them across the entire city because you do have to allow the gas to release in some locations. You'd rather them go through a manhole rather than into somebody's sewer system back into their house.

I would agree with Prescott. With the findings that we found, I mean, they're so small. I think Casey said one thousandth of where it's even a threat at all. I just don't see spending another $64,000 when it's that small, just my opinion. Okay.

And again, Dr. Bell said minimal impact to human health.

Yes.

And it was a 2.3 parts per billion when the state regulatory limit is 80 parts per million, correct? 80 parts per billion.

It's 0.08 parts per million, but I wanted to keep the terminology the same across the board.

So 35 times below regulatory detection limit.

Yes.

Councilman? Have we had problems with this? I mean, I guess what we're dealing with, I guess, is you said it takes a very tiny amount of this to be detected by the notes, I guess is what you're saying. So while people can smell it, and it could even have a strong odor, this was looking at the health component, and it said, I guess, according to your, I guess, the state, You had the chart that had our readings down here, the red line up here, and there was a great deal of difference in between. Have we ever had any problems with this type of gas from a health situation, or how would we find that out if we had one?

I don't necessarily know the history. I can tell you from occupational safety standards for areas like refineries, there are occupational limits that are established, but they're well above the limits that we were seeing. Stephanie, we had that one slide that had the exposure ranges. So in general, short-term exposure is typically expected to be between one to 10 part per million. Again, now you're talking 1,000 times larger than what we were detecting. That's for short-term exposure. Chronic exposure during that same area, basically between 10 to 20 parts per million is when OSHA would start setting limitations to exposure over a duration of a work period. So these are parts per billion. These are a factor lower than that. So from a hydrogen sulfide and human health effect standpoint, what we're seeing doesn't constitute anything that would cause human health effects. But again, from the history, we've never done H2S monitoring um for an entire community or for a duration of time like councilman prescott was referencing like we have monitors the tceq has gone out with us to the neighborhood with their monitors and verified they didn't have anything that had any levels of concern but again we've never done a monitoring program where we have any kind of history and duration that i could speak to to answer your question formally

And is there anything that would indicate that the results we would get if we did testing, whether it was where the citizens wanted or whether the consultant did? I mean, is there anything that would show that we would get different results? I mean, are there any other factors there or?

Aside from the fact that the weather, the seasonality is going to change what your readings look like. I don't think the weather would change it to be, to Councilman Prescott's point, 38 times different than what it is right now. But I don't know that for sure. And again, at the end of the day, the benefit of having the data is the data is what it is. It's defensible forever. I can interpret it one way, somebody else can interpret it differently, but it is what it is. So the seasonality can absolutely affect the results that you get, but I have a hard time believing it would make that large of a difference in the difference of what we're seeing from a 30 day monitoring period during June and July to a six month monitoring period.

Was there any correlation between the higher values, the 2.3 parts per billion, and humidity or time of day? Could you get a timestamp on that?

We absolutely have timestamps on every single reading. We also did the title of this slide is high split modeling. So we took reverse trajectories of the atmospheric data during the same 39 consecutive days of monitoring. and pointed them backwards, and the final report states that the H2S levels tend to be elevated when the wind is predominantly coming from the southwest, that you see those peak points in data. But the entire monitoring period, we have the humidity at every single time it took the reading, we have what the atmospheric pressure was every single time we took the reading, we have all of that data.

Was there a correlation with higher humidity values in sampling dates?

I don't recall. It was very dry during the period that we did the entire monitoring, but I don't have the report in front of me to necessarily say, like, oh, on this date it was 53% and we saw this value in that area. We absolutely know that if you get a colder day and your humidity goes up on those colder days, you're absolutely going to have more calls about odor complaints and things like that just because it

becomes more permeable in the atmosphere are we seeing anything at all in the evenings clearly odor nuisance calls would increase but the compounds that we're seeing coming out of feed yards is that similar to what we're seeing in terms of h2s methane different things like that

I don't recall that during the monitoring period there was a specific time of day that we saw more instances of non-zero values. They were kind of sporadic throughout the entire area. And again, one entire area had no readings associated with it. It is interesting because You know, if you do a search, like a Google search on what ambient atmospheric H2S is in a community, you can get any value between 0.0033 parts per billion up to 8 parts per billion, but it's dependent on where that location is. Most of that monitoring is not done in a location that the predominant industry in the area is agriculture. There are research studies specifically located at confined animal feeding operations, and we did reference that whenever we were looking for the regulatory requirements, but again, I can't see any specific correlations between times of day and when you would see specific functions happening. I would anticipate that maybe 7 o'clock in the evening when the sewer is becoming more overloaded, but the data didn't necessarily show that being the case.

Thank you. If I could ask, Shannon, could you easily count up the manhole covers and put a cost to that for if we did look at that as just an odor prevention method? So let's assume here that the direction of council is we don't have a health concern. We have an odor nuisance. And we want to try to help mitigate that in that particular neighborhood where we get the complaint or the call from. um could you bring that to council just so we could we could get a value and kind of look at that as a potential and if you put your recommendation on how many of those you could swap out and if it would help i know i know it may be a practice but then we would greatly appreciate your opinion on i mean you would see some reduction of that odor will do okay anything else council thank you ma'am thank you have a great day All right, discussion 4.4, Clifton Larson-Allen is online with us here. And so do we want to hand this directly over to them or Miss Lola, do you have anything you need to address before we go? Looks like it, so. Afternoon, Miss Ogunremi.

Good afternoon, sir. I'll just give a brief introduction. I'd like to introduce Mr. Scott Krichnak, principal of CLA, Clifton Larson Allen, and Roy Cobb, the audit director of CLA, who are both connected on Teams for the FY 2024-2025 single audit presentation. The single audit presentation provides an overview of the single audit, including its purpose, scope, key requirements, and results, and it highlights the organization's compliance with applicable federal requirements, identifies significant findings or areas for improvement, and outlines the steps taken to strengthen internal controls and ensure continued compliance. So with that, I'LL PASS IT ON TO SCOTT.

THANK YOU. FOR THE CITY OF AMARILLO TEXAS FOR THE YEAR ENDED SEPTEMBER 30TH, We released this report on June 30th, 2026, and on that same date, we filed this with the Federal Audit Clearinghouse, which included the submission of the data collection form, and that submission was accepted by the federal government. This report was released to the mayor and city council members, I believe, in the first week of July. So you've had some time to go through this report and hopefully formulate any questions you may have. I was going to turn the presentation over to Roy Cobb, who was the director for the single audit portion of the Amarillo engagement. And Roy is going to go through the highlights slash findings of the single audit testing. We will be available to Take it away, Roy.

Okay, good afternoon everyone. My name is Roy Cobb and I was the audit director for the single audit portion of the City of Amarillo audit this year. I am going to go through step by step through the single audit report, which I believe Stephanie has a copy of and is going to be presenting on the screen. So, yes, there it is. Perfect. Okay. So, as we see on the table of contents on the second page right here, We basically, the main highlights that we're going to talk about are the findings, which are technically on pages 15 to 28, the corrective action plans for those, which are on pages 31 to 36, And then, um, the fact that there is a audit also attached to this. Uh, we'll briefly discuss that. So, uh, I guess without further ado, we can skip on down to. The summary of, uh. Audit programs and findings, which is on, I believe page 13 slash 14. CFA with the CFA notes. Those are the expenses that we audited during the current year. And then here's our summary of our results. So essentially, we have audited five programs for FY25. Those are the federal programs, there was four of them, the Housing Voucher Cluster, the Airport Improvement Program, the SAFER Program, the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response, the Community Development Block Grant, and then we did have one STATE AUDIT OF STATE FUNDS, AND THAT ONE, YES, THE TRANSIT OPERATING ASSISTANCE PROGRAM. So those were our five programs. And all in all, there were a total of 10 audit findings, one of which was a financial statement audit finding, the other nine being part of the federal audit. So the four federal programs that we audited, they each touched upon at least one finding for a total of nine in summary. So just to go through and, you know, everything's here in the report, but I can give you a very high level. So going through each of the findings, number one, we had a financial statement audit finding that resulted in a material weakness and internal control. And that was due to the discovery of material accounting and financial reporting errors, which were identified. So that was on. The financial statement side. Of the audit, which that does get included here in the single audit report. That was the only financial finding. Number 2, we had a finding over the housing voucher cluster. And that was in particular for HUD 5058 reporting. And specifically, we had three of 40 reports which were not submitted timely. That was the gist of that finding. That resulted in a significant deficiency and noncompliance finding. The third finding is also on the housing voucher cluster. We had just a significant deficiency control finding over CMAP reporting. And it was because of the fact that there was no evidence of review and approval of that CMAP report prior to submission. Fourth finding is also related to the housing voucher cluster. That one is over the special test and provisions for reasonable rent. That one also resulted in a significant deficiency and noncompliance type finding. This is where the City of Amarillo issued a housing assistance payment before completing and documenting the required rent reasonableness determination. And that was only for, I believe, one of our samples. The 5th finding is also related to the housing voucher cluster. We had a significant deficiency and internal control finding here. And that was for the special test and provisions of the utility allowance schedule. There were no compliance issues here, but we did have. No evidence maintained for the review and approval of the final schedule, the utility allowance schedule. So there really wasn't any segregation of duties in place. So we gave that a significant deficiency control finding. Moving on to finding number six, we're now into the airport improvement program. So this finding was over equipment and real property management, which resulted in a significant deficiency in noncompliance. So, you know, the city's fixed asset ledger does not identify or distinguish assets acquired with federal awards versus those acquired with other funding sources. So, unfortunately, we weren't able to tell which assets were federal, and thus we couldn't select the sample for testing. So, yeah, that one wound up in a significant deficiency and noncompliance. Actually, wait, that one, let me just clarify on that one. If we look back, I believe if you scroll up slightly, there, let's see, yeah, that was a material weakness. I apologize. So that one was a material weakness and material noncompliance just due to the fact that we couldn't even select samples for testing. Okay, moving on, same thing. Airport Improvement Program, another finding here. This one indeed was a significant deficiency in noncompliance. This was over the reporting, the form 5100-127, which is a required report that needs to be submitted on an annual basis. And for this report, we did see that several line items didn't agree to the city's general ledger and or supporting documentation. So we gave that a noncompliance and then the associated significant deficiency. Moving on to number 8, we have for special test and provisions, the revenue diversion requirements. This resulted in a significant deficiency in noncompliance due to the fact that the City did not have an airport revenue policy in place. Number nine, that is now for the SAFER program, the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response. We had simply a significant deficiency control finding where this was over the semiannual performance report in the reporting compliance area. And it was due to the fact that there was no evidence of review and approval prior to submission of the report. And then lastly, finding number 10, program. This one resulted in a material weakness and material noncompliance over FFATA reporting. And it was due to the fact that during the year, there were several sub awards that were greater than 30,000 that were required to be submitted. However, the city didn't have any kind of procedures in place to make sure that they identified awards that were greater than 30,000 and that they were properly submitted. So unfortunately, none of those awards were submitted during the year. So all in all, as you saw, there were particularly there were two material weakness and material noncompliance findings. So for the community development block grant program and for the airport improvement program, We do have a modified opinion on compliance. So we did qualify the opinion. So the rest of the programs were unmodified or clean opinions, if you will. So overall, that's all of the findings. We also have our prior year findings of which there were two of them. And as you can see here at the bottom of each of them, the status shows that the taken for both findings. And I believe the one finding was over the CIP projects. And then the other one was over the reporting. I believe it was, yes. The reporting where the supporting documentation didn't agree. So we were good on both of those. And so we considered corrective action to be taken. In the last part of the report, we have our, or I should say, your responses to the findings. So this is where we talk about, hey, this is the finding. We get the views of management. And then we talk about implementation date targets. and then the responsible folks that are going to be responsible for implementing corrective action so all of those findings are there available for your review to see you know what the city has plans um to correct them if they already have so some of them uh looks like things may be already in place uh we're quick fixes so but it's all here for your review And then the very last portion of the single audit report actually has right here, this is the passenger facility audit report. And so really the main thing to note here is that it is a absolute clean opinion. We didn't have any issues or findings and everything was completed timely, so. That is the summary of the report. Are there any questions from anyone?

