City Council - workshop

Well, good morning everyone. I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July weekend. We're going to get started and it was a tough loss for Mexico last night. For those of us that stayed up and watch that game, man, incredible game. Miss Brian.

Good morning, Mayor, and good morning, everyone. This is a work session of the El Paso City Council for Monday, July 6, 2026. It is 9.04 AM. Mayor Johnson is present and presiding in council chambers, along with Mayor Pro Tem Chavez, Representative Acevedo, Representative Foya-Trejo, Representative Nino, alternate Mayor Pro Tem Fierro, and Representative Limon. Representatives Rocha and Canales will be joining the meeting later this morning. Mayor, we have a quorum.

Thank you very much. Representative Trejo, would you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance?

Yes. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

OK. OK, Ms. Bryan.

Yes, that brings us to item number one, and this is a Public Safety Coalition presentation on opioid use disorder in the borderland.

Good morning, Doctor.

Good morning, Mayor, Council. Great to be here. I know it's a sore spot with the loss of the soccer game. Yes. It's a wound that is still bleeding. We're going to talk about a problem that is not only affecting our community, but affecting the state and the whole country. The substance use disorder is something that is part of the behavioral health. And we made a presentation in 2023 to council in regards to the community health assessment. Behavioral health was one of those areas that it was identified from the community as something that we need to pay attention. And this is a great example of how public health, police department, and fire department are coming together to address a problem that is not only affecting one department, but affects the whole community because of the effects that it has on some individuals. And there's individuals in our community and specific groups that are vulnerable to this specific medical condition. Substance use disorder is a condition that is well recognized within the DSM-5, which is the Diagnostic Statistical Method Revision 5, in which we diagnosed mental health conditions substance use disorder is the overuse of a specific substance without regards to negative consequences and this substance use disorder can be divided depending on the substance can be substances that are legal can be substances that are illegal and legal substances such as the nicotine such as alcohol such as THC in other states, but this will include opioids, this will include hallucinogens, this will include sedatives, and we're going to be seeing how the opioid, and specifically the opioid use disorder, has been affecting our country, our community, and also the state. It is considered a public health problem because of the epidemic proportion that it has taken. Opioid use disorder, it is a very complex public health problem, not only for the physicians or the healthcare providers that treat these kind of conditions, but for the whole community and the city and county that address these issues. And we'll see in a little bit, Let me try to... Very good. I think it's working now. So substance use is sort of the greatest consequence or complication that it can have is death. People that use these substances might use some substances without knowing that they're using something that has been laced with a more potent substance such as a fentanyl or illegally manufactured fentanyl, or they use a combination of different substances that later on is going to carry out the death. And these complications are not just affecting a specific gender. We see that it can affect anybody, males, females, and unfortunately it's affecting in greater proportion males over females. But still, it is a complication that that we see and these individuals mainly rely on EMS to come and save them basically because they know that they need help and unfortunately many of them they cannot stop. These substances affect the biochemistry of the brain and because of the reward system that it has because of the high potential for addiction these people cannot stop using the substances and many times they need to be using more and more substances and unfortunately when they're using the substance and specifically the opioids that can carry a consequence that they're going to be stopping breathing they're going to be after the euphoria they're going to be stopping breathing and that's when they need to have the life-saving medication which we're going to be talking a little bit about brand name is narkin That is the life-saving medication that is going to be helping them come out of that overdose. But many of these people rely on EMS. They call 911. They do the substances with other individuals that are going to be saving their life by calling 911. But we need to do more. It's not just going and save the life of these individuals for this very particular time. We need to save their lives in the long term. There is only a very small amount of percentage of people that seek help. They say that about one in five percent of the people that recognize that they need help are going to be actually seeking help. And the help that they're going to be seeking, sometimes they're going to be falling back into using substances and not only are going to be continuing with the treatment, sometimes they have other issues that are impeding these people to receive the treatment that they need. The kind of drugs that they've been using has been changing over time. As you can see from the late 1990s all the way to 2023 when we have the data, from 2015 up to now, there was a very sharp increase in opioid deaths because of the illegal manufacture of fentanyl, and that is a problem that they saw from the border, from every single city in the country. where people were dying, and initially we didn't know why, but as our technology and our ways to diagnose these individuals with a specific substance, specifically the Office of the Medical Examiner, now we're seeing that illegally manufactured fentanyl were responsible for all these deaths that we can see that it's highlighted in the gray line. that just separated from the rest of the drugs, we see that succulent stimulants such as the methamphetamine make a great comeback. Also some other stimulants such as the cocaine also is one of those that is causing the overdoses. And depending on the drug, Some communities might see some drugs being affecting the streets more than others. And talking to some other individuals within public health and within the behavioral health, that's what they see depending on where they're living. It is demand and supply also and what the people are able to afford that can determine what is happening in their community. In Texas, drug poisoning rates have increased over 75% for the last five years. And going from 9.4 to 15.8 deaths per 100,000 in 2021, just four or five years, the death rate continues to increase, and that is very concerning to all of us, not just in public health, but in many other. That is the reason why the Public Safety Coalition is able to address some of these issues at the local level, but definitely something that we can set the example for many other communities in how we're going to be addressing this complex problem. The drug-related deaths here in El Paso, according to the Office of the Medical Examiner, we saw a very sharp peak for the last five years, six years, but now it declined, especially in the opioid use disorder. But that doesn't mean that we're winning the fight against this specific problem, very complex problem. We saw some other substances, such as the methamphetamines that also peak, and some other stimulants that are also making a comeback. Opioids is not just an illegally manufactured fentanyl. It can be diverted medications from the ones that we prescribe to the patients to control pain. Opioids are very good analgesics, and they're very effective, especially with some acute pains. And people have chronic pain. We need not to ignore these people that have chronic pain, but there has to be some regulation, and there are established by the Texas Medical Board, by the Board of Pharmacy, in how we're gonna be able to safely prescribe these medications to the people that really require it. There has to be that good balance between the proper treatment and the way that we're going to be avoiding patients diverting these medications and selling it or using it for other purposes that are not the ones prescribed. Our main objective and a common objective that we have at the Public Health Coalition is gonna be to decrease the opioid-related deaths in El Paso County. Sounds simple, but it's a very complex problem where we're gonna be starting with not just only one way that we're gonna be addressing it. We have a multi-pronged approach that is gonna be hopefully making a big difference in our community in the way that we're gonna be decreasing those death-related opioid overdoses and opioid-related deaths here in our city. One of the areas is gonna be the harm reduction. There has to be education, not just for the patients, but for everybody that is gonna be involved in the way that we help those individuals that are having this substance use disorder. We have to help in linking these individuals to care, and the data analytics is specifically very, very useful, because without any data-driven interventions, we're gonna be lost trying to find the way that we're gonna be addressing this problem. The way that we're going to be doing the harm reduction is just making availability of the Narcan or Naloxone. How are we going to be doing that? We already distributed Narcan to all the AEDs that we have within the city facilities. We are making Narcan available through some machines that are self-dispensing this medication. So whenever the people need it, the this is going to be the life-saving drug that is going to be helping this individual we know that police department fire department they all carry the narcan in their units but sometimes by the time that they get here or by the time that they get to the scene they are probably some individuals that were standing by already used the medication The availability of the terror drug deactivation bags is also important. So this way, when they have these medications, when they have this drug, they can put it in the bag and it's going to be deactivated. And the take-back program that was initiated by the federal government through the Department of, through the Drug Enforcement Administration, the DEA, has been very successful and our city has seen many points where they can take those medications many of us have the medications and what do people do with those medications many of them they flush them down the toilet many of them they just toss it in the trash where it can be dangerous to the people that collect the trash many of them they just leave them and unfortunately children may get a hold of those or they divert those medications and they sell them We need to train the individuals in how they're going to be using the Naloxone, which nowadays is very simple in the way that we administer the medication via intranasally with the spray in the nose, and hopefully that can save the life. And the prevention of the misuse of the opioids, the prescriptions that we give so people are not going to be doctor shopping, looking for other prescription and how they're going to be finding this prescription medications that are being overused or used for other purposes that are not the ones prescribed. And we're going to hand it over to Chief Tavares now.

Good morning, everybody. Good morning, Chief. So some of the initiatives that we've already started working on is, you know, one of them is our post-overdose response team. So right now we have our MIH team that goes out after 72 hours of an overdose event. They'll go out there and follow up with the family, follow up with the patient and provide a focused education. They go ahead and provide national Naloxone and show them how to use it. And then they also connect them to resources. So they go out there and they perform this to be able to get those individuals, you know, away from the drugs. So we do go out there and provide those resources. They also have community engagements. They participate in many of the health fairs, many of the events. They go out there, educate the public on how to use Naloxone, what to look for. some of the things that prevent overdose. What do you do with a medication when they're no longer gonna use it? So they go out there and provide those resources as well. We distribute naloxone. We took part in the humanitarian, EMERITORIAL TEAM, THE HEART TEAM, I'M SORRY, BUT WE TOOK PART IN THAT AND WENT OUT THERE, EDUCATED SOME INDIVIDUALS, PROVIDED NALOXAN AND TRIED TO HELP THOSE INDIVIDUALS. THE TEAM STILL CONTINUES TO GO OUT THERE AND PROVIDE THOSE SERVICES. ANOTHER INITIATIVE THAT WE STARTED WAS PUTTING ASIL NALOXAN, LIKE DR. OCARANZA SAID, PUTTING ASIL NALOXAN IN IEDS. SO CURRENTLY WE HAVE 95 REGISTERED AEDS THROUGHOUT THE CITY. 82 OF THOSE AEDS, THEY HAVE THE LOCKS ON OUR IN-CITY BUILDINGS. RIGHT. SO WE DO HAVE INCIDENT LOCKS IN CITY BUILDINGS. THE INTENT OF THIS IS SO THAT INDIVIDUALS THAT HAVE EXPERIENCED AN OPIATE OVERDOSE, RIGHT, CAN BE, YOU KNOW, CAN BE QUITE ENTREATED. INDIVIDUALS CAN JUMP INTO ACTION SO IT'S ACCESSIBLE TO THE PUBLIC TO BE ABLE TO USE, YOU KNOW, IN A WAY TO THE 911 RESPONDERS GO BY. TO THIS LIST, WE CAN ADD THE AIRPORT. WE JUST ADDED THEM TO THE AIRPORT A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO. AND SO NOW THEY'RE ALSO AVAILABLE IN THE AIRPORT. All right. So one of the things we want is one for people to, you know, jump into action, start taking, you know, treating the individual, you know, so that they can save their life until first responders get there. So part of the program that we do is we offer training to city employees and also to the public. We offer training in hands-only CPR, how to use an AED, and also how to use Naloxone, right, and when to use it. This, again, this is free to the public. Once they're training in how to do those events, how to do those skills, we offer a PulsePoint app. This application is free to the community. Those who subscribe to the app, they actually get notified when there's an emergency nearby. When there's an emergency, a cardiac event emergency, they can jump into action and they can save a life. right again this is pretty free to the public uh it's available for individuals to sign up for it uh if if they don't sign up for it uh actually our communication center has the same information so whenever a cardiac emergency comes in they actually can see where those aeds are located and they can direct the public or the caller to go ahead and you know those aeds where the naloxone is also located and direct those individuals to where it's at So some of the initiatives that we have to reduce harm reduction. Next, I'll pass it on to Chief Briones. Thank you.

Good morning.

Good morning, Chief.

Chief Briones, El Paso Police. Since 2021, the El Paso Police Department has received and distributed Narcan kits. Narcan distribution began with a narcotic unit, but gradually expanded to all patrol divisions. By 2024, the collaboration between the El Paso Police Department and the Fire Department made possible a distribution of over 1,100 Narcan kits to all our sworn personnel. Since 2023 through the end of April of 2026, our officers responded to approximately 880 overdose-related calls. Our officers administered 103 doses to 63 people, saving many lives.

So as you can see, there's a lot of incidents happening in our city that we respond to. We take that data and we identify where those zones are. We identify where those overdoses are happening. So one of the initiatives that we've done is we've requested from the Texas Department of Health Services to put in dispensaries, point of dispensers in those areas that have those overdoses and high overdoses. You see, we do try to cover most of the area. Again, those dispensaries are free to the public. The biggest thing with those dispensaries is that they don't make contact with individuals, right? So there's no identifiers, there's individuals, you know, don't know who it is, but it becomes available to them. Our goal is to put Narcan or 99% Loxone in the hands of those individuals that need it. By doing so, you know, we can prevent those slides from happening. I see District 1, actually there is no point of dispensing that we found because most of those things, most of those overdose are coming in encampment. So one of the things that we do is we have a mobile team that goes out there and then they meet with individuals, they provide naloxone, they educate them on it, right, to try to reduce some of those deaths. So we're working to put those point of dispensaries in those facilities. Once we do that, then we're going to go ahead and put them in the registry so that everybody that's aware can go ahead and know where those locations are at.

I would like to highlight a little bit of the heat map that fire department has placed here, because that's gonna be something critical in the way that we respond to this very complex problem. And this is done via data that has been recorded by the El Paso Fire Department. The education that we're gonna be giving is not gonna be given just to the patients, but for the people that might be involved, for those individuals that might be bystanders, for those individuals that help. Faith-based groups might be able to shelter these individuals, and they need to know how to use the medication. There has to be education at a different level, so we need to expand our view, and not just to focus in that individual group of people that have the substance use disorder. We need to focus on everybody, in the real people that are gonna be witnessing. SOME OF THESE THINGS, WE NEED TO HAVE ALSO CONTINUING EDUCATION AND HOW THE PROVIDERS, MEDICAL PROVIDERS ARE GOING TO BE ABLE TO SAFELY PRESCRIBE MEDICATIONS, HOW THEY'RE GOING TO BE AVOIDING PEOPLE DIVERTING THE PRESCRIPTION MEDICATION THAT THEY WERE GIVEN FOR THE SPECIFIC PAIN OR SPECIFIC INDICATION SO THEY WOULDN'T BE PASSING IT TO SOMEBODY ELSE, SELLING IT TO SOMEBODY ELSE, WHERE THEY'RE GOING TO BE RISKING THE LIFE OF SOMEBODY ELSE. That's why we talk about the non-traditional stakeholders. It's not going to be just the healthcare providers, it's not going to be just the people that interact on a daily basis with substance use disorder. Those mental health providers, they know how to do treatment, they know how to address these individuals. other sections of the community that need to be aware of how they're going to be able to help how they need to reincorporate these individuals into societies so they will be more successful in the in the way that they're receiving the treatment thank you doctor

Since 2018, the El Paso Police Academy has generated six Naloxone training bulletins for our SOAM personnel so the officers are able to identify and know when to administer Naloxone in the case there's a need. There's also ongoing education on substance use disorder to all our SOAM personnel. The El Paso Police Department continues to provide public awareness presentations across our community to include our high schools and our youth. And the coordination with the Humanitarian Engagement Action Response Team through HEART, the HEART initiative, which helps to educate the homeless population on the dangers of substance abuse.

As we can see, training is very, very, very important. From the time that these cadets are in training, they're gonna be receiving that education that is essential. But it's not gonna be just the education. How these patients reach to their appointment, how can we make that available? The linkage to care is particularly important as well. How we're gonna be supporting the people with substance use disorder, not just opioid use disorder, but any substance use disorder. We are in a professional shortage area. We don't have the many mental health providers that are gonna be helping us with substance use disorder because that's a very specialized area of the mental health providers. But we do have some providers and we need to bring the people that need the help and connecting to the people that can provide that help. That is how we're going to be able to be successful, even though only between 1% and 5% of the people that really know that they need the help are seeking the help. We need to increase that statistic because it's not just a number. We need to be saving lives, and every life is so important that it's not going to be just a number. We don't like to be talking to the Office of the Medical Examiner about the death. through overdoses. We need to talk about the success that we're gonna be having and the Public Safe Coalition, we're hoping to create that difference in our community in the way that we're gonna be saving lives in much broader sense. We need to collaborate with faith-based groups in which a lot of these people with substance use disorder, they rely on for shelter, they rely on for food, they rely for just that spiritual care that they need. The care that they need has to be coming from the healthcare providers, the mental health providers, but also spiritually they need to be there to provide that help. Data analytics is extremely important because data-driven decisions have to be correctly interpreted, analyzed, and then put into action. There has to be many channels in which we collect the data, and it's not gonna be just the fire department the police department as first responders. We need to see how are these individuals coming into the healthcare system? Data from hospital emergency rooms that are treating these individuals with overdoses. Are they spending nights in the hospital? Are they receiving the treatment that they need? or what else is the gaps that we need to be identifying, and that's gonna be done only with the data. We need to have a robust data collection system so we can have that analytic, and this way we can do more work for the community. We need to expand that collaboration between healthcare providers. stakeholders, first responders, and other areas that are gonna be providing the data that are gonna shed light in how we're gonna be intervene with the funds that are given to us and entrusted to us to be addressing this problem. the analytic infrastructure is going to be and the data analytics is going to be by talk by Chief Tavares and how we're going to be doing that and spending the money because we need to have a case manager. We need to have those referrals whenever we encounter somebody with an overdose. How are we going to be sending them to receive the medical care or the mental health care that they need and how we're going to be interacting all of these areas that we talk about for the bigger plan into addressing the common objective that we already spoke about.

