Commissioners Court - Special Meeting

Thank you. 🎵 🎵

Hola, El Paso! From July to August, El Paso County engaged with our residents to address their needs and prepare for the future. See what El Paso County has going on this summer. El Paso County's Public Works Department held weekly information and feedback sessions at Azcárate Park. These meetings concern the proposed improvements to the park and changes to the lakes at Azcárate. The sessions allowed residents to see concepts of what is planned and to provide their input on what they want, including their preferences for the large and small lakes at Azcárate. El Paso County is dedicated to include the public throughout the completion of this critical project. The El Paso County Community Services Office of New Americans recently hosted a large-scale community listening session and resource fair as part of the Gateways for Growth Technical Assistance Grant awarded to El Paso County. The event brought together 60 attendees representing 40 partner organizations including non-profit organizations, interfaith, educational institutions, local governments, and health care providers. The event featured an interactive format designed to encourage meaningful dialogue and collaboration. Rather than a traditional conference setup, participants engaged in facilitated small group discussions, shared ideas and recommendations, and networked with organizations working to strengthen our community. Feedback gathered during the listening session will help inform the development of El Paso County's Welcoming Strategic Plan, a community-driven roadmap that will identify priorities and strategies to make our region more welcoming, inclusive, and connected. Seven years ago, our community changed because of a horrible tragedy. To honor the victims of August 3rd, 2019 Walmart shooting, community leaders, victims' families, and residents gathered at the Azcárdate Park Healing Garden on August 2nd to hold a vigil in their honor. The event included a prayer service, moment of silence, reading of names and release of white doves. El Paso County remains committed to provide a space in the Healing Garden for our community to meditate, reflect and honor our lost community members. The Commissioner's Court and El Paso County Hospital District held a joint special session meeting to discuss the 2027 tax rate for the county's public hospital. The hospital district oversees University Medical Center, El Paso Children's Hospital, and El Paso Health. Hospital administration proposed a no new revenue tax rate of 0.236904 for fiscal year 2027. If this rate is approved later this month, this would mean that the portion of your property taxes dedicated to our county hospital would not increase. Hospital board members and county commissioners approve the proposed rate and the court is scheduled to adopt it towards the end of August. That does it for this edition of County Connects. Stay tuned and make sure to stay connected with El Paso County. Every day, El Paso County works to improve the quality of life for our residents. Sometimes that work happens here at home. Sometimes it takes us across Texas, across the nation, and around the world. County leaders advocate for infrastructure, public safety, veteran services, transportation, and mental health priorities important to our residents. Through legislative meetings, funding requests, and various policy discussions, your county is working to ensure El Paso's voice is heard. Strong partnerships help bring resources, expertise, and opportunities back to El Paso County. Through collaborative efforts with our state and federal partners, our position on critical matters can be shared and heard by those making decisions at the highest levels. Participation in organizations such as the National Association of Counties, Texas Association of Counties, and other professional networks also allows county leaders to learn from successful programs across the country and bring innovative ideas back home. El Paso County's commitment to economic growth extends far beyond our borders. Throughout the year, elected officials and staff travel across Texas, the United States, and internationally to promote El Paso as a premier destination for business investment and expansion. These efforts allow us to build relationships with industry leaders, showcase our region's unique advantages, and compete for new jobs and economic opportunities. The true measure of success is not where we travel to, but what we brought home. At the midpoint of 2026, our grant portfolio remained strong and productive. To date, we have applied for a total of 50 funding opportunities, with 21 awards secured, resulting in more than $15.6 million in grant funding awarded. Every trip represents one purpose, serving the people of El Paso County. Whether advocating in Austin, collaborating in Washington, or building partnerships across borders, our mission remains the same, creating opportunities, delivering services, and building a stronger future for our community. Hola, El Paso! From July to August, El Paso County engaged with our residents to address their needs and prepare for the future. See what El Paso County has going on this summer. El Paso County's Public Works Department held weekly information and feedback sessions at Azcárate Park. These meetings concern the proposed improvements to the park and changes to the lakes at Azcárate. The sessions allowed residents to see concepts of what is planned and to provide their input on what they want, including their preferences for the large and small lakes at Azcárate. El Paso County is dedicated to include the public throughout the completion of this critical project. The El Paso County Community Services Office of New Americans recently hosted a large-scale community listening session and resource fair as part of the Gateways for Growth Technical Assistance Grant awarded to El Paso County. The event brought together 60 attendees representing 40 partner organizations including non-profit organizations, interfaith, educational institutions, local governments, and health care providers. The event featured an interactive format designed to encourage meaningful dialogue and collaboration. Rather than a traditional conference setup, participants engaged in facilitated small group discussions, shared ideas and recommendations, and networked with organizations working to strengthen our community. Feedback gathered during the listening session will help inform the development of El Paso County's Welcoming Strategic Plan, a community-driven roadmap that will identify priorities and strategies to make our region more welcoming, inclusive, and connected. Seven years ago, our community changed because of a horrible tragedy. To honor the victims of August 3rd, 2019 Walmart shooting, community leaders, victims' families, and residents gathered at the Azcárdate Park Healing Garden on August 2nd to hold a vigil in their honor. The event included a prayer service, moment of silence, reading of names and release of white doves. El Paso County remains committed to provide a space in the Healing Garden for our community to meditate, reflect and honor our lost community members. The Commissioner's Court and El Paso County Hospital District held a joint special session meeting to discuss the 2027 tax rate for the county's public hospital. The hospital district oversees University Medical Center, El Paso Children's Hospital, and El Paso Health. Hospital administration proposed a no new revenue tax rate of 0.236904 for fiscal year 2027. If this rate is approved later this month, this would mean that the portion of your property taxes dedicated to our county hospital would not increase. Hospital board members and county commissioners approved the proposed rate and the court

Live from El Paso County, Texas, the Veterans Capital of the USA. From inside the Alicia Chacon Commissioners Courtroom of the Enrique Moreno County Courthouse, you are watching the El Paso County Commissioners Court Meeting.

Good morning. Today is Thursday, August 20th, 2026. Commissioner's Court is meeting in regular special session. It is 915 a.m. This morning, we are joined by ASL interpreters, Ali Harrison and Selena Saloon. Would you please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance? Judge, do you have any opening comments before we begin?

Michael. He's my audience right now. Oh, and behind, I've got Dion. Hi, how are you? And Ramon's here. My goodness. No, well, thank you for being here, and everybody is prepared for this particular executive session, or not the executive, but the special session. Thank you for being here, and I look forward to some great topics and some great interactions between all of us. Wishing all of you a great day and a great week. Thank you.

Thank you, Judge. Item number three is public comment. We do not have anybody signed up online or in person for public comment. Is there anybody in the audience that would like to speak?

With none, we'll have no action.

Move on to the regular agenda, beginning with item 4A. Go bond two, four, pre one. Approve and authorize the county judge to sign and finalize the construction manager at risk contract CMAR with Dantex Construction Company Inc. of El Paso, Texas for the El Paso County Animal Shelter in the amount of $21 million. Funds are available. Funds are available in CPBD 2 for Issue A, Prop E, Professional Services, E1-1, Animal Shelter Professional Services, Contract Number 2026-0435. We do have a request from the department to delete this. It will be back on for Monday. And it is back on Monday's agenda. Yes, ma'am. I have a motion from Judge Salmoniego, a second from Commissioner Stout. The voting is open.

I vote aye.

Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner Butler? Motion carries. Thank you. Item 4B, pursuant to Strategic Plan 2026-2031, Goal 5, Cultivate Strategic Partnerships and Community Connections, Action 2, Strategic Planning Roundtable with Partners, Concept, Plan, Direction, and County Actions, receive a presentation from City of El Paso.

Good morning, Judge, Commissioners, Ramon Bracamontes from County Administration. As you know, we've been bringing in our strategic partners from throughout the community to talk about their strategic plans. Today, we are continuing with our series of presentations. With us today are Dionne Mack, the El Paso City Manager, and Julie Baldwin-Munoz, the Chief Strategy Officer for the City of El Paso.

Welcome, Dionne.

Thank you. Good morning. Make sure I... know how to work the technology. I'm Dionne Mack, City Manager. I am delighted to be here with you and Ramon reached out a couple of months ago just as we were beginning our strategic planning process. I know we're like almost last in line to do this, but our strategic plan starts on the first and like you, we had to kind of get through budget. So I thank you for the opportunity, and I understand that we're really looking for opportunity here to kind of highlight some of the things that we can do together. We know that our communities see us as one entity. When they think about services, they don't care if it's coming from the city or the county. You're really just wanting to make sure we can live well within our community. And so we're really excited about the opportunities to continue to show the community the value of what they're investing in when they talk about local government. So we began this process really thinking about resident priorities. And so what we'll be going through is probably not what you would see as your typical strategic plan. Uh, when I had council members come in at the beginning of 2025, I heard several say your existing plan. Is it my plan? And so we took that opportunity to really think about how can we start to develop things that really tie into the priorities of the community? that could be measurable in ways that help the community see value in the dollars that we're delivering to use data from a variety of ways to be able to make those connections in terms of aligning our priorities and also helping council see us move in a direction that shows progress for each one of the districts. So this was a very different strategy in terms of how we thought about gathering data. We integrated the voice of youth through our youth advisory committee. It's always wonderful to have the young people at the table telling you the truth. A little bit painful sometimes, but it was good to have them help us understand how we're communicating and how they see themselves being valued and how we talk about our community. We created pillar profiles, and it was really backed by data. And the reason we did that was, as we started thinking about strategic planning and how we talk about filters, I really wanted council to really understand how we talk about what we deliver from the perspective of understanding an individual. And so, for example, we created for each one of our pillars a profile. Marisol was one of our profiles. Marisol was a 34-year-old single mom, service-level job, and we pulled that from the data. And so as we asked all the questions about what we wanted to deliver in the community, we came back to what would be different for Marisol in two years? And how would we be able to show the community that what she cared about would be different for her? We focus in this strategic plan on dissatisfaction. You know, it's easy for us to point to, as we do our surveys, the things that we do really well and really say, hey, community, we do these things really well. They're showing value. But if we're really talking about lifting up the community, showing value, and making sure people see themselves in the work that we're doing every day, we really need us to focus on the things that people did not see us doing well. We shifted to a two-year action plan, as I said, because I think we have a lot of long-range plans, but people don't always see that over time. The item that was deleted, you know, I know that you're going to be working on your capital plan. I'm really excited about what's going to be coming out of your bond. But a lot of people who are looking at that won't see a lot of that for five, six, seven, eight years. And so they won't believe that we're actually moving the needle on things that make a difference to them, and so we're really focusing on two years, what we can deliver, and what we can measure. We have lots of long-range plans and things that we leaned on, but really making sure that the items we had in this plan are really focusing on things that we can measure and deliver right away. So we moved from having a very robust strategic plan to what we're calling a placemat. It really is a simplified one-pager. And the goal is just to be able to have it at your desk. And it is a snapshot of everything that we'll be working on over a two-year period. I think it's easy for a staff member to look at, easy for us to be able to refer to. You know, oftentimes I'm out in the community and I'm like saying, We're transparent. It's in our budget book. It's on page 960. Didn't you see that on the website? And so this really is a good opportunity to make it plain and visible for people. As I talked about the process redesign, this is just a snapshot of how we developed our pillar profile, really focused on the data that we gathered. And then we took that data to really understand what we understood from our respondents, what they were saying, what they were telling us, and we built the profile based on that. What you see here as the pillar profile was basically the questionnaire that we had council work through at tables to really kind of understand what we would be focusing on. And it really helped, I think, council to sort of begin to focus on what can we do with the dollars that we have? I really want community to see the results we have for our $1.4 billion budget. We don't want the conversations to always be, well, that requires a CEO, that requires a bond. There's a lot that we can do to utilize the funds and resources that we already have with our employees and staff to be able to move our organization forward in ways that our community can see. So our strategic plan, as you see, is pretty simple. It's five pillars. They are foundational. What is different about this plan and what my staff struggle with a bit is that it's not departmental. You don't clearly look at one of the pillars and say, hey, that's our street maintenance team or that is our capital improvement team because that's not how people see our work and that's not how they translate our work. We spent a lot of time talking about economic mobility. And so council struggled with for a little bit about the fact that we were dropping using economic development. What we heard strongly through the surveys was that people felt that economic development was happening around them and not for them. That for them being able to live in our community, to have jobs that pay a livable wage, that is what economic mobility means for them. And so we really started to structure the things that we're doing and starting to translate those into These are about jobs. This is about economic growth. This is about what it means for your life. And so much of what we're going to be working on in the next year is how do we start to translate the way we think about government in our silos into the language that makes a difference for our community. So when it comes to us making those difficult decisions about what we fund, people clearly understand that they were seen in the work that we're doing as government. Julie just passed out the strategic plan and the pillars. And with that, I'm going to hand it over to her to go through some of the data and other information that we worked through. I just want to make sure I note, because this was Julie's hard work, this was a very robust plan. I think in the beginning when council said, hey, I want a strategic plan, they thought that could happen overnight. It took us about six months. And we started with actually doing individual council strategic plans. We went out to every district and really helped them to sort of understand and think through what their district might need. And so as they were thinking about these broader plans, they clearly could see the connections between what they heard at the community level and what we were doing at a broader level. And with that, I'll hand it over to Julie because I promised to be brief and I'm never brief.

Good morning. So just continuing on with the assessment phase that we undertook for several months and trying to be intentional about ensuring that it wasn't a single survey or a single resident conversation or event or convening. We really looked at the different qualitative and quantitative data points that we had available. So whether it was those conversations that our city manager just mentioned, whether it was also looking at recent community-wide engagement efforts, right? We mentioned earlier, we had different plans and studies that were more long-term focused in different places, but we wanted to create a single repository where we could point to what we learned through those processes. As an example, the Climate Action Plan. We received over 2,000 survey comments that provided really good insights. and over 500 individuals attended various community meetings. So as we look at all of these individual efforts, what is that telling us collectively about where we need to focus our work? So just as one call out. But then tied to that, again, the Youth Advisory Board inclusion and them actually being a part of our strategic planning session throughout and not forgetting that the day-to-day service requests. that are being processed through the system matter as well. And so we see as a snapshot that overgrown grass, weeds, and trash continues to be the number one top priority in terms of what our residents are seeing on a day-to-day basis. And that should also help inform when we're talking about, for example, the quality of life pillar, where we're focused in terms of response and efforts to help address that. So in considering all of those different activities under assessment phase, certainly there were some crosscutting themes that emerged. And we see five that really began to shape our pillars and the core strategies that will follow in the discussion. I'll focus in on one in particular, the getting the basics right consistently. Really came up as a through line. And so it's not just the day-to-day condition of core services, but it's also the experience on the everyday life. And how do we ensure that we're putting in place the improvements that allow us to make that work visible? And that was resoundingly what we heard throughout this process. How do you make progress visible? And so not only this focus on a two-year action plan, but as we look at different actions that we're gonna be undertaking operationally, How does that show up in our work? I'll also call out the last one, which we got a lot of feedback that directly shaped our good governance pillar that you all have in front of you as well on the placemat. And so we heard pretty resoundingly as well that it's not just giving the feedback during the survey, but what are those additional points throughout the process that we're going to be able to point to and show that It's the overall experience that we're focused on. And that actually is shaping the way that we are identifying our strategic performance indicators. So we've created a resident experience type of measure as an example that really looks at that beginning and end point and really everything that happens along that journey. So that's part of what we're working on on the operations side to ensure that that link is evident. I'll spotlight a couple of other things. And so here it's just a visual representation of those key assets and those key experiences that really resonate with our residents. And so if you look at this, I'm sure that there are several that may also connect with you, but it's really that sense of community that's that through line and ensuring the natural environment came up quite a bit as well, but also ensuring that we continue to keep that cultural identity as a through line. We did ask this question, and so both of these questions we asked whether it was our survey, whether it was our resident conversations and convenings, whether it was our employee survey, we asked those two questions consistently to help provide this overview. And what you have listed here then began to shape our improvement agenda. right, those core strategies and items that we need to respond to. And so as Dion mentioned earlier, economic stability and affordability certainly came up as a top thing for us to focus on, as did streets, conditions, traffic, and core infrastructure. So just very briefly, I want to share a couple of spotlights on our community survey approach. And so one of the things that we are really focused on through a partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies is really looking at not just being data driven, but data informed. And so that's not just the data, but the context, the conversations and the rest. So the survey gives us a really good indication of responses to key community characteristics. We approach this differently than we have in previous years. Typically, we're doing a community survey every other year. Moving forward, it'll be an annual check-in to ask key questions. We're able to use benchmarking data through cluster analysis, which has been very helpful. Over 160 cities were accounted for. But most importantly for us, it's always something that we bake into our methodology is ensuring that we're capturing responses from every area of the city. And so we're able to look at that data in detail to see if there are any significant differences. And that ensures that we can look at that appropriately throughout the implementation of tactics. So the survey went out. It was the first time using a digital platform, an ad, in order to capture responses. It was our first time testing this particular approach. And so one might think, OK, in approaching it this way, are we going to hear from certain population groups less so, right? So whether it's our 55-plus or whether it's low-income groups, does a digital ad approach to capturing survey provide us the same level of representative sampling. And so that was something that we really wanted to ensure that we were very careful and thoughtful about how we approached that. And what we saw for this first initial run is those groups are actually overrepresented. We got more responses from our older age group. And so that digital disconnection concern that came up originally did not show up in terms of our response rate for the different areas. And so it demonstrated to us that this is an important and helpful insight, but it's not the only way that we're gathering data. So I'm going to quickly cover some strategic strengths that surfaced. The comprehensive survey report is also posted in our strategic plan page. So anyone who's interested in getting a deeper dive on any of the questions that we asked or additional information, that's been available to our community as part of our strategic planning approach. So residents are satisfied with their quality of life. We're seeing that 11% provided negative ratings, but we are slightly performing above that cohort average that I just mentioned. But we are seeing some distinctions, right, in our social demographics. So we did see that it is highest among young adults in particular. So just at 63% for the 18 to 34 cohort. We also saw that quality of life ratings and asking the question of satisfaction, there was some differences across areas. And so we do have a way to kind of overlap, right? This is looking at district boundaries, but we saw that there were differences, for example, between District 2, which is more of your central area, and District 6 at 67% that had the highest relative satisfaction with quality of life. So we're able to see distinctions. geographically. As we move on to the next key strategic strength, acceptance of residents from all backgrounds also outpaced the cohort average comparison. And so you see here that in this particular question and area, it was our population group of residents age 55 and over that had the highest satisfaction relative to that question as another spotlight here. And then lastly, I'll cover one other key strategic strength. So overall sense of safety comparatively as well surfaced higher than the cohort average. And so while we're going to look at our areas of opportunity next, because as the city manager mentioned, we know that in kind of connecting this data, we want to ensure that we're focusing on those areas of dissatisfaction. So our areas of opportunity are next. But here we saw that our younger residents were actually less likely to rate safety positively. And so that's what becomes so critically important to connect with our youth advisory board and different methods through our child friendly city initiatives in order to really capture what specific focus areas we need to be looking at in terms of safety. Okay, so I'll switch over to areas of opportunity. This was the area that had the lowest relative satisfaction in the key community characteristics. And so only 22% of residents reported being satisfied with the availability of jobs that pay a living wage. And so as you look at the age demographics, ethnicity, and income, We did see that there was a slight increase in terms of our younger population. They had higher satisfaction relative, right, in this area. So it suggests that our younger population may be feeling like there's a sense of progress in this area, but altogether we stand at 22%. And so this is critically an area that we need to be focused on and really what shaped our economic mobility pillar as was mentioned previously. And so this just provides you another breakdown of satisfaction with economic development. And so what we see is that it's pretty mixed, right? As we look at different growth over the next 12 months, there is a sense of higher satisfaction related to new businesses opening, but we see that compared to more job opportunities, far fewer are seeing growth in that area. And so key insights as well in terms of the type of economic development. And then lastly, on an area of opportunity, satisfaction or perceptions related to street conditions. And so you'll see here in this area in particular, we do have more residents reporting negative perceptions as compared with positive. And so this is an area that certainly is gonna require a lot of attention in the upcoming two years. And that's been pretty consistent for us, regardless of the survey. whether it's our annual time and budget survey, whether it's our community survey. And surprisingly, at least to me, we're doing some work with our partners, El Paso Community Foundation, for the child-friendly city initiative work. And so they've been helping us gather survey data from our partners from our youth and that also came up as a top priority street condition. So I was surprised to see that that one rose to the top as well in speaking to our younger age demographic under 18. So this is just a visual snapshot. So one of the things that we prepared throughout the session is a summary of all the things that I've just covered. So we have an individual board and a gallery wall that we did that synthesized and summarized the different insights that we heard for every district. And so that's been a very powerful visual tool to continue to ensure that as we're looking at a citywide perspective, we're also understanding what those differences are across the districts. And so that is a helpful reminder to us constantly to go back to that information as well. On the following slides, I capture pillar by pillar what that breakdown is. You all have the placemat in front of you, so certainly it captures the same information. But I'll call out just a few things on each of these pillars that are going to be focal for us. in particular in considering where we can connect on shared priorities and where we see a lot of opportunity in the upcoming months and years in implementing a strategic plan. So everything connected to supporting individuals, local businesses, and key industries. As we look at our one shared community, there are certainly opportunities there for cross-sector partnerships. And so a conversation that I know, while we can connect on every single core strategy, We see that being a core strategy that absolutely requires partnership with the county in the months and years ahead. On the public safety side, one thing that I'll call your attention to as well is on the third strategy, when we're looking at focusing on key transportation planning and traffic management, this was also something that came up resoundingly in the resident conversations and information that we gathered on the qualitative side, that when we think about street conditions and traffic management in particular, whether it's street lighting or feeling safe, for example, at a bus shelter, a lot of the conversations we had The safety component and the traffic management component becomes such a critical part about how we talk about public safety. It's not just the built infrastructure, but the overall environment that surrounds it. So this is a strategy that's going to require a lot of work with partners as well to ensure that that is one of the takeaways in terms of built improvements as well in the upcoming year. On the infrastructure side, so all things connected to street maintenance and roadway improvements will continue to be a core strategy that anchors our work. But what was interesting about the way that this pillar took shape based on all the feedback is that it wasn't just the construction projects, right? It was also the areas surrounding our facilities, our public spaces, anything that's within public space. that there's an opportunity to really look at at the neighborhood level. How do we create those partnerships? How do we ensure that the environments feel welcoming and that we create that standard of care that's consistent throughout our different offerings? And so on our quality of life side, we see strategies focused on spotlighting current. So a lot of the feedback that we got was not necessarily creating new programs. And we know that that's also a fiscal reality for us, right? We went through this extensive program based budgeting process because we wanted to have a very clear understanding of our programs, their objectives, the different focus areas in the upcoming year. And so what we heard resoundingly, it's a lot of times it's that lack of awareness of all the amazing things that are already being provided. And so what are those opportunities to continue to spotlight? Is it a shared calendar with different entities? Is it providing those opportunities to just simply give it more visibility? Because as we heard, they need to see that visible progress. And part of that is just building up on that awareness of existing opportunities. offerings. And so the last pillar which certainly helps to reinforce all of the above is good governance. I shared a little bit earlier about the feedback, the very pointed feedback that we got about an ongoing relationship, that it shouldn't just feel like a customer interaction, it should feel they should feel like collaborators or residents in how we move our organization forward with our strategic direction and day-to-day operations. And so a lot of opportunity here as we think about what those communication pathways could be, how do we take a fresh look at revisiting engagement, and how do we ensure that in the two years ahead we're producing experiences and reports where our residents can feel the progress, right? And so being very intentional about making those connections is a huge focus for us in the upcoming two years. So what's next for us in considering all of the above is taking this approach, this process, everything we learned through our data informed approach to ensure that we're aligned operationally So we're having those conversations around what are truly our strategic performance indicators and how do we ensure that resident experience doesn't get lost in our day-to-day discussions about making progress. How do we look at new community engagement opportunities? What might that look like in the upcoming months as well? To keep this refreshed and to ensure that it feels like it's an ongoing engagement opportunity. And lastly, we need to ensure that we're putting in place the appropriate data governance standards and practices that are going to support how we measure progress and how we share progress throughout this process. We're also linking this directly with our program-based budgeting that helped inform not just our budget development this year, but certainly we feel is going to be a key component of our strategic budget conversations in the upcoming year. So we're very much just about to start official implementation September 1st. So happy to share our collective work. And with that, I'll turn it over for any questions.