Council, any questions for CLA? No? Okay. Mr. Cobb, thank you for the presentation. We've seen this multiple times now, and I appreciate Mr. Kerschnack as well, your time over the phone and educating myself on this and making sure we know what we're looking at as we move forward.

Excellent. Thank you very much.

Thank you, guys. Ms. Lola, you have anything else you need to add?

No, sir.

Okay, great. We'll stay in touch with you guys and appreciate you jumping on and doing the presentation. You gentlemen have a good afternoon.

Thank you. Take care.

Thank you. And Mayor, I think the main point we wanted to drive home with this was that yes, corrective actions have been taken. We've identified those working with CLA and all actions are being taken to address any of those issues.

Thank you, sir. That brings us to item 4.5, future agenda requests. Council, do you have any?

Mayor, I do have one that I'd like to bring up if I can. I'd like to ask that we place a future agenda item to discuss the City of Amarillo's use of cameras and surveillance technology. And this will be across all city departments. Cameras obviously have legitimate public benefits, and we've seen it. They can improve public safety, manage traffic, protect citizens, provide evidence. But what's happening, I think, is as technology becomes more sophisticated and widespread, I think we also have the responsibility to establish, I don't know, clear boundaries about how government uses it. So what I'd like for us to discuss is what types of cameras and surveillance technology will we allow? And which ones will we not allow and why? I'd also like to understand the safeguards surrounding the information collected. Who can access it? Is access logged and reviewed? What prevents it from being used for other legitimate city business? And what happens when an employee violates these policies? Now, I'm not suggesting that cameras are bad or that our employees are doing something wrong. It's about establishing safeguards before we do have a problem. And there's a growing national conversation, I think, about balancing the public benefits of this technology with the reasonable expectations of privacy and potential for future government overreach. And there's a growing tide, unfortunately, of misuse of this across the country. various departments that it's being misused, not for its purpose. So technology is going to grow. It's going to change. I think our policies and safeguards need to keep pace. And I think our citizens deserve to know where we're going to draw the line. And we draw it deliberately and publicly rather than waiting until an incident forces to come up with that. So right now, as far as I know, we're not having any problems. But I think we really need to have this thorough discussion to know what we're going to do, what are the safeguards. Until we have that discussion and appropriate policies and procedures are in place, I would ask that we pause any future purchases of camera or surveillance technology until we kind of have a discussion and we set clear guidelines on how we're going to operate this in the future.

Understood. So the request is for a future agenda item. But then in hearing what you're saying, if we have any items that are camera related. So we would say if there was an item that was going on a trash truck, camera or a patrol vehicle or let's say a body cam for our AMW. Those things you'd rather hold off until we can get a discussion with clear direction with an updated policy before we move forward.

I'd like to because we have a couple of things that are on there today. And I mean, so yes, I would like us to maybe until we get these policies put into place and identifying, you know, what kind of cameras or technology are we okay with?

and what would we say no that's not something that we would want to have for whatever reason so that we can get clarity on that well sounds like we might want to move that discussion forward quickly um in order to keep everything um working within the parameters and the policies that we currently have um mr city manager do you have any questions on on this future agenda item no sir okay real good do i have anything else from council Okay, that takes us through all of our discussion items, moves us into public comment. Appreciate everybody. If you hadn't signed up, we always encourage you guys to sign up so we can put your name in the list and then we will move into public comment here. Miss City Secretary, do you mind to read us into that section?

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for participating in today's City Council meeting. We value your input and appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts today. Each speaker will have three minutes to address council during public comment or during any of the public hearings we have today. At two and a half minutes, a single beep will let you know you have 30 seconds left. When time is up, the timer will beep continuously. Please stay within your allotted time. We do have four public hearings today, so if you're here to speak on an item with a public hearing, we would ask that you speak on that item either during public comment or during the public hearing, but not both in order to help us keep 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 to speak, state your name, whether or not you live within Amarillo City limits, and then begin your comments to council. for topics not on today's agenda the texas open meetings act limits how council may respond they may provide factual statements ask for your issue to be added to a future agenda or refer you to the city manager so staff may visit with you about your concern if you would like to speak today but haven't please come see me up at the dais to fill out a form so we can get you added to our list at this time we will invite up our first speaker dennis pasternak and on deck after dennis will be tiffany riles and while dennis makes his way up council you should have something that looks similar to this that i'm holding up maybe a different color but dennis provided some handouts in advance for you and dennis you may begin when you're ready

Good afternoon Mayor Stanley and council members. My name is Dennis Pasternak and I live on Crockett Street in the historic Bivens neighborhood. I'm here today to ask the City Council to refer the proposal that you have in front of you to the Traffic Engineering Department. Crockett Street is designated as an RS1 residential street designed for cars and light trucks with a speed of 30 miles an hour. We see, however, significant large commercial vehicles using Crockett Street as a pass-through to avoid congestion on Washington and Georgia streets. I've seen multiple categories of large commercial vehicles using Crockett Street, including three semi-trucks, one from BW and one from SAIA, a large commercial document destruction truck a village transport, commercial charter tour bus, and two large pickup trucks towing 30-foot horse trailers. Additionally, commercial vehicles exiting Crockett Street at I-40 have a tendency, or I should say exiting at I-40 at Crockett Street, have a tendency to ignore the 30 mile an hour speed limit because they're used to the speed limit on the expressway. The proposal is to conduct a vehicle classification study that breaks down traffic by class, cars versus moderate to heavy trucks. an origin destination survey to see what vehicles are local travel and which are passed through a geometric analysis to determine street characteristics and a safety analysis to aggregate the data all for Crockett Street from the north side of the intersection of I-40 to the intersection of Southwest 10th Avenue. I'm asking the city to complete the survey study and analyses in order to gain essential data necessary to answer a critical safety question Too often we assume that a quiet street is a safe street, but a street is only safe if the type of traffic using it matches the design of the street. The greater concern here is the safety mismatch. An RS1 street is geometrically unsafe for usual daily use by commercial vehicles and trucks due to the creation of blind spots that obscure pedestrians, turning conflicts that encroach on opposing lanes or sidewalks, and a statistically higher likelihood of a fatal collision compared to those involving cars. Interestingly, The intersection of Bonham Street and 15th, one block west of Crockett, is on the city's Safe Streets for All high injury network map as a high traffic incident intersection. Is there a connection? How many commercial vehicles are using Crockett Street as a pass-through route, and how many are just local deliveries or service providers? Current city data only tells us the total vehicle volume at intersections. It doesn't tell us the vehicle mix, nor does it tell us on which street the vehicles are moving or in which direction. City traffic management plans commit to reducing traffic accidents and fatalities, but we need specific traffic data to do that. If the data shows Crockett Street is being used as a pass-through, then the safety intervention and traffic calming measures outlined in the proposal is the recommended solution that removes risks and protects our children and residents. Thank you, council members, for your time.

Thank you, sir. Let us dig into that, see what we can do to help. Okay. Appreciate you.

It's Tiffany Riles here. And on deck after Tiffany will be Alan Feingold.

Hello council members and my name is Tiffany Riles. I am a resident in the city of Amarillo. First I want to thank you council member Simpson for your comments regarding the surveillance cameras. One of my favorite things to do every night is to take a walk at my local park and see the panhandle sunset and I've done this for about 12 years now and I do it at night alone. And I have never felt unsafe in these parts. Until a few weeks ago, I happened to just look up, and what do I see strapped to a pole is a flock camera recording every step I take. Not one, not two, three cameras on the trail in the park. And I came to a meeting a few months ago. I listened to the chief of police talk about how these cameras are just license plate readers. They're here so that the police can respond faster in an accident. They're for safety.

Thank you.

