City Council - workshop

Good morning, everyone. We will now call this meeting to order. Ms. Rebecca, if you'll take roll.

Mayor Pro Tem Kaylin Paxson. Present. Council members Roland Barrera. He's absent. Sylvia Campos. Here. Eric Cantu. Mr. Cantu is supposed to participate by WebEx. Gil Hernandez. I saw him. I know he's here somewhere, so... Everett Roy is absent. Mark Scott? Here. Carolyn Vaughn? Here. City Manager Peter Zanoni?

Present.

Interim City Attorney Buck Bryce? Present. Okay, we do have a quorum present to conduct the meeting.

Thank you, Ms. Rebecca. We will move into Item 1, which is the presentation on the Capital Improvement Program and potential adjustments to the fiscal year 2027 proposed budget.

Good morning, Mayor Pro Tem, Council Members. I'm Jeff Edmonds, Director of Engineering Services, and I'll be presenting on the first item. And this is the 12th CIP cycle I've been through. I would like to point out it is not really my work product when you get the book. This is a team effort. that's now produced by the Capital Budget Office. There were a few years back early in my tenure when this was actually produced in the engineering department, and we had about half of an FTE dedicated to it, and departments didn't universally participate in the process. We typically didn't have a long-range CIP. We're doing a way, way better job on this now. And I would like to thank the Capital Budget Office for their work on this. And that's Rudy Pena, John Juarez, and Richard Narvaez. If you guys want to stand up. Raise your hand. Okay, they're doing a great job on this, and so really, I'm presenting a lot of their work. And really, this is the work of everybody, because all of the operating departments collaborate with them to get all of this information together, and it is a very significant effort. Another thing I'd like to say for you folks that aren't veterans and for people out maybe viewing remotely, it's not really a book. There is a book, and we update this every year as part of the process, but it is really a living document. And we only print it out and publish it once a year, but it evolves throughout the year. And I'm sure you know there's a lot of items that come to the council, and it includes as part of that item an amendment to the CIP. And we don't go out and republish the book after that happens. But when we publish it next, it'll capture those changes. So when you're approving this, I would say that this is really just the approving the update to the CIP. It's not, you know, some people think you're inventing this out of whole cloth and it's a brand new thing. It's not. It's really just making it current. So you're dropping off completed projects, you're bringing projects from long range into short range, but there's a lot of commonality between one book and the next book. Okay, I'm trying to change the slides. Okay, there we go. Okay, we got PowerPoint there. Okay, my clicker doesn't seem to be working. Okay, manager has a good clicker. It doesn't seem to be working either. Okay, I can just cue you in the back. Okay, now it's working. Okay, this is a plan. This is a planning document, and it captures a 10-year window. Like I mentioned, putting this together and managing the budget throughout the years, the role of the capital budget office in our department, once this is approved, and most of the projects in here, are projects that are construction projects. Not all of them, but most of the projects in here will be managed by my department. We get it through design, bid, construction contract award, and project delivery. So this is the eighth budget that we've done since reestablishment of the Capital Budget Office. Okay, something else I'd like to say in introduction. So we're going to talk about big picture. We're going to talk about numbers of projects and amounts of dollars. This presentation doesn't have a lot of information on specific projects, or any, I would say. If you want to get that, every quarter we do a quarterly budget report. And if you go about halfway through there, there is... a document which is an update on the capital budget. And it has detailed information on each project and the capital budget and the status of those projects. And this is available on the web, both the book and the report and PDF form. That's under the financial transparency tab on the city's website. Okay, as I mentioned, this is a 10-year plan, and we divide it into three segments. When we talk about the CIP budget, we're talking about the year one budget. So when council approves that, we say that the year one CIP budget has been approved. Now, the short range, what we call short range, is years one through three. And for a project to go into years one through three, there has to be identified funding for that project. So the long-range projects are identified needs. We haven't yet identified funding for those projects, but when you identify funding, it can move into the short-range. Okay, this is the CIP totals, bless you, separated by CIP category. So these are the categories. If you've got one of the physical books, there's tabs for each category. They are, as you might expect, water, wastewater, the two largest categories. And I would say another thing I'd point out, these categories don't exactly map onto departments. So pretty much every department falls in one of these categories, but the category doesn't necessarily correspond to a department. For example, water and wastewater is CCW. Street and stormwater is public works. Economic development, cross-cuts, multiple areas. Parks and Rec is a department, so that's one where it does map onto a department perfectly. So if you add water and wastewater together, that's a little over half of the CIP. Okay, this graph illustrates the funding sources. So revenue bonds is the largest funding source And those bonds that are supported by revenues, usually rate revenues, and that's how we fund the water and wastewater. That's part of the reason that that's the largest. I would call out the second most is operating funds. So a lot of these capital projects are being funded in the annual operating budgets. Grants is very important. That's the third category. Geo bonds, although it's only 4.7%, that is something that we put a lot of importance on because geo bonds have to be approved by the voters. It has to go to a referendum. So that's a special category. And this slide illustrates where we are in terms of expense and encumbrance on recent GEO bond programs. Most recent is Bond 24, and we're about halfway, a little over halfway, expense and encumbrance on that. And these are current as of June, so this was from the last quarterly report. There is one last project that's holding out on Bond 18. We're hoping to get that under construction in the not-too-distant future. That's the work at JFK Causeway, and we actually put Bond 18 and 20 money towards that. And it's been a bit of a snarl with getting the scope nailed down and getting the permitting. And... We're now working with TxDOT. We're going to have to have an MOU with TxDOT for the construction under the JFK causeway. But anyway, we're getting close on that, and that program will be closed out. Bond 20, I think all of those projects are complete. We're probably going with the next update. We'll be looking at reconciling that and closing out that program. Okay, this is a scorecard, CIP scorecard that we came up with back in FY25 for the first time to kind of illustrate where we are on the progress of delivering the capital projects. So the pie chart on the left is based on the number of projects. And right is on the dollars. So if you look at the number of projects we're reporting, 88% of those projects are on schedule or complete. We had a target goal set by the manager to be at 85% on our on-time performance on the CIP. The chart on the right is based on budget percentage, and that is showing 97% complete or on schedule. So that's just based on the size of the project. So the larger projects are more on schedule, so your encumbrances are more on schedule by a percentage of the budget than the project numbers. So there's a total of 245 projects that we were tracking. 26 complete, 189 are ongoing and on schedule. If you're looking at the budget, it was $1.4 billion that we were tracking and $51 million that we're showing as delayed or postponed. This is a summary of what's in our new CIP. So we're tracking 219 projects. And we have eight that are moving from long range into the short range. We have 16 new projects and 174 that are ongoing that will have shown up in the last CIP as well as this one. And 21 projects that we're reporting in the delayed category. And on the right, that gives you a breakdown by CIP area. OK, moving forward, these next slides, we're going to look at each area, each CIP book area. And these are alphabetical. So we're going to start with airport. And each slide is going to show where we are relative to last year's CIP and what's proposed for this year's CIP. So in airport, there were 12 projects we're tracking with a value of $19 million. One of those projects is complete. Ten of those projects are on schedule. And there was one project that was actually canceled by the airport. So, at 2017, we have six ongoing projects that are continuing. There are two projects that have been postponed. We've moved one from long-range and short-range and one new project, and that's tracking 10 projects for a total of $21 million. With economic development, And these are projects that are funded with sales tax or TERS projects, but they cross-cut various operating departments. So there's 25 projects that we're tracking last year with value just under $30 million. We had two projects completed, 19 projects that are ongoing, on schedule, and we have four projects that have been postponed or canceled. For this year, we have 17 ongoing projects. There are two that were delayed from 26 that will show up as year one projects in 27. We have one that moves from long range into short range and three new projects for a total of 23 projects with $19 million value. And you might recall we took some action. This is the current numbers. There was some action at the TURS meetings on Monday, and this was revised, so it doesn't match the amount that's in your book. And that was some detail on the change that was made based on the TURS meetings on Monday. Parks and Recreation, we had 38 projects. We were tracking last year with $39 million value. Eight of those are complete, 26 ongoing. There are three projects that were delayed, and those encumbrances are moved into the current fiscal year. And one project that's been postponed or canceled, So for 27, there are three projects that are ongoing that we're tracking. You had three delayed projects, and you have one new project for a total of 27 projects with about $7.4 million of value. Public facilities, 15 projects from last year with $12 million value. Three of those complete, seven are ongoing, three have been delayed, and two are in the postponed, canceled category. So we're showing 67% based on the number of projects, but 82% on schedule based on the budget expenditures. For 27, eight ongoing projects. We have three that were moved from year one of 26 to year one of 27. We're not moving any in from long range. And we have one new project for a total of 12 projects we're tracking with $1.4 million of value. Okay, public health and safety. And this captures... really three departments, police, fire, solid waste. We had 19 projects that we were tracking last year with $33.8 million value. We have one project completed, 13 that are ongoing on schedule. Five projects have been delayed. So we're 74% on time based on the number of projects or 76% based on the budget. So for 27, we have 10 ongoing projects, five projects that were delayed and are now year one projects, one moved from long range and short range, and no new projects. So there's 16 total projects we're tracking with $3.3 million value. Streets we had 46 projects. We were tracking with seventy six point three million dollars value Six of those projects are completed 38 are ongoing to have been delayed So we're looking at ninety six percent of those projects on schedule are completed and same percentage for budget planning So for the new CIP, we have 32 ongoing projects. There are two that were delayed. We have zero moving in from long range and one new project for a total of 35 projects with $68 million value. Gas CIP, we had seven projects with $39.8 million value. Six of those are on schedule. One has been delayed. That gives us 86% of those projects are on schedule and 95% based on the budget. So FY27, we have six ongoing projects. One project was delayed, and there's three new projects. So we're tracking 10 projects for the FY27 CIP with $93.2 million value. Storm CIP, we had 10 projects with $31 million value. Last year, nine of those projects are on schedule. One is delayed, so 90% of the projects are on schedule, 97% based on budget. For the FY27 CIP, six ongoing projects. We have none that are moving from year 126 to year 127. We have none coming in from long range, but we do have two new projects. That's a total of eight projects with $36.7 million value. Wastewater, we were tracking 23 projects with about $110 million value. 20 of those projects are on schedule. Two have been delayed, and one project is postponed or canceled. That gives us 87% of the projects are on schedule and 90% based on budget. So we have 19 ongoing projects. There are two that were delayed. We have three moving in from long range and three new projects for a total of 27 projects. We're tracking for this year with just under $119 million value. Water CIP, we had 50 projects with $1.1 billion. Five of those projects have been completed. 41 are ongoing. Three projects have been delayed. One project postponed, canceled. So we're doing 92% based on the numbers of projects and 98% based on budgets. So for FY27, we have 45 continuing projects. There are three that were delayed. We have two moving in from long range, one new project for a total of 51 projects with a value of about $162 million value. And that concludes my presentation. I stand ready for any questions, and I may have to call in lifelines from the folks sitting behind me.

