Plan Commission - workshop

Amen. So it's missing. Okay, Ms. Nunez, I think we're ready.

Good morning. This is a work session of the El Paso City Council for Monday, July 20, 2026. It is 9.03 a.m. Mayor Johnson present and presiding. Also present in council chambers is Mayor Pro Tem Chavez, Representative Acevedo, Representative Boyar Trejo, Representative Nino, Alternate Mayor Pro Tem Piero, and Representative Limon. Representative Maldonado Rocha will be joining us later. Mayor, we have a

All right, thank you. Good morning everyone and welcome to our work session. Hopefully everyone had a great weekend and your soccer team won. It was a great, great weekend of soccer. Representative Chavez, would you lead us in the Pledge of 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. Nunes, I believe that brings us to item number one.

Yes, sir. That brings us to item number one in item number one is discussion in action to approve a resolution for the adoption of the data center policy frame.

All right, good morning Fernando good morning.

Good morning, mayor Council. Thank you.

I T can we get the presentation. Okay, no worries.

Representative Canales has joined the meeting at 9.05 a.m.

We're almost there, Fernando.

Hello?

Ari Fernando.

Good morning. So this is an item for discussion and action about the data center policy framework. And you all directed staff on February 17th to come back with recommendations for this policy framework prioritizing community engagement, long-term impacts, and also we want to talk about how this was highlighted and is one of the actions on the climate action plan. Before we get into the recommendations that here we show all the 4 actions that you've taken since February 17th including that one to develop the the actual framework and those include a couple of amendments to the legislative agenda as well and an action taken on May 26 related to specifically to economic incentives and data centers. So we started, as I said before, five months ago on this work. And we put together an internal team that included multiple departments, planning and inspections, urban design, strategic and legislative affairs, the city attorney's office, IT, and the PIO. And we engage in a public dialogue period for the end of March and early April. And then we've been doing the actual development of the framework for the last weeks that now we're presenting to you all. A little bit more on that approach, it's a multifaceted approach. So we did a lot of research both locally, regionally, and nationwide. But we also put together a specific or dedicated website to inform about data centers with FAQs and questions that we were hearing about during those community meetings. We had conversations with the stakeholders and we were able to to do also online surveys and we were able to publish the draft document that was online for public comment for for a few weeks and that we close at the end of June. A little bit of a summary of the actionable community input that we gather throughout this process. The main takeaways, it's something that you've heard before for the last months and that you read in the draft and in the final document. So environmental concerns included water, air quality and noise, among others. Economic input related to utility cost and rate increases about tax incentives and jobs. And the also input about avoiding future data centers in particular hyperscalers. Some numbers that you can see in this slide about those engagement series with the last part of it, we got 162 comments to the draft that was published online. And I forgot to mention, we're going to be doing a joint presentation with planning and inspections with Kevin Smith and also with Omar Martinez from Legislative Affairs. But before I pass it over to Kevin, these are the four categories in which we've developed policy recommendations for the framework. And with that, I'll pass it over to Kevin.

Thank you. Good morning, Kevin.

Good morning.

I can't control your mic, so.

Hello, Tess? Ah, there we go. Good morning, Mayor and City Council. Kevin Smith of Planning Inspections. So I'll be presenting the zoning portion of the presentation. So just a little bit of background, and I believe all of council is aware of these, but this also for members of the public. So City Council is given the zoning authority to home municipalities through state law. And specifically for zoning, that's regulated by Section 211 of the Local Government Code. And that governs the zoning parameters that home rural municipalities have to work within. So City Council does have the authority to regulate zoning requirements within the city limits. I want to make sure that it's also important to know that outside of the sea limits so items within the county in other jurisdictions outside the state. The city has no purview in that but we within the sea limits that is something that we can regulate. A COUPLE OF TERMS THAT I'LL BE SAYING DURING THIS PRESENTATION ARE BY RIGHT AND BY SPECIAL PERMIT. SO THOSE ARE ZONING TERMS. AND BY RIGHT, BASICALLY WHAT IT MEANS IS ONCE A ZONING DESIGNATION IS GIVEN ON A PIECE OF PROPERTY, THERE'S NO ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS OR VARIOUS APPROVALS THAT ARE REQUIRED FOR THAT PIECE OF PROPERTY. For data centers, for hyperscale data centers, that's the way it currently exists right now. One of the items that I'll be talking about quite a bit is a special permit. So that's an additional step that would require, throughout the process, that use to be identified and to be publicized. When the notification is sent out, it is sent out with that specific use in mind and allows the public to better understand what is being proposed rather than an overall umbrella for a zoning designation. So getting into the recommendations is right now we have one definition. And as I mentioned, it is by rights. So it's for a hyperscale data center. And it's allowed currently in the C4, M1, and M2 zoning districts by right. So again, someone can come in to planning inspections, get the necessary permits, and there's no other approvals that are required. What staff is recommending is to create a tiered framework where we create three additional categories for data centers. One would be small. These are relatively small in scale, small in nature, not impactful on the significant impact on the utility infrastructure or the environment. So we would recommend that these be permitted by right. The higher ones, which is the type two and the type three, the type three is like hyperscale. Those would require special permits, which would have increasing requirements the larger they get. And I'll go into some of those on the next couple of slides. So here's some of the regulations that we are recommending for the special permit. Right now our notification requirements is 300 feet for typical notification requirements. We're recommending to increase that to 500 feet. So increased notification to that's direct mail outs to the public that take place at city planning commission and city council. We are recommending a distance buffer of 300 feet from all residential uses, districts, parks, schools, daycares, hospitals, churches, and open spaces. And that would be between property lines. We also are recommending a building requirement so that the building would be set back an additional 100 feet from that property line within THE GIVEN PROPERTY. AND THAT WOULD BE FOR THE TYPE 3. ADDITIONALLY FOR TYPE 3, WHICH IS THE HYPERSCALE, WE'RE RECOMMENDING A 30-FOOT BUFFER OF LANDSCAPING WHICH WOULD PROVIDE A DOUBLE ROW OF TREES AS WELL AS A REQUIREMENT TO ENCLOSE ANY EQUIPMENT THAT IS OUTSIDE AS WELL TO ASSIST IN NOISE MITIGATION. Additionally, as part of this, we are recommending what we call supplemental regulations. So this is typical in a number of uses throughout that the City Council has adopted over the years. What we're recommending for the Type 3 is additional assessments that would be required to be submitted at the time of the application submittal. uh they would these are studies that would be publicized throughout the process both at city planning commission and city council to then be able to make an informed decision on how to take proper action these studies would include looking at assessments based on utility impact looking at heat impact looking at wastewater and how that is mitigated as well as make sure sign and lighting is in compliance with the code, as well as any specific site impacts that may be there. That would be a requirement. So we wouldn't even be able to accept the application until all those assessments are provided to staff. And so the biggest thing, at least in terms of this slide, is changing the use from a buy right to a special permit to then allow for public input on these items, as well as to allow city council the final authority to act on these. And I will pass it back over to Fernando to cover the next few slides. Thank you, Kevin. Thank you.

Thank you, Kevin.

This next recommendation, it's something that we heard throughout the input process and the research process and is requiring disclosure of data related to consumption, energy, emissions, and water. So that's something that it's been consistent throughout our research and input. The next recommendation, we are moving on into the environmental category. You'll remember we have four categories. This is the second one, environmental. The objective of this one is to conserve El Paso's natural resources. And we are recommending, rather, to require the most efficient cooling systems and water technologies not only for water supply, but wastewater operations. And I want to remember you all that the final authority on all things water falls under the water utility. But to do that within a coordinated collaboration with El Paso Electric and El Paso Water, defining a formal way is the way to go. So we are all collaborating when assessing this system. Moving on into the economic category, local incentives. You all took action on May 26. This recommendation was included in the draft. It's in the final document. But in between that draft development and today, you all took action on May 26 related to not grant economic incentives for hyperscalers. Excuse me. The next economic recommendation is they must protect El Paso rate payers looking into avoiding cost shifting, meaning that all the costs related to infrastructure for tentative facilities of this nature to be bared by the company and or developer. And the other recommendation that we have on this slide is to pause LAND SALE ON LANDS UNTIL THE RECOMMENDATIONS OF THIS FRAMEWORK ARE QUALIFIED AND ADOPTED OFFICIALLY. NEXT ECONOMIC RECOMMENDATIONS RELATED TO PARENT COMPANY. SO WE'RE RECOMMENDING THAT ALL IF ANY AGREEMENTS HAPPEN TO BE SIGNED WITH THE PARENT COMPANY AND THAT'S TO AVOID TENTATIVE RISK OF A STRANDED ASSETS. And this recommendation coming in benefits agreement, it's something that came up. Frequently during the these policy framework process and we're looking at community benefits agreements as tentative mechanisms to improve air quality health and drive economic prosperity, but also to ensure water and energy security so we're recommending to explore all mechanisms possible for the use of these community benefits agreements. and now pass it over to Omar Martinez. Good morning, Omar.

Good morning, Mayor and Council. Omar Martinez with Strategic and Legislative Affairs. On the policy recommendation side, it's important to understand that we are expecting a lot of state action regarding data center and policies related to them. It can include the data center themselves or utilities or land use associated with them. And so it's important to remember that this policy framework will become a living document, and staff will be working with our state delegation and our partners, including El Paso Electric, El Paso Water, and the community to make amendments to the policy framework as the state passes new laws. We're going to have two priorities in terms of our advocacy strategy. First, it is to ensure that the state does not preempt city council's authority to make decisions regarding land use as they relate to the data centers. And so we want to make sure that council retains the authority to say the final no if that is council's prerogative in the future whenever we get one of these data centers. The other priority is protecting rate payers. The letter sent by the governor last month essentially called for various protections across ERCOT regions, and it sort of left us with a lot of questions that have not been answered as of today, whether these protections also apply to non-ERCOT regions like El Paso Electric. In our conversations with El Paso Electric, we were told that El Paso Electric is assuming that all of these protections and therefore the required actions will apply to Nunarkat, but staff has not held still. We've activated our lobbyists. We've sent notes to the state delegation. We've communicated directly with the PUC, including a visit later this month to meet with them to ask this very question. And we continue to ask anybody that might give us an answer, does all of the great protections apply to El Paso Electric? And so know that with protecting council's authority and protecting our rate payers, staff will be working with you throughout the 90th legislative session. It also includes when we go to El Paso Days in Austin. You're welcome to join us if you are able to. And we are planning a meeting with PUC, so you can ask a lot of these questions yourselves. And anything else that the community might still have pending any dangling threats. That is on the state side. On the federal side, it's important to remember that the Trump administration generally tries to apply these overarching policies regarding how states can regulate themselves. Generally, these hit the courts. And we're often at a much slower standstill when it comes to executive orders, for example. So where staff spends our time on the federal side is on the rulemaking changes. Sometimes the Trump administration does take actions through the FERC or the U.S. Department of Energy that could have an impact on data center policy, and we're always watching for that. Our lobbyists have been activated to keep track, and any findings, we'll make it as part of our activities and updates to city council when we bring updates on the federal legislative agenda. And so what's important to note about the state and federal response, advocacy response, is that staff is watching. We want to thank City Council for the resources you allocated to our department. We are working hard to make sure that anything that comes our way, we are ready, prepared. And we will be sure to have a regular cadence with City Council whenever there's any changes required by the state. We are planning to bring back an update to the state legislative agenda. with all of the council requested changes towards the end of this year before pre-filing starts. And whenever we are in session, you can expect roughly a work session item on the session, maybe once every month, once every two months, depending on where we're at on the session. Weekly emails or biweekly emails regarding changes. And then when things get real fast, when there's things that we need to inform council, Any legislation that made it through, that passed committee, that we need to let Council know that we need to take action on, you'll get regular emails from us, maybe sometimes a couple of times a day, the way it happened last year. With that, I think that would be the end of the presentation. Staff is available to answer any questions you all might have.

Very good presentation, and I know we're gonna have some questions, so maybe Fernando, Omar, and Kevin can stand by. I actually have one, a couple quick questions. I think this one's for Kevin. You talked earlier about no jurisdiction in the county. So, If a data center is going to go, let's just hypothetically say, into Socorro or one of the outlying counties, we have no jurisdiction.

That is correct, Sir, the only currently as per state law, the only authority that the city has is within our etj is subdivision control land uses are not regulated in the county. There are no zone, there is no zoning in the county so in theory, one can just hop right over across the city limits and build one and i'd be allowed by right.

Okay, and on page nine, why aren't all the zoning, I guess, requests gonna be special permit?

What we're recommending is, too, just that tiered approach, because what we looked at was try to make the less impactful ones, make them easier to pursue being developed. And so the smaller ones typically would not have as large impact. They're small in size. They have less of a impact on utilities. Sometimes they may not have more impact on, say, water, wastewater. than a larger scale one and then so what we wanted what we're recommending is a tiered approach so the smallest one would just be allowed by right the next tier would be required a special permit and then the third tier would require the special permit plus all the supplemental regulations which include all the studies I mentioned earlier

Okay, I just, the only reason I ask is I see it's by square footage. Correct. And then if you see a type one small that was going to be developing at 50,000 square feet, they may start there but quickly expand

If they did expand, that would kick it over to a special permit. So again, if they expand or say their energy increased, that would kick them into the next tier. So again, we would not be able to issue any building permits until they met the code requirements. And since it kicked it over to the next tier, that would require that zoning action, which would require, at the end of the day, city council approval.

OK, very good. And I'm sure one of my colleagues will ask about cost shifting, so I won't do that. But land sale, let's look at page 16. So this will prohibit an agent coming in and trying to acquire land for another customer, for example, Worldwide and Meta. Because Worldwide was the one that actually acquired the land for META. Does this prevent something like that from happening?

So during the special permit, we would be asking who is the parent company. So they would need to provide that we are permitting the parent company.

Yeah, I think if also I could say, I believe this is also for when the city is looking at selling the land. So then they would have to disclose to the city what company that is, that is trying to acquire this piece of property for a data center. Got it.

Okay, just want to make sure. Okay, Representative Lamont.

Thank you mayor Kevin staying on page 9 or slight 9 and I think the mayor touched a little bit on this. I know I'm fully understand that in the county we have no authority, but look at the type 2 where it goes. The notification.

I believe that's on the following slide.

I'm sorry. This goes into the notification? Yes. Right, that distance. If Worldwide or META were applying today, would there be any notification to the people in Chaparral?

No, it stops at state lines. The same with the county. If there's something abutting the city limits within the state of El Paso, it does not go beyond.

Even though we're greatly affecting them, it wouldn't matter.

There are other ways, too, Ms. Simone, that we do notify. So they would still need to provide the sign that is up on the... on the site itself, on every street frontage, it would also be as part of a public meeting as well. So people are invited to, no matter where they live, come and comment on a proposal.

You're welcome. Representative Trejo.

Thank you, Mayor. I have a few questions. And I don't know who can answer this, but how many data centers do we currently have in El Paso?

So hyperscalers or data centers?

Total, just data centers.

Data in general? So the databases that we've consulted, they show six data centers. Those are smaller scale. There are some data centers that are probably not on those databases for private businesses like the big businesses or institutions in the region. So those didn't show.

Okay. Do we know, you know, the amount of water they're using, resources, anything like that? Was that taken into consideration?

No. Right now, they don't have any type of mandate to disclosure any type of information, any type of or size of data center.

Okay. When you have those into the different categories, is that something we're going to be looking at going forward with the smaller data centers as you have them categorized?

looking into the disclosure of information?

Right.

Yeah, that would apply to the hyperscalers to type three.

Only to the hyperscales? Yes, ma'am. Okay. And then on slide six, where you go into the community meetings, and I had these questions when I was briefed, the number of participants. So you did have some repeat participants at the different community meetings, correct?

Yes. Some members of the community participated in multiple of the community meetings, yes.

Okay. Do you know the number of repeat participants?

No, not really we we just try total numbers per community meetings. I want to emphasize that there were also community members that were present but for personal reasons private reasons they they decided not to sign sign in with the attended so the the 5.42 attendees is what we have on our sign in sheets.

Okay. And that includes repeat participants? Yes, ma'am. Okay. When you did the gathering of the information, does that also include the repeat participants?

Yes. We didn't put limits or we didn't track who made how many comments to what is specific questions.

Okay. I know you all had some challenges with District 1 and District 2, I mean District 4 at the beginning. And so I was looking for the page here where you go into on the actual policy. What page is that? I thought I had it marked. Let me take a look real quick. Where you go into the different community meetings? You know what page that is? Okay so it's on page 13 and 14 and you go into the community meetings And you mentioned each, there was a 20 minute intervals. Many committee members weren't able to hear the prompt or move to the next topic leading to participant confusion. And this was in district one and district four. Those were the two first initial meetings, correct?

Yes, ma'am.

And then there was some changes And that allowed participants they were not able to provide feedback freely move about the room the format change and the comments were Redirected to the appropriate boards and so I feel like within you know, I can speak for I would let a representative Chavez to speak on her behalf, but I feel like I'm in my district and That was not available to our constituents to be able to express because of the confusion and everything that was taking place. I would like to request another meeting for that district because I was present and there was a lot of confusion and many individuals left. I feel like they lost out on that opportunity.

So you mentioned the pivot. I heard from all of you. We certainly saw how the meetings were going and so what we did was we added the online survey. And so I think for people who might have felt intimidated to be able to provide an opportunity for their voice, we left the online survey open for about a month or so. We felt that that was a better option rather than trying to recreate that same opportunity. And so that was why we added that survey opportunity for people. In addition, we did have this posted for comment for almost 45 days. to allow people to send us any comments and notice on the website that was available and we thought that that was a more effective way of sort of gathering people's feedback um to make sure that they had good opportunities so they've had opportunity to sort of see this and i really appreciate all of you helping us to think about how we could pivot to get the most information in the best environment for people

Do you have it broken down by districts, what was received on that information, including the survey? Because I would like to see how many from each district responded and removed duplicates. Do you have the ability to remove duplicates?

Yeah, the team went through all the comments, more than 2,000 comments. All those, the breakdown of comments per community meeting topic and type of comment, it's in the backup. It's in the appendixes to the policy framework. I'll be happy to look into that with you if you want to.

OK. I didn't see the appendix. So is that something that is on the website? Is that where the appendix is? It's on the website, all that information? Do you have it broken down by districts and what I've just asked?

It's on the website and on the backup to this agenda item, yes.

OK. Additional questions here. So the utilities, in the original language when this was brought forth, it states, I'm going to read the whole thing. So discussion and action authorizing the city manager to develop within 60 days a proposed data center policy framework with the city of El Paso The framework shall prioritize community engagement utility providers state local and regional government and implementation considerations evaluate long-term impacts of infrastructure and utilities and then during development of the framework sitting Negotiations and development discussions related to the new data center project shall be paused That was removed Further direct the city manager to conduct a legal analysis of all current 380 agreements with data centers and so I don't see the utilities. Did you all have conversations with the utilities?

We did have conversations with El Paso Water and El Paso Electric, and we got quite a few comments from El Paso Water that were addressed in the policy framework, yes.

Okay, and are they quoted on here, or where does it show that their input is in here?