There's no cars inside the parks. Why are these cameras recording me? Why are they recording our children play at the park? What is the purpose of this? I can't even tell you how many times I've taken a walk in the past couple months, but the police department can. The police department can tell you exactly how many hot girl walks I've been on. They know exactly every time I've stepped foot in that park. Any time I've drove inside the park, there are cameras recording that. Why is that information needed? And even the skate park, there's five cameras. The teenagers are playing skating? Are there crime reports that justify the expenditure of these cameras? I mean, is the cartel out there running 5Ks, passing fentanyl instead of batons? What is the purpose? You cannot tell me that these are for my safety and that safety is your top priority when a woman just died in the Randall County Jail. So what is this for? And, you know, I was going to print out the screen. They're not in every park, but there's almost like nine of them at John Stiff. And so I know the people of Amarillo may not know, but you know because you voted on it. Okay, you sign these in, and I want these damn cameras out of my park. Sign them out. Thank you.

On deck will be Tim Benson. And Alan, you may begin.

My name is Alan Feingold. I do live in the city limits of Amarillo. A couple of weeks ago, I addressed you about an alternative to building new wastewater treatment plants. The alternative was to create a more balanced load between the Hollywood Road treatment plant and the River Road treatment plant. The River Road Treatment Plant has a capacity to process 16 million gallons per day of sewage. And the Hollywood Road Treatment Plant has a capability of processing 12 million gallons per day. That is to say that the River Road treatment plant can process quite a bit more than the Hollywood Road treatment plant. However, as the situation presently exists, the Hollywood Road treatment plant is processing a great deal more sewage than the River Road treatment plant. The Hollywood Road treatment plant is now processing at about 75% of its capacity. River Road is processing at about 52% of its capacity. My suggestion, therefore, was to take a considerable part of the Hollywood Road plants load and transfer to River Road. I said transfer 20%. Actually, that's an error. You could transfer merely 17% of the load from Hollywood Road to River Road and both plants would be operating at approximately 63% of their capacity. That would be quite a bit less than the 75% at which TCEQ requires that you do a build out of one of the wastewater treatment plants. You can get data on this from the city of Amarillo, but I'll give you a little bit right here. The Hollywood Road Treatment Plant last year treated about 3,370,000,000 gallons. The River Road Treatment Plant processed approximately 3,100,000 gallons. Now, to take that down to the level of a per diem processing, the Hollywood Road Treatment Plant processed approximately 9 million gallons per day, River Road 8.32. What would happen is if you took approximately 1.5 million gallons per day from Hollywood Road to River Road, you would have the required change in the amount and the Hollywood Road plant would be processing about seven and a half million gallons. The River Road plant would be processing about 10 million gallons. Both of them would be at about five eighths of their capacity. Thank you very much.

Thank you, sir.

On deck will be Mike Fisher, and Tim, you may begin.

Okay, I've got a couple things I'd like to talk about. The first one is y'all's budget today. Woo, buddy. I hope the rest of the week goes better than it did today because it didn't look good. You know, it looks like a lot of bills are getting paid by the general fund. And the other thing is... I caught that the, you know, what is it, a data program problem now? Or, you know, there's a glitch in the software. What's it going to be? It's coming. I can already hear the excuse of it. The other thing I'd like to talk about is the homeless. And, guys, I'm not here to pick on the homeless. I mean, I know everybody needs help. I understand that. We've got a problem. You know, I've been down there. around Transformation Park, last two weeks I've been down there every day, driving around, talking to people, talking to property owners. It's not good. I mean, I know they're trying to help them inside, but outside it's not good around that place. It's almost like a third world country in some places down there. And we've got to do something. I mean, we've got to step up and figure something out. You know, I've even talked to some firemen and some policemen. They said the ones that are on that shift down there, They spend one third of the calls to Transformation Park. One third. How much of that tax dollars are we paying for that? A lot. The homeless, some of the ones that I've talked to, they're not from Amarillo. I've talked to them from Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado. One of them was from Honduras. They get off the bus, and that's where they go. They don't want to leave because they get a free place. Guys, it's not working. It might be working inside, but it's not outside. It's not working. We've got to do something. You know, Mr. Jones, the tree guy that has the, what's it called? What's his, you know what I'm talking about? Bridging the gaps. You know, At least his program, he makes these people work. And if they're on drugs or they do alcohol, they're out of there. They're gone. You know, I told you guys a year ago, you're going to open up Pandora's box and it's open. We got to figure a way to figure this out and close it. You know, we got to quit feeding the beast because it's not going to go away. It's going to get worse. So, again, I'm not here to pick on them. I just think we've got to figure a way to fix this problem. Thanks for your time.

On deck we'll have Claudia Stravato, and you've got a handout coming your way that Mike Fisher has provided. Mike, you may begin when you're ready.

Thank you. Okay. I've been doing my own little audit on PrAD. Some of you guys might know that. But before you have a document and there's 12,634 acres within the city limits of Amarillo where the city is collecting $6,000 a year in taxes. Isn't that crazy? So let me put that in perspective. Start at Georgia and the loop. and then go all the way up to I-40, and then go all the way to Sauncey, now come all the way back down to the Loop, and now we've got 20 square miles. These police officers are patrolling that much space for six grand a year. So why is that important? And why are they getting that discount? This is agriculture exemptions within the city limits of Amarillo, and we've got to put that in perspective. Those owners of those properties volunteered at annexation. We didn't force them to be annexed. They volunteered that. They wanted city services, but they're enjoying the best of both worlds. They still get the benefits of in the country of paying less taxes, or in this case, agriculture, but they're in the city limits and they get the benefits. So you could start with police, but some of these properties get city services, sewer, water, and the solid waste stuff. I think, Cole, I mentioned this a long time ago at a meeting, and I said, you guys need to audit some of this. And your immediate response was, that's not our job. And I get that immediate response. But I think when you put this in perspective, it's worth looking at. Because let's look at the value of my three acres. I have three acres out on I-27. Pratt, just as last year, I have it in arbitration right now, but they went up to 70,000 an acre. So what would that mean for these 12,000 acres if they, because surely it's worth more than my property that's outside the city limits that I don't get any city services. Surely all these 12,000 acres are worth at least the 70,000 an acre they're trying to charge me. So if that were the case, This property would be, all these 12,000 acres would be worth $884 million. And if you were collecting taxes on that, that'd be four additional million bucks. And so you guys could be budgeting with like you were today. I really think you guys should take a look at this, and I think you should really consider not recommending, I recommend that you recommend that we keep Pratt separate and get your own chief appraiser for each county, because I think that would be, maybe some of this wouldn't be happening. Thank you.

And Mr. Roboto, you may begin when you're ready.

Thank you. I'm here to talk about my favorite subject, water conservation. I hope you all read the morning paper where the headline story is about the extreme drought we are experiencing. I know that you all are deeply involved in the budget process right now, and I appreciate that. But you cannot forget about the thousands of people for whom you are responsible to deliver water for, not just now, but in the future. Both Dumas and Canyon have started water conservation programs, while part of it is voluntary, encouraging the city residents to follow the odd and even watering days based on their address. is significant. It's not required at this time, but the spillage and waste of water by automatic water systems are being addressed by both these cities. Because Amarillo has sold future water to Fermi, you have an extraordinary responsibility to impose and save the water that we have. I appreciate the recent project where we had children draw pictures of saving water, but that doesn't save water. I urge you, I beg you to look at the water situation and try to preserve what we have. That that's above the ground is evaporating, particularly in the excessive heat. You We look odd. We almost look like Corpus Christi refusing to deal with the water issue when one city 19 miles from us and another one 50 miles from us are taking extraordinary emergency measures. What does that make us look like here? I really encourage you, as you look at your budget situation, to consider who you're responsible to for the distribution of water now and in the future.

Mayor, that concludes everybody that signed up to speak today.

Thank you, Ms. City Secretary. I'd like to thank everyone for speaking here today during public comment. DO I HAVE ANYONE ELSE HERE WHO WOULD LIKE TO OFFER PUBLIC COMMENT BEFORE WE MOVE FORWARD? OKAY. AT THIS TIME, WE'LL GO AHEAD AND CLOSE PUBLIC COMMENT. WE'LL MOVE FORWARD WITH THE REST OF OUR BUSINESS MEETING. CONSENT AGENDA IS BEFORE YOU. GENTLEMEN, I WOULD ASSUME WE MAY HAVE A FEW THINGS THAT YOU'D LIKE PULLED FOR CONSIDERATION.

SO ON 610, I'D LIKE TO PULL THAT AND THEN 615.

Okay. Council, do I hear any other items that you'd like removed before we take action on the remaining amount of the consent agenda?

Council, if we pull 615, we'll need to pull 617 as well. The two go together. Right. Thank you.

Okay. Anything else? Hearing nothing. Seeing nothing. Would entertain a motion on the rest of consent?

So moved.

Second. Motion and a second on that. As presented with modifications, all in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Let's take up item 615, 617 together, as those may be the easier one to address first. Mr. City Manager, on that, is Alan the best guy?

Yes, I'm going to turn it over to Donnie and Alan.

Perfect.

Yeah, I'll get these to Mr. Harder. He can come up and talk about this quicker than I could get acquainted with it.

Thanks. I'm pulling up a list of locations. So what these are is cameras for video detection systems at signalized intersections. These are already employed at several intersections throughout the city. And just for your awareness, they're relatively low I apologize, the word, low resolution cameras, thank you, that are aimed down the street. So what they do is they identify vehicles that are approaching a signal. The traditional way of detecting vehicles in an intersection is what we call ground loop. So it's effectively a wire loop in the ground that senses the metal in the vehicle. It's a magnet that lets a signal know that there's a vehicle there and puts in a call for the signal to change. So what video detection does is allows for that detection to occur further back from the intersection, so it can effectively predict vehicles approaching the intersection. And if there's nobody else coming, it can make changes before or shortly after the vehicle gets to that intersection. As I mentioned, they're aimed down the road, so they're not looking necessarily into private property. Now, I'm not going to say that on the peripheral there wouldn't be situations where it could see over a fence. That's certainly possible. The traffic division does not record nor are we legally able to record information that we receive from these cameras. We do, however, use them at times to monitor intersection performance. So if we have complaints about, hey, traffic at this specific intersection is backed up, it does allow us in real time from our office to go observe and maybe see what the problem is. Maybe there's been a wreck. Maybe we can detect that the signal isn't functioning the way it should. The benefits over our traditional loop systems is, as I mentioned, that it can detect vehicles as they're approaching the intersection instead of waiting for them to get there. Also, though, they're much less invasive and much less prone to failure, so the traditional ground loop systems oftentimes gets damaged or destroyed during pavement maintenance. They also, when they fail, they require us to go and actually cut the pavement to replace those. Obviously, any cutting on pavement introduces a source for water to get into that, which naturally deteriorates the roadway. So a more reliable system, less invasive, and also provides advanced detection of vehicles before they get to the intersection.