Well, Jeff, I have to commend you. That was very eloquently initiated. Thank you for that presentation. Council Member Scott?

Two quick things. I know I can look this up, so this is a very lazy question. The main library, when is that project scheduled to be completed? Is there a lifeline here?

I think we're a little behind on that than the contractor is.

So, yeah, that's just idle curiosity. I was riding by it the other day with some friends and they were very excited to see it.

I can get you an answer on that. I'll get you an email as soon as I get back to my desk.

Councilman, since you highlighted that, that's an impressive project. I rode by it yesterday. So there's still all the windows still need to be replaced with energy efficient windows in the front. They were using the hurricane shutters. Laura's there. Great. Laura can talk. So it looks beautiful. Before, you could barely recognize it. It had mold on the building. And so, Laura, tell us what's going on.

Yes, we are a little behind schedule, but we're hoping to be completed by the end of the year.

This year. Let me just point out that the company is doing a great job. Yes. So they're behind only because of unforeseen conditions. It's not because of poor performance. So I did want to – what's the company's name that's doing the work?

Crawford. And I can't think of the whole name.

Is it Crawford? Crawford.

CHC, I believe. I can't think of the whole name.

Okay, we're going to get that out because they're doing a great job. Good.

They've actually started doing the windows now, and so we're starting through the windows. And between yesterday and today, they should be completing the door entranceways, the front doors, and so forth.

So end of this calendar year, a couple months.

That's what we're hoping for.

I think it's going to be a beautiful addition. I think the changes in front certainly look,

Yes, it'll be very different.

So I hope we'll have some sort of celebration. All right, that's number one. Number two, what, the JFK Causeway that was on the 2020? What's that project?

Well, that's part of the problem. Let me follow up on what we said about the library, just one more thing. There were some unforeseen circumstances that we encounter on this. There were some lead and asbestos problems, and we've had to adapt to incorporate some abatement and modify the scope a little bit. It's always fun when you open up a wall. Old buildings, you know how that works.

Come to San Jacinto's Holley office. I can show you firsthand what happens when you start renovating. So, yeah, no issue there.

Yeah. So back to the JFK thing. So that one started out, the bond 2018, there was actually a traffic study being done on the island. And when they first started putting that bond program together, they thought some projects would come out of that study that could be used, and they put sort of a plug figure towards that. And then that study wasn't very well received and didn't really have actionable projects. So they said, well, let's instead, let's use that money down at JFK. So it started out, the scope was not very well defined. And then they wanted to make some modifications to the ramps, on and off of that, and then TxDOT was not amenable to allowing that. So then they said, well, let's do some improvements down underneath, add some parking. Well, then you've got core permits and things like that that you've got to work through. We have worked through that, and we do have plans to add paved parking under the bridge, and we're working with TxDOT. Oh, over by the intercoastal waterway?

Correct. Ah, gotcha.

Okay.

And so their plans, are we proceeding with that?

We are getting towards the end stages on this. We're getting approved from TxDOT. We're going to have to come back with an MOU for council with TxDOT. and then we'll be able to construct it. Construction is pretty simple. It's all the administrative things that you've got to go through, both with wetlands there, which are in jurisdictional wetlands, and the land is owned by General Land Office. Who would be the part? What's the part? Who uses that? Well, it's fishermen. They want more paved parking. I guess also to serve some of the stuff on the, south side as well.

Oh, I'm sorry. You're talking on the... It would be the east side, right?

We need to come up with a name for this place. Somebody calls it Sunset Island. There's signs out there that say Sunset Island.

Is there some... Can you send me... Something to go look at, so I don't have to bug you. Send you some drawings of what's going to go. I originally thought you were talking about the ramp on the Flower Bluff side. No, no, no. Now I realize, then I started thinking, oh, we're talking about the ramps on and off. And now I realize, then I thought we were talking about the west side. of the intercoastal waterway. But now I think I realize we're talking about the east side, the island side, where we have the marinas. Is that? Correct.

And the restaurants, Snoopy's, Doc's. Okay. Is it officially called Sunset Island? I don't think so.

It may be after today.

The GLO used to call it the village, believe it or not.

They had a master plan where they called it the village. I remember some of this because it was always flooding. park out there?

Well, you know, unfortunately it's all about, you know, the highest point out there is maybe three feet.

Yeah.

So it's all within jurisdictional wetlands. I mean, it's all potentially jurisdictional wetlands. So we got a non-jurisdictional determination for this work that we're doing, but you got to go through the process to get that. So anybody developing down there, you've got to go through that.

Got it. Okay, if you can just tell me, steer me in the right direction on whatever.

I will get you some drawings of what we're proposing to do there. I should know, I just don't.

Okay, last thing. This is an ongoing peeve of mine, Peter, and it's in the grand scheme of things. I'm almost embarrassed to bring it up, but when Carol and I travel through airports, there's always a paved area around from the parking lots the walkways from the parking lot to the terminal and the one exception is Corpus Christi the parking lot to the terminal is just pure asphalt which is fine right but there ought to be a smooth walkway for all the people that park out there and that are pulling luggage and so I saw one of your slides we have three or four or five projects so just Is someone somewhere in the back of their mind when we get our next application to the feds to spend a bunch of money at the airport? I do think people that do use our airport are like, oh, my goodness. It's a rough experience carrying your luggage, dragging your luggage. Good point on that. And you just don't have that elsewhere.