So where does the money go? All right, so we received about 75% of the 1.2 million dollars the state has allocated for this municipality. One of the biggest things, like Dr. Ocaraza said, is that we need to find out where those gaps are. We need data. We need more data than just what our response teams goes to. We need more data than just our emergency calls. We need to put things together to really look at see where those gaps are and how do we address those gaps. Just simple example, a lot of those individuals that we have post-response, 15 of them, it's repeat calls. So we need to identify where the gap is at. Where do we go wrong? How do we get these individuals the help that they need? So one of the things the funding goes to is the data infrastructure, putting data infrastructure so that we can analyze and see where the gaps are, making sure that we have the information in the providers that we can give a warm handoff and make sure we can manage those individuals so that they don't become repeat users. So putting that together again, our first step is to make sure that we get that data. So 31% of our allocated funding is going to those analytics, putting things together. But not only that, but go ahead and establishing a closed loop referral and case management because we want this program to be successful. And then once we do that and have the data, if we start looking where the gaps are and start addressing and start distributing that funds to those gaps are. The second thing we've invested is education, educating our personnel, make sure that we have a skillful, knowledgeable workforce that can start strategizing on how do we address those overdoses, how do we address those prevention efforts.

And with that, we're happy to answer any questions.

Very good presentation. And we're going to have some questions here. I know I have a few. Dr. Carranza, on slide three. Let's see if IT can bring up slide three. There we go. So the data on this is lagging. I mean, the most current information you have is 2023. That is correct. Why does it lag that long?

Because they need to verify that information. And usually it lags about a year or two before they can release the next year's information. This is according to the CDC, and they have that information, and sometimes it lacks a little bit on that information. The Office of the Medical Examiner, they just released the information for 2025, I believe, or 2024 as well. That's why.

Okay, and do we know the numbers are trending down like they did in 23?

Well, we need to look these numbers very cautiously. And even though it seems like it's trending down, it might be trending down for the opioids deaths, but it might be trending up for other drugs. Depending on the fashion and depending on what is circulating in the streets and the communities, we might see the stimulus such as methamphetamine might have a comeback in the number of deaths related to those that can be increasing. So looking at the overall substance use disorder and then look at individual at each drug, then that can give you an idea of what is happening. But unfortunately, we're still having many deaths. And as you can see, from the 2000 all the way to 2023, almost 25 years, we don't see a downward trend. We see an upward trend that is very concerning, especially over the last five years.

Yeah. And a huge disparity between male and female there. On this graph, it shows the males.

It's over two, two and a half times males over females, which is definitely sad. But every life lost is very concerning.

Right, and then on slide 13. We talked about the AED cabinets and, you know, where there's 95 located throughout the city. So the Naloxone AED cabinets, how do we get that information out again to the public?

In the city of Texas, right, every AED that's put into service in the city of Texas has to be registered with EMS. We have to be notified. So we actually use a PulsePoint application, that's what it's called, where we track all those AEDs, the location of it, where they get registered. And so that information is available to the public. So individuals that download that application that's free can see where those are. And also when emergencies happen, certain emergencies that happen, such as cardiac arrest or opioid overdose, if they're signed up for it and they're in your vicinity, you will send them that notification so that they can take quick action and respond and save a life.

Very good. And then on slide 15. And you might have touched on this, but I noticed District 2 and District 6 were missing. Yes.

So again, our data where we selected those points of dispensing was where we're going to identify the locations where they have the highest overdose rates. So we are limited in the points of dispensing that we're able to get from the state. So we want to make sure that wherever they were selected or wherever they were put, that was going to be where we have the most overdoses. So that's based on the overdose incidents.

Okay.

We continue to review the data as we move forward and we accumulate more data, then we're always going to be able to change them around and make sure that they're effective. Not only that, but where they're located and see how effective they are.

Okay, because looking at the heat map, it appears that there's activity in those areas too, but maybe I'm looking at it wrong.

No, no, there is activity. So every district has activity. But again, because we're limited in the resources that we can bring here, that's why we selected where they're going to be the most impactful.

Okay, very good. Thank you, Chief. Representative Trejo.

And for the record, Representative Rocha joined the meeting at 935 and Representative Canales at 932. Representative Trejo.

Thank you, Mayor. Good morning.

Good morning.

I have a few questions. Page, slide 13. So you mentioned the training is administered for the Pulse Point training. How many people do you have trained in that? And how many are just regular citizens?

Yes, ma'am. You're asking them, sorry, the question was how many people we have trained?

Right, for the Pulse Point training?

Our whole department has been trained for the training bulletins that came out in 2018. In 2018, we've been doing training bulletins in regards to naloxone and the use and how to identify the need and how to administer it.

So you have the training, for example, you have these cabinets in all these areas, and the people need to be trained to be able to administer the medicine or what is it called, the naloxone? The naloxone. Uh-huh.

As far as the training, our officers have naloxone with them, and they're trained on how to identify when they have to use it and how to administer when the need is there. I don't know what...

So if they have this medicine at these different locations, are the employees or the people there trained to use this to help an individual who is OD'd?

yes ma'am so we we offer the training right now it's up to every department to determine whether they want their individuals to be mandatory training but we've been offering this training since 2023 that we put the street together so it is on ep learners and so departments can sign up and make sure that you know they have the training again it includes uh aed usage it includes uh hands-only cpr and also how to use naloxone and it's also suffered to the public So we try to train as many individuals as we can. The last numbers I saw for people that were signed up for the application was a little over 1,200 individuals that have signed up for the application. We continue to promote that to get more individuals to sign up to be able to jump into action if needed.

Okay. Do you have them in high schools as well?

Do we have them in high schools? That I'm not sure because that is really where the district

Sorry, Chief. Within the school, the Texas Education Agency has made a mandate in which naloxone is available in all the schools. It is by a mandate that they need to be having, and the school nurses are trained to be delivering that.

Okay. Let's see. The funding that has been received for the opioid, is that only for that, or is it for any other type of drugs?

Well, it was received for opioid use disorder. But as you can see, the interventions that we're going to be seeing, it's going to be covering substance use disorder. So that is the behavioral health that we need to be providing. That's why only having naloxone available is only going to be treating one drug. But if we give education to the community, if we give that linkage to care, if we do some other interventions, they will be able to address the broader picture, which is the substance use disorder, which include the hallucinogens. It's going to include some stimulus, such as cocaine, methamphetamine. And all those individuals, they have a lot of things in common. and that is why they're using the specific drug, how we're gonna be addressing because the behavioral health specialists are gonna be the ones that can treat not just the opioid use disorder, but they can treat the substance use disorder, not just specifically to the opiates, but they can treat some other substances as well.

Okay, thank you.

And then here where you have it by district, do you have the numbers of the overdoses by district?

I'm sure we can get that information. Again, that's data we use to plot our heat map, so I'm sure we can separate it by district.

Okay. Yes, I'd like to see what that looks like in my district. Yes, ma'am. Please, thank you.

Let's see.

And then on slide 21, when you go into the data analytics, who's going to be gathering it, and how soon will you have it? What is the timeline for that? on slide 21.

So data leaks is aware, right? Actually, right now we're working up a criminal process, so we are working with fix. They have a lot of the data already. They have a lot of the resources already within within their data sharing, so we did look at other other providers, but because it fixes the local. Exchange information, then it was more suitable to have them continue to gather some of the data. Put all data together to be able to go ahead and have the overall picture.

What's the deadline for that?

Well, we're going through the procurement process. We hopefully have it before summer's over.

Before summer, OK. And then once you have the data, when are you expected to start the education part of that?

So the education we already started. The data is going to allow us to identify gaps. Like I said, you know, one simple thing is close-loop referrals. You know, how many of those individuals that we're actually doing post overdose response, how many individuals are really following up with the resources that are provided, whether those resources are, you know, good or whether we need to do more follow-ups. So that's one of the things that's going to help us is not only capture what we're doing, but also what success are we having with it. And so looking at that and identifying where those gaps are to be able to not build a system for opioids, but build a system for substance abuse in general. So like Dr. Osei says, you know, if things change, the drugs change, then we want infrastructure to be able to address all overdoses.

You mentioned working with faith-based groups. Who's reaching out to them or how do they get in touch?

The fire department and public health has already established a good relationship with them. And whenever we need some assistance, we definitely have that formal and informal channels in which we establish and strengthen that communication with faith-based groups. So it's not just one department, it's the coalition as a whole that is establishing that. Going back a little bit to the Paso del Norte Health Information Exchange fix, they're the biggest local repository of data that we have in our community. All the hospitals participate, many healthcare providers participate, fire department participate, in which is making a very robust way that we can collect information, analyze, and we need to decide what is gonna be the data points that are gonna be important to have a public facing information, so this way public will be better informed in how we're tackling this very complex problem.

A faith based organization, who would they reach out to if they want to get more information on training for this?

They can reach out to public health. They can reach out to the fire department. Either one of us will, and I'm happy to answer any questions to any of them as well. I've talked to the bishop, Bishop Seitz. He's a very big advocate of public health, and we're very appreciative of all the help and public assistance that he provides to especially the most vulnerable groups of the population.

Very good.

Thank you.

Representative Chavez.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the wonderful presentation. I think this is very important for our community to understand where we are and what we're doing about it. On slide seven, if we could go back to that real quick, it talks about the different substance users addictions. And I think, if I'm not mistaken, is cocaine the biggest SUD we have, Dr. Carranza, in our community?

Cocaine is coming back, even though sometimes the cost of the drug is a factor that influences which drug is being used in the street. And I'm sure the police department has seen those transitions between one drug or another drug. The cocaine, as you can see, it is in the blue line, how it's starting to come up. It was going down, but then it starts coming up depending on the year. But methamphetamine, which is a very cheap drug out on the street, has caused a lot of deaths.

So we're constantly monitoring access and also deaths related to substance abuse?

Yes, and it's not only just one drug. And most of the drugs that the Office of the Medical Examiner categorizes, it's a multi or polysubstance use. So it's not only one because many of these people use different kind of drugs, not just the cocaine.

Okay. Can I ask Chief Briones? Chief, I know that our K9 unit is very effective. Are they constantly monitoring cocaine usage across our city, or what are we doing about that? Because I do see that it's increasing.

Yes, like the doctor said, we go to certain trends. Again, fentanyl was a big cause of a lot of overdose-related deaths in the last couple of years. We do work with other law enforcement partners, such as DEA, to go after the dealers who are providing these drugs and causing the deaths and overdoses. So we work together with the responding to situations like that. But to answer your question, ma'am, yes, our canine unit, as well as our power officers, our officers in general, they're monitoring and see what the trend is in regards to drug usage in our community. And we have seen a spike in cocaine, marijuana, the marijuana that is used, not synthetic marijuana, which is very dangerous. It's also seen a spike in that also.

Okay, yeah, I just thought that was interesting just to make sure that we're monitoring it. In terms of Narcan, the latest report says we've administered 12 dosages this year to nine recipients. And I know that you also mentioned repeat callers or repeat offenders. I don't know what data you could show in comparison to other years about the Narcan.

So we have some data, but I think one of the things is that, you know, it's challenging because we used to classify overdose and the use of Narcan for many years. Well, you know, sometimes we use Narcan for other reasons, right? When, for example, unexplained death, where it could be one of those factors. So as we move forward, we started filtering some of the data, becoming, you know, getting more acquainted with that data. So we do have some data available that we've been tracking that we can probably share. as far as the overdoses and number of overdoses happening every year.

Yeah, and thank you so much for that. Back to Chief Briones real quick. Chief, could you touch real quickly and talk about the CIT team and how they collaborate and how they're also a part of this in preventing probably some overdoses and everything that they're doing also out on the field?

Yes, as you know, our crisis intervention team is very, very effective in what they do, dealing with mental health crisis, but also on people that are, they also come across people that are not necessarily going to a mental crisis at that time, but might be under the influence of a narcotic or such. Of course, the most important thing is to provide the aid to them to make sure they're safe. follow up with long-term care through EHN to make sure that these people are receiving the treatment needed. And I know that tomorrow there's an item in regards to the diversion center, which I think is gonna be very positive for this city. where we could take individuals, a CIT team could take individuals that are suffering from a substance abuse disorder or a mental crisis and committing low-level offenses and instead of taking them to jail, go to a diversion center where they could seek long-term treatment which will help in preventing them from reoffending. Our CIT team is very, very effective in everything they do when it comes to that.

Yeah, and I have no doubt, even though we probably don't have the data to show it, that they have been a big part in preventing overdoses and other health issues and crisis in our community. So thank you for that. Thank you for the team and thank you for every single department that's a part of this process because at the end of the day, this is one of our pillars as a city to make sure that we continue to keep our community safe and health is directly tied to safety. So thank you all for the work that you're doing. I appreciate it.

Representative Acevedo.

Thank you, Mayor. This is really great information, really great data. I appreciate how you package this. I wanted some of my questions have been answered. So I wanted to ask you specifically about slide 20. You have an OUD surveillance system in procurement. And when I think surveillance, I get a little bit anxious. So can you tell me a little bit more about that? Is information going to be protected? Is it gonna be shared with someone? How is that going to happen?

Well, the reason to choose FIX, Paso del Norte Health Information Exchange, is because they have the infrastructure, they have the technology, they have the means to protect that information, safeguard that information, and only providing that information that is de-identified in the way that we can use it in a higher level to provide the right analytics and the right that we can definitely act upon.

So this is for fix.

Yeah, I just wanna, Dr. Oh, can you just give him the bigger picture about how we talk about surveillance systems in health, how we're looking for trends in our community, how healthcare providers are using that data, so he'll have a bigger picture about how this sort of fits within that.

Definitely. The way that we do surveillance is we choose a specific topic, let's say opioids. And the way that they're opioids, they're going to be categorized in either ICD-10 codes, which are the diagnostic codes that we use. And all the hospitals are going to be receiving the non-fatal overdoses. All that information is going to be sent to the central repository, which is going to be fixed. And FIX is going to be providing that information and how many non-fatal overdoses were done between January and December, a specific year, so we can act and create that surveillance. There's something called syndromic surveillance in which we choose respiratory conditions. Those respiratory conditions can be either pneumonia, upper respiratory tract infections. other kind of respiratory infections that are going to be consistent into a big amount of information that we see, including over-the-counter medications that have been used. And that's the way that in public health we see when they start spanking, we start sending messages. We start implementing that prevention strategy in the way that we are acting upon that specific information.

Okay, so this is for FICS.

That's fixed the one that keeps that information and sends that de-identified information.

Okay, and FIX is a really great tool that we have in our community. It's exceptional and it's grown over the years. I remember when like eight years ago when they were still trying to get one of the private hospitals on board and that was really difficult. I guess what threw me off here is that it said that this was in procurement. Like I thought you were still waiting for this to go through, but we're already a part of FIX.

We're a part of FICS, but now we have to have a special contract for this type of surveillance for this particular program with the areas that they're asking for. So we do pay for FICS and we have other contracts with FICS for some of the other programs that we have in public health. And so we would be just adding this to it.

Okay, perfect. That sounds great. I'm glad that we're doing that. And then I guess when it comes to distributing Narcan throughout the city and kind of looking at heat maps that we have, funding is something that keeps coming up from the state. Is there any other way of getting more funding or are we limited? Are there areas maybe like a top five that you want to expand to and we're waiting on more funding, Chief?

I'm going to ask Robert to talk about the opioid settlement. Okay. We have quite a few years of funding that are available, and we didn't give you proper context at 21, so you can see the big picture.