Now, if you don't mind, can I add something to that? When we first put the traffic management system in in 2019, This was the goal that we would eventually get to the point where we were starting to add this traffic detection. This actually allows the intersections to move a little more freely and that was one of the complaints that we were hearing is how do we get that traffic at 10 o'clock at night when there's nothing on the cross street of a major arterial to be able to see traffic and move that signal. So this was part of that plan originally. We started out with a pilot program. I don't remember what year it was, Alan, probably 22 or so when we put in some of this traffic management stuff on Coulter Street. And it's just continued from there. But they are very low resolution. They point down at the actual pavement on the street. Secondly, they do traffic counts for us as well. So where we do manual traffic counting, we can actually go in and pull data from these to see how many cars there were, how many, and it's not looking at a picture of a car, it's actually just data, how many cars, how many pedestrians, how many bicycles. It helps us make better traffic decisions moving forward.

Councilman, you got any questions on this? Well, I would say we've got this technology, and I'm sure it's great technology, and I have no problem with this technology. What I'm asking is, and I'm sure if we had a policy on what type of cameras we would use and we would not use, I have no doubt that this would probably fit into the use category. The issue is right now we have no policy. on what that looks like. And so what I would add, of course, I've not seen any images that have come out of this. On this one, is there any reason why if we waited a couple of meetings until we have a chance to look at this policy, would that cause us any harm or any problem? No, sir.

Wouldn't I actually ask that question when you brought that up earlier? It would not. We would probably need to get revised quotes. I don't expect that they would go up significantly, though, if any at all. So it's certainly possible to delay that until we have a policy in place.

So this allows the intersections with signals to run more efficiently. So if you've got traffic that is predominantly in one direction or two directions, and maybe there's a side street that's not very often, some of those signals will cycle through no matter what, right? They're going to go to that side street. They will. Yeah. Where this prevents that, correct?

I wouldn't necessarily say it prevents it. You want that cycle to occur naturally. So because there could be situations where the sun is glaring off the camera at a particular time and it just doesn't catch that vehicle on the side street. So you want there to be a maximum amount of time where whether it detects a vehicle or not, it goes ahead and gives them a green just so that if for some reason there was a broken wire or that sun glare or the old loop detection system, the wire was broken so the magnet wasn't working right, you would never have a vehicle just sitting there forever and never getting signal and effectively forcing them to run a red light. But what it would allow is that if it didn't detect any vehicles, other directions would run for that maximum amount of time, which would be the most efficient way to operate traffic.

And these don't record in any way, shape, or form, correct? Yes, sir. Okay. I mean, I don't see any reason not to move forward with these cameras, in my opinion.

Counsel, any other remarks? Yes, sir.

Our use of cameras is important on the law enforcement end and for moving of traffic. But I have to agree with Councilman Simpson that if we're going to do cameras, it would be to our benefit to have a process that we follow before we take some cameras and say, we're going to use these because they don't do this, this, and that, but these we're going to exempt. I just don't think that's a good policy. I think we need to develop a policy for the use of these cameras, no matter what they record or don't record. before we move forward to this. So I have to agree with Les on this one.

Are we using these cameras already? Yes, sir. Approximately how many? Do you know?

Off the top of my head, I don't know.

How long have we been using these cameras?

Several years. Donnie mentioned that we piloted this beginning in the early 2020s, so coming up on five years.

So this is not an adoption of a new technology or a new camera in any way, shape, or form? No, sir. Something we've been using, we've had it.

Okay. We could say that about the flock cameras, too. It's technology we've been using, and depending on if there's no policy and we can use them at will in any place, and that's what people are starting to complain about, and there are cities that are exempting the use of these cameras now, even these. So I think it's to our benefit to have that discussion and to come up with a policy so that people know that are going to be using them. I mean, we don't control it. That's going to be staff that controls that. And we want to make sure that we have those policies in place.

And I don't disagree with the policy of camera usage. I don't disagree with that. What I would just come against is the efficiency in moving forward, getting new bids, wasting the resources when we're looking at a very low resolution camera, ones that we've already used, they don't record. Because you may be correct. This may be something that falls in the category of when we do put together a policy, that it's one that we allow. And I get that. I just don't see that we've already spent the time, effort, and energy to get the bids, do this. They're cameras we already use. They're not invasive in any way. They don't record. I don't disagree with Councilman Simpson on getting together a policy.

What's the expiration on the buy board bid? How long would it be?

The by-board numbers are likely valid. I don't know the number off the top of my head. We still have to get those updated from time to time. I don't know when this one specifically expires. Again, even if it did, I don't expect a significant increase in cost, though.

I am going to labor this just a little bit here in a minute. MR. PATH, NOT ON THIS ITEM. I THINK WE CAN GIVE DIRECTION ON THIS ONE, BUT THEN WHEN WE GET TO THE VERCATA, I WOULD SEE IF MAYBE CHIEF HOVER WOULD BE GOOD OR IF SERGEANT CHADWICK BACK THERE IN THE BACK WOULD BE WILLING TO TALK ABOUT. WE'VE SAID A COUPLE OF TIMES WE DON'T HAVE A POLICY. THAT'S NOT FULLY TRUE AND LIKE THAT'S NOT THE WHOLE OF THE CURRENT PROCEDURE AND THE WAY IN WHICH THEY DO HANDLE THAT VERY CAREFULLY. I do want to be able to speak to what's already in place briefly and then I'm good with taking no action on these and bringing them back here end of August. I tend to agree more with Councilman tips that like this doesn't necessarily fit the agenda the agenda request But in in caution, I've got a council member that would just like to wait another couple weeks and I know I've been on the side of What's the hurry guys? Can we make sure we make a good decision here all the way around and everybody gets to hear it. So If councils, okay, I'm gonna direct us to take no action on these two items under the advisement that our staffs telling us that it won't be a A COST, YOU KNOW, OR A COMPLICATION. BUT WE DON'T HAVE ANY INTENTION ON NOT MOVING FORWARD WITH IT. SO COUNCIL, DO YOU WANT TO REDIRECT THAT? ARE YOU OKAY WITH US MOVING ON TO ITEM 610? OKAY. SO WE'LL TAKE NO ACTION ON 615 AND 617. MR. PATH, WHICH DIRECTION WOULD YOU LIKE TO GO ON 610?

I'M GOING TO DEFER TO CHIEF HOVER IF HE WANTS TO TAKE LEAD ON THIS AND THEN HE CAN DECIDE.

Afternoon, Chief.

Council Mayor, thank you. Based upon the questions, it's a very long conversation. This is not something that's very short that I would feel very comfortable with spouting off right now because I feel, as you guys have, you've seen this across the country. This is a topic that's been going on. It's a very hot topic right now. And I'll be honest with you, there's a lot of misinformation out there on what's what. Just like the statement that you heard earlier about the park cameras. These aren't license plate reader cameras. These are actual cameras for their safety. We've had a ton of calls for service. We've had a ton of vandalism in and around our parks. We are capturing guns on people that are in the parks. So I would like to have a little more time to prepare a full presentation for you to include hundreds of examples of why these cameras are important and the cost effectiveness on the back end. One of the greatest measurements that hasn't been done yet And we're not really going to know for sure that I'm going to kind of, I guess, maybe whet the appetite on. But the idea of what these things do, let's say, for instance, a homicide, for instance. When a camera catches a homicide on camera, there's a likelihood of more than 600%. of that person being convicted. And the reason is the information that's there. And once we capture that individual at the time of that offense, they're going to have that murder weapon on them. They're going to have physical evidence on them. And they're a danger or a violent person. Now let's say that's not there. Let's move forward to a typical approach that that thing's not there. It's going to take hundreds if not thousands of man hours to identify that person. and to safely take them into custody weeks, months, maybe even years later. depending upon the length and what that investigation takes. So I would feel more comfortable coming back to you, showing you a full thing of all the questions, I wrote them all down, of how I approach and show each, every single one. We'll start off on what the policy is that we have internally, what the actions are when somebody does violate those policies, all the way down to the different types of cameras, the length of time that the information is captured and maintained, and the fact that These are just a piece of the puzzle. It doesn't give an officer probable cause if he sees something on that flock camera. He has to take further steps to make a traffic stop to confirm what's on there. So there's a lot of information based upon we just act on those things, and that's not exactly the case. So I would feel more comfortable giving a little more, maybe a week or two after budget to provide you a full presentation.

Real good. I heard a few things there, and that's the point I'd like to make. You do have some internal controls. You have some internal policies. Yes, sir. We haven't been able to advertise those publicly and to do a good enough job of explaining what they are and where they are and where they're not, right, and what they don't do. And so appreciate Councilman Simpson for bringing this up. We look forward to the opportunity to walk that out. I just couldn't leave it where we had no controls and we had no internal policy and they've just gone up.

Well, but I know as a city, as maybe the police department has, but as an organization, do we have any policies governing all of our

Well, here, hang on a second. So before you interrupted me in the middle of my comment, because I'm not complete, I think that with me thanking you for bringing this forward, I think what you're pointing out is that we should have a public-facing policy. And I would say to your question, do we have a public-facing policy right now?

If I could interject real quick, we started to have a forum, an IT forum, talking about not just cameras but technology as a whole when Assistant City Manager Gagnon was here. That got started. In fact, we had our first meeting maybe about a month ago, if I remember correctly. Obviously, with his absence, that's delayed some things, but that was also one of the approaches that we were looking at, building a board out on those members of the committee on there.

Anything further, Councilman?