Okay. We'll work on putting that in this program.

That's all I have. Thanks. Great. Appreciate all you've done.

Good insight. Councilman Hernandez.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Jeff, out of the plan, the CIP plan, 72% of it is paid for through revenue bonds. Yeah, that's correct. A lot of this is going to be done through utilities, borrowing money from the utility for utility projects. But there are some things that I wanted to ask that are separate from that. Like, for example, in the 2024 bond, we had $1.5 million set aside for trails for the south side kind of thing. Where is that in the CIP?

It is under streets, though.

Is it under streets? Is it under stormwater? Is it under parks? I'm pretty sure it's under streets. So I was looking under stormwater. Page 186. It's along the drainage channels, and then I thought, well, it's not there. Maybe it'd be under parks. But it's under streets. Which one is it?

Page 186.

Yeah, so some of these things, it's kind of hard to figure out which category you're going to put it in. Okay.

That's what I say.

These categories don't exactly map in departments.

Well, I mean, it still falls under public works. It's just... Well, I mean, what we're talking about is along the drainage channels. So if I was confused where it was, you know, the general public's probably not going to know where it's at.

They probably are. And the trails is one of those things that it can kind of go either. I mean, some of these trails we've done under Parks and Rec, Some we've done under streets. On that Trail 5 connectivity, it was shown on the streets prop on the bond referendum. And we're working with Public Works on this one. There's some that we're going to do. We're going to do some construction with that money. We've got a preliminary phase, phase one, that is going to have construction. And then we're going to use the remaining funds for leverage for a grant that they're preparing.

Okay, so I'm looking at that page. It's it everything is done prior, but I don't think we've actually Construction this year. Are you gonna have it done by the end of September? Yeah, so that's encumbering money so it's just the encumbering money in the actual yeah, we're using some some of our IDIQ contracts and Okay, because, you know, if you look at it this way, it seems like it was done in the previous year, not this year, or this coming year where the actual construction is going to be. So the money, you've got it encumbered but not spent.

So that's how you're looking at it here is just being – That's correct.

Okay. The other question I have for you is, like in the water plan, you know, you have Sunrise Beach, the boat ramp. Yeah. That for – I think it's 1. – 1.1 million? Sounds about right. 1.2 million, excuse me. And I'm curious, you know, a lot of things that we talk about here is needs versus wants, right? Seems like to me that's very much a want, right? So can you please justify the expenditure?

Sure, Councilman. Nick Winkleman, Chief Operating Officer, Corpus Christi Water. If you recall, last year we... raise the rates for the tenants at Sunrise Beach, and the rates take into account the capital improvements that were projected for the facility themselves.

I don't know. For a project that costs $1.2 million, I don't know if we increase the rates or we get enough rates to account for that kind of expenditure.

We did, and it Camille is here. Maybe Camille can join me as well. But we raised the rates to account for operational costs and then future capital costs as well to cover the projects. Otherwise, we would have pulled the project from the capital plan.

Okay. The warehouse... Camille, go ahead and answer. You want to answer the question.

Well, what Mr. Winkleman stated is absolutely correct. So we did the calculation of what the annual debt repayment would be for the 1.2, plus there's another project for Sunrise Beach. And we scheduled those rates. So it was a four-year plan of rate increases that we passed. So that accounts once we issue, because we didn't want to increase the rates this year for the debt as the project has not been executed. So it's planned out the rate increases for future years. It's planned out to pay for that debt issuance. As we issue the debt and the cost comes in, the rates from the Sunrise Beach RV park would be increased accordingly to pay for that.

Okay. You have another project here, warehouse facility from ground storage tank that's going to cost, I guess, ultimately about $5 million. This is a storage tank that, I guess, was replaced by the elevated storage tank on Holly? On Holly Road, yes, sir. So you have the old ground... a storage tank that's sitting there.

Um, but is this, is this something that is necessary to, to spend $5 million on the, if you look at the square footage of the available square footage of the ground storage tank, we feel it's a good investment. And we also know that we currently don't have enough warehouse space, uh, to store our equipment that's necessary to react to, uh, water main breaks and water leakage.

So just to be clear on the project, you're going to make this tank, you're going to leave the tank there, create some sort of opening and provide power, HVAC or whatever?

That's correct. And our director, Wes Nevgins, here, we've done some preliminary engineering on it, and Wes can talk to the details of it. I'll turn it over to Wes.

Wesley Nevgan, Director of Water Supplies and Infrastructure. So when we were looking at this, we wanted to compare what it would cost to tear it down to the value we could get out of creating something that was valuable to the city. The estimate for tearing down right now is over a million dollars, million and a half dollars to demo that structure. And yet it's a very usable structure. To demo it just seemed like a waste of something we could refurbish and would be there for a very long time. It does offer a lot of space, not just for CCW. I've had conversations with Bill Mahaffey at the gas department as well for storing the very large reels of like HDPE pipe that they use to do boring items like that. This creates a space that would cost tens to $20 million to build if you were to build it as a standalone structure.

Especially what we paid to build.

Yes, so we felt like it was a good return on the investment to go in and repurpose this building.

Okay. Okay, so that's it. Jeff, another question. The seawall that's on the backside of the, in between the museums, It's not real clear as to which project that is.

Can you identify which project that is?

Because you have one that's E16319 that is flood wall upgrades to the science museum, but that doesn't look like the other. And then you have another one 27030 that looks like it's like a total seawall plan, but doesn't really specify. In the past, we used to have a project specifically for that section of the seawall.

That is the E16319 is the one at the Science Museum and the Army Corps offices. And we're actually working on an ILA with the port to allow them to execute that project. They've got a bigger project that they're going to be doing.

No, and it's part of their park kind of improvement for the area where the bridge was.

It's partly that, and it's partly driven by the fact that they're trying to widen the channel there and deepen the channel. And so they're going to be putting new bulkheads out there. And so they approached us about contributing our funding to them, and they take the scope that we would have done plus the additional scope that they've got. We're working on an ILA with them that we're going to bring next month to council.

Okay, can we kind of specify that in the CIP in terms of what that looks like? Because, I mean, it's not reflecting what we're doing. I mean, what we have, what I'm seeing here doesn't reflect any of that.

The funding is going to stay the same.

No, no, I know, but it doesn't reflect what that project is. Oh, okay.

The description isn't good.

The description isn't good. So if the situation with the port has changed, we're going to be combining some fundings and some efforts let's reflect that in the in the cip okay i mean just look at that on the same page uh with regards to that um i am a little concerned that you know a lot of this is debt spending from um you know i want to make sure we're scrubbing this to it's it's really the the NEEDS VERSUS THE WANTS ON SOME OF THESE, AND THERE'S PROBABLY SOME MORE EXAMPLES, BUT I'VE ONLY GOT LIKE 40 SECONDS LEFT. SO I'D LIKE TO TRY AND MAKE SURE THAT WE'RE DOING THIS. AND I'LL GET WITH YOU SEPARATELY INDIVIDUALLY ON SOME OF THESE PROJECTS. CAMILLE, YOU TOO. ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU.

OKAY. I DON'T SEE ANY FURTHER QUESTIONS. THANK YOU VERY MUCH, JEFF. I BELIEVE THAT TAKES US INTO THE SECOND HALF OF OUR PRESENTATION.

Mayor and council, so this next presentation Amy, our budget director, is gonna provide, and essentially this is the amendments to the proposed budget that we've been tracking, either at our workshops here with the city council or listening to the community in our seven community engagement sessions that we had. So Amy and her team have done a good job in summarizing the most prevailing, or the ones that have some consistency across the community. And we'll show those here today. And then she also has options on how we can fund these with either revenues or cuts, cuts in existing programs, or a combination of the two. And that's how we balance the budget. You have to either increase revenue Decrease expenditures are a combination of both so. And we'll walk through that today the goal is to have some consensus of the city council. Preferably today and because next Tuesday we have the first reading on the budget and what we do today will be more reflect that next Tuesday in the first reading and and first first of one of the first of 2 votes on the budget. That'll be next Tuesday.