So we shared the draft with them. When the draft was published, we had conversations with El Paso Water, We look at all comments like we did with all community and other stakeholder comments. And in the final document, we are not highlighting where the wording comes from, but there were specific changes after suggestion from El Paso.

Okay, so you shared the draft with them. It wasn't a discussion. You didn't have discussions with the utilities. You shared the draft with them and they gave input?

I said the draft and then I have follow-up conversations. I don't remember if via Teams or over the phone, at least a couple of times, two, three times.

And then I do have, I have a lot of questions, so how much, no, I'm running out of time, so I'll come back, come back. Okay. Thank you.

Representative Acevedo.

Thank you, Mayor. I just want to commend all of you for really great work. I really appreciate how much time you've put into this and appreciate what you came up with. There's a lot of strategy here. There is a lot of information that will help the community learn more about what we're going to do moving forward. And as we've kind of been talking about data centers for most of this year, I... Know that we've been on the defense. There's been two There's been two amendments to the legislative agendas in terms of basically kind of doing stuff around energy and I forget the other one, just frameworks in general on data centers. And when we were kind of discussing this in my office when you briefed me on this, Omar, we were kind of talking about how we haven't really done any positive work I guess, approach to the data center legislation that might come forth in the next few months, whether it's at the federal or at the state level. And so I wanted to propose an amendment to the legislative Agenda as we're kind of looking through it at the very end. There's some policy recommendations on advocacy and kind of looking at the Resolution being adopted for this framework, but it also includes part of that is the the policy recommendation So it would be easier to just do an amendment through this if that's what the council chooses to do, right? I Okay. So I moved to amend the city of El Paso's state and federal legislative agendas to include support and advocacy for data center oversight legislation that proposes water conservation and protects the environment from air and noise pollution. So I'll send that to miss Nunez so we could send it over to the rest of Council. The idea here is that what the governor has put out is not really addressing what the people are asking for and people are worried about water and pollution and the environment essentially. So I thought this could help us give the city staff direction in terms of supporting this legislation that could help us in the future.

Okay, there's an amendment to, is there a second? Second. Okay, there's a second. Discussion on the amendment, Representative Canales? I have a question. Okay, on the amendment.

Yep, thanks, Mayor. I don't at all disagree with the amendment. I think we should put that in our legislative agenda. This is posted for action to approve a resolution. I DON'T KNOW THAT WE CAN, LIKE, WE WOULD HAVE TO MAKE AN AMENDMENT TO THE RESOLUTION. I DON'T THINK WE CAN MAKE AN AMENDMENT TO JUST DO SOMETHING TOTALLY DIFFERENT. I WELCOME AN OPINION FROM CITY ATTORNEY.

Good morning.

Good morning. Josette Flores from Legal. Are you talking about the resolution that you passed originally asking for staff to come back and present the data center framework?

No, this item is posted as discussion in action to approve a resolution for the adoption of the data center policy framework. And there's a resolution in the backup. We're considering a resolution with the main motion.

We can amend it. If we need to.

Right, but the motion was not to amend the resolution. It was just to amend the policy framework. I mean, sorry, not the policy framework, just to amend the state legislative agenda, which is not posted.

Yeah, that would not require an amendment to this resolution.

It's something that we could bring forward as a separate item.

Yeah, we are doing that as we go along. Yeah, and again.

What we would propose, Representative Acevedo, is that you bring an item forward at the next city council meeting to put that on the agenda for an additional amendment.

Yeah, and again, in no way am I saying this because I don't want this to move forward, Representative Acevedo. I just want to make sure that we do it right and it's not challenged.

So, Representative, do you want to still have the amendment?

Oh, I'll take it off and bring it at the next council meeting.

Okay. Thank you, Mayor. Okay.

Representative Nino.

Thank you, Mayor.

We're back on the main motion.

And thank you, Fernando, Omar, Ian, the city staff for working hard on this. I know that I was brief last week and we spent over two hours in my office talking about all of the different questions that residents in District 5 had, and you guys were helping me address a lot of those questions. One of the things that I asked you all, too, is a lot of residents in District 5 shared with me, why are you guys working on a policy framework for future data centers when we don't want data centers? Why are you still having the conversation of future data centers? And I think if you guys could clarify why, again, it's important for us to have A policy in place, just because I know that you know finding inspections mentioned that currently it's right and there's a lot of different aspects of ensuring that we set these Community protections. Because we're dealing with private land right if an individual sells a private property to another. organization or a private company. There's very limited things that the city could do. And essentially, our authority legal authority by state law is zoning and the special permit process. And that's really where the city of El Paso could have some sort of input of ensuring that there is community protections.

Yeah. So if I can respond to that in the zoning code, we have what's called legal nonconforming. So basically it's when the city changes the laws or something's incorporated in the city that doesn't meet the current requirements as a city right now before city council has some amendments and once it comes in for final adoption to amend The regulations, the current site, the meta site would be granted what's called legal nonconforming, basically almost like a grandfathering rule where it would still be allowed to operate. We cannot, when it came in to develop, they met all the municipal requirements. It went all through the municipal rules. What we're recommending is looking out for the future and to address those. And so that's the recommendation, at least from the zoning side, is how can we address those moving forward and what's the best way to do that? And that's where we're recommending a special permit to allow city council the opportunity to evaluate all the information that's provided to them, receive all the public input and decide whether to grant it or not.

And if we were not to have these policies, the recommended policies that we currently have in this presentation in place, What authority would the city have when it comes to, again, private land sales and then someone wanting to build some sort of warehouse and build a data center, essentially?

So the city would have no ability to intervene. They would come in. The land sales obviously happens every day. But at least from a zoning perspective and a building permits perspective, they meet all the zoning requirements, assuming it meets the current zoning allowances. They come into our building permitting and get the building permits and start construction. Great.

Now, I know that Fernando mentioned briefly that they engaged and shared this draft policy with different entities. Did we also share it with the county, with state representatives and federal partners as well to ensure that they're aware of the framework that we put together and also kind of the sentiment of the community of what the priorities are.

Yes. So staff sent the policy framework to our elected officials, to the Congress, to the Office of Congresswoman Escobar, to our state delegation and to our partners.

Now, I know that we mentioned a little bit about when, you know, There might be a project that comes within the county jurisdiction or even in federal property, for example, the proposed data center in Fort Bliss, right, which the city of El Paso does not have any sort of jurisdiction. Are we looking, and I'm grateful for the mayor for helping us send a letter and the office of the congresswoman as well, for that specific data center of even just asking if that location is the final location, if it could be moved somewhere else, and also sharing the different community concerns that have constantly been shared. When it comes to a project coming into other jurisdictions, do we foresee the city having some sort of engagement or input into that or even just sending a letter of different concerns? For example, in District 5, we have a lot of donut holes, right? My boundaries. are also adjacent within county jurisdiction and federal property. And I know that we talked a little bit about the ETJ, but when it comes to a potential data center possibly being built somewhere that's not within the CEDA limits, what kind of input and or advocacy may we be able to have?

As of right now, I'm not aware of any that we have currently on the books. I would probably defer to legal, see if there's anything. But right now, we have no jurisdiction. We have no ability to influence. I mean, the best we can do is potentially send them a letter with our comments and concerns. But at the end of the day, that city or that county has ability to proceed with development as they see fit within their rules and regulations.

Perfect. No, thank you for that. Now, I know the mayor mentioned in regards of potentially having multiple data centers that are built and it becoming some sort of cluster. So I've seen a lot of new industrial spaces be built around the community. And in El Paso Water's presentation a couple, I think it was like a week ago, they mentioned that someone could build a warehouse and then they might have a data center, but we have no idea that there's a data center. How would we be able to monitor something like that? I know that they mentioned that the water usage could go up and whatnot. But essentially, if someone does have some sort of facility that we're not aware of, what would happen then?

So again, if it met the criteria, say, of a higher level, say, a type 2 or type 3, which is one of the more intense uses, once they come in for building permits, they'd be submitting what's called a tenant improvement, which would be modifying whatever the existing building is. That's where we would identify that. And we would not be able to issue the building permits, again, until city council would grant that special permit.

Does applying for a special permit guarantee approval?

No, no, similar to a zoning change. Again, every property owner has a right to ask. At the end of the day, it's up to city council to approve or deny those.

Perfect, thank you. You're welcome. Would it be fair for that, and this is for staff, would it be fair that this framework is one component to a broader City effort to address again future data centers including the adoption of a climate action plan including our state legislative agenda participation in the Public Utility Commission proceedings and now the development of local zoning and land use standards and

So I would say related to the climate action plan, as you all know and you've highlighted throughout this process, this action was identified in that plan as important, even though the development of the actual plan doesn't bring emissions down or air quality improvements. But the community and the team felt that it was important to include in the plan. So that's part of the broader plan. cohesion of what we're proposing here and other plans from the city.

Now, thank you for that Fernando. Now, you know, one of the biggest concerns has been in the environmental aspects and I know that during the climate action plan I talked about the environmental component when it comes to data centers. The framework currently recommends utility impact assessments, water studies, environmental reviews, and different noise analysis, right? Who would be the

Organization person entity that would verify those So as part of the special permit process, it's just not planning inspections that reviews and make recommendations It's reviewed amongst many city departments including some outside entities such as utility companies So they'd be the ones that would look through this information and they provide the comments and that is incorporated as part of the overall staff comments and Information that's provided again to the City Planning Commission City Council. So it's already built in into that review process, they would be provided all these studies and be able to provide their independent recommendation or analysis and recommendation.

Okay. And that was going to be my follow-up questions. If these studies will be independently reviewed by city or different qualified experts, or if we would rely solely on the information that gets provided by the applicant.

No, it would be reviewed amongst the various entities that review these special permits on a regular basis that currently exists.

And when it comes to, say that someone goes through the process, would staff be providing, or support providing city council with public reports regarding compliance, water consumption, energy demand, or energy reporting?

So as of right now, there's nothing. But again, once the special permits approved, they must meet all those requirements that are as part of the special permit. So if they violate that, then we work with our code enforcement team to take appropriate action, including taking to the courts if needed.

And I mean, I don't think any of us here in the body would want future data center hyperscale data centers to come into our community. And I know that has been mentioned multiple times, but You know, we're making policy decisions for the future. This policy is going to be in place for five years, 10 years, 15, 20 years, even before or after we're here, right? What enforcement mechanism does the city have if a future operator fails to comply with the conditions of a special permit?

So again, that would probably be brought up either by utility companies or by a member of the public can also bring it up, and we'd send our code enforcement team to investigate and take appropriate action. Again, this here is a living document. As council's aware, this is something that a lot of municipalities are trying to understand. We are still, as was mentioned by Omar and Fernando, is there's a lot also going on at the state level and the federal level. So again, as the parameters may change, we may have to adapt down the road as well.

And that was going to be my follow-up question in regards to this being a working living document. How often we foresee revisiting these policies and updating them as technologies and state laws change?

Yeah, I think from at least from the zoning standard, if any changes come about either by the state or federal level, we'll have to modify those to be compliant. I'll defer to Fernando in terms of the overall framework. But again, as with the zoning code, you know, and the codes in general, the city council has the authority to change those as they see fit. Okay. I'm out of time here, but thank you.

Thank you, Representative Chavez.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Kevin, Fernando, and Omar for the presentation. I have first a comment on the amendment that was proposed earlier. Let me get the mic closer to me. There we go. In April, on the 28th of April, Representative Nino, Representative Fierro and myself brought forward an item that was passed by council. I'm gonna read it for the record. Discussion and action to direct the city manager to amend the city of El Paso's 90th session state legislative agenda as well as the 119th Congress federal legislative agenda. to include advocacy support for policy proposals related to data center incentives and regulatory frameworks, including support state legislation to refine sales tax exemption criteria so that recipients must demonstrate clear, measurable public benefits and remain accountable for delivering those outcomes. working with TML and other municipalities to support legislation that sets higher standards at the state for transparency, environmental protection, and accountability requirements for large-scale data center development. The intent is establishing state-level baseline standards for data center incentives while preserving municipal flexibility to structure Chapter 380 agreements, ensuring local governments retain control but operate within consistent guidelines that promote accountability and measurable public benefit. Working with NLC and other municipalities to support federal legislation that strengthens public transparency, environmental protection, and accountability requirements for large-scale data center development. So I just wanted to make it clear that we've already, as a body, adopted this, voted in favor of this, and it includes language for advocacy in terms of environmental protection. We've already done that as a body in April. So now I have a few more questions regarding the presentation itself. I guess the first question, and Representative Niño, you asked a lot of the ones I was going to ask, so you did a great job. I'm just probably going to reiterate a couple of them. And this question is specifically for Ms. Nieman. Ms. Nieman, has there been other cities in Texas that have done a zoning prohibition on data centers?

At this point, only San Marcos has prohibited the development of data centers within their city limits.

and representing your touch based on this a little bit, a few minutes ago, what would be your advice on doing something like that for the city of El Paso?

You would need to direct us to do that research. There's a lot of debate going on across the state as to whether or not Cities have the ability to do that under our zoning code and under state law. A city has the ability to regulate uses within its boundaries. For example, some cities prohibit uses outright. Like San Marcos, that is something that the council would have to consider.

OK. And I think that we've talked a lot about avoiding legal repercussions regarding zoning and other things on the dais here before. And that would be something that we would need to consider because as far as I know, San Marcos is potentially gonna be facing a lawsuit because of that. Zoning prohibition.

You're not prohibited from prohibiting uses through zoning. I don't know whether or not San Marcos is going to be sued or has been sued. We've been following them, but I don't believe that they've been sued yet. There's been comments to that effect. The city, under state law, has strong zoning power to prohibit certain uses within its municipalities. I don't think I'm prepared to give you a full legal analysis as to whether or not the city would face litigation if you all chose to move in that direction. we would need to have specific direction from the council if you wanted to move in that direction.

Okay. Thank you, Ms. Damon. I appreciate the answer because I think it's something that we're tracking again both at the state and federal level in other areas. And I appreciate, Kevin, you laying out our authority as a council in terms of zoning. I want to talk a little bit about A LITTLE BIT ABOUT SOMETHING THAT WAS BROUGHT UP EARLIER ABOUT THE VERIFICATION LISTED ON PAGE 11. FERNANDO, YOU TALK ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS BEING THE NUMBER ONE CONCERN ON PAGE 3 OF YOUR PRESENTATION. I THINK FROM WHAT I'VE HEARD FROM MY COMMUNITY SPECIFICALLY IN DISTRICT ONE AND YOU KNOW FROM PEOPLE THAT HAVE GIVEN ME THEIR FEEDBACK I THINK THE ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS ARE ARE ONE OF THE STRONGEST CONCERNS THAT PEOPLE HAVE EXPRESSED TO ME SO SPECIFICALLY ON PAGE 11 WHEN YOU TALK ABOUT UTILITY IMPACT WHAT WHAT WOULD BE THE VERIFICATION PROCESS FOR SOMETHING LIKE THAT KEVIN

Yeah, so as part of the special permit, this would be one of the submittals that would be required. It would be reviewed and analyzed by the utility companies as they be the supplier of that energy. And they would be able to provide that recommendation. And then council would be able to determine, looking at the analysis provided by El Paso Water, El Paso Electric, whoever the entity may be, and be able to make a decision based on that information. Part of it is just simply making everyone aware of this is how much energy this is proposed to be using. And again, if they exceed that, that's where the code enforcement teams would step in and take action.

And, and something I've, I've, I've been thinking a lot about is some of these companies, especially like the tier three ones that we've mentioned are very sophisticated, right? They have very sophisticated systems, but they're also always changing, right? Because their technology advances and they, they decide to pivot and move in a different direction. How can we make sure that it's not only an initial assessment of whatever the utility impact is gonna be, but if there is a change in their process in the way that they're doing the work that they're gonna be doing, that the impact is also analyzed at every step

of the plan some of these projects are in phases right correct so how can we do that so i think as i mentioned this is an evolving use um throughout frankly throughout the world and so these companies are evolving they're adapting uh what i would be in my recommendation would be whatever is presented as part of their submittal terms of the utility consumption that should be the maximum Everything below that so if there's new technology to have a less, you know a smaller amount of usage of water or energy That's just assisting the community and not being a strain on that the utility agency

Yeah, we talked a little bit about it in the presentation from El Paso Water, and I see Renee here in the audience today. Thanks for coming, Renee. And I think John mentioned in his presentation that, you know, in the contract that they have right now, there's like a maximum amount of water, and this is just for one specific company, right, for Meta. here we're adopting something generally as a policy for the city for for the future but that would be something that I would make sure that we continue to evaluate as we move forward especially with phases because not everyone's going to have a contract with the utility and if they don't have a contract in place how do we ensure that the impact is going to be verified or analyzed at every phase or every step of the way, especially if there's a pivot in what they are doing. And I don't know if Renee wants to speak on that. I think it's important for us to know. Thank you, Renee.

Good morning, Renee.

Good morning, council.

Good morning, councilwoman. And Rene, just state your name. Sorry, you're off the record.

Rene Leon with El Paso Water. Any new customer that comes into the system has to meet with our new installations department. They put in an application for service, and we determine the infrastructure they need. So there will be steps in the process. Let's say someone comes in as a warehouse and decides to upgrade. They'd have to go through the city's policy. Plus, they'd have to check with us to see whether the existing infrastructure is there to serve their needs. If they needed an increase in service, they would have to put in the application and we would evaluate it based on the infrastructure around that site to see if it could support an increase in water service. So there are steps in place to kind of get that information out of the customer and for us to use that information to evaluate it.

So essentially, Renee, just because someone's established and open for business doing whatever they're doing doesn't mean that we have to provide, well, let me say it this way, doesn't necessarily mean that the service is going to be there if their usage increases.

Correct. And if this policy passes, they would have to abide by the city ordinance under that policy. So they would have to go through the steps to get that permit from the city. And again, Separate from that policy, they would have to go through the steps with the utility to see if the infrastructure is there for increased water demand. So there's multiple checks here in place.

And there will be a safeguard in place. Yes.

And I think John Ballew mentioned two weeks ago, there's also the physical limitation of the infrastructure in place. So even if something opened as a warehouse, the infrastructure that we put in is there to serve it as a warehouse. If they were to change their needs and suddenly need more water at a drastic scale, The infrastructure is limited in how much water it can provide on a daily basis. So that's one physical barrier that they cannot overcome without our installing new infrastructure.

And Renee, since you touched on that, can you talk about the valves, the two, the three inches?

Yes. And let me be clear, I'm not an engineer. So the valves, the infrastructure that's put in place is based on what the customer requests and what the customer needs. So most of us here, residential customers, we have three quarter inch meters. That only allows a certain amount of water to pass through within a day. uh you know commercial industrial manufacturing those those have different sizes of meters the meta case for example has a large meter and that will only allow a certain amount of water a day to pass through that meter so in the case of meta they have a maximum use of 2.5 million gallons a day the meter is sized to only allow that amount to pass through within a single day so that is one limitation on the water usage and that's what keeps them within the maximum amount allowed of a contract so that would be the same for any other data center applicant

Okay. Sorry, Representative Chavez. It took some of your time. I'll give it back to you. I'll give it back to you. I'll give it back to you. It took some of your time.