Well, I don't want you to think that I see the value. My personal opinion is, hey, if I'm not doing anything wrong, I don't have to worry about cameras. That's my personal opinion. But I'm hearing from people in the community who have some concerns and what we're seeing across the country. is some abuses of this. And that's kind of what we're fighting. And what I'd like to do is for us to, and I think this is a council level issue, for us to be able to set some policies and guidelines on this, because I do think it's very important that not only do we set things up correctly, But, you know, I trust all these people and all these staff members as your government to do the right thing. But we don't know who's going to be down here down the road. And I think we need to set protections up. So if somebody wants to change some very stringent policies on how we use cameras and what we do, it's going to take some people up here to change those to be able to do it. Because I just don't want to see, you know, lots of good can come out of it, but I'd hate for us to see open because we don't have good policies and we don't have to say here's how we're going to do it and here's what's going to happen if you're an employee called that it takes that good tool away from you because we've not we've not used it the way that should or we don't have policy that gives us good guidance. One thing I would say on this, I see that this is funded by a grant. Correct. If we do not approve this today, do we have the potential of losing that grant money or it not being available?

There is an expiration, but I don't know what that is. We have passed this item several times. It would just be a matter of getting another quote. And I do believe they're purchasing it. It's not a reimbursement even.

Well, I mean, I would say this. I mean, the other one we have more control over. So, I mean, maybe it would go up. I mean, we said it didn't. But on this one, if there's the chance that we could lose out on this money for these cameras, by not approving it today, I would be okay with approving that. Now, if you say no, we can come back once we get this policy, but if the policy takes four or six weeks to get implemented, is there a chance that we could lose this money?

The grant was previously approved by the Project Safe Neighborhood, so it's been around.

This particular grant is part of the COPS grant. It's good until March, so the money does have to be committed prior to March of next year.

OK, so if we wait, then we're not in jeopardy of losing it.

No, this has actually been pushed a few times. It did actually cost us $83,000 just because tech now costs more. So that's to the other guy's point. The further it goes, the more you're spending because the amount of cost of tech currently is rising about every four to six months. So that's the only cost to us personally as far as grant funds.

Councilman? Nothing? Okay. Anything further from council? Appreciate Chief and Sergeant. Anything further from council on item 610? Okay, I hope our citizens here that we will diligently dig into this item and include our public on those conversations, move forward with a strategic plan and initiative to put some good controls in, in how we utilize technology moving forward. Item 610 will be set off to the side with no action taken. Moving forward, we are now going into non-consent, and it is 5.02. We will take a 15-minute recess. We'll come back in here. We'll wrap this guy up. COMING BACK IN HERE. SO, MS. KRISTEN, ARE WE READY IN THE BACK? THUMBS UP. ALL RIGHT, WE'RE GOING TO CALL OURSELVES BACK INTO SESSION HERE. OPEN OUR MEETING BACK UP WITH SECTION 7. THIS IS OUR NON-CONSENT AGENDA. WE WILL START WITH OUR FAVORITE PRESENTER HERE, NONE OTHER THAN BRADY KENDRICK, ITEM 7.1.

GOOD EVENING, MAYOR COUNSEL. ITEM 7.1, THIS IS A PUBLIC HEARING IN CONSIDERATION OF A REZONING. This is the rezoning of 9.23 acres of land being located in Potter County, Texas in the vicinity of Sunrise Drive and Southeast 14th Avenue. The applicant is Furman Land Surveyors Inc. for Big Texan Land Holdings LLC and Galaxy Catering Inc. They are proposing the rezone from Light Commercial District and Residential District 2 to a planned development district 411 for an RV park. And this is located just on the north side of that Starlight Ranch multi-use facility, and this is proposed to be an expansion of the existing RV park that is located on the west side of Sunrise. So that is the proposal for today. Now normally light commercial would allow for RV parks, but since there's that strip of property there on the north side that has that residential zoning, that is the reason that a case was needed. And given the proximity of the neighboring single-family homes and talking with the applicant, we decided to go the planned development route to build in some protections for those single-family homes with this use. As with appropriate protections built in, this could be considered a compatible use. REGARDING CITY PLAN 2045 PLACE TYPE, THIS AREA IS ACTUALLY IN THE MANUFACTURING AND LOGISTICS CATEGORY, SO THAT WOULD ACTUALLY ALLOW FOR MORE INTENSE USES THAN WHAT IS PROPOSED TODAY. SO YOU COULD SAY THAT TECHNICALLY THE PLACE TYPE CATEGORY WOULD ALLOW FOR EVEN MORE INTENSE USES THAN WHAT'S PROPOSED WITH THIS ITEM. Now regarding some of those enhanced standards that we worked into the site plan that is on your screen now, RV spaces are to be set back a minimum of 15 feet from the property line along 14th and Sunrise Drive. A screening fence is to be provided along those just mentioned frontages. Additionally, the gate on the north property line is to be for fire department access only and will also be solid as well. A minimum 10-foot-wide strip of landscaping and associated trees is to be provided outside of the fence, adjacent to the sidewalk, along the north frontage and the west frontage. And then the park amenities are located at the south end of the site, the office area and the park area, so that those are the furthest away from the homes as possible. This is all documented in the site plan you have on your screen right now, and that'll be a part of the ordinance. And this would actually result in a more ideal zoning pattern than exists currently. Currently, you could have light commercial land uses almost all the way up to the single family neighborhoods, so really this request would build in a buffer that would not allow those light commercial uses and create a more desirable zoning pattern in the opinion of the Planning and Zoning Commission. Public notices were sent and posted on this item as required and as of this meeting we did receive one comment in opposition at the Planning and Zoning Commission hearing on the item. They had concerns about crime and safety for the neighborhood if the RV park were to be allowed and they were a neighboring property owner to the north. With that the Planning and Zoning Commission did recommend approval this item with a 7-0 vote. And with that I'll take any questions.

Any questions for Mr. Kendrick?

Is there any issues with the noise study from the airport on this one? This one looks close to the runway.

So this area actually lies outside of the noise hazard area. It is in the height hazard area for the airport, but it is outside those noise contours that we spoke about with that other item last time.

Thank you.

No problem. Any other questions? Thank you, Mr. Kendrick. This is a public hearing. At this time, I'll open a public hearing, see if I have anybody here who would like to speak for or against this item. Seeing no one, we'll close the public hearing. And I would ask council, item 7.1 is before you.

I move to adopt ordinance number 8254 as presented.

Second. Motion and a second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. Item 7.1 passes. Thank you guys for being here. All right, Mr. Kendrick, you're up again. Item 7-2.

Yeah, so this item is a proposed rezoning in downtown for approximately 29 acres. And I'll go ahead and skip to the map. That way we got that on the screen there. This is the rezoning of a series of blocks that are all located in Plymouth's addition, amended Plymouth's addition unit 10, and amended Plymouth's addition unit number 25, plus vacated public rights away. All this is located in Potter County, Texas, in the vicinity of Southwest 15th Avenue and South Harrison Street. The applicant is Playa Design Studio for First Baptist Church, Baptist Community Services, and Central Church of Christ. And they are proposing the rezone from Plan Development District 130, Plan Development District 120A, and Multiple Family District 2, to Plan Development District 410 for campus-style development, utilizing Central Business District development standards. So this case originally started out with Baptist Community Services. They came in and spoke to us about a potential expansion they were wanting to do. And given the zoning of that, because their campus spans multiple city blocks, and that expansion would have been okay in certain parts of their site, but not others. And in this case, the expansion had a setback issue. This site is located on the periphery of the Central Business District, and these sites developed over a number of decades and feature a wide range of ways they are built. And in some cases, some of the ways they were built decades ago wouldn't comply with code today. So we looked at this and said, you know, these are large religious-style campuses, largely built like other development we see in the Central Business District. Let's maybe look at combining these sites and campuses under one zoning designation. That makes it a lot easier for these campuses to do future projects and staff when we're looking at what codes apply to them. So essentially, that was the start of the request, and we recommended to the applicant that, hey, it'd be great if some of the other campuses participated as well. So First Baptist Church and Central Church of Christ also joined in. So that is the scope of the request and kind of the history behind it. Regarding the standards specifically, I'll mention the following is proposed, which these are essentially identical to Central Business District. Max lot coverage of 100%, unlimited building height, which we do have a 10-story building that exists in this boundary already, so that would fit that. Zero foot setbacks as a baseline. However, fire separation building code requirements still would apply. Parking regulations would be the same as central business district and no lot size minimums. And standards not specifically called out will comply with the property's prior zoning. Regarding allowed uses, we are largely leaving things the same for the most part. The area in blue would essentially allow for general retail land uses. And that's essentially what PD 130 allows for today. We looked at how the properties shaded in yellow there were being used in relation to the park and the single-family homes. We are leaving that area as multifamily 2 for allowed land uses. That way it builds in a natural land use buffer to protect the park and the homes to the west there from encroachment by maybe uses that aren't as compatible. So the applicant was agreeable to leaving those areas as multifamily 2 as the way those properties are being used and are planned to be used would fit that. So this would create a desirable zoning pattern for the area and also create concise development standards as well. And on the south side you've got Southwest 15th and that kind of serves as a natural barrier as well as once you start going south to 15th you have a few more institutional uses but then it starts transitioning to single family development as you go further south. So overall, there's a lot of work that went into this with the applicant, and we feel like this is a pretty good proposal that, and the Planning and Zoning Commission believed it was as well in terms of cleaning up the development regulations for this area. Regarding public comment, three comments that were just general inquiries were fielded by staff, and they did not express opposition once the request was explained. And with that, the Planning and Zoning Commission did recommend approval with a 7-0 vote, and I will take any questions you may have.

Questions for Mr. Kendrick? Gentlemen? Looks like a large project. Should be fantastic for that neighborhood. Definitely. Okay. At this time, I'll open a public hearing. Do I have anyone who would like to speak for or against item 7.2? Seeing no one, we'll close the public hearing and would ask council for a motion. I move to adopt ordinance 8255 as presented. Second. Have a motion and a second. All in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Moving right along to item 7.3. Mr. Kendrick, you're still up there.