So this next portion is going to basically recap everything we received in feedback from our community input sessions, throughout the council feedback from the workshops, and how we have ways to incorporate that, such as abatements, streets, those types of things.

That's correct, Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you. Thank you, Amy. Well said.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem and City Council. Amy Rodriguez, Director of Management and Budget. So first I'd like to go over our FY 27 proposed budget development recap. As a reminder, this is our budget development timeline. So in May, I came before you to present our financial forecast briefing on the general fund, and the finance department brought before you financial policies for approval, which we do every year. We also launched our online community budget survey in May. In June and July, we began planning our budget development input sessions, and then in July, we delivered the proposed budget to the city council and to the community. That was delivered on July 28th. In August, we had our community input sessions on the proposed budget, as well as the workshops that we're doing today. This is our last workshop of August. And so all of the feedback that we've received in June, July, August, we want to be able to incorporate that into the proposed budget that we bring before you next Tuesday for the first reading. And then the following Tuesday for the second reading. So for just complete clarity for our community and for those listening, we do have on the agenda for next tuesday september 1st budget related items for the city council to take action on and so any ordinances will come to city council twice for budget approval that second approval would be on september 8th and so we'll be seeking the city council's approval on our operating and capital budgets at that time. So it's really critical today is our last workshop that we hear from you how you would like us to incorporate some of these changes and these options so that we can make sure to include that in the item that we bring to you next Tuesday for approval. Just a reminder, these are the proposed budget workshops that we held CCW. If you recall, did have two workshops in July to discuss the rates for water and wastewater, which were approved at that time. And then we've had three workshops in August. The first workshop was on August 13th, where we went over the general fund and then an offense overview. The next was on Public Works, that was August 20th. And then on August 27th is today. We just reviewed our capital improvement plan and then we'll be going over those potential adjustments now. The dates of our budget development input sessions, so these were the input sessions prior to proposing the budget. And then the proposed budget input sessions, we had seven of those after the budget was proposed. I do want to note that with feedback from yourselves and the community, we will be evaluating this process for next year, timing, structure, frequency, to ensure that we are reaching as many people as we can with these input sessions. This is the summary of how the budget input sessions went for the three sessions, and you've seen this portion before. The three sessions prior to proposing the budget, we had an average of 13 people in attendance with average views on YouTube of 202 people. For the proposed budget input sessions, the seven that took place in August, we had average in-person attendance of 20 people and average views on YouTube of 161. And then overall for the 10 input sessions combined, we had average 18 people in attendance with 174 views online. The topics across all 10 sessions that came up are libraries, animal care services, parks and park amenities, tourism, quality of life, infrastructure, trees, water security, public safety, stormwater. Code compliance, specifically abatements and demolitions, unhoused services and infill housing, and then streets and sidewalks. So now we'll move on into the potential adjustments discussion. These are three items that have come up the last few weeks that are high priority. We have the two for code compliance. First is grass and weed abatement funds, which we have at $600,000, and then dangerous structure demolition is also at $600,000, as well as homelessness services at $200,000. for total potential expenditures of 1.4 million. These, and just want to reiterate, these are not currently in the proposed budget. So these would be, we would need to identify funding to complete these. We've also had some mandated changes to our general fund revenues. So we had proposed a code compliance citation fee Um, at $55,000 in revenue to the general fund after further review, we're having to remove that. So it's not, um, it would not generate additional revenue in the general fund. Um, and so we're, we're taking that out. We've also had changes approved for our tours, two tours, three enters for budgets. which included a reduced transfer to the general fund. And so the total reduction in revenues is $252,958. So in total, that 1.4 increase of expenditures and then the decreased revenue, we need to identify funding of $1,652,958. This slide lists four options for potential revenues. So the first is to utilize $600,000 from the Corpus Christi Housing and Finance Corporation. And I'll go into this a little bit more later, but the item that would be eligible to be funded out of that fund is the dangerous structure demolition, specifically to residential low to moderate income properties. The next three options would be in the general fund, which would be to establish a vacant building registration and inspection fee. That fee is assuming that $403,000 is assuming that all vacant properties pay this fee. The community enrichment fee is another option. This would be a fee on the utility bill. There's rate structures depending on the property type. They're listed on the slide. It would be 75 cents per month for residential, 150 per month for duplex properties, commercial and restaurant properties, and then 1150 per month for multi-unit properties. That would result in $1.2 million in revenue. Another option would be to establish a new assessment on the solid waste fee for cleanup of properties. At 50 cents per month, that would result in $551,292 in revenue. There are five general fund reduction options on this slide. This first option is to reduce the senior management analyst position. This is one that was discussed at the TERS meetings. So this is one of five economic development positions remaining in the Planning and Economic Development Department. That position would be removed from the general fund, which would reduce the general fund's expenditures by $87,909. Another option would be to reduce one mowing team in the Parks and Recreation Department. That would be three positions with an amount of $160,370. The impact to service would be that roughly five parks, at least five parks, would no longer be mowed on a seven day rotation. They would move to a 14 day rotation. Another option would be to eliminate the recycling program. That would be a reduction of nine positions. It would have a reduction to expenses as well as a reduction to revenue for net savings to the general fund of $1.2 million. This would increase waste at the landfill, and we would have to retain some of the positions that currently are in recycling for that expanded waste collection. A fourth option would be to eliminate litter critter, and that's roughly $121,000, $122,000. That would mean that the drop-off locations out in the community wouldn't be available. The community would need to bring their waste disposal to the transfer station a fifth option would be to reduce 11 seasonal lifeguards that would be savings of 56 000 these would be the summer positions the result would be reducing hours at pools during the summer or to close our least utilized pool which is oso pool So our first recommendation is to move forward with funding the dangerous structure demolition out of the Corpus Christi Housing and Finance Corporation Fund. This is a great way to catch up on the backlog for the demolitions that need to be done. It would be one time. This funding is not recurring, but it would allow us to catch up on that backlog. The caveat is that it has to be on residential properties and for low to moderate income parts of the city, which would ultimately, if we demo on that property, we would allow for low to moderate income housing. Our other recommendation is to consider the community enrichment fee. which would generate $1.2 million fund revenue. This fee would be utilized to fund the $600,000 in abatements, the grass and weed abatements that are needed. One other note that I wanted to point out, if you look at the proposed budget book on page 150 is the code compliance department breakdown. And you can see for that department that they are funded primarily through general fund dollars, which is primarily tax dollars, to the tune of $3.1 million out of the general fund. Less than $200,000 of their funding comes from code-related revenues. So what this would do is relieve some of the burden on the tax dollars to fund that code compliance department. One other request that we'd received in our conversations with the community is to identify funding, one-time funding for way finding and beautification on Padre Island. So we would not be able to increase the appropriation in the HOT Fund for this. What we did is we looked at current appropriations in the HOT Fund If we were to reduce our HOT administration budget by $50,000, Bay Seawall programming by $50,000, and the arts grants projects by $100,000, we would be able to fund this one-time wayfinding and beautification for Padre Island. The HOT administration, just so that you know, that is primarily for our HOT audits and other administrative projects. Activities for the hot fund that's managed by finance and then the base you all programming that would be our musical artists that play on the seawall and then the arts and grants projects is also managed by parks for various events. There are a few other adjustments that we'll be showing you with our schedule of adjustments on Tuesday. Depending on what decisions we make as far as general fund revenues, we will have to adjust our transfer to the street maintenance fund and the residential street reconstruction fund because it's based on a percentage of general fund revenues, so that would be an adjustment that we would calculate at the time once we know how to move forward. We are reducing the TERS II, TERS III, and TERS IV expenditures as approved by the board previously, and then we will be reducing the contract and the Type B fund for the contract that was addressed on Tuesday. And with that, I'll stand by for any questions.

Thank you, Amy. I really do appreciate and have to commend you, Peter, and the entire team for taking what we really walked away with all of these workshops as top priorities from the entire council, which is those abatement funds, being able to put some funding into our residential street program, and... There's some great options here. Of course, we understand with more expenditures means we have to move things around. But finding that funding through the Housing Finance Corporation for the demolitions, looking at on page 44, I did wanna notice that on the impact to service for option 2144, that the parks that would be mowed by this crew, we're not gonna just not receive that service. And Peter, perhaps we can look at how we can maybe move around some of that schedule with other crews.

