City Council - workshop

Good morning, Ms. Bryan. I think we're ready to go to work.

Good morning. This is a work session of the El Paso City Council for Monday August 17 2026. It is 9 o'clock a.m. Mayor Johnson is president and presiding in council chambers along with me a potent on it. Representative us have a though representative on a photo shot representative boy at the whole and alternate mayor protein yet. May we have a quorum.

Okay represent fear would you lead us in the pledge of allegiance.

Thank you.

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.

Okay, Ms. Bryan, I believe that brings us to item number one.

Yes, sir, and item number one is annual report by El Paso Water and the State of the Stormwater Utility.

Okay. Good morning.

Yes. Well, my name is he said that I mean I am the utility chief operations officer for stormwater and this morning, I'll be providing the annual update on the stormwater utility through the end of February 2026, which is the end of our fiscal year. The stormwater utility was creating after the 2006 flood disaster to develop a master plan, establish dedicated funding that also helps pay for maintenance, and implement projects that reduce flood risk throughout El Paso. Authorities were divided between the city of El Paso and El Paso Water. And the city manages floodplain regulations and development requirements through your planning and inspections department, meaning that they are responsible for managing impact for development to ensure that neighboring properties and downstream properties do not flood. And EP Water manages stormwater infrastructure that is in place. We perform maintenance of the system and we manage capital improvements to move runoff away from property. So in other words, if you water focus is an engineered conveyance systems while the city focuses on floodplain management and evaluates watershed scale flood behavior, regulatory compliance and long term risk reduction. And today we maintain a large and growing system. We have over it. We have 37 dams, 22 pump stations close to 500 ponds set over 70 miles of channels, 12 miles of agricultural drains, um, over 350 miles of conduits and over 8000 units. And because needs always, always exceed funding, projects are prioritized using objective criteria. And one question that we often hear is, how do you decide which projects get built first? So the answer is that the projects are not selected based on who calls more. They are prioritized through a structured and transparent process, but equally important is public input. So when the stormwater utility was first created in 2008, community leaders recognized that the stormwater fees would only be successful if residents had a voice in how they were spent. And subsequently, the stormwater focus group and later the stormwater task force were established, and these groups reviewed priorities, discussed community concerns, and helped shape recommendation regarding scoring criteria and project priorities. The goal here is to ensure that stormwater investments reflect both engineering needs and the community priorities. And this process exists because there's always more projects than money. The challenge is making sure we spend limited dollars where they can reduce the most risk for the greatest number of people. And this process produces the projects that move into our CIP, or our Capital Improvement Program. We have projects underway in every phase across the entire city. Last year, we completed four construction projects. We had five projects under construction. We had three projects preparing for construction in the current fiscal year. And we had 15 projects in planning and design. And as you can see, work is planned and in progress throughout the whole city. And now we'll look at key accomplishments. The animal services pond improvements increase storage capacity and protection of nearby city infrastructure. The project was completed in December 2025. And current construction projects focus on storage, conveyance, and system reliability. These are some of the ones that are in construction. I say pump on and not only a pump station we improve pump issue efficiency to sediment basins and trash rack implementation. I mean this is because there was a lot of trash getting into the pump stations and they want to announce on now with this the trash gets collected before it goes into that the pump station. The Wilbrook pond is one of our signature projects. It will capture approximately 100 million gallons of runoff and remove more than 600 properties from the flood zone. In this phase of the project, the pond is estimated to be completed by the end of this year. Gilmore Way continues our corrugated metal pipe replacement program, and it improves reliability. And several projects we're preparing to enter construction during fiscal year 26-27. We're going to focus on Clardy Fox. This pump station demonstrates the value of partnerships. It is a major project supported through a 75-25% grant with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. And pumping capacity here will increase from 131 cubic feet per second to 665 cubic feet per second, providing additional protection to the south central area. And additional projects continue moving through planning and design, and this helps us build our future capital improvement program. The RV pond will provide additional runoff storage and reduce downstream flooding risks. The Diana Ditch Study identified multiple long-term solutions for recurring flooding along Diana Drive and provides a roadmap for future improvements in that watershed. However, not all work is planned years in advance. Emergency projects and urgent city and water improvement district needs often require immediate attention and, of course, funding. And these projects consume funding that was originally planned for other projects. And when these come up, we don't have an option on whether to respond to them or not. We have to respond. The challenge becomes finding funding while keeping long-term projects moving. Everest Drive is a good example of why emergency projects are so difficult to plan for. So years ago, an inlet was constructed, and its outlet discharged on the side of the mountain. Over time, that runoff created erosion, and that erosion, of course, progressed. And this was not a project that was identified in our master plan. It became a priority because the conditions changed. The estimated cost is approximately $12 million for this fix, which is a big chunk of our capital improvement program. At Henry Brennan, we're replacing failed drainage infrastructure and restoring pond functionality. I want in Bergen miss a heels we require pipeline repairs payment reconstruction and dam slope stabilization. Gail Borden involved repairs to a damaged bill way to restore safe operation and reliability. A mercantile channel we're addressing erosion and underground voids before they threaten nearby infrastructure. And the Montoya drain project with the Water Improvement District improves crossing stability and drainage reliability. Cedar Grove is a partnership project with the city where we are addressing drainage and street failure due to unstable soils. We're also working with the city of El Paso with us on metal pipe replacements at multiple crossings in the central area. And we're very thankful for that as well. We invested in additional vector equipment to strengthen maintenance operations and also responsiveness. And while construction receives the most attention, maintenance is what keeps the system functioning every day. And of course before every month and season. Our crews inspect infrastructure, they read the remote debris team in its main team ponds clear channels and prepare for equipment. And it is not small task much of this work is invisible to the public because it happens before problems occur and a team of 41 does it all. Maintenance is not glamorous. and it doesn't get a lot of attention. Or funds, we don't get much funds for maintenance, but it's necessary to protect previous investments. This photos here show the scales of maintenance work performed at major facilities like our dams, These are two of our larger dams. We have ranged them 46 feet in height. In McElligan Canyon, 104 feet in height in here. On the right-hand side, you can see three, four, five, about five of our employees that walk up and down the slopes performing the maintenance. It's so big that you can barely see our staff right there. I have... walked up and down some of these slopes, not the larger one, and it's very hard to do. And we do this so that we can meet or exceed and pass, of course, Corps of Engineers and TCEQ inspections as well. Knight's Pond highlights one of the challenges that we face in stormwater. We receive calls regarding weeds, sediment, appearance, graffiti, encampments, and maintenance concerns, among others. And all concerns are important to us, all of them. And we always strive to be responsive. However, with limited staff and resources, we must constantly balance cosmetic concerns against activities that directly impact flooding. Our commitment is to remain responsive while ensuring resources are directed where they are needed the most. Conduent maintenance and channel and agricultural drain maintenance protects conveyance capacity and reduces sediment buildup. Vector operations and inlet cleaning are essential components of our program. And next we'll look at our key performance indicators. And when I show these numbers, it's easy to focus on acres, miles, assets, and percent maintain. But what I want everybody to remember is that our small team of 41 frontliners do it all. We maintain nearly 1,000 acres of ponds, many of them multiple times, and the KPI trended up. Here is a map of the ponds that were maintained throughout the city. We also maintain approximately 341 acres of dams across the system peaking in 2425 when funding allowed us to bring additional contractor have to assist. Here is a map of the dams that were maintained. We maintain 111 miles of conveyance infrastructure, an increase of about 7% from the prior year, and as you can see, this KPI has improved over the last couple of years. We still haven't reached our goal, but we are getting there. We clean, and here is a map of the conduits that were cleaned citywide. We also cleaned more than 11,000 inlets, exceeding the total number of inlets in the system because many of them required multiple cleanings. And this KPI has trended up since we hired contractor assistance for this task. Here's a map associated with those maintenance activities. Overall, we service approximately 40% of our stormwater infrastructure during the year. And given the size of the system and available resources, not every asset requires maintenance every year. And some assets require multiple maintenance during a year. So what we do, we prioritize infrastructure based on risk, condition, regulatory requirements, operational needs, and historical performance. And this approach allows us to maintain the system efficiently while ensuring critical assets receive the most attention. And we tend to those where maintenance is needed the most. And as you can see our system is performed year round and citywide this is the map of all of our maintenance put together combined and we we we do a lot during the year. And those 41 employees not only maintain our assets, they respond to citizen requests, stormy events, emergency calls, and we also support textile maintenance activities when requesting to request it to alleviate flooding within their right of way. The system continues to grow every year, but staffing levels remain stable. And that makes efficiency and priorities very critical. This year may be the most important slide in the entire presentation since 2008 the storm water utility has invested over 400 million dollars in drainage infrastructure throughout the community and that is a tremendous accomplishment. We have built ponds, dams, pipelines, and pump stations. We have acquired land where needed for future flood mitigation. We have preserved open space, and we have made our community safer and more resilient. What is particularly noteworthy is the value delivered to our customers. So based on an average of about 178,000 connections, stormwater residential customers from 2008 to the present for approximately $2,284 have been invested in our stormwater infrastructure for every property compared to about $961 paid in stormwater fees. So in other words, for every dollar paid by a typical customer, about $2.38 has been invested back into the community through stormwater infrastructure and flood protection. However, there still is a challenge. When the original master plan was developed, the estimated construction need was about $650 million. Today, despite investing over $400 million, the estimated remaining construction cost has grown to about $875 million. Why? Well, because construction costs continue to increase, flood mitigation standards continue to evolve, new risks continue to be identified, and our city continues to grow. So while we're making tremendous progress, the finish line just continues to move. And affordability remains a top concern for us. Residents understand the importance of flood protection, but they're also concerned about rising costs. And that reality drives many of the conversations and decisions that we make today. And as a result, we have stretched schedules where appropriate to reduce pressure on fee payers. The challenge is balancing today's affordability with tomorrow's flood risk. Grants are one of the most effective tools that we have to maintain affordability, and every dollar secured is a dollar that does not have to come directly from our fee payers. To date, we have secured over $24 million in grant funding and have another $28 million currently requested, and those partnerships allow us to deliver projects that otherwise would be delayed for many years. The outcome of this work is safer, more resilient community, and a stronger stormwater system. Looking at this monsoon, forecast of course suggests a wetter, warmer, and longer monsoon season, reinforcing the importance of preparedness and maintenance. And in closing, since 2008, we have become a successful stormwater utility that protects our community every day. And we are committed to continuing to protect public safety and private property. Thank you for your time and support. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Great presentation. A quick question on slide 22.

Slide 22. This one.

Yes. So looking at the way that that eroded off of the mountain there, it could easily go to the left or go to the right. And that particular event cost the utility $12 million? Yes, sir. Why does the utility maintain that?

But I'm so that this subdivision was originally a private subdivision so it was built private and this was before the storm water utility was created so that in late somehow it's not in any of the plans we we coordinated with the city's planning and development department and That in it that that was installed that just discharges on the side of the mountain was not in any of the plan. So we don't know if it was approved. However, when it was already there when the street was accepted for public use. So hence, that's something that we're responsible for.

Okay. All right. Representative Chavez.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for the presentation. Thank you for the tour that I received for all the stormwater improvements that you've done throughout the city. My pleasure. It's massive when you go into the stormwater drainage system, and it's awesome at the same time. to know that we have prepared for whatever needs our community has, including future possible monsoons and stormwater needs. I want to thank the 41 people that respond to those calls because I know that I've been asking them for a lot of cleanups, especially in stormwater drains in District 1. and different areas that El Paso Water owns. Just recently, I think someone responded same day to clean something up that a constituent had reached out to my office regarding stormwater drainage. So thank you so much for being so responsive, for being so quick to respond. I have a general question on maintenance because like I mentioned, you do respond quickly when we report things, but what is your maintenance schedule look like? You said some things are visible, some things are not visible to our community. So how do you, How do you basically address those maintenance issues that you have, especially to those that are not visible to us as a community but are probably very well needed to make sure that everything's clean and ready in case it is needed?

So we have an annual maintenance schedule. And we divide the city into who 5 different satellites we call it which it's a the Northeast the West side of the central the East side in the mission that mission Valley and homestead so each of the areas they they became they came up with a maintenance could you can like they divided into different each area within different areas and they made a quadrant and we'll address this first and then we'll move here and we'll move here. So they also try to, they keep in mind school schedules also to try to address maintenance around schools when school is off. But then in addition to that, I mean, we have our maintenance schedule for each of the areas. However, if there's a rain event, then we have to focus our crews somewhere else to tend to cleanups in that area that was affected. And then when we get emergency calls and when we get different things, then we have to delay that schedule so that we can get to respond to customer requests and also the needs out there. I don't know if that answers your question.

No, it does. Something that we've had to work really hard as a city is to clean up weeds all over because of the growth of the weeds and also beautifying our medians and things like that.

Do you have also a weed schedule maintenance? So that's part of the annual maintenance schedule that we do. um we we saw they're so hard to control right it's there's humidity and they just sprout so um sometimes we go to an area and then within the next month it's already out there but so that's one of the things that we cannot just keep going back to the same area because then we won't be able to to service the rest of the area so it's it's tough it's very tough to try to to balance everything because like i said some areas require more maintenance than others. It just depends where it rains.

And if I had any ask today that it would be that, just because I do see a lot of weeds sometimes in areas that are not our right of way, but they belong to El Paso water. So just making sure that we're keeping up with those weeds to beautify our neighborhoods.

Absolutely. And we're trying to come up with a service crew to tend to service requests and to tend to all that. But with a crew of 41, it's just very hard to manage that. But we do as part of our maintenance. We do we do have We do apply herbicide all of well the majority of our staff Is training and herbicide application and then they go through the training and everything because that is an essential part of our maintenance activities Yeah, and again, I do want to thank you.

I know that you've done major cleanups in my district in ponding areas and canals and things like that. So I really appreciate the work that's been put into this.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much, and I will relay your thanks to my team. Thank you.

Representative Nino.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for the great presentation. I was also going to ask about the cleaning and maintenance schedule for the different ponds that are across the city. So thank you for answering that. One quick question. When there's construction, like for example, right now in my district, the Montana Expressways is under construction. And I've done a couple of site visits, but there's been a lot of flooding over the weekend. I'm sure multiple media coverage was highlighting the flooding that took place on Montana. And during the site visits that I've done, they had told me that there is new infrastructure for stormwater drainage, but it's currently not active because the construction is still ongoing until the project is complete. Do you all coordinate with other entities to ensure that there's like temporary drainage capacity to avoid any possible floodings? Or is that something that you guys navigate with other entities?

So we do coordinate with Texas. So anything within the city right away, it's with a Passawater stormwater jurisdiction. Anything on Texas right away, we really have no jurisdiction to be able to just go in there and do maintenance. They perform their own maintenance. In this case, the Montana flooding, that site is still under construction. So it would be, I would imagine, I can't speak for them, right? I would imagine it would be under the contractor's responsibility. But what we do when we see that, we reach out to them to see if they need any assistance, whether it's flooding on 910 as well. whether it's flooding on side of all sound Montana on. McCray you know there's just by sign of those are all kids are right away that come to mind and we do reach out to them to see if they need assistance or something to reach out to us as well. So when needed we do assist.

Okay, great. No, thank you for that and I wasn't communication with text on Friday, Saturday and Sunday just to ensure that they were you know, making sure that the community was safe. I know takes that has different traffic cameras. I was looking at you know, the traffic issues that were happening on Montana and also in Zaragoza. So yeah, I just figured that I would ask you because I am in conversation with them to ensuring that they do have some sort of temporary pumping process. I know they did send a contractor and they were able to help clean the area, but thank you for answering our questions and thank you for your great work.

Thank you very much.

Rep. Acevedo. Thank you, Mayor. Good morning.

It's always good to see you. I wanted to ask you about what is happening with the Army Corps of Engineers, if anything. I know that back in 2024, they came and told us that the mountain wasn't causing the flooding. It was the way the city was planned and zoned and all of that many, many years ago. So have we been able to get any money from them to work on that specifically in Central?

Not yet. We're still working on them. So they finished that study and the result, we weren't completely satisfied with the results. So we worked, we're working with them on another study that they're doing, because that one was focused on the mountain. Now this one, you know, the results yielded were that Like you've mentioned, the mountain is not what's causing everything. It's the urban runoff, whatever falls on the streets, that's what's causing the flooding because it's just so much water going on the streets, right? And as you may remember, the streets are designed to carry water. They're like mini channels that convey water. So there's supposed to be water on the street. Now, so now they're focusing on another study and that one is not costing us or our residents any, any money. That's funding 100% by them because they also understood that, you know, what the findings of the first study was not what us nor them were looking for. So this other project we're hoping that will tell us this is what we need to do. These are the systems that need to be installed. It's gonna be very expensive, but hopefully when we get that we're able to request funding for that. Now funding through the Corps of Engineers takes a long time. Some of these projects we've been working, for instance, Clarity Fox, I think it was like 10 years in the making. Same thing for others. It takes a very long time to get these funds. So hopefully we'll be able to get some funding whenever it's available.

