City Commission - Special Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the City Commission work session meeting. This is a work session meeting that's being held here at the Events Center on June 23rd, 2026. The time is 536 PM. We will call the meeting to order. This is a special work session, so there's not a quorum requirement or a roll call needed. So the item that will be presented is a presentation on the proposed fiscal year 2027 budget. I'll turn it over to staff.

Good evening. Mayor and Commission, thank you for being here tonight. I appreciate you taking time to have another meeting this month. Just what we all needed. I think it's very important, though. My name is Alan Gard, and I'm the city manager for the city of Brownsville. And we are in the midst of our budget season. The budget season starts around February, March, with a lot of detail work going on. We have meetings with our departments. They prepare budgets. We talk about what their needs are. And then we go through a process, and we'll talk a little bit about what that process is tonight. But we're still very early in it. And one of the things we wanted to do was talk to the community about what the budget looks like. I believe, I've been in local government for almost 40 years, and I believe the budget is one of the most important jobs that the city commission has every year. The budget speaks to how we allocate our resources, our finances to provide the services to meet the needs of our community. And we've done a couple of new things this year that I think are very helpful in that process and hopefully will inform the commission as they go through the budget process and as they make decisions about how to allocate those resources, what your property taxes look like, what new fees there may or may not be, and how we meet the demands in the community. So we're going to start this workshop tonight. We're going to talk about strategic alignment. This commission is very strategic about how they make decisions. We don't just make things up in a vacuum. We do a lot of strategic planning. We listen a lot to the community. There's lots of community engagement. They listen to their constituents. They hear about the things that they want to see in the community. And so we align those things. We align our financial resources with those strategic outcomes that the commission is looking for. We're going to talk about legislative impacts. The state legislature in Texas has a lot of influence over how cities budget their resources, how they collect property taxes, how they set property taxes. And so we want to talk about some of the most recent legislation that impacts how it affects the local budget. We're gonna give you an overview of the budget process. We're gonna talk about where we expect to be at the end of this fiscal year, 2026. Our fiscal year runs October 1st to September 30th. And so we wanna talk to you about how this year is going and where we plan to end up. I want to share some information about department operations. It's very easy for the community or for people and the individuals in the community to say, well, just hold the line. Just cut your budgets. Be more efficient. Cut the fat. I think we need to really give you some information about what services are really provided, the level of services, especially for a large city like Brownsville. So you have some, you and the community have some perspective on what you get for your tax dollars. Then we're going to give you a preview of where we are now currently with the 2027 budget. The commission has not made any decisions really about what the final budget looks like. We'll talk about what those steps are as we talk about the budget process, but we wanted to tell you where we are now and give you a very broad overview of what we are putting together. And it's also for the commission's education as well. And we want to talk about some fee adjustments. We are looking at creating a new fee, but also working with PUB getting rid of another fee. And so we wanted to start that conversation. We've had two community meetings where we've talked about a drainage utility and what that fee would look like. The commission discussed at their meeting the other night about eliminating the RSACA fee. And we wanna talk to you about how those two interplay together. They are separate and different with different purposes, but we wanna start educating the community about those two fees as well. And then we'll talk about some next steps. So strategic alignment. The City Commission has established through a strategic planning session, we have pillars. There are certain values that we strive to achieve through the provision of municipal services. Those include economic development, planning and zoning. What do you want our city to look like? Where do you want to have car washes? Where do you want to have schools? Where do you want to have apartments? Where do you want to have houses? Obviously infrastructure, roads, public utilities, public safety. Obviously if we don't have a safe city, nothing else really matters. And then quality of life and vibrancy. Quality of life is becoming more important, especially for a growing community like Brownsville. As we draw industry and we draw new businesses here, one of the things that their CEOs look at is what kind of quality of life will my employees have? So we wanna make sure we're providing excellent parks. We have libraries and we have great shopping and all the things that people look for when they wanna move to a community. And then governance, how do we order ourselves? How do we order our business? And how do we do it in a way that includes the community, that includes a great staff, that positions us for future growth? So all those things are part of the commission pillars. In addition to that, in order to accomplish that, our staff develops departmental work plans. We have 425 items in our work plans. We have 23 different businesses across the city. And every one of those departments, each one of those businesses has work plan items that speak to each of those pillars. And so we're very focused on that. The next step then comes, how do we allocate our budget resources then? to accomplish these work plan items to carry out the vision of the city commission. So we had a strategic planning session with the commission back in January, we met for a whole day and that strategic plan prepared a plan that reviews updates and confirms. We talked about big projects, big plans, and big ideas. So it was a very, very high level conversation. And again, for the commission really spoke to about their vision and what they think, what they're hearing from the community about what Brownsville wants to be when it grows up, what they want it to look like for now, for the next 20 years, the next 30 years, next 40 years. Some of those big ideas are our capital improvement plan. That's how we take care of our house. The capital improvement plan includes things like a new public safety facility, all of our roads, our bus and transit system, our airport, We have all kinds of projects that affect all of our businesses, our park system, and so the capital improvement plan was a big part of that discussion. We're getting ready to do a comprehensive plan, and that is how does the city look from a planning standpoint? Again, what is our future land use plan? How does housing fit in that? How does our park system fit in that? How does our downtown fit in that? And so we've been working on a downtown master plan. We worked on a parks, health, and recreation master plan. We just started a housing master plan. All those pieces will then come together as we start working on the comprehensive plan later this year. Congestion management. As you all drive around town, you all notice there's more and more traffic. How do we manage that? Again, I mentioned the downtown master plan. Space commerce is becoming a big issue here in Brownsville. How does Brownsville impact that? What role do we play in that? And the commission has staff looking at how we develop and plan for that and work with our partners in helping work on that. The Friesen-Nichols utility study, that's the one I mentioned about the drainage utility. With all the heavy rain recently, all of a sudden, flooding's become kind of an issue. When it wasn't raining, when it was dry, people didn't really think about it. But now with the rain, now we think about it. And so we wanna be prepared for how we address that. And the drainage utility is gonna provide us some guidance, some alternatives for how we can start to address that. The housing master plan I mentioned, that's just kicked off. And a new item that's kind of been on our radar for about a year is the USL Soccer League has approached Brownsville. They're very interested in having a franchise here. And so we're in the middle of those discussions. as well. Big plans, all the master planning we have going on. We're looking at a potential rehabilitating our existing recreation facilities and thinking about how can we build a new one? There's a lot of interest in the community about having a new recreation center, something large and modern. And how would we manage that? We're conducting a special need for zoning in