Yeah, the Parks Department has several crews, so there would be an impact, but we could try to minimize it with reprioritization or evaluating schedules overall. But it would be important to note that there would be some reduction in mowing without a crew. But Robert Dodd and team could help to minimize that, right?

Okay. Well, I just can't say enough how much I appreciate the priority put on these items. Councilwoman Campos?

Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Well, I'm glad that... The city is listening to its residents. I can tell that by the issues that were brought up that we are trying to meet that or come up with a good plan. I'm not sure if I still, I mean, the parks eliminating the, how many times? I mean, we already, especially when it rains. I mean, we're, I believe we're still expecting more rain. I believe in September and October is when it.

Yeah, November, December really.

Okay, so what happens when, because we already had people complaining when it was raining.

Right.

And if we cut down a crew, what do we do then?

You would have an impact. There would be an impact. So we're more, the staff here is recommending more, one of the fees, either the community enrichment fee or that solid waste fee.

Yeah.

You know, because then we're not, at this point, as I've said already, we've cut in the past three budgets about 22 million out of the budget. And that's recurring expenditures. And so now we're to the point where if we, the next thing we cut will be more noticeable to the community.

Right.

What we've cut is a lot of internal operations. We had like a performance team that looked at our operations and gave us ideas. So the residents don't see that, but they do see high grass. We've frozen a position in the city manager's office. We've eliminated, you know, a lot of internal operations. So at this point then, what's left of these basic services? That's why we're more recommending looking at some fees. We could reduce number one on page 44, the senior management analyst, and then we talked about that impact, which would be we would just have a few fewer TERS meetings, so that one's more manageable. uh... we put on the on the table the number three for the recycling program that came up with uh... from a prior council yeah i i don't know if that's option yeah okay so many way but on the morning one just to get back to the question we agree with what you say and councilman you know there's we all know that there's only what two ways to get money back our

It's either fees or taxes, and apparently the taxes, we just are flat.

Well, the down, our assessed value is less than what it was last year. It was a $3 million, what was the decrease?

Compared to what we had forecasted based on preliminary values, it was $3 million in less revenue.

In less revenue. That's the first time in 15 years, and primarily it's from the $125,000. Exemption on business personal property that the state legislature approved and the vote is approved. So we're getting less properties tax revenue this year than what we did in the past 15 years.

Okay. I mean, I'm glad that we are getting at least some options trying to figure out how, but I'm like you. I think the community enrichment fee might be That's the one that would give us the most, the 1.2. And that other option, number one, the Corpus Christi Housing and Finance Corporation, that's 600,000. Anyway, but that will give us something to think about. What about, is that gonna hurt? I know the... I've been excited about the glass program, the Crush, whatever happened with that program. I hope that's still in the works.

Yeah, let's have Philip talk about it just so we, they do still collect.

Just so that, because people want to do their part, and I believe we can still, I think, make some money, right?

Philip? Philip Aldridge, Director of Solid Waste. To do glass recycle from Corpus, it's just so big, bulky, and heavy that It's not economically viable to send it to Houston or wherever it needs to go. For us to do it, we need to crush it into a reusable aggregate product. For us to do that, we have the project coming online for the new transfer station facility. That will give us an area to do that process because it's an air permitting thing. We have to permit it and put it in. It's a unit, and then we can crush the glass, and then we can turn it into a viable product.

And how much is that, the proposed glass crusher that you were –

Well, just the equipment alone. You had asked me six months ago or so to research it. It was a few hundred thousand dollars for the equipment.

That's what I thought you said, like less than $200,000.

That's just the equipment. You still have to permit it and have a space to put it. We're just kind of hamstrung right now with the amount of space that we have at the transfer station. We need a little bit bigger area, and it needs to be indoors.

Are we accepting... We're close. At one point, we were accepting... Are we accepting glass bottles at the...

So we can turn it into a... Betting that we use now. We just need to know the answer.

And we accept it. Can residents drop off glass bottles at the transfer station, right? Yes. Okay. So we still can do that. Residents can drop off glass bottles at the transfer station on Crosstown Expressway. Yes, sir. And right now we're just kind of stockpiling it. Okay. And they continue to look on how we can recycle it, reuse it. So that's important. That's why I wanted to, Phillip, just get the answer here.

And that's what I thought, too. I thought that we were moving in that direction. So we just need more space.

Correct.

Okay. And so as long as we're not going to forget it, and we're still looking at maybe $200,000 for the cost of that.

For the equipment.

For the equipment. But that's not the issue. It's the space.

The space and the... But since we're a permitted landfill transfer station, it needs to occur inside, indoors, so we don't need an air permit. Okay.

All right. Well, thank you. Thank you for the update.

Councilwoman Vaughn?

Well, this is disappointing to me. It looks to me like we have targeted the residents instead of some other things that we could probably do. What are you charging right now for the vacant building fees?

Nothing.

Nothing.

There is none.

So this is a new fee.

We recommended it last year in the budget, and it wasn't approved. It wasn't approved. We brought it back.

Do we have a lot of vacant buildings?

Yes.

I know downtown we do.

I'll ask Yvette to speak. Yvette will talk about that. We have quite a few.

Good morning. Yvette Wallace, interim director of development services. So, yes, we do have quite a few vacant buildings in the city of Corpus Christi. Outside of the downtown area, throughout the city, we have well over a hundred, hundreds of them. Sorry, I don't have the exact number with me right now. The vacant building registration is one we have brought forward before for consideration. There are complexities with this registration program. It is voluntary at first until we begin to cite an owner. And then we have absentee owners or deceased owners that we are not able to get heirs for. So it's not the best program, but it is a program that we are interested in because it does give us that actual count. So today we can look at a property and we could assume that it's vacant, but without having that inspection, we really can't determine if it's a vacant structure or one that's maybe just sitting on the market, a second home maybe, maybe just not utilized because from the exterior, I bet it doesn't appear to be vacant, but it could actually be a vacant home. So I can't give you the actual number. A ballpark, we have hundreds of them. We would have to have this program in place so we can get them registered to get an actual count, and it would allow us that annual inspection for it. It'll take time to generate the revenue that goes along with it, though.

Okay. I know this bothers some of you, but this does not bother me greatly on that one because I think until we get some kind of incentive for people to sell or take care of them, nothing's going to change with all the buildings. The others, Unity Enrichment, I'm so against both of those, the rest of that page. I think our residents pay enough right now, and they shouldn't be charged anything else. I don't think you should reduce on 44. The only one on there that I see, is that recycling program. I don't have a problem with that because I don't think bukus of people use it. I think we're probably losing money on that. Yeah.

Yeah, it's cost us more to recycle than to dispose of.

Yeah, so it's foolish to continue a program where you're losing money. It's just stupid.

It's just the nature, yeah.

Yeah.

Nationally, communities decide to invest, and you have to spend money to recycle.

And eliminate the litter critter? No way. Our city's dirty enough as it is, and we need to clean it up. And to do that, you may find more garbage in the yard. I think that's craziness. The one-time funding, I was okay with that, to clean up the structures, because I think we have to do that. We've got to put that as a priority, is cleaning up our city. I think we do. But I think we should partner with the county on that and try and get a program where we're working together. Because we may clean up the inside, but when you come into the city of Corpus Christi, you know, you see tires, mattresses, everything. The county needs to get involved in that. Let's see. Community enrichment. I don't want to charge anybody anything else. The one time wayfinding and beautification, I don't think that's something we have to do right now. So to me, I would take that completely off the theme. I would.

That one just to, we would work with a community group on the island to see, we have it listed as that wayfinding and beautification, but we'll work with a stakeholder group on the island to determine what it is, is a call from the island for some type of tourism improvements like we have in the seawall there. So things like,

Peter, I get that, but right now if we're in a budget cut, those are not priorities is all I'm saying. I know that's not popular. Alan will probably shoot me for that, but that's okay. That is something that doesn't have to be done right now if we're this short on funds. I'm not saying don't do it, but do it next year. If I may? The following.

I don't think this is an addition of funds. It's a shuffle. It's a reallocation. So no funds have been added. No funds are going to be added?