Okay, no, I appreciate that update. I also wanted to see if you could share with us the list of stormwater projects in terms of the next one that's coming up, like the prioritized list. I haven't seen that in a bit, so I'd appreciate to look at that one. I know Elm didn't make the cut this last time, and those residents continue to be very anxious every month and season, which we're in right now.

Yeah, and as you may recall, when we had the Stormwater Task Force, we had one of the residents from Elm Street be part of this, so she was part of the process. And like I mentioned, we have a structured priorities, right? So these are ranked on different, Different criteria that that's that's the word it is different criteria and based on Maine is based on this and there's just different criteria. That's how the projects got ranked and I remember one on street ranked that but that's what we do every time there's a new project we apply this scoring criteria and that's how we get in the. And that is, we have hundreds of projects on that list. So it's very complicated. Now, right now we're working on our CIP, and because we're trying to keep it affordable, we're stretching projects out, where we need to finish off of course other projects that are right now some projects that got delayed because of all these emergency projects that that came up um so it was about 15 million dollars so so we're still trying to to schedule projects in but as soon as we have that prioritized list uh are you talking about the cip list or the priorities of the projects

I guess both would be good.

Okay, the project, the priorities of all the projects that we have, that one we do have available, but the CIP, that one's not ready.

Okay, yeah, I the the CIP is probably a little bit more important, but the other one and then would be good and then when you have the CP that would be great. Absolutely and then I was also going to ask you I believe it was in 2023 that counts so had made a 20 year plan into a 10 year plan for stormwater where are we with that is that still happening.

That's still happening, however, because projects, they're just so expensive now. Like I mentioned, for instance, Will Ruth, that's a total project that's going to be about $60 million, I believe, with the pond and also the conveyance, which is much needed because that area would flood all the time. The courtroom, the police station would always flood, and now you know that. we have the pond in construction, we're seeing an improvement. Once we add the drainage system, that's going to address flooding right there on Dyer and Robin Hood and on Rushing. So the projects are costing a lot more now, so that's why we've had to stretch it out. So even though we had a 10-year plan, now it's been stretched out. But I can provide you that information.

Yeah, so is it stretched out to, like, 15 years or...?

It depends on the cost of each project and on the grant funding that we get. So I don't have whether it's a 10 or 15 year plan.

No, I'd love to see that because if that was council direction and obviously costs have gone up and there's good information on why this is happening, but I don't know how that kind of goes with the direction. It kind of conflicts and if we have to update it, I'd love to see that. Absolutely.

Now, as you also got to remember, the more projects we want to build, then we're talking about an increase, a higher increase in stormwater freeze, which is what we're trying to avoid. That's the affordability that we're looking into. That's why the stretching of projects that we need to do so that we are trying not to do that.

And speaking of affordability, what I've kind of heard from constituents is we pay all of this in stormwater and we're still getting flooded. And I kind of have to say they're doing some really great infrastructure work. And I know you've done some tours of even residents that can go on those tours. I'm wondering how else we could really put that work out because what I see is that it's kind of bad luck. When we have a stormwater event and somewhere floods, you just haven't got into that area yet. It's probably on your list, but it's not there. But then there's a lot of prevention that's happening because of all the work that you've done, right? And so it could be a lot worse. And so I'm wondering how we could have a campaign that could inform residents a little bit better on that.

Yeah, we've talked to our communications department so they they've they've been trying to address that because I wish as we showed in a presentation for every dollar spent $2.48 have gone into the system for every household right. So our stormwater fees about $7.42 I believe a month per per household. So in a year, what is it? It's 70, about 80, 90 some dollars a year that goes into the stormwater system. And 10% of that $7 and 40 some cents a month, 10% of that goes to open space as well. So you take away those 74 cents. So it's about $7, let's say, a month per household that goes to the stormwater utility.

That's good to know. And the last thing I wanted to mention is that I'm hoping we could get to a good agreement on the green bowl with the graffiti. Yeah, I know the city manager and I have been talking about it. We talked to Rene countless times. So I'm hoping we could get to that cleanup in a better way. I don't know how far along that is.

Yeah, and we actually clean it up and within a week it's back up.

It's not even a week, it's a day or two.

Yeah, I was being generous. Yeah. We did a day or two. It's already back. We were working with the with the county's correction correctional department so that they could help us. But there's they they also have a long list to to take care of so that that area has been a chance because like I said we get it we came up and within a couple of days it's back up but and we also have to focus on other things and that's part of the service team that we want to put together but we're still trying to manage that because we still need to tend to everything else and like I said we only have 41 staff, 41 frontliners that do all of this maintenance around the city.

Well, I appreciate everything that your team is doing.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

I really hear your message as well.

Representative Rocha.

Thank you, Mayor. And thank you very much for the presentation. So a quick question. When it comes to everything that you shared today, do you also include outreach of what you all are – what the company is doing in order to prevent or maintain or – DO ANY OF YOUR PROCESSES OR WORK THROUGH YOUR MAINTENANCE SCHEDULES?

SO, YES, WE TALK TO, WE COMMUNICATE WITH OUR COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT, RIGHT? WE'RE IN CONSTANT COMMUNICATION WITH THEM. THEY PUT OUT CAMPAIGNS OF THE TURNAROUND DON'T DROWN AND DIFFERENT THINGS THEY'RE LOOKING AT. THEY'VE LEARNED, WE'VE LEARNED THAT THE TURNAROUND DON'T DROWN DOESN'T REALLY RESONATE WITH PEOPLE, ESPECIALLY WITH THE YOUNGER GENERATION. So they're looking into maybe, I don't know, something to do with their vehicles. So they're just looking at different ways of getting the message out there. Because we've been doing turn around, don't drown for so many years, and people still just drive through the flooded areas. And we've done a lot of work, like Representative Acevedo mentioned. The Lee Trevino and James Watt Pelican area used to flood all the time with any little rain. We installed the system and no longer floods. Sam Sneed, that was a river. It would flood all the time. We installed the system. And we haven't heard anything or seen anything. Those are just two that come to mind. But, yeah, whenever we get, oh, I-10 around the Copia area, when we built those humongous ponds 50 feet deep, you were able to visit those. And that area, you know, it's been protected. Flooding does occur in other areas of I-10 where we have not been able to get to yet because of funding as well.

so thank you for that and and leading to to all of this my next question has to do about the flood zones so all the work that you've done on the stormwater drain has also eliminated if i'm not mistaken several flood zones within the city we have removed about 21 000 properties from the flood zone And that was from starting point of what number? Would you happen to know?

I don't. So yeah, I don't happen to know. But overall, since the stormwater utility was created to now, about 21,000 properties have been removed from the flood zone, which means that residents fee payers are not required to pay flood insurance through their mortgage, right? It's still convenient because if somebody places, I don't know, the big garbage can somewhere, you know, that blocks the water, the water is going to go somewhere else. In channels, we have people, I mean, we have all the illegal dumping, which it's a big headache for us. You know, they throw... Mattresses in their couches televisions saying they blocked the waterway. We've seen manholes where I don't know how but people stuff They stuff pillows and they stuff different things in there, you know, so it's it's very challenging the illegal dumping It's certainly a headache for all of us, which it's also in addition to all the maintenance that we do and that actually leads into that the third point that I had which is what can we do to

residents and ratepayers to be able to help you know the 41 that's not a lot of people when you think about covering the amount of space that you have right within the city what what can we do to help I mean you mentioned the illegal dumping try to stop that I know several of us here encourage that and we have programs that we work with community volunteers to be able to help curb that, but it's never going to stop 100%. So is there anything else that we'd be able to do?

You can report it. You can report it to 311 and then those calls get reported to us. You can also call our customer service department and they'll create a service request and it comes to us. uh there's also a storm at epwater.org email you can also send it there and we monitor those i think 41 people is about the number of people in this room so yeah it's to put it in perspective right it's not a lot of people so this is the number of people that covers the entire city but any help that we can get if you see somebody throwing something down an inlet just report it or or let them know you know hey you can't do that you're gonna you you may create flooding in our area um or if um if you have it in you and you can just remove weeds that'll also help any any help is extremely appreciated thank you i appreciate it thank you for coming today thank you so much thank you again for the presentation my pleasure thank you everyone this prime public comment

Yes, sir. For the record, representatives Nino Canales and Limon joined the meeting at 9.05, 9.10, and 9.22, respectively. We have Ms. Osmond that signed up to speak on item number one. Ms. Osmond, star six, please, to unmute your telephone. Go ahead, ma'am. You have three minutes.

Can you hear me? Yes, ma'am. OK. I know Mr. mentioned Elm Street. Look, this is the things that they live down the hill. Okay. There was a project that the water company was going to do on extending the pond on Louisiana. That won't fix that issue. Purchasing people's homes and basically making them homeless because you cannot go purchase a home with whatever the water company is going to try to pay people out. They do not know what they're doing. There is, as she stated, the channel water, so flowing water down the hill, yet we've got homes, different places down the hill where the cut curbs, the ADA cut curbs are flowing that water into people's homes. I was at the 2024 meeting with the Army Corps of Engineers. And what they stated is we needed more inlets. We needed draining. Yet instead of putting that draining while they're implementing new pipelines, they didn't do that. Could have taken care of two things at once, but they've not done that. Instead, what they're doing is they're trying to implement programs that don't really fix the problem in various areas. We had a grandmother and a niece drowned when what should have been done years ago is that gully of an alley filled in. so that the water, instead of pooled in that area, just flowed past, and those two lines would have been saved. Either way, Water Company doesn't tend to set up with vector units so that when it rains and those ponds are filled up, we're just inundated with mosquitoes, which is a health and safety issue. Nobody in the city trusts El Paso Water, thanks to their NDAs. A lot of their projects do more harm and waste money. But that seems to be what you all like to do with tax dollars. They implemented a fee that was illegal. Yet nothing in your reports about making sure things are actually done appropriately and lies aren't told. Elm Street, they went ahead and capped The ditch.

Thank you miss has been meant to reach the 3 minutes and thank you.

I was friend there's no action on this item.

That's correct.

They're sick item number 2.

Item 2 is discussion in action on a resolution authorizing the mayor to execute an updated sister cities agreement between the city of El Paso and the city of Chihuahua Chihuahua thanks.

Good morning.

Hi, good morning, Mayor, city council members. My name is Israel Alvarado. I'm a business service coordinator with the Economic and International Development Department. I'm here to present the proposed updated sister cities agreement between the city of El Paso and the city of Chihuahua, City Chihuahua. Let's see, before I go into detail, kind of want to give you a quick summary of what's in this very brief presentation. So we'll start with the requested action. I'll talk a little bit about the history of the partnership, then the key updates for this 2026 update. And I'll talk about why this matters to the city of El Paso, our next steps, and with request of council. So the request that action is discussion in action on the resolution authorizing the mayor to executing counterpart originals in both English and Spanish languages and updated sister cities agreement between the city of El Paso state of Texas United States of America and the city of Chihuahua state of Chihuahua of the United Mexican states in a form substantially similar to the attached after review and approval by civil city attorney's office. Okay, so this partnership with Chihuahua has been in place for more than two decades. It started in 2002. The original sister cities agreement was a one-page document that established the cooperation through economic, social, and cultural cooperation. It was a very brief, very small document. In 2008, the two cities expanded the framework to include investment, tourism, education, and technology. The proposed 2026 agreement modernizes and expands those areas. It has areas such as sustainability, animal welfare, public safety, and government best practices. It also creates a stronger implementation structure through designated authorities, annual operating programs, and a binational working group monitoring and evaluation, and clear legal and financial safeguards. With that in mind, I'd like to highlight the updates for the proposed 2026 agreement. So the updated agreement preserves the foundation established through the 2002 and 2008 agreements, but broadens the framework on how the two cities can work together going forward. In particular, it recognizes areas that have become increasingly important to our regional economy, including innovation, entrepreneurship, workforce development, environmental sustainability, and stronger collaboration around foreign direct investment and business development. The intent is to give both cities more current and flexible framework that can support the future projects and opportunities as they arise. And that brings us to a larger question, why updating this agreement matters to El Paso? So for APASO, the value of this agreement goes beyond the document itself. Chihuahua is an important regional partner and maintaining a formal relationship gives both cities a framework to which we can continue developing joint initiatives and strengthening institutional relationships. It also supports implementation of the city's international policy agenda approved by council back on April 2025. turning those broader international priorities into opportunities for direct city to city collaboration. Ultimately, the agreement helps position El Paso and Chihuahua to work together on opportunities that support economic growth and benefit the broader region. Let's look at the next steps. So assuming council approves the resolution, after review and approval by the city attorney's office, the anticipated next step is the official signing during Mayor Johnson's visit to Chihuahua on August 25th, with the mayor signing on behalf of the city of El Paso and mayor participating as a witness. Following the execution, the focus shifts from the agreement itself to the implementation part, continuing the relationship between the two cities, identifying specific opportunities for collaboration under the framework established by the updated agreement. Those efforts will also continue to be guided by priorities established once again by the city's international policy agenda. So again, our request to council action is discussion and action on the resolution authorizing the mayor to execute in counterpart originals in both English and Spanish languages, an updated sister cities agreement between the city of El Paso and the state of Texas, United States of America and the city of Chihuahua state of Chihuahua of the United Mexican States in a form substantially similar to the attached after review and approval by the city attorney's office.

Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to approve this item. Thank you.

Second. Motion and second, OK. Is there any discussion? Discussion? OK. Israel, looking forward to, well, Ms. Frank, want to call for the vote?

Well, there is public comment from Ms. Osmond, sir.

Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, public comment.

Yes, Ms. Osmond, star six, please, to unmute your telephone. Go ahead, ma'am. You have three minutes.

really curious how a city has any authority to enter into an international policy with a city outside of our country i'm sure our federal government wouldn't approve of this i also feel that because of that Security risk, you know, the tallest building in our area that is being built aquatic. If anybody keeps up, not only did Mexico already have Pegasus, but they already have Grappling, which means anytime you all go as government officials, you're completely trapped. So it poses a national security risk. But aside from that, I don't think our city should be entering into any sister city agreements because for some reason, our city also has one with a city in Israel who's committing genocide. Now, I completely approve of everything that Shine Bomb is doing, and I'm curious as to how the interoceanic corridor railway is gonna affect all the shipping on the Bridget. But the fact of the mayor and Ms. Chavez gonna go down to Chihuahua for a little vacation so they can sign a paper with an international city on a city basis, which should be a federal matter, seems highly suspect. I'm curious, did y'all get approval from the federal government to do this? Because it appears as though when you go through a lot of the records with the city, y'all are doing a lot of things that are illegal. There's a lot of fraudulent statements that are made. And you all might want to look into Texas Penal Code 3710 and read guards. to making false statements. But there is no reason why a city should be making any sister city agreement with foreign nations. And I wonder, again, did you all get any federal approval to do this? Because our money is already going to Israel. Should it be going to Mexico? I don't personally think so, and I don't think a lot of the citizens in this city whose rates have been trashed out.

You've reached your time, Ms. Hosman.

Representative Nino. Thank you, Mayor. Ms. Niemann, would you be able to clarify, are we authorized to enter into such agreement with a sister city as such?

Yes, sir. The sister city agreement has been in place for decades and is done through the federal government. It was done through President Johnson. We have entered into many sister city agreements as have many other cities in the country.

So we are authorized by the federal government to enter? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I have no further questions. Thank you. Representative Chavez.

Thank you, Mayor. Israel, can you clarify if we will be expending any money towards this agreement in any way?

No, there are no clauses in there that make us spend any type of money on anything.

Thank you. And we just signed a similar agreement, I believe, with Ciudad Juarez. So this is similar to that in nature. Very similar, yes. Thank you, Israel.

And Israel, I'm looking forward to the continued collaboration with Chihuahua and Mayor Bonilla. And as many El Pasoans know, we're working on a flight directly to Chihuahua. And Chihuahua is one of the largest aerospace areas in Mexico. We're going to continue to talk about that collaboration and how we can benefit here in the city of El Paso. So it's a great agreement, and I'm looking forward to hopefully getting that signed. Yes, sir. Thank you. All right. Ms. Pratt, would you call for the vote, please?