Well, thank you. I'm very impressed at how succinct and all of you are so true to a strategic plan, really understanding who your audience is. And you've made several comments yesterday and today, Dion, about what is it that they want? Because I think quality is defined by the customer, not by us. So I think really putting, you know, I see so many touch points between what you're doing and what we're doing. I think this is what an opportunity to share not only the experience, but your approach to a strategic plan, because I think there's a lot of things that we need to take to heart. For example, like really understanding, you know, what do they want? What is it that they want? You've also, like I said yesterday, I had the opportunity to hear you yesterday as well, how you talked about the quality that I'm wondering if we do enough of stepping back and saying, is this at the level of quality that's expected by by the constituent. So we sort of say, think, hey, this would be great, a park would be great, but what is it that they really want? What level of quality are we willing to put out there? And that we never drop that, that we always know if we're gonna do a really good park, they're all gonna be great. For example, in our case, knowing we did one for accessibility, but then we said, well, shouldn't everything we do have accessibility? I don't care what it is that we do. So we learned a lot from this idea that we have to be able to, anybody should be able to enjoy what we have. And then also breaking the barriers, the paradigms of how we do that. I was at a conference with the CEO of Black & Decker, and he got up and he said, you know, I know you guys are excited about your drill, but the people don't want a drill. They want a hole. That's what they're looking for, a hole. They're not looking for a drill. So to break that sort of paradigm that the drill is what makes a hole. Well, maybe there's so many other ways to do that and technology and so forth. and i think that we have a great opportunity in this partnership to show our community i think we really need to take serious this expectation that we should work together we try it and we think about it but i don't think there's anything more that i hear out there than why don't the city and the county do x or why isn't the city working with each other and the county working And I think we have a great relation, great opportunity with the mayor and his, you know, his openness with me to try to do things for, together. But I think that's gonna, and you said it, Dion, the level of credibility. that our community will have when they see that when we do things together they know we're saving money we're not duplicating and so they know that we're being smarter about how we do things for them with the money that money they gave us that dollar bill that we're all splitting up you know that uh they want to know how we're using that money and if they don't have credibility Then no matter what we do. They're always suspecting like now for example when we went out to bond We knew that we had a lot of things against us of people said you're gonna get the you're gonna get the money You're not gonna. You know do the budget on time. You're probably not going to It's gonna be over budget and not timely and so forth that was a reaction that we got and so we made a commitment that we were gonna show the community not only for ourselves but but for the city or anybody else going out for a bond, that it's going to happen. And it's going to happen exactly and better than what they expected. And so if you guys now go on bond, then there's a sense of credibility out there that it's going to work.

It's going to happen.

So I think we have that commitment between the city and the county to make sure that, you know, I'm always thinking I don't want to do anything that indirectly impacts the image of government because then you guys are going to have to deal with it and vice versa, right? Something that you do that they feel government is not transparent or they're not doing what we'd like to see. So I feel very encouraged. I know it's way overdue that that we come out and show each other our strategic plan. But I can tell you, having been involved in a lot of Fortune 500 strategic planning, this is at that level. I mean, you've captured it. if you put it in in a way that people will understand it especially like to the elevator as we say the 11th floor being able to explain a strategic plan or that becomes so complicated that even internally or externally they don't truly understand what took place so i i congratulate you i mean this is you've done a lot of work and And I think we'd like to meet you at that point and do as much as we can. So Betsy, before we go, Betsy, anything quickly about, she works, she's obviously, like Dion, works tremendously on our strategic plan.

I also think Commissioner Stout, did you want to say something before I go?

You can go ahead. General and then we'll have Commissioner Stout.

I just wanted to mention, I always love seeing someone else's plan and getting ideas from the plan. I loved the profile. I love thinking of somebody in our community when we're thinking of these goals and thinking of these actions. That's what we all do all of this work for, and so I loved that. I loved the resident experience measuring. I'm really excited to see that. I'm so glad you all partnered with Zen City because I thought we'll kind of benefit off of it, too, because people do... This happens all the time in cities and counties, but especially because we have the same name. We sometimes get things that are for the city. The city sometimes... sends things over to us. Unfortunately, it's usually complaints where we get things for each other. But I love that you're doing it because we'll benefit off of what you're learning through the Zen City services. There are so many areas, Judge, where we are already working together or we have so much overlap. The one thing that, well, there were several, like the housing, the development streamlining, but the thing that just was so loud was the jobs and good-paying jobs, and this is where I do think that we have not ever sat down together and talked about that. We all are working towards economic mobility, but we've sometimes differed on our views about jobs and pay, and not like... outwardly differed, but we've never sat down and really aligned, and I think that is such a loud message to us about our economic development strategies. It's something the Court has discussed at length about looking at pay and jobs, and I think that's a real low hanging fruit opportunity for us to get more aligned on that we would all see quicker impacts that really matter to our community. So I'm excited. I love working with our team over there at the city. I'm really excited for this opportunity to continue partnering together.

Thank you Betsy. Commissioner Stone. Thanks.

Thank you all so much for the presentation on the strategic plan. It's good to see that we have a lot of alignment in some of the work we're doing and the values. As Betsy was saying, a lot of times people don't differentiate between the county and the city, right? And that's important. I'm glad we're able to sit down and see your strategic plan. I advocated for doing this for a while because I really think it's important for us to understand what other entities in the county. I mean, we're not just doing this with the city of El Paso. We've had others of the smaller municipalities come in as well. Because I think that we need to do some community-wide visioning. I've talked about this many times in our own strategic planning. Back in the 90s, Senator Shapley, Jose Rodriguez, our former county attorney, Ray Caballero, who was the mayor back then, they got together and did this huge community visioning. exercise and that's what, you know, I think they came up with like three main goals or visions for the future of El Paso. One had to do with supporting our military base and making sure that like when the BRAC process was going on that we increased the number of missions here. Another one was cross-border collaboration. That kind of, that motor got a wrench thrown in it because of 9-11 and just the whole border security industry that's ensued after that. But the biggest thing that came out of that was our medical, our health sciences center, Texas Tech, our medical school. and the Medical Center of the Americas and just all of the infrastructure that's been put in place when it comes to that industry and taking care of our people here. And so, I've been pushing the county to look at partnering with other entities and seeing how we can do this again. Because I feel like even though we're doing our strategic plans and we have things set in place, as a community, we don't have those big goals like they set back in the 90s when they did this visioning in the past, right? What is our goal as a community in the future? What are we heading toward? And I know that Congresswoman Escobar is planning on trying to lead something like this. We've talked to her about it in the past as well. And it's so that we have a course that we can chart and that we can move toward. And I think that the coordination between especially the city and the county to be able to do that and then carry those things out is gonna be just so important. And as I said, looking at your strategic plan, it's really good to see that a lot of the things that you all are prioritizing are in line. with what we're looking at. I do think we do need to work a lot more closely together. I know that I and other members of the court will have, we have relationships or we meet with the city council people that we overlap with, One thing that it's no longer the strategic plan because we just gave up on it, but I'm gonna do a shameless plug for it is having a joint city county commissioners court and city council meeting. Y'all did that with Juarez not too long ago. I attended a meeting that you had a joint city council meeting with the city of Juarez. And so I would really like to impress upon you, I think, the necessity and the benefit that having something like that would bring for, I think, both of our bodies. And it's been something that, you know, even before Mayor Johnson came into office, we were trying to talk to Mayor Leaser about doing it. I'm not sure who we need to talk to to make sure it gets done, but maybe some guidance on that would be helpful from you all if you can let us know kind of what you all think we need to do to be able to make something like that happen, because I think that it will be beneficial. ONCE AGAIN, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR TIME THIS MORNING. I KNOW YOU ARE VERY BUSY RUNNING THE CITY AND YOU'RE IN THE THICK OF BUDGET AND IT'S NOT EASY, SO I REALLY APPRECIATE YOUR TIME. COMMISSIONER BUTLER?

THANK YOU, JUDGE, COMMISSIONERS. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR BEING HERE TODAY AND FOR PRESENTING THIS INFORMATION. I think it's very insightful. I really appreciate the breakdown of some of the survey information so that we can see the demographics and by district some of the issues. I frequently, when I think about my relationship and as a function of my role as commissioner to the city, work really closely with the city council members, like Commissioner Stout said, that overlap in our precincts. And it's good to understand what those issues in the specific districts are so that I can have a better understanding of the priorities of the city council members. and find ways where we might be able to collaborate and find solutions. And it's easier said than done, I understand that, but I think that the more that we could focus on shared services, so areas that we already operate independently or individually in spaces like animal services, like transit, like public safety and public health. I think that I would really like to see some mechanism where we could understand areas where we could support each other, maybe not duplicate services, maybe find cost savings by bringing functions together as much as possible. Because I do think that in certain areas, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter which line you fall in, right? Whether it's city or county, people move all over the place. I think about animals all the time, right? Especially out in Precinct 1, we have packs of stray dogs that are one minute in the county and then the next minute have walked on over to the city. And so how do we partner together to manage those kinds of things? Transit is another really great example. We're doing a lot of data analysis to see where people are taking AN ETA BUS. WHERE ARE THEY LANDING IN THE CITY? WHICH STOPS ARE THEY GOING TO AT SUN METRO? HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE TAKING SUN METRO BUSES TO GET ON AN ETA BUS? WHAT WE'RE FINDING, IT'S ABOUT 50-50. SO, PEOPLE USING ETA, 50% of them are traveling into the city, people traveling from Sun Metro into the ETA service. It's about half and half, and so how do we work together to enhance services to make sure that we're making that system as seamless and affordable as possible for everybody. And so I know we talk about it a lot, but maybe we could, maybe a next step could be like actually putting forth some kind of mechanism or a meeting specifically to talk about potential shared services between the city and the county. I don't know, how do you feel about that, Ms. Mack?

I think once we align with the plans, I think it gives us a good opportunity to sort of say how do we narrowly focus some of these pieces. I think some of these just require better coordination and communication among staff. I think that it really is important for us to make sure the right people at the table from a strategy perspective and some of these joint pieces. to make sure that staff are thinking about the big picture, thinking about it more strategically, or taking a step back from a day to day grind to really look at where we might be able to save some dollars. I do think it's a good opportunity for us. The judge has spoken to the mayor regarding the joint meeting, sir, and so that is something that has been on the mayor's radar. We meet monthly or so, and so that has been discussed. And so I assume that he would have some opportunity now and as we're settling into our strategic plan to decide what that looks like for us. Of course, we're in the middle of elections as are you, so maybe next year. But I do think that there's good opportunities there as I'm moving into this position, really understanding when those conversations weren't happening. you know, when things are just totally off culture, you know, really understanding what's happening with, you know, the interlocal agreements, asking those questions, understanding that things are expired, you know, how are we mapping it? And so it's been a lot. It's been some cleanup, and it's been some opportunity to sort of ask those questions and build, I think, really good infrastructure and systems as we talked about data governance here. That's really my focus. I want good data. I want that data to be able to help inform the organization. I was all about AI. I kept going to a conference. I'm like, I want that. They were like, your data is dirty and you can't have that. And so now we're really working on every single department, mapping their data dictionary, using AI to clean up my data. And so as you talked about animal services, I have my team working on an app right now. that's helping us to see everything that comes in. You can see it across the app. You can understand where that data is. And so all the audit things become easier for us. And so I think a lot of times you're We are addressing things because they become an issue. It would be really great to kind of get in front of what are those three or four bucket things that we need to sort of do to make sure that we're showing people that we're doing a good job and that we're aligning. I think all of us are doing so much that sometimes we just don't stop to say, we've done this good work together. And I think that there's lots of things that we're already doing and that's what we're finding. Our staff are in the grind every day. They're getting things done for our community. And we just don't stop to say, hey, we heard you. And in your neighborhood, I've done something for you. And so I think that would be powerful for us to help people see value through that, whether it's about our relationship working together or just about the things that we do every day. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Dionne. Thank you very much for the presentation.

Thank you. You know, I really want to commend you on some of the things that y'all are doing and focusing on. Particularly, I'm going to mention a couple things. I really appreciate the work you're doing on your parks, because you're certainly doing, over the years, have done a lot better than we have on ours. But we are focusing on those now, and we're really working on that. The other thing I was going to say is your focus on streamlining your permitting and licensing. I met with the contractors several times, especially last year, early last year. And they were very, very concerned about the delay in the city's licensing and permitting for jobs. How is that going in terms of streamlining that? Because that's one issue that really is a big concern to locally.

Mayor Johnson applied for and was successful in being a part of the Bloomberg Harvard Leadership Initiative. So we spent a whole year, myself, Julie, an extensive part of our team working with John Hopkins and others really helping us to understand our data. And so we had been working on that issue for years and I just, I was convinced that it was my marshals. It's a fire marshal, if you could just, it wasn't even that. And so when we finally got the data clean enough to really understand the processes, we focused on tenant improvements because that was the biggest number. We were finding that a very small number of applicants are representing a lot of different businesses and it was taking them more than six times. to get through the planning process. So one of our goals is to get that to half, really looking at how we do one-on-one with some of those individuals. We had never been able to drill down to understand the company name or the individuals, and some were doing really well. And so, you know, to say 53% of them were taking six times to get through a process, you know, the data told the story. And so my team is now working on improving our website portals. We are working on making those really easy for people. Developing some widgets that allow you to make sure that as you're submitting those documents, they're actually correct. Working on training for our staff members. And from our perspective, if we can have the limited number of staff we have not have to do rework, then you can use that same time and effort to make other aspects of that work easier and cleaner if somebody's coming into those processes new. So that's just one of the items that we're working on for permitting peace. We have a whole other series that we're working on to make housing easier. Council will be adopting our housing strategy as part of Envision El Paso in September. We think that one of the things that we can do as a city, because we can't necessarily do the millions of dollars that other municipalities are able to invest in housing, but we can make it easier for people to get through those processes. And so we're really focusing on the process pieces to get out of the way. And how do we help people to be able to really understand and let them know that we understand that time is money. That the rework costs them money. That taking a year to get through a plan is not acceptable for people. And so that's really where we've been focusing our efforts and it's been a very transparent process. And so that's really where we're going to be focusing our efforts this year and then moving into other types of permitting as we move forward.

Well, good. I'm glad because some of the things I've heard from the contractors is like that they'll submit things and then they get back and then they go send them back again and they point other stuff that could have been pointed out earlier on at the same time.

Or you got a different person and they have a whole different interpretation of the exact same thing.

I get it, but to them, it seems like it's just over delay and having to resubmit and then getting things that are in compliance when it should have been done completely, not piecemeal. Do you understand? At least this is what I'm hearing from them.

Yeah, we see it, we heard it. I think we've been, we've done Lean Six Sigma projects, we've done our Kaizen, I mean, and I can't say that any of those, besides what we spent this year doing with Harvard Bloomberg, gave us the type of insight. And it was really lucky for us, AI came along, and so my team actually used AI to clean the data in a way that I never had transparency on. The other thing we did this year was we approved and had council adopt an ordinance that allowed us to do fire third-party in third-party reviews. And so you can now do third-party reviews for almost end-to-end of the work. And we had never done that before. We had a third-party review that has been very successful in terms of some businesses, but the fire piece, we hadn't done that. And so it really, I think, allows for us, as we're working on the processes that are end-to-end to sort of, as I say, get out of the way and allow the work to happen. And our team, of course, does an audit, but I think it really is going to reduce their time in terms of the investment that needs to happen. I mean, we're often seeing that people aren't able to get their COOs because they're at this last piece with fire or something, and it's It's costing them millions of dollars to just try to get their businesses going. And so we're going to do our best to understand that as we talk about economic mobility, as we talk about supporting small business, that we need to make sure that we are developing these processes in earnest to make sure that we are partnering with our community to do this work. We know that it is their dollars that are really helping us to be able to lift our community. They are the employers outside of how we talk about government.

Okay. Thank you. And there's a couple other areas that I know we can work on, particularly in the area of public safety in terms of the DIMS participation from your law enforcement. I mean, you are the number one client, so to speak, that our county jail has in terms of bringing detainees. And so we'd like to see, you know, actually 100% participation with respect to some of those issues in terms of, and I know we have our issues with respect to our DIMs that we need to, and we're working on making sure that that's fully staffed throughout the entire week. 24-7. And so I think it's not going to solve all our problems, but it is going to go a long ways into making sure that we have issues related to not detaining people at the jail as long as possible. And if we can't even have them in there to begin with, by going through the DEMS process that maybe they're, you know, I think that would go a long ways in helping us to reduce the expenses that we have with related to detaining people at our jail. i mean that is the biggest uh... item in our budget is public safety and so uh... we'd like to see a little more participation from the city on that the other issue and know that we you know really can work on together is and i know in commissioner stouts precinct and mine as well as you know central in the northeast as areas that really need lighting, and we'd like to see how we can help with respect to that. We know we have dedicated funds every year to provide lighting, and maybe there's a way that we can work where we can provide the, so to speak, the hardware, the posts and lighting, and then y'all can maintain them in some of these areas that are really desperate for need of lighting. I'd like to see that, as a matter of fact, I have a meeting with Representative Tovar tomorrow, Trejo, with respect to those issues, and I'm glad that Michael's here. Get on his ear about that. The other thing that I'd like to also see with respect to, what is the status of your Firefighter Training Academy?

So we will complete the new academy, what we're calling our public safety complex, which is over a $200 million investment. We're targeting 2029. So we'll be breaking ground on that facility at the end of this year. But we have now combined, it is now police training, fire training, fire headquarters, police headquarters, fire logistics on a 50 acre campus. So that's going to be quite a lift for us in terms of that. And so we're thinking that our folks will be moving into that in about 29, in the 29 or so.

Okay, great. Because I'd like to see that down the road, maybe that the county can take back over their fire training academy at Ascata since we made that possible for you all to take over in the first place. Where do you all stand on that?