I'll maybe come back, Mayor, but I just want to make sure that the community knows Renee and Kevin and Omar and Fernando and everybody, right? We need to understand that this is a living document and that just because someone has a permit to open and operate, it doesn't necessarily mean that there's not going to be checks and balances. Correct. Along the way, or if there's any growth also along the way.

Correct. And I think it's also important to point out that what works in one area of the city for one customer or one applicant may not work for that same applicant in a different part of the city because the infrastructure and the water supply might not be there. It might already be spoken for. So that's another step. That's another check and balance in it.

And that's important for me as well, because just because I take a vote to permit something today, if any part of that process changes in the future, or if they come back requesting more permits, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to be granted. Correct. And that's important to know for me as well. Thank you, Renee. And I'll come back, Mayor. Thank you.

All right. Representative Trejo.

Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate District Representative Nino and Chavez for the additional questions. A lot of those were my questions as well. So thank you so much. I do have additional questions. On slide 8, when we look at the zoning authority and we consider, for example, legislative preemption, What would that look like? Would state and federal incentives override or state and federal legislation override when it comes to zoning authority, even though El Paso is a home rule municipality? Would the state and federal override those?

So it depends on what state and federal regulations you're referring to. Currently, the city of El Paso and every other home rule city has zoning authority, which means that you have the ability to decide what is or isn't allowed within the city limits. Also, within a special permit provision, the city council can deny a special permit you could have a data center come forward and say we want a special permit to do x y and z council can say no we're not going to grant you the special permit we don't think that it's in the right location or you're not willing to do x y or z but then along comes another data center that applies for a special permit and then the council believes that they've done a better job of placing that facility in the correct location that they're doing the right conventional standards that they're following the zoning standards so while there are some cities that believe that they don't want to have at least one city in the state of texas has said we don't want data centers it appears that the rest of the state is willing to have a conversation like this council's having where it's on a case-by-case basis, right? And that's really what staff is bringing forward. It gives the council the broadest authority without unilaterally saying, no, we're never going to allow these ever again.

I guess my question is more along the lines of, you know, we know that in the federal side, they're incentivizing data centers. And so if they're wanting to come to El Paso and we're putting all these restrictions, how can we hold those?

Well, you're no longer incentivizing data centers. So these are regulatory provisions that are as a result of zoning. And every... zoning has been around since the early 1900s businesses understand what zoning is and the powers of cities to zone so unless you have a federal directive that prohibits zoning of data centers these regulations are still valid unless you have a state bill that passes it says that cities can no longer regulate data centers, then this proposal still applies. Also keep in mind that if you approve this plan today, staff will have to come back with additional changes to the zoning code to put those into place.

Okay, very good. Thank you. Do we know if the county has already put together a data policy framework?

So you'll remember back in February, you all had that discussion about the county and the city. To the best of my knowledge, they haven't started working on their, they call it large load framework rather than data center. But I don't think they kicked that off.

Okay. And then my other question comes with the, so we're no longer gonna be incentivizing hyperscale data centers. No more 380 agreements. What does it look like if we have a large Again, we go back to the zoning, right? But how do we put protections in place for the city and our residents when it comes to the resources? I know we you know, you talked about Code enforcement and things like that. Is that part of the data policy framework? Is that being included on there? Is that something that's also a work in progress?

That's typical for any development that doesn't comply with the regulations is we just go take appropriate action and Again, that's there certain items already built into the code say if you exceed those Limitations set imposed by council if you exceed that then the city will take appropriate action to enforce those Okay, but that we don't have anything written as to what that looks like Well, again, it would go through the Code Enforcement Department. They'd be given, I believe, a notice of violation or citation, and then they would have an opportunity to comply with a certain amount of time. If they don't, then it'll be taken before the courts.

Okay, but do we have that anywhere written? Is there already a documentation for that or is there something that's going to be developed?

There are penalties already written into the zoning code I'm aware of that do talk about penalties that exist. Right now there are no regulations. Basically it is allowed by right currently and someone could go into planning inspections, submit for a permit, and we'd be required to issue one if it met all our requirements. So again, what staff is recommending is to change our zoning code and to make these changes to require a special permit with all these other requirements and assessments to be brought forward and allow City Council the final say whether to grant it or not.

Okay, very good. Thank you. No more questions.

Representative Chavez.

Thank you, Mayor. I'm back, Kevin. Again, Carla, this is going to be a question for you on slide 15, cost shifting. It says, demonstrate that 100% of the cost for transmission, distribution, substations, or generation capacity additions, or any water-related infrastructure required to serve a data center load must be paid by the developer. We've had this conversation. a lot lately. What is your perspective on the load being paid by the developer? I know that you've had several opinions you've shared with us.

So the work that we're doing in the utility section with El Paso Electric, the position of the city has continuously been that the user needs to bear the cost of the use or expense or drawing of that utility right so um i think we've done We've been extremely aggressive in taking that position with El Paso electric clearly that will continue to be the position of the city as long as this policy is in place is actually always been the policy of the city that the person that is drawing that need has to pay. for that expense. I think that we would need to rely on El Paso Water to come forward with a program or some sort of analysis or some sort of explanation as to how they're ensuring that the user is also paying for their fair share of the water resource.

Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, I think in addition from the environmental impacts, which I already discussed when I spoke earlier, I think the second biggest concern is the utility rate increase being passed on to the consumer. SO THIS IS DEFINITELY SOMETHING THAT WE NEED TO ENSURE, NOT ONLY WHATEVER THEY INITIALLY COMMIT TO, BUT IF THEY TRANSITION OR THEY CHANGE FOR WHATEVER REASON TO WHAT THEIR NEEDS ARE, I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT THAT WE MAKE SURE THAT THE COMMUNITY DOESN'T END UP PAYING FOR WHATEVER INFRASTRUCTURE IS PUT INTO PLACE TO SERVICE ANY DATA CENTER. I WANT TO PUT THAT IN MY RECORD. Let me go back to page 13 real quick. Rene, I might need you one more time, please. Where it says, coordinates directly with El Paso Electric and El Paso Water to promote best technologies. I don't, I have. no knowledge on how you would decide what best technologies to coordinate with them on. I don't know if you have someone in place at El Paso Water that is an expert in terms of data centers specifically and technologies they use, or how would this coordination happen?

The coordination would work similar to how the coordination worked when Meta was in discussions to come to the city. Our engineers looked at what they were proposing and they thought this is more demand than what the system can supply. So they worked with Meta to come up with better options for cooling technologies for their center rather than just rely on large water use for swamp coolers to cool the facility. They worked with Meta to say, you know, this is too much of a demand. What can you come up with that would cool your systems to meet your needs that would not strain the supplies for this particular site? And that's when Meta came back with their closed loop cooling technology that lowered the amount of demand that that site would need. And we looked at that and that fit within the cap of supply that we can supply for that area. So that kind of coordination would mirror what the policy would call for. They would come to us. We would talk to them. We'd see what they need. Can it fit within what we can supply? And then we can go ahead and offer our comments to the city.

Yeah, and I think it's important to also make note that it's not that we're trying to promote data centers to establish themselves here in El Paso, because that's not what we're trying to do. We're trying to put a policy framework in place. I would encourage El Paso Water and El Paso Electric to ensure that they have someone on the team that is knowledgeable on what technologies they're using and which ones to coordinate with to ensure that if there's another project in the future, regardless of the size, that we are only recommending the best technology out there that has the least impact on our utilities.

Yes, and we're also not trying to recruit or incentivize new data centers. But at the same time, we can't deny service to data centers that come in if we have the capacity to serve them. So these types of discussions help us bridge that gap between what we can do and what we can't to what we want to see in terms of water use.

Thank you, Renee. Thank you for that. And lastly, I'd like to just make a statement, Mayor, because I think it's important regarding this discussion today. I've listened to hundreds of residents. I've heard concerns about water, energy, environment, quality of life, and protecting taxpayers. I want to let everyone know that those concerns matter greatly to me. and they deserve policy that is responsive and transparent. That's why today's discussion on this comprehensive data center framework establishes stronger rules for the future, greater public oversight, and stronger environmental protections, increased transparency, which is so important, and clear expectations for anyone that is seeking to establish themselves here and establish a data center in El Paso. My responsibility is to the taxpayers to safeguard their dollars and to ensure that we continue to build a city that is strong, a city that is built with a future that is bright, but that is also built on trust. And again, I want to welcome the community to reach out to me if they have any questions. I welcome the conversation, and I thank Fernando, Omar, and Kevin, and the rest of the team, really, because I know there were a lot of people behind this that put this framework together. Thank you.

Representative Nino.

Thank you, Mayor. I know that I really spoke for a period of time and talked about environmental components. And I want to touch base also on the impact of utility costs, because I know that was one of the main takeaways whenever we were doing the community outreach. When it comes to utilities, we have original jurisdiction when the utility is trying to file some sort of CCN or any other type of filing. However, it's important to also understand that we aren't the final approval in the entire process. We have the Public Utility Commission, the Railroad Commission, And I know that we amended the state legislative agenda also about ensuring that there's further community protections. One question that I would like to have is, the Public Utility Commission and the Railroad Commission, they're either appointed or elected statewide. These individuals have that state authority, which is state law that gives them that authority. Have we talked to our state legislation or when it comes to having the amendment of the state legislative agenda, we could advocate for a long period of time and we'll spend funds on legal counsel trying to essentially advocate for old past ones. But then, you know, I looked at the hearing for Railroad Commission, for example, when it comes to Texas Gas. And when I saw that hearing, our legal counsel and our staff didn't even get the opportunity to present the case. They decided not to hear the case. So it gets a little difficult in the process of us as a body, we're advocating for El Pasoans taking a position of advocating for ensuring that there's further protections, but when we are not the final authority, then it puts us in limbo even with the community, right? I know a lot of members of the community are currently facing rising costs when it comes to the utilities. However, this body did take action to intervene on any of those filings to, again, ensure that we're advocating for them. But again, the authority to the PUC and to the Railroad Commission is set by state legislation. Have we considered having any of those conversations of ensuring that cities do have more advocacy at that level?

Thank you for that question. It's it's complicated, but the city staff has been active in preparing us for quote unquote good bills that are going to come that we're expecting to come from the state, and I go back to Rep. Acevedo's amendment to, the proposed amendment, which I believe the intent was, city has historically always fought back against preemption, pushed back against state preemption, and it's because we wanna keep our original authority as a homeroom municipality. Sometimes the state gets in our ability to raise revenues or to make decisions. When it comes to data centers, the city's primary authority, as Kevin discussed, was through zoning. However, we have had conversations with Texas Municipal League and the PUC directly as they figure out what the governor's letter and directive to ERCOT and the PUC is. And so to that end, We've done a couple of steps. The first one is at the end of this month, city staff will go to the PUC and advocate. This is sitting down with them, letting them know like, hey, we're very concerned that ERCOT's protections will not apply to our region. Can you give us any guarantees in writing? That step in itself is already beyond what normally cities can do on their own. The fact that the PUC took a meeting with us so early in the process because we are one of the largest non-ERCOT communities. Second, we have submitted formal requests to the PUC to clarify, and their response has either been no response or has been that we'll get back to you as they themselves find out. At the end of August, Texas Municipal League, all the large cities and smaller cities will gather to set TML's priorities. And Rep. Limon, you participated in one of these events in the previous session. One of our primary goals in this is ensuring that El Paso's voice and issues are heard at the state level. What this means is we're going to use the collective power of all the municipalities through TML to advocate for the city's position and this data center framework. So we're going to come ready with our folders. A lot of advocacy, as you all may know, is gentle conversations. Some of them are through formalities. And so in TML's final legislative agenda, legislative priorities, we're pushing hard for data centers, clarity around data centers, ratepayer protections, and protecting municipal authorities, that that become a permanent part of TML's issues. Now, we as a municipality, you're absolutely correct, may not have the same authorities or the same weight that larger cities or state-appointed officials might have. And you're absolutely correct. Sometimes we're so far from Austin that sometimes it's hard to make our voices heard. But this is why we hired state lobbyists. This is why you have strategic and legislative affairs. This is why we travel to Austin so often, to make El Paso's voice heard. And so going back to Representative Acevedo's amendment, the intent to push for good bills. Historically, our legislative agenda seems to be a little bit defensive, but we hear you, Rep Acevedo, we can flip the narrative and work with TML, work with the lobbyists, work with partners, work with community advocates, and push for good bills. No guarantees yet, but for example, if you've kept up with committee sessions, Representative Mary Gonzalez has been very active and very vocal against status centers. I wouldn't be surprised if she proposes a bill. Know that we will do our usual analysis, the way we analyze all of the bills, and if it's a quote unquote good bill, which I think it will be, then we'll definitely advocate for it. So that's the kind of actions that we as a body have and your Strategic and Legislative Affairs Department will take in this next session. We do have to work with the existing state machine to make a difference, but know that we're looking at every avenue possible to make the community's voices heard.

Okay, no, thank you for that. And the reason I was bringing this up is exactly because of the amendments that we've done in the state legislative agenda in regards of taxpayer protection, ratepayer protection, environmental protections, to ensure that, again, even when it comes to utilities, we could advocate as much as we can, but we're not the final authority when it comes to the PUC or the Railroad Commission or any other regulatory entity that is gonna make that final determination, right? Again, I mentioned how a lot of members of our community even saw a huge increase on their electric bills this last month. I had different residents reach out to me, but again, the city, this body did intervene and we have been advocating for old past ones, but sometimes the final decision is not made by this body. And I think it is important to ensure that those costs are not shifting to residential or current existing customers. I know that Ms. Neiman briefly mentioned also in regards of we're still going to do future adoptions of zoning code amendments and whatnot. What is the framework? What are the next implementation steps or when do we foresee recommendations that will require future ordinances, amendments to zoning or additional council actions coming forward?

Yeah, so thank you. As was mentioned, this adoption of the framework does not change the code at all. So staff will have to do research, work with our legal team, and bring forward those amendments to the zoning code specifically, which obviously is recommended as part of this framework. We'll want to research also best practice in terms of other cities as well to see if there are any tweaks or adjustments we need to make. But I would envision bringing it forward in the next few months for council to adopt.

Perfect well, I'm grateful for your work is Neiman is Mac. Slate planning inspections think you guys for your work. I know that we've had a lot of meaningful conversations about this and how important it is for members of our community. So thank you air outside to request for my comments to be part of the record. Thank you.

Objection that represent Dallas.

Thank you, Mayor. No real questions, just a couple comments. First of all, thank you to all three of you and the teams behind you. I think you've put together a really robust document, 38-page policy document, but backed up by 172 pages of documentation in the appendices. I think it really reflects both the huge amount of work that your team's put in, but also a lot of community sentiment and I appreciate that it's very honest. It presents a very honest picture of where we are. And I think not every document goes so deep into thoroughly documenting what the community thinks about a particular issue. And so I appreciate that this one does. And Fernando, I know it took over your life for the last couple of months. So I really appreciate it. You know, we tasked you with the climate action plan, and that took a few years. And then we didn't let you breathe for even a minute without having to put together this and go through that community outreach process again. So I wanted to say thank you all. I think you've produced a very strong set of recommendations that I'll say is, I hope, sticky, legally defensible, You know, something that the community can be happy with and satisfied with, and that will protect us and protect the environment in El Paso. into the future. So I plan to support it. Thank you.

Thank you. Good job, guys. And I think it's a good first step and then we'll see the additional recommendations you bring. But I think this also shifts power to the council now with the zoning reclassifications, which is really good because BEFORE WE DIDN'T HAVE ANY POWER BUT THIS AT LEAST GIVES US SOME POWER TO WORK AND DO THE JOB THAT WE NEED TO DO AS CITY COUNCIL. SO AGAIN WE WERE LEARNING AS WE WERE GOING BUT THIS IS A GOOD FRAMEWORK THAT WE'RE PUTTING IN PLACE AND WE'LL CONTINUE TO IMPROVE IT BECAUSE IT IS A WORKING DOCUMENT. I just want to congratulate you guys on a very good first step, and we'll continue to modify it and adjust as we need to going forward. But good job.

Thank you, Mayor. Now, if I may be so shameless to name out the people of our team that did a lot of the work. Sure. I'll start with our climate team. Yes, Fernando is the leader, but also Mia Trevino, Dora Hernandez, and Roberto Saga were the ones that were part of the community meetings. So if we could give them a round of applause. On the legislative side, we have Alejandra Gorski and Cesar Ortiz. And in strategic partnerships, we had Judith Almodovar. All of them had a lot to do with making sure that the community was heard. We have Alex Hoffman, who gave us a lot of his brainpower on understanding zoning issues. And then Ian Vogelwied, our director, who is not here today, but he should have been presenting. And then our partners in economic development, Karina Vrazgala and Bill Allen, who also gave us a lot of the insider information we needed to put together this document. Thank you.

Well, that was a well-deserved plug. Well-deserved. Thank you guys again. Mr. Nguyen, we have public comment.

Yes, we do have two members of the public signed up to speak. Ms. Veronica Carvajal, followed by Saúl González. You have three minutes, ma'am.

Good morning.

Good morning. Good morning, Mayor, Council. Veronica Carvajal with the Sembrando Esperanza Coalition. And I want to be clear. This was brought up earlier. We want to be clear. We don't want AI data centers here. If this meeting were about a ban on data centers, we would have a full house at City Hall. The AI industry is like so many industries that have exploited our environment, our health, and most importantly, our lack of knowledge about their operations and their impact, especially long term. This is like, I've said it before, the lead industry, tobacco, asbestos, fossil fuels, opioids. Yes, Mayor, we are learning as we go. And regulations are key. Again, I want to thank the staff and the public. Really, the public has done so much of this research. But these regulations are only as good as our knowledge, so I am happy to hear staff say that this is a living document and that there will be future modifications as we learn more, because every day we find out just how bad these data centers are. um there are no experts at el paso water or el paso electric or i would say even at city hall even us we're not experts even though we're looking at this every single day because this is changing so quickly we have focused so much on the water and the energy and the land impact but also the noise and right now the framework is saying you know we're going to use existing noise regulations You have heard from Felipe Acuna, Miss Rocha, we've talked about Union Pacific, for instance, violating noise regulations. And most of the time, because the regulations are so loose, they're allowed to create a huge impact on people's health. So the existing regulations are not fantastic. In terms of heat, there is no regulations. And we know that these data centers can increase temperatures from 3 to 16 degrees. Electromagnetic fields from the electric usage can lead to cancer. And from construction to operation, these issues have to be addressed. We know about Cheyenne, Wyoming. They're dealing with bacteria from a meta site that has been going on since February. Regulations must be enforced and there must be penalties. In Wyoming, what they did is that they prohibited META from discharging into the wastewater. So this will only mean something if you have penalties attached to it. We're sad to see that renewable energy was not made mandatory in this framework. It affects air pollution as well as water shortages. We need the PSB, El Paso Water, to adopt a similar framework, if not a tougher one, and to not allow land sales to data centers. And then lastly, to the point about your impact with the county and Fort Bliss, you do have nuisance authority. And so if there is an issue with these data centers outside of city limits, you do have the power to strengthen your nuisance authority and to intervene on behalf of residents. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Next is Mr. Saúl González. You have three minutes, sir.