Good morning. Good morning. So we have several settlements, and there's, it seems like, a new settlement occurring every year. And just for the record. Robert Cortinas, good morning. Thank you. Thank you. The manager's office. So these settlements are occurring sort of randomly, and so there have been several settlements that have occurred. The terms of these settlements vary depending upon the pharmacy or the distributor of these type of pharmaceuticals. Some of these settlements range from anywhere from a six-year payback over to 18-year time period. And so it's going to be multiple years that we'll continue to receive funding. BUT THE CITY, THE LOCAL MUNICIPALITY, THE CITY RECEIVES A VERY, VERY SMALL PORTION OF THE OVERALL SETTLEMENT. SO NOT ONLY THE CITY RECEIVES FUNDING, THE COUNTY ALSO RECEIVES MORE THAN DOUBLE WHAT THE CITY ACTUALLY RECEIVES. BUT A LARGE PORTION OF THIS FUNDING IS GOING DIRECTLY TO HOSPITALS. SO I BELIEVE IT'S ABOUT 15% OF THE OVERALL SETTLEMENT AMOUNT IS COMING BACK TO LOCAL MUNICIPALITIES. It's very very helpful funding to be able to address some of these issues locally what the city is doing and what you've heard today But again, it's a small portion of the overall plan Settlement that's being distributed. So But there is also grant opportunities. So there's additional funding that obviously the state is collecting So the state is managing again that 85% and so there will be grant opportunities to be able to assist in the future to be able to continue to provide the services. And so one of the discussions that we had when we were preparing this presentation is ensuring that we were able to continue this type of program into the future. And so we do have, again, those settlement funds that will continue to come in over the next several years and then continue to take advantage of any grant opportunities that will be available as well.

Okay, thank you for providing the context. Appreciate it.

Just to clarify, sir, I know that we have it in dollars. We have about $536,000 that we have on hand, and that we continue to add to it. We probably shouldn't have put it in thousands like on the last slide, slide 21.

Okay, thank you. Representative Canales.

In regards to the funding, and I'm sorry, Representative, in regards to the funding, it is very small amount of funding to tackle a big problem. And a lot of those things, we're working with interventions that many times do not require funding, such as that education, such as the teams that we have. We utilize all the resources that we already have, and therefore, the Public Safety Coalition can make a big difference in the community. We had a recent Education for the healthcare providers in which we brought in pain specialists special agent from the Drug Enforcement Administration and myself talking about the problem and how we're gonna be able to coordinate between all the healthcare providers and that was free to all the healthcare providers that was free to Allah all of us in the city so we can best utilize the resources in the manner that is going to be producing the most positive effect. Representative Canales, I'm sorry.

No problem. And I apologize. I'm having a health issue with myself this morning, so you get a few minutes of voice out of me, I think. So I missed a portion of your presentation this morning. So forgive me if I ask you a question that you've already explained. Representative Anello and I, former Representative Anello and I, proposed the resolution that directed a lot of this work back in May 2023. So it's taken some time, but I'm happy to see how far it's come along. And thank you to both the police department, the fire department, and the health department and yourself, Dr. Carranza, for all the work and many others, of course, to get this moving in the way that we had hoped in 2023. I'm sure the city manager can attest I've been a little bit annoying about the naloxone in the cabinets. She's nodding her head yes for anybody watching at home. I like to spot check those cabinets when I go to our facilities to see if we have it available. And on slide 13, we had a list of naloxone and AED cabinets. Are we fully stocked now? Can we say we have naloxone deployed at all of those facilities?

There's a lot more work to do. And that's why we're not going to be just happy with the way that we have it. We need to expand. And as you saw with all those cabinets, they're spread across all the districts and all the city. We are having that conversation with the county in which we need to collaborate. Collaboration is going to be big. because the lack of resources. We all don't have all the resources as a county, as a city, but if we collaborate, we'll be able to address different areas because in the judicial system, there's gonna be a lot of the people that have the substance use disorder that is involved in the judicial system. And it's not just gonna be given in the Narcan. It's gonna give them the help that they need. We need not to just save the life for one day. We need to save a life for the duration of the rest of their life.

Yeah, of course. But I think both are important. I think it's important to have the naloxone on hand as well for the emergent situation where we need it.

Yes, definitely. It's one of those strategies of the harm reduction, definitely. And we will continue having most likely more of those. And there's the vending machines that also we're receiving from the state. And those vending machines, they're going to be available to the people depending on where we see with the data. That is mostly... and need it and we're stuck in also those vending machines with some other prevention strategies such as sexual health such as some other public health topics that is important that people besides getting the naloxone they're going to be able to receive that kind of information as well okay so i'll keep spot checking my my cabinets as i move around my district definitely hope you feel better um

I'm looking back through the resolution from 2023, and I just wanted to ask about a few of the things that were directed to understand where we stand on different parts of what we had asked for back then. I know, for example, it's in the presentation, We've supplied first responder vehicles. That was one of the biggest things that we asked for. I know that was the police department moved very quickly to get naloxone aboard all of the vehicles, and so did the fire department. And I think they had already had quite a lot of their vehicles supplied. So very happy with that progress. The facilities as well, the city public facing facilities was one of the big asks in that resolution. One of the big things we asked for and we had a lot of them present on that day in May 2023 was forming new partnerships with a lot of the organizations that work in this area. The Harm Reduction Alliance, Project Vida, Punta de Partida, Recovery Alliance. What is the status of the collaboration with the community organizations in this space?

I participated in some of the meetings with Recovery Alliance. I've extended the collaboration with the county as well. I've been in contact with them. With some of the other groups, definitely there's different groups that have a specific aim. Some of them or most of them are gonna be having the harm reduction strategies. How do we extend, and that's what we're working now, and how do we extend to provide treatment? What is it that these individuals that provide substance use disorder treatment. How can we get the patients to them? How are they going to be expanding their capacity? Because we're a health professional shortage area, as mentioned previously. And those are the things that we need to think in a broader sense, and not just the harm reduction, but in a more comprehensive plan. And therefore, we developed that plan. We developed the way that we're going to be working. And we continue to establish those partnerships with even non-traditional stakeholders, which I think it is extremely important that we get other people involved into this.

One of the other things that resolution directed was to explore the creation of a city run or city supported needle exchange program, potentially with one or multiple of the other local providers.

um have we ex have we made that exploration at all in the in the last three years not yet we haven't done that exploration yet we need to know what the problem is do we have a problem with needles here in our city or is the bigger problem with other ways of delivering drugs to the people that have the substance use disorder and that information many times the police department the fire department may have that And we need to start exploring all those different variables in which we're going to be able to address some of those. Other cities may have that problem that is bigger, making that needle exchange program a lot more successful than testing some of the drugs or seeing what the prevalence of the specific drugs are on the street, what are going to be the trends that we're seeing in regards to the substance use. out on the street. So all those variables we need to zoom, localize to our city and look at the problem a little bit closer. If we don't know what the problem is, how we're gonna be addressing it and that is something that definitely is an area that we need to be exploring as well.

Okay. Yeah, I would ask that we engage in that exploration that we redirected back in 23. Actually, since then, in the 88th session in the legislature, HB 1403, specifically carved out El Paso County, together with a few other counties, as an eligible county for a pilot needle exchange program. Just a handful of them. The state identified that there is an issue in El Paso. municipalities across the state mode for the most part are not allowed to implement a needle exchange but El Paso was specifically granted the ability to and so I would ask that that's something that we can we look to explore as the the council directed in 23 we you talked at length about fix and the role that they play in in the data gathering and I know some of the questions before kind of hinted at this but we also directed the creation of a public-facing data dashboard on this issue. And we have several years now of data from FIX. I wonder if that's something that we can work toward implementation of as well.

Yeah, we will be working on getting the public-facing dashboard. We need to identify what's going to be the data points that need to be reflected for the community to see and how that is making progress into the bigger problem. And definitely, once we continue finishing with it, different contract that we have with fixed because public health has been working for many years now in many other circumstances and city manager mentioned as soon as we finish that that is going to be dedicated for the opioid use disorder or opiate settlement funds definitely we will be having that

okay and then the last part of the resolution directed the creation of a few different informational campaigns and and i think there was a very robust campaign for the public about opioid use and overdose and even the use of naloxone i recall that happening in like maybe 2024 and i was very happy with that portion it also directed an education campaign for healthcare providers on prescribing practices for pain management and other symptoms of substance use disorder. It talked about an education campaign for providers about prescribing medication-assisted treatment programs. Do you know if anything like that was ever rolled out for providers from the public health department or from somewhere else?

The best example is the educational session that we have through the in which it was June 2026 that we provided another session of education for healthcare providers in which we provided two hours of continuing medical education ethics which is required to renew your medical license the Texas Medical Board requires hours of continuing education that is going to be in different topics but some of those are going to be in opioid and pain management strategies if you want to renew also the Drug Enforcement Administration certificate which is a license to prescribe schedule to to five medications, you need to have at least eight hours of opioid continuing education. So we are able to provide that, and we were able to provide a free of charge to the healthcare provider with the two hours of continuing education that they can use for renewal of their medical license. So that was very successful. We have good attendance and good turnout of healthcare providers with that session. We will continue doing those, and this is not gonna be the only one that we're gonna be doing. And as public health, we continue to address different issues that are affecting our community. And substance use disorder is one of those that is gonna be continued coming for the healthcare providers to take advantage for.

And you said Board of RAC was the partner on that particular course?

Yes, Board of RAC was the one that helped us out and provided the continuing education credits.

Okay. Please don't take any of my questions to mean that I'm not very happy with the work that you all have done. I think we've made a ton of progress on this from where we were in 2023. And to be honest, I think the... The wide availability now of the nasal naloxone, the nasal delivered naloxone, has made a huge difference. It's so much easier to administer than the auto injector. And so I think the public just has a better understanding of naloxone and how to use it and what it does. And just that general awareness has been very helpful. And I think the campaigns that you all have done to raise awareness, both in the public and amongst providers, have been very helpful. I appreciate all of that. I just don't want to lose sight of the other things that we directed. It's been now more than three years, and I don't want those to fall by the wayside necessarily. I know this was a multi-year strategy to roll a lot of this out.

Yes, and we're very appreciative of all the input, all the questions, because you guys are the voice of who you represent. And this is a great example of how all that is going to be shaping the way that we tackle the problem. But we appreciate that, and we thank you very much.

And I feel it greatly. You look on the map, and that heat map is the brightest in District 8. And I feel it when I read in the news or hear from the police department that there's been an overdose death. And so I just want to make sure that we're addressing all those concerns. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor.

Yep. Representative Nino.

Thank you, Mayor and Dick.

Thank you, Mary, and thank you, Dr. O, Chief Tavares, and Chief Briones as well for this important work. I had a lot of questions, but a lot of them have already been asked. But I was doing research also in regards of the actual opiate sentiment here in Texas. So my understanding was that it was a $3.3 billion settlement over an 18-year period to remediate the harms caused by the opioid epidemic. But in regards of slide number 21, where it shows the education, the data analytics, and the uncommitted funds. The uncommitted funds is meaning we have those funds, however, they're not specifically set to how many expenditure at this time until we find the means to do those expenditures, correct?

That's correct. I think the team has said a lot of our costs and expenses are really related to staffing and we're not charging that you know those hard costs against because it's really the work of the team which really allows us to be able to build some of the things that representative canal has talked about something the dashboards. When we get the information from FIX, that's really where our cost centers are going to be in a lot of this. We also know that although we will be getting some money coming in, it is not going to probably be a huge amount, and so I think we're thinking strategically about how we use those dollars for costs and expenses that are not a part of our normal operation. For example, the training things that we've done, we're using our own platforms. We have e-learners that we allow the public to use. We already pay for that, and so we're not charging some of those things against these funds.

Great, question for you all. I know the county also receives settlement funds. What kind of coordination are we doing with them in regards of that we're not doing the same work at the same time and using the same settlement funds?

That is a great question because that is something that we don't want to duplicate services. They are doing a lot of the work with the judicial system in which we have no jurisdiction. Police departments see some of those, but I talked to Joel Bishop about that and there has been recently within the last couple of weeks or one week, requests for information in which they're, what is it that they're gonna be doing with those funds that the county's doing. But we'll continue to have the conversation. We firmly believe in collaboration as previously mentioned. Collaboration is gonna be the right formula for success in which we can apply funding, we can apply talent, we can apply many other positive things into this bigger problem. And that's a way that we're gonna be able to do it.

And what was the total amount of settlement funds that the city received, Ms. Mack, do we know?

I only remember one funding source. Do you have a number? A little over 900,000?

Perfect, correct. And then so, also in the research that I was doing, I was seeing how part of this settlement, the 15% went directly to participating counties and municipalities, 15% went to the state of Texas to administer opiate abatement efforts, and then 70% went to the Texas Opiate Abatement Trust Funds to grant competitive grants and regional grants allocations are we applying for different grants also to this specific settlement fund.

Believe that we've seen anywhere we have thank you chief.

Yes, Sir, we continue to apply for grants again, you know we look at every opportunity to be able to feel those roles so recently just apply for a grant this year and so we're going to keep up with those folks come up.

Great. Yeah, because I know that it was 70% of those at $3.3 billion settlement that got allocated specifically for those grants. So thank you for, you know, being proactive and applying and we want to ensure that we try to, you know, maximize, you know, any funding that we could receive to support all of our services and continue to do this important work. So thank you for all your work, ma'am and team. Thank you. No further questions.

Okay. Representative Limon.

Thank you. And doctor could answer I'm looking at slides 15 and 19 and trying to reconcile the 2 slides the first one 15 shows the legend shows us the sparse and then goes on to the dense. Point of dispensing and so it looks like. In that tip right down there the the yellow. A spot that would be

Was that District 8?

That's a downtown area, correct? Okay, and so then as I look at 19, though, it seems like the darker area is more north? What district would that be in?

Sorry. That might be part of District 2? but that is just an example of that information that we can extract from FICS, and that's why I put that information there. Even though those are the number of patients that we're receiving, there's a hospital there in that area.

Okay, I see. All right, and I was just wondering because with that density that it appears to be possibly that area that we have two, five, and six districts without points of dispensing. Is this in progress? We're moving into more dispensaries?

And there's some other areas of the city where city property has those naloxone dispensing, but.

Probably need to put them on one slide ma'am. So you'll see on slide 13 the 22 community centers are our rec centers I think we've done all the libraries the vending machines are going in different locations And so as a team, I think are pulling this information together Maybe we just put it in one place so you can see where it is across the map, but even the the dispensers that we had the we just rolled out some things maybe three months ago and

yes yes so we we uh requested those from the state those come from the state they're supplied by the state so uh we like said we're limited in the one number that we can get so like i said we wouldn't put them in locations where they're being most most impactful uh for example you know on district one district one there is no real location for us to put it because it's the encampment that we get a lot of the overdoses so we actually in that situation we have teams go out there constantly you know to go there and provide those resources But we continue to evaluate and as it changes and we'll relocate those point of dispensing to make sure that we have the most impact locations.

Very good, thank you very much. Thank you, Dr. Carranza.

Very good presentation. Just observation on slide seven. IT LOOKS LIKE WHEN YOU LOOK AT THE FENTANYL DATA, RIGHT DURING THE PANDEMIC IT SPIKED. YES. AND THEN IT'S NORMALIZING LIKE MOST THINGS NOW. BUT WE SAW A SPIKE IN FENTANYL, WE SAW A SPIKE IN METHAMPHENAMINES AND OTHER THINGS. SO DO PANDEMICS NORMALLY CAUSE

spikes in... It is an interesting observation and definitely you can see all across the state. I was looking at the data for the non-fatal overdoses that is reported by the state and there was a peak around 22, 23 coming out of the pandemic. As you have restrictions, people were doing A lot of activities, and those include risk-taking behaviors. Risk-taking behaviors can be that specifically, the use of drugs, the use of other substances, because they were not able to go out. They were not able to go to public places where they used to get their supply of different drugs or different activities. And that is a great observation, Mayor.

Very good. Very good presentation, too. Thank you guys so much. Thank you, Dr. Earl. Thank you very much. Thank you, guys.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Ms. Prine?

Yes, sir. Item number two is a presentation on water supply and infrastructure serving Northeast El Paso and Medici.

Good morning, John.