District 1. There's some historical corridors there where there's a mix of housing and a mix of retail. How does that work? So we're studying that to make sure that we accommodate the people in that neighborhood and that it works for them. Our airport is a real key piece of our economic development program. It is a real spoke in our economic development wheel. And we are generating, we are applying for and receiving significant grants for our airport for rebuilding a runway and actually extending a runway so we have the potential to have cargo service. If we were to have that runway, we could potentially have FedEx or UPS or somebody like that building warehouses out near our airport so we would have more immediate access to those kinds of services. Talking about our four-year university, we've had a lot of discussions with UTRGV and we've made some progress. It's very important that Brownsville have a four year university where people can come here and go to the same campus for four years and graduate and get their degree. So we're looking at that and having those conversations with our partners. Back to the USL, sports tourism. We have a real opportunity for Brownsville to be a sports tourism hub. And so how does that all fit together? We're looking at a green zone underneath the highway overpasses. How can we create a place where we can have congregational parking and then use our bus system to route people through downtown to the zoo, to the MIDI, and around town without them having to go and find a parking place and then find a restaurant and then move their car again. So we're looking at that. Let's see, what else? Again, we're developing a space commerce master plan, as that becomes more and more prominent here in the RGV. Big projects. I've mentioned almost all of these. You see some of them going on right now. Phase 1 of Coffee Port Road is really moving along well. Old Highway 77 is moving. We're going to start Dennett Road very soon, as well as Dana Road. No pun intended, but down the road, you'll see Old Atlas start being worked on. So a lot of major roadway improvements. We have about $50 million worth of road projects in our five-year CIP right now. Now, it sounds like a lot, but our assets of our roads is about a billion dollars. And we're spending $50 million on basically about 10 roads. We have about 800 roads in our system, so we're barely starting to scratch the surface on that. But that's an investment that people want, and you'll see that when I get to the citizen satisfaction survey. So these are a lot of the projects that are going around right now. Again, these are major investments, and we're very proud of them. I wanted to share with you our updated organizational chart. What I have done here is I have created, with the permission from the city commission, two deputy city managers. One basically is over development, one is basically over public safety. And then our interim assistant city manager is over several departments there in the middle. Under my purview is organizational development and human resources, financial services, communications and marketing, and information technology. And so that's how I have organized our city structure to help us carry out those work plans and accomplish all these goals that the commission's looking for. There's a QR code for the survey. Does this take it so they can look at it on our website? Or is this from when you could take it? This takes you to the survey itself. It's already closed, so your input won't be taken. But what I wanted to tell you about this survey is that we talked to over 700 people. They participated in the survey. There is now a link on our website where you can go and look at all the results. And it is all the results. There are even the comments, and some of them aren't very flattering. So you can even go look at what everybody had to say about all of our services. But I wanted to share a high overview with you of the results and let you know that we're very pleased with these. When they were asked, About the changes in the city in the past three years, 56% said things have improved, 20% stayed the same, and about 24% gotten worse. Are we going in the right direction? 62% of those surveyed said we're going in the right direction, and that's a very positive trend, and we're very pleased with that. What's positive? People love the neighborly community and a very friendly community. And I can vouch for that. My wife and I moved here about two and a half years ago. And what we really love about Brownsville is how welcoming and engaging and friendly this community has been to us. We're outsiders and you all have embraced us. And my wife and I absolutely love living here. And that's confirmed as one of the very positive things about being in Brownsville. Our culture and our heritage, preserving it, very important. Events and festivals. Scenery, beautiful wildlife. Good amenities, our parks and playgrounds. Positive city growth. There's lots of very positive comments on here and I would encourage you to take a look at the survey because you can look at any of these questions and it'll take you to comments about that. It's an interactive survey. survey link online where you can actually sort it. You can sort it by district. How many people in District 1 think the police services are good? How many people in District 2 think their parks are good? So you can do sorting. What do females think? What do males think? What about people who have lived here a long time or people who have are new. You can sort this information and see how different demographic groups feel about each of these categories. So it's very interactive and we think it's great. What needs to improve? What's number one? Roads, number one. And I'll tell you, I've worked in 13 cities. That is every city in America. Every city in America. Fix our roads. Number one is always fix our roads. Traffic and transportation. How does our budget deal with that? We have received $23 million in grants that we're going to match with about $9 million of our own money. to do traffic signalization all around town. So I'm trying to start to share with you how does the budget connect to these requests from our community. City maintenance and infrastructure. Again, we start to work on that. Safety and emergency services. We are spending several million dollars over the next few years on new fire trucks and ambulances. So again, there's a connection between how we allocate our resources and what our community's looking for. Park and public spaces, pickleball, obviously becoming very popular. City governance and transparency, 11% said we need to work on that. Guess what, we're here tonight. We're here tonight to be transparent. It's very important to me and I know it's very important to our commissioners that we don't hide anything from you, that you know exactly what's going on. And again, when you go look at this survey, every single piece of data is on there for you to look at. We're not keeping anything from you. So we would encourage you, again, to look at it. Code enforcement and compliance, especially after the rain. We see how necessary it is for us to go out there and ask your neighbor, hey, can you mow your lawn? Because it creates problems for us. Sidewalk improvements. We have a half a million dollars in our budget to do sidewalks, to fill gaps. Listen to your residents. Again, we're here tonight. Last night, we had a community meeting with VICC to hear about what their challenges are and how we might address that. I tell you, again, I've worked for 13 cities. This commission is the most engaged group of individuals that I've ever worked with. They take phone calls. They take emails. They share them with me. We're here to listen and to hear what you have to say and try to come up with potential solutions. So while these are negative comments, we hear it and we're showing it and we're going to be dealing with all these things. Again, I would encourage you to go to the link on our website and check out all of these and see what you think about them. So looking over the city facilities and amenities below, we asked people, which two do you feel are the most important for the city to focus on and improve? Neighborhood parks was very important. We get about $3.3 million a year from the Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation, BCIC. They collect sales tax. We have an ordinance that says they are required to give 50% of that back to the city for quality of life projects. And we send them a list of projects for about $3 million. They provide that funding back to us. And I know that our parks and recreation department is making meaningful improvements in our parks across the city using that money. So again, I'm trying to show you that we're listening and we are tying our financial resources back to what our community is telling us we need to do. multi-use paths and trails. We have several large grants that we're matching with funds to expand our trail systems. We just had a groundbreaking for amenities for the West Rail Trail. So you're gonna see benches and water fountains and other things starting to pop up along that trail. So again, we're listening. The Brownsville Library is very important. And look at that, 