Good morning. Good morning. City Council, my name's Saúl González, an organizer with Sembrando Esperanza and a resident of District 3. As Beto mentioned, we want to be clear, we don't want AI data centers in our community. I want to thank Fernando and the team for hosting these meetings. Sembrando Esperanza was part in every of these meetings. We were talking to residents, and they shared our values. We don't want more AI data centers. The discussions there were about canceling the 380 agreement, about how do we protect our natural resources. So I do support this first step of this draft, but I think we should be having more conversations. As Beto mentioned, direct the PSB to implement a framework for data centers as well, or for large water users in general. When it comes to the acquisition of land, I do find, and I want to say like a loophole, the PSB has a lot of land. Just in the last meeting in executive session, item A, they had an item that it's, I'm going to read it. It's a discussion of the value of approximately 1,000 acres of the utility real property. So they're valuing a land that's next to the MENA data center. So what's going to happen if MENA purchases this land or Basso Electric buys this land to apply for another power plant for transmission lines? It's going to bring more pollution to our community. So I'm already telling you, this is an executive session. I will ask you to take some actions to prevent MENA from expanding or El Paso Electric for even creating more pollution. When we talk about having more meetings, I'm going to be really respectful about this. I think it's a waste of time if it doesn't come like what's next over an action. So Sembrando Esperanza is going to have an event this Saturday, where we're going to invite people from Chaparral and people that live close to the metadata center. I forward you an invitation to all of you. I haven't heard from some of you, but I think it's important that you hear from those people. I think it's important that you pay attention to what Chaparral is even going. I know it's not part of the jurisdiction of the city of El Paso, but I think the impacts are just terrible. I go to the metadata center really often, and I can see all the pollution, all the construction going on, and I couldn't imagine living next to it. So I extend the invitation again. I'm gonna share some flyers with you. I know there's maybe commitments, but even if you can send a staff member, I think, you really need to hear from those people. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Mr. Gonzales.

Okay, Ms. Nunez, we have a motion and a second.

Yes, we do. And for the record, Representative Maldonado Rocha joined the meeting at 10, 10 a.m. And we do have a motion made by Mayor Pro Tem Alejandra Chavez, seconded by Representative Lili Limon.

No, it was Representative Trejo made the motion.

Boyard-Trejo seconded by Representative Limon Correct Voting session is open Voting session closes And the item has been approved unanimously, and that is the resolution adopting the data center policy framework.

Very good. Very good. Let's take item number two, please.

Item number two is presentation and discussion on the proposed housing strategy, a key deliverable of the comprehensive plan update, Envision El Paso. The update will cover an overview housing deliverable scope of work, overview housing deliverable scope of work, a review of the housing needs assessment, and the proposed housing strategy for implementation.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Hi, all. I'm Matt Prosser. I'm a principal of a firm called Economic and Planning Systems. I'm back here to present to you the housing strategy that we've been working on as part of the Envision El Paso comprehensive plan effort. If you recall, we was presenting to you all in November of last year, talking about our housing needs assessment. That was really the framework for us to understand what the housing issues and conditions are in El Paso to help us develop this strategy. So here to share with you the draft housing strategy and get your input and questions. So this slide shows a Overview of what we've been working on our major deliverables our housing needs analysis that really identifies the types of housing We need at different income levels and different types. We use that analysis develop a housing strategy Which we'll be talking about today and then ultimately we're also creating a dashboard that will track conditions over time that you can use to see how you're doing in terms of making progress towards needs as well as tracking housing conditions and So this is a timeline of the study we started over a year ago. A lot of the upfront work last year was focused on the housing needs assessment, which we, like I said, presented to you all in November. And then since then, we've been doing work on the housing strategy and also have been doing a lot more outreach as well. There was another round of outreach to the development community and others related to not only the housing strategy, as well as the future land use map, which you have heard about in other presentations. So just an overview of this outreach and engagement. We had sort of a multifaceted approach in terms of the types of folks that we talked to. Throughout the process, we had a housing working group. This was about like a 10 member of neighborhood organizations, housing experts, providers in the community that helped us guide the effort throughout. So we met six or seven times with them throughout the process at each key step, getting inputs and thoughts on the different components we developed. We also met with community organizations that are active in providing housing and housing-related services. Had two different focus group meetings with them in person. Throughout the process, a number of meetings with different developers or folks in the real estate community, including some focus groups, individual developer interviews as part of that future land use map process, as well as a presentation to sort of a regular meeting real estate folks have in relation to the future land use map. And then lastly, we had some targeted meetings with what we call design professionals, folks like architects, planners, engineers that work on development projects, housing development projects, really kind of understand what challenges they have with the process and some of the tools and programs you have in place. And this is a quick overview of sort of what we've heard from the different groups, pretty diverse set of inputs. You know, the working group, a lot of the focus was, you know, we need to look more finite or more in depth than just the citywide or countywide boundaries when we think about housing strategies. There are certain conditions and certain portions of the city that are different and different affordability needs and challenges. And so we need to be cognizant of the diverging needs and throughout our city, as well as needing to prioritize issues with vulnerable communities and making sure we're not creating undue burdens on those that are least equipped to address changes. Community organizations talked a lot about how our demographics are shifting, especially the needs of aging residents, challenges with home ownership. A lot of those organizations were active in ways to help support existing and future homeowners and how we can support them. developers a lot of the comments that we received were the challenges with developing within the city review times the process some of those challenges making it less attractive than perhaps developing in your neighbor jurisdictions and then just the reality that as we start to develop more and more infill within El Paso as our boundary is not growing as quickly as it could Previously there are more challenges within fill and so how do we work collectively try to address those? similar sort of feedback from design professionals about review processes challenges with existing programs And addressing the needs to invest in our existing infrastructure So we took all of that feedback as well as the the housing needs findings I'm going to give you a quick re recap of some of the stuff we presented last time in terms of drivers of housing needs to set the stage for the housing strategies, which will be relatively new in terms of a presentation. So some quick overview of some of those drivers of housing needs. As we talked last time, we have a growing economy here in El Paso that has been outpacing population growth. Over the last decade or so and so as we continue to produce more jobs that are located in the city Our population isn't necessarily growing to meet that and that's partly due to a number of reasons So in one of those sort of the lack of housing production First we know that our demographics are shifting there's a increase in the number of older residents in the community that are over 60 years old and they're having Obviously some diverging housing needs in the perhaps they would need than they would have when they were younger perhaps still had children and so that is creating impacts on housing needs in the community. We also have seen a pretty profound decrease in the number of residents under the age 20 in the community and that's something that's really jumped out to us and actually we've We've heard pretty loud and clear from the school districts the issues with declining enrollment. And part of that shift, what we're seeing is that We are seeing a decrease in housing production overall in the city and the county, but a lot of the housing production has actually shifted outside of the city into your neighboring communities. And so where we used to have a lot more families form and move into the city, they're more often finding choices outside of the city, and that's having impacts on school enrollment, but also the attraction of workforce over over time. Coupled with that sort of lack of housing production, as well as sort of a shift, a large increase in the average home price within the community. That's something we saw nationally through the COVID pandemic. As we had very low interest rates, the ability to get into homes was lower with some discretionary spending. And so we saw a large spike in home prices. And when that's coupled with a lack of production locally, that started to create more strain on the availability of affordable options within the community. This slide illustrates the decrease in affordable home sales to folks earning 120 percent of AMI and below over the last five, six years, as well as the number of affordable rental units to folks earning less than 80 percent of AMI over the last five or six years. And so finding it for some of those lower income households more and more challenging to find affordable options within the community. So with this back This sort of background research and data that we've compiled, we started to set out defining what does affordability mean in El Paso and how can that drive your policies going forward. And as we looked at all the different data points we had, your household incomes, the distribution of wages, occupations and wages, and the market conditions, our sort of finding was that your focus on affordable housing, and we'll talk specifically what that means, should be at folks that are earning 70% of AMI or below. And so just for reference, a two-person household in El Paso, the 100% of AMI is around $64,000 a year. And so 70% would be, you know, 70% of that 64. But we also, when we think about housing options, there's more need and nuance beyond just what we would call capital A affordable housing. Affordable housing is often housing that's needed to address folks that can't access market rate options. And often those options need to be rent subsidized or income restricted to ensure that folks can access that. And so when we talked about capital affordable housing, We generally think you should focus on folks under 70% of AMI and trying to create housing products in that price. There also is a need to help support development of what we would call attainable housing. These are folks that might have challenges accessing housing, whether it's rent or for sale, but wouldn't qualify for some of the sort of federal tax credit type units that are income restricted. And so we still have needs there. And so thinking about not only addressing our needs for those lower income affordable housing units, as well as more attainable options for the folks that are in your workforce that are still having challenges accessing options. This is an overview of what area median income is just in case you need a reference so the area median income is a federal sort of definition set by the Department of Housing and Urban Development It's set at the metro area for El Paso County here And it reflects different the area median income and a lot of housing programs, especially federal housing programs are targeted specific cohorts of income related to this area median income definition. As I mentioned, in 2025, Two person household 100% of AMI is about sixty four thousand dollars annually when you look at your the city specifically your medium Household income is around 90% of that definition. So it's slightly less just as a point of reference We also did a lot of work looking at wages and what folks are earning you know the top four most prevalent prevalent occupations in El Paso are account for about 40% of the workforce. And those occupations all earn at or below sort of the median wage, which is about $40,000 annually. And that equates to a household that would fit in that sort of 74% of AMI. And so that shows you a lot of your workforce, a lot of folks that are working in the community fit in that sort of near affordable or attainable level in terms of the type of housing options we have. And so as we support the growth of our workforce, important to understand we need a diversity of options that fall in and out of what would be typically typically defined as sort of affordable housing efforts so we went through all of our analysis started to create some estimates of housing needs and really what we're doing here is trying to illustrate a figure of housing units that of different need at different income levels that the city should try to address through its programs this is really just sort of a number to help you understand the relative order of magnitude need in the community and we've broken that down by geography and AMI level to help understand the types of products they need to address this need And we calculate this housing need based on two buckets, two things we looked at. First is called catch-up need. This is where we look at existing housing issues in the community and identify the number of households that are facing these issues. And we need to sort of catch up to addressing these needs through different programs. And then as we think about continued growth of the economy over the next 10 years, we also need to think about what we call keep up needs. How do we continue to create housing options for this growing economy that we have at different income levels? And sort of this slide breaks down the distribution of need between catching up and keeping up. The one thing I'll note in terms of our existing housing needs related to catching up is overcrowding is the most prevalent issue that we found. So this is households that have more than one person per room in a unit living in it. And that's not bedroom, that's room. So kitchen counts for that, living room, bathroom, that counts as a room within a unit. Housing unit and so that is the biggest need that we have and that's sort of a reflection of likely folks having a challenge finding affordable options and Therefore are doubling up tripling up in units with different household with other households So we've documented this housing need by sub area These sub areas were defined through help with our housing working group um to sort of document the different you know contextual areas within the city and trying to get a sense of what the needs are for those certain areas so that can be a little more hyper focused or more locally focused in some of our strategies understanding that the east side or the west might have different challenges than central or south central and trying to address those and this gives you an overall sort of Estimate of the need as in relation to the overall need in the city. I will say that just These are more targets to help understand how we might focus different programs It's perfectly fine for one area to provide a lot more housing in the future than other areas We don't necessarily need to hit these targets specifically locally They're more to help support an understanding overall addressing needs as a community. I think is the biggest priority We also have broken down this housing need by the types of products and different income levels. And so there's a pretty great diversity from about 20% of our housing needs at that very low income level, below 50% of AMI, but also the need of 20% of units to be more that sort of upper income luxury option. And so we need to focus on creating a diversity of housing throughout the community. And this shows a pretty even spread of need among all the different income levels. So we took all of that information in and started to develop some strategies to address these needs based on the feedback that we got from our outreach. So the way that we've sort of organized this housing strategy is first focusing on the issues that we heard most commonly through the process. And those are identified on the left side of the slide up there. These are the things that we saw in the data, but are also commonly reflected to us in our outreach. And we use those issues to develop sort of three key strategies, which you see on the right. The first being reinvestment and stabilizing neighborhoods, specifically existing neighborhoods is the way that should be read. The second is attracting a diversity of housing types, so a greater diversity that currently exists. And then third is an overall call to increase housing production. As I had mentioned previously, we've seen declines in the rate of production in the city that are even greater than the declines we're seeing in the county. And this lack of housing option is really creating a lot of pressure and need on all sorts of folks in the community. And so how can we work to create overall housing production while focusing on those specific areas of need going forward? So within the housing strategy, we created sort of a structure to each of these. So we took the issues to identify those three main strategies I just showed you. And underneath that, we have actions and tools. So actions are the steps that we're recommending that you take in the short, medium, and long term. And then tools are potential tools that you can utilize to implement those actions. And we'll go through each of those three key strategies. the housing strategy we've developed a strategy matrix this is an example of the matrix what it looks like in there i just want to point out how we've sort of organized those different strategies first we tried to follow a similar sort of framework you've been using for other initiatives in the city thinking about process program and policy so trying to identify is this an action that's a process is it a program is it a policy Also some guidance on what we think the short-term, medium, and long-term strategies are, as well as we've identified who the potential city lead would be, the level of resource for a certain tool that might be needed, and then what AMI levels or income levels does this tool or strategy address? Some address all of them, some address specific ones. And then lastly, some partners that'll be key to the implementation of these. So the first major strategy is this reinvestment in stabilizing neighborhoods. We heard a lot through our outreach, especially with our working group, is that as reinvestment in our community comes, as home prices increase, those impacts are most disproportionately felt on our most vulnerable populations. And so we need to think about how we can support those existing residents and existing neighborhoods to ensure that they can benefit from economic growth and reinvestment in our neighborhoods. We sort of identified two buckets for that. One is neighborhood stabilization and the second is anti-displacement. In terms of neighborhood stabilization, these are tools and actions focused on supporting existing residents and homeowners to be able to maintain their homes and stay in place. And so one of the biggest things we sort of found through the process is that you all have sort of limited resources that's been invested towards housing. The federal government provides funding through community development block grants as well as home funds. That is primarily what you use to invest in housing programs in the community. And as the needs for affordable housing have grown over recent years, you've started to prioritize the creation of affordable units. through those funds, and that's come at the cost of being able to offer some of these neighborhood stabilization programs, specifically programs focused on home repair, loans and grants. That's something that you used to provide, but have now prioritized those federal dollars for affordable housing creation. But they are still really important programs and tools that we need. But we need resources, we need funds to be able to invest in that. And so one of the first action steps, as you'll see in both this first strategy one and two is the need for additional resources to be able to provide some of these programs so as we look for different resources to use the priority tools are listed on the right i think the biggest focus is how do we kind of recreate that home repair loan and grant program that used to provide to help support existing homeowners to invest in their homes and stay in place but there are additional tools that could be considered We also did a fair amount of outreach with local lenders, development community, community development organizations within the community. And there's a lot of folks doing various programs and providing various services to folks. A greater level of coordination, one, and then more awareness to the availability of capital resources to homeowners was pointed out. How can we help support existing homeowners to utilize the equity in their home to help reinvest that through lower-cost financing tools and grant programs? And so there's potential partnerships long-term to form with some of these local lenders that do a lot of uh... support to existing and future home buyers and how can we tailor some programs to work with them going forward the second part of this uh... this bucket is the the creation of an anti displacement strategy there was a council directive to start creating an anti displacement strategy and we've actually started working on that uh... and so what we've done in this housing strategy is really just to set the recommendation that you should explore the creation of anti-displacement strategy and these are some of the tools on the right that you could explore within that strategy to implement as well as the direction to try to track issues and risks related to displacement long term a lot of that foundational work that's needed to start to track areas that are most vulnerable has already been done and so what we're doing through the anti-displacement strategy which is really a next step implementation effort out of this is to use that documentation of priority areas and best practice research to come up with a suite of tools that the community can consider, do stakeholder outreach with our partners within the city to figure out which ones are best suited for El Paso. What makes sense here? Best practices in other communities may work there, but may not work here. So wanting to provide the options for the community to explore, vet those through the outreach project, efforts and then bring recommendations back to you all to consider for implementation. And so that's a next step effort that's happening outside of this. The second bucket of strategies is trying to attract a diversity of housing types. We suggest doing that through two ways. First, policy and regulatory changes, and then second, programs. So from on the policy standpoint, you have in recent years tried to make the prioritization of your resources go towards creating new affordable housing units in the community. We think that's the right approach. That's the biggest priority that you need to continue. So that continued prioritization of supporting affordable housing projects is something you should continue. You've recently adopted a new policy in terms of how you support 9% low income housing tax credit projects. I think it's great to have a policy for how you prioritize those. Although through our outreach we did find that perhaps the existing policy is a little too narrowly defined. And that we would encourage you perhaps to sort of expand specifically kind of the geographic boundaries of where you'd like to support projects. to create more opportunity. The biggest challenge we heard in our outreach is finding land for these projects is challenging. And while it'd be great to find a site right next to a transit stop, a grocery store, a daycare, they don't always exist. And they're also competing in the private market for that land. And so perhaps a little more broader definition that's in line with the state requirements would make more projects perhaps fit underneath your policy in terms of which ones you want to express support to when they go towards tax credit, getting tax credits. And then the third thing in terms of greater housing diversity is something you've been doing a lot of work on for a while now. It's changing different development policies and programs to help for greater diversity of housing options to be built in different parts of the community. And as you've done that, like exploring things like more middle density housing or ADUs, you've run into the challenge and the nuances of where and how to apply this. And so I think the path forward that we're recommending that fits in the line with some of the work that you're doing with the Future Land Use Map is to try to identify those target pilot areas where the community is supportive of changing regulations to provide more housing options and where you have the infrastructure and the capacity to best support it. And so you've been working with the planning team in development of growth areas. And so our recommendation is to target changes to zoning code and development codes along with sort of this idea of growth areas, places where we can pilot these types of changes that can increase more housing diversity to show sort of how well they could work, what impacts they might have on the community, and then consider how we might do that in other parts of the community going forward. And so really kind of prioritizing those areas first and then considering expanding that over time as the need presents itself. The second group of actions and tools related to this second strategy are related to how to create more resources and sites for affordable and different types of housing development. I sort of buried the lead by putting the biggest recommendation at the bottom here. I think one of our recommendations is for you all to create a housing trust fund. This is a recommendation that was provided to you in previous housing studies that have been done for the city. And the point of a housing trust fund is is it creates a separate fund outside of sort of your operating general fund where you can fund different housing programs and programs out of and becomes somewhat decoupled from sort of the the year-to-year budgeting process as well it provides more flexibility for how you receive funds for housing and use funds out of this housing trust fund. But part of creating this trust fund is trying to find something to seed it with. You're gonna need, whether it's a general fund allocation, one-time allocation, a portion annually, considering the use of a bond program to help seed the trust fund. Other ideas we looked at, The use of proceeds from selling city land and other sort of things could help seed the trust fund over time. But ultimately, this trust fund can help support a lot of those different programs and give you more flexibility for how you raise resources for those as opposed to just through general fund allocations. A second recommendation is a policy and program to use excess city land for housing, including affordable housing. You own a number of sites throughout the community that might be good candidates for housing, and how do we set up a policy and a program that you can offer those sites for development of affordable housing that meets your needs and goals, and then start to use some of the resources that are generated through that sale of excess land to support other programs. Along that line is in our conversations with school districts, is the realization that as we see declining enrollment there are school sites whether they're schools or they're just district property that could also be options for housing especially affordable housing and so a suggestion for long term to consider forming a partnership with the school districts to explore how they could reuse certain excess or closed public school sites or district sites for the use for housing All right, lastly, the third bucket of strategies is just overall increase of housing production. And there's a whole number of recommendations that are put on this slide, and we probably should have broke them up. And so these are different things that you can consider to help support increasing the production of housing within the city. You've already started doing this through the Future Land Use Map within the Comprehensive Plan. The Future Land Use Map provides a greater range of place types. that encouraged a greater diversity of housing options to be built in different parts of the city and that'll ultimately drive changes to your zoning code your development code over time and so setting that important future land use map in place that provide that flexibility and guidance for where different types of housing are best suited in the community especially using that growth area framework is a great next step to really sort of set forth the the policy or the regulatory changes that you'll need to help support greater diversity of housing. As you know, the Texas legislature has been extremely active in addressing housing production. Changes to state law makes buy-right housing for multifamily a reality in commercial and mixed-use districts. That's something that all Texas cities have had to react to. And as you're sort of reacting to those, there's an opportunity to try to leverage the changes you're going to have to make to support housing production over time. And so you've already started doing that, but just to encourage you to think about, as those sort of top-down things come at you, how do you best leverage those to address the needs within the strategy? I'm sure you're aware of you all have been selected to participate in a national housing supply accelerator program And this is a really great opportunity for you to explore What are sort of internal and somewhat external policies and processes that you can improve to help? increase the rate at which housing can be approved and built within the community and so that program will lead to I think a number of sort of internal changes you can consider to Adopts over time as those are be developed in that process That's something that we would likely would have suggested a lot of those types of improvements within the strategy But this accelerator program gives you a great implementation step for addressing those um something about i'm going to talk about in our next uh presentation after we talk about housing is your infill uh infill incentive policy um and part of that is our recommendation to refine that policy to make it work better and we'll be talking about that later but that's one of the strategies that we think is tied here in housing that also has an impact on sort of economic development how do we attract new housing creation as a tool to support workforce as well as an attraction of new businesses. Next suggestion is there are a number of public financing tools and mechanisms that are available to cities and developers in Texas that we think you could leverage more to help support development. And I think there's a lot of benefits to using some of these these special districts to help support development. One, they can help shift some of that cost burden off of the general community and place it onto the new development. And so some of that infrastructure investment that is needed to make new development happen now becomes more attributed to those new residents or buyers in that specific area as opposed to perhaps that shared cost throughout the community if you were to have to expend capital resources to help support a development. As well, it helps address the upfront cost of new development for a developer and being able to place that more on the long-term property assessment as opposed to the upfront cost, which might require them to charge more rent or higher home prices to be able to make a project feasible. And so some of these tools can help developers find ways forward in terms of financing, especially as we face more challenges with development in the community and that Our ability to grow outward into sort of those easier to develop greenfield areas is more and more limited now with the inability to unilaterally annex. And now annexation has to happen through voluntary efforts. And we're finding there's less sort of desire from the development community to annex as opposed to developing in the unincorporated portion of the county or other communities. And if we're able to support those projects more, be able to address the housing needs that we have but also within the parameters of what we'd like to see that development look like other things that we've suggested or found were ways that you can internally help facilitate developments through your review process and we'll talk about that in the infill incentive portion And then also, how do we support and grow our network of community development organizations that are active in different programs to help housing production? So that was a lot. I gave you an overview of the overall housing strategy. Before we jump into discussion, I just want to talk about next steps. As I mentioned, this housing strategy is part of the overall comprehensive plan effort. City staff has been bringing you different elements of the comprehensive plan for your consideration. I know you talked about the future land use map previously. Ultimately, all of these elements will go through a series of community open houses and then back to you for a council adoption of the overall comprehensive plan. This is an opportunity here to ask questions and provide input on specifically the housing strategy. With that, I'll stop talking for a minute.