Good morning, Mayor, Council, John Ballew with El Paso Water Utilities. I appreciate the opportunity to get together and talk about the water supply and infrastructure planning. I'd like to just comment in general before I start off. So we have been doing water planning for El Paso for many, many decades. The current system that the state of Texas utilizes, we've been in on from the beginning. So whenever there is vacant land, we have already planned for how the water and wastewater services are going to be provided to that land. And so when a customer comes out, it doesn't really matter what the customer is. We have generally provided the water and wastewater infrastructure that's necessary. So I want to talk about how that takes place. There we go. So we have a planning process. And the purpose of that planning process is to safeguard the future of El Paso when it comes to water and wastewater infrastructure. We do have master plans for Northeast El Paso. We have more than one so at least four right off the top of my head but for the area in question I'm going to talk about two plans that we have had way back in the past and Then number three is how the projected water use for the meta site fits into that planning so The Texas Water Development Board is the agency that the state of Texas has that provides funding for water and wastewater infrastructure and provides planning for water and wastewater infrastructure. The planning process is a cyclical process. So it is based on decadal planning that you renew every five years. And so in January, the Texas Water Development Board approved the 26 regional water plans. And so these 16 plans come together, these 16 regions come together, and that's the state water plan. And this is the sixth time that this particular process has been done. Prior to those six cycles, there were other processes done, but they fine-tuned it. So this five-year planning cycle projects demands for the next 50 years so update Every five years, decadal planning for a 50-year horizon. So the projects that are identified in that plan become eligible for the financial products that the Texas Water Development Board has, both grant and loan programs. You have to have a project in the plan in order to get funding. And the planning begins, the next cycle of planning begins next year. We have to be already starting next year to be ready for the 2031 planning cycle. So this is the region that El Paso is in. So this seven-county region in the far west part of the state, El Paso is by far the biggest urban center, and so we collaborate with a bunch of small communities in putting together a package that's necessary to comply with the state for this region. So basically, we have... The starting point for all this is population. We need to have the population projection and that population number comes to us from the state of Texas. We do not do our own planning when it comes to the population. The population estimates provided to us ultimately through the state demographer, the Texas Water Development Board to us. And then we assess the current supplies. Can those supplies meet that population demand? If not, then we calculate what sort of strategies are needed to be able to put in water projects to be able to meet that demand. And then that is the development of the regional plan. It goes to the Texas Water Development Board for review, along with all the other regions, and then that creates the state plan. So we just got that approved, and now we're gonna go back and start the whole planning process again. So as I mentioned, the starting point is population, but really the population gives you the demand. How much water is going to be needed for the system going forward into the future? Again, in a five year horizon, a 10 year horizon, and a 50 year horizon, how much water is necessary? And then the next part is the supply so start with the demand then the supply how much water do we have if we don't have the water then we have the water management strategies, how are we going to come up with the water, how are we going to manage the water to supplies that we have in order to meet that demand. So back in 2021, which is the five years ago in the planning cycle, the yellow line that you see there was the projected population. And it's a significant upturn in what we actually see now. So when we receive the population estimates for the 2026 plan that we just completed, which is the blue bars there, you can see that that trend is still an upward trend, but it is less certainly less than than the 2021 plan and so i'm sure you've heard these kind of numbers coming from the school district and from other other locations that yes the population is dropping the birth rate is dropping and so the demand is projected to be down and so we're we're following that demand However, from the standpoint of the actual data that we have, so we know exactly, the population, of course, we're estimating, but we know exactly how many meters we put into the system, how many net new meters that we put into the system. And we're doing, this past year, we did 1,700 net new meters. That number typically varies between 1,500 and 3,500, maybe in a BRAC year where we have a big influx of people coming in, maybe 3,500. So from our standpoint, the demand right now is normal demand, but we're projecting that that demand will be slowing. Okay, so how do we get the supply? So that's population, demand, and then supply. So currently, And by current, I mean in the drought year that we are in right now, the drought season, 57% of the supply comes from the Hueca Bolson. Ideally, that would be less than 50%, and the river would be producing more, but this is where we are at this point. So we have the Wekaboson east side, the Masiaboson on the west side. We have a reuse component and Rio Grande. Within that Wekaboson is also the desalination plant. So that's where the supplies are coming from at present. We have our two aquifers and just as a reminder, we share these aquifers with Mexico and Mexico. The Rio Grande, we also share. And so we are coming off of a Supreme Court case. I'm sure that you read about it, a settlement between Texas and New Mexico. It's a long-running case that spanned about 12, 13 years. There's a settlement coming from that. In general terms, Texas will end up getting more surface water from the Rio Grande. And as a customer of the irrigation district that supplies that water in the state of Texas, we anticipate that we will be getting additional surface water supplies. However, of course, there's still drought, still subject to drought. The water supply goes up and down based on the snowpack in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. We will be getting more of that. But there is a component of that settlement that does affect us, I'm going to use the word adversely, which is to say that our Maceo Bolson pumpage is going to be capped at a certain level. So the growth that happens on the west side, we have to figure out, okay, since our current planning process is we just increased the pumpage from the Maceo Bolson, now we're going to have to do something different. But we do need, even with this limited population growth that we're forecasting, additional million gallons per day of water every decade going forward for the next five decades. And how those strategies come about is, well, we need different water projects to come online successively in order to meet that demand. So here in this bar chart, which is in acre feet units and an acre foot is a big amount of water, 325,800 gallons of water. The blue bar represents the existing supply. That's how much we can supply right now. The yellow represents how much additional supply is needed for that small amount of population increase that we're forecasting for the decade. And in that yellow bar for 2030, of course 2030 is right around the corner, we have three projects coming online. to do that, which is the expansion of the Kay Bailey Hutchison Plant, the Aquifer Storage and Recovery, and the Pure Water Center. So those projects are taken care of. And each decade that you see there, those yellow bars in the State Water Plan, there are projects specifically related to meet those demands. OK master plans we did 2 different master plans for Northeast and so the the colored area that you see there were those plans so whenever you do a plan of this of this nature you have to estimate what kinds of. Development is going to take place. So there's going to be some residential. There's going to be some commercial So the 2006 master plan is what I would consider a normal Development like we would typically do in El Paso, which was heavy on the residential component and You see in the blue circle there being the blue square representing the location of the better site That This master plan, as I mentioned, was a normal, typically residential site. So if you take that footprint of the meta site, the 1,038 acres I believe is the number, you superimpose that upon the existing plan. So remember, back when that plan was done, we did not necessarily know anything about data centers. So this is just customers that we have to estimate what type of customers are coming into the system. So we plop down that meta, we superimpose it on here in a residential area, 2.3 million gallons per day of demand for just a normal residential development. The 2.3 number, if you compare, and I'm gonna talk about the demands for the metadata center, but in the contract, there are numbers in there. And the highest number in that contract is 2.5 million gallons per day. That's the cumulative peak. So you can see this compares very well with the metacyte. Now if you add a little bit different type of mixture, and this was done in 2009, where there's a more industrial, more commercial type of activity in the same area, Then superimpose the meta on that. That is 3.7 million gallons per day. So that's actually more water than the meta site would be using on the same footprint. okay so projected water use so we know that there is a contract and there are numbers in in that contract but the actual usage we have to estimate and we have to come up with okay what are the size of lines that we need what are the size of meters and so we come up with a a projection so just to to talk about how Meta uses water for their cooling purposes. So most of the time, air is used to cool the data center. So whenever the temperature is less than 86 degrees, air blowing through the system is cooling the data center. So once the temperature goes over 86 degrees, water starts to be added to the system. The hotter the temperature, the more water is added to it. The evaporation of the water Causes the further cooling of the air as it goes through the system so this particular day here is a hundred and seventeen degree day and that's number significant because that's how that's the number that's baked into the contract that comes up with a 2.5 Now, there has never been a 217-degree day in El Paso. There's only been a 114-degree day. But anyway, here, this is an illustration, if you will. So you can see that every hour that's through there with an estimated... demand for water there's times when the water demand is very low even on a 117 degree day because there's only a few hours of high temperature in a day where the water use is going to be at maximum so when we compare I'm going to give you a number there that 480 000 gallons per day if we take a model of climate temperature humidity and we determine how much water we estimate that meta will be using on an annual average basis 480 000 gallons per day because many days during the course of the year they're not going to be using any water and even on a peak summer triple digit day they're not going to be using that water 24 hours during the course of that time so when we talk about the 2.5 million gallons per day that is a number which is normally not going to be reached and if it is reached it's going to be for a matter of a few hours during the course of a 24-hour day So in reality, when we're talking about a comparison of water from the plans that I showed you previously, those are based on 24-hour averages. So really, in terms of a 24-hour average over the 365 days in the year, that's 480,000 gallons per day. So more than likely, they're going to be using that 2.5 only when the temperature is 117 degrees. And where did they come up with this? Well, they're basing it on climate forecasts going forward into the future. So we feel that the system that we negotiated with META is a very efficient use of water supply in this area. It is now different from any other type of development that would take place in that area. All right, so if we look at how much water do we distribute to our customers? So right now, without any meta, we have 34.5 billion gallons of water a year that we sell to our customers. Now, of those customers, we have a certain subset of those which we refer to as the very large water users. And there's a different rate structure that goes along with those. It's different from the rate structure that everybody else is under, commercial and residential. So that little slice of the pie there, that's 3% of the total water usage. So on the left there is the no meta. That's the current illustration. If we switch over to the right and we add Meta to it, that very large water user slice of pie goes up 3.4%. So you see a tiny little yellow sliver, that represents Meta. So again, on an annual average basis, the Meta consumption is a very tiny part of what we're gonna be supplying to our customers. So with that, I thank you for the opportunity to come and I'd be happy to answer any questions.

John, before we take questions, can you give us your background in water?

Okay, so I have been with El Paso Water Utilities for 43 years. I've been the president for maybe like 15 of those years. I worked my way up from the bottom of the water utility I've been intimately I was in charge of planning During the first cycle that we did with the Texas Water Development Board under this current system So intimately familiar with with how we do water projects Intimately familiar with what it takes to bring in a water project into the community

OK. ONE QUESTION BEFORE I TURN IT OVER TO COUNSEL. YOU SAID THAT I THINK THIS IS WHAT I HEARD. WITH THAT LAWSUIT, THERE'S NOW A CAP ON THE MACEA, BULSON, AND THAT WE'LL GET MORE INCREASE IN RIVER WATER. Correct. What if the river water is not at the levels we're expecting, you're still capped on the Maseah Balsaw?

Yes. So that means that we have to do something different. So my whole point in saying that is in the next planning cycle, the next five-year cycle, we're going to have to do something different on the west side. And so what that's going to consist of we still need to work on that this is like hot off the press information so we as you recall we did get from through Senator Blanco's efforts an allocation of money to put in a surface water treatment plant in the upper valley in the Vinton area so we're gonna we're gonna do that to utilize the additional surface water that that's available but ideally we would want to have some sort of waters Bank on the west side so that we could put water into it and then withdraw that to meet those demands when the river is not there That would be just one example of something that we could do.

Okay, very good represent trail Thank you mayor.

Thank you for the presentation John. I have a few questions With a water large water usage And the rate structure is meta on a different rate structure as well?

They would be falling into the very large water user rate structure.

OK. And when you say that the 480,000 gallons per day, what would be a similar business to that?

So a similar business to that would be a golf course, for example, a large hospital complex, So in those 11 or so customers that we fit into that very large water user category, we have an industrial laundry, hospital, housing authorities, Anopasa Electric, Marathon Refinery would fit into that category.

Okay. When you were speaking of the planning over the next five years, I believe you have the next planning coming up next year?

We're going to start next year, and the plan needs to be complete in May of 2031.

OK. Is data centers part of that plan?

So when we do the planning, the driving force is primarily population. And then so we come up with how much water is being demanded. Now, we do also forecast an industrial component to that. And so the data centers would factor into that industrial component. So we would have to figure out how much additional industrial water is necessary to add to the population demand push for water, how much additional we would have to do for that.

Okay. This presentation is very, very much needed for the community. Are you, is El Paso Water open to having these presentations at our districts, individual districts?

We would be happy to come to your district to do this presentation, yes.

Thank you.

Representative Chavez.

Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, John, for this presentation. I did have the privilege of having El Paso Water in my last community meeting where Gilbert presented the same presentation. And I'm going to read an email that I received from a constituent because I do want it on record. It says, Dear Alejandra, your most recent District 1 meeting at the Osborne Regional Command Center was very informative. Thank you for including El Paso Water Utilities and our city attorney. They both provided excellent insight into El Paso's commitment to the metadata center, and I left feeling confident that you are looking out for El Pasoans while at the same time allowing for new economic development. El Paso Water Utilities has proven over time to be very capable stewards for our precious water. For that, we can all be thankful. As for our tax base, thank you for the clarification provided by our city attorney that the incentives enjoyed by META only apply to the city portion of property taxes, and even then, they are still on line to be the largest city property taxpayer. Other taxing entities stand to enjoy substantial tax income from META which benefits us all. Additionally, META will be applying for their city property tax incentives annually and they are subject to predetermined metrics, all very positive. Finally, on the topic of nondisclosure agreements, they are quite common. In my personal business, I have been subject to nondisclosure agreements on several occasions. They just allow for parties to make business decisions objectively and are not intended to be harmful. Competition often warrants confidentiality. Thank you for your work on our behalf. So I wanted to put that on record. John, I know that there is a lot of information out there, and I thank you for the clarification on today's presentation. I think our water is a concern for all of our community, and rightfully so. We live in a desert. I think we all understand that. And we want to make sure we're going to have enough water. And we also want to know rightfully so that our water is not going to be contaminated right though it's going to be drinkable and that we're going to continue to provide water for future generations I have 3 small children in the city of El Paso that I'm raising 1513 and 11 year-old so I would like to make sure that they have enough water for their future can you please tell us how you're planning once again and I know you've said this but I think it's important to say it again how is it that El Paso water plans for our future responsibly.

Okay, so I'm going to answer that question. But I'd like to talk about contamination since you since you brought that that up. So I want to assure everyone and council that we already have a team of people in place. So this is not the first industrial type customer that we have in the system. And in terms of industrial customers, the type of water wastewater that comes out of a data center is very highly known and regulated. It is mostly evaporated water. So it's a concentration of what's already in the water with very little other things that come with it. And we deal with much more complicated waste streams where we have, for example, Marathon Refinery, a very complicated waste stream. So we have an entire team of people. We have inspectors, we have laboratory staff, and we collect samples, we do analysis, we have a permit. Marathon has a permit for the types of substances that can be in their discharge. Highly regulated, inspected by TCQ on a thorough basis. We've had this since 1985. So we've been doing this with much more complicated So we'll have the same team. We'll have a permanent place. We have a team in place to make sure that the discharges coming back are not going to adversely affect any of our treatment equipment or the quality of the effluent coming out of it. So I thank you for bringing that up. I just wanted to mention that. So in terms of the planning, the basic idea that we utilize, so superimposed on the planning that I talked about, is a general concept. And the general concept, it was established by the Public Service Board in reality back in 1943, which is to diversify the water supply. So we're not just reliant upon one thing. And so the more pieces of supply that we have, the more different components to that, the more resilient and the more flexible we can be. Because when you project forward into the future, and remember, we're projecting 50 years into the future just for the purposes of this plan. It's very difficult to pinpoint and say that I know exactly what's going to happen 50 years from now. 50 years from now, I know exactly what the climate is going to be and how that's going to affect the water supply. I know exactly what the regulatory environment is. No, we don't know that yet. in any comfortable degree of confidence. But what we do know is if we have multiple sources of supply, the chances of any one of these events happening that adversely affect those supplies would hopefully only affect one of those at a time. So we'd have multiple strategies to provide water to El Pasoans. So even though I talk about the water plan and we talk about these strategies in place, And so the strategies, for example, that we have in place right now, expansion of the desal plant, the pure water center, and the aquifer storage and recovery, and we have coming along after that, we have the potential for another desalination plant in El Paso and the importation. But aside from that, we have these alternative sources of supply. So El Paso Water Utilities, along with UTEP, wrote the textbook on taking agricultural tailwaters, the drainage water that comes off of the farming and producing drinking water from that. So there's many other strategies that we can implement to ensure that we have water. So if there's some big influx of population into El Paso, we'll be flexible enough so that we can handle that. We like the steady growth that we have had all these years and it allows us to do the long-term planning and to come up with these projects. And we have to execute one of these projects about every five years in order to make sure that we're ahead of the game.

I'll ask you a question I also asked Gilbert in my community meeting because I think this is something people have asked me and I think we need to clarify it. Who do you prioritize? Who does El Paso Water prioritize?

OK, so that is a good question. So the priority of El Paso Water Utilities is the customers. And so I would like to jump in and say, yeah, we prioritize the residential customers. But in the regulatory environment that we work in, we have to consider all the customers as the same. So we have to talk about customers that are similarly situated. That's a legal term. So residential customers similarly situated. So when we put in a system, we have a network of pipes that supplies water or collecting wastewater to a specific area. generally treat all the customers in that area in the same way. However, when it comes to an emergency, we have a water emergency management plan that comes into play so that if we know that there is going, let's say for example, right now on a peak summer day if all of a sudden the water in the Rio Grande was stopped so we didn't have any water in the Rio Grande then we would have to cut back on the demand in order to adjust our our supplies and so we have a plan in place and that plan does go after item going after is a probably a difficult term to use but what it prioritizes is reduction in certain classes and so those classes of customers are in specifically listed in that in that approved plan that's approved by the state of Texas and so things which we would describe as discretionary uses of water so that would be like car washes and those sorts of things so we start off with voluntary and then we go after specific CATEGORIES OF USERS AND HAVE MECHANISMS IN PLACE TO REDUCE THE DEMAND FROM THOSE USERS. NOT RESIDENTIAL.