I think it really depends on where we land with the project. So although we have all those elements that would allow us to be able to not utilize those sites within the plan, as you know, construction doesn't always go to plan. And so some of the phases of some of the things that they actually needed for training pieces are not included. So I think we want to make sure, because we don't know exactly what's going to need to stay at the police headquarters or what exactly is going to need to stay at the fire headquarters until we actually get to the place where we're building this and understand that we're fully done. And so I don't know if any functions will need to stay exactly where they are, but Ms. Keller has brought this up. I think we've been talking about it for about a year or so in our monthly meeting.

Okay, and just the other thing I want to mention is that we all have issues, the county and the city, with respect to our stormwater flooding that's happening, particularly in the northeast, central areas. I know that you all are concerned about that, but I'd like to see it in the strategic planning. I didn't see a whole lot of that in there.

So we don't manage EPW and all that work is with them. And so we partner with them, but we don't have anything related to EPW's work in the plan. And you'll see this be very light in terms of some of the capital pieces that you spoke about. One of the things that Council and I talked about in this plan is everything in this plan is funded. You know, and so this is not, you know, we call it an action plan that is funded with our budget. We really want to show things that we did not have to go take out additional debt. I don't have money for lighting. I mean, we don't have money for capital. If council chooses to go back out for a bond, You know, that would be the way for us to pay for some of these elements and items. So right now I have about $405 million that still needs to be issued. It is primarily on our streets bond and it's also on my public safety bond. And so we have not had a discussion about what next looks like. We have not issued, you know, COs since 2019. What we're seeing right now in terms of some of those projects that might be in some of those areas are those dollars sort of flowing through. And so we really wanted council to sort of say, there's still things I can do, although community is coming to ask for some of these things. Part of the strategy that we undertook this year with some of the lighting pieces is that we're really leaning into solar because it is a fraction of the cost. And so we utilize our $5 million that the community approved for us through the Climate Action Plan. It's all lighting. And so we're doing parks lighting, and we're doing street lighting, and we were able to get, I think, almost 63 different installations for less than that $5 million, almost $3 million as a result of that. But when you're talking about communities that don't have the infrastructure for it, we're not at a place to be able to talk about that. And what we've shared with council is if they want to develop a bond, that will more than likely be after we present our parks master plan, which is coming to a conclusion. And so then they'll have an opportunity to sort of see what that looks like. My recommendation was that that doesn't happen until 2028 to really allow for the community input that would be necessary to make sure that we have a fully developed bond. And I really am not going to do a citywide election if I don't have to.

Okay, and I think right now is a good opportunity for us to work together with respect to those water infrastructure issues, even though some of that responsibility is not, I mean, it is within the city, so, and I'm thinking there's a great opportunity right now, at least in terms of some of the industries that are moving in. that we can get some community benefit agreements for them to help and provide. And I know we can advocate alongside you all and other entities to make sure that we can get that done, including our legislative delegation, both on the state and the federal side. And I think there's very good opportunity for us to do that, to bring these services to our community. And I agree with Commissioner Stout. I think there's an avenue for us to for the city and the county to meet together on some of these issues. And there's even more issues that I think we can work together on. And so I want to thank you for the presentation and the good work you're doing. We know both of our governments are challenged in terms of our budget, and everybody's... getting on us to make sure that we try and but i think we both governments have done a really good job in trying to maintain the tax rate as low as possible in light of all the needs as well as all the services we have to provide so thank thank you very much thank you

I just want to thank you, Ms. Mack, for always being available and willing to discuss. I know that there's been issues that we've had to get together to work on invoicing and things like that, but I just want to thank you for first taking the time to come out and present to us, but also just being available to be a good partner to the county. The best way that we're going to serve our residents is by working together as the two main entities here in El Paso County. And so thank you for your accessibility and for all of the hard work that you and your team do at the city.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. We're very, since I've met you, Deanna, your candidness, your openness about what's going on has been very refreshing. And we want to continue Betsy and I on some of these items and sort of the, like you might not understand what we might need and now we understand what you need. For example, I want to quote the mayor of Soneli. He says, why isn't everybody excited that we're the seat of the county? So he feels like it's only them that they're excited instead of the entire community being excited about that. So if there's anything that you could think about on the mission trail, we do a lot to make sure people go downtown. And then if you do a lot, help us with that. trying to get people to say maybe there's some activities where the mission trail becomes a little bit more visual for all of you and the city gets behind it. I think this collaboration can be just amazing because we have the relationships right now that we need to take advantage of and we sure, I feel that we do so. Thank you both. Congratulations on your SBA grant. We appreciate that.

Representative Lamone pointed it out so she's already charged my staff to do a little more.

thank you both we appreciate you thank you for your time i appreciate it thank you

Item 4C, receive a presentation and discuss and take appropriate action to approve the water and sewer rates for the El Paso County Water System doing business as East Montana Water System and authorize the fees to take effect October 1st, 2026.

Good morning, Judge Commissioner Fernandez with the Infrastructure Services. Today we're bringing back the item to introduce and discuss the water rates adjustments for the East Montana water system. As you all are aware, this is the issue that we bring back every year to make sure that we do an analysis to make sure that the fees we do charge cover the rates that we charge our customers and to make sure that all the maintenance and operations is covered within those rates. Today we are joined by our consultant, Andrew Rehm, which will be doing the presentation. I'm not sure if he's available online already. You're muted, Mr. Rehm.

How's that?

Good. We can hear you now. Thank you. Okay, you got the mic, Kendra.

Sorry, I've got audio coming through. Let me turn off the speaker. Okay.

Welcome, Andrew.

Am I coming through? Am I coming through?

I think you joined on your phone as well.

So if you want to stop your phone.

I did and I have. I'm not really sure how it's looping through.

Okay. I removed the phone. I can hear your audio through the computer.

All right. Well, that works. Apologize for that. so let me uh share the the presentation and and um this is largely the same as was provided uh late july july 27th at the regular county commission meeting uh as you know you all know and those that were uh part of that uh meeting uh we we hadn't gotten the presentation fully uh in the packet and so um WE PROVIDED AT THIS TIME. AND JUST WANT TO KIND OF HIGHLIGHT, TALK THROUGH A LITTLE BIT WITHOUT REGIVING THE ENTIRE PRESENTATION. WE UPDATED AND ADDED A FEW SLIDES, AND I'LL GO THROUGH AND KIND OF TALK THROUGH AND PRESENT THE NEW SLIDES. JUST IN GENERAL, FOR THOSE THAT ARE JUST TUNING IN, THERE WAS A PRESENTATION OF THE ANNUAL UPDATE THAT My firm, Raftelis, and I help lead the annual update we've been doing with the county on water and sewer rates and financial plans for about five years now. And so that presentation was provided with recommendations for rate adjustments starting October 1, 2026. There were some questions that were posed and a follow-up presentation and questions that were submitted following that late June presentation. And so the, you know, responses to the questions submitted by commissioners and their staff was the bulk of the reason and the content of the presentation that was provided a few weeks ago, July 27th. So ultimately, you know, I'm not going to go through and represent the whole thing, but just want to highlight a couple things and a couple of the new slides that we had added. Before I go there, this is just for reference and reminder, the current rate structure that the county's water and sewer funds have in place include a fixed or monthly base rate minimum charge with a minimum allowance of 3,000 gallons for water, 2,000 gallons for sewer. and then volumetric charges per thousand gallons uh for usage above three thousand gallons and as uh is is summarized here uh it's a inverted or increasing uh rate schedule or volume rate for the water charges uh using this tiered rate and so you know the the second tier and then the incremental usage starting at six thousand gallons gets filled at the third tier up into uh ten thousand gallons and and then that last year usage over ten thousand gallons is billed at the uh current rate of eight dollars and eighty four cents per thousand gallons just a reminder um before we get into a few of the details uh one one thing that i wanted to highlight on this slide did not change it's still the same in terms of the drivers as we looked and updated the plan this year. But one of the things that was some new information that was updated in late June, early July, was regarding the grant of $0.7 million. This characterizes it as being awarded. THAT'S NOT TRUE FULLY. IT'S ELIGIBLE FOR CONGRESSIONAL FUNDING. IT HAD MOVED ON TO THE NEXT STEP, BUT IT HAS NOT BEEN AWARDED YET. AND WE HAD ANTICIPATED THIS AND, YOU KNOW, SOME ADDITIONAL GRANT FUNDING AS PART OF THE PLAN. THAT ADDITIONAL GRANT FUNDING IS SUMMARIZED HERE OF THE .9 MILLION. SO WE'RE ANTICIPATING SOME GRANTS FOR LARGE TANK PROJECT. AS IS HIGHLIGHTED HERE, BUT I JUST WANTED TO CORRECT THAT HADN'T BEEN FULLY AWARDED, IT MOVED ON TO THE NEXT ROUND. AND AS THAT, YOU KNOW, CONGRESS GOES THROUGH THEIR PROCESSES, YOU KNOW, IT'S ELIGIBLE FOR A POTENTIAL AWARD AND WE'LL FIND OUT AS THEY COMPLETE THEIR PROCESSES. A couple of new slides. We're asked to just compare the plan that we had developed last year that was presented to the commissioner's court. That is in the orange bars. This is just the water rates and the water fund. But as we were projecting out over THIS UPCOMING FISCAL YEAR, FISCAL YEAR 27 THROUGH FISCAL YEAR 30. IN LAST YEAR'S PLAN, WE WERE ANTICIPATING 9% INCREASES FOR THIS FIRST THREE YEARS AND THEN AN 8% INCREASE IN FISCAL YEAR 2030 IN ADDITION TO THE PROPOSED RATES THAT WERE IMPLEMENTED EFFECTIVE OCTOBER 1, 2025. SO AS WE HAD UPDATED THE PLAN THIS YEAR, IT'S SLIGHTLY HIGHER WITH AN ADDITIONAL PERCENTAGE INCREASE IN THESE FIRST THREE YEARS AND THEN UPWARDS OF AN 11% INCREASE OR 3% HIGHER, CERTAINLY COMPOUNDING AND CUMULATIVE ADJUSTMENTS AS WE COMPARE THIS TYPICAL WATER BILL, TYPICAL RESIDENTIAL MONTHLY WATER BILL. side-by-side where we are today with the approved rates. Then rounded to the nearest dollar, we can see as the higher projections over this five-year period come in with this update, you can see that cumulative or compounding impact that it's a few dollars more in the fiscal year 29 and 2030. JUST AS CERTAINLY A REMINDER FOR THOSE VIEWING THIS MEETING, WE'RE JUST RECOMMENDING ACTION BE TAKEN FOR FISCAL YEAR 27, BUT HAVEN'T, ARE PROJECTING SUBSEQUENT YEARS AS WE HAVE AS PART OF THIS PROCESS. So I'm gonna kind of jump to a couple of the additional slides that were added and included or updated in addressing some of the questions that had been posed. So let me go to, one of the questions was around comparing the county and El Paso water rates. And so this slide was presented and hasn't been modified. just a side-by-side comparison to the water rates for the two entities as best we can, a side-by-side. An additional point of comparison, IS COMPARING A TYPICAL RESIDENTIAL MONTHLY AND WATER SEWER BILL. THE KIND OF METRIC THAT WE'VE INCLUDED IN THE PRESENTATION. AND WE TOOK THE PROPOSED RATES THAT WE'RE DISCUSSING AND RECOMMENDING. the current rates for the county, and then apply the same parameters, the same size meter, the same volume of water through the existing rate structures for the Village of Benton, the County Tornillo Water and Improvement District, El Paso Water, the charges they have inside the city, the Lower Valley Water District, and the Horizon Municipal Utility District. So as we certainly see the county today and Vinton are towards the top of this comparison and different usage of the bills and maybe a little bit different, but the county and Vinton have highest bills within the survey group. And certainly El Paso Water, there's kind of a next step down for the other entities, the districts as well as El Paso Water. And one thing to keep in mind, it's footnoted here, is item number two. So, you know, comparing the bills, certainly the county today, and as is proposed, would be a higher monthly water bill for this type of residential customer, this usage threshold. But the district's And then to some extent, the village of Vinton do have tax based revenues that are funding, you know, debt service or portions of, say, capital and operations. So that that is one way that the rates and the user charges are maybe a little bit lower as compared to the county where we just we don't have any tax based revenues in the water and sewer funds today that are helping to offset or or pay portions of the costs. And that's also the case, I mean, El Paso Water is certainly a much more complex entity, but in terms of, you know, their user and fee based in terms of their funding as well. So, you know, sometimes, you know, certainly the comparisons can help, but just in terms of how a typical user compares to other utilities in the area, this slide gives that indication with the caveat that there are some tax based revenues that may be helping offset rates for some of the entities that are included here. Moving on to a slide that was presented, there was a question about the remaining debts of the system, and the first portion of this slide was included, focused on the water fund, and just left out, neglected one of the issues that is assigned to the sewer fund for the area that is receiving sewer service within the county. the other areas are water only and so the summary of outstanding debt as of the start of this fiscal year interest rate for that outstanding debt and the fiscal year where the final payment is going to be is shown here with the inclusion of the remaining debt for the sewer systems And I'm gonna go to the last slide here, last new slide here. There was a question around, are we currently meeting annual cash reserve targets? If not, how long has that been the case? And this depiction summary of the water fund balance was showing the reserve target that is increasing its cost increase, and also as we phase into the full recommended target over a 10-year period. So there's kind of two drivers with the red line. And as we can see, you know, we're drawing down that reserve balance, you know, said differently. We have expenses greater than the revenues each year in fiscal year 27 and fiscal year 28. And this is after the increase is going to play. So this is largely capital projects. And then starting in fiscal year 29, continuing through fiscal year 2031, we're adding, maintaining the reserves as we get to just above the target in the last two years. And again, this is the projected, and this is projected with including annual rate adjustments as forecasted within the Water Fund each year. So the additional slide was just showing, you know, getting a little bit beyond the chart or the graph or the outcome that was, you know, the reserves and showing that in kind of the next three years between, you know, our operation and maintenance charges, DEBT SERVICE, INCLUDING, YOU KNOW, A NEW ISSUE THAT WE'RE PROJECTING WITH DEBT SERVICE STARTING IN FISCAL YEAR 29. AND THE CAPITAL ADJUSTED FOR ANY GRANTS THAT HAVE BEEN AWARDED OR THAT ARE ANTICIPATED AS WELL AS AN EXTERNAL OF THAT NEW DEBT ISSUE. As we see, it's a little less than a half a million dollars in capital projects, less those external funding sources. That's really what is driving as we total the expenses, look at the revenues with the projected and proposed increases. There's this $100,000 we're drawing in fiscal year 27 from reserves, about 275,000 in fiscal year 28. AND THEN WE START TO KIND OF BUILD THOSE BACK AGAIN STARTING IN FISCAL YEAR 29 CONSISTENT WITH THE SUMMARY CHART THAT WAS PRESENTED. SO WITH THAT, AND I APPRECIATE YOU INDULGING ME GOING THROUGH AND HIGHLIGHTING THE NEW AND UPDATED SLIDES. done presenting that new information and we'll kind of go back and certainly can go to any of the slides that are included here or address questions that folks may have.

Bernie, what do you make of this?

Well, you know, we're looking to be able to recuperate the initial expenses and, you know, to operate our management fees as far as for making sure that we're within budget and do grow our fund expenses. I'm sorry, our reserved expenses. And so that's why we're proposing this new rate similar to what we had last year. I know last year our projection fell a little bit short. I think we're within 1%. But we did have some different circumstances. We did have an additional rate increase from El Paso Water that kind of led to that contributing factor. But we feel that we're pretty much on the same page as we were last year trying to predict what we were gonna be charging for this year. And so that's why we're looking to accept, I guess, what we had our initial projections from last year kind of confirm.

Any questions Betsy anything to add to this you've got OK Commissioner Butler.

Yes, thank you, Judge. Thank you, Ferney. Thank you, Mr. Ream. So thank you for the additional information. I think it's really helpful. And it's really interesting to me to see the comparable average billing between the different water providers throughout the county. And it's concerning, too. It makes me concerned about the long-term sustainability of us managing a water system on our own when trying to meet real affordability challenges of the people who are our customers for the East Montana water system. I think that... it would be in the best interest of our customers to explore other options moving forward, whether it is in our best interest to have our own water system or if we should look for alternative solutions, including perhaps joining one of the other taxing entities. I don't, I mean, I think we need to explore those options if it means that water will become more affordable overall. One of the things that I noticed both in this presentation but I also was able to review our current contract with El Paso Water Utilities is that over 90%, about 91% of our water operating costs are direct payments to El Paso Water Utilities. THAT'S JUST PASSED THROUGH. 91% OF OUR OPERATING IS PASSED THROUGH TO EL PASO WATER, CORRECT? YES, MA'AM. SO ON TOP, AND THAT INCLUDES THEY CHARGE AN ADMINISTRATIVE FEE PER CUSTOMER TO THE COUNTY, IS THAT CORRECT?

Yes, ma'am, and that's part of the management process, right? So they charge for the billing to have the people on staff. And since we no longer have water operators on staff, now that's part of their budget, yes.

Yeah, thank you. One of the other things that I found interesting and I wanted to ask about was, In the contract it says that we're required to pay a percentage due to water loss. Do you know if that water loss percentage is just for the East Montana water system area or is it system wide water loss percentage that we're paying for?

That's for the whole system as a whole, right? The East Montana water system is the name of our water system, but it does incorporate areas along the Colonial Revolution and areas along the west side as well. But it's still merged under the East Montana water system.

But the percentage that we pay through our contract with El Paso Water for water loss, is that for their water system or is it just for ours?

No, just for our system.

Do you know how much that water loss is costing us per year?

I believe we have that outlined in our annual water loss report. I don't have that off the top of my head, but it's part of the package that we do put together for the, when we do submit our packet. Okay, thank you.

And then just lastly, I just wanted to say that I understand that the 10% projection in increased rates is trying to... to account for the rise in costs, especially the pass-through costs from El Paso Water. I think they're raising the rates well above 10% this year, so we wouldn't even be matching that rate with this 10% rate. But also, we have that fund balance and that reserve that is above the target right now. So I would like to know if we, instead of approving a 10% rate, if we approved maybe a 5% rate, what would that look like in terms of impact to our fund reserve?

I don't believe we've gone through that exercise of doing a 5% increase. Andrew, correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I think that was something that we weren't anticipating and looking at half that rate.

uh you're correct i i don't have that specific uh item ready um i i did run a scenario just a kind of what if if there was no increase in 27 uh at all so you know not not a five percent but but no adjustment and i mean in the the there are a couple impacts and so five percent would certainly be better than no increase in terms of the impacts but um we draw the reserve down more without the additional revenue both within the water and the wastewater fund And essentially, the way that I ran it, Commissioner Butler, you're exactly correct that it's not like next year, we got to do 10%. It's more trying to levelize the rate adjustments over a multi-year period. So it's like really two or three years out when the tank and the new debt service comes in, in addition to the overall increased expenses that really drives the rate adjustment. So we still need to be at the same spot. And, you know, if we shorten the period that we're having additional revenue recovery, then those increases need to be higher. So, you know, effectively to meet our reserve targets, meet the debt service coverage target, you know, fund the expenses, do the same things. And again, this was a 0% increase. The fiscal year 28 and 29 adjustments just to get to that reserve target. would need to be two 16% increases in a row. And so it's compounded, kind of cumulative out to that third year, pretty much about the same spot. But it's just giving ourselves a shorter time period to collect that additional revenue out that third year. So I don't have the exact answer on certainly the 5%. We'd still be above the reserve target. You know, we'd be just drawing down a little bit further than what we projected with the adjustments. And really it's more kind of that cumulative impact and kind of that two or three year period where we have a steeper rate increases and rate adjustments in both funds.

Andrew, this is Betsy. On slide 14 of the presentation, it shows that additional water fee revenue from the rate increases. It looks like we go from just over 3 million to about maybe 3.4 million. So are we saying that the water rate increase will generate about $400,000 more revenue?

I mean, in rough, we've got a little bit of new customers being added, but it's a little more than 300,000 or that 10% or just above 3 million with growth and the rate adjustment will be in that 3.3 to 3.4 range.

So if the court were to decide to adopt a 5% instead of a 10%, as an example, you would imagine about half of that, that would eat into your... not necessarily eat into your fund balance, but it would slow the growth of your fund balance to the projected level that you'll have to be at or want to be at by year 2031. And in a future year, we would have to do one of two, well, one of a few things. We would either have to do a larger increase or we'd have to look for some other type of grant or some some other type of method to gain funding into the system.

And I guess just to give you a little bit of insight, Commissioner, we did go through this exercise last year when we were forecasting and trying to plan for the elevated tank out there at off of Leary. And at that point, if we didn't take into account the gradual progression of the rate increases, and we held off till the 28, 20, 29 season or a year to be able to do that rate increase. We're looking at about a 29 to 30% increase at that time. So we felt at that point it would be a very hard hit to all the residents at that point. So that's why we had gone through the exercise of trying to bring some of this to make it a more level gradual curve of the increase instead of trying to hit in three or four years, try to get a big boost at that point.

Have we done, do we have any data from El Paso Water on the, on how many delinquency or disconnection accounts we have within the East Montana Water System year over year?

I don't think Omar, is Omar on the line?

We do have that information. The auditors, but I don't know if they have it readily available, but it is something that they follow on delinquent. Do you have anything like that now? No? Yeah, we would need to come back on that, but it's not a significant amount. Based on my experience, we do have delinquent accounts. We have people who disconnect, but it's not a significant amount.