45% very good, 45% okay. That's a 90% rating. for our library. People love our library and it's important to them. The recreation centers, they're okay. They need some help. And again, we asked people in the survey, do you want us to make our recreation center better and do you want a new one? And they're selling us yes. The sports park, the event center, these are the facilities and the amenities that people ranked as very important. Looking over city benefits, city beautification and cleanliness, preservation of the environment and wildlife, very highly rated and they're saying we're not doing a great job on it. So how do we impact that? And so we're looking at how we can address that. Family friendly, they say we do a good job with that. City sponsored events, they love our city sponsored events. So, again, other things here that I think are very important for us to consider. Animal-friendly, very poor down there on the right. I've got to tell you, I've done a lot of work with our animal control, and they were spending probably about $3 million to upgrade their HVAC and their systems there. But they do a wonderful job. We just got them five new trucks. Their trucks out there that they've been using had 300,000 miles on them. We are constantly trying to make that a better service. My wife volunteers at the animal shelter. It's very important to her, so I guarantee you it's very important to me because I hear about it every night. I want you to know that we really care about our animals. We are investing in spay-neuter programs. That's the key in every city to addressing stray animals. It just is. And so we know that, we recognize that, but budgetarily we put $25,000 in there in the budget to do low-cost spay-neuter programs. I just signed off on a grant application today for another $100,000 to try to address spay-neuter programs. So we're making this effort. Again, we see this information and it helps guide our financial decisions. Growth and development, street, roads, and sidewalks. There it is, very poor, we knew it. But it's very important. And so again, probably $50 to $60 million of our CIP is focusing on roads, streets, and sidewalks. Drainage infrastructure, very important. So it's very timely now that we have this discussion about the drainage utility and help us find a way to fund those kinds of improvements. Affordable housing. Again, we just started the housing master plan. And one of the key things that we talked to about the consultant that's leading that study is make sure we come up with some solutions so that we have housing options for everybody in town, no matter what your income level is. If you work in Brownsville, we need to make sure you're able to afford to live in Brownsville. And that's one of the items we'll be looking at. Local and small business support. The city does that. The Greater Brownsville EDC, Economic Development Corporation, does that. And the Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation has grant programs for local businesses. Historic downtown area. Again, we just finished the downtown master plan, or almost finished. We're getting ready to adopt it very soon. And there's a full implementation plan there. And we have funding in our capital improvement program to fund some of the projects that will be happening downtown. But I think there's been a lot of positives about downtown improvement and I hear comments about it often. Retail and shopping, we're working on that area. Access to public transportation. We've added I think about 40 bus shelters over the last two years and we're gonna be adding more bus shelters. We're getting ready to receive some new buses that we funded partly with local money, partly with federal grants. Again, we use local money to leverage federal grants wherever we can. We have over a million people a year ride on our buses. We just finished a micro transit study to figure out how to make our bus system more efficient in town. We also looked at an express route that goes from Boca Chica all the way out to possibly the port and maybe out even to SpaceX. So we're starting to explore those too because the more people that we can get on those buses, the fewer cars that are on the road. So that will also address some of the congestion. So we're trying to be very thoughtful about this. Safety and security, pedestrian safety is very important. And we need to do a better job with that according to these findings. And so I know right now we're budgeting quite a bit of money for striping and things out in our streets. So we're trying to access that. City preparation for response to emergencies. We've been handing out sandbags. We've been doing lots of public information and meetings about being prepared It's hurricane season now, so we've been talking a lot about that. Crime prevention, vandalism, police services. Solicitor and panhandle control. That's something that our commission has been talking about, and we're going to try to come up with some solutions for that as well. Leadership. Value resident input engagement. Again, I struggle with that very poor because, again, we're here tonight, and I know that our commission... listens I know they do and we do it staff too we live here too you know we go to church with you are you know so a lot of our employees coach your kids in baseball and softball our kids go to school together we're part of this community and so we really want to work hard to know let you know that we value your input and engagement we've had we had over 1,600 people engaged in the parks health and recreation master plan We had another thousand or so in the downtown master plan. We've had several hundred involved in the museum and cultural plan. We value community input. And so again, we're here tonight to re-emphasize that we really care about what our residents think. Manage city growth wisely. Well, I just named four master plans, so I don't know how much better we can manage growth. We know that's important. And again, we value the input that our residents bring to those processes. Because you live in this community and it's very important to us that we address the things that are important to you. Plan strategically again. Be transparent. Again, we're here. Prioritize the most important issues first. Show fiscal responsibility. You're gonna see some slides tonight, I hope, that show you that this is one of the most fiscally responsible cities that I have ever worked for. And I came up through budget, and I've done probably 30-something budgets that have won awards. I've been a CFO for 12 years and I'm a city manager now. And I can tell you the budget policies that this city has and uses, we are in solid footing in terms of finances, solid footing. There are cities in Texas that this budget process, budget season are gonna have to cut millions of dollars in order to meet their budget. We are not in that position We are not in that position. One of the things that we have done very well is we have diversity of revenues. We are not reliant on just property taxes or sales tax, and we have some slides that'll show you that. So again, a lot of this is educating people and letting them know what we do and how we do it and how professional we are about it. Communicate effectively with the residents. Again, we're here tonight. So then they asked them, here's the list of 10 issues you selected as being important. This was happening in the survey. Which four are most important to you? And now this list below combines top to bottom, the top 20. So these are from the previous list before. And of course, streets and roads is on top, as it is, like I said, in every city. But drainage is number two. So again, very timely to be talking about a drainage utility and eliminating the RSACA fee. So legislative impact. For this, I'm going to turn this over to Stephen Mews. He's our finance director, and he is very much an expert on how the state legislative changes have impacted our city budget. Stephen.