That's correct. Yeah, what Mayor Pro Tem said. So this is in the hotel occupancy tax fund.

So we're going to reduce those?

Well, we would reallocate funds. So the $50,000 for the HUD administration is actually realized savings. The audits are costing less.

Okay, I misunderstood that.

Yeah.

Okay. And adjust transfer to street maintenance? Yes.

Yeah, so because of our council policies, there's dedicated percentages that go to streets. So if we increase the general fund, we have to transfer a little bit more to streets. We'll just bring that to your attention.

I'm okay with that.

We'll manage the transfer by the total amount of revenue that's generated from revenues.

And the type B board as well?

Same thing, correct. Okay, good with that.

I just don't think that we need to add residence fees to any more resident fees. We've got to look somewhere else. I think that's a bad move.

If we didn't do the fees and we would look to the reductions, number one, and potentially number two, you know, that would be, or if we did the vacant building fees, Councilwoman Vaughn, just to kind of recap what you're saying, if we did vacant building fees at 400,000 and eliminated the senior management analyst position, that would be about 500,000 when we could do then mowing and homelessness programming.

Yeah, because we can't quit mowing.

No, we need to bring, yeah. We made a big, a good, we're really, we'd like this recommendation of the housing trust fund, and John Bell's the attorney, and we had to check to see can we use those monies for demolitions, and he said yes, it's housing related. So that's a great recommendation, because it doesn't, we're not increasing general fund monies.

But what about the senior citizen, you're going to reduce one?

Let's see, I don't think so.

I can't see that.

It was a senior management analyst. Yeah. On page 44. Yeah. Yeah, so in our planning economic development department, that position helped with the TERSs, and because the county's going to reduce that payment of $200,000. Okay. Yeah. That would help a little bit to offset the county's less money for management oversight. Okay, that's what it is. Yes. Okay.

Well, I guess you've got to because...

we can't do it now because the county is not cutting out 200,000.

So that's right.

Yeah.

Okay. And you did a good job. I know you're trying to find everything you can, but I just don't want to increase the fees for any citizen.

Sorry.

That's good direction. This is what the workshop's about. Just trying to get some clarification.

Thank you. Councilman Hernandez.

Okay. Um, It is terrible to introduce these kind of things like a vacant building because, I mean, any time you put in something like this, there's a lot of issues you have with it, right? For example, the short-term rental registration fee that we do now doesn't cover the cost of the program, of the bureaucracy associated with it. so when you create something like this you have to hire somebody to manage it you have to have a program that to to run it you there's a whole set of cost to it that you're not accounting for through just putting a fee out there for this and then what constitute constitutes a vacant building is it is it's you know if somebody's trying to sell a building and they got a sign out in front but it happens to be vacant at the time is that considered a vacant building

We have all those answers.

And she can come up and answer it, but you're not talking about the bureaucracy and cost associated with doing a program like this. So it's not just revenue. You've got to have factor in cost.

Right. We can go over that with you, Councilman.

Okay. But this is not something we decide the week before we vote on a budget.

Well, we talked to the air about it last year.

Well, I know that because you tried to include it in the historical building.

There was a budget recommendation last year that included the Board of Realtors as well for several months, but we can summarize it if you'd like.

Right. Go ahead.

So when it comes to the administration, that would be done in-house. We currently have administrative staff that can manage the program, and we would monitor it or build it within our in-force system. So there would be no additional cost because it would all be done in-house when it comes to the administration of the program. when it comes to the definition of a vacant building, along with a proposed fee, we'd be proposing an ordinance change that would clearly define what we would call, consider a vacant building.

Okay, so I'm, you know, we can't nickel and dime people to death here with, and trying to figure out other ways to pay for stuff because we don't want to put on the mantle of like, oh, we didn't raise taxes. Okay, this whole thing about, you know, and we try to do it all the time, street user fee, you know, this fee here, that fee there, you know, and then we say we didn't raise taxes. Well, yeah, we did, just in a different manner. The community enrichment fee was just god awful. Okay, utility bills should be for utility bills. Shouldn't be for all kind of other stuff that we're trying to add on to things. You know, I would take a look and let me ask you this question. Have you done a survey of your employees at this city to say, hey, where can we reduce our cost?

Yeah, we do that all the time, Councilman.

Okay, when was the last time you did it?

Probably a month ago. Okay, and did we use any of those suggestions? That's what we have in front of you today.

So, yes, sir. So we began discussions again in February, which was the mid-year budget adjustment that we brought this summer as we were going through the budget process. And then we had those discussions again during the month of June and July with departments for this upcoming budget.

Right. Okay, so, I mean, and I got to say, Phillip's predecessor came to this podium and said, we are losing money on this recycling program. Right. Now, I understand it's kind of one of those things where, oh, we've got to recycle and save the earth kind of thing. But, I mean, if we're losing $1.2 million a year, what other ramifications does it have? How much does it add cost to our solid waste collection? That's all that costs. maybe Philip can answer that question. Can we do an alternate form to like, you know, some cities will have drop-off places to drop off your recycling, right?

Yeah.

And they would have it in various spots throughout the city. As a matter of fact, one of them had a deal with their school district where they had drop-off centers at their school district or at the school locations or something along those lines. Have we looked at alternatives for recycling that will save us money? I mean, what I hate that this is the last meeting before we have to vote on it the first time next week before some of these things come up.

Well, during research, Lubbock is a city that's similar to our city. They don't do curbside. They have three or four collection centers that are throughout the city. They're manned. You have to have somebody staffed there. So when people bring in waste. You've been to the transfer station. Somebody needs to be there to make sure you put the cardboard where the cardboard goes, et cetera. So you need space. You need containers. You need staffing to do that. Lubbock recycles approximately 1,000 tons a year out of that program where people drop off to them. We do recycle about 10,000 tons a year. Ours is heavily contaminated, so we go around and we collect 12,000, 13,000 tons and And by the time we sort it, clean it, and we're left over with 9,000 or 10,000 good tons of recyclables, now Lubbock's is really clean because people bring it to them, eyes are on it, watching it, et cetera, do that. So there's some costs there. One thing to consider, you know, when doing this decision package, the amount that we would actually cut from recycling is about $2.2 million. But then you have to remember you're going to lose $700,000 of revenue over here from the sale of the commodities that we do sell. that offset some of the costs. Now what happens is I have 88,000 blue recycling carts out there. So if you were to cancel, which we can implement any policy decisions that are made on the ground level, that would be a decision that would have to be made. Because back in the past, we had twice a week garbage collection. And we said, OK, well, if we're going to do recycling, we're going to take away one of your garbage collections. We're going to give you this recycle can. So now we're going to remove that. People are going to want. more service, they're going to have that volume still going to be there. We're still going to have to collect it. So we're only proposing eliminating nine of 17 positions. So the remaining eight are still guys that are going to go around collecting trash cans. So we have to either let people take all their blue cans away, spend about a million dollars collecting blue cans and bringing them back in house. We let them keep them. Did you set it out with your trash once a week or do you let them set it out every other week the same way we're doing now? and put non-producible waste in there that doesn't decompose, you know, creating a mess. So it'd be some challenges.

Okay, so to my point, there's a lot of other things that we have to unbundle here besides just saying, okay, we're going to limit its $1.2 million in savings. Okay, if we're going to really realistically look at that, we need to have some options to do that. So it doesn't have to be, you know, we could do this mid-year, right? You can go back, do an analysis, say, okay, if we do it this way where we have collection points, it's going to cost this much. We're going to save this much. If we eliminate it completely, this is what it looks like. And have a very informed decision about something like that. You know, I know we talked about property registration before, or I guess you call it vacant building registration. We already have short-term rentals registration. And there's a bureaucratic cost to that, right? And I understand that, you know, but there's always cost to it that we – that are unforeseen, right? Do you have to have somebody to go inspect it? Do you have to go and look at it? To verify that it is vacant in the way we think it is. There's all sorts of costs that we're not considering here. Before we just make a decision on adding something or a fee or something like that, we need to thoroughly vet it and it doesn't make any sense and then not to include You mentioned the Realtors Association. I'm sure they'll have an opinion about it, and we can't just make it willy-nilly as a line item in the budget. So whatever you want to bring with regards to these cost-cutting savings or administrative costs, I'm pretty sure there's a lot of bureaucracy we can still cut within our budget here. You need thorough vetting of it so we can weigh our options and make an informed decision, not something at the last minute at a budget meeting. Thank you.