Commissioner Butler, if you're finished with your questions, Judge, I have some questions. Yes. Thank you. So the last time that we had this presentation, I had several concerns. One of the biggest concerns that I had was the year-to-year increase to customers that was being projected because it was going to be very significant. Another concern that I had was why such a difference in the base rates, between our base rate and EP Water's base rate. And then another question was why, well, I think we know why it's so much more economical for EP Water to provide services, and I think Now, in this new chart that we have where we see the actual difference, when you're comparing household, I think based on the quick math that I did, the county, it's almost $40 more for us to provide the same service that EP Water provides when just comparing those two. Because as Andrew mentioned, the other entities are taxing and so that can offset some of the cost. So just comparing El Paso Water and El Paso County. It is significantly less expensive for EP water to do it and that was kind of the driver for the conversation that we were having and I think that's what Commissioner Butler was alluding to right now is, you know, it's maybe we shouldn't be in the water system business because it costs us a lot to do it and there are other entities that can clearly do it for a lot less. So I know we talked about that possibility last time. I know I also asked about the possibility of maybe paying off some of the smaller debt that we have instead of waiting for 30 years to pay off that small debt. I know we've got larger debt, but we do have some pretty small debt. I was interested in seeing how that would change things if we thought about doing that. So those are the concerns that I brought up at the last meeting, but I don't feel like, so I was hoping that today's meeting would have more options or other things for us to consider in light of all of the concerns that the court brought up. But it doesn't look like anything's changed, right? The rates are still the same that were being proposed at the last meeting. I'm not sure if we've started having conversations at least. I didn't expect to have some kind of resolution with El Paso Water, but maybe at least starting to have those conversations with them. You know, maybe an answer to why no one knew last meeting why our base rates are so much higher. We didn't know even like kind of where that figure came from. So I'm a little bit disappointed that we don't have a lot of the answers to some of the concerns that we had at the last meeting. I was really hoping that today's meeting was going to maybe bring us more options based on those conversations. But it seems like really the proposed rate is the same, even in light of all of the concerns that we had at the last meeting.

Right, right. And I guess, you know, I apologize for that. I guess I misunderstood the previous assignment. But I guess what we feel is, you know, one of the factors is that we do, we are not a wholesale maker. You know, I'm sorry, we're not a water maker. We're not like El Paso Water where we do treat the water and produce it. So we are a water wholesaler. And so we do get those pass-through rates that El Paso Water gives us. One of the things that also we have to keep in mind is that we also have to pay an out-of-service fee, which is a fee that El Paso Water only holds everything within their CCN, and then they sell us at a higher rate rate. They also do have a larger base of where they actually recoup their money, right?

No, and I understand all of that, but to me that just reinforces the point that maybe we really need to consider not continuing to have the water system because it is so much more expensive for us to do it. But I feel like this plan, um really isn't thinking about that as a possibility it's just you know increasing the rates for the next three years um assuming that it's just going to continue the way things are continuing now but i feel like that's really an important conversation that we have to have is whether we should even stay in the water system business because it's clearly for all those reasons it's clearly much more expensive for us to do it So we have to take action for this coming year, but I would like to see us really set a deadline for ourselves to have these serious conversations and figure out if transferring our system to one of the other water providers is going to be the best thing for those residents.

And Commissioner, if I can add on to that. So I think it has been our goal to get out of the water business from past direction. And it was to try to get as many grants to get areas provided water and then get out. There are some things that we need to follow up on. We previously, when the court was considering this before, before we learned that we would not be able to continue to get grants and expand to more densely populated areas, we started those discussions. And in those discussions, where we didn't get all the way along, there was interest in assuming our water system and even assuming our debt. But where we didn't get to is, what will that do to the rates of these users? And I do think that's an important thing for you all to know before we do this either way and to even see if, I think unless it goes to El Paso Water, I could be wrong, but I think we'll be in the same scenario. I don't think someone else can assume this system. They'll still have to buy the water wholesale. They'll have to be buying it because it doesn't have a water supply.

Yeah, no, everyone will have to buy their water from EP Water, but looking at that chart, the other providers, and of course, it does have to do with the fact that they also collect tax revenue, but their charges to the customers are less.

And what EP Water has told me in the last year is that some of those other agencies had longer-term contracts with them and did not have an increase built in, I believe. And they did tell me, we will be renegotiating some water rates in the next year, and we can expect some pretty significant increases to some of the other providers. And so I'm imagining some of these other areas may also see some significant increases. I don't know how many of them, but I do know that that is what I was told by El Paso Water, is that some of their contracts are up for renegotiation.

And I understand that, but I feel like we haven't really made that effort to try to figure it out and see what the options are.

So I do think that's what we need to do. We need to sit down. We need to find out what that would look like and what that would do long term to our residents in these areas. Would they then benefit from the economies of scale of being in a much larger system? Would they still continue to see unusually larger rates? I did notice on slide I apologize, let me go back, what slide it was.

Was it 13, the one that listed all the different providers?

Yes, the slide 13, a lot of it too is, I mean our waste water is a major driver for the total bill. It's both water and waste water, but our waste water is abnormally higher. And I don't know if that's because I noticed the debt payments increased because of waste water. And some of the waste water loans and improvements we've made, we've really worked to try to add waste water to our systems. But we are significantly higher.

But I don't think waste water is what's causing the increases, right? In one of the other slides, it looked like waste water actually, those costs weren't necessarily going up, it's really the water cost.

It's going up about 5% on waste water, but overall, waste water is a large portion.

And that's because of economies of scale. We only have one area that has sewer at this point. And so we don't have that many customers.

So the majority of our customers are going to see the water bill portion of this? Yes.

And so something to consider is that we still have a lot of areas where we have colonias that don't have water. And while EP water can go out for grants, they probably will not be eligible for those grants, maybe a loan. And so that's the difference between us. And I think that was the goal, get people water, the ones that need the water, and then turn over the system to a pass of water for them to run it. Because as you can see, we're not the subject matter experts in that area. So that was the goal, and I think that's still the goal. We can sit down with El Paso Water, talk to them about any opportunities, but if that's the court's direction, we can do that, definitely do that. But that's what the problem is, that we won't be able to bring in additional people into our water system if we turn it over to them because they're not eligible for these grants. Yeah.

And I think that was also part of the discussion that we had at the last meeting was really looking at how many areas we're talking about, right? How many areas remain? And so we talked about that at the last meeting, but we don't have that information.

Right. And one of the questions I have, sorry to interrupt Commissioner Ordean, is that still factually true? I mean, the last two and the next wastewater grant that we're getting in the East Montana water system is coming from El Paso Water Utilities. So has that landscape changed since we developed the East Montana water system? Have we confirmed with El Paso Water that they wouldn't pursue grants because they're doing it now for wastewater? So what would prohibit them from doing it further?

So judge, commissioners, I think we need to go back and get that information. I apologize that we don't have it today, but we can go back and look at what does paying off debt do to our long term outlook? Why is our base rate this much higher? What is the interest in El Paso Water, assuming our water system, and what does that do to our rates, or to the rates to these users? And what areas qualify for grants that haven't been added, and would El Paso Water be able to get those grants?

So we do have the number. We still have 47 areas, and that includes Waco tanks that are lacking water.

But I don't think all of those 47 were in our grant portfolio, because last time we looked at this format, there was only, even for us, there was only about six areas, maybe seven areas that qualified. There weren't very many areas that would ever meet the threshold of households and service to get the grants. So I think the number is lower that we could get grants for that are not currently served. But we could go back and analyze and see why would we qualify and not El Paso Water.

And just a point of clarification, Commissioner Butler, the ones that the El Paso Water did get are for the Desert Meadows, excuse me, Desert Meadows South subdivision. And so that area is within their CCN. It's not the El Paso, the East Montana Water System CCN. So that's why they were able to get those, They're not even, I think they're EDAP funds, and so that's why they're able to get the sewer for those areas, but that's because that's part of their system, it's not the East Montana water system.

Judge, Commissioners, Eric Rosales, Nagaglione, Assistant County Attorney, just to add one more thing to Betsy's list of follow-up. So our office has also been in discussions with the Public Works team and with our auditor's office to do a review of the debt documents and the provisions and what's required of the county as far as the fees, what they cover, the reserves. There's four different debt documents, and so we would also be prepared to bring back an analysis of that so that the court is just aware of our obligations under that debt.

And that goes back to the question I think we asked last time about can we pay them off early? Are they callable? Especially the one with the 4.88% interest rate. So no action today is what I'm hearing and that we need to bring back this information. And the other thing I forgot to mention that we need to bring back is the disconnects and delinquencies.

I appreciate it. Thank you.

I have a question. Let's assume that, best case scenario, we're able to say we're gonna transfer this over to El Paso Water. How long is that gonna take? I don't know. What'd it take?

I don't know, Commissioner.

It's not gonna be real quick, is my guess, right? Plus, how does El Paso Water figure their rates in terms of an area that they service if they bring in an area? There's still gonna be a need for that infrastructure to our system. Are they just gonna say, okay, we're gonna spread it out over everybody else? Or is it just for those areas? That's another thing we need to look at because regardless who takes over, they're gonna have to pay for this infrastructure down the road. And how's that gonna pan out? Now we have other people saying, hey, why should we be paying if it's going to be spread amongst everybody? Those are issues that need to be addressed.

I will tell you, that is a really good point, because when we talked to El Paso Water last time, one of the things that they told us back then was that they were, because we had gone through a period where we had not addressed rates, back in the early 2000s to 2015 timeframe or 10 timeframe, somewhere in there. And so the last time we spoke to them, they said because we had addressed rates and we're recovering our cost, they were more interested in considering it. That was a specific mention during the discussions with them last time.

That we're starting to look at recovering. Because my understanding is if we can't just turn it over, we'd have to pay off the debt, right?

No, when we discussed it, that would be a point of negotiation. So when we discussed it with them previously, it was them paying off. Them assuming our debt. Not necessarily paying it off, but assuming our debt. Because the debt is built into the numbers.

Right.

Commissioner, I think those are all really important questions. And obviously, I mean, if there was an easy solution to this, we wouldn't. Like, this is a very, very complex issue and a critical one. We cannot, like, ignore it, right? We need to figure out solutions to this. I think what I'm asking and I think what Commissioner Holguin is asking is let's make sure that we're considering every alternative, that we're turning every stone, that we're thinking as innovatively and creatively as possible to both meet the goals, which is to provide water and wastewater to as many residents as we can, but also make sure that it's affordable and sustainable. um uh because you know we can't price people out of water service which is what i fear we're going to be doing if we if we just year over year approve a 10 increase i get that we just need to have a plan and uh how soon that we can even implement that is going to be the issue It's not going to be easy. And I read the contract we have with El Paso Water. It's pretty hard to change. And it requires approval by USDA to change the structure of our water system. And so it would be a lengthy, complicated process. But I think that we need to explore that. Commissioners?

Barbara Parker, County Auditor. Also keep in mind that the current rates that we have We are operating at a loss on the water system, and if you look at the projections that Reptile has put up on the screen, for the next couple of years, we're continuing to operate at a loss, even with the increase of the rates that they were recommending. It's not until, I think, 2029, where we start seeing the ability to start building those reserves back up again. So it is expensive, and there aren't nearly as many customers as El Paso Water has.

And do we know what that, Barbara, what that break-even point is to cover or recoup the losses?

Andrew, do you have that?

I don't know that I understand the question.

When you say break-even on the losses, what do you mean by that? What would it be the break-even point? In other words, that we're covering all of the expenses without even And I know this is off the cuff, but...

Yeah, I guess, let me see here. Judge, Commissioner, sorry to interrupt.

Andrew, Eric Rosales, Nagaglione Assistant County Attorney. I would recommend, because this does pertain to legal rights and responsibilities, which I referenced earlier, compliance with the terms of the debt. I would recommend for the court to discuss an executive session. If you agree, we'd have a motion ready for you to go. And if you'd like, the next item we're also going to take into executive at the very end, so we could take it up at the same time, if the court would like.

Well, and they don't have that. Maybe we ought to just reset it for down the road. I don't want to have to get people right now to start calculating.

Yeah, since it's being brought back later in.

Yeah.

When we bring it back, we'll bring it back with an executive session.

But I think that regardless of what we decide, we're going to have to decide on some kind of increase for this coming year because otherwise, as we're told, we're operating at a loss. We can't continue this even this next year. Even if we decide we're going to... transferred over.

The other part of this is the notice. We try to give our residents notice of what the increase is going to be. Normally the increases go into effect October 1st, so we need to get this back rather quickly with this information. Some of it might take us a little bit more time to get, but we need to get it back as soon as possible and it'll probably prolong when we're going to be able to make it effective so that we can give people at least 30 to 45 days advance notice.

Yeah, and maybe we don't do the 9% or 10% this year, but maybe 6%, 7% or something like that, something that's not going to be, knowing that down the road, if we don't transfer it, we're going to take a higher hit.

And I think that's what we're asking for, is just what are the other options? Absolutely.

And I do think that's an important thing that we can bring back, also showing, again, what's the exact impact of unbalance and to the timeline that we have that built up that additional $2 million if we slow down the rate increase at this point. What does that do to that long-term schedule? And then it also gives us some direction on looking to see if there's any other way we can infuse funding.

And I think, Commissioner Lagina, we have to advocate for our constituents. And I think what you're saying is we don't have much control, and they decide what the rate's going to be, and then where are we in this whole process. So I think you're right.

And I think Commissioner Butler made a good point about potentially pricing people out of affording water, which was the entire reason that we undertook all of these grants and setting up the Montana system because we wanted people to have water. But if we're pricing them out of that, then how does that help?

Right, but I guess, Commissioner, you know, one of the things is, you know, the cost it does, we do operate at, right, so we knew that, I guess, in a few years back, we did recognize that this, When we had to go into the new contract with El Paso Water, we did notice that because of fluctuation of the contract, we did see that they had built in this new yearly renewal or revisit of the yearly analysis of the rates that they do sell the water to us. And so that's why we had made that push to try to do the the management contract with El Paso Water. So that way they can do the management and they can see what our weaknesses are and what our weaknesses are in targeting the easy low-hanging fruit to be able to adjust those rates. But as we are going through the process of getting that transition going, so that's kind of where we're seeing the delay, right? Where they're barely learning in our system, they're trying to do the analysis as we go. And so that's one of the things that we are trying to work as, try to be more effective and efficient going forward.

Yeah, no, that was definitely a good first step. Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We'll take no action for item 4C. Item 4D, receive and discuss a presentation and update from the Bond Performance Team regarding the voter-approved bond projects in the Capital Improvement Plan.

Good morning, Judge, Commissioner Scalise Martinez with the County Administration Department. Here to provide you with the monthly update on the Capital Improvement Bond Starting with some of the administrative activities, as you all are aware, we issued the second tranche of funding earlier this summer. And so, over the course of, in early July, we went ahead and closed and coordinated that second issuance of funds, which are now available for use from the project management teams as those, as all those projects and those project budgets progress. Moving into more of the financial overview with regards to issuance A or issuance one. You'll find that right now that the overview provided is still only for that first issuance, since that second issuance is still fairly new. But as we start to see some financial activity on those, we'll go ahead and revise these slides to include an overview of the spend down as it pertains to both issuance one and two. But for today's purposes, Here in the first issuance, you can see the overall budget for across all three propositions of $12 million. And I want to highlight the actual expenditures there from that $12 million as of the time we submitted this agenda item, which was a little less than two weeks ago, at about $3.8 million. That represents 32% of that total budget. This slide breaks it down a bit further into some additional detail by proposition, parks, medical examiner, and animal shelter. Starting at the top from that $12 million, as you all know, $8.2 million has been budgeted or allocated for all of the park projects, from which $2.5 million has been spent. As of this month, moving into the next for Medical Examiner's Office, from the $1.7 million allocation for that project, $724,000 has been spent in actuals. And then for the animal shelter, of the $2 million allocation, 600,000 has been spent as of this month. leaving that total overall graphic, there you can see on the right, that represents the overall budget. What is still available, meaning really those things that are, or those funds that are either not, that are they're not spent or have not yet been encumbered. Put together at 74% there on, on the graphic. There's no questions on the fina, financial side or financial review of things. I'd like to now hand things over to Ms. Melina Banyuelos to talk about the programmatic updates.

Good morning, Commissioners. Lydia Arias with Public Works. Our first project is Ascot at the Park. We finished our additional public outreach earlier this month. So at this point, from all the meetings, all of the feedback that we gathered from the meetings, we're working on with our consultant to come up with concepts, a revised concept to be presented to you next month. So we're working on that, on some of those options for those concepts that we will be presenting soon. We have also received some information on some of the branding of the park, the signage, all the other design components that are still moving forward as part of the park. Regarding the CMAR, since we did the additional outreach, we now anticipate that our CMAR will not kick in until the schematic phase. Originally, we anticipated, I'm sorry, it won't kick in until the end of the schematic phase. Originally, we had planned the CMAR to come in earlier, but because of some of our additional outreach, the CMAR is a little bit behind on the timeline. To clarify the construction timeline, we still anticipate to be the same. That hasn't been impacted, but the CMAR did take a little bit of an impact. On our next project for San Felipe, we did get that flood development permit finalized. So we are working to finalize the package for purchasing. So that should be going to purchasing within the next two weeks. We're working on that competitive, it's gonna be a competitive seal proposal. And the other thing I believe purchasing will also talk about is the phase one, the grant portion of it. That will be out for award and they might talk about that I think later in this presentation when that is going to be but we are planning to kick that first phase off pretty soon. So the next step again for San Felipe is to finalize that bid package and put the phase, what we call phase two and three out to bid. For Gallegos Park, we did complete our negotiations with the consultant. We do anticipate to have this contract for the trails, and that includes the park component and the river trail component. We do anticipate to have this on the agenda on September 7th, and we will have a design kickoff and public meetings October, November. For Ruben Estrella, we did receive a preliminary estimate for the design of the project. Our preliminary estimate did come in a little bit over budget, so we're looking internally on some of the things that can be done in-house, design-wise, to try to reduce that budget so that we are within our, our initial budget. So some of the things that we've been discussing is possibly doing some of that paving in house. And then I know that there's possibly some lighting opportunities where we can add some more high power lighting and reduce maybe the number of poles. So we're looking at some of those details on how we can bring back, bring down the budget or estimated cost so that when we do the full design, it is within our budget and we can move forward. For Sparks, we have also completed our negotiations for this one. We also anticipate that this one will be in the agenda early September, and we will be having our public meetings and our design kickoff October, November. This one also does include the skate park component. So we are doing the contract negotiation on that. That one is a design-build contract, so it'll be a little bit different because of the specialty of the project. But we hope that we can combine the public meetings for both into one meeting. But they might run into different timelines, meaning that the skate park construction might kick in a little bit earlier than the overall park construction. Also to add on this, we have placed the order for the shelters, and this is one of the, many of the parks that have the shelter bundle. We anticipate that the shelter bundle, the first project for that will be Westway. The next three parks, I believe we're gonna discuss these with legal, so I'm gonna skip through these next three parks and hand it over to Melina for Westway.

Thank you. Thank you. Exciting news at Westway. So this project is moving along great. Again, Westway, this is A7. So this is specifically to the walking trail portion. So this trail, we've had some great savings in collaboration with purchasing, as we discussed a couple months ago. We went through a co-op, finding cost savings to be able to actually bring this walking trail to the area. But through this, we had some savings that allowed us to actually expand some scope. So as we've been going through this project, we've actually done additional rock wall repairs, as well as integrated some lighting. And so you can kind of see this in the upper left picture. We have some small lights that are now integrated within the rock wall. Again, these are funds that were already allocated to the site, so we took those funds and kind of reinvested them back into the site and found optimal ways to enhance that park. Additionally, we increased walking trail areas. Finding additional routes to repair, such as the walking trail that was near the rose garden, so we increased that one. Originally it wasn't part of the scope, and we went ahead and removed what was in there and brought it up to grade. And also the path that surrounds the playground, that also got upgraded as well. As we move along, the actual water fountain got upgraded there. So we already did that one and it's ready to go. One of the parts that you don't see here, and we'll get a better picture for next month, is the upgraded area near the baseball field. So that one has more of a kind of a bi-level viewing area now. So the walking trail kind of wraps itself on a high level and you can actually watch from above and below. So it's a really cool little viewing spot now. But this took a little bit more work, so while we anticipated this work to be completed at the end of this month, now it'll push into the end of next month. Again, this was phase one of what we were bringing to Westway. With this additional work, we're looking at pushing into the end of next month, just to kind of wrap up all of these new components that are with the walking trail. The Westway Park also has another funded source, which is the, I believe it's A17. And that's where we come in with the shelter bundle as well as the basketball shade structure. And we'll talk about the shade structure in a bit. What do you think, Commissioner?

Looking good. It's just some of the residents have been contacting us that what's taking so long, but I get it. I mean, they're just anxious to get this done. If we had kept the original, it would have been done. Because their park's been completely closed, so they don't have access to it.

Yes, it's unfortunate. We did have to close the entire thing, but yeah, that one's going to be back.

But no, I think they're going to be happy with this.