THANK YOU, JOHN. I ONLY HAVE ABOUT A MINUTE LEFT. I MAY HAVE TO COME BACK LATER. BUT BOTTOM LINE IS, WOULD YOU PRIORITIZE META SINCE THEY'RE IN YOUR PRESENTATION TODAY OVER A RESIDENT?

NO, WE WOULD NOT.

OKAY. THANK YOU. I MIGHT COME BACK. THANK YOU, JOHN.

REPRESENTATIVE

Thank you, Mayor. This is good information, John. Thank you so much. I wanted to focus on slide eight first. I know that you were kind of telling us that you're kind of capped with some of the Bolsons. And I wanted to kind of play some scenarios with you in terms of what if the Rio Grande came in at 4% instead of 6% because there is a drought. And now we have to kind of look at the other Bolsons if we're capped. What do we do at that point?

So specifically the one project that we have online to take care of the river drought is the Pure Water Center. So the Pure Water Center is sized at 10 million gallons per day. That 10 million gallons per day is exactly the number that we would be short if there was zero water in the Rio Grande. So for the purposes of our planning, we plan on a zero water delivery year from the Rio Grande. that would put us at 10 million gallons per day short and that's the capacity of the pure water center but but keep in mind we're also bringing on two other projects so we don't we don't like to run exactly at the amount of demand that we would need we like to have some backup and so that's the aquifer storage and recovery plus the expansion of the K Bailey Hutchison plan okay and then I guess can you put a cost to each of these categories the different projects that we're talking about?

Just right here on the Waco-Bulson, drawing water from there, you're saying the Pure Water Center would take over the Rio Grande. How much does that increase cost to do that if the Rio Grande goes to 0% and you're going to the Pure Water?

OK. So the pure water center, I don't know the exact number, but it's in the vicinity of more than $200 million capital cost. The aquifer storage and recovery is about a $32 million capital cost. The expansion of the Kay Bailey Hutchison plant, we've done it over three different phases, probably $50 million. So water projects are expensive.

OK. And with Juarez kind of having their population growing, we've been a little stagnant. Are they drawing from these same sources? Do they have different agreements, or how does that work?

So Juarez gets their water from the same two aquifers that we utilize, the Mesilla and the Huecabal zone aquifer. They do get an allotment of water from the Rio Grande, but that's used exclusively for agricultural purposes in Mexico. So Juarez does use those same two aquifers that we use. And we have a very good relationship with our sister organization, Hemas in Juarez, and we do joint planning. We provide them all the information from our wells. They provide us all the information from their wells. We put it into a model, and that model is shared between the United States and Mexico through the International Boundary Water Commission.

Okay, so you are kind of accounting for that and everything that you're doing because you're working on it.

Absolutely.

Okay, perfect. And then on META specifically, on what you're kind of putting out here on the last two slides, are you accounting for off-site water consumption for energy production by El Paso Electric as well as the on-site usage for META?

OK, so that's a great question. And it has been raised in the general meta discussion that there's an additional electric demand. And in general terms, water is utilized for the generation of electricity. But how the water is utilized and how much water is utilized differs based on the type of power generation. So the most intensive water consumption in the power side is your typical steam driven. So you boil water, you create steam, you run the steam through a turbine. That's the water intensive purpose. Intensive production of water in the electric power business so those Units which are in in Newman plant in the Newman El Paso electric plant right out in Northeast Those are being phased out in favor of gas turbine plants the gas turbine plants use some water But very little water in comparison to the steam turbine, of course the photovoltaic doesn't use anything now the project cloud that is being implemented specifically for The META project does not use any water. It's essentially like the amount of water that you put in your car. You have water and antifreeze mixture and it's in a closed loop with a radiator. That's what that system looks like. We have not been asked to supply any additional water to El Paso Electric. And I was at a meeting that Representative Boyer-Trejo put together. The El Paso Electric president was right there, and she said that their water consumption is going to drop by 40% in the next year. So those are the different pieces that we've had. We have a no increase requested by El Paso Electric. They're telling us that their water demand is going to go down.

El Paso Electric is telling me that their water demand is going to go down by 40%. 40%, correct. OK. And then these numbers, I remember you said something in January at a PSB meeting where you said 2.5 million gallons were good for phase one. We don't know past this. Now Meta is saying that they're going to do all the phases in the next two years, and they're good with water. So I kind of want to understand, as this project has really ballooned over time, what happens if Meta comes to you and says we need more water than 2.5 million gallons per day?

Okay, so the contract that includes the 2.5 number was for the full build out of the project. So that is what they told us early on. That's the number that's in the contract. So they have consistently told us, as they have talked about advancing their schedule and whatnot, that they're going to stay within the bounds of the contract. So if they need additional water that's not in the contract, then they would have to come to the Public Service Board and request something additional. Because right now, there is a water line that runs down Stan Roberts, and we are going to put meters on that to come up with a supply for the project that would allow them the maximum of the 2.5 utilizing. So the plumbing that's in place is based on the 2.5.

not any additional okay and then with the 2.5 how did you get to that math was this something that meta came to you and they said we're going to do 2.5 million or did you say you could only do up to 2.5 million no that was meta's request meta's request okay and that wasn't independently confirmed by you or anyone else it was just kind of saying okay we could do this we're not getting any other experts to see if this is possible

We did we did hire an expert so we used a doctor a family on the cop from San Antonio. So she's. The consultant that San Antonio water system utilizes a person San Antonio they own the electric power system and so we had an analysis done of of these numbers and that's where we came up with the 480,000 gallons per day is the average annual average.

Okay. And then just the impact of meta on the average customer, can you monetize that or get to some sort of anecdotal thing that you're seeing or think that you'll predict?

Okay, so that's a good question. So last week I was interviewed by someone, I don't remember the name of the person.

A reporter.

A reporter of some sort, yeah. And the question came up. And so when I answer that question, it's complicated because we have to talk about what is the initial cost and then what is the ongoing O&M cost. When you talk about the initial cost, There is a system in place that was put in place by the state of Texas to as to how growth is to be paid for that's the impact fee process. This meta facility is an impact fee service area and so the facilities that we put in to supply water to matter where impact fee funded. Projects but as you know the the Actual amount that we get in the impact fee is far less than the actual impact that is created by these users So we are getting money through the impact fee when when those meters are actually put in place meta will be giving money to us in the form of the impact fee, which represents a small percentage of that cost of that capital. So yes, the customers, all the other customers in the system are going to be making up for that difference between what the impact fee is providing and what the true cost of that is going to be. But that system was put in place a long time ago without any consideration of data centers. So it's not specific to any type of customer, just customers. If it's a residential customer with a three quarter inch meter, or in this case, a big industrial customer with maybe two or three four inch meters, it's the same principle applies. So in terms of the capital cost, we are in fact recovering from META a small percentage of what their overall demand is. Now, when it comes to the O&M, it's a different picture because on the O&M side, every customer is paying their portion of the O&M. So that one we have a good handle on.

Okay. And now that we're kind of seeing meta talking a little bit more in our community that we've seen that they've been very scripted and they just stick to talking points. So we've seen data centers across the country kind of need more water. Where would you put the limit as to how much more water they would get if it was past 2.5?

Okay, so Again, we have to look at that plan that we already did So we we had a plan that that was forecasting a certain amount of water usage based on that footprint And that's essentially what they're getting So if they're going to use more water than would be forecast in that plan for that footprint then that water has to come from some other part of the development in Northeast and So for example, if we had another portion of that plan that was dedicated for industrial, we might have to convert that to residential supply. And so when the land is sold off, then we might put in a deed restriction on the land that's based on the particular supply constraints. So you will see coming before you, for example, it's about a 480 acre site that's adjacent to the Metta property. We put in deed restrictions. The Public Service Board put in deed restrictions on that property because the capacity of that area The backup capacity of that area. Was limited so we want to specify this is exactly how much water that you have for this piece of property. So that's what we would do for the other pieces of property in the area if. The decision was made to increase the water supply to that but we don't have any plans to do so we haven't been asked to do so.

Thank you, I apologize, I'm over time, it was really I bring you back I bring you back perhaps that's better represent Chavez.

Thank you, Mayor. I'm back, John. Thank you. I'm going to ask you a few more questions that were asked at my community meeting. And so just for the record, I'm not representing META in any way. I'm just trying to get the information out there that my community expressed during that meeting that I think might be helpful to others that didn't have the chance to go to the meeting that day. So the 2.5 million gallons per day, is that with the five phases in consideration?

Yes.

OK, so that's total, right?

Right.

OK. I also want to bring up purple pipe water, because some people in my community asked if they could use purple pipe water.

Could you answer that, please? So Meta could utilize purple pipe water. They asked us about that in the beginning. But the problem is that we have. Are we produce a certain amount of purple pipe water and it's fully allocated. So we have we sell all the purple pipe water that that we produce. And yes, we might ask the question, well, why don't you produce more water? Well, in the Northeast, All of the water that we produce is beneficially utilized. You see it through purple pipe or through the aquifer storage and recovery. So if we increase the capacity of the purple pipe, we're just not putting the water into the aquifer for storage. So that doesn't necessarily help anything. So when we put together and we negotiated what we did with META, the purple pipe water was not in question because it was fully utilized.

Okay, thank you, John. What about wastewater that will be produced at this site?

Okay, so the wastewater that comes off of the site, of course, it's sanitary wastewater, your normal stuff that comes out of the bathrooms, but there is a process wastewater that comes out of the plant. And as I was mentioning, it is primarily the evaporation products of water. So when they take the water into the in the facility, they're not just utilizing it one time. They're cycling it maybe five times through the system through a cooling tower. And what that is is the cooling tower is evaporating water. And so the wastewater product that's left over is a concentrated water, if you will. It's the products that are left over from when you evaporate water. And that is primarily salt. And so when we negotiate our permit with Meta, the salt content is very important to us because, as I mentioned, the entirety of Northeast wastewater goes to the Fred Hervey plant, which reclaims it to drinking water. Fred Hervey plant does not have any desalination capacity in there. So whatever salt products are there, they have to treat it so that it can come to the Fred Hervey plant and not adversely affect the quality of the wastewater, the water product that comes out of the Fred Hervey plant, which is either supplied to our Purple Pipe customers or injected back into the aqua.

Will the residents that live in and around that area, will their drinking water be affected by any of this?

No, their drinking water will not be affected. And so it's an important note. And I know that people are concerned about it. And in other places where perhaps a data center was allowed to drill wells and produce water, and maybe the water table is shallow, there might have been a way to do that. But when I say a way to do that, I mean a way that water could be contaminated. But here in El Paso, all the water in Northeast comes from either wells that are right there in Northeast or coming from the Rio Grande when we have water available for treatment. That water is treated to meet drinking water quality standards and highly regulated. And so nothing coming back from Meta is going to be blended in with that that doesn't come through the Fred Hervey plant. And so like I was saying, we have a team of people to ensure that the quality all from any customer meets the standards that are needed for the operation of the Fred Hervey treatment plant, and that will ultimately end up in the aquifer storage and recovery.

So from what I just understood that you said, John, is that I know that in other areas of our country, perhaps drinking water could be affected, but from everything you've just stated, not in El Paso.

Correct.

Is that correct? I have to ask you this question, John, and I appreciate, again, you being here. Are you being disingenuous in any way with your remarks today?

No, absolutely not. So I wanted to point out that I was born and raised in El Paso, and I have three kids here living in El Paso also. And I wouldn't do anything that would adversely impact the community of El Paso. The data center that we're talking about is just part and parcel of what we've been planning to do for all these years. Of course, the data center is something new, but the way we look at it is the data center is just a customer like any other customer. And like any regulated utility, water utility in the state of Texas, when a customer comes into our service area, and request service, we have to provide them service or we say that we don't have the water available. But if we do not have the water available for a data center, then we don't have the water available for 1,038 acres of residential development either. And that's not the case. If this were a residential development or even if it was a golf course, Nobody would be complaining about it, even though it was the same amount of water. So in terms of taxing the overall water supply for the future generations of El Paso, tiny, tiny impact on that. And we have strategies in place bringing in new sources of supply that we can easily make up for any impact from this or any other customer.

So just to recap, your plan is for the next 50 years. And we have enough water for that timeline, is that correct?

Yes, absolutely.

With this project in mind? Yes. Okay. And drinkable water is not going to be contaminated from what you've just stated?

It will not be contaminated.

And the usage for this project specifically is less than what you had anticipated in a 2009 master plan that you had already put into place?

Correct.

Okay, I appreciate it, John. Again, this is a project that came before council in 2023 and we are grateful that you are at least planning ahead to make sure that we are providing the best use of our resources to our community because it is important that we clarify that and that we are completely transparent with our constituents. So I appreciate the work that you and your team are doing. Thank you.

Thank you. Representative Limon.

Were you or did you have a plan when it was announced the DOJ had purchased 3 warehouses in the so-called area to house 8500 people for you part of that.

You know we did not have a a plan for that of course so quarter is not part of a possible water system that's part of the lower Valley water district system. So we have a relationship with lower valley, which is through a contract where? They supply us surface water rights from the Rio Grande we treat that and we supply it back to them So it's not even a traditional wholesale agreement where there would be limitations perhaps on that type of development And obviously that the contract that we have did not foresee that something like that was going to happen So there's nothing in the contract, but we did inform the lower valley water district That they needed to report to us. What is the impact on their system? And how is that going to affect our ability to supply water to them and they have hired somebody to do specifically that I had understood that lower valley water had a

had in essence been told from El Paso Water that there was no more water, that there was a limit as to the amount of water that would be allocated to them. And that was prior to the actual sale of the warehouses. They're in limbo right now, which I'm very glad to see that it's not necessarily proceeding as quickly as it was. My question, John, is we, as a council, we had an item on the agenda really to put a no to any more of these horrific camps within the city. Point of order, Mayor. Yes.

That is not the agenda item that is before us. And I don't think that should be the conversation.

Ms. Neiman, are we able to be discussing the lower valley?

Good morning. The item on the agenda specifically to the northeast and the meta site.

Okay. Represent the one for the meta site. Excuse me? We're going to be discussing the meta site. Go ahead.

Thank you, John. Thank you for being here. Appreciate it.

Represent Nino.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, John, for being here and doing this presentation. I've mentioned that a lot of our residents deserve their answers to the questions that they've had. And I'm grateful that you've been able to answer a lot of the great questions that have been asked today and provide that reassurance that we're protecting our water and our resources. that drinkable water is not going to be contaminated and that we are not going to run out of water. As an alumni of the El Paso Citizens Academy, I was able to really tour all of the facilities and see the process of El Paso water, including their wastewater and the entire process. I know I've mentioned prior that I've gone into the domes of the wastewater to really see how that entire process takes place. Now, one thing that I think is also important to mention, or that if you could help clarify, is when the city sold the land to Meta in 2023, the city kept ownership of the water rights. Can you just share with us a little bit of what that means? Meaning anyone, they cannot just dig a well and get access to limit water. And again, that's just an example of a protection that took place from in 2023 to ensure that we kept the water rights to the land.

absolutely that's it's a good point so texas as i'm sure you're aware is known as a right of capture state and that is if you own a piece of property barring any thing of that nature, you would be able to drill a well and produce as much water as you wanted to. So in order to prevent that from happening in general, any time the city sells a piece of property, that deed restriction is put in there so that we don't want to have a proliferation of wells all over the place. The advantage of the land ownership the Public Service Board had enjoyed since 1952 was that we could control where wells are drilled to make sure that the weckable zone is used as efficiently as possible. And we coordinate not only with amongst ourselves, but Mexico as I was mentioning, and Fort Bliss, all who are customers of the workable zone. So we want to be able to spread that demand out. So we don't want to have in a particular area, a customer drilling wells and producing a large amount of water further, further will utilize. So you're correct. That's an important restriction that we put in any sort of transact land transaction that's done.

And how many miles or acres of water rights does El Paso or the PSP own?