Yes, 7.3. This is also a public hearing on a rezoning. This one is a 13.38 acre tract of land. They are proposing the rezone from Agricultural District to Residential District 3. This is located in Randall County, Texas, in the vicinity of Town Square Boulevard and Battery Street. Applicant is Furman Land Surveyors Inc. for PW Land Holdings. And this is simply the next residential phase of the Town Square subdivision for additional single-family detached lots. THE REQUEST FITS WITH THE APPROVED MASTER PLAN ON FILE FOR THE SUBDIVISION, AND THE PLANNING AND ZONING COMMISSION FOUND THAT IT MATCHES THE CITY PLAN PLACE TYPE RECOMMENDED AND WOULD BE A LOGICAL CONTINUATION OF ZONING AND DEVELOPMENT PATTERNS IN THE AREA. WE DID RECEIVE ONE GENERAL INQUIRY ON THIS REQUEST, AND THE PLANNING AND ZONING COMMISSION DID RECOMMEND APPROVAL WITH A 7-0 VOTE.

REAL GOOD. ANY QUESTIONS FOR MR. KENDRICK ON ITEM 7-3? Okay. At this time, I'll open another public hearing. Do I have anyone here who would like to speak for or against item 7.3? Seeing no one, we'll go ahead and close that hearing and would ask for consideration by council. I move to adopt ordinance number 8256 as presented.

Second.

Motion in a second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Item 7.3 passes. Last one for you, Mr. Kendrick, I think. Item 7.4.

Yes, 7.4 is a public hearing of another rezoning. This one is the rezoning of Lots 27B, 27C, and 27T, Block 2, Coulter Acres, Unit Number 5. This is located in Randall County, Texas, in the vicinity of Southwest 77th Avenue and Coulter Street. The applicant is requesting the rezone from Residential District 1. and Office District 2, two general retail districts, and the applicant is the Reserve Offices LLC. And the applicant acquired the house that was at the southwest corner of that intersection and already owned the two properties south of there, and they want to get the properties owned appropriately to potentially develop it with retail land uses in the future. They do not have exact development plans identified as of today, but they wanted to see how this case went first before they went further. The city plan place type for this is the reserve category, and then the house was identified as being the neighborhood low category. So that reserve category is usually a placeholder until development patterns for an area typically become better known. Going to the next map there. Over time, this area is a little unique. The city limits in this area are located within about a tenth of a mile to the west of the applicant there. So you have these holdover properties on the west side of Coulter that or either vacant or featured larger style of state homes that over time have transitioned the other uses and then on the side of culture it's been predominantly developed with general retail uses other than the school there to the south of this subject site. um typically properties along an arterial like this midsection are more suited for non-residential development as homes fronting upon an arterial that's not exactly ideal given the high volumes of traffic seen on a street like coulter and additionally the planning and zoning commission noted that we have retail zoning directly across the street from this property and many portions of coulter now between ARDEN ROAD IN HOLLYWOOD, SO THEY FELT LIKE THAT THE REQUEST KIND OF MATCHED WITH THE EVOLVING ZONING AND DEVELOPMENT PATTERNS FOUND ALONG THIS SEGMENT OF COLTER STREET. Regarding a public comment, we have received one call that was a general inquiry. In a second call, he did not explicitly express opposition, but he did express some concerns about if additional retail development kept occurring along Coulter, the potential traffic impacts. So those were the two calls we have received. And with that, the Planning and Zoning Commission also recommended approval of this item with a 7-0 vote.

Real good. Questions for Mr. Kendrick on 7-4. Okay. At this time, we will open another public hearing, and I'll ask if I have anyone here to speak for or against this item. Seeing no one, we'll go ahead and close the public hearing and entertain a motion. I move to adopt ordinance number 8257. Second. Second. Motion and a second from place two. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Mr. Kendrick, you've been so efficient. Why don't we just do one more while you're up there?

Yeah, definitely.

Item 7.5 is actually your last one.

Yeah, so this is the second reading from the asphalt batch plant case you all heard last time. Since the vote was not unanimous, that's why it has to be on non-consent today. So there have been no changes since the last meeting on this one. So unless there's a Any questions for me? I really don't have any updates other than just as a reminder, this has to have a supermajority vote to pass.

Okay. So this one's back for our consideration, Council. Do we have any questions on this one from Council? No? Okay. Item 7.5 is a consideration, not a public hearing at this time, because we've had one. With no further discussion, I would ask all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye.

I believe we need a motion and a second first, please.

Oh, that would be helpful, wouldn't it? So I apologize. I'm a little out of order there.

I move to adopt ordinance number 8252 as presented. Second.

Okay. I have a motion and a second from place one. Thank you, Ms. City Secretary. Now, gentlemen, all in favor for item 7.5, please say aye.

Aye.

Aye. All opposed? Nay. Motion passes with a 4-1 vote. Thank you, Mr. Kendrick. Thank you. Appreciate you. All right, moving right along, we'll jump into item 7-6. Ms. Cashin, are you presenting this one? No? All right. How are you, ma'am?

I'm good. How are y'all?

You doing well today?

I am. Excited to present this to y'all. So, moving along. So, I am here, or I'm Braylee Beck. I'm the Director of Finance for Visit Amarillo, and I'm here to present our 26-27 budget request to y'all. And to start off, I wanted to share the tourism impact statistics from the state of Texas governor's office for 2025. Direct travel spending, so that's dollars directly going to businesses within our community, totaled around $1.1 billion for, again, 2025. So that comes out to almost $2,100 per minute being spent in the community through tourism. And this contributed to $260 million in wages, salaries, and benefits, about 8.5 thousand jobs, $95 million in tax receipts, and all of that culminates to $1.2 thousand saved per household by those taxes offsetting the tax burden on residents.

Do you have any questions?

I said that all really fast. Okay. As we move through this to protect time and everyone's sanity, I'm not going to go line by line through the budget. Y'all do have that. We submitted it. If you have any questions as I'm going through, just stop me and ask. So for revenue our total estimated revenue for fiscal year twenty six twenty seven is two million eight hundred forty one thousand one hundred fifty one dollars. The majority of that comes from hotel occupancy tax and is approximately a four percent increase over our current year fiscal budget. That estimate is lower than what I believe the city is projecting. We initially took a, or not initially, we did take a conservative approach. Construction has increased hotel occupancy this year along with the Route 66 centennial stuff, which we expect that to stay, but we don't want to build ongoing expenses around revenue that's going to cease at some point with the construction side of that. AND WE DO EXPECT THAT THERE WILL BE A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT THAT WILL GO INTO RESERVES FOLLOWING THIS NEXT FISCAL YEAR. FOR THAT WE'LL USE THOSE INVESTMENTS INTO OUR TOURISM MASTER PLAN. ANY QUESTIONS ON THE REVENUE SIDE? And for expenses, the majority of our expenses are in administration at 1.5 million. That covers staffing, operations, and organizational support. Advertising follows that at a little over 640,000. The remaining expenses support key initiatives for the rest of our departments, film, communication, tourism, arts, Route 66. EXPENSES ARE ESTIMATED AT A LITTLE OVER $107,000 OVER REVENUE, SO THAT IS THE RESERVES PART OF OUR REQUEST THIS YEAR. I'LL GET INTO THAT LATER. ANY QUESTIONS? Compared to last fiscal year, the largest decreases, and these are all kind of to be expected, again, with Route 66 Centennial. So Route 66 Special Project and Tourism saw the largest decreases. That's just pulling expenses out of Route 66 Centennial activities that we had and spreading them back out across departments. The largest increases are in communications due to increasing literature production for this year and administration. We're hiring another marketing person, which will help obviously keep this momentum going that we have over the past few years, but it also gives us the ability to control our brand in-house, which actually saves us money on some other contracted dollars that we've had in the past. So, on to the reserves request. We have, oh, I'll start by saying this. We use reserves as a stability tool. So, one-time emergency funds, if that were ever to be needed, that's in there. We hold a quarter of our expenses each year in reserves just period as a policy. It's also used for strategic one-time opportunity investments. we currently have 2.5 million in our reserves account 1.2 or sorry 1.02 held in a certificate of deposit our new request for 2026-27 related investments is 107 500 we project that after these expenses we'll have 2.5 million including the cd remaining in reserves we also expect that there will be a significant amount of reserves going in this year because again hotel occupancy tax has come in above what we had originally expected that reserves request um is for the strategic investment part of how we use our reserves so we have our website redesign at 70 000 we've already held 30 000 for this the past two years a resident sentiment study coming in at 22 000 to help us better understand community perceptions this really goes into the tourism master planning which was our last reserves request And then the server, or a server IT split that completes our transition to operate independently from shared services that we still have with the Chamber, who we share a building with. That's all I have. Do y'all have any questions or anything else for me?

We appreciate the presentation. So, Council, do you have any questions? I don't have any questions, but just a couple comments.

I mean, Cash and her team are phenomenal. I have the pleasure of serving on the board over there. Love it. You know, one thing that we've got to look at as we go through budget, you know, we're looking at property taxes going down depending on what the legislature does, what we do. We're trying to run a good, tight budget. What this team does is there's such an ROI when it comes to their budget and what they do. If you miss this, the tourism, what it brings in is it's saving every taxpayer 1.2 thousand, so $1,200 a month. $1,200 a year, $100 a month. That's huge. So when we look at how do we gain or increase revenue for the city, This is it, it's tourism, it's hot tax, sales tax. That's what's gonna build our city. That's what's gonna bring our revenue up. And I just wanna give a shout out to them and for everything that they do, they do a phenomenal job. And I think I might be a little biased, but I mean, I think the biggest bang for your buck is right there, so.

Appreciate that.

Yes, sir.

Just a quick observation is, have you guys rebid the $70,000 for the web page? Pricing models on web pages are drastically adjusted right now.

We are working on sending that out for bid. That's the amount that we have so we did raise it initially 45,000 was what we were planning on and which is why we have that 30,000 another 15,000 was going to be spent this year for it, but because of that we've raised that to the 70,000 and there is generally an option to add on and different tools and things in the future if that's needed and we can look at that and depending on how the bids come back.

Okay. I think you'd be surprised at the savings in web page generation right now with AI.

We've already had multiple questions and requests and different approaches that we're noticing. And one of the things, Hope was very thorough in our RFP, we have over... Right now we have 800 pages on our website that we're trying to take down to 200 pages. It's a monster to manage. So that's a big piece of it, too, is working with people to keep the branding, keep all the information, but make it simpler.