It's a motion was made by mayor Pro Tem Chavez seconded by representative Nino this is to approve the resolution on item 2 on that motion call for the vote. And the voting session and that motion passes unanimously.

Thank you israel thank you very much.

And it's fine, I'm not sure we go from here to have a special meeting and executive to.

Yes, Sir, I believe executives. The special beating to the special at this time I need a motion to recess the work session move to recess. There's a motion in a second to recess the work session all in favor. I anyone opposed. And the work session is in recess at 9.56AM in order to conduct a special City Council meeting. Good morning. This is a special meeting of the El Paso City Council for Monday, August 17th, 2026. It is 9.57 a.m. Mayor Johnson is present and presiding in council chambers along with Mayor Pro Tem Chavez, Representative Acevedo, Representative Maldonado Rocha, Representative Boya Trejo, Representative Nino, Alternate Mayor Pro Tem Fierro, Representative Limon, and Representative Canales. Mayor, we have a quorum.

Okay. Good morning, Robert. Good morning.

mayor and city council i would request that we do item number two first item number two we will do the presentation go through essentially a budget recap into where we stand and then item one will be the public hearing on the tax rate okay let's do that so item two is a public hearing in action on the proposed budget as amended for the city of el paso filed by the city manager with the city clerk on july 17 2026 which begins on september 1st 2026 and ends on august 31st 2027. Okay, Robert, you're up. Good morning again, Mayor and City Council. Robert Cortina, City Manager's Office. So this presentation will cover a couple of different items. As I mentioned, we'll do a recap of the 2027 budget timeline, the development. We'll talk a little bit about the proposed budget and go through some of the highlights, and then we'll talk about recent actions on the introduction of the tax rate. So as mentioned, looking at the overall timeline of what we have done so far with this particular budget, actually just looking at different public discussions back on May 27 to 28, the city manager and myself did the overview. And then you got to hear a presentation from each of the different department directors outlining their particular budgets for each of their departments and the things that they're going to achieve with the upcoming budget for 2027. BUT THIS BUDGET ACTUALLY GOES BACK MUCH FURTHER THAN THAT. SO THINK BACK TO FEBRUARY TIMELINE WHEN WE DID NOT ONLY YOUR STRATEGIC PLANNING SESSION BUT WE ALSO DID SEVERAL PRESENTATIONS. THE BUDGET DIRECTOR DID SEVERAL PRESENTATIONS REALLY FOCUSING ON REVENUE LIMITATIONS. WE TALKED ABOUT EXPIRING FEDERAL FUNDING. WE DID OUR FIVE-YEAR FORECAST TO SHOW YOU WHAT THE NEXT COUPLE OF YEARS MAY LOOK LIKE. So those presentations were again intended to sort of lay the foundation and the framework for what we've discussed since then. So as of today, right now, we are doing the public hearings on both the budget and the tax rate. And then tomorrow we will have the adoption of both the budget and the tax rate for council's consideration. So on item number two, this is the public hearing on the budget as read into the record. And so with this item, once we get to the end, we will ask that the council does take action. The state law does require that the council take some form of action on this public hearing. And so the action will be what is on the screen here. It is to postpone the vote until tomorrow, which will be here at City Hall at 10 AM tomorrow. We did follow the proposed budget on July the 17th, again, in accordance with state law. On August the 6th, we did publish in the El Paso Times and the El Paso Diario, which we are not required to do, but we do publish in both in English and Spanish so that the community is well aware of when these public hearings will be held. looking at some of the key challenges again just a high level recap of what we've discussed over the last three plus months again this budget for fy 2027 is being driven by a couple of different things one of them is loss of taxable value which we've talked about pretty extensively and again the need to continue funding city operations and different obligations whether that be from public safety fixed cost or other obligations that we have to fund all of the city services, including our debt service, which we'll talk a little bit about here later in the presentation. But again, we still do have several hundred million dollars of outstanding debt to be issued from those voter-approved bond projects back in 2019 and 2022. As we talk about the budget development again, The tax rate discussion, which we've had over the last several weeks now, and you all introduced the tax rate a couple of weeks ago. It's important to point out that prior to that introduction of that tax rate, we've done multiple presentations not only to the council. We went out to the community, Ms. Mack and myself. We visited each council district and did presentations on the budget, got to hear directly from them, get their feedback. But as the budget was developed, and so as I mentioned, going back to that February timeline, I'm the city manager myself. All of our city departments did look extensively at how we can identify the efficiencies of different adjustments, again, to ensure that we're bringing forth the most financially sustainable, reasonable budget for council's consideration. And so I included in the budget that was presented on May the 27th, again, we talked about going back and identifying almost $26 million of savings through eliminating or unfunding almost 400 vacant positions in the organization. You all approved back in May the refinancing and the issuance of the new debt. But with that refinancing, we were able to generate $17 million of debt service savings over an extended period of time. So in the FY 2027 budget, we do have $2 million of debt service savings from that refinancing. Additionally, the city departments, we do an extensive review. The budget office works very closely with the different departments, again, to ensure that the budgets that are being recommended and developed are based on actual spending. One of the big things that I want to point out as well is that it's part of the budget process. Each city department essentially presents a base budget, a flat budget. So no new programs, no expanded programs. And so if a department wants to recommend or ask for those things, they submit a program request similar to what you all did as part of the process. So each department submits their department program request. those are reviewed so most of those do not get approved there was maybe one or two that actually did get approved things that we have to do but for the most part those things do not get approved because we don't have the financial resources to be able to fund those things so some of those things included public health submitted a few i believe six or seven different requests for different resources for health service programs Our it department you all have seen different presentations from the it department the need to continue investing in our infrastructure Replacing computers ensuring that we're staying up to date with cyber security investments that we need to make Those requests were not funded And then the two big ones which we'll talk a little bit about more because this is really what's going to drive the budget next year Is our public safety departments our police and fire departments? So both of those departments have additional requests on top of what is not in the budget for fy 2027 So the fire department, we're working right now to try to identify some additional funding because they do have some different investments that we need to make, some equipment that does need to be replaced. And so we're trying to identify additional resources that we can find to be able to make those purchases one way or another since they are not currently in the budget. So those total almost $19 million of different things that, again, cost that the departments feel are necessary just to maintain their existing programs, whether it's some additional staffing to help or, as I mentioned, some of those equipment replacement that some of those departments may need. We talked a lot about this a couple of weeks ago, again, in talking about the importance of a financially sustainable budget. So these three points are sort of high level, very sort of don't really speak maybe to maybe the ordinary person, but for you all, I believe that we've spent a lot of time and I really want to reiterate that the decisions you all make today and tomorrow will in one way or another impact what we face in 2028, 29 and 20, 2030. So that is not a scare tactic. That is not in any way trying to convince or persuade the council to vote one way or another. It's just the reality of the situation that we have to deal with is that whatever decision is made will have an impact one way or another on next year's budget. And so it's important that as we think about and as the city manager and myself brought forth the recommendation for you all to consider, we take that into account. What is the best recommendation that will help the city, not only in this fiscal year, but again, as we look to these next several years with the things that we know lie ahead of us? That second bullet point, the one-time adjustments. We've talked a lot about this, a lot about this. One-time adjustments are not sustainable. One-time adjustments that do not directly result in reduction of ongoing cost are not sustainable. Utilizing fund balance to balance the budget is a one-time adjustment. That's a one-time source of revenue That can help in that fiscal year, but in the following fiscal year Unless you continue to use fund balance you're having to make up that revenue. That was one-time revenue so all essentially that you're doing is you're deferring to the following year and And you're making that structural gap in the following year even larger. Essentially, you're kicking the can down the road. That last bullet point, reducing the revenue base, while we know we are entering or will be entering into new collective bargaining agreements with our fire union, which that agreement expires in about two weeks, our police collective bargaining expires in August of next year. Those will be four-year contractual obligations that the city will enter into. And so as we are considering or as you are considering adopting the budget and the tax rate for this year, You have to keep that in the back of your mind. How are we going to fund the agreement that we enter into with the fire and police unions over the next four to five years? As we look to the breakdown of the overall budget, and again, we show this for a couple of reasons. So one, as you look to the left hand side, this is where the money is invested. Again, the largest expense for the city is in our public safety departments. Almost 60% of the total general fund budget that we presented, the proposed $655 million, $371 million is in public safety. If I can point you to the right hand side on the graph, our largest revenue source is property taxes. Half of the general fund revenue is from property taxes. Property tax revenue for FY 2027 328 million does not even fully cover the 371 million dollar public safety cost So again our largest source of revenue where we rely upon for new revenue every year Combined with sales tax, but the big drivers property taxes again about half does not even fully cover our two largest departments and So another way to think about this slide, again, is another way we've broken this down and showed you all in the last several months is if you were to look at this by category, we talk about almost 3 quarters of the city's budget is our workforce. So a little over 70% is the investment in our workforce, the salaries, benefits, and taxes that go along with providing all of the city services. So if you were to, let's say we look at the overall $655 million, and we say we don't want to adjust or we don't want to impact police and fire, you subtract the 371 million out of that 655. If additionally you say we don't want to impact city employees, We don't want to do anything of impacting negatively our workforce. That's another $138 million. So essentially, that leaves you, once you subtract police and fire and our workforce, that leaves you with 22% out of that $655 million to identify reductions, if that were the case. So you're talking about a very limited amount of money to make significant reductions if that were to be the case. And so as we present every year, the largest cost drive we see is going to be our public safety and the investment in our workforce. You see the other items on the screen on the left-hand side, again, followed by Quad of Life, our infrastructure, which is streets and maintenance, capital improvement, IT, internal services. And so you have to remember, out of that remaining 22%, I just mentioned, built into that 22% are a lot of fixed cost. We have utilities, vehicle maintenance, fuel, our IT contracts. There's a lot of fixed cost in that amount that Unfortunately more than likely would not be able to be reduced. So again As we think about the budget this slide is very very telling particularly as I mentioned Not only for this year but as we look to the future over the next four years with the investments that we're going to have One of the big drivers again that we've talked a lot about Is the impact on the property tax revenue that the city will collect next year? I And so this slide shows you on that far right-hand column, from FY26 to FY27, that's an increase of $13.5 million that the city will not collect. So this is tax relief for these different groups. So our business personal property exemption, the disabled veterans, our seniors and disabled, and our homesteads. That's $58 million of property tax relief for these groups. $58 million, an increase again of $13.5 million. Business personal property, again, was something that was new, so that takes effect this coming fiscal year, which equates to almost $7 million of additional property tax revenue that the city will not collect next year. We've talked about the status of the collective bargaining with our fire union. We last met on July the 23rd. We have not met since. because we would like to want to get the budget passed first so that we know where we stand, and then come back and hopefully we can get this agreement wrapped up. As I mentioned, the agreement does expire August 31st of 2026, so just a little over two weeks from today. So our intention is once the budget is approved tomorrow and the tax rate is approved, we're going to re-engage with our fire unit to hopefully get that agreement approved. Finalized and hopefully get that back before City Council for approval again. That's going to cover 2027 through 2030 Our most recent proposal that the city made was for 43 million dollars over four years and the point that I Have on the slide here that I showed you two weeks ago The way that we've structured the city's proposal is essentially pushing some of the incentive increases, some of the other items that we've tentatively agreed to into outer years. And so you'll see that the average increase in years two through four is $11.7 million for one department, $11.7 million increase every year based on the city's last proposal. And so as I mentioned, the intention is once the budget and the tax rate is adopted, we will set up a meeting and work with the fire union to get that agreement renewed and back before city council here in the next few weeks. A recap on the recent action. So again, on July the 24th, We received the certified property values. We presented that to you all two weeks ago. At the same time, city council introduced that tax rate of 0.809487, which results in an overall tax rate increase of 4.9 cents per $100 evaluation or $132 annual increase on the average single family home. Additionally, that does generate an additional $9.67 million, which is on the screen there of what you all introduced two weeks ago. So we have additional funding for the park light program and our street light program. Again, all safety related to ensure that we're replacing lights that may be out or broken. A million dollars for additional fleet for our animal services department. some additional funding for our animal services spay and neuter program. And then finally, a majority of that funding would go into our contingency account, which primarily would be used to help ensure that we're able to fund, again, that multi-year collective bargaining agreement with the fire union. And again, just to be clear, and we have it on the slide here, out of that $7.89 million, any use of that would come back before city council for approval. So whether it be the collective bargaining agreement WHETHER IT BE ANOTHER COUNCIL PRIORITY THAT MAY COME UP DURING THE NEXT FISCAL YEAR, THE USE OF THOSE FUNDS WOULD COME BACK BEFORE CITY COUNCIL FOR APPROVAL. AS WE LOOK TO THE BUDGET BY FUND, YOU'LL SEE AGAIN OVERALL HERE INCREASE OF 33.8 MILLION. A COUPLE OF THINGS I WANT TO POINT OUT HERE. SO YOU'LL SEE THE GENERAL FUND going from 625.7 up to 664.9. That's based, again, on the action that the council took two weeks ago. So overall, all funds budget just over $1.4 billion. And one of the reasons why we show the slide is that you'll see the different categories of funds. And that's important because each fund has a restriction or a specific purpose for which it is used. So we cannot take, the city cannot take enterprise funding Including the enterprise funding is our airport, environmental services, our mass transit, our tax office, international bridges. We can't just arbitrarily take that funding and use that for whatever the city picks and chooses. Airport funding is highly restricted by the FAA. There are grant assurances that we have with the FAA. We can't take airport funding and use it for streets or for lowering property taxes. It has restrictions. All of these funds have restrictions in place. Our special revenue funds, primarily grants or funding that has been approved by voters for certain things. For example, our car rental tax is in the special revenue fund, can only be used for the Sun Bowl game. City can't use that funding for another purpose. So it's important that as we have this discussion, that there's a distinction between the general fund and the non-general fund. So all of the other funds separate and apart from the general fund have specific uses or restrictions on how those funds can be used. Some of the budget highlights, I'll go through these pretty quickly because you all have seen these again over the last three months as we talk about the different pillars as part of your strategic plan, the good governance pillar. Again, really focusing on how we communicate with not only the council but the community. And so one of the big changes that we made this year was the program-based budgeting. So I've seen things floating around social media. And one of the things that I'll point out, and hopefully the media picks this up and we continue to share the message, we've made the budget much, much easier for the community to understand. And so now if you look at the budget, over the weekend somebody asked me about parking meters. How much do we collect from parking meters and where does it go? So let's go to the parking meter program. International Bridges has a report. You go to the proposed budget. You find the parking meter program in the glossary. You click on it. It takes you right to that program. And you can see what that program does, how much money they collect, and where it goes. Much, much easier now to navigate and understand the city's budget. With this good governance pillar as well, reinforcing that long-term financial sustainability. We talked a little bit about that. Additionally, as I mentioned, there are fixed costs in the budget for next year. We have the election November the 3rd. That's a $1.5 million cost that the city has that we have to have the election. That's not something that we could reduce or eliminate. We have to have the election. As we look to the economic mobility, again, I mentioned the investment in our workforce. I also mentioned the elimination of almost 400 or unfunding of 400 vacant positions in the budget for next year. And I want to be very clear on this because I've seen some comments made and I want to make sure that it's very clear what the city is doing next year. we have built into the budget and what we presented to you all is a 50 cent increase to the city's minimum wage which would take the minimum wage from 15.75 up to 16.25 an hour that's a 50 cent increase in the city's minimum wage but to be clear every civilian employee will receive at least two and a half percent next year It takes effect into September, so the employees will see that reflected on that first paycheck in October. But it's at least a 2.5%. Employees who are at that minimum wage, that increase is a little bit higher. I believe it's closer to 3%. But every city employee, civilian city employee, will receive at least 2.5%. And I say it's civilian because our uniform employees' salary increases and incentives are set by their collective bargaining agreements. The last point there, we have no increase to our non-uniform healthcare contributions. And so again, the city has been working to increase the wages for our employees. And again, at the same time, not passing on increases in their healthcare that essentially wipe out or negate any increase in their salary. So the city has been absorbing the increase in our healthcare contributions over the last nine years now. Public safety pillar there's there are a lot of items on this slide And so I talked about the investment 371 million for public safety departments Again as I mentioned those wages are going up according to their collective bargaining agreements So it has their step increases their cost of living increases their incentives what they pay in health care outlined in those agreements and Additionally we have in the budget for next year similar to what we've had over the last several years now nine point four million dollars for vehicle replacement We have three academies planned for the police department we have two academies planned for the fire department We shifted 37 positions from non-general fund so they just mentioned non-general fund to funding in the prior year. So we had ARPA funded positions and some other grant funded positions that are no longer available in FY27 that we have shifted to the general fund. That's 37 public safety positions now being shifted to the general fund. We have an increase in the crisis intervention team contract we have with the Emergence Health Network. And then we have an almost $2 million, a little over $2 million increase in our P25. That's the public safety radio system that the city utilizes, which falls under the IT department. But it's a cost primarily for our public safety departments. That's the radio system. That's a $2 million increase in that contract alone. We do have a couple of grants, thanks to the efforts of the mayor and the city council, that offsets the impact of our public safety departments a little bit. So these are three-year grants, whether it's the COPS grant and the SAFER grant. Grants are fantastic when you have them, but they don't last forever, unfortunately. And so those grants are three years of grants, and so we need to, again, think about the future when those grants go away. When that SAFER grant expires, the city's responsible for picking up the cost of those firefighters on that SAFER grant. And then the last item here on the infrastructure, just some of the points on the PAYGO funding that the city has implemented over the last several years. We've worked extremely hard to build into the annual budget funding for street maintenance, for vehicle replacement, for equipment replacement, for facility improvements, for park amenity replacements. Very simple things that on the surface you would imagine or should be included in the city's annual budget. Unfortunately, those things haven't always been included in the city's budget. It's only been in the last several years that we've been able to include these Dollars in the annual pay go budget without having to use debt or to finance these replacements over an extended period of time So we have the 10 million dollar for our street maintenance program 4.9 million for citywide facility and so I Two years ago, the city reduced our pay goal funding by $3 million. So we reduced the funding for facility improvements and for vehicle replacements by $3 million. That was one of the years the city adopted the no new revenue tax rate. but at the expense of deferring the investment in facilities and vehicle replacement. You saw a presentation from Andy Garcia a few weeks ago, and he talked about the 300 plus facilities that they work to maintain to keep operational for city services, for public facing facilities that we have. So that's all of our health clinics, our senior centers, our recreation centers, our fire stations, police stations. $4.9 million to maintain over 300 plus city facilities, which of those facilities, I believe over 60% of them are more than 30 years old. Old facilities are very, very expensive to maintain. I mentioned a minute ago, too, we have the $9.4 million for public safety vehicles replacement. 9.4 million sounds like a lot of money, but when you have a fire truck that cost I don't even know what now probably 1.5 2 million dollars that 9 million dollars goes very quickly So we have not increased that allocation since we've implemented it. We're still at the 9.4 million So again as we look to the long term that's going to be an area we're going to have to look at How do we put more money into the budget for? replacement of our vehicles whether it's public safety or all of the other city departments that need vehicles to provide the city services and As we talk about quality of life, just a couple of the points here. And again, you all saw full presentations from each of the city departments a few months ago. We have maintaining the funding for our park amenity replacement. We have the additional funding for animal services. And then we do have built into the budget for next year, which is a non-general fund source at $920,000 for the Eastside Sports Complex, which is coming from the Public Improvement District, number two, which was approved by the people living in that particular area. That is a non-general fund source of revenue. But it will help the Parks and Recreation Department be able to buy the vehicles and equipment they need to maintain those facilities without having to put that on the back of our property taxpayers in general. A LOT OF DISCUSSION ON FUND BALANCE. FUND BALANCE IS NOT THE SOLUTION TO FIXING THE STRUCTURAL IMBALANCE OF THE CITY'S BUDGET LONG TERM. I PUT THIS IN HERE BECAUSE WE'VE TALKED A LOT ABOUT IT. I POINTED OUT THAT JUST FIVE YEARS AGO WE WERE AT 88 DAYS, OPERATING DAYS OF UNRESTRICTED FUND BALANCE. What we're projecting right now is, as we close out our fiscal year 2026, we're projecting right now to start fiscal year 2027 at 65 operating days. Best practice is 60 operating days. And so I've seen a comment, well, why don't we just use fund balance to balance the budget? You have five days. You're five days over the best practice. Just use the five days of fund balance. Two things. Okay, so what will happen when the city drops below 60 days next year? How will the city replenish our fund balance to ensure we stay at 60 days? We're having discussions about limited resources the city we do not have additional funding to be able to allocate to replenish fund balance Secondly most importantly is if you were to do that all you're doing is kicking the can down the road next year is you would have to make up that amount that you're using from fund balance or continue using fund balance and you completely deplete your fund balance over the next several years. But you're using one-time revenue. So essentially, let's say you use $10 million of fund balance. Next year, we're having a discussion. OK, we used fund balance in FY 2027. Now we just lost $10 million because it was a one-time source of revenue. So now you have to make that $10 million plus your increased cost. Utilizing one-time revenue to supplement or to balance the budget is a horrible financial practice. Horrible financial practice. Particularly as you see on the screen here, we've seen the decrease in the number of operating days over the last five years. Additionally, on the debt service, I mentioned it two weeks ago when we talked about the no new revenue rate. The city did not issue debt for the last three years. We've been using the bond proceeds on hand from the debt that we had issued to fund our capital projects. But we had, up until this past June, $470 million, roughly $472 million of bonds the voters approved in 2019 and 2022 to issue. That means we don't issue all of our debt all at once. We only issue the debt as we need it to keep the capital projects moving. In June of this year, you all approved and we issued $70 million of new debt for the Community Progress Bond approved by the voters in 2022. That issuance plus our existing debt service, we have an increase of $4.3 million in our debt service. These are voter approved bond projects that we are working on right now. So we still have, after this issuance that we just did, we still have $402 million of debt to issue over the next several years. It'll probably go through 2032, I believe, as the last planned issuance. So we still have another five or six years of planned debt issuances, which will continue to impact the debt service portion of the property tax rate. Last couple of slides I talked about the property tax rate that was introduced two weeks ago This shows the comparison the FY 2026 adopted on that far right-hand column seventy five point nine cents To the introduced rate of eighty point nine cents, which reflects a four point nine eight three eight cent increase per $100 evaluation which equates to, on the average family home, which this slide takes into account, that change in the tax rate plus the change in the single family home, on those homesteads, so the single family home, that impact on a yearly basis would be of $132. For our over 65 and disabled homeowners that have one of those exemptions, which we have almost 60,000 homeowners that have either the over 65 or disabled exemption, the annual impact would be $110. For the disabled veterans, on average, again, and as I've mentioned, that exemption amount varies depending upon the disability ranking. But if we just take the total value divided by the total number, it comes out to an average of $5 a year for 42 cents a month. So there is a wealth of information, not only on the city's website, we have links to all of the presentations, the proposed budget book, There is additionally this website, which the state of Texas now requires, going back a few sessions. You can go to this website. You can type in your address. And you can see what each of the different taxing entities is proposing. And individual homeowners can get a really good idea of where they stand currently with what they're facing in regards to their particular property tax bill. And so as I mentioned, we are open for questions and this will be the requested action at the completion of item number two will be to postpone the final budget vote until tomorrow, August 18th at 10 a.m., which will take place here at City Hall, 300 North Campbell. City one.