Matt, that was impressive.

Thank you.

You didn't have no notes or anything, did you?

NO, I'VE GIVEN IT A LOT.

YOU DID A GOOD JOB, MATT, AND THANK YOU FOR GIVING US THE UPDATE THERE. AND AS YOU MENTIONED, THERE'S SOME NEXT STEPS ON PAGE 30, PAGE 35. THERE WILL BE A NUMBER OF THINGS WE'LL HAVE TO BRING BACK TO COUNCIL. ONE QUESTION I DO HAVE IS ON THE HOUSING ACCELERATOR PROGRAM, THE NATIONAL, WHO ELSE IS PARTICIPATING IN THAT AND HOW DID WE GET INVOLVED?

You know, I'm not the best to answer that. Is there a city staff? Yeah, Casey with planning. We'll have a better answer.

OK. Good morning.

Hi, good morning. Casey Schnell with Urban Planning and Design. So we have four of our council representatives currently a part of that alongside city staff. And it's been expanded to economic development, community human development, so everyone that's kind of working on housing.

Very good. Very good. And then the last question I have is, you talked about the housing trust fund on page 32. Is there, and you talked about a couple ways of getting dollars into that fund. Is there grant dollars available for that, or are there private dollars that can also go into it? Because you talked general fund into money. What other types of money mechanisms are there?

yeah so commonly we've seen cities try to seed this through either one-time allocation of capital improvement funds or general fund dollars or through bond programs that's been a common one on the city side although creation of the trust fund though puts the fund at more of an arm's length from your your operation of your regular general fund budget so Exploring ways to look at philanthropic investments that might come into that becomes more of an option through that trust fund. And so are there ways to partner with foundations that might be interested in funding specific programs so that the trust fund would then administer is something to explore. I can't think of any specific grant opportunities, but that is something to explore as well. Creating the separate trust fund gives you more flexibility and less sort of the challenges and hurdles of just funding your housing programs directly out of your general fund on a year-to-year basis.

Very good. Thank you. Representative Kanellis.

Thanks, Mayor. Yeah. Kudos on talking for that long. Really thorough presentation. I know that this has been in the works for quite a long time. I don't have particular questions, and I want actually to ask a question not about what's presented, but kind of in the next steps. It's difficult to give feedback to you. live essentially in this setting. Will there be some formal process for, I know we'll have the community open houses to get specific feedback from the members of council about the plan between now and August, September timeframe for adoption? I think yes. I'll let Casey answer that. Sure.

So no formal process I guess has been identified specifically but what we're doing is we're posting everything on our conveyor site for gathering public comments so that could be a way to circulate and then I think we'll work with our leadership to identify any additional steps.

Okay and then strategically or I guess the way that we work through this for a rollout is the idea to bring a lot of these policies together as a single package or is this something that we look to implement over time?

implemented over time so as we've worked with both the housing supply accelerator group and the CFT group identifying both the growth areas and then prioritization and where those apply so versus rather than taking a blanketed approach for everything it's really looking at what's going to be the best fit where so taking them incrementally and kind of in batches okay yeah the strategy identifies a lot of

tools, strategies, I just wanna make sure that we leave this in a place in a final draft where there's an implementation plan kind of for all of those strategies that is identified maybe across a timeline. My worry like often is that we have identified lots of great tools and then there's not a concrete plan for like a phased implementation.

Yeah, so we have within the matrix that Matt had showed on one of the earlier slides, sort of a short-term, medium-term, and then long-term approach to that implementation. So again, both in kind of bucketing prioritization of certain More of the policy aspects, there's also programs and process improvements that have been identified in that short term that are sort of internal work that don't need to go after additional funding or anything like that, so those we can address rather quickly. And they're really identified just through the short term, medium term, and long term. So given within the first zero to one year, two to three year, that aligned with the way that departmentally we're structured to meet our metrics for each year. So that's gonna be structured in that way too. So they'll be kind of aligned in that sense.

Okay, but the idea is to come to council with some of these things as soon as around September when it says for that initial implementation timeframe?

Maybe. I don't know how to answer that one.

I'm looking at slide 36. It says August, September council adoption. Adoption of this particular plan, but not of any of the rollout.

That's the entire comp plan. We're bringing everything back to use. We're bringing everything in buckets so we can kind of have some digesting of all of it. Go back out for the community meeting. We will find ways for you to provide any final input But then we have to come back to adopt the entire Comprehensive plan and then from there on the items that we have listed will be included within the strategic plan So I already have a layout for the next two years from Alex and the team In terms of some of these pieces more than happy to share some of those with you already working on some of the permitting pieces and things that we know are going to be critical to this plan and And so those are already included. And so you'll see those in my reports as well over the next year.

Okay, and will the timeline be included in the adopted comprehensive plan, or is it something that we will not include?

We are flexible with our timelines. Okay. I mean, some of it, I think, require us to sort of have some discussions and conversations, and then really understand the breadth and depth for the changes that we're saying that we're going to put forth. And then I think it gives us a better opportunity to kind of understand what those changes are. A lot of those are policy things that we would need to bring forward. I'm not quite sure the extent of the work at this point.

Okay. Yeah.

We're seeing it within the two-year strategic planning cycle that starts September 1 for some of these.

Okay. Yeah. I'm a little bit in two minds. I understand the importance of giving you the flexibility on the timeline. I just want to make sure that we are, if we are adopting this plan, we are committing to bringing these things forward in a reasonable amount of time.

Correct, yeah, and I didn't realize you were talking about the adoption timeline.

So one of the commitments we made with this comprehensive plan was that it was going to be executable, that it was not going to be an award-winning document that's just sort of sitting on the shelf. And so making sure that we had very concrete actions to hold ourselves accountable for the things that we were saying. And I think you see that we're looking at things that are really going to be achievable within our community, not having everything sort of be in one bucket or dependent on a certain level of funding.

there are things that we can do to move the plan forward you know even if some elements of this don't aren't realized within the next few years as our thinking is the entire plan should have those steps included okay um and then my final question is on the anti-displacement strategy specifically i know that directive came later from the council and so it's on just a generally later timeline we don't anticipate to have that completed by the time of comp plan adoption?

Correct. Yeah, I think we're working with staff on sort of a six to nine month time frame that's already started. So it will follow the comprehensive plan adoption. And so within the housing strategy is the recommendation to implement an anti-displacement strategy. We've done a lot of the data work to support where we need to target specific programs already. And what we're doing is really taking that next step of investigating what policies you can actually implement. And I think the outcome of the strategy is to have a suite of, whether it's policy recommendations or potential programs that you can bring forward to implement. So it's really, to me, it's kind of a next step implementation item that's already happening, the housing strategy. And we were able to sort of move that forward with that council directive to do so.

OK, I guess my only request would be that, similar to my last one, some sort of preview, if you will, or some sort of semblance of that anti-displacement strategy be at least called out in a little bit more detail in the comp plan, if we're able to. It doesn't have to be the entirety of the strategy all fleshed out, because I understand that will take several months to develop. But like you said, a lot of that work has been started already. And so whatever we can include, I think, would be important in letting the community know that that has happened already.

OK. Yeah, we'll work with staff to define what that looks like to see more definition there. Things that jump out to me. is we have a good sense of the areas that have the highest need and priority. And some of those sub areas we identified in the housing strategy were specifically designed or drawn around sort of that realization that those certain portions of the community have greater issues or needs or vulnerability to displacement issues. We have that framework geographically, as well as already a suite of tools to consider. And so we'll think about what level of additional detail we can add into the strategy to provide that guidance. Got it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. Representative Chavez.

Thank you, Mayor. And thank you for the presentation. I guess I have some comments and some questions, generally speaking. The first thing I'd like to say is I know that this is a conversation that's happening all across the country. A few of us a few months ago were at the National League of Cities in Washington, and I know that NLC is also pushing towards some bills at the federal level regarding housing strategies. So I know it's a conversation happening all over our country. I have a lot of questions. We've been a part of the CFT group for a few months now, but many of the things that you've presented today are new to me. Like I haven't, I'm not aware of them at least. So I have some concerns and some questions. I would love the opportunity to probably meet with you one-on-one to go through those questions, because I think it's too many for me to cover in a 10 minute period. And I don't know what the best way to do that, but I would like that very much. AND I'VE HAD ALSO CONVERSATIONS WITH ALEX. I KNOW HE'S NOT HERE TODAY, BUT HE KNOWS SOME OF THOSE CONCERNS AS WELL. SO I'D LIKE TO CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION WITH HIM ALSO. I KNOW THAT YOUR CONSULTING FIRM HAS OFFICES IN OAKLAND, SACRAMENTO, LOS ANGELES AND DENVER. FROM ALL THE CITIES THAT YOU'VE EVALUATED, HOW DOES EL PASO RELATE TO THOSE OTHER CITIES?

Well, I think you're unique in some interesting ways. You haven't felt, to some of your Texas peers, you haven't felt quite the acute rapid growth pressures that, say, Austin, San Antonio, even, you know, Houston, Dallas have had. which have really exasperated some of those housing problems. And so while your economy has grown, it hasn't grown at such a rapid rate that it's created profound issues. So you have a real opportunity to put in place some things like anti-displacement or ways to help support housing production in a way that I think is not as critical as some of those other communities. I think you being relatively isolated creates some challenges in that. Your development, this is somewhat true, but your development community is really hyperlocal. have a lot of folks that are doing good stuff but you need to continue to sort of build the capacity of that development community that's one thing we heard that even if the city is able to help support with processing permits quicker or a better review process sometimes the challenges are with inspections with your utility provider sometimes it's just finding professionals in the community that have time and capacity to support projects And so it's that realization you kind of need to collectively build that capacity greater because you don't have the same sort of larger sort of access to folks in that community that say, you know, along the I-35 corridor in Texas would have. Yeah, I mean, I think those are the two biggest things that jump out to me. I mean, the other thing is you're still a relatively affordable community. It's still relatively easy to buy a home here. And maintaining that, I think, is a part of your competitive advantage economically. And so a big key to that is obviously economic development and attracting jobs that can pay better wages that help support home ownership going forward. But it's also making sure that we're creating housing options that the community can buy, as opposed to having to go outside the community to find housing. And so part of maintaining that affordability is to continue to produce housing options that the community needs and wants.

And I think in addition to what you just mentioned, El Paso is very unique because we're a binational community. 83% of our population more or less is Hispanic. You talked about overcrowding in homes. I don't know if any of that is because of our culture here. You know, when people having more children here, I don't know if overcrowding is with adults specifically, or are you also estimated with children? Like those are the types of questions that I would like to know more about.

You do have a much higher percentage of folks that are children living, adult children living with their parents than you see in other, in Texas overall as well as national. Your average is much higher. But that is not direct related to overcrowding. The overcrowding, as I said, the definition we looked at is more than one person per room in a housing unit. This cultural practice of living with family until you're getting married or buying a home, doesn't necessarily have to show up in overcrowding data. It's more the actual physical size of the unit and the number of folks living in it. And to be over that one point, that one person per room threshold, it is more of a reflection of multiple households living in one unit than it is sort of a cultural sort of practice of family members living together.

What about other cities that you've studied regarding their income levels? How do we fit in that?

Yeah, relatively lower income than some of the larger Texas cities, but although kind of comparable to some other larger southwest cities like Tucson, Albuquerque, those are similar levels. And they have similar challenges in the work that we've looked at. Those communities have been trying to attract more urban reinvestment and have a little bit more successful than El Paso has. And so I think there are somewhat models for some some strategies could utilize. I do a lot of work in San Antonio, they've been uh relatively similar wage level and been pretty successful not only in attracting urban investments in terms of housing in their downtown core but also building community capacity and support for a housing bond that they passed and are looking to do another cycle of that's helped create funding for supporting affordable housing projects in the community

Now, you mentioned Austin earlier. I know that they had affordable housing strategies that their city did that. I don't know how successful they've been, but I've read some articles regarding that. Do you have any input on that?

Yeah. Yeah, we do a fair amount of work for the state of Austin. One of the things that we most recently did is they have a pretty robust density bonus program. Their market is very strong in terms of development demand and pressures. And so they've been able to do a good job of leveraging private development to create affordable housing through density bonus programs. Their downtown program has been able to leverage a lot of fee and lieu revenue. So a lot of You're sort of, in essence, either providing an onsite unit or paying a fee to go higher in height in your project. And that's created a lot of resources. There are other density bonus programs that have been successful as their affordable housing unlocked program, which was a program that's tailored around supporting basically 100% affordable projects. And so they've provided a number of sort of regulatory flexibility and bonuses for projects that are completely affordable to make it easier for them to develop. And it also provides them more options in terms of sites that they might be able to develop than a typical market rate development would because of that zoning flexibility. And so that program has been super successful for them. They've had to do a lot more aggressive work around displacement issues because of the rapid pace of growth And so they've had a lot of focus on that. I am less of an expert of what they've implemented there, but there are some things to consider related to those.

Well, I appreciate the presentation. I'm almost out of time. I have a lot more questions. I have several concerns as well, but I think it's better if we address them one-on-one and with the team. I do just want to say that I think it's important that when we adopt policy that we make sure that we're adopting the best policy WITH THE RIGHT VISION IN PLACE FOR THE FUTURE. I KNOW THAT, AGAIN, THIS IS A CONVERSATION HAPPENING NATIONWIDE, BUT THERE'S SO MUCH NEED, RIGHT? AND SO WE JUST ALWAYS HAVE TO DECIDE WHERE TO FOCUS OUR EFFORTS AND OUR TAXPAYER DOLLARS AND ANYTHING ELSE. AND IT'S AN IMPORTANT CONVERSATION. SO THANK YOU FOR THE PRESENTATION.

REPRESENTATIVE TREJO.

THANK YOU, MAYOR. I HAVE A QUESTION ON PAGE OR SLIDE 24. When you look at the strategy and attracting the diversity of housing types, were there any, you know, considering that there's an increase in 60-plus of individuals that are homeowners, was there any discussions or strategy on having 55-plus community?

You know, not specifically. That did come up. A lot, especially with the community development organizations, was trying to be able to keep homeowners in their home over time. And so some of those programs around home repair or upgrades are related to how you could retrofit for know wheelchair ramps or you know zero step entry kind of universal design principles and creating resources to help folks whether it's an incentive or a low interest loan something to allow them to adapt their home so they could stay in over time and so that could fit pretty pretty well within a home repair grant program if you have resources to provide those. So that's one thing that we did consider. In terms of new development, we didn't specifically identify any strategies related to 55 or older communities other than encouraging them. That could be something we could consider in terms of what might be some specific strategies. I think about while you're thinking through building code and development code changes, making it easier to do more universal design techniques that allow for making sure you don't have regulations that are making it more burdensome for folks to get in and out of their homes, and so a little more flexibility in design. I'm not an expert in your code in relation to that issue, and so I think that could be a recommendation that we plant in the housing strategy to consider that as you start going through the accelerator program and look at some specific development code regulation changes.

Yeah, I think we do need to take a look at that, especially if that's increasing the number of homeowners. But also, you know, the older, the seniors are looking at ways on how they can downsize and then the possibility of doing something where we have a community of 55 plus and that specific community is geared toward that. So I think that's a very important area to consider. Thank you.

Representative Fierro.

Thank you, mayor, mayor, this question is from his Mac. It's back. This gentleman has has shared a lot of local data with us today. Is it possible for for you to share that information that data with all counsel?