So we're hoping AI will be used in that, so we're not paying all that.

Anything else for our CVB friends? Cashin, you're kind of known for WRCA Route 66 now. It looks like you run a crew of 30 or 40 people when you're looking at the event on 6th Street, right? Tell us again how many ladies and gentlemen you have over there.

Right now, currently, we have eight women, one gentleman. And yeah, we are high-executing. I like to say we do big things.

So nine of you guys have been running that, plus, I don't know, a number of other really good events. And you still found time to help get the Corn Fairy, a PGA-recognized tour, to Amarillo for the first time in over 20-plus years. And so that went great. looking forward to having that in town for another four years at least so we uh we appreciate what you guys do and then it definitely looks like there's more of you over there uh in what we're seeing on the output so thank you all for your service to the community and continuing to keep things fun appreciate that thank you gentlemen item 7.6 has been presented

I move to adopt resolution number 081126-1 as presented. Second.

Now that we've got a motion and a second, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. We'll move right along on to 7-7. Mr. Koshuba, is that you? Am I right on that one? Yeah. So aquatic market viability study.

Mayor and Council, Michael Koshuba, Director of Parks and Rec. This is the agreement for the Engineering Services for the Aquatic Market Viability Study. Just a quick history, so we brought this to Council back in August of 2025. At that time, Council directed staff to do a staff-led evaluation of Southeast and Southwest. We presented those findings to Council in December of 25. We have since issued a second RFQ, which is 306-26, which would basically do the market viability for southeast and southwest pools and also the splash pads. this was recommended at the park board meeting in june 10th one of the reasons it was pulled from last meeting is it did not have the correct and updated information previously it was 99 000 it's now 146. the reason for that is there's a couple things number one we removed warford from the study we wanted to focus on the outdoor pools of southeast southwest and the splash pads We added a topographic survey to see if there was any kind of movement of the structures themselves. We also added in the structural assessment of the building, the architectural assessment, so looking at the buildings themselves. Previously, it was just the shells of the pool. We also added in the water leak detection testing and water pressure testing, just to make sure that the piping in the ground, we could see if it was in good condition or not. So the addition of all those items is what caused it to go from 99 to 146. We'd be happy to answer any questions on this item.

May have a few on this one, Michael.

Who wants to go first? So what you said, the items that we just added, the pipe, the testing, all that kind of thing. So we're going to spend about, and I don't know what the cost is, but it looks like about $50,000 more than what the initial was. I guess is that part of the viability study part for those pools? Because I'm thinking if they're going to do this whole aquatic study and they say scrap those pools, why would we spend $50,000 extra to say, well, the piping's good? I mean, we're not selling it, so... Would it not be smarter to maybe change the order of that and say, hey, what are you telling us first? What are you finding? Like, hey, get rid of these splash pads. This is the area that we think they're. Because I had a discussion with city manager that what all this entails. Because I was thinking, why are we spending $146,000? It's crazy. All we wanted was just bids. We just wanted bids to fix the pools. That's it. And hopefully those are free. This is a much more in-depth study. It's location. It's everything. It's all this stuff, plus the additional testing on this. But I would say for the $50,000, the testing on the actual structures and the pipes and the pressure testing and all that, Would it not be smarter to wait for them to give us their study results first of whether they think that those are even usable or like, hey, y'all can open those, but they'd be terrible because nobody likes these pools. These pools aren't an attraction anymore. It just seems like the order of things, maybe we could save 50 grand.

Well, I think one of the main things was one of the things we told the community was the structural assessment was going to be one of the key components. So determining what we could do currently with those existing structures would maybe dictate what we do in the future. So if those structures are sound and the buildings are sound, then you could do some repair things. If not, then maybe you're looking at replacement. So one of the things we're going to look at is repair versus replacement. Could you repair what's currently there? If council decides that that's not the direction we want to go, then obviously that can change the scope of this work. We just wanted to make sure that the structural assessment, which is what we've heard multiple times, was conducted thoroughly so that we could say, yes, structurally it's sound or structurally it's not sound. which is why we wanted to look at the structure of the actual pools, but then also the piping systems which are under the ground, which you can't just dig up and look at. So that's why we wanted to make sure that we were testing not only the pressurizing those pipes, but also the shell of the pool itself. If that makes sense, then you could, in theory, repair those.

Okay, I don't disagree, but what if their study comes back and says, really, you should scrap these pools? I mean, not like... They're sound, right? The buildings are sound, the pool shells, whatever, right? Either they are or they aren't, whatever. This is what it's going to take. But then they come back, and these are the experts with aquatics, and they come back and say, you can repair these, but they're no good. Our expert opinion would be you build one here. It's going to have the biggest draw. This is the way you need to build it. This is the cost. That's all I'm saying is I get it because you're right. That's exactly where we started. But if we're going to spend all this money to do and use their expertise, why would we, and if they go away from these and say, You see what I'm saying? Why would we waste the money on this? Yes, we told the public that that's where it started, but clearly it's gone way beyond that. We're not just getting repairs or bids for repairs. If we're going to get a full aquatic market viability study and these two are just not in the right location, not the right type of pool at all, why would we not start there and go, okay, this is what it is. Does that make sense? Or is it all combined? I mean, I'm not directing. I'm asking questions of, does that make sense? Or is it like, no, we've got to do it all?

I think we can look at it either way. I mean, I think one of the approaches is if council wants to repair the pool as is, then I think that's the first step. That's going to be your lowest cost to go in, fix what's currently there, keep it in kind of the same shape and layout. But if that's not the direction, if we rather spend our money looking at what fits best where, then I think you're right. Then I think we could reorder those where maybe the structural assessment isn't the first component. It would be kind of a backup if that site is the best site still. I mean, if you look at Southeast Pool, if we want to make changes there, there's no room. um so in theory southeast would be looking at a different location now if you want to keep southwest and repair it then i think the structural assessment would be essential to that making sure that we can identify is it structurally sound or not and i think that's the approach we took to start was let's look at the structure first if the structure says it's good then that gives us more options if the structure says it's not sound then obviously that limits what we can do moving forward and we start looking more at replacement as opposed to repair If Council wants us to go in a different direction, we're happy to do that and look at other options, other locations. But that's kind of the guidance we had initially received, was to focus on the structure first and then look at other options. Thank you.

So I'm reading this market viability study, and I'm also reading into the Kimley Horn, you know, piece. So that is an engineering firm, but they do quite more than just engineering. And so when you say market viability, what I'm hearing might be something more like, you know, an aquatic center. I'm assuming by reaching out and engaging an engineering firm like this, you might could be opening up More like a nationwide look where there may be some entities out there that. They do public facing pools, but but they may have some sort of other component for. I'm thinking kind of like the natatorium, so competitive swimming, Olympic size pool, other things like that. And so our issue is going to be cost, right? Like us going and finding money. that we can put into that when we're trying to balance all of the other needs of the city. Not likely, but in this amount of money, is there anything to be gained in hiring a large firm like this? And the market viability piece, would that give us anything that we could potentially try to attract anybody to the neighborhood that would be able to say, oh, that looks really good in those demographics? Because If they don't know you're there, they're not going to know what your demographics are, right? And then nobody would know what we've had to do with the two pools. So am I thinking incorrectly or could I place some sort of value on this 150K in at least trying to open ourselves up to additional funding from outside of what we typically use in our general fund?

I think it could. I mean, what I would say is it allows us to look at the current market to see what makes financial sense. If we're looking at kind of the cost recovery, it allows us to see and benchmark what other facilities, local facilities are doing. It allows us to see are we over served in certain portions of the community and underserved in others. I do think it could open up some conversations, bigger conversations. I think the challenge is if we're looking at more of community pools, it may be different than more of an aquatic destination. I know when we had initially talked about the John Stiff development study, there was a group that had reached out that had talked more about a big aquatic facility as a part of that. So I think there is interest in the market. Now that would be a little bit different potentially than a city pool. you know something like a thompson it would be more of a destination draw i think there has been some interest on that side this could probably support that i mean it could look and see okay what is the current demand how much service is currently in place with these other providers whether it's verdura the town club town thompson pool so i think it could provide some insight there but it's going to be a little bit different than looking at just a community pool it would be more of a destination okay

That was really my one question and just in what we're trying to purchase there. So, Council, any other questions for Mr. Kashuba?

Council, if I may real quick, I think, and Councilor Tips, I think I did misinform you yesterday. I apologize. So I think what you're saying makes a lot of sense. Maybe a phase one, phase two approach to this. I think unless the Council would like to study both the existing and the quality, I think it does make sense to determine uh uh is is is the need here or is it somewhere else and then if we decide it is here at southwest southeast then proceed down that down that vein of cost i think council said i think that you're saying that that makes sense to me and so i apologize i i wasn't aware of the internal component of this and so and i and i know step right told me and i missed it and i saw it's on me so but i think if we were to proceed this i think my recommendation would be to take this we convert into a phase one phase two type approach do the viability study, and if it comes back that, yeah, southeast, southwest locations make sense, then move on to phase two, I think. So, Michael, I think, and Donnie, is that something we can do with this, or is that a total change of scope for Kenleyhorn?

Well, I think a lot of it would be the tasks that are outlined in the proposal. And obviously we can talk with the consultant. So the proposal lists out those different tasks. It would just be us taking those in a different order. So we can broach that conversation with them and make sure they're comfortable with that.

To assist in that, could council entertain maybe a motion to payment up to that amount as needed and put a few You know, kind of controls on there. Would that give you what you would need and moving that forward? So you didn't have to bring back a revised proposal.

Yeah, I think if we had it not to exceed, then we could always go work with them on the specifics.

Any other questions comments.

So we're so outside of Thompson park. We're not going to have any other aquatic facilities here for quite some time. I mean, this is going to be a long time coming to determine what we're going to do going forward. So not only this summer, but we could have multiple summers where Thompson Park is provided by the city. Correct. And have we tracked usage there? Is it up? Do we know if people who use the pools in other places are coming up?

We have done a little survey. I don't have that information with me. I'd be happy to provide it. We have seen an uptick in a lot of the revenues coming from Thompson. So I would say, yes, we've seen an increase at the facility.