Okay, so we own still in El Paso County probably about 20,000 acres of land that was purchased for the protection of the groundwater rights. And then in terms of surface water, there's an additional probably 4,000 acres of surface water rights that we own outright. And then we have leased from farmers as they take land out of production, many other water rights. And that's part of we cobble that together. And that's the water that comes from the Rio Grande and is provided to El Paso, including the northeast portion.

Yeah, no, thank you for that. I think it's extremely important to understand or know that. There was a protection right where we continue to own the water rights so no company or whoever was to purchase that can just take a while and have access to the water right so thank you for to our city staff and all of everyone that was involved in ensuring that there was that protection and I have no further questions. I think there's been a lot of good questions that purpose in the month.

Thank you.

How much water actually comes to the Rio Grande to this area. that actually is maintained here in our city area.

Okay, so in a normal year, that is to say a non-drought year, about 700,000 acre feet a year gets delivered to the state of Texas. And of that, in a, The most water that we've ever been able to treat out of the Rio Grande is 62,000 acre feet. So when you look at the overall amount of Rio Grande water delivered to Texas, it is primarily an agricultural project. So we get a little bit for our own purposes, municipal and industrial purposes. A small percentage of that is converted for that use. And that's through a complicated system. contracts and agreements between El Paso Water Utilities and El Paso County Water Improvement District and those are signed off on by the Bureau of Reclamation as well.

Very good. So you have nothing to do with irrigation water rights or anything like that or do you do you manage that? You do not. You do not. So it's all under the Lower Valley Water District.

The El Paso County Water Improvement District.

Thank you John. Thank you very much.

Representative Basfero, did you want to? OK. John, thank you for this great presentation. Just one last question. Is there another data center program for this area?

Okay, so I read in the newspaper, like everybody else, there seems to be one that's coming up perhaps in the Favens area. Again, that's not part of our system. The Project Jupiter is not part of our system either. And then we have the Fort Bliss project. I've attended all the meetings with Fort Bliss. I met with... Colonel Sokka on several occasions Concerning the the data center there so we don't have any particular concerns about any of the other data centers now if another one Wants to come in within The city limits then we would have to go through a very careful Planning and vetting process that we would discuss at the public service board meetings.

Okay, but there's not one program for this area Okay Final question.

Yeah, go ahead. John, do you have any idea how many actual data centers we have in the city of El Paso?

No, I don't, because I understand from other people that there are already several other data centers. But from our standpoint, when they came in, they did not come in as a data center. So for example, if a customer built a speculative building, and they put in water and wastewater services and so it shows up on on our books as a as a warehouse for example converted into a data center as long as they're not increasing the water services that went to that building that we wouldn't necessarily know anything about okay thank you john so no more data centers are programmed for the no sir okay miss prime believe we have public comment yes sir thank you john miss turner signed up to speak on item two

Good morning, Miss Turner.

Good morning. Good morning, Waring Council.

So happy to be back down here again. Since you asked Mr. Blue his background, which is water, I'll let you know what my background is. My background is material science, RF wave theory, electrical engineering, chemistry, both classical and quantum physics, and a few other things. Computer engineering also. And I will tell you this, you're not going to be cooling an AI data center with our local air. You may have six weeks out of the entire year where the temperature will be cold enough to do such a thing. To optimize performance, you have to keep those systems at 65 degrees. not 80, not 90, 65 degrees. Because what happens is the warmer it gets, the slower those chips perform, performance drops, damage occurs, and that just doesn't work for a business model. Your stuff has to be up and running. Now as to water, The headwaters, the Rio Grande, the source for the Rio Grande, is in a drought. And with our climate change, it's going to continue to be in a drought. And there's not going to be any water. By 2030, there won't be a drought coming down. Right now, Elephant Butte's at 3.3% capacity. When you all went into this deal with Meta, you basically condemned this city between Meta, the data Jupiter, another one I think is supposedly in the lower valley, and Fort Bliss. Not only were our airbeats severely polluted, but we're going to run out of water. We got too many straws drinking out of the same cup. You know it. I know it. So the deal's been done. We have to live with it, but you're going to have to live with these consequences too. And I know we had, we bought land for water to import from the Del Rio region. What makes anybody think that the state of Texas will allow us to do such a thing that they will not take that from us? Texas is running out of water. And if there's any water in the ground. The state of Texas will go after it. And you know as well as I do. We don't we barely get any crumbs. Everything east of us. Austin San Antonio Dallas. Anything on 35 into the east gets everything we get squat.

Thank you Mister good to see you too. Thank you for coming back.

That brings us to item number 3 and this is a fiscal year 2027 schedule see the changes presentation.

Good morning, Mayor and Council. Sasha Andonovsky, Office of Management and Budget. So today we are bringing a different presentation. So this presentation builds upon previous discussions that we had for the fiscal year 2027 preliminary budget. So over the past several weeks, we had discussions and we reviewed the overall, the city's overall financial outlook. We looked at our strategic priorities and as well we looked at our fiscal year 2027 preliminary budget. As you already know, we started the budget process six weeks earlier. which allowed us to have multiple presentations to the council. So first presentation was on May 27th, our first round of budget workshops. At that presentation we had a regular budget overview and then we provided departmental breakdown of the budget. From June 1 to June 11, we held community meetings where we sought public input through our budget simulation tool. And then we came back on June 23 for the second round of the budget workshops. On the second round of the budget workshops, as you know, WE PROVIDED DIFFERENT TYPE OF PRESENTATION. WE BROUGHT COUNCIL BUDGET ADJUSTMENTS THROUGH OUR NEW BUDGET PROCESS AND AS WELL WE BROUGHT THE BREAKDOWN OF THE COMMUNITY INPUT. SO FOR THE REMAINING BUDGET TIMELINE, BUT THE SCHEDULE, AS YOU CAN SEE, WE HAVE ON JULY 17TH, WE ARE GOING TO FILE OUR PROPOSED BUDGET. ON JULY 25TH OR 24TH PROBABLY, WE ARE GOING TO RECEIVE OUR APPRAISAL EVALUATIONS AND THEN OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET. together with tax office and CFO, we are going to recalculate the property tax, and then we are going to come back on August 3rd to introduce the tax levy and the tax ordinance. On August 17th, we are going to have our public hearing on the budget and the property tax rate, and the plan is to adopt the budget on August 18th. So with regards to WITH REGARDS TO THIS PRESENTATION, SO THIS PRESENTATION WILL FOCUS ON ANOTHER IMPORTANT COMPONENT OF THE FINANCIAL PLAN, THAT'S OUR SCHEDULE C OR SCHEDULE B FOR SUN METRO, AND IT IS GOING TO FOCUS ON THE FEE ADJUSTMENTS THAT WE ARE PROPOSING FOR FISCAL YEAR 2027 BUDGET. So these adjustments were already provided as a backup for the 27th and 28th budget workshop agendas. They are included in your SharePoint drive that we share with you, and then they are also included in the budget book, fiscal year 2027 preliminary budget book. So I just want to mention that we as a city, it's our commitment to good governance and long-term financial sustainability. We continually evaluate the user fees, and the intention is to remove the burden from the general taxpayer and to ensure that the fees remain equitable and transparent and appropriately aligned with the cost of providing services. So the goal is not just to increase the revenues. The goal is to improve the cost recovery when appropriate. So we reduce subsidies paid by the general taxpayer for specialized services and ensure that those who directly benefit from our service pay a reasonable share of the cost. So today we are going to hear presentations for several departments. So we are going to hear changes to the Schedule C adjustments. Then we are going to hear changes to some Metro's adjustments. And then we are going to provide status update for the user study that we are currently conducting. And with that, I will turn it over to our departments to walk you through their proposed fee adjustments and answer any questions that you may have. So with that, I will turn it to the Department of Aviation and Mr. .

Thank you, Sascha. Good morning.

Good morning, Debbie Olivas with the airport. So we are proposing changes to the FTC transaction permit fees, and that is to establish a tiered pricing structure with four different levels for the distribution site operators. We currently have a fee of $20,000 for large operators, but with this new structure, companies of different sizes would be able to participate in the FTC program at a level that fits. their operations. And so some of the benefits of the changes is that users would be able to process admissions directly to or through CBP. And it also shifts the liability for compliance from the city to each operator, which reduces the risk for the city. So with your approval, we would like to move forward to introducing medium, small and micro fees. Any questions?

Questions for aviation? Representative Lamont. Yes.

All right. Can you give us example of these operators?

Like what kind of businesses?

Yes.

So we have our FTZ manager on the line, and I think he has, I have a list of it, but I think he can provide better.

I was just trying to, I'm sorry. I was just trying to figure out what a large operator, you know, what the different levels would be.

So a large operator, this is David Danko, foreign trade zone manager. Can you hear me okay?

Go ahead. Go ahead, David.

I've got a lot of background noise right now. But a large operator would be someone like Wrangler Jeans, Expediters, Honeywell, big companies like that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. I'll pass it over to code enforcement Good good morning.

Good morning mayor and council Steve Alvarado code enforcement for the record So during this recent legislation Texas legislation They passed several state Senate bills and House bills which precluded us from charging certain fees as you can see we have a decrease in temporary establishment food service establishment and temporary late service fees We are looking at a flat rate for plan review and administrative change fees. So instead of it being tiered to a certain amount of square feet for a small business, medium and large, it's a flat rate for everybody moving forward. We are looking at adding the additional school inspection fees. They've never been charged in the past, but we do spend about two hours on each inspection that we never charge for, which they should be charged for, because it is time that we're putting into it. The mobile food vending reimbursement pending. That has been approved. Thank you, Council, for approving that. Thank you, Mayor, for signing that. And that is pretty much where we're at with the code enforcement budget. With that, I open it up to any questions you may have.

Okay. Any questions for code? Steve, thank you.

Thank you. I'll turn it over to Ms. Carolyn Patrick now.

Good morning, Carolyn.

Good morning, Mayor and Council. Carolyn Patrick with the IT department. What the technology department is proposing is an increase to the technology fee that is applied to license and permits coming through the planning inspections department. Currently, it is a seven-tier based fixed fee per tier, and we are proposing going to a 4.5 percentage applied across the various licenses and permits. We feel this is more equitable in scales with the cost of the various licensing permits.

Can I answer any questions?

All right. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is International Bridges.

Good morning.

Good morning, Major and Consul. Roberto Tinajero with the International Bridges Department. Main changes we're proposing are simply to simplify the classification of vehicles. Nothing major there, so we would like to charge everything by axle. We are also proposing a 50 cents increase per axle for commercial vehicles that will go to the P3 program just to supplement our capital improvement projects and all the construction that we have on the pipeline. We are also proposing change the fee for new EFAS pass tax and the replacement of those to $5. This is essentially just to recover the costs. And that's essentially it on my end, unless you have questions.

Questions for Roberto. Okay. Okay. Representative Rocha.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Roberto, for the information. So on the classification, the toll crossings that are going to be charged at the per axle rate, is there a projection as to what the income will be as a result of that from current traffic?

For commercial vehicles, yes, it's about $1.6 million.

So it'll be an additional, that's the $1.6 million. So that's the one that you're wanting to propose to use for the capital projects? Yes. Okay. And currently they're being charged at what? They're charged at? It says it's a 50 cent increase.

Correct. So we charge for commercial vehicles $4 if they are prepaid or $4.50 if they pay cash.

So you're going from 450 in one situation and then $5. OK. What's the cost increase by companies? I know that this is like $1.6 million, right? So you have trucks that cross frequently. So this is whether they're empty or they're full. Is that correct?

Correct. OK. Thank you. Yeah, it's applied products.

OK. Thank you.

Roberto, when's the last time you had an increase?

2014.

Okay. Representative Canales.

Thank you, Mayor. Can you talk just a little bit about the current state of the P3 program and then the change in revenue that we expect to see?

Yes. So the P3 program was established, as you may remember, in 2014 by adding 50 cents to the commercial tolls, 50 cents per personal vehicles as well. So we have been utilizing that money for three main things, capital improvement program, traffic control at the bridges, plus the overtime for CBP officers so that they can open additional lanes. at the city-owned ports of entry. We are expecting, like I said, to increase revenue with this change by $1.6 million by year, and that will be, again, towards supporting the P3 program.

And essentially all of that increase we expect to fund capital improvement, not the other portions of the P3 program?

For the most part, we will allocate it to capital improvement. We have big projects coming in the pipeline. We are conducting the feasibility slash master planning for Isleta Zaragoza. So this will help us finalizing the design plus construction that we may have to do based on the results of the plan. Great.

Okay. How much of the P3 revenue is currently being allocated to the overtime for the federal agents at the ports?

We allocate on a yearly basis about $1.5 million. $1.6 million.

Okay. And again, that's to keep additional lanes open for cross-border travel?

Correct.

Okay.

During peak times.

During peak. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor.

Roberto, thank you.

Thank you. Now I leave it to Mr. Ben Fyfe with impact.

Good afternoon. Good morning, Ben.

Good morning, Mayor and Council. For the record, Ben Fyfe with Museums and Cultural Affairs. The bulk of our changes to Schedule C are really driven by bringing parity through the department as we work to enhance museum school the Museum of History. We're looking at making sure prices align to other sites. We also are looking at adjusting fees specifically at the MAC to be able to do greater cost recovery for some of these offerings and then adding of course employee discounts to a lot of our offerings as well. Are there any questions?

Representative Acevedo.

Thank you Mayor. I wanted to talk about the rooftop terrace and Just get a little clarification. So the last fee was up to 200 per hour, $600 for four hours. And then now it's up to 500 for four hours, up to 375 for eight hours. So is that $500 an hour or is it 500 total for four hours?

One moment, sir.

It's on page five of the fee schedule.

Sorry, I'm having trouble opening my document.

Thank you.

So this is actually just, this increase is related to if somebody is, essentially if you're renting for a longer period of time, we're able to reduce the cost. Sort of like buying in bulk, if that makes sense.

Okay. So it would be the 3 75 per hour for up to eight hours. Yes.

And then, but if you were just doing a block of four hours, it's, it's the 500.

Okay, so this is increasing significantly, I guess, right? So it would be about $2,000 instead of $600 for four hours.

It is increasing significantly. However, that is based on what we've seen over the last year and a half at the MAC in terms of what it costs to be able to keep that space open. We get a lot of requests to use it, especially at night, which means we're opening up after hours. There's increased operational costs over time, things like that.

Okay. And is there any chance that you could send us, like, who's been using it, just to have an idea of what's been happening there over this last year? Of course.

Absolutely.

And then on the previous page, on page four, on the rooftop terrace and catering kitchen, it's up to $1,000 for four hours. It's up to $1,000 depending on what people choose to serve, correct? Correct. Okay.

That is something new that we didn't have last year people know and what you'll see for a lot of the MAC fees is as we have lived in the facility as we've actually done a full year of Programming seen what the demands are and also seen what the costs are to be able to provide those offerings.

We are adjusting fees, okay Yeah, I do get a little bit of heartburn with how expensive the rooftop terrace is going to be I

But it is a pretty high demand amenity. I will say that the rentals at the MAC this year we have done over seventy thousand dollars in rentals. We know that this is a peak year because it's still a new space that money directly goes into you know funds that we use to be able to offer programs scholarships things like that. So when we can charge and use those fees later on to be able to offset costs it's a good thing. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Representative Kanellis.

Thank you, Mayor. I mostly got my questions answered. The instructional fees for camps and classes, that's mostly Mac related as well, correct?

That is. Although we have increased the instructional fees for camps and classes at the El Paso Museum of History as well. We've actually recently added amenities that allow us to diversify offerings there. It also will offset some of the crowding we have at the El Paso Museum of Art for similar offerings, but we want to make sure the prices are about the same because it doesn't make sense to a customer why one is priced differently than the other when they're just a block away from each other.

Okay, understood. Thank you. Representative Rocha?

Thank You mayor and thanks Ben for the information in regards to the request to see who's joining or who's renting out the facility I have a bit of concern with that because it could be private parties and it could be public parties and and so how I'd like to ask miss miss Neiman what that what that looks like in regards to Giving us a list of who's Renting the property or who's renting the facility.

I Don't know that there's any prohibition on releasing those those that information we can certainly review it Before it's released and to ensure that there is anything that's proprietary And I was thinking that would just be an up an email to the council.

Yes. Thank you.

I appreciate it And been just out of curiosity has there been a wedding yet at the Mac? I think it's coming, but it has.

You know, actually, it's funny. We actually had city staff that wanted to marry at the MAC, and unfortunately, we had a little bit of delays with some of the spaces. We weren't able to get them in and accommodate it, but it's coming. It's coming. Okay.

Wow. Representative Nino, do you have anything?