I want to take a quick second and just say All of us in this room acknowledge that when there's new initiatives and new desires for programming, there has got to be trade-offs. So acknowledging at the beginning of this meeting that this team has gone to work to bring options does not mean that this team has come to this council and tied our hands. We're the policy makers. We give direction and we vote up and down. and respect needs to go both ways. There's about 30 professionals sitting in this room who have put a lot of time in these options and they need to be acknowledged for such. They've given us options to reallocate funding that's within the budget and they've given us options to increase funding that is not yet in the budget. It is up to us to make those decisions. If there's items in the budget that we feel individually could be trimmed back, or there's a more high priority to use an initiative for, I would like to see each council member's proposal for that. Actually, I wouldn't. I think Mr. Zanoni would like to see that. I have so far found that it's a very reasonable ask. If you bring line items and say, hey, can we evaluate this? Is this a priority over here? Can we move it over here? I would just like to say that. Let's just be respectful across all the table members. Councilwoman Campos.

Thank you. I just want to still ask a little bit more about the recycling, only because what is the most products that you get that is being recycled that is either... I'm assuming it's plastic, but I could be wrong. I don't know.

The most is probably by weight. It would be corrugated paper, like cardboard boxes and whatnot. And then plastic's number two. and aluminum, they're all really close. I don't have a breakdown of the current audit, but it'd be cardboard and then plastic, like water bottles.

I mean, because you do make money from your cardboard and your aluminum, and there is, I think, a mixed success with glass. The only thing that I have an issue with is, of course, the plastics that we just see everywhere, and I would say, yeah, that's trash. I mean, I don't think we're we're able to recycle that. So I feel like if we could just not include plastic in the recycling, because we're not recycling it. It's a false, you know, sense of that you're doing something, but in fact, you're not. So I'm just making, I'm just trying to make sure that we, there is a valid reason for continuing to recycle. It may be 1.2 million, but like, you know, Councilman Hernandez was saying, what happens if you don't? I mean, we really do need to look at all how it's done and what would happen if we were to completely eliminate it. So, anyway, thank you.

Councilmember Scott?

So, how do you go about this? So, hey, do we make money on solid waste? No, we don't.

Yeah, we don't make money.

That's silly. Yeah. Point is, we don't we don't make money on anything we do. It's just whether it's a break even or not. That's the cost of services. My point is, I guess you're telling me that the the cost for recycling exceeds that the amount of money we're putting in through the budget.

Right. So the years ago, when when cities started recycling, the sale of the commodities was the cities were making money. But as commodity pricing has changed, now it's like what we're doing. We have to pay additional monies to dispose of the recycled material, essentially. But back in the day, we were making good money, you know. But now it costs more. Was it ever subsidized? It costs more to recycle than it does to landfill material. Right, I get it. Was it ever subsidized, recycling?

What was that? Does recycling have subsidies involved? Like the government? Yeah, like the city. No. So we started recycling saying we're going to put a dollar in and we're going to be able to sell the recycling for two, so we're going to make a dollar.

Yeah, the return on investment wasn't that great, but it was something like that. Okay.

And then one day we can't sell the product. that we're getting in, so we're losing money.

The sale of the commodity, the price you get for it is less than what it used to be back in the day.

Do cities generally subsidize recycling? Yes, they do nowadays because the sale of the commodities is less now.

A lot of it because China is buying less cardboard and other materials. China was a big buyer of all these products, but now they're not.

And we are unable to sell the plastic that we recycle?

No, we are.

Yeah, we resell it. Let's talk this through. Let's talk this through. Have Phillip come up.

So everything's sold by weight. Plastic's very valuable. It just doesn't weigh very much. Okay. And then to speak to his point, so I don't know, six years ago we paid about $88 a ton to process our recyclables. So that includes everything we collect curbside. we pay $88 a ton to process it. And the amount we sold it for would almost offset it dollar for dollar. Now we pay about $145 a ton to go process all the recyclables. And that's like 1.8 million. When I did this, this is last year's numbers, actual numbers. So 1.88 million. And then we received $750,000 from the sale of the recyclables. So I take my recyclables to you. I pay you to process them. You sell them, and then you give me 50% of the money that you make. Is that how it works? That's how it works.

Interesting. Why did ours flip? What happened that flipped the model?

So you've got to look at it. So the facility that we use here, we bake up probably 80% of their throughput. It's owned by a private company. Corpus is the big facility. producer of recyclables versus like, and it only runs one shift. It runs one shift Monday through Friday. So you go to Houston and some really big MRF, you know, they're running two or three shifts and they have the same capital cost for the equipment to process it. They're able to produce a lot, you know, push through a lot more material. They don't have the transportation costs because they're right there by the coast and some of the processors are there. So we're paying for processing a smaller amount and then also having to ship it off. Further distance. So kind of at the end of the line for recyclables. But we were always at the end of the line, weren't we? Yeah. It's just the way the market's gone.

I get it. I mean, I don't think it's anybody's fault. I'm just fascinated that it went from.

In 2013, China kind of started hammering down on the amount of recyclables that they were bringing in from other countries with the contamination. So they've had to fracture the cell through brokers. So it's not bringing in as much.

We are, the Scott family are big recyclers. That's a big deal to me. I get the math. It just needs some time to come to terms with the math. I think it would be, I think you had an interesting comment that we, And not everybody recycles, right? So I guess if we eliminate recycling, they go, you know, whatever. I don't recycle anyhow. I don't have the blue can. We have two blue cans. We have two blue cans. I do think that would be kind of a weird experience to go, hey, we're not going to pick it up. We're going to need your blue can. And I hear what you're saying, that you might have to put back in additional, because that's how we went every other week, because we were, right, we were, We used to pick up your trash weekly. No, twice a week. Twice a week. Sorry, twice a week, thanks. And then we went to once a week, and then we went to every other week for recycling, right? Interesting.

It's really expensive to drive by your house. What's that? It's really expensive to drive by your house six times a year.

Well, you know, that doesn't even start with the damage. Not my house, personally. No, I'm just saying. I mean, that hurts my feelings.

Every stop we make, we make $20,000 a day, so.

Not to mention the damage on the streets. Okay, I got it. I'm a big recycler, but I also get the math. I just need time to come to terms with it. My sense is, and then I have a question. To me, this is the canary, that sound we hear, is the canary in the mine. We need to grow. Whatever reason, our fault, your fault, people's fault, China's fault, whatever reason, our economy is not growing at a rate that we need it to to fund the services that we want to provide the citizens, and I think whoever's here in the future needs to keep that thought in our decision-making, because we need to grow. So I set that. So thanks on the recycled plastic. So we're looking, and it's not your fault, right? You brought us a balanced budget. We're the ones that went, oh, no, we want X, Y, and Z, and I'm part of that. I think the vacant property You know, nuisance was an issue last year, and Michael brought us an alternative, and we just didn't do it. You know, it was pushback from organizations across town that we chose not to argue with, and we just eliminated it. So this is all on us, not you. I do agree with Gil that, I mean, it is a difficult endeavor to come to a meeting at 9 on a Thursday and go, hey, you know, we're going to have to eliminate three things you really like, or you've got to say no to the two things you wanted. So time would, and I don't know how you resolve that, and I don't think you're bad people for where we're at, but it would be nice to have a little time to, hey, Mark, this is our alternative. Which one do you want? Which child are you going to give up? I'd give you both, by the way, in my family. So we're looking for $1.2 million, but the $600,000 that Mr. Bell, excuse me, said was okay, does that bring it down to $600,000?

There's about $2 million in that fund, or $1.6 million in that fund?

It's $1.6 is what we're looking for. So we have increased expenditures of $1.4, and then we have the reduced revenues from the changes to the TERS.

I think he's just, the councilman is just referring to it. Yeah, the Housing Finance Corporation Fund is a fund in our budget, right there.