Yeah. And going on to the remainder portion, A17 here is discussed. So this is the basketball shade structure. I just wanted to go into some detail. So on the shade structure, this one actually has some structural, not concerns, structural design work. And the design team is creating the footings designs that the actual structure will go for the shade structure. Now this is a 30 foot structure. big they even have to move the lights out of the way to get the structure in there so it will be wrapping up probably in the mouth the the design the design will be wrapping up in about two to three months and then that will uh allow the contractor to go ahead and and price and go through the procurement process. Now, this is going through a co-op as well, so we're not going through a full procurement process for this using one of the available purchasing routes that we have. And so while it is an expedited route, we just need this footing design for the contractor to be able to expedite this one. Reisinger, and I'm gonna blink forward a little bit, Agua Dulce, are tied now with phase one being complete. So we're really excited about these two parks being complete on phase one, and they are now ready for phase two shelter bundle. As Lydia had mentioned earlier, they're currently in fabrication, and as soon as they come in, they'll be coming out to install the new items. And then we have our most recent groundbreaking, which was at the park administration building, Azcárate Park Headquarters. We were having a great day out there. It was early in the morning before the heat came to get us, even though I got a sunburn. But we were really excited. The project's moving well. They've officially broken ground, so if you swing by, the asphalt is gone. And we're working with parks now on relocating some trees and making sure that we're getting the best use of our site there. It also gave parks a chance to clean up their yards, so that was a good win for Public Works. And on to the county animal shelter. This one is currently working with county attorneys for the CMAR. This will be seen very shortly on the Commissioner's Court agenda for the approval. Purchasing did award this to the vendor for the CMAR pre-construction services. And we will have this contract for you on Monday. And I'll pass it over to Bernie.

Good morning, Judge Commissioner Sperniot on this with Infrastructure Services again. On the medical examiner, we are progressing forward. We are, we did have our pre-construction meeting with the contractor on site. So we are, we're looking to start construction here within the next couple of weeks. They've already started some of the prep work, some of their installation of their temporary facilities and the relocation of some of the items out there. We're looking to do a groundbreaking ceremony at the end of September, so we're working with communications to be able to set that up with all of you so hopefully you all can join us out there. But other than that, we're just anxious to kick off construction on this one. That's pretty much our update for this one. I'm not sure if anybody has any specific questions that I can answer on this. If not, then we can go ahead and turn it over to our procurement department, Karen.

Good morning, Karen.

Good morning, Judge. Good morning, Commissioners. Karen Davidson, your county purchasing agent. And I have a slide, but there it is. There we go. And on my slide, I wanted to talk a little bit about the construction manager for the animal shelter. We've already alluded to finalizing that. That's been awarded. You all awarded it in June. Your contract will be on Monday so that you can get that one, the GMP amendment awarded. and get it back on track for a groundbreaking. The next one is the CMAR for a security park, which Lydia spoke to. We are completing, or she has completed her community meetings and we're on track to receive that CMAR package in January of 2027. So for the public, anybody that's looking to participate in our next construction manager at risk contract, that will be for a security park. And we should have that out in January of 2027. The next project I wanted to bring to your attention to is the construction of the San Felipe Off-Highway Vehicle Park. And as Lydia mentioned, the Phase 1, which is not a bond project, but it is part of our overall bond project. overall project is the Texas park and wildlife grant award should be on August the 24th for you all to award those bathrooms out there. And then she will be kicking off the phase two competitive seal proposal for the park establishment as a go bond project. And we hope to have that package to us in September, October, so we can get that one moving as well. And I'm here for any questions the court might have on procurement processes. And if you don't have any, then I'll kick it over to my communications team.

Good morning, Commissioners and Judge. Desiree Gonzalez, Marketing Coordinator. Just to give you all an update from our July outreach, Azucarate Park Duck Pond community meetings were very, kept comms very busy, which we're really excited. Big kudos to our multimedia team for putting together that special Commissioner's Court meeting out in Azucarate. Thank you Miguel, Alexis, and Matthew for setting that up. We had five community meetings plus a special commissioner's court meeting that ran from July 8th through August 6th. Within those meetings, we put out outreach to our social media, our marquees over at Escarte, our loops within the county courthouse here, and then of course around the park. Social media included our Instagram, Facebook page, and LinkedIn. Emails out to our focus groups went out as well, and these are attendees from past meetings, as well as some of the special interest groups. Thank you, Commissioner, to your staff for also assisting us with that outreach. And then, of course, our press releases out to the media that went out on a regular basis. Excuse me. Along with some of that outreach, a lot of the materials that were created for these meetings were, of course, how our public can sign up for public comment. So which really gave us a great opportunity to also utilize that outreach for our regular commissioner court meetings. And then, of course, we had our frequent asked questions that was handed out at each meeting and, of course, our funding overview breakdown of what was going on with the breakdown of the projects for Escarrete. As Fernie mentioned earlier, our Office of Medical Examiner groundbreaking will be coming up in late September. We've been reaching out to your offices, so we're getting that scheduled with you all. COMING UP IN OUR AUGUST UPDATES, WE HAVE BEEN DOING, WE CALL HER OUR GO BOND GIRL. OUR INTERN HAS BEEN GOING OUT TO SOME OF OUR PROJECTS, DOING SOME SOCIAL MEDIA FOR OUR GO BOND UPDATES. SO WE'RE REALLY EXCITED. WE'VE BEEN GETTING A LOT OF GREAT RESPONSES ON THOSE. I didn't put them in this update, but I'll definitely have them for you all for the next one. We have two of them right now. One's at Westway Park, and we have one for Reisinger. So we're really excited about those videos. They've been a great one. Our next one's going to be out of Scott at them, trying to see if we can get the history of the admin building.

Because I thought that was pretty interesting.

But as far as for me, that's all we have at this moment. If you have any questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Hi, Erica.

Good morning, Judge, Commissioners, Eric Rosales, Nick Aglio, and Assistant County Attorney. My update is mostly an executive session, but I did want to highlight the great work, the animal shelter CMAR contract that you're going to see on Monday. This is the second CMAR contract for these projects, and Public Works did a wonderful job of spending time with Assistant County Attorney Diana Shearer to make sure that the contract reflected what they wanted to see in the project. And so we're just very excited for the court to have that for your approval on Monday. Just want to highlight that win. And then the next part of it, we have a proposed motion to go into executive session to just give you all an update on some of the parks. I believe Ms. Ugas has that motion.

Sure. Eva Rodriguez, assistant county attorney. So the motion would be to move item 4D into executive session pursuant to Texas government code section 551.071 to discuss the county's legal rights and responsibilities pertaining to the voter-approved bond projects in the capital improvement plan. If the commissioner of courts agrees, I just need a motion, a second, and a recorded vote at this time, please.

I'll make that motion.

Second. I had a motion in the system. I apologize from Judge Samaniego. Let me just clear that out so we can match the verbal. I had a motion from Commissioner O'Geen and a second from David, from Commissioner Stout. Voting is open.

I vote aye.

Thank you, Commissioner Coronado. Aye. Thank you, Commissioner Butler. Thank you, Judge. Motion carries. At this time, Commissioner's Court will move into executive session pursuant to Texas Government Code Section 551.071 to discuss item 4D.

Hola, El Paso. From July to August, El Paso County engaged with our residents to address their needs and prepare for the future. See what El Paso County has going on this summer. El Paso County's Public Works Department held weekly information and feedback sessions at Azcárate Park. These meetings concern the proposed improvements to the park and changes to the lakes at Azcárate. The sessions allowed residents to see concepts of what is planned and to provide their input on what they want, including their preferences for the large and small lakes at Azcárate. El Paso County is dedicated to include the public throughout the completion of this critical project. The El Paso County Community Services Office of New Americans recently hosted a large-scale community listening session and resource fair as part of the Gateways for Growth Technical Assistance Grant awarded to El Paso County. The event brought together 60 attendees representing 40 partner organizations, including non-profit organizations, interfaith, educational institutions, local governments, and health care providers. The event featured an interactive format designed to encourage meaningful dialogue and collaboration. Rather than a traditional conference setup, participants engaged in facilitated small group discussions, shared ideas and recommendations, and networked with organizations working to strengthen our community. Feedback gathered during the listening session will help inform the development of El Paso County's Welcoming Strategic Plan, a community-driven roadmap that will identify priorities and strategies to make our region more welcoming, inclusive, and connected. Seven years ago, our community changed because of a horrible tragedy. To honor the victims of August 3rd, 2019 Walmart shooting, community leaders, victims' families, and residents gathered at the Ascata Park Healing Garden on August 2nd to hold a vigil in their honor. The event included a prayer service, moment of silence, reading of names and release of white doves. El Paso County remains committed to provide a space in the Healing Garden for our community to meditate, reflect and honor our lost community members. The Commissioner's Court and El Paso County Hospital District held a joint special session meeting to discuss the 2027 tax rate for the county's public hospital. The hospital district oversees University Medical Center, El Paso Children's Hospital, and El Paso Health. Hospital administration proposed a no new revenue tax rate of 0.236904 for fiscal year 2027. If this rate is approved later this month, this would mean that the portion of your property taxes dedicated to our county hospital would not increase. Hospital board members and county commissioners approve the proposed rate and the court is scheduled to adopt it towards the end of August. That does it for this edition of County Connects. Stay tuned and make sure to stay connected with El Paso County. Every day, El Paso County works to improve the quality of life for our residents. Sometimes that work happens here at home. Sometimes it takes us across Texas, across the nation, and around the world. County leaders advocate for infrastructure, public safety, veteran services, transportation, and mental health priorities important to our residents. Through legislative meetings, funding requests, and various policy discussions, your county is working to ensure El Paso's voice is heard. Strong partnerships help bring resources, expertise, and opportunities back to El Paso County. Through collaborative efforts with our state and federal partners, our position on critical matters can be shared and heard by those making decisions at the highest levels. Participation in organizations such as the National Association of Counties, Texas Association of Counties, and other professional networks also allows county leaders to learn from successful programs across the country and bring innovative ideas back home. El Paso County's commitment to economic growth extends far beyond our borders. Throughout the year, elected officials and staff travel across Texas, the United States, and internationally to promote El Paso as a premier destination for business investment and expansion. These efforts allow us to build relationships with industry leaders, showcase our region's unique advantages, and compete for new jobs and economic opportunities. The true measure of success is not where we travel to, but what we brought home. At the midpoint of 2026, our grant portfolio remained strong and productive. To date, we have applied for a total of 50 funding opportunities, with 21 awards secured, resulting in more than $15.6 million in grant funding awarded. Every trip represents one purpose, serving the people of El Paso County. Whether advocating in Austin, collaborating in Washington, or building partnerships across borders, our mission remains the same, creating opportunities, delivering services, and building a stronger future for our community.

Thank you.

Hola, El Paso! From July to August, El Paso County engaged with our residents to address their needs and prepare for the future. See what El Paso County has going on this summer. El Paso County's Public Works Department held weekly information and feedback sessions at Azcárate Park. These meetings concern the proposed improvements to the park and changes to the lakes at Azcárate. The sessions allowed residents to see concepts of what is planned and to provide their input on what they want, including their preferences for the large and small lakes at Azcárate. El Paso County is dedicated to include the public throughout the completion of this critical project. The El Paso County Community Services Office of New Americans recently hosted a large-scale community listening session and resource fair as part of the Gateways for Growth Technical Assistance Grant awarded to El Paso County. The event brought together 60 attendees representing 40 partner organizations including non-profit organizations, interfaith, educational institutions, local governments, and health care providers. The event featured an interactive format designed to encourage meaningful dialogue and collaboration. Rather than a traditional conference setup, participants engaged in facilitated small group discussions, shared ideas and recommendations, and networked with organizations working to strengthen our community. Feedback gathered during the listening session will help inform the development of El Paso County's Welcoming Strategic Plan, a community-driven roadmap that will identify priorities and strategies to make our region more welcoming, inclusive, and connected. Seven years ago, our community changed because of a horrible tragedy. To honor the victims of August 3rd, 2019 Walmart shooting, community leaders, victims' families, and residents gathered at the Azcárdate Park Healing Garden on August 2nd to hold a vigil in their honor. The event included a prayer service, moment of silence, reading of names, and release of white doves. El Paso County remains committed to provide a space in the Healing Garden for our community to meditate, reflect, and honor our lost community members. The Commissioner's Court and El Paso County Hospital District held a joint special session meeting to discuss the 2027 tax rate for the county's public hospital. The hospital district oversees University Medical Center, El Paso Children's Hospital, and El Paso Health. Hospital administration proposed a no new revenue tax rate of 0.236904 for fiscal year 2027. If this rate is approved later this month, this would mean that the portion of your property taxes dedicated to our county hospital would not increase. Hospital board members and county commissioners approve the proposed rate and the court is scheduled to adopt it towards the end of August. That does it for this edition of County Connects. Stay tuned and make sure to stay connected with El Paso County. Every day, El Paso County works to improve the quality of life for our residents. Sometimes that work happens here at home. Sometimes it takes us across Texas, across the nation, and around the world. County leaders advocate for infrastructure, public safety, veteran services, transportation, and mental health priorities important to our residents. Through legislative meetings, funding requests, and various policy discussions, your county is working to ensure El Paso's voice is heard. Strong partnerships help bring resources, expertise, and opportunities back to El Paso County. Through collaborative efforts with our state and federal partners, our position on critical matters can be shared and heard by those making decisions at the highest levels. Participation in organizations such as the National Association of Counties, Texas Association of Counties, and other professional networks also allows county leaders to learn from successful programs across the country and bring innovative ideas back home. El Paso County's commitment to economic growth extends far beyond our borders. Throughout the year, elected officials and staff travel across Texas, the United States, and internationally to promote El Paso as a premier destination for business investment and expansion. These efforts allow us to build relationships with industry leaders, showcase our region's unique advantages, and compete for new jobs and economic opportunities. The true measure of success is not where we travel to, but what we brought home. At the midpoint of 2026, our grant portfolio remained strong and productive. To date, we have applied for a total of 50 funding opportunities, with 21 awards secured, resulting in more than $15.6 million in grant funding awarded. Every trip represents one purpose, serving the people of El Paso County. Whether advocating in Austin, collaborating in Washington, or building partnerships across borders, our mission remains the same, creating opportunities, delivering services, and building a stronger future for our community. Hola, El Paso! From July to August, El Paso County engaged with our residents to address their needs and prepare for the future. See what El Paso County has going on this summer. El Paso County's Public Works Department held weekly information and feedback sessions at Azcárate Park. These meetings concern the proposed improvements to the park and changes to the lakes at Azcárate. The sessions allowed residents to see concepts of what is planned and to provide their input on what they want, including their preferences for the large and small lakes at Azcárate. El Paso County is dedicated to include the public throughout the completion of this critical project. The El Paso County Community Services Office of New Americans recently hosted a large-scale community listening session and resource fair as part of the Gateways for Growth Technical Assistance Grant awarded to El Paso County. The event brought together 60 attendees representing 40 partner organizations, including non-profit organizations, interfaith, educational institutions, local governments, and health care providers. The event featured an interactive format designed to encourage meaningful dialogue and collaboration. Rather than a traditional conference setup, participants engaged in facilitated small group discussions, shared ideas and recommendations, and networked with organizations working to strengthen our community. Feedback gathered during the listening session will help inform the development of El Paso County's Welcoming Strategic Plan, a community-driven roadmap that will identify priorities and strategies to make our region more welcoming, inclusive, and connected. Seven years ago, our community changed because of a horrible tragedy. To honor the victims of August 3rd, 2019 Walmart shooting, community leaders, victims' families, and residents gathered at the Azcárdate Park Healing Garden on August 2nd to hold a vigil in their honor. The event included a prayer service, moment of silence, reading of names and release of white doves. El Paso County remains committed to provide a space in the Healing Garden for our community to meditate, reflect and honor our lost community members. The Commissioner's Court and El Paso County Hospital District held a joint special session meeting to discuss the 2027 tax rate for the county's public hospital. The hospital district oversees University Medical Center, El Paso Children's Hospital, and El Paso Health. Hospital administration proposed a no new revenue tax rate of 0.236904 for fiscal year 2027. If this rate is approved later this month, this would mean that the portion of your property taxes dedicated to our county hospital would not increase. Hospital board members and county commissioners approve the proposed rate and the court is scheduled to adopt it towards the end of August. That does it for this edition of County Connects. Stay tuned and make sure to stay connected with El Paso County. Every day, El Paso County works to improve the quality of life for our residents. Sometimes that work happens here at home. Sometimes it takes us across Texas, across the nation, and around the world. County leaders advocate for infrastructure, public safety, veteran services, transportation, and mental health priorities important to our residents. Through legislative meetings, funding requests, and various policy discussions, your county is working to ensure El Paso's voice is heard. Strong partnerships help bring resources, expertise, and opportunities back to El Paso County. Through collaborative efforts with our state and federal partners, our position on critical matters can be shared and heard by those making decisions at the highest levels. Participation in organizations such as the National Association of Counties, Texas Association of Counties, and other professional networks also allows county leaders to learn from successful programs across the country and bring innovative ideas back home. El Paso County's commitment to economic growth extends far beyond our borders. Throughout the year, elected officials and staff travel across Texas, the United States, and internationally to promote El Paso as a premier destination for business investment and expansion. These efforts allow us to build relationships with industry leaders, showcase our region's unique advantages, and compete for new jobs and economic opportunities. The true measure of success is not where we travel to, but what we brought home. At the midpoint of 2026, our grant portfolio remained strong and productive. To date, we have applied for a total of 50 funding opportunities, with 21 awards secured, resulting in more than $15.6 million in grant funding awarded. Every trip represents one purpose, serving the people of El Paso County. Whether advocating in Austin, collaborating in Washington, or building partnerships across borders, our mission remains the same, creating opportunities, delivering services, and building a stronger future for our community.

you

Hola, El Paso! From July to August, El Paso County engaged with our residents to address their needs and prepare for the future. See what El Paso County has going on this summer. El Paso County's Public Works Department held weekly information and feedback sessions at Azcárate Park. These meetings concern the proposed improvements to the park and changes to the lakes at Azcárate. The sessions allowed residents to see concepts of what is planned and to provide their input on what they want, including their preferences for the large and small lakes at Azcárate. El Paso County is dedicated to include the public throughout the completion of this critical project. The El Paso County Community Services Office of New Americans recently hosted a large-scale community listening session and resource fair as part of the Gateways for Growth Technical Assistance Grant awarded to El Paso County. The event brought together 60 attendees representing 40 partner organizations including non-profit organizations, interfaith, educational institutions, local governments, and health care providers. The event featured an interactive format designed to encourage meaningful dialogue and collaboration. Rather than a traditional conference setup, participants engaged in facilitated small group discussions, shared ideas and recommendations, and networked with organizations working to strengthen our community. Feedback gathered during the listening session will help inform the development of El Paso County's Welcoming Strategic Plan, a community-driven roadmap that will identify priorities and strategies to make our region more welcoming, inclusive, and connected. Seven years ago, our community changed because of a horrible tragedy. To honor the victims of August 3rd, 2019 Walmart shooting, community leaders, victims' families, and residents gathered at the Azcárdate Park Healing Garden on August 2nd to hold a vigil in their honor. The event included a prayer service, moment of silence, reading of names, and release of white doves. El Paso County remains committed to provide a space in the Healing Garden for our community to meditate, reflect, and honor our lost community members. The Commissioner's Court and El Paso County Hospital District held a joint special session meeting to discuss the 2027 tax rate for the county's public hospital. The hospital district oversees University Medical Center, El Paso Children's Hospital, and El Paso Health. Hospital administration proposed a no new revenue tax rate of 0.236904 for fiscal year 2027. If this rate is approved later this month, this would mean that the portion of your property taxes dedicated to our county hospital would not increase.

GO AHEAD. WHAT DO YOU THINK THIS WILL TAKE?

COMMISSIONER'S COURT HAS RECONVENED INTO SPECIAL OPEN SESSION. IT IS 1210 P.M. JUDGE, WOULD YOU LIKE TO TAKE THE AFTERNOON BREAK?

Judge, are we ready for our afternoon break? Half an hour for lunch?