Thank you, Mr. Gardner. So he gave me the fun stuff, right? The legislative stuff. So just a quick overview on some of the things we have to operate within, right? The state is pretty... controlling of how we go about the budget. Senate Bill 2 here is something we've operated with since 2019. It basically lowered the threshold from 8% down to 3.5%. So it really restricted how much we can increase the taxes on residents. And that applies to new construction. I'm sorry, not new construction, but existing properties on the tax roll. New construction, they pay the full tax rate. The next year, they fall under that protection, right? Under that limit of 3.5%. And there's been talk, the last legislative session, they were talking about potentially lowering that to 2.5%. So it's something we need to be aware of. And since that was passed in 2019, and once we get to the tax rate slide, you'll notice that... OUR TAX RATE, THAT'S WHEN WE STARTED REALLY LOWERING THE TAX RATE BECAUSE WE COULDN'T KEEP IT ANY HIGHER DUE TO THE CAP. ANOTHER RECENT SENATE BILL THAT WE HAVE TO BE IN MIND OF IS SENATE BILL 1851. NOW THIS ONE IS RELATED TO THE DEADLINE WE HAVE FOR COMPLETING THE AUDIT. WE HAVE 180 DAYS. WE'VE ALWAYS HAD THAT DEADLINE, BUT NOW THEY ADDED SOME TEETH TO THAT. IF YOU FAIL TO COMPLY, YOU'RE PREVENTED FROM ADOPTING A TAX RATE. SO BEFORE, YOU COULD FILE EXTENSIONS, AND WE HAVE HAD TO DO THAT IN THE PAST. FOR EXAMPLE, A COUPLE YEARS AGO WHEN WE HAD THAT FREEZE, WE WERE OUT OF POWER FOR A FEW WEEKS, AND THAT PUT US BEHIND. WE ACTUALLY COMPLETED THE AUDIT AND WE PRESENTED IT TO THE COMMISSION THE FIRST WEEK OF APRIL, WHICH OUR DEADLINE WOULD BE MARCH 31ST. SO IF THAT HAD BEEN IN EFFECT BACK THEN, WE WOULD HAVE MISSED IT, YOU KNOW, JUST DUE TO THE uh... natural disaster that occurred right uh... that's the only problem with this legislation there is no extensions so if there's if that happens again we get delayed uh... you know we could potentially face it's essentially a multi-million dollar fine right if you can't adopt a tax rate use a no new revenue rate you're missing out on a couple million dollars so and uh... that did impact a hundred and thirty municipalities this year so a hundred and thirty cities in the state of Texas are prevented from adopting a tax rate by a state. So they are very much staying on top of that. We're not worried about it. They got me taking care of the budget, so we'll be in compliance. This other one, House Bill 1522, is another new one. It is related to the... Notice requirements, right? There's a new notice requirement for this. This one's relatively easy to comply with. It makes us show the median value. We've always shown the average value of a house, what the tax rate is going to look like, apply to the average value. Now they're making us show you the median value. This is what that statement looks like, taxpayer impact statement. That bottom, I think I got a laser here. This bottom one is what we've usually shown everyone. We put it in the newspaper and whatnot to disclose what you could potentially end up paying We do have the preliminary values for 2027. And assuming we kept the rate the same, this is what it would probably look like. This preliminary values and subject to change. And then this top table shows the median value. So the difference between the median and the average, if you don't know, the average is just sums them all, divides by the total, right? And then the median is you take all the property values, line them up from least to greatest, and you grab the one right in the middle. So what this does, it's intended to be more transparent. So it shows you kind of a range of what you're expected to pay. And while there's not a big difference for us here, it's not a very big difference between the median and the average. In some cities, there may be like a super wealthy neighborhood that skews the average really high, so the median would give you maybe more of a realistic amount of what you can expect to pay. So that's something we have to show every time we do a presentation on the budget or tax rate. So you'll see us again a few times throughout this budget process. Advertising requirements that we got to follow. Newspaper, we gotta publish it in the newspaper. They even specify the font size, which section of the paper it has to be in. We have to put it on our website and we also have to show a commercial on our peg channel for 60 seconds. It's probably the worst commercial you've ever seen if you have seen it. I'm in charge of making it. The one thing they don't require is social media, and that's something that we probably should have done anyway. We shouldn't have to wait until it's required, because I feel like that's where most people get their news from nowadays. So this year and going forward, we'll be making sure to work with our CMD team to put the advertisements not just in the newspaper that nobody reads or the PEG channel that Probably nobody watches either, but we'll make sure it's advertised on social media, get the message out there so that people are aware of when we have our budget hearings and they can attend and have their voices heard. To that end, we've also had community engagement sessions this year. To start the budget process, we had some public meetings at the event center and the public library where the city manager went out and was available and explained where your tax dollars go, what you do with it, and basically was there to answer any questions. So we've been trying to be a lot more proactive, not required by the state, but something we want to do to be more engaged with the public. Do you want to take over from here?

Thank you, Stephen. I appreciate that. Again, he's much more expert on that than I am. So this is a little bit about how our budget is prepared. We start, actually we start a little bit earlier putting the numbers together, but the strategic planning, April, May, June, the budget preparation, July and August, public input, a lot of communication with the commission. In August we have to have public hearings. As soon as we get the certified tax roll at the end of July, the city manager, according to the charter, sends the recommended budget to the city commission. and they start talking about it in August. We're required to have certain public hearings that Steven showed you in August and September, and then in September they adopt the budget before October 1st, and that's when we begin implementing it. This is our 2026 budget. I wanted to show you where the money comes from. We get about $42 million in property taxes. This is our general fund. This is your basic day-to-day operations. This is police, fire, libraries, parks, uh... planning city manager's office finance this is you know our general checkbook about forty two million from property taxes which is it less than thirty percent of our budget we get a about thirty five percent of our budget from sales tax almost fifty million dollars in the general fund uh... fees and services are about eight percent Funds from PUB, we get about $11 million, and we have operating transfers from other funds of about $12 million. But this is a nice balanced budget. We get about a third from property tax, a third from sales tax, and a third from other sources. This is what you want a municipal budget to look like. It's very well balanced. It shows diversity of revenue sources, so we're not overly reliant on one type. This is some history of our sales tax, and you can see how that has grown since 2019. The big jump occurred in 2021 and 2022. That's when the Wayfair decision became law of the land by the Supreme Court. What that means is when you buy something from Amazon, when it lands in Brownsville, Brownsville gets the sales tax on that. Before that, a lot of the mail order stuff didn't have sales tax at all, or the sales tax stayed in the community where it was sent from. The Wayfair decision by the Supreme Court said, the sales tax belongs in the community where the item was purchased. And that helped us tremendously, especially during COVID, when everybody was buying everything online. And so you could see that really had a big impact those two years. We went from 31 million to 41 million just over those two years. So this is the property tax rate history. Since 2020, we've decreased our property tax rate by almost 14%. And people are gonna say, well, that's crazy because my property tax bill went up. That is correct. And again, I'm gonna be fully transparent and very honest and direct with you. The state calculation for the property tax rate is really complex and really complicated. And Stephen just shared with you some of the laws that the legislature passed that we have to follow. And they have worksheets that we have to prepare to show this. So even though that property tax rate went down from almost $0.70 down to $0.60, that was a 12% decrease. I can tell you that year, according to the state calculation, that was a 3.5% property tax increase. It was a tax rate decrease, but it was a property tax increase. You paid more, even though the rate went down 12%. That's how goofy that calculation is. And again, I'm here to be transparent and tell you the truth. So when people say we don't want the property tax rate to go up, That's really only part of the equation. The other part is property value. And the city does not do that. The appraisal district does property value, and that's what we have to go by. Whatever they send us is what we do, is what we use in our calculation. You have the ability to impact that. Usually earlier in the year, February, March, April, you'll get a notice from the appraisal district with your preliminary value. You have the opportunity to appeal that value. And the appraisal district has a process for you to go through to say, you know, if they say your house went up $20,000, you're gonna say, well, I didn't do anything to it. You know, I didn't put a new roof on, I didn't build a pool, I didn't add a room. Well, that's crazy. You can go and appeal that. And there's a process for that. And I encourage you to do it. It doesn't matter to the city if you appeal your property value. It really doesn't affect us at all. But it's half of the equation. It's half of the equation. So I want you to be aware of that. In fact, when we had our One City Information Fair earlier in the year in April, we invited the appraisal district to come and be at our fair and explain to people how they could appeal their property values. So again, we want to be very transparent about that. But