Is there a motion on this action item to postpone? I have an official motion okay and I would recommend that the motion be made after the public hearing yes okay okay please thank you represent canal yeah yeah there's no motion represent canalis we're good no motion represent canalis Thank You mayor

Robert, I had just a small handful of questions. Forgive me as I scroll back through the slides. There was one location, let me see, where it seems to say 0.49 of a cent. but should have read $0.049. And I just want to make sure that that's clear for the public. That's a typo. It should be $0.049. Which slide are you referring to? Slide 12. This is a tax rate increase of $0.49838. But it is $0.49838. Just clarifying for the public, yeah. I want someone to point back there and say, we misled anybody. That's 4.9 cents. I commend you for this presentation. I think it addressed a lot of the questions that I had been seeing from the public as well. particularly about the use of unrestricted fund balance and the possibility of deploying that again to reduce the tax rate. I know that that's what has been done in some prior years It cannot happen every year. Definitionally, you would run out of fund balance. The fund balance is something that you keep on hand and you, by definition, don't use in order to maintain a balance in the fund balance. And I think it's worthwhile to explain, because you have many, many times in the past but didn't today in this presentation, why it's important besides emergency expenditures to maintain a fund balance, things like bond rating. Do you mind going into that quickly?

Sure. So one of the things that we've talked about over the last several months is the need to get a fund balance policy approved by the city council. So the bond raters, when we go through the bond rating process, looks at that. They're looking at, where do we stand currently with our fund balance? THEY LOOK AT MULTIPLE THINGS.

SO SORRY TO INTERRUPT YOU. CAN YOU EXPLAIN BOND RATING AND WHAT THAT EVEN IS?

SO WHEN THE CITY IS GOING OUT TO ISSUE DEBT, ESSENTIALLY WHAT HAPPENS, ONE OF THE STEPS OF THE PROCESS IS THAT WE GO THROUGH A RATING PROCESS, VERY SIMILAR TO A CREDIT SCORE. SO WE GO THROUGH A PROCESS. WE MEET WITH MULTIPLE BOND RATERS OVER THE LAST COUPLE YEARS. WE'VE USED CROWL AND S&P. And essentially what they're wanting to do is basically they're looking at coming in and scoring the city to basically let investors know where the city stands financially. What's the risk to investors of investing in a city, buying the city's bonds? That's essentially what they're doing. And then they give you a score. Triple-a double-a single-a the city's double-a with S&P and double-a plus with Kroll very very low risk and So one of the things they look at is your fund balance. Where does your fund balance stand? How would you be able to withstand? An emergency now, it's natural disasters they look at Cyber threats they look at a wide range of things. Basically. They want to know how much risk did the city have and But they also look at operational structure and functions that you have. Collective bargaining is something that they look at very closely because they're looking at the political will of the council to be able to fund your obligations. That's one of the things that they look at. It was one of the things that I got asked when we went through the bond rating process back in May. Explain to them, we're in the negotiation. We expect to have a new agreement. Same thing with police. But essentially that's what it is. They go through and they look at your finances and they assign a score. So essentially right now we're right on the cusp of being as high as you can be, very, very low risk. The higher rank you have, AAA being the highest, as I mentioned we're at AA and AA+, means we can get a lower interest rate as opposed to having a lower rating. So if we had a double A minus or a single A, our interest rate when we go out and issue bonds would be higher, which means ultimately the taxpayers are going to have to pay more to complete projects. And so we strive to ensure that we maintain our fund balance, that we have sound structural budgets every year, that we're not utilizing one-time adjustments to balance the budget on an ongoing basis. And so it's important that we maintain that fund balance. And so I started with a reference to the fund balance policy. We do not currently have a fund balance policy. We have in our annual comprehensive financial report, we do state in there that it's the city's practice, it's the city's target to maintain 60 days, which is the best practice, as I mentioned. But a fund balance policy is a much larger discussion, because in that policy, it's not just a policy for policy's sake. In that policy, it outlines what does the city do if you fall below 60 days? If you see your target is 60 days, what is the city going to do if you drop below 60 days? That's important to know, because those investors and bond readers want to know what will the city do to make up to ensure or replenish your fund balance. Or it could be the opposite. If we're at 100 days, it could be at what point, at what threshold does the city say we're financially healthy, we have adequate fund balance. Let's set in the policy that the city can use an X percent or X amount for one-time expenses. So it can go both ways. We currently do not have a fund balance policy that outlines those different instances or situations as I mentioned. And it's important. It's important because we do not want to be, the city does not want to be, the city manager, nor myself, want to be in a similar situation that the city was in in 2014. 2014, the city had nine operating days of unrestricted fund balance. nine operating days of unrestricted fund balance. And so I know the 65 days still looks very healthy, and it is, but we have to preserve fund balance.

Thank you. That was a good answer. I know, so last time I ran for this position, a lot of people I spoke with impressed on me the importance, and I agree with them, the importance of having cash on hand. So dollars in the general fund budget every year for things like fleet replacement, building maintenance of particular importance to a lot of people's street maintenance. And that's not something that the city has always done in practice. And you presented that during your presentation. And I think anytime you transition into uh, those programs being in a budget, eventually you realize typically right away, but eventually you have to realize some of the hurt and I'll call it hurt or pain that comes along with, with doing so we we've done so for the last several years now. And I think that's a, it's a great investment. It makes a lot more financial sense than bonding those things out and paying the debt for 30 years, very often on assets that don't even last 30 years. Um, But I think it's important for the public to understand a lot of that, uh, you know, pain again, I'll call it pain. was pushed out further by doing things like masking it with the use of fund balance or, uh, you know, some, some artificial reductions in other areas that were one time costs, you know, one time, one time expenses to, to, to mask that, the realization of that impact, but it comes due eventually. And so we're at a point now where we, we still, we want to fund those priorities in that way. But like I said at the beginning, we cannot continue to just deplete fund balance in order to cover that, to make up for what we end up funding in cash. And I firmly believe that in the long run, this is the right way to do it. We have to make that transition eventually. We've made the transition now to having these annual priorities, things that should be in the budget, funded with cash in the budget every year. And so I think that what, uh, you've proposed, uh, Robert and city manager and, uh, Mr. And the OMB team is, is a very sensible budget to, to make that happen. Of course, it hits at a time that's difficult for people, but we still have obligations that we have to fund. And I think as you explained, Robert, so much of this is non-discretionary. The largest drivers of this are the public safety collective bargaining agreements, which are pretty much non-discretionary for us. We have to pay the firefighters and police officers That's something that is in our budget, whether we want it to be or not, it's just there. Lots of the other obligations that we have as core functions of a city, but then also on the revenue side, like you explained, some of the things that we have to realize because of changes at the state passed by the legislator or passed by the voters, but at the end of the day, they represent multimillion dollar impacts to the city We don't have a say like we have to realize those and I think that this budget that's been proposed us so without Sacrificing the the core functions that we need to continue to fund as a city. So I thank you for the presentation I think it's one of the best presentations you've you've ever given Robert and I've seen ten years of your budget presentation.

So I appreciate it And those are all spot-on. I'll give you another real-life example. So one of the things else to remember is that Is it really worth trying to save $1 today that's going to end up costing you $2 or $3 next year to either replenish or restore? And so I'll give you a real-life example. As I mentioned, Ms. Mack and I built the city for a long time. We've seen a lot during our time with the city. The city went through a stretch more than 10 years ago, going back probably 13 or 14 years, where the city wasn't investing in police and fire academies. City saved money by not doing those police academies, but what was the real impact? It meant if an academy will last nine months and then a year to get on board to become a police officer that can go on your own, you're looking at essentially a two-year investment. So that little bit of savings in each of those years had essentially a two-year impact because you're trying to play catch-up by not investing in those academies So when I say, is it worth saving $1 now, that's going to end up costing you $2 or $3 to try to bring those things back online. Facilities, the facility money we reduced. We're very fortunate that we were able to identify some additional funding and got restored this past year to take care of some of our city facilities. But if we reduce the money we have for our facilities and we can't replace a roof, And we say, sorry, Randy, you're going to have to wait until next year. Hopefully we can find enough to get you through the next year. And then something major happens. And then instead of just spending whatever it would have taken to replace that roof, now it becomes the roof. Now it becomes interior structure. Now it becomes a much larger problem because you're kicking the can down the road. Again, these aren't intended to be scare tactics, not to try to convince or persuade the council to vote anyway. The city manager's job and my job is to ensure that the council has all of the information make the best decision to position this city to be financially sound for the long term for the long term it's not just about right now it's about looking beyond and I was joking with somebody last late last week we're gonna be right back in budget there's no break for budget we're gonna be right back in it very, very soon, very quickly, and we're going to start having these discussions all over again. And so it's a matter of where do we want the city to be next year when we start having these discussions again.

Thanks, Robert. Just in closing, I think if just purely selfishly I was to consider this decision, I have an election this year, It makes sense that the city council doesn't want to raise taxes because it's not popular to raise taxes. But also, the whole reason why I was interested in running for this position in the first place is because I was interested in the long-term sustainability of the city. And I think that we have a fiduciary responsibility to the city to make sure that we're making decisions that leave us on solid ground, on solid footing. into the future. And so I don't feel that I have the luxury to make a selfish decision here with a view to politics or something like that. At the end of the day, we have to make decisions that benefit the city. And like you said, I think that in the long run, the investments we make now save us in the future. And like the example you gave of the police academies. That's the reason why we have three academies funded in the budget this year. We're catching up from those years of disinvestment. And I don't want to be the one who makes the decision to do that to future members of the council after I'm gone, where they have to make harder and increasingly harder decisions into the future because of decisions that we made today. So I plan to support this as proposed. I think it's difficult and, of course, a difficult conversation, but the right thing to do. Thanks, Mayor.

Representative Rocha.

Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Robert, for the presentation. I agree with Representative Canales. This was easy to follow. It was very comprehensive. It was a really great presentation to lay out what what's at stake. So I do have a couple of questions. I did have the opportunity to present the budget to a community meeting last week. There were a few questions that came out of that. First, as you know, we've heard a lot from the community members that there's increases across their households, utilities, taxes, insurance, you name it, materials in any type of rehab or any renovations that they're doing. And one of the questions that came up was, would you happen to know what the increase in utilities are from last year to this year for the city by any chance?

I believe it's 800,000, but I can't tell you.

800,000 over? Yes, increase. From the difference increase? And that's across all departments, Robert? Just confirming.

Yeah, $800,000 total. So we're going from $23.5 up to $24.3 million. So $23.5 million in utilities alone. So utilities for the city? Yes, ma'am.

So in FY26, $23.5 million.

This coming fiscal year, we're at $24.3 million for electricity, water, and gas, natural gas.

That's natural gas, and that doesn't include fuel.

That's not fuel. That's just utilities.

That's just utilities. Thank you, Robert. And let me ask you, a lot of this, and I know similar to what Representative Canales was speaking of, it's really difficult, right? We're in this position. I've had this conversation several times with family members over the last two weeks. Why are we going to increase? Why should we increase? And unfortunately, it's piled on. That's the easiest way I can put it. It feels like it's piled on at this point. What's the risk, Robert, if this particular proposal as it is today, what's the risk if it's not passed? From what I was able to tell, and you can confirm it and elaborate on it, I've looked at it. It looks like it would be human resources. what's at risk for us and if we're losing staff then we're possibly losing programming I don't know if that's a fair statement but if you could if you could elaborate on that I'd appreciate it so I'll start and then I'll let city manager chime in but essentially what one of the main drivers behind shifting to the program-based budgeting that I mentioned

is so that not only us as staff know what we do as far as programs, what we're spending for programs, what are the results of each of these programs, but that the council knows and the community knows, the community can easily see. And so the intention is, is that if there is to be a discussion about wanting to make changes to the budget or reductions to the budget, the discussion should be about what is it that we want to provide to the community as far as services? How much, at what levels of these services do we want to provide? That's a much different discussion than let's reduce our facilities by a million dollars and let's use instead of doing these one-off adjustments you're making real budget decisions about looking at ongoing expenses versus your ongoing revenue so that was one of the big reasons why we did program-based budgeting so that one we can internally start to really Modify and review and analyze how we're performing and where we may see programs that aren't performing where we thought they were Or at the level that we thought they were That should be the discussion and that gets away from this like I mentioned these one-off well, let's reduce this account by 50,000 let's reduce 100 and those are good. We do that all year long. We do that every budget process We make those adjustments But the discussion should be about what services and at what level do we want to provide to the community.

Thank you, Robert. And I appreciate it. And just looking at it, it looked like it would be more quality of life impacts, senior centers, rec centers, programmings. That's what it's looking at. I don't know, Ms. Mack, if you want to chime in.

Correct. So one of the scenarios I put together just following the discussion that we had August 3 with some folks asking about the no new revenue was to really understand the difference in terms of what that looks like and i think one of the things that's complicated for people to understand is those calculations are very different from year over year this year based on looking at our introduced rate versus the certified no new revenue you're talking about 35 million dollars in previous years we were filling in a gap of about eight to ten million dollars and so you know it's not ever gonna be apples to apples. Situations have changed. Our budgets have been impacted by different things this year. And so one of the things that we looked at was if we were to move to those type of models, if that was the will of council, what would that look like for our operation? Taking into consideration, you're looking at, as Robert said, right-sizing the organization that could then continue to function in that way in the next fiscal year, because those dollars are permanently gone. And so if you looked at that and based on the conversations we continuously have, holding police and fire harmless, and Robert discussed with you how much of the budget that is, then you really end up in the quality of life areas. When you look at where our dollars go as a general fund, it is police, then it's fire, then it's streets and maintenance, and of course streets and maintenance also supports our enterprise applications, and so you have to take into consideration that you still have to have fleet, you still have to have people to take care of the streets and the streetlights. The next biggest bucket really is our parks department. That's the next biggest operation. So that's mostly people. And so it would be Parks and Recreation and then our libraries. You also have within that mix the contracts that are associated with your water parks. Our La Nube contract is in that mix. And so really that's what you start to look at in terms of where those cuts and reductions would have. And so it is much more severe than we've ever had in terms of a conversation. I've been here for almost 16 years and I have a lot of staff who've been here much longer than that. I think we've always tried to make choices and decisions that protect jobs. You know, as you're talking about people hurting, we certainly don't want to be in a situation where we're talking about people at a very medium wage within this organization then being unemployed. And you're talking about hundreds of positions. I believe the numbers that I provided was just a scenario. We're very conservative because I have not gone into each position. We have a civil service provision within that requires bumping. And then we would pay the unemployment. And so that's also not in the calculation. And so for us, I think we have heard clearly that programs and services that we're offering are critical to our community, that we want to maintain and sustain them, but we wanted to make sure you all had all the information necessary to make the very difficult decisions that I think always go into adopting a budget.

Thank you, Ms. Mack.

Let me make one more comment. So one of the things else to keep in the back of your minds is any reductions that would have an impact on grants or revenue maybe generating service. And so, for example, we leverage city staff and city resources to get grants. Public health is a perfect example. Community development is a perfect example. relatively small general fund departments, but they leverage substantial amount of state and federal funding for those city services. And so parks and libraries, accredited departments. So if we're talking about reductions that may have an impact on their accreditation. The zoo, similar situation. What does that do lack of that accreditation can have an impact on your ability to get grants? That plays a role in and some of the grant awards that those departments get so There are a lot of things to consider Obviously if that were to be the discussion, it's a lot of things that we take into consideration. These are things that This is our lives. We I mean, this is what's built into the recommendation is If we do this, what happens? If we do that, what happens? That's how we have to think. That's how we have to be prepared as an organization.

Thank you, Robert. I really appreciate it. And thank you, Ms. Mack, for that explanation. In going through this budget process, I want to really publicly thank you for bringing it six weeks earlier. than what you had previously done last year. I think it allowed me an opportunity to really go through each department to be able to identify, is there any possible way that they could cut any more? It was absolutely minimal. when when I went through that exercise in my office. But one of the things that I do know from a fire department standpoint, I know that several of the firefighters, especially those that have just started, they have to have two jobs in order to support their household. And that goes the same for for police, I believe, when they're barely, you know, starting starting on the force. I've been witness to a lot of these firefighters that come in and they're trying to tell me, you know, they have to do other jobs in order to maintain a household. And that's something that has resonated with me since I started. So one of the last questions that I have, let's just talk scenarios, Robert. If it goes to that no new revenue, for example, Have you calculated how many days of fund balance would be available at that time? Because the 65 is at the current rate, correct? Correct. At the current proposed rate. Correct.

No, I haven't calculated that. But there's a lot of things that would impact that. What would those adjustments look like? And then what would the budget ultimately end up being?

I just wanted to, I've been struggling with what to do because I understand the implications of what's taken place over the years to get us to this. Ideally, I would think taxes would have increased slightly Year over year so that the impact this year wouldn't necessarily be so much But that's because that's you know, we're in a working family I'm in a working family and so I still feel for the people that are on fixed incomes and so I understand the struggles that they have and But I also know that they also use a lot of the facilities and a lot of the programming that's available to them as well. So I appreciate your presentation today, Robert. I thank you for answering the questions. And thank you again, Ms. Mack.

And you just made the comment, and it's spot on as well, is the city of El Paso as an organization is one of the top 10 employers in the area. Over 6,000 employees, uniform and non-uniform, rely upon the city of El Paso for a paycheck. So it's, again, it's important that we're, as I mentioned in the presentation, that we continue to take care of those workforce that are here with us while eliminating those vacant positions or unfunding those vacant positions that I talk about. But you're spot on. We've got over 6,000 city employees that rely upon the city of El Paso for a paycheck.

And I'll leave it with one final statement because you brought up the workforce piece. I do believe that workforce, especially upskilling in the workforce, is a form of economic development. And so I know that by doing that, you're providing living skills for the future for any type of promotions or movements within or outside of the city of El Paso. So I thank you for that comment, Robert. Appreciate it.

Well, you opened up another comment I was going to make now because I probably read social media way more than I should. But whatever. No, I don't have that much free time. One of the things I saw was looking at a reduction in HR and the learning team. And so I go to HR and look at the learning team. The biggest piece of that, it's $1.8 million. The biggest piece of that, the city puts a million dollars a year into our tuition assistance program. And Mayor, you were recently at that event where we got to celebrate the employees that got their degrees, received their certifications. These are employees that are not only improving their lives, but their families' lives. Whether it's an employee that is getting a CDL license, that results in more money for him and his family, or her family. An employee getting an associate's degree, a bachelor's degree, we're improving the lives of not only our employees, but our community. And that ultimately is what, again, that investment is in our workforce. I'll say, so when we were early in the budget process, I threw it out there. Let's eliminate or reduce the tuition assistance program. But we go back. Again, we have a lot of employees that rely upon that to get their degrees, their certification, so that they can promote in advance in the organization. A majority of them do stay with the city. I believe we had over 400 employees that received a certification or a degree last year. That's a significant investment, not just in the organization, but in the community.

Now I have another question. Sorry to my colleagues. Last question, I hope. We always talk about, and I know that in different industries there's different rates, but within government, retention I know has been actually something that every department has been doing extremely well. the city of El Paso which it wasn't that the case in prior years and so I know that a lot of that has been driven by changes that have been made departmentally or you know so forth but do you would you happen to know the difference of cost between keeping maintaining and retaining employees versus letting go of an employee and rehiring. There is a significant increase in cost from the industry that I'm aware of, that I'm familiar with, but I'd love to know if you have that information, Ms. Mack,

The last number I saw was almost $40,000, the cost of turnover. And right now we're at a place where the organization is probably as stable as it's been in probably at least a half decade. We're at about a 9.1% turnover rate. And so I'm continuously hearing from departments, you know, how well we're doing in those areas and some of the areas where we are struggling with some of the retention. I think the teams have been very creative about using opportunities for developing those skills on site you know, for heavy equipment and fleet, which is really difficult for us. How do we help them to have a way to be able to get those certifications while they work for us? And so all of it really ties together. And so we're really talking about sustaining staff. We're really talking about having people who can promote within the organization and continue to make those commitments. All those resources help those things to be possible for our organization.

Thank you, Ms. Mack. That was it for me. Thank you, Robert.

Representative Chavez.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Robert, for the presentation. I know you and I have had many discussions on the budget, so I appreciate your transparency when it comes to talking about numbers, because that's a difficult conversation for a lot of people. So I know some things changed between May and now in terms of the budget proposal. Could you discuss what the fiscal year 26 adopted budget brought in for revenue?

Yes, one second. So for the current fiscal year, FY26, general fund revenue was 304 million.

And the proposal from May?

The proposal from May was 327.2 million.

327.2. So that would still be above what was brought in for fiscal year 26?

Yes.

Is that correct?

Yes.

And the proposal now would bring in how much?

So with the tax rate that was introduced two weeks ago, we are at $336.9 million. And property tax revenue.

And from the discussions we had when each of the departments came up and talked about their budget, I believe most of them stayed flat, right? There's a few that have an increase, but most of them stayed flat.

Almost every department is flat. The majority of the increases that you all saw were either related to the salary increases from the prior year and what's built into next year. So we have the salary increases built in or any fixed costs that are occurring next year. So for example, city clerk's office, a very, very small department, but you'll see that $1.5 million increase for the election. IT, you'll see increases for the contracts. You'll see those fixed costs for those departments. But again, to be clear, in the budget for next year, no new programs, no expanded programs other than some of the things you all approved two weeks ago. But it really is just about the existing city services and the costs that come along with providing those services.

So the budget for May has $23 million over fiscal year 26, right? The one that was proposed in May?

Yes.

$23 million over last year's.

Correct.

And what would the percentage increase be in the tax rate there?

In the tax rate or the property tax amount?

Well, either. I think we have from your presentation two different

is it the tax rate that you want to know the change in the tax rate yes it's approximately three cents of an increase three point three cents and so to be clear this is let me make one correction before we go too far okay because you're going to see if you look at if you looked at all the backup we posted everything is backup you're going to see different percentages different numbers

In item number one, for example, the proposal says it's a 6.97% increase from last year's budget. So that's what I'm trying to figure out, the one in May, what the percentage increase would be from last year's budget.

So you're looking at the tax rate. And I'm going to explain, I want to take a minute to explain the differences in those amounts. So you're looking at the ordinance, right?

Yes. In item number one, the backup says, and I know we're on item number two, but I'm just trying to get to the same information here. We've already established that the proposed budget that you brought forward in May had a $23 million increase from fiscal year 26 budget. Is that right?

Let me walk you through something really quickly because I don't want to create confusion. The state has multiple requirements that we are required to publish and present. Multiple. So we have items in the local government code, items in the tax code. So if you were to look at the backup, because I had a lengthy discussion with somebody last week. If you look at the backup, you will see a budget cover page. which has a change in the property tax revenue from last year to this year. So from 26 to 27, and then it lists an amount from new property added to the tax roll. And then it has the different rates at the bottom. So this is one item we're required to present. Another item is the notice of public hearing on the tax increase. This is another item. If you look at this particular publication, which is state prescribed, At the bottom there are several different boxes that show the change in the tax rate, the change in the average homestead taxable value, so the change in the average taxable value, and then the change in the tax on the average homestead. So that one uses the average value home. There's another document from local government code 551, which is the taxpayer impact statement. This particular requirement lists the median value home, which is different than the average value home. So you get a different percentage and a different amount. And then you get to the city ordinance that we're working on, item number one, which lists the operating and maintenance component of the rate, the debt service portion of the rate. And then at the bottom, it reads, as of right now, the tax rate will effectively be raised by 7.89% and will raise taxes for maintenance and operations on a $100,000 home by approximately $46.54. So this ordinance, state prescribed, word for word, is comparing a $100,000 house and only looking at the O&M portion of the rate. The motion that will be read tomorrow by the Mayor Pro Temp to adopt the ordinance It's completely different than anything you see here. And so that motion will be, I move that the property tax rate be increased by the adoption of a tax rate of, so as of right now, 0.09487, which is effectively a 8.3% increase in the tax rate. So that's looking at the change in the proposed rate, well, the introduced rate to the no new revenue rate. A lot of different percentages, a lot of different numbers. creates confusion. And the state's effort to improve transparency, all it does is create more confusion. So one of the things we're going to work on, we'll work on and we'll probably bring it back to add it to the agenda, is to work on some form of a transparency bill TO TRY TO GET THE STATE TO STANDARDIZE THESE PUBLICATIONS SO THAT IT'S NOT SO CONFUSING AND YOU DON'T HAVE FIVE DIFFERENT PERCENTAGES AND WHEN YOU'RE COMPARING THE AVERAGE VALUE AND THEN THE MEDIAN VALUE AND THEN $100,000 VALUE BECAUSE IT'S VERY HARD TO FOLLOW.

IT IS. AND I THINK LAST YEAR WE, THE MOTION READ TO INCREASE THE TAX RATE WHEN WE WERE ACTUALLY REDUCING THE TAX RATE. SO IT CREATED A LOT OF CONFUSION AND WE HAD TO EXPLAIN SOME THINGS TO THE COMMUNITY ABOUT THAT. I'm not trying to make it difficult, Robert, really. So in May, just to reiterate then, the proposed budget that you brought forward in May essentially would have brought more revenue in this fiscal year than last fiscal year. And the difference is $23 million, right? Yes. Okay. Hypothetically speaking, I'm just going to ask the question. If we were to adopt the same tax rate as we did for fiscal year 26, I haven't seen that anywhere. Do you know if it would also generate an increase in revenue for fiscal year 27 versus fiscal year 26?

I don't have it, but it would generate. Maybe I do. It would generate 308.7.

So about 4 million, 4.8 million more.

Okay, yes. Go ahead. The fire department alone for FY27 right now is going up by $8 million. Their budget, not their... Their budget is going up by $8 million next year.

in separately from the bargaining agreement that we were separate from the correct is that correct as of right now correct yes and we just laid out the exemptions that came that were mandated yes by the state yes right some of them were new by the voters of the state of Texas approved by the voters of the state of Texas and those exemptions are about 13 and a half million dollars

That's the increase, yes, and the loss of revenue. So some of those are state, some of those are city, but the biggest one is that $7 million from the business personal property exemption.

Yes, but parks, for example, came in flat, except for the salary increases that you laid out earlier.

And they had some contractual increases. Port-a-Potties went up, I think, that contract by $300,000. And so there were some contractual increases built into the budget as well.