Absolutely.

So thank you, man.

Representative Nino.

Thank you, Mayor. And thank you for the great presentation as well. I also love to sit down and have further conversation with you. I'm part of the cross functional team for the housing strategy. And I was trying to understand in regards of, I know that this is part of the Envision plan, and I know that I've asked staff, trying to really get a comprehensive understanding of even the input that was obtained from the cross-functional team. I'm not sure how it ties to here, because again, some of the new tools, I mean, there's policy advocacy and then there's tools, but this is the first time that we're having this conversation with you. So I think I would also benefit of having that conversation. I'm glad that you have a slide of defining affordability in El Paso, and I know that I've mentioned with staff, or even just public safety, any conversation that we have could be defined by different committee members very differently. Oftentimes, I know that we talk about affordability, but we might focus on low-income housing or other strategies, so I'm glad to see that there's other strategies in place, including ensuring that we, one of the things that I constantly have mentioned is, How do we build more home ownership? How do we help individuals build that generational wealth? And I know that I've had numerous conversations with the city attorney and Ms. Mack of other strategies that I'm thinking about and other ideas that I could possibly would like to have further conversation on. Because I've been thinking about even just bringing items forward of what is it that I could advocate for to ensure that home ownership and first time home buyer programs, for example, could possibly be an opportunity. Last year I had asked about the first time home buyer program And I know that used to be a program that the city of El Paso used to have many years ago, but rising costs don't make it feasible anymore. But I have some ideas that I want to possibly discuss because I think, again, to me, it's about how do we help individuals reach that home ownership, build that generational wealth to help overall our community.

Just to reflect on that, I think you have – both from the Housing Finance Corporation as well as your local lending partners. They offer programs and options that I think the city partnering with and building on is a great framework for addressing that. And so as you look at those, I would

Would encourage including those your local mortgage lenders as well as the housing finance corporation including those in those conversations great Ms. Mac or staff When it comes to us We did a survey with our cross-functional teams and the housing accelerator kind of the different policy priorities that we wanted to Advocate for that we wanted to prioritize and I know that there was you know, every different every district It's also very different. How does how does that input tie to this? I?

Yeah. So this is just a snapshot of the strategy matrix. I just want to make sure that we're really clear on that. So it's not meant to be the comprehensive snapshot of all the things that you've talked about. I think we'll make sure you get all the information. And I think what's going to be important is as you're thinking about ideas, does it give us a flexibility over the next 10 years? Because the comprehensive plan is that long to do the types of things that you may want to do. So it should be a broad policy and under that policy, Can we do some of the things that we might want to do? One of the conversations I had with the team was, you know, I certainly don't think we have an appetite for, you know, issuing debt or doing some of those things that are tools that we are listing in here. But it doesn't mean that we're going through this process to really understand the breadth of what those tools might be. So in the future, that is something that a future council may see as a higher priority. then we make sure that we've done the work and we have the data to be able to really understand it. So I'll make sure you get the full documents and we'll also make the staff available for follow-up meetings before we come back for the adoption of the plan. And we won't do an adoption until everybody's come.

And then the tools are just their ideas should the body wish to implement or find funding or strategies.

And so really just trying to make sure that as we're thinking about these things, and you'll hear in the next presentation too, As we're thinking about developing new policies for economic development and others, what are the basis for that? What does it tell us about our community? This is far more, from my perspective, comprehensive than the plan we did in 2019 that was our housing strategy. It really covers everything in a way that I didn't understand for our city, and so that's really what we're hoping to do. Some of these policies we may not bring back to you right away. Some things we will be doing right away, and you'll see that within the matrix. But if we're going to consider this as somebody sitting, you're sitting eight years, you know, what does this look like and how do you understand what our strategy is for our city because it really becomes our comprehensive plan for everyone.

No, thank you for that. No, thank you. One more follow-up question when it comes, I saw that some of the data that the consultant puts together comes from the American Community Survey from the census. Me, myself, personally, have not been a huge fan of the American Community Survey or the census because I feel that there's discrepancies and not enough people actually participate at least from what I've seen, right? My staff and I have analyzed the different community service throughout years to try to analyze how do we advocate more for my district. I know that we had a conversation like, for example, for opportunity zones, and we were analyzing the different patterns and including when it comes to AMI and including when we were talking about multi-generational families. We see more and more individuals living together, but then that kind of affects when it comes to the income of the home rather than the actual property owner or the person who's paying the bills. Again, I would like to have more conversations about that just to understand really how we could even possibly in the future advocate. A lot of these data points come from, again, the American Community Survey and the census, but I think it's also having a broader conversation of, I think we analyzed my staff were the the average income comes from all everyone if it's mom dad brother sister and everyone is working they put all their their incomes together so then they're at a higher threshold compared to you know there might be only one or two people that are paying for that home and they're still living in poverty so again i'm looking forward to further conversations with you to really try to comprehend and understand that too to even advocate for further tools or policies in place to help with this housing strategy that we're working on. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor.

Okay. Representative Rocha.

Thank you, Mayor. And thank you for the presentation. And this may be for staff first. You mentioned that there was community outreach. How many meetings were held when it came to community outreach?

We had a total of seven working group meetings for the assessment portion. We had three focus groups. We met with them twice, and then we had maybe about 30 one-on-ones. Into 2026, we had a total of 50 meetings, a presentation to get par, An additional meeting with our community-based organizations, which is part of that earlier focus group our eight neighborhood association meetings one per district And that's it the seven for our working group is included in that Thank You Casey and about how many total would you say attendees?

Did you have out of these? 50 meetings, would you be able to sum that up?

I I know I had included it on the backup with everyone that showed up. That everyone was there. I think in the 50 meetings that were held in 2026, a lot of them were one-on-one or two people involved in those. So you would say at least 50 to 60 there. Our CBOs was about 12. Our working group always ranged between 10 or 12. And then the neighborhood association meetings, they ranged from, you know, 5 to 20 or something like that.

So in the upcoming community outreach that you're going to be doing, is it going to be similar to what you've previously done, holding community meetings or district meetings? Or what does that really look like?

So this will be more of an open house format. Again, it's bringing Envision El Paso as a whole. So it's all of the components that make up the plan. So including the housing strategy, we also have the future land use map and the land use plan. So we are proposing to host them as open houses. It allows it for more of a conversational, really walking through the whole process for developing the plan, being able to show the recap of engagement and what was said and how it's applied, how it's integrated into the plan, and then be able to show sort of the proposed updates in the plan as well as having the online components so people can kind of dig into the finer details.

Okay, I appreciate that. And then is it supposed to be in each district or are you just gonna host a certain number of meetings? Is there an expectation on that?

We're looking to host four, really centrally located, to capture multiple districts.

Thank you, I appreciate it.

Is that it, Representative?

Yes, thank you. Thank you, Mayor.

And maybe this is for staff also. On slide 21, it's housing needs by sub-area. Is there a way to clearly define by district? Because you have Central, South, and South Central. Is there a way to represent by district?

way that would come to mind but i know that it has a component to the data aspect that i'll let matt speak to is just overlaying district lines onto what that sub area map already is but

Yeah, so these boundaries align with census tract lines. Okay. And it could be possible to reorganize the database on district assuming those districts follow census tract lines, that would be.

Okay, so it's by census tract.

Yeah.

Got you, okay. Representative Rocha?

Thank you, Mayor. That actually led to something else. When we talk about the AMI, you have less than 50% AMI, 51 to 80, 81 to 150, and then greater than 150. On these, is there a way to set it up so that we can see how many units there currently are fitting into each of these buckets and then what the actual need is per bucket?

Yes, we can.

I think that would be super helpful.

It might be in the housing needs report, but if not, I'll make sure that, yeah.

Thank you, I appreciate it.

All right, any other questions? That's clearly not Ms. Nunez, so Luis, I believe we have public comment.

Public comment. Oh, look at this.

All right, Ms. Nunez, I believe we have some public comment on this item.

Yes, we do, sir. We have Ms. Kathleen Stout, followed by Richard Dayup, Carmen Rodriguez, and Rafael Garcia.

Okay. Good morning.

Good morning, Ms. Stout. You have three minutes, ma'am.

Thank you. My name is Kathleen Stout, Kathy for short. I'm co-founder of the Community First Coalition and a member of the Affordable Housing Group headed by Carmen Rodriguez. She will also speak. I speak today in support of item two for this work session focused on housing strategy. Well-designed report, excellent material. I commend city staff for thoroughly researching and consulting with the community, very elaborate. uh for presenting findings that target geographic areas and affordable housing needs for presenting a strategy that resonates with both the bipartisan federal effort the 21st century road to housing act which recently became law and in last year's state legislative actions at least four bills were passed that resonate here I also commend them for the idea of using vacant city lots and public schools for affordable housing. And finally, for generating capital for an affordable housing through a TERS. From the CFC community first perspective, our major points affirm support for supply of affordable housing inside the city and streamline procedures as per new state and federal laws. However, we in the CFC would also like to push a little further than the strategies under consideration for the following. Number one, expanding opportunities for nonprofit affordable housing developers and medium sized for profit developers to take advantage of low income tax credits. Number two, facilitating community land trusts. I noticed one little line in the presentation on that, but this is a way to reduce the overall cost of homes by as much as a third for homebuyers for the legal trust of leased land. Many cities in Texas afford this opportunity, including Texas, including Austin, Texas. In addition, I would like to make a few points from me as a retired political scientist with one foot in the MPA public administration program. Please identify who is in charge of what seems to be a somewhat fragmented effort. Not wanting to criticize, but it does appear that way on the website. Who's in charge? Who's the housing director? Will the director be assigned a grant writer? I think one is desperately needed. Also, please create a small fund, and this has been mentioned with different tools, which capital finance incentives might be drawn from. When I examined websites for other cities in Texas, I found such funding, albeit in San Antonio and Dallas, where voter-approved bonds exist. And I know El Pasoans have no stomach for that at the moment. However, I wish to plant a seed for such a fund. Can I give you?

We'll give you a few more minutes, a few more seconds. Go ahead, go ahead.

You were on a roll, go ahead. In sum then, I hope you will listen, read, and positively consider the city staff affordable housing strategy presented today. We've been behind the curve on affordable housing rather than ahead of the curve for quite a while, but it is time to keep up with the momentum and change in this movement. Thank you.

THANK YOU.

THANKS FOR THE EXTRA SENTENCE.

YOU GOT IT. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU, MA'AM. NOW WE HAVE MR. RICHARD DEYUP. MR. DEYUP, YOU HAVE THREE MINUTES, SIR.

GOOD MORNING.

It's hard to follow Kathy Stout, but I'll do my best.

Richard Day, for the record, registered lobbyist with the city. I first want to thank Alex Hoffman and Casey Schnell for meeting with me along with several of my clients and for including the city's housing consultant, Matt, who made his presentation and listened to our recommendations. And I see reflected a few of those in his recommendations. We believe that it is advisable for the city to be proactive in developing strategies now and generally support these efforts. Generally. We have a few recommendations for your consideration. As is evidenced by the chart on slide 21 entitled housing needs by sub area, each of the six areas of the community have dramatically different challenges and needs. One size does not fit all. Each of my clients underscored this point. Consistently, the common theme in our meetings is that current city code discourages infill development, partly because of the related costs as well as the limited inventory of property that is economically feasible to develop, especially for multifamily housing and affordable housing in particular. While community development has made some improvements to the criteria for affordable housing support, A great deal more needs to be done. Despite stating that we want walkable neighborhoods, not all neighborhoods are realistically walkable. Except in design senior communities, there persists a perception that affordable housing means many of the residents do not have private transportation. So requiring specific criteria, such as proximity to public transportation, and grocery outlets as a scoring measure for support is in my view contrary to both the reality that most have their own vehicles, but also making it more difficult to reach your stated goals of increasing the housing stock. Zoning codes and lengthy permitting processes also make it difficult and excessively costly to develop within the city compared to the ETJ and neighboring communities as you identify areas of the community that you want to develop consider incentives that are mutually beneficial and equitable to all development in those areas. We should consider policies that remove barriers so as to increase our housing inventory and affordability. You have an excellent opportunity to make changes now that will encourage developers and builders to support infill development that makes economic sense and will help the city achieve its long term goals. to include regaining our location advantage, which we have lost to the outlying communities. Thank you.

Thank you, Richard.

Followed by Ms. Carmen Rodriguez. And then we'll have Rafael Garcia.

Good morning, Ms. Rodriguez. Good morning.

Good morning, good morning, Mayor and Council. Thank you for this opportunity. I'm from Community First Coalition, and I'm not a registered lobbyist. This is all volunteer work. We started working on affordable housing in 2023. We began with commenting to the mayor, Leaser, and his administration regarding the downtown plan. At that time, we urged the city to focus on current residents. And we have seen for too long that thousands of working families with children and elders who live in all eight districts and have long lacked adequate and dignified housing. We believe then and now that such conditions breed hopelessness in our youth and reflect negatively on our city. We have continued to work on this issue to educate ourselves. We've had many meetings, many discussions. We have a group from all over the city, some with a lot of knowledge of the issue and also of the community. So we were never optimistic that the federal Housing Act was going to pass but miraculously it has passed at least up to today. I hope so Today there is much to be optimistic about Hopefully those funds will come in and we won't have that huge challenge that we have always had and We have documented our findings and our recommendations. And what I would like to do is leave this information with you so that you can look at it in your own time. There is a lot of detail. This is a complex and very broad issue. So I'm not going to speak very long. except that I would like to point to a couple of our recommendations. One of them is the city registry. We are very concerned about the rental conditions in some of our very low income areas. We are aware that many of these homes, apartments, are really uninhabitable. Technically, they are uninhabitable. They do not meet the requirements that habitability has. We are very much in favor of the housing trust fund and a community land trust. The TERS is a very good idea. Many of our ideas are very much supportive of what the city has presented, but we also have some ideas of our own that we would like for you to look at and consider. And we will continue to work on this and attend the community meetings. And hopefully we will be able to agree on many, many of these initiatives. We look forward to that. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Mr. Rafael Garcia.

Mr. Rodriguez, you could give those documents to Ms. Nunez.

You have three minutes, Father.

Good morning. Good morning, Mayor and Council. Good morning. Good to be here with you. I'm Rafael Garcia. I'm the pastor of Sacred Heart Church, which I've been a pastor there for a total of 19 years at two different times, first time starting in 1994. So I'm pretty familiar with the Segundo Barrio and adjacent areas. And I want to share some of the... I WANT TO SHARE SOME OF THE ISSUES THAT CONNECT WITH THE TOPIC OF HOUSING AND WHAT MS. CARMEN RODRIGUEZ JUST MENTIONED AND THE PRESENTATION DEALT WITH. BASICALLY, ALSO, I WAS AN ARCHITECT BEFORE I BECAME A PRIEST IN MIAMI, FLORIDA, SO I'VE GOT SOME EXPERIENCE THERE AS WELL. There's just this ongoing since the 90s. As a pastor, I hear and constantly see the same problem occurring where it's people that have major problems in their apartment units, major deficiencies. dangerous situations, plumbing problems, lighting, inadequate lighting, inadequate ventilation. Recently, we've learned, I don't know how appropriate this is, but there's two buildings that we know of that have multiple units, people renting in different units, and there's only two bathrooms available. In one case, you have to walk through one area of a person's unit to get to the bathroom. So things like that are happening. I think you're aware of that. People are afraid to complain, so the current system has to be revisited for complaining from the tenant because people are just not doing it. They're afraid of being told to leave. If they have immigration issues at their families, sometimes that's brought up as a kind of a threat. So the precedent system is not working. I also find that there's a need for inspections, which apparently are not part of the code system or inspection systems at the time. These are commercial areas. There are gathering spaces in these apartment complexes, like courtyards where everybody has to go out through that courtyard. And often, those courtyards don't have the proper hardware on their exits, which are required of other gathering spaces, like, for example, in a church or a store. So I think some things have to be revisited. I would just want to suggest two things. One of them, if the present codes don't require inspections of these buildings, I think something should be done about the codes to make them work for the least of our brothers and sisters who are hardworking people who often don't have a voice. That's one thing. The other one, there should be some sort of, I would think, some kind of whistleblower-type protection for people that have the courage to step up and want to denounce what's going on. At present people are very afraid when we visit homes. They tell us well don't say anything because we're afraid we may be asked to leave So something should be done about the present systems so that they work for the people.

Thank you. Thank you And represent long did you want to say so we don't normally provide combat but represent them on

Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to add, I'm not sure that I mentioned this to Kelsey when we did the briefing, but at our last meeting of the Housing Finance Corporation, we're applying for $25 million in first-time homeowner funding that's going to come to the city, specifically to the city of El Paso.

Fantastic. OK. Any other comments on this item? Okay, we're gonna move on to item number three.

There is no action on that item. And item number three is presentation and discussion of the proposed redevelopment incentives policy, which is complementary element of the housing strategy, a key deliverable of the comprehensive plan update in Vision El Paso. The update will provide an overview of the current infill policy, the engagement process proposed policy updates, and a summary of overarching policies and goals to direct and guide economic development efforts in the region and city.