our property, you see, even though that rate went down, you can see with new value, with new construction, and with reevaluation of existing property, the amount of revenue we have collected has gone up. The blue part is for our debt service. That's how we pay. That's like paying our mortgage. When we sell debt to build a 20-year road or when we sell debt like we're building a new public safety facility, that's like paying our mortgage. That's the loans we take out. This is our operations, the pink part. That's the day-to-day checkbook. So even though our rate has stayed flat, even though our rate has gotten down 14% since 2020, we're collecting more revenue. And again, I wanna be transparent and open about that. So where does the money go? We are a people-centered business. When you call for a police officer, you want a person to show up. When you call when your house is on fire, you hope people show up. When I'm at the library, we have lots of automation at the library. But what do people always look for when they need a question answered? They go find a person. They don't want to look it up on a computer. They want to go talk to somebody. We're very people-centered. Now, we are trying to figure out how The city can use artificial intelligence, use AI and chat GPT and those good things to try to become more efficient and more effective. But we still, people wanna talk to people. We have bus drivers. We don't have automated buses. We have people that work at the airport. That's just, we are a people-centered business. And you can see, 68% of our cost is for people. That's salaries, that's benefits, that's retirement, that's health insurance, that's all those things. Very little of it is for services. We are people-centered. So out of $148 million budget, 100 million of it is people. We have about 1300 employees. And for those costs, the vast majority of that service is public safety, and it should be. If you don't have a safe community, nothing else matters. 68% is police and fire, and it should be. And that is, again, that is every city in America, every town I've worked in, between 65% and 75% of the budget has been for public safety. And I'm okay with that. I'm absolutely okay with that. To give you a little bit of background, since 2023, we've added not quite 30 positions, but that's less than 1% that we've increased our staff. And our demand for our services has increased significantly. So again, we're trying to do more with a little bit, we're trying to do a lot more with a little bit more. To give you some more perspective, since 2016, if you look at the bottom there, the consumer price index has gone up 47%. Our wage adjustments have equaled 31%. Our employees were not even able to keep up with inflation for our employees. So when people say, well, you know, city employees don't need a raise, well, they buy eggs at the same HEB that you buy eggs. They buy gas at the same gas station where you buy gas. They live in the same community that you do. And while the commission has really tried, but again, trying to hold the line on taxes, and part of that's due to some of those state mandates, we've really tried to do what we can, but we're not even keeping up with inflation. So again, when people say cut, okay, cut what? So I wanna give you a little bit of flavor for the operations. Brownsville Fire and Rescue, they have a average response time under seven minutes to a structure fire or an accident. And in 2025, they went to more than 13,000 calls for structure fires and accidents. The EMS, which is my favorite part of the fire department, they're like little doctors, little pair of doctors on wheels, they're awesome. Their response time is under six minutes. And in 2025, they had almost 25,000 calls for service. Think about that. How many is that per day? That's a lot. Both fire and rescue. We also, we have this thing called the 2080 agreement. We are the biggest fire department in this part of the valley. So when something happens out in the county, when something happens, we gotta go help. When something happens in Los Fresnos, we go help. When something happens in Rancho Viejo, we go help. That's part of that 2080 agreement. And we do not get reimbursed the full cost of that service. And we are talking with the county about how we can make that a little more fair. We don't mind helping. We love to help. But one of the things that does too is that means there's fewer fire personnel in Brownsville to handle Brownsville calls. while they're out of town. Police, they have a response time for priority one calls under six minutes. They had over 115,000 calls in 2025. One thing they have done, and I'm going to talk to you about this a little bit. Again, we're trying to find ways to be more efficient. We have this new system called Axon, and it is body cameras, it's drones, and the chief has some wonderful drone video that he showed at his State of the Police Department this year that make it much safer for our officers to handle calls now. But one of the things it does is it uses AI to help our officers with report writing. And they believe that it saves about 15 hours per week in report writing for the officers that have to write reports. And we did the math on that. That saves enough time to be the equivalent of 10 full-time officers. So while we are paying a little bit more for this system, about $450,000 a year, we're getting the equivalent of 10 officers back in time. 10 officers would run us about a million dollars. So there's actually a real benefit to this system. And we think using technology is, again, a great way to make us more efficient. We're not going to need fewer police officers as we grow. So how can we be more efficient with the ones that we have? Our public library, we have two wonderful libraries. If you have not been and you do not have a library card, please go. Get a library card. You can access books electronically. You don't even have to go there. So you can get books on your computer, books on your Kindle or whatever at no charge. But they're open 3,744 hours each year, Monday through Sunday. They're open every day, some hours. That is a wonderful asset for a community. And they're open several nights. They're open after 5. So if you're working, you can take advantage of that. They have access to 260,000 physical items, 74,000 electronic items. And they serve 600,000 customers a year, 600,000 visitors a year, and circulate over 330,000 items. We have something, a lot of cities have a 311 system. Ours is called 546 Help. And we have five call takers on duty at any given time. In 2024, they had almost 90,000 calls. 98.4% of them were resolved. That's 340 calls per call taker per week. Each person there is handling about 60 to 70 calls during their shift. And sometimes these people are very upset or they're just not having the best time at the best day of their life. They're having a rough time. So these are very professional people handling these calls. They have incredible empathy. They have incredible patience. They're wonderful listeners. And they get to the point where they're actually helping these people who are having difficulty with something going on in their neighborhood. They've had over 80,000 calls in 2025, and they resolved 99% of those. We have 46 parks that cover over 1,000 acres, 47 miles of hike and bike trails, four gymnasiums, two pools, 50 buildings and structures, 55 athletic fields, an 18-hole golf course, a dog park, and an event center. We have a wonderful Parks and Recreation Department that has a whole variety of ways that you can do active or passive recreation. It's hot. It is Brownsville. I get that. But there's lots of opportunities to be healthy. We are well below staffing levels that are recommended by the national standards by the NRPA. They do enough overtime right now. The staff that we have, They do enough overtime right now. For them not to have overtime, we would have to add 11 maintenance workers. So that's how short they are just to cover the overtime. So they do a wonderful job with what they have. When you see the farmer's market, we have people out there helping. When you see the Lunadas, they're out there helping. If you go out to the sports park on 4th of July, they're out there working. They're out there nights, days, weekends. They're doing a tremendous job, and there's not enough of them. We use some of our general fund to supplement both, subsidize both B Metro and our airport. Our airport has 156,000 departures annually, and again, it is a real key spoke in our economic development wheel. We have to have that international airport if we are going to draw big companies that have CEOs that fly in and out. We need that airport. And it's a beautiful airport. My first impression when I first came to interview in Brownsville was the airport. I flew into there and went, wow. I mean, it's brand new. This is gorgeous. This town really has it going. And it was a great first impression for me. B-Metro, again, over a million riders a year. And they're a key part of getting people around town, getting people to work. We have agreements with BISD and TSC and UTRGV. With the proper ID, they get to ride for free. And so it's really helpful for our students to be able to get around town. Public