Representative Nino. Thank you, Mayor. And Ben or Ms. Mac, is there a system that we have whenever it's like a nonprofit organization that wants to possibly rent a space for an event gala that the city kind of coordinates or works with them in regards to possibly having access to renting a space, or is that a program that we have?

Yes, yes, sir. Actually. So we oftentimes, you know, we have our set fees. Council does not give us the authority to waive those fees. However, there are times when we do partner with nonprofit entities where we feel this is a mission driving event. And so we're able to partner with them and absorb a lot of those costs. A great example would be El Paso Pro Musico, which has the box lunch concert series that takes place at the El Paso Museum of Art. That is seen as a great partnership. It helps drive the mission of the Museum of Art. So we do not charge them for, you know, use of the space or that programming.

Okay, that's good to know. And how does that work? Does your organization reach out to the department specifically and then you all coordinate to see if it fits?

Correct. So typically, they reach out to the actual site that they're interested in. And then we actually go from there to determine if it's a good fit or not. I will say that one of the things that we're speaking about internally at the department right now is actually trying to figure out if we can actually codify that so that it's a lot more transparent. And so again, that there's parity between all the sites.

I know that's great because I know there's some organizations that might want to use different facilities and they might have some challenges when it comes to cost, right? So it's good to know that there's still systems in place.

And I do think we want to make sure we clarify because in some cases, you know, Pro Musica is one of the recipients of funds from the city of El Paso. And if it's during the day and it doesn't require additional costs, then it's easier to accommodate. But then sometimes we'll have other nonprofits come in and it's after hours, it's on a weekend.

Correct.

And then they get upset that we're not trying to accommodate when they point to one of these examples. And so we just want to make it very clear about how we're thinking about those processes across the entire facility.

Yeah, and I'm glad you're mentioning that because exactly what we were talking about earlier, how if it's after hours, you're going to need more staff, it's closed, so you need to have some sort of funding, right, to support that. But if the organization sometimes... how plans for it to be during hours and you all could coordinate, then that's the support that we could offer. But thank you for all your work. Appreciate you.

Representative Chavez.

Thank you, Mayor. And I wasn't going to ask any questions, Ben, but now I can't help but jump in a little bit because this was kind of my space prior to being on council. So when people rent out your establishment at the MAC, do they bring in food from the outside? Or typically they bring in a caterer or someone?

Typically, yes. And so they can bring in food. We also have the commercial kitchens as well. So we actually have experimented recently with actually being able to provide that ourselves now that we have a culinary coordinator. But yes, that's how that works at all of our sites.

AND THE COMMERCIAL KITCHEN IS NOT SPECIFICALLY FROM THE MAC, RIGHT? THAT'S AN OUTSIDER AS WELL? OR IS IT SOMEONE THAT'S PROVIDING FOOD FROM INTERNALLY?

NO, WE CAN DO IT INTERNALLY.

OH, OKAY. WELL, I'M JUST GOING TO THROW AN IDEA OUT THERE BECAUSE THIS IS WHAT I USED TO DO. There were certain days of the week and also certain times of the year that were high peak. So I would adjust what I would call a minimum consumption. So I would say if you want to rent on this day, your consumption has to be this amount or your rental fee has to be this amount. But then when it peaks, you might want to change it. I don't know how we could fit that into the schedule if possible, but it might be something to consider going forward just because there will be times of the year that will be peak season and you'll be able to even probably rent it out for even more money. It's just supply and demand, right? There's not that many spaces available, but if there is a demand for it, you should maybe consider at least having some sort of fee schedule depending on those things.

Absolutely. And actually, that's something we have tried to work into our fee schedule over the years is just allowing us a little more flexibility with some of our other offerings. Again, I think the MAC is still a little bit of a learning exercise for us as we navigate the space, understanding how people are responding to the space. We know, for example, in December, because Winterfest has now expanded to Cleveland Square, that we're a really great space for holiday parties. And so that would be an example of some time we may want to think about adjusting those rates or giving ourselves that flexibility. And so I think we'll definitely consider that mem for FY28.

Yeah. So let me just give you one more idea. So like your fee could be something to use the terrace on the top and then if they're going to consume from your internal caterer then maybe the fee schedule could be adjusted because they're also going to be paying the cost of our internal caterer that would come back to you directly. But if they're going to be bringing an outside caterer then there might be a different fee there. Exactly. Does that make sense? I don't know. We could talk more about it, but my mind is just working on it.

It's very similar to what happens at the Plaza Theater with catering.

Lots of opportunity. Thank you.

All right, Ben, I'm asking for a friend, okay? So under the star ceiling, if somebody wanted to get married and have dinner, does that, in the $5.25 an hour, you have a menu or a list of like seating and tables and they can go a la carte from that point?

So we've actually, we are in discussions right now to just solidify that with Destination El Paso to be able to handle that because they've done a series of events that have been very successful underneath Star Ceiling, including an event for Pro Musica. They did a chef's table under there as well. Progress 321 had an event there. They understand the space really well. They have a lot of the equipment. So yes, actually, that would be who we would be partnering with.

OK, perfect.

Very good.

Any other questions for Ben? Ben, thank you.

All right, thank you. All right, now we have the cock-fuller.

Good morning.

Good morning, everybody. Margarita Marin, deputy CFO and comptroller. So we're proposing an increase to credit card fees from 1.98% to 2.25%. And this is only to kind of break even and recover the cost to the city. There's no really a revenue-generated impact here. Also, this fee will apply to all departments that do not utilize a third-party merchant services provider.

Okay. Any questions for Margarita? Representative Nino?

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Margarita. I know that we previously had talked about the credit card processing fees. Specifically, I had had some constituents reach out to us or to my office in regards of when they pay their property taxes. And they were showing examples of other government entities like the county that they just charge a set fee rather than a percentage fee. I know that we previously just briefly talked about that. Have we looked deeper into that or

So for the tax office is one of the cases where they hire a third party merchant services provider. So that third party is the one that charges the fee and they don't charge anything to the city. So whatever they charge the customers is what they have as revenue and then they process and send to the bank. So that'll be a discussion with the tax office. Okay, okay.

But thank you for clarifying that. Yes, sir. For the question.

All right, Margarita, thank you.

Thank you so much. And I'll pass it to Dr. Taneja. From the public health department. I'm so sorry.

We'll get there. Or I'll change my name to Taneja. It works.

Margarita, watch this. Good afternoon, Doctor. Good morning, Doctor. Good morning, Mayor and Council.

Vinny Taneja, Director of Public Health. So very quickly, let me change the slides. So throughout the year, our program managers and our billing team sort of keeps a track of what's happening with the insurance industry and Medicaid. A lot of our fee codes change sometimes, and sometimes the labels get updated. So they keep track of all those changes. And throughout the year, if there are new services added to our health clinics or to our dental clinic, they keep a track of those as well. And before we submit for Schedule C, there's an internal discussion on what needs to be added or changed or updated and what fees have changed. So all of that is now in front of you for consideration. That way we can keep our services sort of, you know, the costs are getting recovered for those services provided. And just for background, as a public health department, there's state law that requires us to offer these services regardless of somebody's ability to pay. So even though you might see a bunch of fees, they're usually meant for people who may have Medicaid or insurance. And then we also have sliding fee scale programs, certainly in our dental clinics. And then for all our other services, if there's not an ability to pay, we tended to still offer the service without that barrier being there. So sometimes people see the fee and it looks very onerous, but it's really for insurance industry so that we can collect that fee and kind of subsidize these services. But that's what we have currently just to better align our fees with what the insurance industry standards are so we can recover our costs. With that, I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Any questions? Thank you, doctor.

Thank you. And we have Mary Lou Espinosa with Real Estate Next.

Good morning, Mary Lou.

Good morning, Mayor and Council. Mary Lou Espinosa with the Real Estate Division for the Record. Our Schedule C changes, proposed Schedule C changes today are for temporary rights of entry, license and use agreements for city-owned property, and the application fees. And so what this does, the change is intended to ensure adequate consideration for temporary use of city-owned property and to recover administrative and compliance monitoring activities. The license and use fee is, there's three sections to this inside of the Schedule C already. And so what we're trying to do is remove that third bullet point. And it will read then like this, the greater of $10 per parking space per day and or 10% of the annual fair market value for the city-owned property. There's an additional bullet point right now in the Schedule C that says it's the greater of those two and or $5,000. And we have found that that's not right sized at times for properties that are smaller sizes. This will get us the ability to right size the market rate for what the size of the property is. The last bullet there is for the application fee waiver authority, and that's to grant the city manager the authority to waive lease application and license application fees to governmental entities and or nonprofits on a case-by-case basis if the waiver serves a public purpose.

I like that.

Questions?

Any questions for Mary Lou? Representative Acevedo.

Thank you, Mayor. This one's giving me a little bit of heartburn. I understand where you're coming from, and I get where you're at and how you developed this. But overall, it works for for-profit people that are doing events. If it's a massive concert and they're going to come in and do it, I agree with the assessment. I'm going back to the nonprofits and understanding how we can help with the space. If we were to do a city space where we're charging per parking lot or the greater one of each one, like you mentioned right here, I worry that that would be hard on a nonprofit. I'm wondering how we can get to a point where we can do some waving for the nonprofit and I think the the real estate part would be where I would wave if if it was up to me and then they could pay for trash pickup and Barriers that need to go up because of closures etc. But I think this would be a really big help for the nonprofits and I

I think the first part does I think when we were talking about the parking lot out front because it had the or 5,000 as a minimum. We could do anything else so that think the first part actually allows us to do exactly as you said so can you have an estimate of what you think that would be.

In the front it would be approximately $2700 versus the 5,000 per day.

So we'd bring it down to $2,700, but then we still wouldn't have a mechanism if it's a nonprofit for us to just waive that fee, and then they pay for the rest of the cleanup, police, et cetera.

As it's written right now, that is correct.

Okay.

Yeah, I really hope that we could explore this a little bit more. I know that we're going to continue talking about schedule C today. This is a motion for action. It's informational purposes. But as we adopt a budget, I would love to see something along those lines. Thank you.

Thank you.

Representative Nino, I see it in your thoughts.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mary Lou. Quick question, Ms. Mack. Do we not have a current process of someone submitting for a sponsorship?

We do. So we do have, and I believe that's with planning and inspection. So if we have an organization, nonprofit organization, who's doing a parade or something else within the city, we have a waiver of, I can't remember how many events we do per year, but that is also built in. It's not the same as saying that we are going to utilize space for the city that would be utilized for some other purpose or could bring in revenue and just have that waived completely. So I just think that's a broader conversation. I think it also leans into,

the conversation we just had about use of spaces and so i do think that we need to be very strategic about how we talk about that and ensure that it's well balanced yeah but yeah that was my understanding that we do have a process that an organization could submit an application at least six months or something in advance to start the process of trying to submit a sponsorship opportunity okay thank you very little thank you thank you

Up next, planning and inspections.

No, he's answering a question, but I can't remember the detail.

Yeah, so Kevin Smith with planning and inspections. Yes, Representative Nino, we do have a process for city-sponsored events. From my understanding, it is held once a year where interested parties can ask to be included as part of it. We do get some interest, but obviously there's so much money to go around, and so we do have to cap it. I don't have the number off the top of my head, but we can give that to the council.

Yeah, I believe it's similar to like what we allocate for parades and all that as well, right? Yes. Because we allocate, I think, $100,000 for parades a year or something like that.

Yeah, so we can give you that information.

Okay, yeah, that'll be helpful. We'll send it to the council. Thank you for that. Thank you.

All right, Mary Lou, you're back up. Now you want to do your introduction?

Yes, up next is the zoo.

Thank you, Mary Lou.

Good morning. Good morning. Willie Diaz with the El Paso Zoo. So our changes are for the add-on fees. So the membership package add-on fees, my child $15, name guest $25, name guest $30. And we do cap it of one adult and two adult China. So that's for any package that we have. They can add any family member that they want to add on. We added some general admission discount tickets, and it's for our city employees. seniors in active duties, and it's mostly for our special events like Brew at the Zoo, Boo at the Zoo, so we can offer the employees discounts. We also did an increase to facility rental sampling, and it's usually for event tents, so when they rent the event tent, they can also use the giraffe terrace or the boardwalk if they want to include it for like a wedding or quinceañera so they can also add that to the to the event and then the special programs we deleted some of the animal encounters behind the scenes that we're not doing anymore we're doing a lot more on the public side and then we change the some language on them you know making sure it states Monday through Friday or the the camps that make sure that says you know weekly camps compared to daily camps so that's pretty much WHAT WE DID. ANY QUESTIONS?

REPRESENTATIVE TREJO. THANK YOU, MAYOR.

WHAT IS THE CURRENT FEE FOR KIDS, FOR CHILDREN?

For the camps?

No, for the, so you're increasing it to the membership packages? What is the, what was the price before?

So it comes in a package, so from the tape years, the most popular one is the wolf package, which is two adults and three kids, and so that's one, and two added adults, so, and then the penguin pals, that's, two adults up to five kids and then two uh named guests so uh if you know non-orphans are the same so they can always add you know a child for uh fifteen dollars the difference between the unnamed guest and the name guest is the name guest you know they have to show their id when they come in the unnamed guest they can bring you know somebody different each time and then the senior discount how much is that That'll be depending on the, I don't have it right in front of me, but I believe it'll be for the events, $10. $10.

What is considered a senior?

Anybody over 65. 65, okay.

and the animal encounter fees. What is that? How much is that?

So right now, the ones that we have are $45. It could be the penguins, the rhinos, the calapagos. I'm forgetting one, the prop horns. So those are the ones we have.

OK. Very good.

Thank you.

Is there any discounts for the veterans? I see active duty, but what about veterans?

Veterans, it's hard to kind of, because, you know, with active duty, we do ask for the ID of the veterans. We don't have anything, but it's kind of hard to know if they're veterans. You know, we kind of take their word, so sometimes we do have, like, for veterans, a discount for them. But, you know, it just depends, you know.

I I I think Miss Turner is raising hers and I think they have a card. So my father has a card. Yeah, they have cards. So maybe maybe that's something we should look into for our veterans as well. OK, representative Acevedo.

Thank you, Mayor. Wanted to ask you specifically a question about the animal encounter for private event in conjunction with catered event. It's going from $75 per educator to $75 to $125 per educator. Can you explain that a little bit more?

The difference is because most of those catered events are night events like weddings, quinceanera. So when they're night events, usually our educator has to work overtime or the night. So we're trying to cover the difference in the overtime that they're working.

And so it goes from 75 to 125, depending on how many hours. Yeah.

If they want one hour, two hours, depending on what the, what animal they want.

Okay. Another thing that comes up a lot is the carousel being $500 per hour with the minimum of two hours. Now with this change, how do you determine getting to $500 to rent that carousel for an event?

It's usually for, you know, big events, you know, they rent it out. So usually we have to provide a rights attendant. So if it's a night event, then it shouldn't be an issue. But if it's during the day, then, you know, it's, you know, we use it for that event. And then you usually give them a respite so they can use it.

OK, so the $500 per hour is for a night event, but during the day it's OK? Yes. And you just give them risk spends. They don't have to pay the $500?

That depended on the event, if they want to rent it or they just want to pay per ride per each person that they're part of the event.

And when the zoo, has the zoo had any fundraisers Lately where you're just using that for people to use that people you're raising money for the zoo, right? So You're letting people use it for free

Well, we just had the Joy Center event maybe a couple of weeks ago, and they paid for the entrance fee. It was a big event because they paid for like the first 500, and then we ended up with like 3,500. So they ended up paying for, you know, several people for the rides and the carousel. So it just depends on what event we have.

But when the zoo is trying to raise money for the zoo, do you have that open for guests to use?

Yeah, for like Brew at the Zoo, we do have it open for people to use.

Okay. I'm just getting a little worried about the zoo charging and I understand where you're coming from with we're trying to recover costs and things were a little different at some point but it is something that keeps coming up in the community that it's getting unattainable in terms of how much is being charged for different events different aspects of the zoo not necessarily the admission is coming up but just wanted to put that out there because constituents do bring it up quite often

I just want to remind council that city council through general fund pays for only people. So every dime that the zoo is raising is for every other aspect of operations. And so whether it's the gate or these special events, it is paying for the food, it's paying for repairs, it's paying for absolutely everything that happens there. So they do have fundraising goals and I do think that we work hard to try to make sure that it's affordable. But I think like with every other fee, if you're really talking about something that's over and above that you're opting in to be able to use that for a party or something, I strongly feel we shouldn't be subsidizing. And we should be good stewards of these dollars to make sure that we're not needing to put more money into the zoo to make sure that we're helping to operate it.