Good afternoon, Matt.

yeah it's afternoon now good afternoon so um two big focus areas of the comprehensive plan uh were housing and then economic development and so the first part of our task and of this presentation is really uh sort of a summary or overview of what all you're doing economic in terms of economic development in the community i think it's an important element of a comprehensive plan is to express to the community what you're doing and it provides an opportunity to show that framework. Within that, dovetailing on the housing work and the work in the future land use map, we were tasked with looking at specific potential refinements or changes to your infill incentive policy. And so the first set of slides is providing that overall framework of what you're doing in economic development. A lot of this you're probably aware of, you're working on it day to day, and it's showing how the infill incentive program fits into that, into the larger context, and then we'll get into the specific process that we went through and recommendations we have for refinement for that policy. So in terms of economic development, we've, we're developing sort of economic development policy overview or framework that will be part of the comprehensive plan. Uh, its components include an overview of your existing economic climate, your assets and partners, uh, guiding efforts that impact economic developments, which includes your strategic plan as well as the regional SEDS and other efforts. Uh, underneath that we've developed sort of three policy buckets underneath all of your shed or what you're doing in terms of economic development fall, and then sort of listing the programs and tools. Um, as you know, uh, the economy in El Paso has been growing at a relatively consistent rate around 1% annually in job growth. Um, it's been outpacing population growth, as I mentioned. Your economic base driven by healthcare, education, defense, military, trade, and tourism. Healthcare has really emerged as one of the largest industries and fastest growing industries in El Paso. While we have economic growth, we do have a lot of jobs that pay relatively lower wage, a median wage in the community about $40,000 annually. We have a lot of opportunities and challenges from an economic standpoint to face as a community. You know, we have this amazing benefit of being at the center of international trade with the ports of entry into Mexico and our connection throughout North America and how we can build on that, as well as building on the presence of Fort Bliss and the military activity and spinoff activity that can occur related to that. You all have a rich cultural and historic tradition here that really attracts a lot of people and visitation to the area. And how do we continue to build on that? Some great educational institutions that we can leverage to create economic activity. And as been mentioned in previous comments, this multicultural bilingual workforce that is really a strength and unique aspect of our community. But we also have challenges, shifting international trade policies, which sometimes or a lot of times are completely out of your hands. And so reacting to those. We have an increase of cost of living and doing business. We heard a lot through some of our outreach throughout this planning process that access to resources for businesses to support new businesses and expansion of businesses is a challenge. And we have an economic base that is pretty heavily reliant on public sector employment. And so our private property tax base from commercial and industrial uses is relatively lower to some of our peers. And that presents challenges in being able to reinvest in our community. And so how do we address that? But you have a lot of really great assets to build on. Obviously being, as I mentioned, sort of the center of trade and manufacturing. Second largest U.S. Army installation that has a really outsized economic impact on the community are ports of entry and premier research education institutions that provide an opportunity for growth. And with that, you have a lot of partners that are doing a lot of great stuff that most or some are reflected here. And working collaboratively is really the best way to grow the economy going forward. And you all have put some thought into this, too. Within your strategic plan, you've placed economic mobility as one of your key pillars, creating opportunity and prosperity for all of Pasoans through strengthening economic mobility and that local identity that is here. And those sort of key strategies or core strategies you've identified are sort of reflected in the policy statements that we've created. the plan looking at workforce pathways supporting individuals and local businesses within our key industries defining how the city can support housing options and affordability we just talked about that i think it's important to underscore how more and more housing availability is a key part of economic development for cities like el paso and so continued support for those efforts, as well as how can you do better to help support businesses expand, make changes, grow over time. As you know, there is currently a regional effort being done to create a regional comprehensive economic development strategy. This is a five-year regional strategy document that's created that identifies the priority economic growth areas and projects within communities. it helps to provide a listing of those priority projects that the community is going after that can help secure funding specifically uh federal funding for economic development support so this is an important effort to be part of they're currently in the process of drafting that i know that city staff has been giving you updates along the way on this, and so a key component of your economic development efforts. Another key component I think that's going on right now is the future land use map. While it may not jump out, but I think it's a core element of ensuring you have a healthy economy is making sure you have healthy economic places for businesses to locate and grow. And so that plan is an important element of identifying those key employment locations in our community, whether there are centers and corridors that have a mixture of uses or those specific employment areas that have things like manufacturing, logistics operations, and making sure that we're planning for the types of spaces our economy need is a really important element. And that's something that Future Land Use Map is pushing forward. So with that framework, we had generally identified three major policy buckets that your efforts fit underneath. And this is sort of a reflection within the comprehensive plan of what you're doing. First is looking at diversifying and growing the economic base by providing supports to businesses. You do that currently through foreign and domestic business expansion, attraction, and retention efforts with focuses on some target industries, advanced manufacturing, manufacturing, defense industry-based businesses, international trade, life sciences. You also do this through support of small businesses. Your BOSS program is a key component of supporting small business development. And you also do that through supporting tourism activities in diversity of different areas, whether it's cultural and heritage tourism, growing outdoor recreational opportunities, and then events and destinations, including things like your convention center and looking at things like youth and college sports and how that can leverage tourism. The second major policy bucket for economic development is investing in your economic places to ensure that it has the infrastructure needed to support economic growth. You do that currently through things like your foreign trade zone designation, your advanced manufacturing district that you've identified, as well as through place management. Your downtown management district, city initiative TERS, the use of things like business improvement districts. Those are types of strategies to curate and manage economic places. And then the ongoing investment and management of your critical infrastructure, including your ports of entry, which are a key component of your economy. And then the third bucket or policy related to economic development is supporting workers and residents to improve economic mobility. You do that through skill development, educational programs, career pathway programs, and then investing in quality of life infrastructure. And again, that's where this idea of affordable and accessible housing shows up, transportation connectivity, things like that to make sure that we have an attractive place for workers to live and thrive. So within that, you have a number of tools and programs they utilize to implement those policies and strategies, including your Chapter 380 grant loan programs, your Chapter 312 tax abatements, your existing infill development policy, which we're gonna talk about in a second, these other programs that you put in place, as well as state and federal programs that you're able to leverage and access. And so what we've been asked to do is we go through this important comprehensive plan process that really focuses on place and development of the city we were tasked with providing recommendations to one of those key tools that I just talked about one of those is your infill incentive policy a redevelopment incentive policy And so throughout our outreach, we heard a number of things from different stakeholders about the challenges of doing infill. So proving a market for new uses within existing parts of the city is a common challenge that a lot of cities face and a common challenge of trying to build sort of a a market within areas that haven't seen growth in recent areas. We heard a lot about the approval review inspection capacity within the community and your broader development community and how we can enhance that and improve that to make it easier to build projects. Utility infrastructure upgrade costs are higher generally with infill projects. So how do we address that? Infill projects usually have very nuanced needs related to design, which perhaps a greenfield development wouldn't have. It's a lot easier to develop out there because you don't have some of these existing condition parameters you have to work around, especially when you're talking about old buildings that are trying to be adaptively reused. So how do we create more flexibility to make it easier? Especially as this community has been growing outward for a long time and now the focus has sort of shifted back for a number of reasons. A lot of your tools, your development regulations have been oriented to sort of developments on the edges of the community and trying to retool those to address a greater diversity of types of projects is part of this challenge that you're seeing now. So your current tools that you provide to support infill reinvestment or infill development are your infill incentive policy, your TOD incentive policy, which is pretty much a mirror of the infill incentive policy, the use of tax increment reinvestment zones, as well as your downtown management district. I want to focus on the infill incentive policy currently. So within your policy, what you currently have in the books are the use of a construction material sales tax rebate, an incremental property tax rebate, support with lien waivers for projects, as well as waiving building and planning permit fees, I think up to $10,000. That's your current policy. And the applicability of that policy is pretty broad in terms of its geographic reach. It defines infill as a pretty broad definition throughout the community. And so what we really dove into is what are some changes you might make to that incentive policy? And then what is the broader context of other organizations and tools that you might be able to leverage to help support that? So we did some outreach specific to this program. to figure out how well it's working. We mentioned those focus groups with design professionals in the community. They were an important part of this conversation. They helped us kind of understand what the challenges are currently for development and then what challenges they're having with your current programs. So I reflected to you in the first slide sort of some of those more broader infill challenges, and then these are specific points of feedback that we heard from folks trying to use your incentives currently. Generally, the reflection was they're often too small in value to address project feasibility gaps. And so it's great that you're providing incentive. It's often not enough to move the needle. Part of that is they're largely rebates. So you have to pay up front a lot of these taxes and fees and then wait for a rebate. And sometimes, specifically to a property tax rebate, the increased value that's created for the property, the property valuation, because you invest in your property, can offset the impact of the rebate that you're getting. And so there are some suggestions for how we might be able to recalibrate those to make them so that they're more impactful to projects, thinking about length and administration. The sales and use tax rebate is, we heard, a very laborious program to use where you have to document every receipt that you have for a project. And it's often too hard to try to collect all of those different documentation requirements to even use the program. So it will cost you more to try to document the rebate. than it would be just to get the rebate, so often not utilized. And then we heard that permit fee waivers are great. Can they be increased or removed? Because they've been really helpful and supportive. So what we've done is we did some financial modeling of different types of development projects in the community to kind of understand where do we find challenges with feasibility for different product types. And so we looked at different ranges, mixed use and multifamily developments stemming from small, you know, 5 to 20 unit projects up to a larger like 150 unit mixed use building. And different contexts in terms of location and parking requirements to look at where there are financial challenges. And then if there are financial challenges with feasibility, how do the current incentives address those? And so, to no surprise, more of those urban infill projects have more financial challenges especially ones that have to have things like structured parking or more urban elements to make them fit within a site and currently the incentives generally don't address those financial gaps part of that is due to the length of abatement or rebate into the property taxes is pretty limited especially in line with your peers And then we also found that different projects have different varying needs. So smaller projects have different needs than larger projects. And then lastly, you utilize your tax increment zones to help support infill and reinvestment, but your partner taxing districts don't often or ever participate, whether it's the school district or the county. And we've seen in other communities, in Texas as well as elsewhere in the south and western U.S., been able to leverage tax increment financing as a very powerful tool to support urban redevelopment. But often they have the participation or at least a portion of school district or county property tax mills. And that is sort of a missing sort of extra power that you could potentially explore with your partners. With this feedback from users of the incentive program, feasibility analysis, and the broader efforts that we were going through, we kind of set up a framework for addressing infill development and how the city can play a role in that. First, there's direct incentives. That's your infill incentive policy. There's also ways the city can support redevelopment and infill. Ideas include, we'll get into those in a second, but there's a bucket of different ways you can support infill developments as well as partnerships. And I think that's something to emphasize is that how can we talk to our partner school districts, utility providers to help them join in this effort to help support reinvestment in the community. And one of the biggest things we identify is we think it might make sense to structure incentive policy around small projects versus large projects. And so smaller scale projects being ones that, you know, are a million or two in terms of total valuation, perhaps under, you know, 15, 20 units. You've been doing a number of sort of individual chapter 380 agreements for some of these smaller projects that perhaps are only a half a million dollars in value. versus larger ones that are much larger investments from the developer and have different financing obligations and challenges and how do we sort of support small infill projects differently than perhaps larger ones. So this is the meat of the recommendations that we have. Three major recommendations for changes to the existing policy. exploring a modification to have two different sets of projects. We have suggestions for some specific modifications to agreement processes, definition, eligibility criteria, some tweaks that can make them more attractive. And then lastly is, now that you've gone through this future land use map process, this comprehensive plan, let's align our infill incentive policy to the growth areas that we are identifying. The areas that we want to support development, that's the places where we want to address the additional costs and challenges of developing in those. And so using that effort to tie your incentive policy to it, which now is pretty broad in its definition. So I'll go through each of those specifically. First, in terms of small projects, setting a maximum threshold in terms of project costs or units. Applying this more broadly, similar to how your current info and policy works, is there a way to simplify your sales and use tax rebate program so that it's more of like a grant as opposed to a laborious rebate program? Exploring the use of a tax abatement instead of a rebate. for projects for five years or 10 years if it's a more complicated project. One challenge that small projects have is the upfront cost of feasibility. An incentive is less valuable for them in that if it's rebated, they still have to come out of pocket upfront in terms of equity and financing to make that project happen. So if you can give them an abatement where they don't have to pay it, um it can address those challenges and then continue to do things like provide waivers of development permit fees and property lien support and in terms of larger projects it's sort of thinking about this differently so start to target the use of the incentive policy to specific growth areas that you're identifying through the future land use map process Creating a longer period for the tax rebate that you currently provide. Currently it's five to seven years with a decreasing percentage that is allocated to projects. We found that creating a 75% tax increments of the value added portion of property tax created by the project for 10 years would put you in line with a lot of sort of the incentive level that a lot of your peer communities have been at that have been successful at creating infill projects. attracting infill projects and then sometimes as we try to build a market perhaps in downtown for urban living or for mixed-use development sometimes we need to explore some upfront grants or zero interest loans to help address feasibility in the near term as we build mark on the market momentum over time we found in some of our peer communities specifically don't work a lot in San Antonio had a very a very successful infill incentive program within their community. They've set a priority goal of creating 7,500 housing units in their urban core over 10 years, about a decade ago. And they put in an incentive policy that was very successful, pretty streamlined, where the same incentive was provided to every project, as long as it met eligibility criteria. And it was very successful. They met their target and became so successful that the market started to place a premium on being in downtown. And to the point where they didn't need the incentives anymore. And their focus shifted more towards supporting affordable housing specifically because they had built a market. And we've seen that in other areas too. And as you start to create a market for urban living and urban projects, the need for those incentives will change over time. And so the realization of we need to help support the market getting its feet to start, and then over time we can adjust that as market conditions improve, as people start to see the benefit and find premium in living in these walkable urban places in El Paso. Other recommendations related to how else to support infill and redevelopment. We found other communities have been very successful in dedicating a specific project review team or approval team to infill projects. The needs of infill projects are so more diverse and different than greenfield projects that having a dedicated team that works continuously on these infill projects builds a capacity and knowledge and experience of how to address issues. And another potential suggestion is to have specific roles within that review team to help support the process. One is the idea of a project navigator, somebody that helps shepherd a development project through the review process and can help flag issues that are occurring. And then another common challenge we see other communities address is that you often have multiple departments and utilities reviewing plans, and sometimes they have conflicting changes that they want in the plan, the conflicting challenges, and having an arbiter or somebody to help resolve those issues and figure out what is the greater policy priority or requirement to help move projects forward is something that's been successful in supporting infill and redevelopment. Another call here in terms of the use of your tax increment zones. Trying to encourage your partner jurisdictions or taxing districts to participate in a contribution of tax increment can really make that a valuable tool to not only support development projects directly, as well as build resources for investment in programs and capital and infrastructure investments in your TERS areas. The school district specifically has, there's a state program that actually backfills the amount of lost revenue from their operating and maintenance portion of their tax levy if they participate in a tax increment district, which would make them more or less whole in terms of, the amount of money they might be out of pocket if they were to participate. And so exploring conversations with them to see if that's an option as well as how the county can be a partner in the use of tax increment going forward. Also talking with utility providers, specifically water and sewer and power, are there ways that they might be able to offset fees for redevelopment in areas that already have existing capacity or infrastructure that doesn't have outsized costs that they need to recover through their fee programs, and how can they reduce the cost of infill development through a waiver, rebate, or a portion of their fees. And then lastly, there are some additional tools to consider. I've mentioned the Housing Finance Corporation previously. And the housing strategy, that's a powerful tool that has the additional power to support mixed income development in the community, similar to how a public facilities corporation can support that. So relying on that tool to help finance projects, especially those mixed income or affordable projects in infill locations, as well as exploring other state-enabled tools, things like a neighborhood empowerment zone. That's similar to your chapter 312 and 380 agreement programs. What you can do here is identify specific neighborhoods design a specific program That has a specific incentive whether it's home repair or things like that within the neighborhood and then each time there's an incentive given it doesn't have to come to City Council approval it is a pretty streamlined process and And so that you can set parameters for specific empowerment zones that have specific programs that then can enable reinvestment and infill in neighborhoods. That would be especially a tool for smaller scale reinvestment in neighborhoods and commercial districts. So that's a big overview of a lot of things. This presentation really was to one, show you that overall framework of economic development and then how this Incentive policy fits into that. We were tasked with providing suggestions for refinement to your infill incentive policy. What staff is going to do is take those and any additional comments that you may have, changes, ideas, and develop a draft policy that they'll bring forward to you for consideration in the future. council setting. They're doing that in alignment with their changes to your current 380 incentive policy. So that 380 policy is really focused on incentivizing big economic businesses and investments in the community, whereas this infill incentive policy is more supporting the development side of that, as well as smaller scale projects. So it's a key tool. There are two different tools that work together. And you're kind of working through changes to those concurrently. Today, I specifically want to ask you for some thoughts about some of the recommendations that we put together. Specifically, the idea of focusing on small and large projects makes sense. Is the idea of targeting the incentives to specific geographic areas make sense? And then what are your reactions to things like a dedicated infill review team or participation of other taxing districts within TERS and other programs? So your thoughts and reflections on those topics would be helpful for us to provide more REFINEMENT TO OUR RECOMMENDATIONS TO STAFF AND THEN ALLOW STAFF TO BRING FORWARD CHANGES IN THE FUTURE.

VERY GOOD, MATT. IT SOUNDS LIKE SAN ANTONIO HAD A VERY GOOD INFIELD THAT THEY PUT TOGETHER. SO MAYBE WE COULD TAKE PIECES OF THAT AND USE IT HERE AT THE CITY.

YEAH.

REPRESENTATIVE LIMON.

Thank you, Mayor. I fully support the two items that you just mentioned. The policy of supporting small businesses, incentivizing them, is certainly embedded in our district strategic plan that came out before the city plan. We're certainly looking at that and very much in support of all the items that you brought forth. Thank you, sir.

Representative Canales.

Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, specifically on these feedback topics, I mean, I think aside from the last one and that we can't force other taxing entities to participate, I'm supportive of all of those potential strategies. I think I'm going to say the same thing that I said last time. This is kind of a difficult forum to provide more detailed feedback. And so I'd love for just a mechanism, if our feedback can be solicited some other way and we can provide you something more detailed, I would love to be able to do that before You can move into the next steps.

Sure. Yeah. We'll work with staff to define that. We have a more detailed report that we wrote that details our analysis and builds the basis for our recommendations and that we can share that with you all for a more in-depth review and then happy to answer any questions.

Yeah, that'd be great. I mean, I can commit to getting stuff back to you quickly because I know you have next steps to work through in terms of providing the more final draft to our staff. Yeah, I just think this is difficult to give you more detailed feedback like this verbally.

But yeah, I wanted to give you that presentation of what we're thinking about, what we're recommending, and then those topics, whether it's now or in the future, the specifics that would be helpful in terms of direction.

Yeah, and I appreciate it. I think it's an excellent set of recommendations. Thank you.

Representative Acevedo.

Thank you, Mayor.

Can you send us, I guess, like a good overview of what the districts could do? You explained it really nicely, but I kind of want to dive a little deeper into that in terms of the TERS and getting that money back and why it's so lucrative for them to join. I would appreciate that. Yeah, yeah. And then the other thing that I've been thinking about lately is infill is really important to my district. It's vital. It's the core of the entire city. And sometimes we have some unintended consequences when infill happens. You know, there are projects that are not affordable for people. So I'm wondering how we can build that into this. And I know that there's just different scale of projects, whether it's small or large, but there's also incentives. So how can we strengthen the policy to say, if you're going to come in and take over 20 units, can you at least make X percentage affordable or something? I think that's kind of missing in the guidelines here.

Yeah, that's a good point. There's a couple of things to react to there. I think, especially for larger projects, being focused in the specific areas where those are applicable helps, I think, support putting your public tax dollars into places that you want to see growth as well as preventing, perhaps, development in places that are less ready to support that, whether that's from lack of infrastructure or displacement concerns. you can also place parameters on the type of project you invest in and so if somebody is buying an existing property you can place you know requirements around displacement and things that you mentioned within the incentive agreement so you can structure it that way so you can provide direction there generally we're sort of thinking of these as projects that are replacing whether it's a parking lot or an abandoned building or underutilized building but you do make a good point that There are sometimes existing uses that we want to value and protect, and I think putting those parameters is something we can recommend.

Yeah, I'd love to see more on that. I would appreciate it. There's just this balance that I think this work is all really great. I'm very supportive of all of it, but that was something that I kind of see as a gap, so I appreciate you saying all that. Thank you.

Okay. Representative Chavez.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Matt, for the presentation. Again, I'd like to have a conversation with you in my office just because we only have 10-minute increments here, and it's hard to ask everything or talk about all the thoughts that I had while you were going through your presentation. But a couple of things I do want to touch on, and you briefly mentioned it at the end. I've had multiple conversations with people in my district specifically who've tried to buy older homes to rehabilitate them to live in them Personally and they've gone through a lot of trouble doing it both both because of the cost and the time involved in those projects most of the time people don't have The the time it takes to do it because they work full-time they're they're raising families and the cost involved in it as well and BUT I DO KNOW THAT THERE WAS SOMETHING THAT WAS BROUGHT FORWARD THAT'S CALLED THE WHOLE HOME REPAIRS ACT. I DON'T KNOW IF YOU'RE FAMILIAR WITH IT.