And I think for the most part, most departments, from what I've understood and seen and heard directly from them during their presentations, is that they really did a really good effort in trying to come in as flat as possible because they're trying to be conscientious of the fact that people are feeling the pinch with rising costs everywhere, gas, utilities, insurance, inflation in general.

so every year when we start the budget process from the time that we get the all of the department budget request we put it into the document we compare that to the available revenue every year that gap is enormous and so every year the budget office is working closely with those departments to identify adjustments to look at budget to actual comparisons to look at making them justify contractual increases And we bring that requested budget down as much as possible by making all of those adjustments prior to presenting them to the city manager, which is three steps before we present to the city council. So all of that work is done prior to the actual public presentation of the budget. And so, I mean, yes, we work extremely hard to ensure that we're identifying any adjustment that we can to bring forth the best recommended budget possible.

And I think when we went back and asked for efficiencies and more cost savings opportunities across the departments, I believe that Parks came in with an even lower proposal by at least, I think, $200,000 or something close to that number.

We had two departments, Parks and Museums and Cultural Affairs, where we identified, I believe it was about 140,000. It wasn't a lot, where we identified some additional savings that they thought they could take at the time. But it becomes a larger discussion, so I'll give you a couple of examples. After we presented the budget to you all on May the 27th and 28th This was in early July. There was a contract on the council agenda for the libraries for security That contract that got awarded because that happened we didn't know what the contract is going to come in at they built in what they thought The increase was going to come in at And it's already been awarded so I can talk about it. That contract came in $100,000 higher than what the library has built into their FY2027 budget right now. But I'm not up here asking you all to increase the library's budget by $100,000 because now I know we have to do something about it. So we manage every city department's budget very closely, but it's one big budget, and we're managing every department very, very closely.

Yeah, and I did want to point that out because I do appreciate the fact that they came back with additional cost savings. I think it's important that we recognize their efforts for that. And every department, right, that I think has done a really great job at trying to find THE MOST FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE BUDGET TO BRING FORWARD TO THE COMMUNITY. I JUST WANT EVERYBODY TO BE MINDFUL OF THE FACT THAT AS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVES AT THE END OF THE DAY WE ARE ELECTED TO REPRESENT THE VOICE OF OUR COMMUNITY AND WE HAVE ALSO HEARD FROM THEM AND WE WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT WE MAKE THE MOST RESPONSIBLE DECISION WITH ALL THE INFORMATION THAT'S BEFORE US.

worked very well with the budget office and was willing to do what they felt they needed to do every department police and fire included they took reductions and adjustments as well and looking at some of their expenses and again just lining those budgets to actuals they were very willing i mean they everybody did their part to again identify where we could make those reductions and those adjustments prior to coming to city council

LASTLY, ROBERT, I'D LIKE TO, SINCE YOU LIKE TO GO ON SOCIAL MEDIA AND READ THINGS, THERE'S AN ARTICLE THAT WAS PUBLISHED THIS MORNING BY TEXAS TRIBUNE. ITS TITLE IS TEXAS CITIES I PROPERTY TAX HIKES SPENDING CUTS AMID YAWNING BUDGET GAPS. I'M JUST GOING TO READ THE FIRST PARAGRAPH. IT SAYS TEXAS CITIES HAVE FLOATED UNUSUAL PROPOSALS TO SLASH THEIR SPENDING AS THEY FACE YAWNING BUDGET GAPS. from laying off employees and charging non-residents higher zoo ticket prices to asking voters to reconsider public funding to a new arena for the San Antonio Spurs. These desperate maneuvers, some of which have not come to fruition, underscore how inflation, a slower economy, and moves by state lawmakers have put Texas' biggest cities in a tightening financial noose that will take big moves to get out of. So I recommend everyone read it. It's something that is being discussed everywhere at this time of year. So thank you.

Representative here.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you, Scott is for the presentation and for the details and going into the weeds like he's mentioned earlier we appreciate you of you talked about public safety and police in fire classes training classes, you know we have the benefit of living in one of the safest cities in Texas in the USA, we have an outstanding police and fire department. If we do not approve the rate that we were talking about and go to a lower rate, how will that affect the classes? How will it affect the people in the field? And how will that affect the safety of our city, in your opinion?

Ultimately, it's going to come down to the city council's direction. Nobody, including the city manager and myself, is going to want to make reductions that's going to impact public safety. But if the direction is to identify whatever the number is, we're going to have to look at everything. We don't want to be hypocrites and say we shouldn't use one-time adjustments and then we come back and recommend one-time adjustments unless that's the council direction or there's potential veto which we've seen in the past and there's no other option we have to come to some compromise but everything should be on the table I mean if we're going to look at making reductions they should be reoccurring reductions that will be aligned with the available revenue to fund them on an ongoing basis that one will not add to further widening future deficits in our years by delaying or deferring investments now. So I mean, I can't say we would not touch police and fire, but I mean, everything would probably be on the table in that situation.

I mean, to be fair, I think one of the options is going to ask you to touch police and fire. I don't see what other choice you have. putting us in another boat, what will that do to us? And what will that do to our firemen and women and their contract?

And so thank you for mentioning that and bringing that point up. And so, I mean, I covered it in the presentation. We talked about it two weeks ago. We are in negotiations right now with the fire union. That agreement expires in about two weeks. We do not know as of right now what those final costs are going to be. The city has made a proposal. We received a counter from the fire union. We have not met since July 23rd, because as I mentioned, we need to have some idea of where we stand with the budget and the tax rate, because this is a four year agreement. When we come back to city council with this agreement and the council approves it, this is the council saying, okay, this is a four year agreement. We're going to fund this agreement over the next four years. Irrespective of what happens as part of the annual budget adoption process, we will be committed to that agreement.

So this budget has the potential of not prioritizing fire department, their contract. And let's just, you brought it up earlier, we're going to go in negotiations with police next year, and there'll be no money for them either.

It may have an impact on how we negotiate from here on out to get a final deal. Thank you, Mayor.

Representative Acevedo. Thank you, Mayor.

Robert, great information as always. I think that slide where you're kind of comparing what property taxes and it's not even funding most of our budget at that point, right? So just for public knowledge, you know, there's been some talk about defunding Destination El Paso or museums or other places. And we have the enterprise funds and the special revenue. Can you describe what those are and why they cannot be defunded and how they don't come from property taxes, please?

Yes. So in our adopted budget books, I'm not sure if we include in the proposal, but if you look at the adopted book for many of the prior years, we include almost like a cheat sheet. It gives you an example and ideas or definitions of what each of the different funds are, how they can be used, and examples. Destination El Paso, perfect example. So if you look at Destination El Paso, primarily funded by hotel occupancy tax revenue. which is set by state law how that revenue source can be used, we can't take hot revenue and go do street projects. Hot revenue has to be used for marketing, tourism, for the convention industry. It's very specific. State law is very specific in how those funds can be used. No way impacted by property taxes. So a reduction in destination El Paso does nothing to the property tax rate or property tax revenue. They also receive revenue from different events that they host. And so that helps fund all of the different conferences and to take care of the city facilities. So that's a special revenue fund. Hotel occupancy tax revenue falls into that special revenue category. So it has a specific purpose or restriction in how those funds can be used. Other examples, economic development was one that was pointed out. If you look at economic development, it's a very, very small general fund budget. Majority of the economic development all funds budget comes from the El Paso Electric Franchise funding that we received that is restricted for economic development Whether it's the TED fund the impact fund the auxilary fund Those funding sources from the El Paso Electric Franchise Agreement are for economic development If you reduce that it has no impact on property taxes, that's a special revenue fund and Talked a little bit about the Zoo Environmental Services Enterprise Fund. What that means is essentially all of the funding that the Environmental Services Department generates through their garbage fee, the landfill fee, cleanup fees, they have some other miscellaneous revenue sources, but it's primarily the garbage collection fee and the landfill fees, goes to pay for all of the services that they provide. Not only the operating, but the capital expenses that go along with it. So it's the day-to-day staffing, material supplies, labor, but it's also the new trucks that they need to buy every year. It's building out new collection stations, which we need for District 4 for the new collection station in District 4 to be opened up here pretty soon to fund the new municipal service center in the Far East side. So their revenue is restricted for their activities in their department. That's an enterprise fund So we have multiple funds and fund types, but it's important to understand that not every fund or funding type is flexible you can't Arbitrarily pick and choose how you use that funding Okay, I appreciate that and I wanted to also Understand a little bit more

i don't know if you could do this by by tomorrow but i really want the public to have a picture of what the next four years could look like in terms of bargaining agreements bargaining agreements that are really important more than being contractual for for me it's really important that that is going to be going toward public safety i fully understand that you're hopefully in the final stages with fire police will hopefully start in the next few months but maybe at the very least if we could get what fire looks like i know that on slide 11 you you said that a counter proposal is being reviewed i'd love to have that breakdown kind of like you did side by side right there where the city's proposal of 43 million, what that looks like, 7.7 million, and then about almost $12 million each year for the last three years of the contract. What does their counterproposal look like? So the public understands that this is kind of where it's going. The way I'm looking at this potential increase is we have to do this for public safety, and then the other part of it is that the state of Texas continues to say, we're doing property tax relief over and over in many different ways, right? Some of the extreme proposals is to just completely get rid of that.

And I don't know how that works, but it's Texas, I guess.

they throw it on us to make those difficult decisions, right? They put a lot of restrictions on us, and then the voters also decide certain things, which I respect the voters' opinion on many things, where they are looking at slide number 10, and business personal property is taking a huge hit on this budget. And so what ends up happening is that the rest of us that don't fall in those categories subsidize this. It's very similar to the impact fee conversation. Not that I'm trying to get into that conversation, but just using that as an example. I think that's really important to say. So I feel like those are the top two reasons that we would probably need this increase, correct?

Two big drivers, yes. Loss of revenue and increasing obligation. So I'll go back to your first comment. So back in February, one of the presentations, and we've been working on least showing what FY 2028 would look like incorporating the city's last proposal in the fire union and because things have changed so back in February we did the five-year forecast we did the multi-year financial outlook and we presented to you all we'll walk you through based on all of the assumptions everything we have built in this is what the city could be facing in the next five years For FY2028, in that presentation, we showed a $22 million deficit, a $22 million gap between revenues and expenses. Built into our assumptions on the expenditures was not what the fire union is proposing. Not to say that would further expand that gap, because things have changed since then. But to give you an idea, I mean, if you go back and look at that presentation that was done, that's the structural imbalance. So that presentation really, and we can add that slide to the presentation for tomorrow, but it really reiterates the point of how do we close that structural balance gap. And so this recommendation that we have puts the city in a much better position next year as opposed to anything that would be less. Because essentially what you're doing is do you want to have a $18 million deficit next year or do you want a $5 million deficit next year to start with? $5 million is much more manageable than $18 million starting point.

That makes sense. And I think it's kind of the cards that we've been dealt and how we handle that. I do. You know, you see what the state is doing in terms of property taxes, what voters have approved, and we're seeing those effects affect our city budget today. It's affecting County it's affecting the schools, especially the schools and you have the state withholding a lot of funding that could go to schools and You also have Meadows tired recycled rehearse Talking points on this is going to go to the schools and it's not like it's going to the state The state's gonna take that money. It's not actually going to the schools in terms of the impact that META is gonna bring to the the city of El Paso and so I really want people to understand that this is happening because of our current economy the the federal level hasn't really done much to help the economy and it's it's it's really bad then you have the state and I All of the stuff that I just mentioned. So that is really worrisome to me. I also want to touch on something that you were discussing earlier in one of these worst case scenarios, which could be one of the options. It sounded like we get there by doing a reduction in force. So I want to understand that a little bit more of you could elaborate on that.

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking.

There was one option that was, one of my colleagues was discussing something about parks and recreation, quality of life being impacted. Those were all positions that.

So that was the no new revenue model that we haven't presented to you all publicly. As I said, I ran that scenario last weekend just to really put it within the context of what it would look like for our organization. sort of holding harmless some of the public safety pieces and I think what it showed was you know as we're looking at the organization as we're looking at how staff intense we are it would be impossible not to touch some of those positions we have not heard you know any movement towards that but again it's important for you all to have seen those models so in that model sorry it was it was a lot of the programs that were in quality of life particularly in parks and libraries.

Okay, thank you for that clarification. Another thing that I think we as a city get is when there are property tax increases, all the blame goes on us, right? And from everything that I've seen, we have other taxing entities that are likely going or have increased in the last few weeks and will do so in the next few weeks. and so can we get a comparison of where the county is going to go where EPCC is going to go UMC some of the school districts whether that's preliminary or final to have that comparison where we have one OPTION OF $132 A YEAR AND I BELIEVE THAT I SAW A FEW WEEKS AGO THAT THE MEDIA REPORTED ONE OF THE MEDIA OUTLETS REPORTED THAT PEOPLE'S TAX BILL WOULD INCREASE BY $300. AND I KNOW THAT WE HAVE NO SAY OVER THE OTHER ENTITIES AND I'M NOT TRYING TO GIVE Laura Cruzacosta more work, right? She has sufficient work. But I think it would be great to have those comparisons for us to look at and put that out as a press release to say this is where the city has landed. This is where the others are going to land. So the public has an understanding that it's not just us.

It's almost like that dollar bill you used to show.

We can do that. But again, I'll go back to how we started the discussion. And I don't disagree. I mean, showing that may help, but it also may create more confusion. I mean, I think the important thing is focusing on the city of El Paso and the needs for this organization is the priority, right? And that's the thing that we really need to focus on. But we can show the dollar slide. We can show the comparison on the property tax rate and what other entities are looking at.

i think it would just be helpful so we have those numbers where it's not just landing on us i mean the last time i checked i think the the city is about 31 percent of a tax bill and we're probably the second highest the the first is the school district we're second the third i believe is the county and so forth and and so I really want to get people information and I think this discussion really serves to have the public understand that we are in a dire financial situation because of so many factors state national economy world economy at this point and at the same time we would have to make really tough decisions where there's drastic areas where it could be positions or it could be services. It could come down to senior centers that are extremely vital to our constituents. And I just really want people to have that full narrative of how we got here, what we're doing and how difficult this decision is. Thank you.

Representative Nino.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Robert, Ms. Mack, and the entire team. I know that it's been, we've had many numerous conversations the last three months and you know we've often said even during our strategic planning session one of the resounding uh statements that we would say over and over is that people experience their government on the way to work at their parks on their streets and um we are the direct impact to the residents right of their experience of the local government And I've been also reading different articles, and I know that a lot of different entities and governments all across the nation are facing these different deficits. And right now, we're not facing that deficit, right? And I think about what is the financial health for the city of El Paso in the future. And as you mentioned, the next year, the last thing we want is to have $18 million, $20 million deficit, and then what does that even mean more in the direct impact of the financial health of the city? And I also don't think that we should be relying on, you know, for the city to be in a better financial position, we must not be relying on making service cuts to be in a better financial position. And I know that that's kind of like what some of the conversations have been. You mentioned that in 2014, we had nine days of the Rainy Day Fund. So how were we, what strategies or how did we get in being able to grow our Rainy Day Fund? What strategies did the city do? I'm just curious to navigate those conversations, specifically given the fact that in the last three, four years, we've used almost 20 days of the Rainy Day Fund, right? right now we know that it's 1.8 million dollars of daily operating cost and essentially that operating cost is gonna keep going year after year and I worry about again I know that we've talked about the 60-day policy to ensure that we keep that savings available for the city should we run into any financial situation I mean we recently also had a legation right eight million dollars that we had to navigate of how are we gonna pay that that wasn't part of our fiscal year budget that we're currently in. So I'm curious to know, Robert, from nine days to now even having 65 days, how were we, and I know it went up to 80 and 90, how were we able to grow those, that balance?