Works, we have over 2,300 streets that have more than 800 miles of roadway that we're required to maintain. They fill over 600 potholes every year. Over 123,000 square feet of asphalt is used to fill those potholes. They have over milled and overlaid 50 streets in 2024. They've done more in 2026. They're doing more. We have more scheduled for 2027. They have 230 traffic signals that they have to maintain. And again, we just got a significant grant to try to synchronize all that signalization throughout town. And they have 27,000 traffic signs they have to maintain and miles and miles of stripes. And one of the things they've added that I think you may have noticed is they've been helping out TxDOT take care of the grass along the frontage roads. That's technically the state's responsibility. But it was getting so tall, they were only getting down here maybe three times a year. It would get so tall that we would get lots of complaints. So we worked with TxDOT to allow our own crews to go out and start taking care of that. And we are supplementing the tech stock contracts so they can get down here more often. Because when people drive into a town, that's a first impression. We do not want our roadways along our front rows to look that ragged. And so we have invested money into trying to make our roadways look better. And we'll continue to look to find ways to do that. Public health, we are very fortunate to have a public health department in the city. It's not operated by the county. We operate it in the city. They do health inspections. If you have eaten at a restaurant today and you did not get sick, thank your health department. I've seen the before and after pictures. They do a wonderful job of keeping it safe for you to eat out in restaurants. And our restaurants appreciate that. They don't fight them. When our public, when our inspectors go and say, hey, this is kind of bad or this process doesn't work, they fix it. They fix it. They know that we're trying to help them. They don't want their customers to get ill. So they're very cooperative and work well with us. Ordinance enforcement. They pick up 40 tons of tires. Again, tall grass, illegal dumping, and debris cleanup. So they do quite a bit of that. Maternal and child health. They hold community events and serve new mothers. Vector control. They take care of mosquitoes. Anybody have a problem with mosquitoes? Yeah, me too. I walk my dog twice a day and they do a great job with that. And when they come through your neighborhood, if you go on our website or you have an app, is that right? There's actually a mosquito spraying app. You can see when they're going to come through your neighborhood after some rain and you know to stay in when they do that. So again, using technology to try to be more informative and more transparent. Employee wellness visits. Employee wellness for us, if we can save money on the city health insurance, we save money, and that helps keep property taxes down. Wellness presentations, both to city employees and out in the community. And then our BARC, our animal control, is also in the health department. Their animal save rate there is over 65%. Sometimes it's up as high as almost 90%. They do a wonderful job of of saving animals and finding new homes for them to be adopted. They work with rescue groups around the country. Dogs and cats leave on planes from Brownsville on a regular basis to go to other parts of the country where there are rescue groups that will find them adopted homes as well. So they're very creative. Our CIP, our Capital Improvement Program, I just want to show you a couple of slides on this. Through 2031, we have almost $480 million of capital improvements. About 295 of that is our money that we will sell debt. 184 million of that is grants and other funding. So we are leveraging, we're using this 295 to leverage 38% of the funding. If you could get somebody to build you a house and pay for 38% of it, it's a pretty good deal. So we have a very active grants department. I haven't talked about them much, but they manage over $40 million in grants every year for community programs, but they also assist our departments with these grants as well. So very important. I've not worked for a city that has leveraged this much in grants before. They're very effective. And what they're doing is they're bringing your federal and state taxes, they're bringing those back to Brownsville. That's huge. Funding by department, IT is about $8 million. The landfill, the landfill is a moneymaker for us. Engineering and Public Works, about $85 million. This is the CIP funding for these various operations. So $96 million, a lot of that is grants. A lot of the airport CIP is a 10% match. So when we build a $30 million runway, we're putting in 3 million, we're getting 27 million back from the federal government. So those are really good projects there. 77 million, that's our public safety facility. That should say police and fire. Although fire alone has $20 million. I was telling you about equipment. A fire truck today is over a million dollars. One of the LNGs donated 1.2 million fire truck back to the city because we are going to help service them if, God forbid, they ever have an accident. But they want to be great partners with us, and we're looking at building those kind of partnerships with other entities out in the county. Again, the big projects, I'm not going to go over these again. I talked about a number of them. But our motto is one city, people, purpose, projects. We have wonderful people that work for the city. They have a purpose. And we are building projects that make this a great community to live, work, and play in. So for 2027, we have our base budgets in. These are new requests. There's almost $17 million of new requests from departments. I have about $2 million of available funding. So I'm going to have to make some priorities. I'm doing that by using guidance from the citizen survey. I've received guidance from the commission about things that are important to them. And I've got to try to find those balance. And I will bring a recommended budget to them. at the end of July after we get the certified tax roll. It's not gonna have $17 million of new items in it. It's gonna have about two and a half million dollars of new items in it. Because we're committed to keeping that tax rate at that 60 cents. We're committed to that. The commission has given us that direction and we'll make that happen. But I just want you to understand there's some things that our departments want to do that we're not gonna be able to do yet. We're still going to keep trying to find ways to be innovative and find ways to do those services. And some of them will get done. Some of them won't get done. But just like you and your house budget have to prioritize, we have to prioritize ours as well. Of the new budget requests, Only 20% are new positions. A lot of it is professional development. We have $2.6 million of maintenance and operations for our fiber broadband. We are actively seeking and actually starting to receive some deals for people to use our dark fiber, to use our fiber broadband system. That's going to help pay for that. And so I'm very confident we're going to come up with the money to cover that one. But we need contract labor. We need more public communication. We want to be more transparent. We need more maintenance items. A lot of the things we have are subscription services. We have to pay more for our Microsoft subscriptions and our cybersecurity subscriptions and all the things that you have to pay for on your home computer as well. So fees and adjustments. I'm going to talk about the RSACA fee. THE STORMWATER UTILITY, OUR STORMWATER CHALLENGES, POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS, AND HOW THIS MIGHT BE FUNDED. SO THEY DID A COST OF, THIS IS JUST A VERY QUICK HISTORY. THERE WAS A COST OF SERVICE STUDY DONE IN 2022 FOR THE ROSSAKA FEE. THEY CAME UP WITH A RATE, A FIVE-YEAR RATE. THEY ADOPTED IT AND THE CITY COMMISSION ADOPTED IT AND THAT FEE WAS ADOPTED. IT CREATED A SEPARATE RESACA FEE THAT WAS ON YOUR WATER BILL. AND THAT FEE WAS INCLUDED TO DO RESACA MAINTENANCE. capital projects for resaca maintenance, capital outlays, the Restore Act, which was one resaca project, as well as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers resaca restoration project, because that was a $300 million federal program. The federal government was going to cover $200 million, and they wanted the locals to cover $100 million. And so that fee was built or that fee was designed so that the city could start or PUB and the city could start collecting money in order to cover their $100 million. We got into that study and all kinds of issues came up. One of the reasons PUB does maintain their resacas is they divert and store raw water. They need to conduct dredging operations in the Risaca de la Guerra reservoir to make sure there's capacity for raw water there. They do additional dredging operations at the other Risacas to improve water circulation and control flood conditions. They pump water from the Rio Grande into town Risaca and its adjacent bancos and maintain water levels for ecological and community benefit. They purchased raw water from the irrigation