Half an hour, yes, sir. Commissioner's Court will recess for half an hour. It is 1210 p.m. We will reconvene at 1240.

you

Every day, El Paso County works to improve the quality of life for our residents. Sometimes that work happens here at home. Sometimes it takes us across Texas, across the nation, and around the world. County leaders advocate for infrastructure, public safety, veteran services, transportation, and mental health priorities important to our residents. Through legislative meetings, funding requests, and various policy discussions, your county is working to ensure El Paso's voice is heard. Strong partnerships help bring resources, expertise, and opportunities back to El Paso County. Through collaborative efforts with our state and federal partners, our position on critical matters can be shared and heard by those making decisions at the highest levels. Participation in organizations such as the National Association of Counties, Texas Association of Counties, and other professional networks also allows county leaders to learn from successful programs across the country and bring innovative ideas back home. El Paso County's commitment to economic growth extends far beyond our borders. Throughout the year, elected officials and staff travel across Texas, the United States, and internationally to promote El Paso as a premier destination for business investment and expansion. These efforts allow us to build relationships with industry leaders, showcase our region's unique advantages, and compete for new jobs and economic opportunities. The true measure of success is not where we travel to, but what we brought home. At the midpoint of 2026, our grant portfolio remained strong and productive. To date, we have applied for a total of 50 funding opportunities, with 21 awards secured, resulting in more than $15.6 million in grant funding awarded. every trip represents one purpose serving the people of el paso county whether advocating in austin collaborating in washington or building partnerships across borders our mission remains the same creating opportunities delivering services and building a stronger future for our community

you

Hola, El Paso! From July to August, El Paso County engaged with our residents to address their needs and prepare for the future. See what El Paso County has going on this summer. El Paso County's Public Works Department held weekly information and feedback sessions at Azcárate Park. These meetings concern the proposed improvements to the park and changes to the lakes at Azcárate. The sessions allowed residents to see concepts of what is planned and to provide their input on what they want, including their preferences for the large and small lakes at Azcárate. El Paso County is dedicated to include the public throughout the completion of this critical project. The El Paso County Community Services Office of New Americans recently hosted a large-scale community listening session and resource fair as part of the Gateways for Growth Technical Assistance Grant awarded to El Paso County. The event brought together 60 attendees representing 40 partner organizations including non-profit organizations, interfaith, educational institutions, local governments, and health care providers. The event featured an interactive format designed to encourage meaningful dialogue and collaboration. Rather than a traditional conference setup, participants engaged in facilitated small group discussions, shared ideas and recommendations, and networked with organizations working to strengthen our community. Feedback gathered during the listening session will help inform the development of El Paso County's Welcoming Strategic Plan, a community-driven roadmap that will identify priorities and strategies to make our region more welcoming, inclusive, and connected. Seven years ago, our community changed because of a horrible tragedy. To honor the victims of August 3rd, 2019 Walmart shooting, community leaders, victims' families, and residents gathered at the Azcárdate Park Healing Garden on August 2nd to hold a vigil in their honor. The event included a prayer service, moment of silence, reading of names, and release of white doves. El Paso County remains committed to provide a space in the Healing Garden for our community to meditate, reflect, and honor our lost community members. The Commissioner's Court and El Paso County Hospital District held a joint special session meeting to discuss the 2027 tax rate for the county's public hospital. The hospital district oversees University Medical Center, El Paso Children's Hospital, and El Paso Health. Hospital administration proposed a no new revenue tax rate of 0.236904 for fiscal year 2027. If this rate is approved later this month, this would mean that the portion of your property taxes dedicated to our county hospital would not increase. Hospital board members and county commissioners approve the proposed rate and the court is scheduled to adopt it towards the end of August. That does it for this edition of County Connects. Stay tuned and make sure to stay connected with El Paso County.

Bye.

Every day, El Paso County works to improve the quality of life for our residents. Sometimes that work happens here at home. Sometimes it takes us across Texas, across the nation, and around the world. County leaders advocate for infrastructure, public safety, veteran services, transportation, and mental health priorities important to our residents. Through legislative meetings, funding requests, and various policy discussions, your county is working to ensure El Paso's voice is heard. Strong partnerships help bring resources, expertise, and opportunities back to El Paso County. Through collaborative efforts with our state and federal partners, our position on critical matters can be shared and heard by those making decisions at the highest levels. Participation in organizations such as the National Association of Counties, Texas Association of Counties, and other professional networks also allows county leaders to learn from successful programs across the country and bring innovative ideas back home. El Paso County's commitment to economic growth extends far beyond our borders. Throughout the year, elected officials and staff travel across Texas, the United States, and internationally to promote El Paso as a premier destination for business investment and expansion. These efforts allow us to build relationships with industry leaders, showcase our region's unique advantages, and compete for new jobs and economic opportunities. The true measure of success is not where we travel to, but what we brought home. At the midpoint of 2026, our grant portfolio remained strong and productive. To date, we have applied for a total of 50 funding opportunities, with 21 awards secured, resulting in more than $15.6 million in grant funding awarded. Every trip represents one purpose, serving the people of El Paso County. Whether advocating in Austin, collaborating in Washington, or building partnerships across borders, our mission remains the same, creating opportunities, delivering services, and building a stronger future for our community. Hola, El Paso! From July to August, El Paso County engaged with our residents to address their needs and prepare for the future. See what El Paso County has going on this summer. El Paso County's Public Works Department held weekly information and feedback sessions at Azcárate Park. These meetings concern the proposed improvements to the park and changes to the lakes at Azcárate. The sessions allowed residents to see concepts of what is planned and to provide their input on what they want, including their preferences for the large and small lakes at Azcárate. El Paso County is dedicated to include the public throughout the completion of this critical project. The El Paso County Community Services Office of New Americans recently hosted a large-scale community listening session and resource fair as part of the Gateways for Growth Technical Assistance Grant awarded to El Paso County. The event brought together 60 attendees representing 40 partner organizations, including non-profit organizations, interfaith, educational institutions, local governments, and health care providers. The event featured an interactive format designed to encourage meaningful dialogue and collaboration. Rather than a traditional conference setup, participants engaged in facilitated small group discussions, shared ideas and recommendations, and networked with organizations working to strengthen our community. Feedback gathered during the listening session will help inform the development of El Paso County's Welcoming Strategic Plan, a community-driven roadmap that will identify priorities and strategies to make our region more welcoming, inclusive, and connected. Seven years ago, our community changed because of a horrible tragedy. To honor the victims of August 3rd, 2019 Walmart shooting, community leaders, victims' families, and residents gathered at the Azcárdate Park Healing Garden on August 2nd to hold a vigil in their honor. The event included a prayer service, moment of silence, reading of names and release of white doves. El Paso County remains committed to provide a space in the Healing Garden for our community to meditate, reflect and honor our lost community members. The Commissioner's Court and El Paso County Hospital District held a joint special session meeting to discuss the 2027 tax rate for the county's public hospital. The hospital district oversees University Medical Center, El Paso Children's Hospital, and El Paso Health. Hospital administration proposed a no new revenue tax rate of 0.236904 for fiscal year 2027. If this rate is approved later this month, this would mean that the portion of your property taxes dedicated to our county hospital would not increase. Hospital board members and county commissioners approve the proposed rate and the court is scheduled to adopt it towards the end of August. That does it for this edition of County Connects. Stay tuned and make sure to stay connected with El Paso County. Every day, El Paso County works to improve the quality of life for our residents. Sometimes that work happens here at home. Sometimes it takes us across Texas, across the nation, and around the world. County leaders advocate for infrastructure, public safety, veteran services, transportation, and mental health priorities important to our residents. Through legislative meetings, funding requests, and various policy discussions, your county is working to ensure El Paso's voice is heard. Strong partnerships help bring resources, expertise, and opportunities back to El Paso County. Through collaborative efforts with our state and federal partners, our position on critical matters can be shared and heard by those making decisions at the highest levels. Participation in organizations such as the National Association of Counties, Texas Association of Counties, and other professional networks also allows county leaders to learn from successful programs across the country and bring innovative ideas back home. El Paso County's commitment to economic growth extends far beyond our borders. Throughout the year, elected officials and staff travel across Texas, the United States, and internationally to promote El Paso as a premier destination for business investment and expansion. These efforts allow us to build relationships with industry leaders, showcase our region's unique advantages, and compete for new jobs and economic opportunities. The true measure of success is not where we travel to, but what we brought home. At the midpoint of 2026, our grant portfolio remained strong and productive. To date, we have applied for a total of 50 funding opportunities, with 21 awards secured, resulting in more than $15.6 million in grant funding awarded. Every trip represents one purpose, serving the people of El Paso County. Whether advocating in Austin, collaborating in Washington, or building partnerships across borders, our mission remains the same, creating opportunities, delivering services, and building a stronger future for our community.

Thank you.

Hola, El Paso! From July to August, El Paso County engaged with our residents to address their needs and prepare for the future. See what El Paso County has going on this summer. El Paso County's Public Works Department held weekly information and feedback sessions at Azcárate Park. These meetings concern the proposed improvements to the park and changes to the lakes at Azcárate. The sessions allowed residents to see concepts of what is planned and to provide their input on what they want, including their preferences for the large and small lakes at Azcárate. El Paso County is dedicated to include the public throughout the completion of this critical project. The El Paso County Community Services Office of New Americans recently hosted a large-scale community listening session and resource fair as part of the Gateways for Growth Technical Assistance Grant awarded to El Paso County. The event brought together 60 attendees representing 40 partner organizations, including non-profit organizations, interfaith, educational institutions, local governments, and health care providers. The event featured an interactive format designed to encourage meaningful dialogue and collaboration. Rather than a traditional conference setup, participants engaged in facilitated small group discussions, shared ideas and recommendations, and networked with organizations working to strengthen our community. Feedback gathered during the listening session will help inform the development of El Paso County's Welcoming Strategic Plan, a community-driven roadmap that will identify priorities and strategies to make our region more welcoming, inclusive, and connected. Seven years ago, our community changed because of a horrible tragedy. To honor the victims of August 3rd, 2019 Walmart shooting, community leaders, victims' families, and residents gathered at the Ascata Park Healing Garden on August 2nd to hold a vigil in their honor. The event included a prayer service, moment of silence, reading of names and release of white doves. El Paso County remains committed to provide a space in the Healing Garden for our community to meditate, reflect and honor our lost community members. The Commissioner's Court and El Paso County Hospital District held a joint special session meeting to discuss the 2027 tax rate for the county's public hospital. The hospital district oversees University Medical Center, El Paso Children's Hospital, and El Paso Health. Hospital administration proposed a no new revenue tax rate of 0.236904 for fiscal year 2027. If this rate is approved later this month, this would mean that the portion of your property taxes dedicated to our county hospital would not increase. Hospital board members and county commissioners approve the proposed rate and the court is scheduled to adopt it towards the end of August. That does it for this edition of County Connects. Stay tuned and make sure to stay connected with El Paso County.

Thank you.

Every day, El Paso County works to improve the quality of life for our residents. Sometimes that work happens here at home. Sometimes it takes us across Texas, across the nation, and around the world. County leaders advocate for infrastructure, public safety, veteran services, transportation, and mental health priorities important to our residents. Through legislative meetings, funding requests, and various policy discussions, your county is working to ensure El Paso's voice is heard. Strong partnerships help bring resources, expertise, and opportunities back to El Paso County. Through collaborative efforts with our state and federal partners, our position on critical matters can be shared and heard by those making decisions at the highest levels. Participation in organizations such as the National Association of Counties, Texas Association of Counties, and other professional networks also allows county leaders to learn from successful programs across the country and bring innovative ideas back home. El Paso County's commitment to economic growth extends far beyond our borders. Throughout the year, elected officials and staff travel across Texas, the United States, and internationally to promote El Paso as a premier destination for business investment and expansion. These efforts allow us to build relationships with industry leaders, showcase our region's unique advantages, and compete for new jobs and economic opportunities. The true measure of success is not where we travel to, but what we brought home. At the midpoint of 2026, our grant portfolio remained strong and productive. To date, we have applied for a total of 50 funding opportunities, with 21 awards secured, resulting in more than $15.6 million in grant funding awarded. Every trip represents one purpose, serving the people of El Paso County. Whether advocating in Austin, collaborating in Washington, or building partnerships across borders, our mission remains the same, creating opportunities, delivering services, and building a stronger future for our community.

you

Hola, El Paso! From July to August, El Paso County engaged with our residents to address their needs and prepare for the future. See what El Paso County has going on this summer. El Paso County's Public Works Department held weekly information and feedback sessions at Azcárate Park. These meetings

Go ahead.

Good afternoon. Commissioner's Court has reconvened into special open session. It is 1251 p.m. We are on item 4E. Receive a presentation from the Planning and Development Department and their consultant, Walter P. Moore, and provide feedback for the proposed El Paso County flood damage prevention order update.

Good morning judge, commissioners, planning and development. I am here joined by with Jamila Johnson from Walter P. Moore who led the review and modernization of the flood damage prevention order. We're here to provide an overview of the proposed update to the order, which staff anticipates bringing back to Commissioner's Court for consideration in an upcoming meeting. The purpose of today's presentation is to familiarize the court with the update effort and highlight the key changes being proposed. During today's presentation, we'll discuss the reasons for updating the Flood Damage Prevention Order, the process used to review and modernize the existing order, benchmarking the El Paso County's regulations against peer communities across Texas, the recommended updates and how they will support reasonable development, improve flood resilience, and strengthen the county's floodplain management program. The goal of this effort has been to modernize the flood order, address current floodplain management challenges, prepare for updated FEMA maps, and ensure the county has effective flood regulations to support future growth and development. With that, I'd like to begin by discussing why the flood damage prevention order should be updated. We have several good reasons for updating the order. First, the flood damage prevention order was last updated in 2006, which is nearly 20 years ago. Since then, floodplain management practices, development patterns, and regulatory expectations have changed significantly. This update has given us an opportunity to modernize the flood order and incorporate current best practices. It also is a timely update because El Paso's county flood maps from FEMA are being revised. When those maps become effective, the mapped floodplain is expected to increase substantially. As more properties are brought into the floodplain, it is important that the county's regulations are clear, current, and prepared to support implementation of the new maps. Third reason, FEMA conducted a community assistance visit in 2021, and like many communities, the county received recommendations related to administration, enforcement, inspections. This update provides an opportunity to address those recommendations and strengthen the county's floodplain management program. Fourth reason, we also identified a regulatory gap in the county's current development regulations. Today, certain developments may not be required to prepare drainage studies or drainage plans. The proposed update will close that gap and help ensure that the development throughout the county adequately evaluates and addresses stormwater impacts. This will promote consistent, responsible development across the county and reduce the potential for new development to create flood risk for neighboring properties. Meanwhile, continued growth, changing land use patterns, and increasing rainfall intensities are placing more people and property at risk. We want the flood order to be part of the solution by helping reduce the future flood damages and improving community resilience. Finally, the National Flood Insurance Program has changed significantly with the implementation of Risk Rating 2.0. While insurance rates are now more closely tied to individual property risk, communities that adopt stronger floodplain management practices can help reduce future losses and position themselves for program benefits that can ultimately help residents manage flood insurance costs. In short, this update is about modernizing a 20-year-old order, preparing for new FEMA flood maps, addressing FEMA recommendations, closing regulatory gaps in development review, reducing flood risk, and ensuring the county continues to grow in a safe, responsible, and resilient manner. Before discussing the specific updates, I want to briefly highlight the process used to develop the proposed flood damage prevention order. This was a comprehensive effort that combined technical analysis, policy evaluation, legal review, and extensive stakeholder engagement. We began by reviewing the county's existing flood order to identify areas that could be clarified. We then benchmarked regulations from peer communities and evaluated policy options to determine how El Paso County's regulation requirements compared to current standards across Texas and the region. Supporting engineering analysis were conducted to ensure the proposed requirements are grounded in sound floodplain management and drainage principles. Based on that work, a draft flood order was prepared and reviewed by county staff and the county attorney's office. The draft was then presented to stakeholders. Outreach was performed via newspaper legal advertisement, notices on the county website, consultation with the El Paso Developers Flood Focus Group, floodplain management professionals through the Texas Floodplain Management Association, and the public to gather input and identify any concerns. The Texas Water Development Board also reviewed the document and provided comments. Feedback from all these reviews were carefully evaluated and incorporated into the final draft whenever appropriate. The results is a flood order that reflects technical best practices, legal review, stakeholder input, public feedback, and state agency recommendations. Today's presentation represents the final step in that process that will as we will bring the proposed order before the court for consideration. With that, I'd like to introduce Ms. Jamila Johnson from Walter P. Moore, who led the flood order update, and we'll discuss the benchmarking process and key findings.

Thank you. Welcome.