Well, it's ironic that the fire truck just drove by because I was gonna say that we rang the alarm. And that's essentially what we did was we, I don't like to relive the past, but I think a lot of times it's important to kind of remember where you were to have a better appreciation for where we are as an organization. Because this organization has been through a lot, a lot. So prior to 2014, simply, and I'm gonna answer your question, but I think it's important to kind of get an understanding of perspective and some context to this. Prior to 2014, the city never did fourth quarter, end of year presentations and updates. To present to the city council, here's how we finished the fiscal year. Plus or minus, do we have a deficit, do we have surplus? Never got presented. We began doing that, ended up being 2015, but we needed the one full fiscal year, but the city had never done that. And that's a very simple, should be straightforward, right? That's something that the city should have been doing. So the city council is fully aware how the city performed in the previous fiscal year. So what we did, so I'm not going to say it was all me, because it wasn't just me. It was the city council. And it wasn't the former city manager or the current city manager. It was the city council. So there were years where the city council actually adopted a budget one year. We raised the tax rate that year. But they actually adopted a budget to replenish fund balance in that given year. So that budget actually was budgeted with the surplus to go into fund balance in that given year. The big driver, the thing that really helped us was the council's understanding of exactly the discussion we're having today about this long-term, sustainable, we need to be proactive. We had some very, very good years in 2022 and 2023, pretty sizable surpluses in those fiscal years, primarily through sales tax growth. We saw 13% to 14% increase in sales tax in those given years. So we ended the year with additional funding, pretty sizable surplus. because we had had this discussion leading up to these years with the City Council about the status of the fund balance and We needed to increase our fund balance. It became the council's Number one priority to get to a better position financially so instead of taking some of that surplus in a given year that we had and using it to go out and do a project or using it to go out and do a you name it, certain things, the city council understood the best recommendation is to bank that money and put it into our fund balance, to build up our fund balance, to get us to a healthy level of where we need to be as an organization. So we did that. The city council did that. Instead of spending that money, the city council intentionally made sure that we built up our fund balance to where we are today.

Thank you for that, Robert. Again, I was just trying to think about, and I know I've met with Ms. Mack and I was thinking about, we generate $1, we spend that $1. And I was thinking of different strategies and ways that we could potentially have cost savings in the long run. I know that in the last quarterly report, it was about $180,000 of surplus that we were projecting. Then I know that there's different challenges from overtime to different expenditures that have to take into account. But one thing that I really would like to see is, in whatever direction the body wishes to move forward is, to have a bigger surplus next year somehow. Even if it's 500,000, again, trying to identify those savings at the end of the year, I think will be extremely important. And I know that I asked staff to go review their expenditures and I'm grateful that they were able to do that. And again, and I'm thinking about the long-term financial health of the city of how do we build that fund balance so that whenever we run into different situations, now we're having to talk about the collective bargaining agreements, right? And thinking about how does the city move forward, including providing the essential services of people experiencing the government on the way to work, on their streets, at their parks, on their neighborhoods. And I know that it's a challenge, right? And I know that we have that fiduciary responsibility to ensure that we're in a good financial health and we're aware also of the different challenges that our community is facing. Robert, you mentioned about the exemptions that we also have faced, the $13 million increase. But it's a $13 million increase, but the total bill is $58 million, correct? Correct. So it's a total of $58 million impact that our budget is facing.

So the 58 million that you see on the slide, that's property tax revenue that the city does not collect because it goes back in the form of tax relief, essentially. So it lowers the tax impact for commercial businesses, disabled veterans, our seniors, disabled, and our homesteads, the people that are primary residents.

Robert, now I know that when we started the budget conversations and even in our briefings, I had asked about if we kind of had a ballpark number of what the cost of service per home is to provide services. By any chance, do you know what that is like?

We don't. We'll get you something that, and then the growth in each of the districts, we finally got the full tax roll, and so we'll work on providing that. One of the things, if IT will bring that slide back up, please. So one of the things that we've talked about Couple things I want to make sure we get very clear is, one, the motion that the council made, the item that you brought forward for us to go back and do the additional review, and then the additional item, Representative Chavez, was to go back and look at consultants or those type of contracts that we had. While we may not have found tons of money this year, That's not a one year exercise. And so we're going to take that feedback. And that's something that now going forward, we continue to make sure that we're looking at these things so that while we didn't identify $10 million this year, it doesn't mean we're going to stop doing that. We're not going to do that. So that was a good exercise for us going forward to make sure that we're doing all of those different things, whether it's that item or the addition item of looking at the consultants. The other thing I want to make sure that it's very clear is we're not just sitting back. The city is not just sitting back doing nothing. We're not just sitting on our hands doing nothing. And so it's important that we talk about the things that we are doing. And so we have looked at different revenue sources. And we've had some of that discussion, some of it not publicly. But we've had some of those discussions about potential revenue sources that the city could use to take advantage of. We are in the process of doing the fee study of looking at the cost of service for our Parks and Recreation and for Planning and Inspections Department. So looking at the cost of service. So as our costs are going up, are we recapturing or are we recovering those costs through the form of those fees for those particular services? So we're doing that. And that fee study should be done hopefully pretty soon. They're pretty far along. It should be done pretty soon. So bring that back, and we'll do a presentation to look at those. We're also looking at leases. That's been a big discussion in the last year or so, is looking at these $1 a year leases that the city has where we're nowhere near a market rate. And so having that discussion about looking at the lease revenue that we're generating through all of the various leases that the city has to ensure that we're recovering those costs. State funding and so this is why I asked to bring this slide back up So on the disabled veteran the state i've talked about this before the state has the program For local governments disproportionately impacted by disabled veterans So this exemption was approved by the voters and it's a wonderful exemption to help provide tax relief for our disabled veterans and the surviving spouses But the state program only allocates $9.5 million a year for the entire state. So what the state does is they reimburse cities that lose revenue from disabled veterans in their community. So I've talked about last year when we submitted our application. We submitted the application for $11 million, although the full impact of the 100% disabled was $17 million. But the way the application is, we submitted for $11 million to be reimbursed, and the city received $1.4 million back from the state. $1.4 out of the $11 million request. And so that's going to be, and you all approved it as part of the state Let's Live agenda, is we will be very aggressive in working with other communities that are impacted similarly to encourage the state to allocate more dollars towards that program so that we can get reimbursed for those property tax dollars that we're not collecting. So those are a few of the things that we're working on. But it's everything. And so my long-winded answer to that was the council action and the things that we've talked about aren't just one time or, you know, you asked for it, we did it, and we're over with it. No, it's an evolving cycle that now we're incorporating into future budgets as well.

No, and I'm grateful for all the work that has taken into account. I know I talked to Ms. Cody as well with the OMB department as well of reviewing marketplace and expenditures and I know staff has been really working on reviewing all of those expenditures as well. Robert, can you repeat one more time how much in property taxes we are projected to collect for this new upcoming fiscal year budget?

So as of right now, with the tax rate that was introduced, it will bring in $336.9 million in property taxes.

And can you tell me the investment for police and fire?

$371 million.

Okay. I just wanted to, you know, I've been having a lot of conversations with different members of our community, even my family, trying to explain that to them. Because I think oftentimes, again, I know we're facing different challenges, and a lot of members of our community are facing those challenges. And oftentimes, they think that we have a limited source of funding to provide all of the services that are needed, right? So I'm grateful for all the work that has taken into account. I think also it's important, you know, I'm glad that some of my colleagues ask different questions, including the rising cost of utilities, right? We're facing an $800,000 cost, increased cost of the utilities. yet a lot of members of the public believe that we are the utilities, that we are El Paso Electric or Texas Gas, but we voted to intervene to try to reduce those costs because it's also an impact to our fund and to our balance and to our budgets. And so we're facing those same challenges to ensure that when we're advocating for affordability, we're advocating for affordability through many different avenues, including when we're intervening. Because again, if there's a rising cost on the utility, we're going to have to essentially, the taxpayer is the one who's going to have to pay for it. So I'm grateful for all your work. And again, thank you for answering all of our questions. Thank you, Mayor.

All right, Robert, I'm going to make mine quickly. And I do have a few comments and then maybe a couple of questions. I know everyone on the dais is very sensitive to the inflation that we're seeing, not only from the national level with gas, utilities, groceries, and rising costs. But I believe this council last year lowered their effective tax rate. Is that true?

Yes, sir. The tax rate was lower last year.

So we lowered it last year?

Yes, sir.

Okay. And on page 10 that we were looking at earlier, if they could bring that back up, IT.

There we go.

So a lot of this, most of this is voter approved items.

And I'm going to look at it a little different. Being the veterans capital of the US, these are investments that we're making into our veterans. These are not costs. These are investments. And with our seniors are disabled, those are investments that we've decided to make as well as a city and into these groups. the business business personal property number did you see that one coming no sir we did not receive that impact from the appraisal district until we received the preliminary values at the end of april and that number went from 2500 to 125k yes sir and you had no idea it was coming not to that level okay so why are why are we in this position and just Layman's term for the average person. Why are we in this position as a city?

It's the loss of property tax revenue that we just talked about And it's increasing expenditures primarily in public safety and some of the other fixed costs that we have in the organization okay, and How do we get out of it It's the million-dollar question So one, the tax rate as recommended will definitely help address FY2028 going forward. So it's going to help in those outer years. The big unknown right now, we talked a lot about this two weeks ago, the big unknown right now is the fire collective bargaining agreement. I don't know, the manager doesn't know. Nobody knows where that's going to end. We've made multiple proposals, $43 million for four years. That's almost a $12 million increase starting next year. So how do we fix this? One, I talked about some of the things we're working on, looking at cost recovery, looking at leases, looking at new revenue sources, looking at tapping into additional state funding. Those are some examples of some of the things that we're working on that will help us be in a better position next year.

I would also argue that economic development would help.

Meta is going to help once we start collecting property tax revenue as they're building out Their five phases again. It's not all going to come at once. It's going to come incrementally But over the next several years as they were completing and opening up these phases Even though the city is rebating that 80% that 20% will help bring in additional tax revenue Yeah, and another economic development would help and other economic development projects will absolutely help the tax base. I

And so if we do nothing, does the problem compound?

Yes. If we do nothing, it goes back to the February presentation, that five-year forecast, where year over year, we'll have not only a deficit year over year, but that deficit compounds every year.

OK. Representative Trejo.

Thank you, Mayor. I'm a listener, and I've been sitting here just listening and listening and trying to come up with a decision. This is very, very, very tough. The different things that I'm hearing and looking at this long term, And Mayor, you brought up one of the things I think is something that most of us ran on when we were running for these positions is economic development and how important that is. You mentioned different ways that you're looking at as far as revenue for, to bring in revenue for the city and you mentioned several different things that you're working on. But I think economic development is one of the areas that we really, really need to concentrate on. But not only in economic development, but our 380 chapter agreement, I think that's something that needs to be reviewed. Really restructuring it and looking at the tax incentives so that we can start seeing more revenue sooner. And so that's something that I think will be proposing in the next council that we look at what our 380 agreement looks like.

I don't mean to interrupt you, but we are currently looking at revising our 380, our incentive policy. So that's currently under review. That's good. We'll be reaching out to all of the council members to make sure that we get your feedback into that policy change as well. And then that'll be coming back before the end of this calendar year.

Very good.

Very good. Yes, we are currently reviewing that as well.

Yes. I also believe that we've talked about community benefits agreements, and that should be part of the 380 agreement, as you all are looking at that, to look at when we're looking at these businesses that are wanting to come to El Paso, there's opportunities for maybe affordable housing within these agreements that they're looking at, how we can bring that in. Of course, living wages, I know that's part of the conversation always within the 380 agreements, but making sure that those are part of the agreements. We have a skilled workforce here in El Paso, and that's something that we really need to promote. And then also just improvements with infrastructure, looking at the neighborhoods where these businesses are coming up and seeing where there's opportunities to improve the infrastructure in the neighborhoods, things like that. This is really going to attract those businesses that are looking for long-term partnerships. And so I'm glad that we're looking into that. This is something that I did want to mention. You know, going back to this decision, and take into consideration the residents and the hardships that they're facing right now that we are all facing together. It's a very, very tough decision. And a lot of my questions have already been answered with many of what my colleagues have shared. But this is something that I wanted to bring forward to make sure that's in the radar. Thank you.

Thank you, Robert. Ms. Prang, we have public comment.

Yes, sir. That opens a public hearing at 1158 AM. The public hearing is open. We have Ms. Osmond that signed up to speak on item number two. And this is a proposed budget. Ms. Osmond, star six, please, to unmute your telephone. Go ahead, ma'am. You have three minutes.

You know, the city invested quite a bit on AI. IT is information technology. And the thing about AI is it's sold to reduce the workforce. So I guess this block, we should need less EPPD. The reason the city is considered the safest is because our numbers are skewed. All the various law enforcement don't pull the crime numbers together. But we are also situated in an area across the country where we have more law enforcement agencies per capita than most cities, even major cities across the nation. And then every school district has a police force. So we've got the sheriffs, the PD, you've got DPS, Texas Rangers. We are inundated with pd and since we've got flock we should need less pd and instead of pensions perhaps we should go with 401k just like the general public has to do i don't know how about uh we reduce the wages for our elected officials according to google you'll make at least city council over 70 000 a year and the mayor well over a hundred thousand Perhaps there needs to be some wage reduction. At very least, a moratorium on wage increases. Good governance? It hasn't been the case. You've got to kill a lot of the vanity projects. I don't know. Is La Nouve holding their own? Are they completely funded all on their own? How about the Chihuahua Stadium? We still get a dollar per parking. When the parking was $10, yet they increased to 20 and the city still hasn't increased the amount they get. Crisis intervention, yeah, that went up. If you call PD, and you ask for crisis intervention because somebody is having a mental break, they don't show up. In fact, what happens? PD takes them down. In fact, more people with mental health issues end up costing millions in lawsuits. So yeah, fighting against utilities. How about all the lawsuits the city has had to pay on the taxpayer dime? Reduce your own salary. Hey, we don't need. Thank you.

You've reached the three minutes, ma'am. Thank you. This is a public hearing. Is there anyone else that would like to come forward and speak on proposed budget? Go ahead, sir. This is on item number two on the proposed budget. Mr. Sam, I'd be home. You have three minutes.

I'd like to use the, uh, despite

IT, may we have the ELMO, please?

I signed up. I believed I was on the budget.

You signed up for item number one. You signed up for the ordinance living the taxes. That's the item we have. No, I'd like to speak on this subject. And that's fine, sir. You will have three minutes.

Could I use the overhead?

Yes, sir.

This is, I think, Mr. Cortina's documents. Good afternoon, Mayor Johnson and representatives. Today I am again asking you to select the no new revenue property tax rate. If you do, El Paso homeowners' property taxes will not increase in September. At the August 4th council meeting, I proposed approximately $21 million in budget deferments and reductions as a practical way to adopt the no new revenue tax rate without affecting essential, not discretionary, essential city services. Instead of evaluating or adopting any of these recommendations, the council increased the proposed budget and selected the voter approval property tax rate of 81 cents per $100 valuation. As elected officials, you have the power to impose the highest property tax rate allowed by law without an election. I urge you not to exercise your power against El Paso's homeowners who are already overtaxed. They will be forced to pay more to the many other taxing entities in the county Their electric bills are skyrocketing, groceries cost more, gasoline costs more, and now instead of spending, cutting spending, the city council also wants more. There are additional opportunities to cut spending as shown in this graphic. The upcoming budget ordinance identifies programs such as wellness benefit of up to $150 per employee, and payments for employees assigned to additional Lean Six Sigma duties. In the 1,100 page budget, I could not find how much these activities would cost if every one of the city's 6,500 employees receives these payments that amounts to almost $1 million. I doubt that these activities and expenditures are more important than property tax relief to our citizens. The biggest additional opportunity in the proposed budget is a 65-day reserve fund. Although the staff maintains that this fund is untouchable, the Government Finance Officers Association defines 60 days as a best practice. If the city council reduces the unrestricted reserve fund by just five days, you will release $9 million to the general fund and still leave over $370 million in the reserve fund to run the city for two months. By adopting these adjustments to the proposed budget, I would just like to complete my statement. I ask your.

How much longer do you have?

Less than a minute.

Go ahead.

By adopting the adjustments to the proposed budget, combined with spending cuts recommended previously, this council could easily adopt the no new revenue property tax rate and still provide adequate funding for the city services. And most importantly, give our homeowners a break. I request that this graphic and a brief be entered into the record of this budget. This council meeting. Thank you.

Thank you That's right anyone else that would like to come forward and speak on the budget Kind of coming up sir, and please state your name for the record and you'll have three minutes Good afternoon

Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Mayor, City Council. My name is Leo Arcos. And first thing I want to do is I'm going to read a Bible verse, Exodus 18, 21, which says, but select capable men from all people, men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain and appoint them as officials over thousands, hundreds, and tens. I just read a powerful verse, a verse that draws a clear line between leaders who serve integrity and leaders who are driven by greed. Exodus 18.21 says leaders should be capable, God-fearing, trustworthy, and people who hate dishonest gain. Those standards matter today because some of you have accepted campaign money from people who expect loyal to their agenda and not loyal to the residents who elected you to serve them. That is why we are here today. Let me ask this plainly. Has anybody sitting in those chairs truly read your own strategic plan? My guess is that many of you have not. So let me read some of them for you. Strategic plan. Economic, mobility, public safety, infrastructure, quality of life, and good governance. Quality of life. acts as an integrating pillar that ties together opportunity and safety infrastructure and sense of belonging. Good governance. Residents expect responsive leadership that listens and communicates clearly. That is all from your website. So with these strategies in place, how is it possible for you to look at residents in the eye every day and claim to serve them while preparing to raise their property taxes? How can you speak about quality of life, good governance, and responsive leadership? You were elected to protect. It is time to stop serving special agendas, start acting in good faith for people. Residents are tired of empty promises and backdoor priorities. and tired of leadership that says one thing in a strategic plan and does something in a different way. Do what is right. Follow your own plan that you developed. Represent the people, not the interests standing behind you. Do what is right for the people of this city. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else that would like to speak on the budget? Yes, sir. Please come to the podium. State your name for the record. Jesse Moreno.