districts to provide water to Resaca del Rancho Viejo. They use it to coordinate on flood control operations with other agencies. And they also use that fund in order to leverage grants from state and federal sources. The Restore Act with the primary purpose was to mitigate flooding in the town of Osaka system, reimbursement from the Department of Treasury through the TCEQ, and construction has been underway with completion expected in early 2026. The USAC Contract 1 is ecosystem restoration, and Congress appropriated funding for Contract 1. pending financial assistance for the agreement. And there are constraints, though. One of the things they require of the city is to get right-of-way and to get ownership of the land around the Rusakas, and that's been very controversial. And that is something that when we communicate that to our citizens, they weren't interested in giving up the land around their Rusaka, and we completely understand that. They're also doing the Bureau of Reclamation water smart project that was a grant they received as well So PB strategy that they brought to the Commission last meeting is eliminate the risaka fee They want to complete the restore act and water smart projects they have we have some reserve funding that we can use to complete contract one and of the USACE project. This will allow them also to have some dredging operations in area used for raw water. There'll be other RSACA related functions that will continue. They have a fund balance that they'll be able to manage their RSACA maintenance program for a while until those funds are exhausted. And in the future, in order to continue to maintain their RSACAs as part of their water system, they will build in those costs into the water rates that everybody pays. This will take time. There will be subject matter expertise, data, more rate studies and things that will determine that in the future. So with the risaka fee going away, that's $6.25 going away, the city staff has been talking with the city commission about establishing a drainage utility. We do not have a dedicated source of funding to deal with flooding and drainage in the city. It has to fight for The same money that we use for roads, the same money for the drainage maintenance fights for the same money that we hire police officers with and firefighters, and we just don't have enough resources that we have not effectively dealt with drainage over the years. 140 cities in Texas have a drainage utility fee and they have a stormwater or drainage system. And so we hired Friesen Nichols, they helped us conduct this study throughout the town. And this would be a dedicated funding mechanism that can only be used for the stormwater system. Can't be used to hire a police officer, can't be used To pay somebody else's salary can only be used for maintenance and projects related to stormwater It would be a fee based system as it be a monthly fee that would be on your utility bill Again, it can only be used for drainage related costs and it's limited by state law State law defines how you have to develop this calculation how you can use it you have to have a permit and All these things come into effect as we look at developing this utility. So flooding and erosion and water quality, the causes, heavy rainfall, aging and inadequate stormwater infrastructure, blocked storm drains, that impact there is property damage, disrupted transportation and safety concerns. When we have intense rainfall and runoff, Lack of vegetation and ground cover or inadequate drainage infrastructure. We have increased flooding risk, sedimentation of our waterways, and damage to existing infrastructure. And when we have insufficient funding and resources, we're not able to address water quality, lack of awareness and training, inadequate maintenance. All these things harm our aquatic life and our water ecosystem. And so in the current situation, stormwater work, we have about $600,000 in the general fund that we use to do minor projects, funding some staff to go clear the drains, do some cleaning in our drainage areas, our ditches and things like that. That's what we have right now. What would change is our existing operating costs. Those $600,000 would move into the drainage fund, and we would have that $600,000 then. to hire more police officers or firefighters or librarians or park maintenance workers. It could be used for other things. This would free up that general fund capacity and stormwater dollars would stay dedicated to stormwater service. THE ONE CITY-LED PROGRAM FOCUSES ON DRAINAGE, RUSSAKAS, AND STORMWATER SERVICE. THIS IS MUCH BETTER IN TERMS OF PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY. WE HAVE A DEDICATED FUNDING SOURCE. WE HAVE CLEAR PRIORITIES. WE HAVE IDENTIFIED PROJECTS THAT WE KNOW NEED TO BE DONE. BE VERY TRANSPARENT IN TERMS OF THE SERVICE DELIVERY. AND MUCH MORE RELIABLE. WE WOULD BE ABLE TO PROPERLY FUND A STORMWATER DRAINAGE STAFF to make sure we're getting out and doing routine inspection, cleaning and repair before small issues become big issues. Proactive maintenance, drainage and resaca maintenance, staff equipment and responses, all these things would be a proactive maintenance program funded by the storm drainage utility. Types of improvements. The other thing this would allow us to do is capital improvements. And this is another area where, with this funding, we can leverage state grants. There are now drainage utility grants from the Texas Water Development Board that are available to municipalities. And when we have these funds then available to use as matches, we could get some really, really good cost savings by, again, bringing those back to Brownsville from Austin. So we could do storm sewer and inlet upgrades, drainage channel improvements, water detention and flood storage, culvert and roadway crossing improvements, and we could also fix and put in pump stations and outfall improvements. And we have a listing of these. We know exactly what we can get done. SO WE'RE LOOKING AT SOME DIFFERENT OPTIONS AND THESE WILL BE PRESENTED TO THE COMMUNITY AND TO THE COMMISSION OVER THE NEXT COUPLE OF MONTHS AND WE'LL HAVE DEBATE. AND IF YOU DON'T WANT THIS STUFF FIXED, IF YOU DON'T WANT TO PAY ANOTHER FEE, PLEASE COME TO THE CITY COMMISSION FEE AND DURING THE PUBLIC HEARING TELL THEM, I DON'T WANT TO PAY THAT. But I want you to understand there are consequences if we don't have this funding. We're not going to be able to do these projects, or we're going to be able to do them at a very limited basis. So option number one is right at about $5, $4.99. That would allow us, that's per household, or what's called an equivalent residential unit, an ERU. Because a house would pay the 499. A house is, I think, about 2,400 square feet of impervious, 2,500 square feet. I was close. 2,500 square feet of impervious area. So like Walmart, their parking lot may have 200 ERUs. They would pay 200 times $5. They would pay $1,000 a month because the water runs off of their parking lot And that's what creates the flooding. This is how state law requires you to put together a stormwater program. So we're following state law. So option one, that would fund a $26 million capital improvement program. That would let us get about $26 million worth of those projects done that we don't have a funding source right now. And again, if we can use that 26 million to leverage another $10 or $20 million of state funding, we might be able to get up to a $40 million program at that $499. Option number two is to go all the way up to the $6.25. That is currently the RSACA fee. So the customer, you want to see a change. You'd lose the $6.25 RSACA fee, but you'd gain the drainage utility. That would allow us to do a $45 million capital improvement program. And then option number three would be to start at the 499 and then increase it 25 cents a year per year over the next several years. And that would allow us to do something between the 26 million and the 45 over time. But again, using that money to leverage grants, I think we could get a lot more work done. And we really address, for the first time, really address flooding and drainage. That's a real problem. We know we have some of the biggest drainage projects in Cameron County. Four Corners is, what, about a $100 million project? About a $100 million project, Four Corners is. And so that's a real issue. We are talking to the consultant about having some exemptions. I think we probably want to, obviously we have to exempt BISD and the schools, probably exempt UTRGV and city and our county. county property and state property we have to exempt. I think we want to have a credit system. So if you have detention on site and you're keeping water on site, maybe give you a 30% credit because you're already doing that. A lot of our development now, all of our development now requires onsite detention or at least not allowing any more water to go off of your property than currently is. So our development, code is already trying to address drainage that way and it used to not address it at all so we're fixing problems again that occurred you know 40 50 30 40 50 years ago and now we have to deal with it so these are some options that that uh the commission is looking at oh there you go and eru is 3600 