Good morning, Commissioner. I'm so pleased to be able to present. this work to you. It's been a distinct pleasure to work with your knowledgeable and professional staff on this project, and it's our plan to bring all of the best information we can to you. As part of the flood order update, we wanted to understand how El Paso County's regulations compare to those of other Texas communities and identify all the best practices that could be incorporated into the revised ordinance. Sorry, the revised order. To do that, we conducted a benchmarking assessment of peer counties across Texas. I'm not going to tell you every single thing that happened during that benchmarking analysis, but I do want to give you some highlights, which are shown on this slide. One of the things that we looked at, you know, really closely is to understand who we should benchmark against. We wanted to find communities that would be good comparisons. So we looked at such factors as NFIP or flood insurance program participation, population, geographic size, their location, and whether or not they participate in FEMA's community rating system program or CRS. That's FEMA's incentive program where Communities that have and document strong floodplain management practices receive discounts for their residents. We also had to consider that because Texas counties have more limited regulatory authority than cities, we focused primarily on peer counties to ensure the comparison was relevant to EP County. In total, we reviewed 10 counties. They're listed here. That included Hidalgo County, Webb County, and Cameron County. We also included Harris County as the most populous flood prone county in Texas, as well as the city of El Paso for local context. One of the key elements we evaluated was use of higher standards. Higher standards in our floodplain management requirements that go beyond FEMA's minimum NFIP requirements to provide an additional level of protection from flood risk. We found that El Paso County is already ahead of the game in this category. Our 20 year old flood order included several higher standards, which we show here, and eight of 11 comparison communities have adopted similar provisions. Three communities, Hidalgo, Nueces, and orange are still just doing the minimum. The proposed flood order maintains these existing higher standards while adding targeted enhancements to improve the resilience of critical facilities and essential public infrastructure. We found that four of the 11 comparison communities, Bastrop, Denton, Harris, and Webb, have adopted similar critical facility protection provisions. demonstrating that these requirements are becoming accepted best practice for protecting facilities that communities rely on during and after flood events. Overall, benchmarking show that El Paso County's current approach is generally consistent with peer communities and that the proposed updates build on that foundation and incorporate proven practices that strengthen resilience and protect public investment. So that's the benchmarking picture Now, let's get into what we're actually recommending. Let's go on to the next slide. So, we revamped the flood order to modernize it and incorporate best practices from around the state and using the Texas Floodplain Management Association model flood order. Let me give you the highlights. They're shown on this slide. You'll notice that the goal of these key updates in the justification column are really just to enhance the compliance of permit holders. We also had a priority of improving community resilience, protecting property, aligning with new flood insurance requirements so that we could save residents money where we could, supporting public safety, incorporating FEMA community assistance visit recommendations from when FEMA last inspected El Paso County, and then clarifying permit requirements and figuring out how to cover the cost of plan reviews and inspections. So now let me walk you through the most significant ones so you know what's behind each of the lines I summarized here. Next slide. So floodplain determination is a new requirement. And as you can see on this map that I have on the screen, We're anticipating when the pending floodplain maps come online, we're going to see a significant increase in the area that needs to be regulated under the flood order. That probably means that it's going to be hard for people to realize if they need a floodplain permit or not, and that's when people get into trouble when they're trying to develop property. Considering that right now, the county has no formal step that establishes whether a proposed project site is inside the floodplain, we think it's important to close that gap and make sure that we can catch development before it moves forward without a permit. Because we think that it's not that the owners and the developers don't want to comply, they just don't even know that there are rules and that they apply to them. So under the draft, a determination becomes a required part of development. It does three things for us. Number one, it tells the applicant up front exactly what standards apply. So expectations are set before any money is spent on design or construction. Next, it gives the county consistent defensible record of what was reviewed and when. And that really matters both for the NFIP and making sure we stay square with them and also any future enforcement if there's compliance issues. It also, number three, it improves public awareness by putting property owners on notice about flood risks before they build rather than when we're dealing with a violation or worse yet, when a property is damaged in a flood when... They could have just followed the rules in the flood order and avoided that damage. The fee for this is only $25, and an applicant can avoid even paying that amount if they have their own engineer complete the form and the required attachments. We think that this is a really low-cost, high-value step, and it's the least expensive item in the fee schedule and one that prevents the most costly mistakes. With that framework in place, let's take a look at some of the provisions that are so important. Freeboard is probably the most important provision that we have in the flood order. Freeboard is the margin of safety built around the base flood elevation or the 100-year flood elevation. El Paso County already requires the lowest floor of a residential structure be elevated to this level. And if we're talking about a non-residential structure, there's an option either to elevate or to flood protect a structure to this level. This two-foot standard is really a best practice across Texas, and it's served the county well. So we don't want to change it. We just want to make sure that it's crystal clear and an updated flood order. And we want to make sure that everybody knows that no one who is building today is facing a higher elevation requirement under the draft that we're proposing. We're just going to keep it the same. What the draft does do, though, is that it applies the same protective thinking to the equipment that services the structure. That often gets left out, and it was unclear under the 2006 flood order. So let's take a look at that in the next slide. So when we think about the elevation of equipment, it's really important that we make sure that that's elevated too. It's not only a good idea, it's also a FEMA requirement. And the practical problem is straightforward. Okay, so a home that can be elevated correctly, it'll still end up being uninhabitable after a flood if the important equipment gets inundated like the HVAC condenser, the electrical panel, or the water heater. And then even though the building is not damaged, the family is still out of a house for weeks or months while the equipment is being replaced. And all that can be avoided if we make sure that this provision is followed based on our flood order. So the draft resolves this issue and it's really not a change, it's just a clarification It's very important for the floodplain administrator to have this in the flood order. Otherwise, there'll be tons of arguments when inspectors go out and explain that equipment needs to be elevated. So we're going to take care of that. Next, let's move on to the next slide and talk about an incentive. We have an incentive in the flood order that helps to align our flood order with the way FEMA now prices flood insurance under that new pricing formula, Risk Rating 2.0. And so in Risk Rating 2.0, the most important thing of all the things that they're looking at is how high the finished floor of the structure is as compared to natural ground. Making sure that a structure is elevated like that equals a lower, a much lower flood insurance premium. You know, you may say, well, what difference does it make if the structure is elevated like this or if it's elevated on fill? Well, it makes a big difference to FEMA. And so we want to recognize that and incentivize people who are building new houses to consider elevating in this way as shown in this picture. What the incentive is, is that if you don't elevate it up and fill and instead get your finished floor above the surrounding natural grade, you don't have to comply with the flood orders compensatory storage requirement. And that offers a savings. It makes development much more simple and it benefits the county because we get the desired impact and help. save money in the future for the property owner. So let's move on to the next provision we want to take a look at. It's a very important one. It's public safety. The draft order prohibits the construction of new low water crossings. The reasoning is simple. It's just public safety. It is the most direct life-saving provision in the document. Low water crossings are where flood fatalities happen most in Texas. Drivers consistently misjudge the depth and velocity of moving water and then emergency response is required when a vehicle is swept off a crossing and it puts our first responders at risk as well. Two points of clarification because this provision draws a lot of questions. One, it only applies to new crossings. Existing low water crossings across the county are unaffected by this new provision and they can continue to be used and maintained. Second, it doesn't cut off any access to anyone. It just requires that new crossings be designed to convey the flow of water rather than to be overtopped by it. It will really enhance public safety. So this is a new provision. Now, let's talk about compensatory storage, since we just mentioned that a minute ago when we were talking about that in front of what is compensatory storage. Well, it's already a requirement that we have in the 2006 flood order, but we're expanding it here and we're trying to keep it to clarify it. Compensatory storage is the requirement that when fill is placed in the floodplain, a certain volume of material be removed from the floodplain to offset it. So, in the graphic shown here, when the dark brown fill, which can be dirt, soil, pavement, or any other solid building material, is added to the floodplain, a certain volume of material shown in the red-pink hatching must be removed. The principle is simple. Flood water displaced by fill has to go somewhere. And without an offset, it ends up going into the neighboring property. So what this looks like is, you know, kind of similar to perhaps a detention or retention pond. Volume is removed from a floodplain development to make up for dirt or concrete or other building material that's brought into the site. And the effect is that it doesn't have a negative impact on the neighbors. So for non-residential development, the requirement is unchanged. We ask for a cut fill ratio of one and a half to one. That's in the old flood order and we're continuing it. For residential development, the current order has no requirement at all. The draft adds a requirement, a one to one ratio. or compliance with those performance standards, that incentive that I mentioned, where if you build your house in a certain way, not on fill, then you don't have to worry about this requirement. And that makes your permitting simple and it benefits the neighbors because there's just less impact. You're not interrupting neighborhood drainage patterns. So while this is an additional requirement for residential, It's our hope that new residents will take the incentive and they can skip over this. Let's move on to the next provision, which is talking about the fee. Well, the fees that are included here were actually already approved by Commissioner's Court. What the flood order does is it explains how they will be applied. The flood order ties the permit fee to permit classes based on where the project is located, whether it's in or out of the floodplain, or whether or not there is an approved drainage plan covering the proposed improvements. The goal is that what the applicant pays lines up with the actual staff and review effort. A simple project outside the floodplain pays very little. A complex project that needs third-party technical review pays more. Two things are worth flagging. Applicants can avoid the determination fee by having their own engineer complete the form. I keep saying that, but we want to make sure people don't feel like it's a duplication. If they already have an engineer they're working with, it may be pretty simple for that engineer to take care of this for them and they can get the fee. Next, if the development is already covered by a regional drainage improvement, then there will be no additional inspection So that's good news. Overall, the fee range runs from $25 to $800. Plus, there could be additional fees or third-party review for those really complex projects. Our benchmarking showed that these fees are in line with the Texas counties that we looked at, if they charge anything at all. We designed our fees to cover the cost of running the program, not to generate revenues. And we know that there's going to be added workload that this order is going to create. So we do need a funding source for it. The fees fund the work. And part of that work is inspection. So in the next slide, let's take a look at those inspections. So with regard to inspections, we have listened to the recommendations of the FEMA Community Assistance Visit that audit that FEMA did of EP County a few years ago, and we are trying to clarify those inspection requirements and implement them. We added clear requirements for a pre-construction inspection, an elevation or flood protection inspection, and then last, a final inspection. It may sound like, oh my gosh, that's going to be a lot of red tape, but this is really important It's been my experience that compliance and awareness is significantly improved with those pre-con and those elevation inspections. They're also required by FEMA, so we got to have them. They avoid costly and difficult to correct inspections in construction and lead to projects that pass final inspections with no problems. This also helps EP County stay in compliance with FEMA Because it's really hard to deal with a violation where a house has just been built too low and it's already finished. And now we've got a problem with FEMA and we've got a problem with the homeowner or the developer. So we really want to avoid that by having adequate inspection. But inspections are not always enough to ensure compliance. We have to consider enforcement and we talk about that in the next slide. So looking at enforcement, we knew that we got recommendations in that FEMA CAF, recommendations to improve our enforcement. Right now, we have very limited provisions within our existing flood order. So this is a big area that we improved. Our draft modifies fines for violations, doubles the permit fee when work starts without a permit, and adds a certificate of noncompliance, suspension of permits, revocation of permits, and Section 1316, all as enforcement measures. The point is not to punish people. It's really to give the floodplain administrator a graduated set of options so there's something between a warning letter and no consequence at all. The process can be paused at any stage with a compliance agreement. And we expect most cases to end right there. That's been my experience. What's a compliance agreement? It's just a letter agreement between the floodplain administrator and the property owner or developer where we set a clear path to get into compliance and a milestone schedule of getting there. That way, we have a tool that helps us if we end up having to do further enforcement action It's a tool that helps us demonstrate compliance to FEMA. And it's also a tool that does what we really want to do the most, which is help developers and property owners to comply. And so they can have a successful project that is flood resilient. So one note for the court, what is that section 1316? Jamila's talking all that floodplain management talk. What is that anyway? Well, it's a special FEMA procedure where a community can request, you know, if they've done everything they can do to get a property into compliance and have failed, the end of the road, the final step is to tell FEMA, we can't do anything else. Take this property out of the program. And that's something that in our flood order, commissioner's court is required to take that action. It's something that the flooded plane administrator would recommend and then court would decide. So that's our updated enforcement provisions. Now let's take a look at some other special provisions we added to the flood order. One of the things that Gilbert mentioned is that we have a regulatory gap. We know that there are some properties that were platted prior to drainage regulation. And there's a loophole. They're not currently required to comply with any of our drainage regulations. And the result is that this puts adjacent properties at increased risk of flooding. And that is not something we want to continue. We can address this in the flood order because we did a study that proved that these properties contribute to flooding in the community. We performed an H&H study of El Paso Hills and the results showed us that it's really important that we address this issue. Let me show you what we found in the next slide. So as I mentioned, we studied El Paso Hills area that's located along I-10 corridor. It's approximately two miles southeast of the city of El Paso. And this area is as partially developed, and it has a lot of upstream, unplatted, undeveloped areas that we think could be ripe for development in the future. This area is a good example of the regulatory gap we are trying to close. In our study, after we did our engineering modeling, we found out that without drainage regulation, development of the undeveloped, sorry, platted property results in that blue-green inundation you see on your screen. And that impacts a bunch of adjacent properties, which we really don't want. Now, if we get these properties to develop with the current drainage regulations, we instead only have the red inundation when the development occurs. So you can see that that's really important. We can avoid making flood risk worse as development continues in EP County if we can close the gap. Now, so that's one step that we've taken to close gaps in regulations. The other issue is with regard to the maps. So let's look in the next slide. So there are some deficiencies in our maps. It's not EP County's fault. These are the maps that FEMA has provided historically. It's both the existing maps and most of the pending maps, the new maps that we're looking forward to receiving. They don't include floodway delineation. Well, what's the floodway anyway? Well, the floodway is a special part of the floodplain that has especially hazardous areas. They're deep, fast-moving water. And where we have floodways, we have special regulations in that area to reduce the risk. But unfortunately, we have a lot of areas in EP County where floodways have not been determined. And so what happens? Well, lack of information about this high hazard area leaves developers and the public uninformed about the severe flood risk. This lack of information leads to either overregulation where we just say, okay, no development in the floodplain, forget about it. Or underregulation where we say, well, so much trouble to figure this out. Let's just let the developers do what they want. Well, we don't want that. We don't want the high cost of making everybody do a big engineering study and get FEMA involved. On the other hand, we also don't want to just ignore the risk. So what do we want to do instead? And what does the flood order say? Well, in the flood order, we establish a high hazard flood zone. to approximate the floodway. It's not as good as the FEMA's delineated floodway, but it's a good compromise because we can do a simplified procedure that developers, engineers can use to figure out where development would be especially risky. And then EP County floodplain administrator can decide if that means that we're gonna need a FEMA study in order to proceed with development. So that's the way that we want to handle it. Now we could, EP County in the future can go ahead and map this high hazard blood zone area for the whole county and make that available. so that the community would know where these areas are. But in the meantime, what we can do is ask the developers, engineers to handle the analysis, and I'm sure they'll prefer it as opposed to doing a full-blown FEMA study. What does it look like? Here's a closer look in the next slide. Okay, so what I'm showing here is kind of a cross-section, like if you cut across a stream or waterway within EP County, And you can see that the red areas are especially deep. They're kind of taller in the profile than the blue areas. Well, those red areas, they have deep and fast-moving water. And we know from all of our engineering calculations that when the depth times the velocity reaches a ratio of 2.5 or higher, then we're in a dangerous area where structures are at risk. and where adults can be swept off their feet and carried away in the flood waters. So we want to pay special attention to those red areas, but the blue areas we can just use our regular regulations. So that's what the idea of this high hazard flood zone is. Let's take a look at how that looks on the ground. Let's go to the next slide. Okay, so here's our same area that we've been looking at in El Paso Hills. And you can see that the D times V area, the high hazard flood zone in red, is where we would want to take a closer look at any development and maybe require a FEMA study. The blue area, we can immediately just follow our plain vanilla floodplain rules. So we think this is a great compromise and avoids overregulation. Let's move on to the next slide. Now you can see in Playa Lake or Lacustrine area, I promise you there are a couple of little red dots, but you can't even see them. And that means that we can just follow our regular floodplain requirements for development within these areas. So let's go on to the next slide, which is where we tell you that we're done explaining all of those provisions. I hope you guys are still awake and still with me. We had many, many other things we could tell you about the flood order, but we think we've hit the most important items. What's going to happen next? Well, at an upcoming meeting, Commissioner's Court, we'd like to bring the flood order to you for consideration so that it can, you know, with your approval, it could be adopted. Once it's adopted, we would want to tell FEMA and Texas Water Development Board about the adoption so that they are aware of what the rules are for AP County. Next, we'd want to have outreach and implementation. We've done a lot of outreach in the past to get feedback and stakeholder involvement, but this outreach would just to be to notify developers and property owners that we have new rules and that the new flood order has been adopted. We don't want to catch anybody off guard. So then it'd be time to implement. That would include staff training, We've got updated permit forms we'll start using. We'll have the new fees, we'll start administering them, and we'll stand up the inspection program. So that's our plan. Let's go on to the next slide because we are at the end of our presentation. Our contact information is on the screen. We're available between now and December whenever you are considering this item for additional, for individual briefings or to help answer any constituent questions that your offices receive. We really wanna thank you for your time and consideration this morning. AND WE'D BE GLAD TO TAKE YOUR QUESTIONS.

MS. JOHNSON, THAT'S QUITE A PRESENTATION. VERY COMPREHENSIVE, VERY INCREDIBLE. BUT I WAS THINKING, COMMISSIONER CORONADO, YOU FACE PROBABLY THIS SITUATION QUITE A BIT, SO I WANTED TO HEAR FROM YOU.

YES, THANK YOU, JUDGE, AND THANK YOU, JOMILA. CERTAINLY A LOT OF THINGS TO CONSIDER, AND I THINK HEADING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION. OUR ESTABLISHING THESE NEW REGULATIONS Knowing that there's existing development already out there and current development that aren't gonna be subject to these rules, how are we going to be able to navigate that with existing development that might be nearby to where we're gonna put new rules on? How are we going to?

Commissioner, specifically with you, is that a situation where?

Yes, because there's a lot of development happening north of Trans Mountain.

That's going to be outside the city.

A lot of it right now. Yes. And they're in right off the mountain, all the really the prime mountainside land left in the city is in the Northwest area going to deal and towards Anthony.

That is a, that's a really good question, commissioner. Let me let you know that in my experience, You know, flood orders, they have to be updated sometime. And the typical reason they're updated is exactly what you're describing, that there is development pressure or there has been, unfortunately, a flood disaster. Those are kind of common reasons that flood orders are adopted, new ones are adopted. And what typically happens is that there is... a timeframe where the flood order has been adopted and then there's an effective date. And at which point that effective date is when the flood order becomes effective and that new permits that are granted will follow the new flood orders provisions. So that is the typical practice and it allows for developers to realize, okay, I may have received a permit or, I may have begun construction prior to the new effective date. Once that effective date hits, I know I have to follow all of the new rules. So that's how it's handled. And I realize that that transition period can be difficult. but it's necessary to move forward.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's going to be difficult for us to navigate through that with all the construction happening, and particularly from, like I said, north of Trans Mountain that's not in the city, and it's in our area. All the way up to Westway, there's plans already. I mean, the construction is ongoing.

Commissioner Guy, can I add something to that? Well, whatever you could do, the quicker you do it, right? The quicker we do it, the better. That you catch others.

But let me add something to that. So as we mentioned previously, we actually did a lot of outreach even to the developer focus group and all that kind of stuff. So we really didn't get a whole lot of resistance, to be honest with you, from the developers because they already comply with all these requirements. these changes, Jamila, I don't know if you want to chime in on this, but I think it doesn't really affect them much, right? I think it's more, the ones that get affected more really are the ones that are not, really not developers, like let's just say, for example, somebody comes in with a truck facility and it's in a certain location that doesn't, is not subject to those regulations. They can literally just go out there and develop it with no drainage provisions, and then causes problems with the neighboring properties, and then they come to the county and say, hey, you know what, they're sending all their water, and we unfortunately, at those points, we have to say, you know what, it's a civil matter between you guys, you know, and so these are the ones that would be more affected, but the developers, you know, if it's in a flood zone, They already go through the whole process going to FEMA. They change the maps. They go throughout that whole process. And I really don't see this really negatively affecting those. And it only applies really like for new development, right? So if it's already been, you know, it's already under construction, they fall under the old regulations. But I don't know if you want to add to that, Jamila.

I totally agree. You know, when we think about the changes that we're making for properties that are outside the floodplain, if they have, if they've been following the current regulations, if they already have an approved drainage plan, it doesn't make any difference for them really. For properties that are in the floodplain, we know that they're already elevating their structures so that That's part of the existing 2006 flood order. So those are kind of the two main impacts. The third impact is the fees. And as Gilbert mentioned, there's been outreach to the development community and we didn't receive any negative feedback. So those are kind of, you know, what we can expect in terms of how the change is. would impact that type of development. As Gilbert pointed out, kind of one-off type of development where the developers are not that sophisticated. They're just building something for their business. They're not aware of the rules now. So we think that the new flood order and the outreach associated with it and that floodplain determination step is really going to help them stay out of trouble. That's our goal.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say. It's really because I know that and I've seen already the large developers are already compliant. I know just there's a development just south, rather west of I-10 by the outlet mall where I know they've created their own large ponding area. There's like some apartment complexes. So then similarly east of the freeway between Trans Mountain and Westway large developments are they're constructing their own retention of flood issues I know they're working on that my concern is with exactly what you pointed out the other smaller areas that don't even pay attention to some of these because they're out in the county they think We don't have to comply with anything. Those are the ones that my concern are, exactly what you pointed out. Because I know the other development, but when you have those large development, then you have the smaller ones coming right after that, right? Like what you mentioned, these other truck facilities.

Yeah, and when we presented this information to the developer focus group, we did have some of these developers asking, well, how's that gonna affect us? And I don't know if you saw the application of the fleece structures. it basically exempts them from flood order requirements if they're already paying for subdivision fees, right? And so we didn't wanna like double charge them in certain situations, again, because those developments really don't, are not problematic for us, and in some instances, or many instances, really, they actually help in reducing drainage issues.

Yeah, some of them, they are helping. Those large developments are helping because they're taking on a larger scope in the area. My concern is with the smaller ones that don't. I guess we'll just have to I guess what you mentioned in terms of the great data policy provisions regarding enforcement is going to have to where that's going to come to effect. And of course, we're going to need the infrastructure for that, right? We don't. Do we have?

We do have. We do have them in place? We do have the inspectors that, you know, our construction inspectors are kind of, you know, they turn on their, you know, they put on their hat and then they, you know, they'll bring us some of these issues to our attention and then In some instances, we issue stop work orders, but it's just the enforcement is very, very loose, and so it's been kind of difficult, I guess, to get them to comply, but we just need it to get a lot cleaner. We have to have, at this point right now, there really is no repercussions with just starting now and ask for forgiveness, right? It's always, well, we didn't know, or there was nothing like that. So in this flood order, there is a floodplain determination process to every single project, which is only $25, unless they have an engineer already that can do it for them. But all it does is just tell them, look, you're in a hazard, a FEMA flood zone that does require you to, you know, special provisions. Or it says, you know what, you're outside this area. And then you follow basically a very standard, you know, what most people already do. They already do it just, okay, just put a standard grading and drainage. Just put a, like, drain it, contain your runoff. and just get an inspection. And that's the only thing that would be applicable for those kind of situations. So there's a lot of things that it looks like are going to be different. But in a lot of cases, it doesn't change a whole lot for developers.

It really helps Gilbert and his team have a framework to work from rather than just having not so many tools for inspections, enforcement, and fees. This establishes the framework of a strong floodplain management development program, and it should help make things better. That's the goal so that developers, property owners, they have more clear steps to handle their developments. And that Gilbert and team have more tools to help with inspections and enforcement if necessary. But we hope the focus will be on inspections. And that's what I found is that, you know, have your inspectors out there. They're going to a pre-construction inspection or even a final inspection that day. But in the neighborhood, somebody else is about to start construction. And they say, hey, wait a minute.

Do you have a permit? You know.

If we can get the inspectors out there, you know, helping to pay for the program with the inspection fees, then as they're out in the community, they see what's going on and they can intervene in some of these problems as they're just getting started. And that's really the goal of the program is to help everybody in the community to comply so that they can do that before it gets expensive, before it gets to be a lot of trouble. So this is the framework. And I hope that that helps answer that question.

Yeah, no, absolutely. I guess in that respect, the sooner we get to this before the larger developers who are in sense, complying with that, but then the surrounding other development that comes around it that aren't as savvy about some of these things, that maybe we can get a handle on it. And so the quicker I guess we do it, the better this is going to be. I think we just need to get ahead of it and make sure that we have our inspectors and have enough as soon as we do this that can go out there in the community to stop some of these from becoming issues. Because I know that development, I mean, it's going fairly fast. And, you know, in respect to that, some of the developments are going to help even when we get down to the I-10 area, heading on the northwest side, and I know we're waiting on our grant from the Texas Water Development Board for that area, our northwest and Vinton area, that we should have gotten notice sometime back, and I guess they're kind of delayed it, because that area, what you were talking about, is one of those particular areas with the low crossings, and people going into a complete area that, could even hamper our emergency service vehicles going into that part of that subdivision in Westway. That's one of my, was one of my concerns that these floods would happen and we'd have that. And so I think the quicker we do this, the better.

Any other questions, Gilbert Johnson? Thank you so much. Thank you representation. Thank you, Jamila. Thank you.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Let us know if you have any other questions.

Thank you.

M4F receive a presentation and provide feedback on a proposed update to the county's master thoroughfare plan.

Welcome.