Well, that might be something as we're continuing to look at this. I mean, the usage of that and, you know, is it filling a need and are people finding it that use the others or coming there? So I think that would be something that would be good to know once, I guess, we get through with the summer.

The other thing I failed to mention was this also includes the splash pads. We've got 15 splash pads spread out all over town. So we didn't want to go do an aquatic viability study and focus just on the pools and then come back to council in a year and say, oops, we forgot splash pads. Let's go look at splash pads. So we wanted to look at all of our aquatic facilities at one time. That way, if there are some shifts that need to happen with where we place things, that we're looking more than just the pools. We're also looking at those splash pad locations. and determining is that the best location for each of those splash pads as well, because a lot of those are coming up to life expectancy.

Michael, when would this, if awarded, when would they have the deliverable to you, as stated in 7.7? Let's see.

Just give me one second. I'm trying to find the timeline for it. I would say it would take less than nine months would be my guess. I don't have a specific, but I would say probably nine months to evaluate it. Thank you.

And, Michael, is there any way to track usage of those splash pads? How many times that button gets pushed? There's really no way to track it, is there?

No. I mean, unless you had staff going by and doing physical counts on a random pattern. And the other thing is a lot of times we've seen kids, when we go by there, they'll go push the button and go sit down and watch it as a feature as opposed to interacting with it. So trying to get a true count of... Yeah, there's just really no way. I will say there are some that are heavily used and some that aren't as heavily used. So I think that's something that staff has observed in certain locations where we know those splash pads get a lot of use.

Can I go back to Councilman Simpson's question? And somewhat could be a request. Was Southeast Pool the one that was in better condition? Which one had the foundational crack and

So Southeast had the structural, well it had the void underneath the deep end that we had to go and structurally repair before the start of last season. Southwest has the deck that has the voids underneath it. So they're both in very similar condition

But if Council was to entertain a conversation where, look, we're looking several years out, let's see if we can go identify some funding to go in and do an update while we still have time over the winter, get Southeast Pool up and going to a functioning, realistic expectation, knowing that we really are trying to put good money after a good intention of looking bigger and better, and you're going to wait on Kimley Horn to give you some advisement, would Southeast or Southwest be the one that would take less cost and care?

I would have to visit with staff because I know since we've closed them, I know they've had to use the controller from one of the pools to go get one of the splash pads operational. So I'd have to get with staff to see what condition they're all in currently.

Yeah. And if we consolidated to one, I mean, I know that would greatly, uh, help in, you know, repair equipment or whatever. But Councilman Simpson, is that something you're leaning towards? Or are you just stating the expectation level of the community of this is going to take some time?

No, I mean, I wasn't thinking. I mean, I think we just have to look holistically at these two facilities. But to me, I think we're at this crossroads to determine if we're going to invest. I mean, the question is, are we going to invest in aquatics in the future? I mean, that's something. And if we are, where are we going to get the money? Do voters have to approve it? Do we have it somewhere? But to me, the bigger question is, what is the right type of thing to build? And because we have Thompson Park, that seems to be something that has shown an increase in usage. There's one in Canyon. There's other things here. I guess what they're going to tell us is there room for something else here because I think not only how much it costs, but it's got to get used and it's got to generate some revenue. I don't know of two equally sized pools like we've had before, which are basically kind of Olympic pools and that's all they were, a place to go in versus Thompson Park or these other places. It's going to take a while. I don't know if putting good money after bad under Southeast would be a solution. I think it's more focusing on what do we want to do in the future. We may get through this, and we may determine we don't, I mean, there's no need for us to be in the aquatics business anymore. I don't know what that, or they may say, here's what we really need to do, and here's the money that you need to do it with to make sure that it can move forward.

Any other questions or comments, counsel?

What I could do is I can get some costs for what it would take to get those operational. We could provide those back to council.

If you would just to keep it super simple, pick one that would be the more economical. And maybe bring that back, run that through city management. Let's see on kind of a 1 on 1 basis. If if we can get educated with that before, maybe we take up the time to do a. another discussion item that might not be the direction you go so uh but i am interested and then um council it looks like item seven seven um could be motioned with a not to exceed and that would give uh staff a little more latitude so moved i got a soul moved second and i hear a second all in favor on seven seven not to exceed the one forty six six please say aye aye aye any opposed Motion passes. Thank you, sir. Item 7.8. Appreciate it, Mr. Koshuba. Mr. Hooper, how you doing?

Doing great, Mayor and Council. These are great items, the next two items. I'll just present the first one. This is new processes in progress. And you're going to get to see that. We've talked about our CIP processes a lot lately. Well, this is that new process in play right here. So today, this item is a ratification of emergency engineering service authorization related to $211,000 capital project transfer from project 000132, add another zero in there, and wastewater system improvements and repairs over to project 000221, which is the Hollywood Road Wastewater Treatment Facility Boiler Replacement Engineering Services project that was created. The city manager authorized an emergency purchase for this in the city's emergency purchasing policy following a failure in a combination of the existing boilers at the Hollywood Wastewater Treatment Plant recently. We had to get that done in a hurry because it's a big part of our process out there, and if we don't have those boilers in place and operating, we run into trouble. Luckily, at that same time, KSA engineers were already out there working on a project that was right next to that one. We grabbed them, had them do the engineering for this project. and so the requested transfers for 211 000 to pay the bill for that this item demonstrates the city's new cip transfer process functioning as it is intended before we would have made that transfer and done that and came back and ratified it and they would have been all over with but this time we're bringing the actual transfer to you for your approval it has been to the cip oversight committee reviewed approved by that committee it's been reviewed and approved by the city manager as well And now we place it in your hands on this agenda for approval of this transfer request.

Questions for Mr. Hooper? No. Thank you for the presentation and bringing it back to us. Item 7.8 is before you, gentlemen.

I move to accept item 7.8 as presented. Second.

I have a motion and a second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Last item up Miss Donna Knight. You're still back there. Sorry we we put you at the very end, right? Somebody's gotta be there. Yeah, welcome up. Tell us a little bit about what you're trying to get done over there at the courthouse.

Well, I am requesting a transfer between my two projects that I have open right now. I have a completed parking lot project that has $1,004,979 left in it, and I would like to transfer it to my flooring project. BOTH WERE FUNDED BACK IN 22, 20, 30. AND THE FLOORING PROJECT WAS ONLY FUNDED FOR 130,000 AND THE BIDS ARE COMING IN AT A LITTLE OVER 500,000. SO I NEED THE MONEY TO REPLACE THE FLOORING. THE FLOORING IS LIFTING, IT'S CHIPPING, IT'S BECOMING A HAZARD TO STAFF AND CITIZENS. Oh, am I supposed to? Sorry. So there is examples of the chipping lifting of the tiles. I know it's only a small lift. It's the width of the tile at this point, but we have people of all walks of life coming into the court every day with mobility issues. A small lift like that can cause a trip and a fall. And then with the remainder of the funds from that million dollars, I would like to expand the scope and make the courts bathrooms ADA compliant. There is a picture of our current bathrooms. As you can see, they haven't been touched since we moved into the building and making them ADA compliant will help us in the future because nothing can be remodeled on that first floor unless you make those bathrooms ADA compliant. And right now we actually have the funds set aside for the court. They were set aside in 2023 or 2022 to remodel parts of the court so if we can MOVE IT TO THAT FUNCTION, IT WOULD HELP MAKE THE BUILDING WHERE YOU ALL CAN DO THINGS IN THE FUTURE LIKE REMODEL THE COURT, REMODEL THE FRONT ENTRANCE OF APD.

OK, Miss Donna, let me back up just a few slides there. So your previous project came in under budget, and we watched the parking lot finally get updated and repaired. Oh, yes.

It is wonderful. I appreciate it. You have no idea what the potholes were like before.

Definitely took care of a few potholes over there. You guys, I guess I would say facilities, right? Where did that facilities guy go? We've got some savings that's recognized. We're right in line with Mr. Hooper's comment earlier that this is the way that you guys are identifying savings and then you're capturing that. because it was appropriated for the municipal courts building. So the way you'd like to spend some of the money over there would be to update both of the bathrooms.

No, there's actually six bathrooms. There are two public and four staff.

Update all the bathrooms. Yes. And then do the flooring throughout.

It's not this morning throughout. It's only the linoleum tiles. So that is in the clerk's office, prosecutor's office, jury room, court rooms.

Okay. And then this part in the conversation, you are... APPROVING A TRANSFER COUNCIL. IT'S GOING TO BE NOW REALLOCATED BUT THEN IT'S STILL GOING TO GO THROUGH THE NORMAL PROCESS SO WE GO BACK OUT TO EITHER A BUY BOARD OR TEXT BUY OR WHATEVER AND THEN WE WOULD TAKE BIDS AND SEE LIKE SELECTIONS AND WHERE THEY COME BACK, RIGHT? THEN THAT WILL BE BACK BEFORE THE COUNCIL.

Correct. And this has gone through the same process. So it's gone through the CIP committee. It's gone through Grayson Path and is here for your approval. Jerry Danforth, I know, has looked at this project as well and thinks it's a very good project to do. I think it was already actually on a list of projects, but just was not funded yet.

Okay. And then right in line with our earlier conversation this morning, these are monies that are sitting over in CIP. So as you realize these savings, much like the example we used earlier today, they're not being pulled back into your fund balance, where you're looking at a fund balance for that budget from municipal court. They're sitting over there. So if they had have spent all the money just to get the concrete poured and the landscaping done in the parking lot done, it would have already been over there. So those monies are remaining. This is a perfect example of how they're being reallocated or reappropriated, I should say, by council. So thank you for the presentation, Mrs. Knight. Questions, council, for that process specifically or for Ms. Donna? Great.

Okay.

Thank you, ma'am. Item 7.9 is before you, gentlemen.

Move that we approve non-consent on 7.9 as presented. Second.

I have a motion and a second from the right side. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Nobody wanted to go home. They just kept pausing. I know.

Try to get you guys out early. You just don't want to leave. Motion passes. That concludes the business that we have here to take care of today. Gentlemen, y'all good to adjourn? Move to adjourn. Hey, you're adjourned. Thank y'all for being here.