square feet of impervious area now i know and you do too So next steps for the budget the proposed budget will come before the Commission will probably have another budget workshop as we get more information Talk about the general fund they have to have a public hearing on tax rate options So again an opportunity for you to come to a commission meeting and say hey, I don't want you to raise my tax rate We're looking at our internal service funds We're looking at our special revenue funds the storm stormwater utility fee would create a new fund so the commission is going to have lots of discussion about that and then we look at our enterprise funds as well key dates we get a draft budget filed with the city secretary at the end of july our next budget workshop will be august fourth and we'll also talk about bcic and the edc budgets they get they split A half a penny. They each get quarter of a penny of sales tax. They have almost $8 million budgets with a quarter of a penny. Think about that. But their budgets have to be approved by the city commission as well because they're part of the city organization. The first reading to adopt the budget is August 18th. The second reading will be September 1st. And our fiscal year starts 10-1. So those are some of the key dates. I wanted to leave you with this. So this is a slide that I shared with the chamber earlier in the year. The total amount of revenue that per capita, per person, of property tax and sales tax. Those are the two taxes that we have. is about $683 per person. So for every man, woman, and child in Brownsville, we collect, the city collects about $683 per year from each human being that's in town. That's $1.87 a day that you pay to get a six minute response time from police, under five minute response time for an ambulance. that allows you to have a library that you get to go to over 3,000 hours a year, that gives you access to 46 parks. That $1.87, I think, is good value. I think you get a lot for that. And I really want to point that out. And you can see 35% of it's for public safety. 23% of it's for debt. Again, that's our mortgage payment. That's how we're fixing our roads. That's how we're building a new public safety building. That's how we buy new buses, new fire trucks, all that stuff. 11% is economic development. That's the EDC and BCIC. 6% for culture and recreation. That's parks and our libraries. Public works is about 5%. Public health is about 2%. Again, the bulk of our budget's for public safety, and it should be. But this is what I want you to really think about. It's $683 per capita for all the city taxes, but state sales tax, which is 6.25% when you buy that new pair of shoes or you eat out at a restaurant, is 6.25%. Per capita, We're sending almost $1,000 a year to Austin. You're sending more to Austin than you give to the city. And I just showed you everything you get for every penny that the city spends. What do you get from the state? Can somebody tell me something? We get schools. They provide school funding, but they don't even provide 30% of school funding. The majority of school funding comes from local taxes. So I think we're a great value. I don't think we're the problem. I don't think cities are the problem with your taxes. I want the state to have what they need. I want to have a strong state. But I also want to have a strong city. We have very dedicated employees that do wonderful work day in and day out, again, making this a clean, safe place to live. We want it to be affordable. And the commission has heard that. And so we are committed to keeping that tax rate at 60 cents. And I've shown you why that calculation is so goofy. McAllen's tax rate is 45 cents, but their average home price is about 100,000 or about 75,000 more than ours. People in McAllen pay almost 40% more in taxes than an average house in Brownsville. It's just a fact. It's just their tax rate looks lower. So, oh, their tax rate's lower. It's two things. It's property value and property tax rate. It's always two pieces. And so again, it's complex. It's complicated. And so we're here tonight to educate you about that, let you know about that, and show you what you're getting. At the end of the day, it's up to you. You can come to the public hearings. You can talk to your commissioner. You can talk to the mayor and express your views. We listen, and we try to put together the best program we can based on what we have, what state law allows us. We have to follow the law. We have to advertise. We are as transparent as we possibly can, and we're out here now in June talking with you about it. And they're going to tape me and they're going to show this on TV. So if those who aren't here tonight, we're going to show it over and over again so you have an opportunity to see it. So with that. I wanna thank, we do have a subcommittee of our commission that serves as the budget committee. Commissioner Cardenas, Commissioner Galanski, and Commissioner Villarreal served on that this year, and they went through a lot of this preliminary information with us and shared it with the rest of the commission. They helped us make some important decisions, so I wanna thank you all very much for your participation and being part of that group. And with that, before we adjourn, we have some flip charts around the room and we're going to have some city staff there. And so if you have some comments that you would like to give about the budget, about something you want to see more of, about something you want to see less of, if you want to say, don't raise my taxes, that person will write it down for you. Cause we wanna collect as much information as we can tonight and take that and process that and have that be part of our budget communications with the commission. Again, we're out here tonight to be out here in the community, to be transparent, to be with you and give you the opportunity to learn, but also to give us your feedback. And also too, before we close the commission, I wanna open the floor and let them also have some comments.

THANK YOU, ALLEN. THIS IS A GREAT PRESENTATION, JUST A LOT OF INFORMATION, AND I KNOW A LOT OF WORK GOES INTO THIS. THIS IS THE FIRST TIME, I'VE BEEN ON THE COMMISSION FOR EIGHT YEARS NOW, THIS IS THE FIRST TIME WE'VE EVER DONE THIS, AS FAR AS I KNOW, IN COMING OUT TO THE PUBLIC WAY BEFORE THIS ACTUALLY HITS CITY COMMISSION AGENDA. IT'S IMPORTANT TO GET COMMUNITY FEEDBACK TO EDUCATE, BECAUSE THERE'S A LOT OF INFORMATION, AND YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND ALL THE NEEDS THAT WE HAVE AND HOW WE'RE TRYING TO ADDRESS THEM. I DO WANT TO PROVIDE AN OPPORTUNITY FOR THE PUBLIC, IF ANYONE HAS A QUESTION OR WANTS ANYTHING CLARIFIED, TO HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY AT THIS FORUM TO CHIME IN OR ASK QUESTIONS.

ANYBODY?

NOW'S YOUR TIME. ALL RIGHT, THANK YOU. I'LL PASS IT ON TO MY FELLOW COMMISSIONERS IF THEY WANT TO ADD ANYTHING.

Thank you, Mayor. Good evening, everyone. Thank you all for being here. I want to just echo what the mayor said and being the first time that we do this, we open it up to the public. I encourage you all to take part in this process. It is a lot of information, but once you really understand it, this is where you also can give us feedback and we can prioritize what our resources will allow us to do. But I just want to express my gratitude for you all being here today. Thank you. And we look forward to having you part of the process. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, everyone for coming out. This is my first budget meeting. And I want to thank the mayor and Mr. Cardenas for putting this together. But most importantly, the city employees of Brownsville that make this city keep going every single day. It's easy to come up here and do policy with the city manager and the deputies and the mayors. It's important to think people work and give credit where credit is due and that's to the city employees. I'm grateful for everything they do day in and day out, especially when there's storms or EMS or fire. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. If anybody is here that it's important to ask questions because This is the opportunity that you have to voice your opinion, whether we're right or wrong, but we need to get it right. And I urge you all to either write down on the pieces of paper if someone's shy, that doesn't want to speak, or someone that wants to speak. This is the time to voice your opinion. and we'll give you the opportunity to do that. But as far as the mayor, thank you, Mayor, for being the face of the city. Mr. Commissioner Cárdenas for putting this budget together and my fellow Commissioner Martínez, thank you. Thank you, thank you for everything you do. You have a good night.

Anything else, Alan?

I do not have anything else, so please help yourself to some refreshments over there. Again, we have people stationed at each of the boards, so if you want to have some comments, please approach and work with them, and they'll write down whatever you have to add to the discussion. We look forward to it. Thank you. Thank you for being here.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you. That concludes the special work session. And we are adjourned at 7.03 PM. Have a good evening.