Good afternoon, Commissioners, Judge. I'm Roxanne Medina with Planning and Development, and we're here to present our master thoroughfare plan update. So basically, So back in 2020, the county did a master therapy plan. This is probably the first one they've done. And it was to provide a roadmap for the transportation development within the county, using to identify structural transportation routes within the unincorporated areas, work with developers and municipal agencies to create a cohesive multimodal transportation network, a developed cross-section so that we can identify how we want to develop our roads according to functional class, and identify projects which were high, medium, and low priority. As part of that 2020 study, they identified several goals and objectives. The goals mainly were with mobility and sustainability. mobility and accessibility, safety, sustainability, travel choice, economic variety, and funding. So we were looking at different ways to provide various ways of traveling through the county through the unincorporated areas, making sure that we could pay for those and that they were sustainable to our environments. That study primarily looked at our major arterials and major collectors. So we're looking at ITAN, Alameda, Montana, Pelicano, Darrington. So these are the big roadways. within the county that that we were looking at that this study focused on. And so with that, from that, we got various projects that we've kind of been implementing. So we've done rojas extensions and widenings and different projects that came out of that study. And so with this update, it's been several years, and there has been a lot of growth within the county. So we looked at that we needed to update the 2020 plan. And so we wanted to have, first we wanted to identify the roads that had been completed already from our 2020 plan. The county has been doing a lot of construction, and so we wanted to implement those into our plan. We wanted to acknowledge that there's a lot of growth happening in El Paso County, especially in the east. We also were looking at maybe doing a level lower in connectivity from the arterials and the major collectors to minor collectors and residential collectors. So getting to more of a subdivision level. We also wanted to look at to make sure that we provided frontage road access to our five acre parcels that we have so that in the future as development continues that we can have that frontage, whether the improvements or at least getting the right of way so that when the development does continue, especially in the east side of El Paso County with the five acre parcels, that we have right of way available to create roadways so that they have access to those parcels. There are some easements in there, but we wanted to make sure that they have a full roadway access. And then we're looking at connectivity between land uses as it changes between residential and commercial, and then account for the new development. And then we were also coordinating with adjacent municipalities, City of El Paso, Horizon City, and Socorro. So this creates a more fine-grained level to our MTP, and we're looking at increasing traffic circulation, reducing drive time, and reducing sprawl. So we did have outreach. This update was done in-house. And so we did have outreach. We distributed our draft MTP plans to all the precinct offices. We held in-person meetings with precinct one and three. And we presented to the city county developer focus group so that we could have some feedback from the developers. And then we did have coordination with the city of El Paso and Horizon City. So, and sorry, these are kind of, they're very zoomed out, so they're hard to see, but I do have some blowups. So this is basically what we're looking at. So basically we're putting a plan together so that as development comes in, we can have a roadmap for developers to provide connectivity within their development and then with adjacent developments. And so we wanted to look at... Providing some collect some minor collectors. So those are the green lines that we're looking at there. And so this is in precinct one. So you can see we have Montana Avenue and how we would connect that to other as development outgrows out in the other areas of the county. We can have connections to Edgemere, Montana and maintaining connectivity back. One of the things that we, in our meetings with Commissioner Butler, we did find out about in Fort Bliss that they are preparing the data center, and it's right near Precinct 1. And so we did include in, oops, wrong one.

I'm controlling the slides to advance it.

Okay, go back. Go back one. Thank you. So we've connected, can I do a pointer? So if you look at the corner right there, kind of that L shape or that shape corner kind of to the left of that yellow box, that's Fort Bliss property. And so in that corner, that corner area, probably the lower corner, is where the proposed data center is for Fort Bliss. So we're looking at some connectivity between that data center and the loop. And so that came out of the meeting with Commissioner Butler where she identified that. So we did add a connection. connection there to the loop. And then with some other development that we had further down in Fort Bliss, we noticed that there was a connector coming up from some Fort Bliss property that had been sold and is now county right of way. And so we are going to make that connection there. And so that way we have a nice interchange off of the loop that would be a future interchange for this area. So this should hopefully help relieve some of the traffic coming off of Montana, getting it up into kind of the Fort Bliss area and getting it back to the loop in a different area. So these are some of the things that they're in paper, but we want to at least have a plan for them and so that when development comes up, when we're approached for these ideas, we already can say this is what we're looking at and this is how we want to try and guide this development in the future. One more? Yes, so, and then this is precinct three, and we're looking at basically Horizon City to the south and the city to the west. West, yes, to the west. And so, next slide. We can look at some of the connectivity. The pink lines are MTP items from the Horizon MTP. And so how we're looking at their MTP and making connections to ours. Go ahead. And then this is kind of the southeastern portion of the county. And here we're looking at connectivities between some of the outlying eastern areas and connecting them to I-10 and getting the interchanges there. There's already a proposed interchange for Darrington and one for Timothy, and so we're looking at further east. At what other point are we going to need another connection as development happens outside the county? And this we can kind of see where we're looking at some of our, as it's undeveloped, looking at these sections where we're putting in at least, we were looking before at a kind of a mile, I guess, distribution. Now we're kind of looking at that half mile so that we have some connectivity on that. And then in precinct four, where we're a little bit more, you know, we're much surrounded more by the city of El Paso, but there is still some areas where we have some connectivity. Go to the next slide. And we have, we can see here like Los Mochis where we're connecting to that. But if we look there to make a connection to the west at the, I think that's Busca Road, IN ORDER TO MAKE THAT CONNECTION, WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO HAVE A LOT OF COORDINATION WITH IBWC BECAUSE WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO CROSS THE RIVER, WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO CROSS THE RAILROAD, SO WE'LL HAVE SOME RAILROAD COORDINATION, AND WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO CROSS DONOVAN, SO WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO HAVE TECHSTOCK COORDINATION. To do all this, it's going to be a multi-year, multi-agency coordination to actually make these connections. There might be things that we want to identify and we want to identify them now so that we can start planning that and that coordination as we get further along and as development comes up so we don't wind up behind the curve with the development happening and we don't have that connectivity.

Not only that, I apologize for interrupting, but I'm glad that we're getting this done because down the road on Bosque where you're seeing Los Mochis connect west of the river, eventually that area development is coming, the children's botanical garden, that it's going to bring a lot of traffic. And the only outlet there is Vinton, so this will provide another access out there.

And that's the main reason for having this implemented and getting this on paper so that as development happens we have something to go with the developer to let them know this is what we would hope to see or we would like to see. They can propose something else as long as it and if it maintains the connectivity plan that we have then we can approve even if it's a slightly different route or they want to go to a slightly different, you know, different look to the roadway, they may do that. But we want to have at least something in place so that we have a starting point on that conversation.

Yeah, and it looks like it's heading right at the corner of where the current middle school and Gallegos Park is, right? Is that right, Norma?

Yes, I believe so. Yes, yes, right there.

And you know, Bosco Road coming out of the middle school was already a big traffic issue. So not only because of the other development, but even currently now, it's gonna help quite a bit. What is the projected?

A lot of these are not identified projects yet. So we're looking at that. So we will be looking at the project list and looking at some of the priorities. I know Los Mochis is probably one of the higher priorities that we do have. There's already connections at least to I-10. And so we'll have to look at how we would fund and do the next connections to get it across.

Yeah, some of the residents are already asking or the constituents are already asking about a traffic light at Los Mochis and Donovan.

Allow me to also make some comments. One of the important parts about the MTP is it helps us get right of way where we can't obtain it in a normal fashion. And what we want to preclude in a lot of ways is not only be able to plan for roadways, but preclude others from coming in and building where we need roadways. So having the MTP in a finer grain fashion allows us to be able to say, hey, if you're going to build there, you need to provide the right of way that we know we're going to need. Because if it's not on paper, they can just build right there. And that means we're going to have really big circulation issues where we're being cut off. And so what we're really trying to do, and you're seeing, you're talking about all these things, is taking this big picture that we have now and then getting and filling in that missing middle. There's a whole bunch of ways you can say it, but we're really trying to get a finer grained picture to increase the circulation, plan for new roadways, and importantly, keep our paths of travel open for us so that we can get those roadways without them being built upon, blocked. I hope that makes sense.

Yes. Thank you.

I believe that's... Yes. And if there are any other questions...

Thank you. I don't have a question. I do want to say thank you very much for going through this process. I remember early last year I sat down with the MPO and I asked how can we get the MPO to support funding for a road. I think I was talking about Ascension. And they said, well, is it in your major thoroughfare plan? And I didn't know when the last time we did it, and I didn't know if it was included. And we see it every day on the east side, how fast it's grown, how many new residents are there. and maybe just a gap in the foresight to understand that we're being as discerning and thoughtful about the future growth that might happen in those areas. and also trying to relieve some of those issues that we're currently seeing with these plans.

And that's where we're seeing this. This will be a great tool for the planning department because that's where a lot of those five-acre parcels are. And we can get the right-of-way within those easements that are already in those parcels so that we can build the roads in the future. And that way they don't get blocked. We're already seeing that even as we were doing this, as development was coming in, that there were pathways that were getting blocked. And so we need to get ahead of that development. And that's what we are trying to do with this.

Yeah, I think that's a key tool that we need to mitigate some of these future issues, but also be able to fund some of the larger roads that we need.

Yes, and from this we'll go back and look at what our previous MTP was and what our previous projects were, verify which ones have been completed, and then look to see which are our next highest priority so that we can develop the next set of projects that we go with to the MPO and get those funded and get those in the pipeline. Because any project you see in construction right now took 10 to 20 years of planning. And so we need to start now for our next 10 to 20 years that we're going to be developing our roadways. Absolutely. Well, thank you very much.

Item 4G, discuss and take appropriate action regarding regional transportation planning and funding and the county's input on the El Paso Metropolitan Planning Organization, MPO, upcoming transportation policy board meeting agenda.

Good afternoon, Judge and Commissioners. George Reyes, Associate Planner with Planning and Development. I have a couple of highlights for you for tomorrow's August MPO agenda. First one's going to be item number two, consider adoption of the amendments to the El Paso Metropolitan Planning Organization Transportation Policy Board bylaws. And so if you remember back in June, I had presented that the MPO was going to go over their bylaws and make edits to them. There was some lengthy discussion and after that debate, that item ultimately got deleted. And so what this item is doing is it's bringing back two items to put to the bylaws that weren't part of that debate that went on for the bylaws. And the first one was adding the New Mexico Border Authority to the TPAC. And so the New Mexico Border Authority would become a voting member of the TPAC and would increase the membership from 18 to 19 members. But luckily Quorum would still remain at 10 members for the TPAC. Now in that June meeting, I also brought the attendance policy that the board was going to approve, and they did end up approving it, basically saying that if you want to do the TPB board meeting virtually, you need to notify the director of the board a week in advance in order to attend the meeting virtually. And so that was adopted in the June 2026 meeting. So what the MPO staff wanted to do was put that policy as part of an exhibit to the bylaws. So that way the bylaws become an all-in-one document for any type of questions that the public may have for policy guiding the TPB board. Sorry, the TPB. And so it was presented at TPAC and they did approve it unanimously. Any questions for this item?

I'm sorry, that was just item two?

Item two, yes, sir. Item three is discussion and action to consider authorizing the executive director to execute task order three with HDR Engineering Inc. for services related to the border highway connector phase two traffic impact and improvement feasibility study for an amount not to exceed $780,000. So HDR was originally contracted to complete this study back in July of 2025. Pretty much phase two is a traffic impact and improvement feasibility of phase one, which was a 8.3 mile highway that connected the Santa Teresa Port of Entry to McNutt and Sunland Park. And at the time, I believe it was last year, the city of El Paso had brought forth concerns bringing all that truck traffic onto the city's Sunland Park Drive, what the impacts are. And at the time, the Mexico Department of Transportation couldn't really say anything. They were just concerned about their traffic getting everybody from the port of entry into I-10. which was the purpose for their phase one. So phase two is a traffic impact and improvement feasibility study that looks at the regional transportation network and looks at the infrastructure improvements needed to address those concerns. The project was part of the TIP and 2050 MTP and the state of New Mexico provided $2 million in funding for this project. So task order three is the final phase of this study. It's going to, HDR will previously, will take previously identified hotspots and prioritize locations for improvements and develop feasibility level improvement concepts, evaluate preliminary roadway geometry and identify right-of-way requirements, identify potential utility conflicts, and develop preliminary cost estimates. So this performance period is gonna be from September 1st, 2026 through March 31st, 2027. And TPAC didn't hear this item. Any questions for this one?

Chair, I don't know if I should bring it up on this one. Or five, but do you think, is this study that they're wanting to do, is it gonna look at alternatives to actually doing the project, or is it just to advance the project?

No, the project's under construction right now. It is under construction and it's set to open, I believe, in late 2028, early 29, I believe. This is just to look at those concerns about where that traffic's going to go.

Yeah, but this is the highway that's going to connect basically to 375 or I-10.

It has the option to do both, because right now the highway's gonna connect to McNutt and Sunland Park, and then from there, Sunland Park, it's gonna take them up to that interchange on I-10 where you can either go I-10 or, well, if you go west, you're just going on I-10. If you go east, you can go take Loop 375 or I-10 east.

yeah i mean i don't know i'm just worried like you know with this project um and i and i guess it's it's somewhat under underway but um it's gonna it's just gonna push like santa teresa truck traffic like through i-10 And it seems to me it would be better to push it around instead of through the city, right? I've talked about opposing the widening of I-10, but this also I think affects other parts of I-10. It's going to, I think traffic's going to bottleneck at Racetrack in Donovan. It's going to bottleneck at Sunland in Donovan. And of course, like one of the biggest bottlenecks that exists right now that the Itin Lightning downtown doesn't address is by the spaghetti pole. And this is going to, cause bigger problems for that bottleneck. I don't know, for the members who are on the TPB, if there's a way to emphasize the bypass going through the Anthony Gap instead of bringing more truck traffic through the core of the city. I think that's what this project is gonna do. And I don't know if it's too late, but... It's just it's just it's just weird because. I feel like our for our hands being forced by New Mexico by building this thing that's ultimately going to connect to us, but they don't. They don't even know. How it's going to connect it like whether it's going to be on 375 or or itinerant is going to be.

I guess you said it would be both right because it's all that what's a direct connection to to McNutt Sullen Park. That was what but angered the city. And so they're gonna use the existing infrastructure at Sunland Park pretty much to go up to I-10 and 375. So their project ends right at the state line.

Yeah, I mean, it just concerns me like air quality, I think issues. I don't know if anybody's reviewed the environmental for the project or what the number of trucks that are gonna be added to the roadway here in El Paso or the highway, how that's gonna affect the air quality. I think some of the parks and entertainment, just like El Paso, when it comes to EPA and air quality.

Where's that traffic going now? Where's that traffic going now? If we don't hit that outlet. They're going down Artcraft, right? Correct, I believe so. All the way down to I-10, and there's the bottleneck there.

Yeah, but I still think it's a good opportunity to push using the Anthony Gap and that bypass.

Oh, the Borderline Expressway?

Yeah.

Absolutely, but this is from Santa Teresa though.

Right, but they can still use that as a relief route to go out around El Paso instead of- Around the other way?

Yeah, but they still have a bottleneck going down Artcraft. Right now as it is, Artcraft is really getting, and that's why they're doing that overpass.

I think that construction is going to relieve some of that bottlenecking.

The problem is they didn't do it on the east side of I-10, and I don't think they can do it where Amazon is right now.

And then that would lead to the borderline expressway, I think, with that overpass.

If we were to be able to get that done, yeah. But see, it's not going to stop the traffic that's, you know, THAT'S GOING WEST ANYWAYS. THEY'RE STILL GOING TO GO DOWN ARTCRAFT. IT'S ONLY THE ONES THAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT THAT ARE GOING TO GO EAST. That would help. I don't know how feasible for someone's going to be that they're going to drive another 10 miles out north and then cut across and go back. I guarantee you they're still going to go down our craft, go down I-10 and head south. I mean east. It's they're still in other words, I think they're still going to head. DOWN I-10 TOWARDS DOWNTOWN. I DON'T SEE THAT. NOW, WHERE I DO SEE IT HELPING IS FROM THE EAST SIDE CUTTING ACROSS DOWN TO NEW MEXICO AND AVOIDING DOWNTOWN. THAT'S GOING TO HELP IT QUITE A BIT. ANYWAYS, THAT'S JUST MY...

I GUESS IF YOU'LL JUST KIND OF ASK SOME OF THOSE QUESTIONS OR TRY TO FIGURE OUT WHAT'S... And keep pushing the border on the expressway is like we should really be trying to divert traffic out off of I-10.

Judge, you're going up to the state to advocate soon, right? Next week. Next week, right? Yeah.

Yeah, we'll make sure to ask some of those questions and try to get that information back.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Item number four, discussion and action to consider authorizing the executive director to execute task order number eight with WSP USA Inc. for GIS database and EPRF system management support for an amount not to exceed $38,677.08. Previously there was task order number six that allowed the MPO to work with WSP to modernize a lot of their databases. A lot of what the MPO used was Microsoft Access and Microsoft's discontinuing that program. And so task order six worked with WSP to modernize their MPO databases, their project request form, and their reporting dashboards to be migrated to Esri ArcGIS online. And so the updated systems build upon the MPO's existing multimodal performance measures web tool and ePRF platform, which was originally developed with the assistance of UTEP. The completed products are now being transitioned to MPO staff for ongoing operation and maintenance and the city of El Paso's IT department is assisting with that transition because they serve as the MPO's fiscal agent. So this task order that's gonna be voted on by the board will provide detailed internal user manuals, post handoff technical support meetings, and develop an implementation of an automated data update system for the launch of this new software. Any questions for this one? Okay. Item number five is consider approval of an amendment to the amended RMS 2050 MTP, the RMS 2052 MTP, the 2025-2028 TIP, and the RMS 2027-2030 TIP to program the Sunland Park Drive Futurity Intersection Reconstruction Project with $250,000 from the Federal Community Project Funding Program in fiscal year 2027. This is a project, a small local project for the City of Selim Park to reconstruct an existing all-way stop at that intersection into a two-lane roundabout. The project will also include landscaping and irrigation, lighting and permanent signing and striping. The City of Selim Park received this funding through the fiscal year 27 community project, federal community project funding. And this item is pretty much to put that project, it's a new project, into the MTPs and TIPs as well as the September 26 revision to the New Mexico STIP. Any questions for this one? Item number six is consider providing the City of El Paso Mass Transit Board with the approval recommendation for service expansion agreements between Sun Metro and the following public transportation operators. El Paso Transportation Authority in the city of Socorro, Texas. So approval would allow the ETA in Socorro to become direct recipients of the FTA section 5307 funding. Back in 2021, El Paso MPL worked with Sun Metro to establish a service expansion policy explaining how other public transportation systems in the area can utilize El Paso's urban area for the federal 5307 funding. The policy requires approval from the city's Mass Transit Board, City of El Paso Mass Transit Board, a recommendation from the MPO and compliance with the requirements of the policy and its appendices. MPO staff did review the draft agreements for both entities and determine all requirements have been met. So if this does get approved by the MPO tomorrow, The following action will be taken. The agreements will go to the City of El Paso Mass Transit Board for final approval. And once executed, Sun Metro will notify FTA that a portion of the fiscal year 26 FTA 5307 funds can be made available to both ETA and Socorro. The funding allocation will be based on the entity's share of the urban area population within its operating area. Any questions for this one? Then the next one's report. I usually don't report on reports, but on the Executive Director's report, Mr. Galvo did have the mention of the Texas Transportation Commission meeting on August 26th at 10 a.m. He always encourages elected officials to go, so it's great to hear that the judge will be in attendance. This one's particularly important because The 2027 UTP is scheduled to be approved. In a presentation we had with TxDOT, they notified us that late in July, the local district was notified that the draft UTP includes $100 million for the Montana Phase 2 project. This award partially funds Phase 2 to allow TxDOT to continue work in right-of-way acquisition and can continue with utility relocations for the project. The design is currently at 65%, so this funding will allow to finish up that design work as well. TxDOT El Paso's goal, from what they've told us, is to apply for the remaining $82.5 million during the fiscal year 28 UTP, and if awarded, they plan to let the project sometime in fiscal year 28. Questions for that one?

So the, the 100 million has been awarded?

So it, it. I checked this morning and they haven't posted the presentation yet for this particular item, but in late July they told the district that it was part of the draft UTP.

Okay.

So between then and now, or when they release that presentation, which I would think would be tomorrow, it would hopefully still be in there.

Okay.

But they were notified in late July that $100 million was going to be awarded for that particular project.

So they're basically phasing out phase two now?

They're completing the funding, because they needed 182.5 million. And then you all did a resolution back early, I think in March, for it to be included in the UTP. And they're not funding the entire thing, but they're funding the majority portion. Well, a little more than half of the portion. And so TxDOT will go back and apply in fiscal year 28's UTP call for the rest.

I guess that's encouraging. I'm just, I'm curious about what that timeline looks like then compared to the original timeline or even the latest one which was I think further extended than 28, so.

I'm not too sure about the original one with all the delays, but they didn't tell us that they were going to need all this time either way for the completion of the design and utility right-of-way acquisitions. So it's just if they were to get the full funding now, they probably still would have led into fiscal year 28. Okay. So now it's more of a waiting game to see if they get it in fiscal year 28, which the award would come this time next year. If they get it, then they can start planning for the letting to start in fiscal year 2028. Right.

Okay, I'll take it if it's hopefully comes through. Thank you.

All right, and that's it.

That's a big need out there out in Montana. The traffic out there is just,

Yeah, I appreciate that some funding was allocated.

And that's the phase where we granted them access right away in front of the detention center?

Yes. Yes, I believe so.

Right? Okay.

All right, thank you all. Have a great day. Thank you, George. Thank you, George.

This takes us back to executive session. I'm going to have a request to delete item 5B. Let me read that in for the record. Pursuant to Texas government code, section 551.071, discuss legal rights and responsibilities pertaining to the statutory public purpose test.

Commissioners, we are asking the court to delete this item. We will be returning back to you all for this specific item. We just need additional time. Thank you.

I have a motion from Judge Samaniego, a second from Commissioner Ageem. The voting is open.

I vote aye.

Thank you, Commissioner. Aye. Thank you, Commissioner. Motion carries. And that completes all of the items on our agenda today.

Not too bad. We have very few people left. Everybody have a good weekend.

Commissioner's Court is adjourned at 2.21 p.m.