But you're saying if you want to do what you all want us to do, you all need to find $1.2 million?

We need to find $1.6 million. If we use that fund to fund $600,000 for the demos, that leaves us with $1 million.

I missed that part. I thought it was already 600 to the good. So if we do the six, it's one six, 600 we can get out of the housing corp. So we're still looking at either a million dollars in additional income or reductions in services.

Right, or the other option is that we don't increase expenditures for the priorities at this time. I know right now we're looking at 600,000 for abatements. That would get us caught up on the backlog for the most part. If we can't do that much, then maybe we do less.

Okay. And you need an answer by noon? Does that mean I've got an hour and 45 minutes? Can I get some lunch before I have to give you my final answer?

Yeah, we have until next Tuesday for the first reading, and then we have another week on top of that before the second reading. So we still have two weeks to go.

I sure can't. It's a frustration that we're out of time. Put in a pickle here on a Tuesday.

No, this is a dialogue-based workshop. We're not expecting you to give us an answer, and you can't tell us anything else after that. So this is a workshop meant to be just what we're doing, having a dialogue, getting feedback from the council. We know that our former government, we have to do this in open with the council. We can't have walking quorum. So this is exactly how it works. So we need feedback today. We can continue the dialogue either one-on-one or next Tuesday at the council meeting, and then again that following week is the final adoption. So we have 14-plus days to work on this still.

Thank you. I tell people I'm in a constant state of consternation, and I think this morning is added to that, and I want to thank you for your added consternation. But I get that it's in our direction. It's not your fault. No worries.

Councilwoman Vaughn.

I think they were talking about your house, Mark.

I do.

You know, it's funny. When you start talking about money, it really gets testy, doesn't it, even though it's not our money. And I appreciate what y'all have done. This is the way it is every year. You're at the 11th hour. This is nothing new. You just get used to it. Do I like it? No. But I don't fault y'all for that. On that vacant building fee, you said you brought it up last year. Did you get with the realtors last year?

Yes, I did. So after the proposed budget, and Yvette can talk about it, there was hours of dialogue with the Board of Realtors. Let me have Yvette finish what I was going to say.

So we did. We had numerous discussions with them, and we worked on some alternative language that kind of assisted with some of their wants and then also some of our needs. like maybe considering that if a property is posted as MLS, that of course it wouldn't be considered vacant because it's going to be on the market for sale or for lease. So we did go through with that. At the 11th hour, it didn't really go into our favor. The association didn't really side with the ordinance and asked us to take a second look at it, which of course we did over the past year. And for clarification earlier, you asked how many properties Last that we've canvassed the area there are about 1,300 assumed vacant properties 800 of those are confirmed with non-compliance today and that excludes anything from the downtown area which is excluded from this permit So we did have those conversations and of course we'll continue to have those conversations before it's heard with with council But this vacant building registration outside of generating the money which is desperately needed also is desperately needed because we do need to account for these properties in the area and And it sets standards for those owners, whether they're absent owners or present owners. It sets standards for maintaining the premise.

So what was their problem, the realtors? What was their big problem with it?

It was concerns that we would be having these vacant structures or considering something vacant that really isn't vacant that maybe is on the market and up for sale. So we were just fine-tuning that language. to exclude some of those things that they wanted to see. So if it is a property that is listed, of course it's a listed property. We wouldn't consider that vacant, but if it is a non-compliant property, even if it's listed, of course, we would still do our notification process. If you have tall weeds and grass, or if it's the substandard structure, so it wouldn't exempt you from the code compliance rights, but it, we would encourage that true vacant properties be registered.

Okay. Have you looked at what other cities are doing about vacant properties?

There are other cities that have vacant building registrations, which is where we started going down this path from. There are successful communities that do it. San Antonio has had one for many years, and it actually helps ensure that those properties stay in compliance. Okay.

Okay. I'm just not seeing what the big issue is here with this. This actually really doesn't bother me. This one doesn't. Okay, thank you. And as far as the recycling goes, I like this idea. Why couldn't you come by once a week or maybe every other week with your regular day and put out another garbage, the garbage can for things like that? I recycle too, but I don't need it every week. So, I mean, I thought that was a good idea. And that's a huge savings. I just don't think you continue. We wouldn't in our homes continue with an expense like that that was costing us money. Once a month what? Well, maybe once a month, whatever. I would like to see you come back with a plan on how we could do that and get rid of the recycling. Mark will just have to take his to Houston or something. But I think people do it, but not everybody doesn't do it. They don't.

That's correct.

And I don't fill mine up every week. There's only two of us, so I don't know what Mark and them are eating over there to have two of them. So anyway, okay. And thank you for what y'all are doing. I know it's hard. I'm just not for increasing anything on the citizens. I think that's a bad move. I think we can find some other areas to do that. That's my, I'm not mad at y'all for waiting until the last minute because we do this every time. It just is what it is, Gil. You'll get over it. Okay, thank you.

Okay.

Councilman Hernandez.

Okay. Mark, did you say you were constantly constipated? Sorry, just a moment of levity there. No. No. but it just the the wording the verbiage you used um sorry i couldn't resist um okay um what i'm concerned about is i don't want to make a decision on something that's complex and needs to be understood thoroughly right property registration with for vacant buildings or for any building is a significant decision, right? Because it's not just the, there's bureaucracy associated with it, and that costs money, right? You know, I don't want, I want less government, not more government, right? The less government you have, the less you have to pay. So let's not put undue regulations and burdens on our citizens if we don't have to. The second part of that, the recycling, I think that we still need to have some sort of recycling. It may not be curbside pickup, but we need to know what those options are, what that cost looks like. Let's make good, informed decisions so we can – you know, there's people that are adamant about recycling. I have two blue canisters myself, just like Mark, I guess. I believe in recycling. You know, I get on – I get on my kids about making sure it's on the, you know, the right, you know, we have a blue can inside the house and separate our trash as well. You know, I saw like in Lubbock or Midland, I've seen they have the same kind of program where they have drop-off centers. Well, we have a drop-off center. Maybe it could be part of our litter critter aspect as well to where you give people the option to recycle that are passionate about it. You know, let's try to, you know, balance what our costs are with actually trying to do good stuff, right? But we need to have a fully vetted information about it so we can make good decisions. I don't like knee-jerk reactions. I don't like being rushed on things, especially like big issues like that. Look at the situation we are with STRs because we rushed through an ordinance to address a certain issue and we have problems with it going even now. So let's make... Good decisions, let's vet things thoroughly and make sure we're spending money properly and we're not creating more problems for ourselves as we go along. So if we can do that, I'm okay with discussing it and looking at it thoroughly, but it's important that we make those good decisions because I don't want to create more problems going forward, okay? Yeah, that's understood, Councilman. Thank you.

Councilman Hernandez. If ever we need to call on someone to think through every granular detail, you're definitely at the top of that list. So perhaps, do you want to put your light on?

I wanted to ask one last thing. The suggestions from the employees that are doing the work every day and see things that we may not see from the top down, but they see from the bottom up, I'd love to see what that looks like, what recommendations they made, because I think there's value in that that we don't appreciate as much. I really want to see what they have to say about what can be done better or what can be reduced or how can they save money. I think there's a lot of good things that they can provide.

And just to remind us, it's constant. The department directors know to constantly be asking for that, so... It would take some time to compile it because it's years and years of ideas. This isn't a one-time ask. It's constant.

You know, you can summarize it. You can summarize it, but, you know, I think we should really look at the value of the people that are working here that see things that we don't always see because we're looking at it every day.

Yeah, we're constantly speaking. We're proud of our 4,000 employees, and we constantly remind them of that. And we like it when the council does too. Thank you. Thank you.

Councilman, have you ever heard the phrase voluntold? Perhaps if you have any time tomorrow, since we're trying to pass this on Tuesday, so we have essentially Friday and Monday business hours, perhaps you, suggestion, perhaps you can meet with our teams and look at some of these granular details behind that registration fee and and see how if we could make that a possible solution since i know you familiar with the feedback from the realtors association just a suggestion okay i don't see any other comments okay and i believe that concludes the presentation yes ma'am thank you thank you amy thank you everyone this meeting is adjourned thank you