My name is Jesse Romero. Good afternoon. I was getting ready for tomorrow, but I didn't know about today. But nevertheless, when I was running for city council two years ago, they told me, if you don't say you're going to reduce taxes, you're not going to win. Guess what? I didn't make the cut because they did not say I want to reduce taxes. What I wanted to do was increase revenues. Now, the City of El Paso gives a lot of things they do. They've got the library. They don't charge anything. It's not self-sufficient. There's a lot of things that we do. The water parks are used, what, three or four months a year? And then after that, what happens to them? They're talking about reducing this, reducing that, but you haven't discussed MEDA. Their revenue is supposed to be coming in, right? How is that going to affect us? It's a big deal. It's good for construction. I've been there. And guess what? Half of the employees are from El Paso. They're from out of town. And the general contractors, I saw VMAC out there. But who was there? Hensel Phelps, the biggest contractor. Why cannot we hire local contractors? That's my question. Yes, you're talking about the city, but you're covering city employees. What about if not a city employee? What if you're a contractor? What about your wages? Where do they come in? That's what you have to think about. And the biggest thing, though, is when, remember, we told people, we're going to cut the taxes. What's going to happen tomorrow? Because for you, your jobs are pending. One, five, six, and eight. What are you gonna do about that? That's what you gotta consider. Thank you very much, Jesse Romero.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else that would like to speak about the proposed budget?

I don't see anyone else.

Okay, Representative Rocha.

Thank you, Mayor.

I have one question for Robert.

There was a statement that was made that no new revenue would not increase taxes this year. And I know that during the Your City in Five segment that you and Ms. Mack did on Friday, it was about an 18-minute segment, roughly. There was a question in there that said, are taxes going up, whether we do no new revenue or we do this piece, Robert? And you had a very direct answer. Sorry, Robert, I'm putting you on the spot. It's no different from the Your City in Five.

So we did show the average value home impact. And so even with the no new revenue, you're not guaranteed to see a decrease in your property tax bill. It's all dependent upon the value. So when I talked a little while ago about all the different state requirements, whether it's the average value, the median value, it's just a general sort of comparison, right? So it's, again, going to all be dependent upon the value of each individual homeowner's

So on the average value of the $232,000 home, that's the average median value. We still know that there's some pending litigation, pending ARB appearances that are still pending. And so that's not actuals. But I know you've built in, conservatively, probably where it's going to land.

So based on the appraisal district, correct. So the certified values are 95% settled. There's the remaining 5% that will get settled over the next few months. So yes, all of that's accounted for. But we do, based on the certified values, based on what we received from the appraisal district, which all of that information is posted to the backup for tomorrow. We posted all of the documents. So you can see the average value from last year to this year, the median value, the tax rate calculation worksheet, all of that information is available. Yes. And so to be clear, yes, we did present. We've been very straightforward. And so that word transparency is used a lot. I don't remember who it was. One of the members of council earlier mentioned about starting the budget process six weeks earlier. And that wasn't done. for no particular reason. It was done so that we could have more engagement, more discussion, not only with the council but with the community to get the information out. The website is loaded with all of this information. There's tons of information available for the public to go and look at if they're not able to attend a city council meeting or if they want to go watch your city in five, which, yes, it was a very good 16, 18-minute segment that Ms. Mack and I recorded last week just to provide the information related to the budget for FY2027.

Thanks, Robert. Appreciate it.

OK, Ms. Bryant.

Mayor Pro Tem, thank you.

I'm sorry. Have we taken a vote or did you want to take well, I just have one final comment So we have the two items on the agenda for today So you've got item number two, which is the public hearing on the budget Which we need the motion that I had on the slide. I'd one is again a public hearing on the tax rate So we'll open up for anybody who wants to comment on that item There's no action on that item For tomorrow, we have three items for the council to consider. So one will be the approval of the budget. The second item is a state requirement. So it's a ratification of the budget with the property taxes associated with it. And then the third item will be the approval of the tax rate ordinance. And we do need, just to be clear, and I know, sorry, one more thing. I know Ms. Mack sent all of the information out to you all, and she's had a lot of discussions with you all over the last couple of weeks. But on the tax rate ordinance item tomorrow, and I think it's item 29 or 30, I don't remember the item, but on that item, on the approval of the tax rate ordinance, state law, the tax code requires that we get 60% of the governing body. So that's five out of the eight council members will need to vote in favor of that item in order for it to pass.

Anything else, Robert? That's it. OK. Ms. Prine.

Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Ms. Prine. I make a motion to close the public hearing at 12.15 PM and postpone the final vote on the budget until August 18, 2026. Second.

OK, there's a motion and a second. Ms. Prine?

This motion was made by mayor Pro Tem Chavez, seconded by Representative Nino and this is to close the public hearing at 1215 PM and postpone the final vote on the budget until August 18th, 2026. On that motion, call for the vote. in the voting session and that motion passes unanimously. We now go to item number one and this is a public hearing on the ordinance living FY2026-2027 taxes. Okay, Robert.

So we just did the full presentation. This is an opportunity for anybody from the public that would like to comment. They're able to do so at this time.

Okay, Ms. Bryan.

The public hearing is open at 1216 p.m. We do have three members of the public signed up to speak. The first person is Sam Armijo, followed by Leo Arcos and Patricia Osmond. Mr. Armijo? I already spoke, thank you very much. Okay, Mr. Arcos? Same. Thank you, sir. Ms. Osmond, star six please to unmute your telephone. Go ahead, ma'am, your microphone is ready. You have three minutes.

So Robert's correct that regardless of the tax rate, everybody's property taxes are gonna increase. What's very misleading is how it states average, $100,000 home. My own property value raised $80,000 one year to the next. almost that $100,000 alone. Can't imagine what everybody else across this town got with that increase. Possibly because CAB did exactly what Dean Margo had asked them to do years past. Keep raising the values. That way we get more tax revenue. So what nobody mentioned is the tax rate right now, is that what has to be done just to cover the difference? I didn't hear that exactly asked or answered. Or are you raising it higher than what is needed? And then next year you're gonna raise it again. Because quite frankly, all of you on the diet with money in your discretionary fund, that money should go into the general fund. Some of you all have hundreds of thousands of dollars in your discretionary fund. And that's on top of the money, the tens of thousands, over 70,000, over 100,000, you all are getting paid. But you're fine with nickel and diming every citizen in this city it went from your children go swim at the pool for a couple of bucks to it's almost twenty dollars about the same fee as taking a wet and wild one project after another to just drain the highest poverty population in the state and none of you care. You truly don't care because you're getting paid enough not to. Some of you on that dais don't even own a house to be paying property taxes on, so you don't really understand the issue. Don't have kids, so you don't understand the school tax issue either. But you don't have a comment.

Thank you, Ms. Hausman. You've reached the three minutes, ma'am. Thank you.

There's no action on this item, Ms. Prine?

Just to close the public hearing, is there anyone else that would like to comment on the ordinance living the taxes? I don't see anyone else coming forward.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Ms. Prine. I make a motion to close the public hearing at 1220 p.m.

And there's a motion second is right.

There's a motion made by me for Tim Chavez seconded by represent him on the road and this is to close the public hearing at 1220 PM. On that motion call for the vote. The motion passes unanimously and the adoption will also take place on 8th, 2026. Okay.

And Ms. Bryant, do we have a mass transit meeting? Yes, sir.

Is there a motion to adjourn this meeting?

Second. Second.

There's a motion and a second to adjourn the special city council meeting. All in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? And the special city council meeting for August 17, 2026 is adjourned at 1221 p.m. Would you like to convene the special mass transit?

In one second, Rob, we had a quick comment.

No, so we do have one item and I failed to mention that just a minute ago. So we have the transportation code, different code of state law requires we do a separate public hearing for mass transit. Tomorrow there'll be a mass transit meeting as well to approve the Sun Metro mass transit budget.

Okay. Good afternoon. This is a special meeting of the mass transit department board. Present is board chair Johnson and board members Chavez, Acevedo, Rocha, Nino, Fierro, Limon, and Canales. It is 1222 PM. If we may go to item number two, this is a public hearing on the proposed budget for the fiscal year FY27, Mass Transit Department of the City of El Paso, Sun Metro, followed by the city manager with the city clerk on July 17, 2026, which begins on September 1, 2026 and ends on August 31, 2027.

So this item is, again, required by the Transportation Code. So we have, as posted as backup, we have the presentation that was done on May the 27th and 28th for the Mass Transit Department, Sun Metro, as well as the resolution for them and their schedules as well. This is an opportunity. I don't know if we have anybody signed up to speak on this item.

The public hearing is open at 1222 PM. Is there anyone that would like to come forward to speak on the proposed budget for the Mass Transit Department of the City of El Paso, Sun Metro? No one has signed up to speak, and I don't see anyone else coming forward.

OK, Ms. Frank, don't we have to take the consent agenda item, too?

The consent agenda was to request to excuse any absent members, which there are none. OK. Is there a motion to close the public hearing?

Motion closed.

Oh, second. There's a motion. Hang on.

Representative Kanellis? I didn't notice. Was Mayor Trejo present at the start of the meeting?

She you're right. She is that she's not present for that.

I do think we need to excuse her absence if she's absent for the day We can I think we can do item one after we do item two.

Okay, let's do it There is a motion By board member Nino seconded by board member Limon and this is to close the public hearing at 1223 p.m. And postpone the final vote on the budget until August 18 2026 that motion call for the vote thank you board member Fierro and the voting session and that motion passes unanimously Now, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda to excuse Board Member Trejo from the Mass Transit Board meeting?

So moved.

Second.

There is a motion made by Board Member Canales. Seconded by Board Member Limon. And this is to approve the consent agenda to excuse Board Member Trejo from the meeting. On that motion, call for the vote. And the voting session and that motion passes unanimously is our motion to adjourn the mass transit department board meeting. There's a motion and a second to adjourn the mass transit department board meeting on paper. Anyone opposed and the special mass transit department board meeting for 8th 1720 26 is adjourned at 1225 PM.

I some is Brian how do we get into lunch.

You can just go to lunch now because the work session remains in recess at this time. What time would you like to return?

We will return at 1.30.

Thank you, sir. So the work session remains in recess.

And we'll reconvene at 1.30 p.m.

Oh, that's good.

Okay, Ms. Bryan, I believe we're ready. She's running. Well, we got two, we're good.

Council, is there a motion to reconvene?

Second.

There's a motion and a second to reconvene the council meeting. All in favor?

Aye.

Anyone opposed? And the meeting is back in session at 1.32 p.m. And that brings us to the executive session items. Is there a motion to retire into executive session?

Move to retire on items EX 1 through EX 7.

There's a motion and a second to retire into executive session. All in favor?

Aye.

Anyone opposed? And the City Council of the City of El Paso may retire into executive session pursuant to section 3.5A of the El Paso City Charter and the Texas Government Code Chapter 551 Subchapter D. To discuss any of the following, Executive Session Item 1, Application of El Paso Electric Company's Approval of a System Resiliency Plan, PUC number 59137, HQ number Utility-77, under 551.071. Executive Session Item 2, El Paso Electric Company's Petition to Extend the Duration of Certain Existing Texas Electric Vehicle EV Ready Pilot Program Tariffs, HQ Number Utility-82, Under 551.071. Executive Session Item 3, Application of El Paso Electric Company to Change Rates, PUC Number 57568, HQ Number Utility-60, Under 551.071. Executive Session Item 4, Legal Consultation on Chapter 380 Development Agreement, With worldwide LLC, HQ number 26-0475 under 551.071, Executive Session Item 5, Discussion on Economic Development Opportunities in El Paso, Texas, HQ number 23-939 under 551.087, Executive Session Item 6. Discussion on Economic Development Opportunities in El Paso, TX 23-1007-3025 under 551.087 and Executive Session Item 7 Legal Consultation Regarding Employment Evaluation and Duties for City Council Appointed Employees City Manager and City Attorney HQ No. 23-1161 under 551.071 and 551.074 These matters are taken into executive session under 551.071 Consultation with Attorney, 551.074 Personnel Matters, and 551.087 Deliberation Regarding Economic Development Negotiations. It is 1.34 p.m.

Let me know when you're ready. Okay, Ms. Prime, we're ready.

Is there a motion to come out of executive session? So moved. There's a motion in a second to come out of executive session all in favor. I anyone opposed. And the meeting is back in session at 5. 15 p.m. We're on the X one may approach him no action.

Thank you the X 2. Motion made seconded and carried that the city attorney in consultation with the city manager be authorized to accept the settlement in the El Paso electric companies petition to extend the drew duration of certain existing Texas electric vehicle EV ready pilot program tariffs under the Texas Public Utility Commission docket number 59509 in matter number high Q utility dash 82 and to take all steps necessary including the execution of any required documents in order to effectuate this authority.

There's a motion. Is there a second? Second. Okay. Ms. Frye.

There's a motion made a letter to the record by may have a chance to have this. It's to second it if I would make represent him on that approach and this to accept the settlement petition. On that motion call for the vote. And the voting session and that motion passes 5 to 1 representative us a bit of only name representatives. But I hope and kind of is not present the motion carries takes 2.

It's 3 of the sorry 3.

No action. Thank you it's for no action.

Thank you it's fine motion made second didn't carry that the economic and international development department return an amendment to the chapter 3 80 economic development program agreement with by 5 holdings Inc for City Council's consideration and approval at the next City Council meeting as practical to do so.

Case there's a motion. President Chavez.

Thank you, Mayor, and I do wanna state for the record that I will be abstaining from this vote because I do have family ties to this company. Thank you.

So motion, is there a second?

Second.

Okay, Ms. Bryan?

There's a motion made and written to the record by Mayor Pro Tem Chavez, seconded by alternate Mayor Pro Tem Fierro on EX5. On that motion, call for the vote. And the voting session. And that motion passes with 5 affirmative votes representative Chavez abstaining representatives that hope and that is not present.

Mayor care reconsider my vote for X 2 sorry that we're on another item okay to do that. We need to do spray X 2.

I need somebody on the prevailing side take a motion to reconsider. There's a motion to second this right there's a motion in a second to reconsider X 2 all in favor. Anyone opposed? We're back on EX2.

Motion made seconded and carried that the city attorney in consultation with the city manager be authorized to accept the settlement in the El Paso electric companies petition to extend the duration of certain existing Texas electric vehicle Evie ready pilot program tariffs under the Texas public utility commission docket number 5 9 5 0 9 in matter number high Q utility dash 82 and to take all steps necessary including the execution of any required documents in order to effectuate this authority.

Okay, there's a motion, is there a second? Second. Okay, Ms. Bryan?

There is a motion made and rendered to the record by Mayor Pro Tem Chavez, seconded by Representative Rocha on EX2. And this is to accept the settlement petition. On that motion, call for the vote. In the voting session and that motion passes unanimously representatives 3 whole and canal is not present that brings us to the exit.

Motion made seconded and carried that the economic and international development department return an amendment to the chapter 3, 80 economic development program agreement with LNF distributors LLC for City Council's consideration and approval at the next City Council meeting as practicable to do so second.

All right, there's a motion and a second. And Ms. Prine, just for the record, although I'm not voting, I did receive a campaign contributions from the principals of that organization.

Thank you.

Mayor, as did I. OK. Who was that? Representative Fierro.

Fierro, thank you. There was a motion made to the record by Mayor Pro Tem Chavez, seconded by Representative Limon. This is on EX6 for your staff to return with an amendment on that motion. Call for the vote. In the voting session. And that motion passes unanimously. Representatives Trejo and Canales not present. EX7? No action. Thank you.

All right. Is there a motion to adjourn? I make a motion to adjourn the meeting, Mayor. OK. Is there a second? Second.

OK.

There's a motion and a second to adjourn the work session. All in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? And the work session for Monday, August 17, 2026 is adjourned at 521 PM. Thank you, council.

Thank you, staff.