But I think that's where it comes back to the nonprofits not being able to afford it when they want to have an event there. And that's kind of the general thing. Like you said, Joy was really great. They had a lot of people. But there have been other nonprofits that have kind of stepped away and looked for another place because it was not affordable. Right. Understood. Thank you. All right.

and miss mack if possible um we could look into the general mission discounts and just look at what we could do for veterans because we've got city employees seniors active duty and most of them do carry a card so if that's something when you get some time you can look into sure okay thank you thank you you forgot your introduction huh

afternoon jerry de miro good afternoon jerry i'm here for sun metro so we have some minor fee changes we are updating the basis for our transit license fee today when another transit provider uses our own street stops or our transit centers they are charged a set fee of five thousand dollars for either the transit center or the on-street stops We're making a modification to that rate to have that rate actually be calculated based on the proportionate use of the facility by the transit entity and the cost associated with utilities, security, and janitorial services. So for example, if we have 100 buses per day stopping at a transit center and 10 of them belong to the El Paso Transit Authority will be paying 10% of the cost of the janitorial security and utility costs. Sun Metro would absorb the rest of the cost. That allows us to recover an additional $73,000 per year based on use of our transit facilities. The other modifications we have are in the modification of our daily parking rate. The current daily parking rate at Union Plaza Transit Terminal is $15 per day. We are lowering that to $10 per day to be more consistent with the parking rates throughout the city. And we have made a decision to no longer offer rentals at Union Depot. And that's primarily because of the cost of the facility and maintaining the facility. Currently, there are a number of upgrades that are needed to Union Depot. And rather than incur the cost associated with those upgrades, we have made the decision not to rent it. We actually have very little rental use in the past five years of that facility.

Wow. Representative Limon.

Thank you, Jerry. That's a shame. It's such a beautiful facility. I've been to several weddings there. My question is related specifically to the parking at the Union parking lot. That's right across from the Convention Center. Yes, ma'am. That's commendable because every time I go downtown to an event, the rate increases and increases and increases. I mean, I've seen something as much as $17 now, maybe even almost $20. What about Glory Road? What is the rate that Glory Road?

Off the top of my head, the Glory Road is charged by the hour. And again, its maximum will be $10. I should qualify the fact that our event parking is different from our daily parking rate. Our event parking, for example, for sporting events that start at 7 PM is $10. If it's a 1 PM game, we start it at $15. Very good.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Jerry.

And next up is?

And I believe I got my own entry slide here because I have more than one slide for my presentation. The proposed Schedule C changes for environmental services is first proposing a change to establish a dumpster service rate as a per pickup instead of a monthly rate. For example, for a two-yard dumpster, we currently charge monthly $24.38, and we'd like to change it to $6.10 per collection, because sometimes we do get a request for additional collections throughout the month to assist the different programs that we're working with. Second would be proposing an increase to the residential and commercial solid waste fees by $0.50. This will take the residential fee from $21.50 to $22 and the commercial fee from $31.50 to $32. This is part of a $2 phased-in rate increase, which I'll speak on a little bit more in the following slides. The last is the proposing of the create a new CCS pass fee for $20 to allow non-solid waste customers to purchase a digital pass to visit the citizen collection stations. This was calculated based off the $16 fee that we charge our customers to go into the greater El Paso landfill, and then calculating costs for transportation, waste disposal from the citizen collections, delivery to the landfill per customer, It came out to about $4.12, $4.12. So we rounded it down and made it even $4. So with the $4 and the $16, that's why we're requesting a $20 fee to enter the citizen collection stations. What does the solid waste fee fund? So it funds our annual operations for the landfill, waste collections, our recycling program, and our citizen collection stations. What this fee has done for us is helped us develop a vehicle replacement plan and a capital improvement plan so we could do a lot of our projects which prevents us from issuing any debt for any of our purchases for vehicles and for like our construction projects. We include the citizen collection stations, the new greater El Paso landfill cells that we just built. then it helps us maintain a two-month operational reserve as i mentioned in fy25 a four dollar increase was requested over five years to cover capital expenditures operating reserve and our daily operations in fy25 we were able to get two dollars for go from 19 to 21 and then starting this fiscal year we were as a 50 cent increase over four years we got the fy26 sent to get up to 21.50 and this year we'll be requesting to go to 22. Our vehicle replacement investment, we on average spend anywhere from $13 to $60 million per year for vehicle replacement. It's an eight-year replacement for our larger vehicles. And the industry standard is anywhere from six to eight, but we have such an amazing fleet program with our streets and maintenance department that on average, the majority of our vehicles make it all eight years before we completely have to deadline them and get rid of them. Because at that point, the amount of maintenance outweighs the cost of the vehicle. And just to give you examples, our trash trucks are averaging about $450,000 per vehicle. Our sweepers are approximately $420,000 per vehicle. And our landfill equipment on average is anywhere from $1 to $1.2 million for a compactor, a dozer, a scraper, any of those larger equipments, which we tend to buy two to three of those on an annual basis. Our heavy equipment costs on average increase anywhere above 3% to 3.4% annually. And then our capital investments. As I just mentioned earlier, we just finished the greater El Paso landfill for $20 million. That was 65 acres of new landfill disposal area, which will allow us to dispose there for the next 12 years. We're getting close to completing the Hondo Pass citizen collection station, which costs us approximately $5 million. And hopefully this fall, we'll be starting the Donovan citizen collection station. And per the last cost limit, that one's going to be approximately $7 million. Future projects that we have are the Far East Citizen Collection Station, which should be approximately 7.5, and then the new Far East MSC, which we're looking at approximately $12 million. So we have an operational reserve, a two-month operational reserve for environmental services. Per the state of Texas, per the Texas Administrative Code, since we are the trash provider for the citizens of El Paso, we have to provide weekly trash collections for them and disposal properly at our landfill. What this two-month operational reserve allows us to do, just in case for any reason we're unable to collect any of the solid waste fees for any reason, We'd still be able to maintain Trash service which covers salaries contracts maintenance fuel and minor equipment So we'd still be able to operate if something were to happen where we weren't able to collect the solid waste fees for any reason And this fund balances hold to design two months of operating reserve for us Which is approximately we're looking at about 12 million currently based off our budgets And then just other cost drivers, personnel costs for environmental service increased 500K from FY26 to 27, thanks to the raise in the minimum wage, which has been great for environmental services. We're below 10% vacancy and we hadn't been that low as long as I've been with the city for seven years. We were typically around above 20, 25% on vacancy. So that has helped out a lot, which I believe has made a big difference. There's a $250,000 increase for landfill contracts for leachery repair pumps. And then indirect costs have gone up. A larger item is the $600,000 increase from the El Paso Water Utilities for the billing program they provide to us. As you know, all our billing goes through the water utilities bill. But I do want to mention, I know we're raising the rate, but I do want to provide the information that we do still have a senior discount. We know these rates do affect a lot of our residents who are senior citizens, but we still provide a 20% discount for all residents that are 65 or older and the primary account holder. So the accounts under your name and you're over the age of 65, all they have to do is contact Environmental Services. We'll mail them out an application or they could come down to our office on Sao Paulo and we'll help them, assist them, fill out the paperwork and get them their discount if they're needed. Any questions?

Yes, Representative Limon.

Thank you, Nick. It's understandable why your presentation was so long and took so many slides to cover everything. Your department has stepped up to the forefront in months now, and I congratulate you, but your leadership and Yamaguchi's leadership are what has set the standard for that department. I can't thank you enough. You do a really great job. You and Yamaguchi take care of your people, take care of equipment, always looking out for the best thing. And with the low turnover rate, that says a lot. And so, publicly, thank you very much for all your work. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Any other questions or comments for Nick? Representative Canales.

Just very quickly, it's not a question, Nick. I think there are so many areas across an organization like a city, like a municipal government, where you don't want to get behind on the maintenance and the capital needs, but I think probably none greater than solid waste and trash. I think people will see very quickly what happens if the city gets behind on its needs and obligations in this area. I know it's an increase, and I appreciate the gradual approach that began already last year, and I think it's an investment that's well worth it. So thanks, and thank you for all the work you've done at the department. I think it's in a much better place. Thank you.

Thank you, Nick. And I'll introduce Sasha to come back up.

Sasha, welcome back.

Good morning again. So we are going to provide a status update on the study that we did. So in January this year, we contracted MGT Impact Studies to provide a comprehensive study on our user fees for parks and recreation department. for the Parkland education fees and as well for the planning and inspection fees. So they are 80% done with the study. The study is going well. They have good findings so far. So I will kick into planning and inspection and then Kevin to give you status update for the planning and inspections and then we will go to Pablo and Parks and Recreation.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Kevin.

Good afternoon, Mayor and City Council. Kevin Smith with Planning Inspections. First of all, I'd like to thank city leadership and OMB for this opportunity for us to reevaluate our fees. So I believe, as you're aware, we have a lot of fees for planning inspections, over 500 line items. And so periodically, historically for the past few years, we've come with a number of updates. But this is a great opportunity to completely reassess our fees, and we're grateful for this. As we look at our department, this is broken up into two main categories. One is planning, which a lot of the items that come before you are the planning-related items. And then the other portion, which is a lot of it behind the scenes, but they carry a significant portion, are the building permits. So the study is including the analysis over 2 million of expenditures related to the 103 planning-related fees. as well as from the building permit size looking at over $10 million in expenditures related to over 260 fees for the building permits. Currently for planning is we are only recovering 31% of fee-related services, which is leaving approximately $1.5 million of funding that is having to be found elsewhere. for the services that we provide, and that is just the planning fees. For the building permits, we are collecting, we're recovering approximately 86% of the fees related to those services, which is leaving about $1.4 million on the table. So if both of these were brought up to the 100%, it would It would allow the city to receive approximately $3 million of funds of additional funding from just the planning inspections fees. So some of the preliminary results that working with a consultant is what we're looking at is we'd have 20 new or reclassified fees to better reflect the current environment, as well as a lot of the fees are needing to be clarified in terms of how they're on the Schedule C, because right now, frankly, some of them are a little confusing how they're worded. So try to clarify that for our customers. This is to go along, obviously, with the THE FEES THEMSELVES, WHICH WOULD BE OR ARE BEING REASSESSED AT THIS TIME. FOR THE BUILDING PERMITS, WE PROCESS ALMOST 13,000 TRADE PERMITS ANNUALLY. THIS INCLUDES MECHANICAL, ELECTRICAL, PLUMBING AND IRRIGATION. THESE ARE ACROSS 125 CATEGORIES. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING AT IS TO RESTRUCTURE THESE INTO 12 TIERED SEGMENTS TO STREAMLINE And improve the customer and the city staff experience This also like I mentioned does not include the fees themselves which are to be presented to council at a later time And that is the conclusion. And then just to follow up to Representative Nino's question earlier about the events, the city-sponsored events, is we accept the applications in the month of May every year, and there's $200,000 allocated for these type of applications. We did have 15 applicants submit applications at this time, and they're currently under evaluation.

Thank you for that clarification. So we allocate $200,000 for this type of sponsorship, 15 applications. Does those 50 applications exhaust the $200,000?

Generally, they would exhaust it.

OK.

So we're not accepting any more applications at this time? Correct. And it's only that month period in May.

And do they open from May 1 to? May 1 to the end of the month. And how do individuals have access to this application or this process?

They could reach out to us to plan inspections and we can assist them. And again, we'll send out this information to all of council. Perfect. All right. Thank you for that clarification. Truly appreciate you. You're welcome. Be happy to answer any questions.

All right. Any questions for Kevin? Kevin, thank you.

Okay. Thank you very much. I'll turn the time over to Pablo with Parks.

Mayor and council, these two will be coming back to you once we finish the study. We just wanted to let you know what we are with.

Okay. Good afternoon, Pablo.

Good afternoon, Mayor. Good afternoon, Council Members. Pablo Caballero, for the record, Parks and Recreation. And again, this is only an update from our fee study. We've been working very hard for the past three to four months with the consultants sharing a lot of information and analyzing a lot of information because of our See schedule Has been there for many many years and I think we need some changes in order to continue to operate in a good manner Actually right now they're analyzing thirty eight point three million dollars in expenditures Associated with all of our programs from after-school programs facility rental special events sports recreation classes and aquatic activities and As of right now, we're currently recovering an average of 11% of fee-related programs. Recovery levels range from 1% for senior services, 12% for aquatics, and up to 40% for sports leagues. Our preliminary results or recommendations that they have till now, it's that going moderate of a 15% increase over the next three years on our fees would increase free revenue for $4.3 million to 6.6 and reduce general fund subsidiaries by $2.3 million. That's all we have and like city manager said you're gonna have a chance to look at the presentation the complete presentation presented by the consultants very soon very good any questions for Pablo Pablo the parks are good with all the the rain.

They're green. They're they look great Thank you. Thank you Pablo. Thank you Council now would be a good time to take lunch. I think we're done miss Ryan

Yes, sir in open session, yes, yes.

Would you guys like to take lunch. Till 1. Till 1.30.

Make a motion to break for lunch.

Okay, there's motion to motion in a second to recess the City Council meeting until 1.30 all in favor. But anyone opposed and the meeting is in recess at 1221 PM and will reconvene at 1.30.

That's good to hear. Thanks.

Yes.

OK, Ms. Prime.

Council, is there a motion to reconvene? So moved. Second. There's a motion and a second to reconvene the work session. All in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? And the work session is back in session at 1.31 PM. And that brings us to the executive session items. I'd like to move into executive session, please.

Is there, there's a motion to second, Ms. Frey?

There's a motion and a second to return to Executive Session, all in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? And the City Council of the City of El Paso may return to Executive Session pursuant to Section 3.5A of the El Paso City Charter, New Texas Government Code, Chapter 551, Subchapter D. to discuss any of the following. Executive session item one, application of El Paso Electric Company to amend its certificate of convenience and necessity for a 366 megawatt natural gas generation facility, PUC number 59076, HQ number utility dash 74, under 551.071. Executive session item two, City of El Paso, Texas versus the Honorable Kim Paxton. Attorney General of Texas, cause number D-1-GN-26-004983 under 551.071. Executive Session Item 3, Joseph Pickett v. City of El Paso, cause number 08-24-00405-CV under 551.071. Executive Session Item 4, Daniel Villegas v. City of El Paso et al., cause number 315-CV-386 under 551.071. executive session item five discussion on economic development opportunities in el paso hq number utility hq number 26-1200 under 551.087 executive session item six discussion on economic development opportunities in el paso hq number 26-1214 under 551.087 These matters are taken into executive session under 551.071, consultation with attorney, and 551.087, deliberation regarding economic development negotiations. It is 1.33 p.m.

Oh.

Test, test, test.

Okay, Ms. Bryan, we're ready.

Is there a motion to come out of executive session? Second. There's a motion and a second to come out of executive session. All in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? And the work session is back in session at 4.37 PM. We're on EX1. Mayor Potem? No action. Thank you.

EX2? Motion made, seconded, and carried, ratifying the suit filed on June 22, 2026, and assigned the cause number D1GN26 004983 and that the city attorney's office be authorized to file suits to protect the city of El Paso's interest pertaining to rulings issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas, which do not allow the city to accept from disclosure documents as otherwise provided by relevant provisions of Chapter 552 of the Texas Government Code that the city attorney be authorized to retain the services of outside counsel and to take all steps necessary, including the execution of any required documents in order to effectuate this authority.

All right. There's a motion. Is there a second? Second. All right. Ms. Bryant?

Yes, sir. There was a motion made and written to the record by Mayor Pro Tem Chavez, seconded by Representative Maldonado Rocha. And this is on EX2. This is to file suit and retain outside counsel. On that motion, call for the vote.

in the voting session and that motion passes unanimously EX3 no action thank you EX4 motion made seconded and carried that the city attorney in consultation with the city manager be authorized to evaluate and accept the settlement offer and terms in the matter of Daniel Villegas versus City of El Paso cause number EP15CV00386DCG, pending in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, El Paso Division, and to take all steps necessary, including the execution of any required documents, in order to effectuate this authority.

OK, there's a motion. Is there a second? Second. All right. Ms. Prime?

There is a motion made and written to the record by Mayor Pro Tem Chavez, seconded by Representative Canales, and this is on EX 4. This is to evaluate and accept a settlement offer on that motion. Call for the vote. In the voting session. And that motion passes unanimously. EX 5? No action. Thank you. EX 6? No action. Thank you. Is there a motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn. There's a motion and a second to adjourn the work session. All in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? And the work session for Monday, July 6, 2026 is adjourned at 4.40 PM.

Thank you, counsel.