NO, I'M NOT.

IT WAS PASSED IN JULY. AND WHAT IT DOES, IT REQUIRES HUD TO ESTABLISH LIKE A PILOT PROGRAM UNDER WHICH THEY WILL AWARD GRANTS FOR ORGANIZATIONS TO INCLUDE NONPROFITS. I HAVE IT RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME HERE AND I WANT TO TOUCH ON THIS. IT SAYS IT'S AUTHORIZED TO PROVIDE GRANTS TO IMPLEMENTING ORGANIZATIONS TO ADMINISTER A WHOLE HOME REPAIRS PROGRAM FOR ELIGIBLE HOMEOWNERS AND ELIGIBLE LANDLORDS. AND IT'S BASICALLY FOR REHABILITATION FOR OLDER HOMES. I KNOW THAT THIS IS ON A SMALLER SCALE THAN WHAT YOU WERE MENTIONING, BUT I DO THINK IT'S IMPORTANT BECAUSE WE HAVE OLDER ESTABLISHED NEIGHBORHOODS ALL ACROSS OUR CITY. And if we really want to promote infill, this is something that I would definitely be in support of to ensure that people that do want to buy older homes have such a program or that we basically advocate for this type of program in our community.

Yeah, that's awesome. I'll look into that. That fits well into that, going back to the housing strategy, that first bucket related to neighborhood reinvestment. Some communities we've seen had success with They kind of set up a program where they have pre-qualified contractors that can do sort of whole home repairs and then have matching grant funding to help support that. And it helps reduce the barrier of doing a project for a homeowner that it's really hard to have time to like, Go find 12 different contractors that could do all of this. And if you're able to get a grant as well as have one single sort of point of contact, it makes it a more realistic option than perhaps a daunting one that is probably a lot of the challenges you're hearing. And so that's really awesome that there might be federal resources to help support that as well.

Yeah, I mean, I think sometimes it becomes too much trouble for people to go through the whole process. And so they end up just buying a newer home, maybe even outside the city limits, just because it's faster. Not necessarily what they wanted, right? But we do want to promote that infill. There are a lot of beautiful neighborhoods in our community all across the city and older homes that do need a lot of help in terms of repair and things like that. So that's something to look into that I would be supportive of. On the slide where you mentioned the partners, the people that you've spoken to, I see Bill is in the audience. There are others in the community that I've spoken to that have given me a lot of in-depth information in terms of data. I don't know if you've had an opportunity to speak with them, but one is the Federal Reserve Bank. I know they do a lot of and they've provided me research specifically to our community, to our city, which I don't see listed here. And then UTEP has a whole program through the Hunt Institute on global competitiveness. I know that you mentioned we're a binational community. You mentioned manufacturing and things like that. I don't see them listed here. I think they would be worthwhile to reach out to to see what other data they can provide in terms of putting all of this together for economic development. And then finally, just to Ms. Mack, through our budget that we've gone through recently, we've talked a lot about forecasts. I know that Robert Cortina has gone through a lot of them. And for different reasons at the state level, for people getting different incentives in our community that's impacted our forecast for our fund, our general fund. And I was just wondering, if we could also get a forecast, if we implement some of these strategies, what that would look like. I think it would be important for us to understand financially the impact we would have as a community if we were to try to incentivize some of these groups. Okay, and then maybe we could continue the conversation in my office. Thank you.

All right, Matt, appreciate the presentation. Yeah, thank you. All right, thank you. And Council, I would entertain a motion to adjourn for lunch. All right, 145. Okay.

Is there a second? All those in favor? And you want to post in the City Council is that taking a recess at 1236 PM for one hour to 145 145 okay.

Thank you.

It's freezing, I know, all tech facilities right now.

Okay, Ms. Nunez, we're ready to go.

Is there a motion to reconvene? Second. All those in favor? All right. Anyone opposed? And the work session for July 20th is back in session.

Okay, that brings us up to agenda item number four.

Yes, sir, and item number four. Give me one second, the system, there you go. It's presentation on status of facility condition assessment update.

Good afternoon, Randy.

I'll mess with the microphone to upset Laura. So can IT bring up the presentation? Okay. So this is Streets of Maintenance Facility Condition Assessment Update. So what we've been doing is we've been tasked by Ms. Hernandez and Ms. Mack to really come up with a better way to look at how we see our facilities and how we do our overall long-term maintenance. So just a quick overview. We're going to go over the inventory for only the buildings that are maintained by streets and maintenance facility department. That's not inclusive of all the buildings owned by the city. It's just what we maintain. We're going to talk briefly about our capital investment plan. assessment which is how we actually look at the buildings to determine what maintenance needs are required of us give you an update on the progress since we've implemented our new assessment method this year and then looking forward to the next two years of our five-year action plan So the city maintains 304 very unique different types of buildings throughout the city. And you can see the majority of those buildings are over 50 years of age, 37%. And within the next 10 years, you'll see that next large group of 30 to 49 years coming, being older than 50. So even though we try to be as proactive with preventive maintenance and day-to-day maintenance, it's really important that we develop a way to do an assessment of what state those buildings are in, how well they've been maintained, the day-to-day maintenance, and then looking at all the systems that we have within those buildings. So you can here see a breakdown of the buildings. The majority of them are public-facing. Parks leading the way, of course, having the most. And then you can see the internal departments such as fire, ESD, even streets and maintenance. We do have buildings that we utilize that we maintain. So when we look at our capital plan, we've been given money the past few years to do an investment. And the way we looked at our assessments in the past is we would do a one-off, create a list, and try to use the money that was given to us during the budget season for that list. And we would do that one year, one year, one year. But now what we're trying to do is looking at a full five-year plan of how do we develop a more robust plan and a stronger plan going forward. So what we've talked about in my department is the facility condition assessment, really looking at industry standards, developing a rating scale that helps us prioritize the buildings and the repairs that are necessary, developing a checklist so when our staff goes out there, they know what they're looking for and what to say is in poor condition and what is in good condition. Really, we are focusing on the subsystems of the building, mechanical, of course, that's the HVAC and heating and cooling, plumbing systems, making sure they're up to date and up to code, electrical systems, making sure that they are fully functional, and the building envelope, the roofs, you know, the surrounding parts of buildings. We need to ensure that those building envelopes are secure before we put additional money into the other subsystems. So if we look at our key elements for our assessment, we really look at the age of the system, the expected service life, the history of the building, the visual inspection of it, and the operational needs. And from there, we go into a rating. So we have a checklist. We'll rate those subsystems. And then that kind of tells us exactly where we want to focus our repairs. So when we're implementing this process, we first look at the assessments that we currently have completed, and we verify that those assessments are still accurate and up-to-date. From there, we'll look at scoping and getting specifications for those projects, and then we work with our purchasing department to obtain quotes through our GLC contracts or other on-call service contracts that we currently have. That's just to try to expedite that purchasing process. From there, we actually do the actual construction work. Any modifications needed to that specific project will get done through a change order. And then finally acceptance of the project and closing it out, making sure all the documents are complete and all the work was done as per the specifications. So currently, we're calling this year one. We have 32 projects that we've identified through prior assessments and our current assessment. And you can see here the majority of those are building, those are roofs, and then the mechanical systems. And here's just really a breakdown of the detail of the buildings, what we're doing. So you can see lots of roofs. We're all over the city. Lighting projects, mechanical projects, HVAC being important, especially as we came into the summer season. And here's five of the projects that we finished. I think we actually finished another project recently, but these are the five ones that I know we have finished to date. Looking at year two, we already have identified 20 projects that were deferred from the year one list, so we move over. Again, a lot of building projects, a lot of roofs, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems. And you can see the breakdown also by the department. Again, looking a lot at the forward-facing groups such as parks. And here's an actual breakdown of the detail, the buildings that we would be doing the maintenance projects on this coming year in FY27. So I really want to focus on this. This is our capital plan kind of going forward, how we're going to look at it. So we have year one deferred projects that we're going to move into year two, which is FY27. We already have those 20 projects in queue. So once that fiscal year starts, we know what buildings we need to work on and start getting those purchase orders, the scoping, the specifications completed. But really what we're focusing on right now is the updating of our inventory. We have over 300 plus buildings. We need to go in there and see what subsystems we have, what type of HVAC systems we have, what's the state of electrical systems. And that leads us to our continuous assessment. We're aiming to do 25% of our buildings of 304, which is approximately 74 buildings per year to complete the assessment. And that assessment will be continuous. It won't stop. So that means if we have a building that we know what it's like today, we can keep on looking at it and ensuring that we're on top of it to making sure if anything does fall into disrepair, we can make sure that we can put it on a list for any projects. And we also do look at emergencies. This year we had a couple of concerns with the HVAC unit at PD headquarters, and it just happened that the cooling towers were going down. So we had to be reactive. We looked at the list. We have that funding. We do the assessment of that HVAC and determine if it's necessary or if it's wanted to do it immediately, and then we make that decision from there. so this is really just a whole new way of looking at it instead of just handling a repair as a one-off repair we're looking at holistic buildings now and we're really trying to determine what the grade level of that building is to really prioritize it and really ensure that we that we are using the money that's given to us from council from this mac um and making sure that we are being efficient and effective in the way we are utilizing that funding with that is there any questions

Randy, you have your hands full.

Yes. It's a lot.

Yeah, and let me make sure I understand this. So 65% of our buildings are 30 to 50 plus years old?

Yes. The majority of the buildings that are over 50 years old. But with that being said, I mean, as long as we are maintaining and we have an active way of actually maintaining them and having a process in place, I think that's what's really important. That's what, you know, I don't mean to, but Mr. Hernandez really pushes, develop processes, develop criteria, You know, look at industry standards. How are we maintaining this? What are we doing? Are we just going and changing a light bulb and changing the light bulb and continually doing that without checking if it's an electrical system problem that's making us change a light bulb? Or if we have a backup in a toilet system, do we go and just do that one-time fix? Or do we really look at what's going on there, dig a little deeper and making sure that we are just not getting our day-to-day maintenance money and just continue to do these one-off repairs?

Very good. Representative Chavez.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Brandon, for the presentation. I was very happy to see something like this come forward because this is something that I've been dealing with in some of the older buildings in my district specifically. I do have a question regarding, so you have a plan in place for everything that we need to maintain, right? And I like the first year, the second year plan, all that's great. Last year, we had an emergency at the Westside Sports Complex where water went into the electrical system and shorted out all the lights. And it became a big deal because the cost to repair all those lights was expensive. The first price that we received was very high. We didn't have the money to replace it. And that is a facility that's rented out by a soccer team. And so it's a money-making facility, right? It's under parks, but it's a money-making facility. And I almost thought we were going to have to cancel the season because we didn't have lights for them to play at night. So it became something that was very concerning for me. So you have a plan in place right now for ongoing maintenance, but do we have a plan for emergencies like that, right? Yeah, thank you, Ms. Mack.

Different funding stream. So we also have 1.5 for park facilities. I mean, it's also doing the best with the dollars that we have. I mean, I think that's one of the kind of emergencies that Robert kind of hinted to when we did our last presentation that having flexibility or some flexibility within our budgets to be able to address those things are really important. What happened in that situation was the team had some dollars within the fund, and then they had to look for savings in other accounts across the board. I think we ended up at 165 or so, but it was like in September or October. So we're very early in the fiscal year, lots of other things come up. And so our goal is to really have a really good assessment of all of our facilities, really understand where we have those needs, get proactive with all of them to really understand how we might address them there will always be emergencies we have a lot of assets you've heard Randy talk about streets and street lights and how many of those we have in addition to buildings and others and just trying to find that balance unfortunately these dollars have been allocated through the budget this council has worked to increase that number or help to get us restored but Randy certainly is showing you what the need is across the board you'll soon be soon be seeing the Parks master plan that's going to make some recommendations will be talking about the amount of maintenance that's required for those facilities. We just think it's really important for the community to be able to see this as well. I think you talk about it a lot in the community. So we hadn't done this type of presentation for you, but we're trying to find those opportunities. So when you're starting to talk about the things that we need for our city, people have a broader context for it.

Yeah, and I appreciate it, Ms. Mack, and I think it's important for the community to understand that there's so much need. There's a lot of maintenance that's required from all of our city buildings, and learning how to prioritize those and not just try to put out fires like we were doing in the past is important moving forward. So I appreciate it. I appreciate the fact that you're saying we have a different funding source altogether for emergencies. I think that's being very responsible so that we can continue providing the services and, more importantly, quality of life for our community. So thank you. Thanks, Randy. You're welcome.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Randy, for all your hard work. I know that we had a really good conversation last week about all of this maintenance that happens across the entire city. Can you touch a little bit about standardizing some of the materials and supplies that are needed across all of the facilities? For example, if a light bulb is needed, How is it that we're looking at possibly buying in bulk, for example, and ensuring that even just new facilities kind of use the same type of light bulbs that we're not, you know, buying limited amounts of this certain light bulb? Can you touch a little bit about, again, standardizing and ordering in bulk?

So I think something that we had talked about during the budget process was really looking at how do we standardize as much of the maintenance activities we're doing, not only with facilities, but fleet and also on the street side. So I mean, we do have opportunities with the cooperative contracts that purchasing has put in place that allows us to use. And by being able to leverage those contracts, talking to the contractors and asking for additional discounts. That's really important. And that's something that we have recently done in the street department. I think recently we saved $60,000 on a recent purchase of some street materials that we needed. So that's kind of what we're looking at. What the assessment's going to help us do now is know what systems we actually have in place. So if there's specific HVAC units or a specific subsystem that we need to look at to standardize, or maybe there's a certain model that's just not working for us, where we know to keep away from that and we know to kind of get what we feel is the best through the assessment. Again, buildings change the age every day, so we need to make sure we stay on top of it. And the assessment just can't be a one-off thing. It has to be continuous. We have to continue to look at it. And I think once we can look at the entire systems and we get to a good place where we feel comfortable, you know, about knowing what the costs are for some of these projects, then we can go back and look at how can we standardize as much of this and get bulk purchases so we can get a bigger discount when we make those purchases.

Yeah, thank you for doing that and verifying that just because overall I think if there could be any potential cost savings on the expenditures, that would be a great avenue to look into. Another question that I had during our briefing was in regards of the warranty when it comes to building a new facility or even buying new equipment, ensuring that You know, we're working with CID and we're following up with a warranty, for example, at the Beast. We've had roofing issues since we've had that facility. And I know that it's been looked at a couple of times and I know I've had conversation with Ms. Mack about that as well. But I wanted to ask about I'm glad that we're looking at all the maintenance components, but also ensuring that if the actual equipment or the materials that we're buying when we're building such facility that we're looking at the warranty aspect so that there could be additional cost savings so that we could go after the warranty rather than having to do that expenditure. I could tell you this rain that happened this weekend on Friday, the bees had a water leakage again, Ms. Mack? So I think if we could look at, again, that warranty component of it, just ensuring that we could, because I know some of the warranties could be 20 years or 30 years for the actual materials. And I mean, I'm not an engineer or a contractor, but maybe that could be something. But I know that you mentioned that you're working with CID and all that as well.

Yeah, so we'll continue to work with CID to make sure that all the warranties are covered or any repairs that need to be done if they are covered or not covered by the warranty and making that determination. Again, I think the good point you brought up was the materials and if the materials have a separate warranty. So we'll definitely be in contact with CID to ensure that if there is a warranty that we can take advantage of that we do so.

All right. Well, thank you again for all your hard work and truly appreciate the work that everyone does. Thank you. Thank you.

Representative Lamont.

Thank you. Thank you, Randy. Good afternoon. Randy, on slide 10, item number 10 under the building area where it says Isleta Park Rec Building, is that actually a parks and rec building or is it an animal shelter thing?

No, I believe it's the senior building behind the Pavo Real Center.

Okay, but you've got Isleta Senior Center roof replacement.

Yeah, so that is actually the rec center building, the Pavo Real one. I think we're doing both of them.

Okay, so then number 10 would be Pavo Real?

Yes.

Okay, Pavo. All right, and the other one is the Senior Center. Okay, yeah, those have been there. And Randy, on plumbing, is that for the PD headquarters plumbing?

Yes.

Is that a major thing that we're doing given that we're not going to have that building?

So we really looked deep into it because we knew we're not going to occupy the building long term. um the plumbing was the truth and we've we've what we've been doing in the past is as the issues have come up with the toilets and some of the the water issues we've seen there we've been handling them as one-off issues um we we did go in there and look at it closely and we determined at that point like either this plumbing system is going to continue to fail until they get their new building and that we are just gonna be really, really reactive. We're now at a chance to be proactive and be a little more efficient with our time and with the funding we have and going and taking care of the problems that we see. It's not an entire system rebuild, but there are major parts to that plumbing that are just completely failing. And it was time that we stopped sending it as emergency calls and actually take care of it if we know it's gonna happen again and again.

Okay, so it's a partial plumbing thing. All right, thank you, Steve. Thank you, Randy. You're welcome.

Representative Trejo.

Thank you, Mayor.

I apologize for being late, but you shared the presentation with me last week and had some questions on it. On page seven, where you go into the assessment key elements, and we had that conversation in my office, far as you know taking into consideration possibly buildings that are revenue that are somehow generating revenue I know we're looking at a lot of the parks and recreation here on the list that you have but looking at that as one of the possible assessments and adding it on to that this is a way of you know generating revenue for the city and if we're not looking at those as a priority we're losing out on that

Yeah, and I think that that was a good point that you made. Since we've already started the assessment earlier this year, I think as we go into FY27 coming up, I think it's important that we do look at those revenue generating facilities and see if that's somewhere we want to put our priorities at. So it's definitely something as part of a program improvement that we could implement. So it's something definitely that we'll look at.

And then the other thing that was fed up is having more equitable just a distribution between the districts.

Yes, so, but the way we looked at it this year is we started from one, we started looking at different buildings and doing those assessments. We had a prior assessment that already had a lot of projects identified, but yeah, I will work with Ms. Hernandez and Ms. Mack to look at how it comes out. But when we look at the buildings, we're just looking at the building. So if we need to look at the different districts to ensure that the money's getting spread equally, if that's something that I get direction from Ms. Mack to do, then that's something.

We're gonna have to go where the problems are. This is complete maintenance and I think we have, as you talk about the assessment and the priorities, it really is about facing, I think we talk about our public safety facilities and then we talk about how our seniors and others engage. They're looking at it from the lifecycle of the building. Some areas of our city have newer facilities. You can see this is a complete mix. I think it would be difficult, and I do not want to put on the record for you all that if we have an emergency or something that's near failing, that I'm going to at all consider what district is in. I mean, our obligation is to make sure we're taking care of the city. I think as we start to talk about bond projects and things like that in terms of how we do those, I think it makes sense for council to have those discussions, but for repairs, We just need to keep the city going.

Right, but when you're looking at the different districts, some districts have been waiting for renovations. For example, I can give you an example of Arlington Park Shelter. We had a meeting there and the AC was not working. So maybe if we can have a list or something of where they are in the queue to be maintained as far as whether it's electrical, mechanical, or whatever, but maybe we can have a list of where they are in the list

look at what happened with veterans. It was never a conversation about what district it was in. You know, council made the decision. The investment was well over a million dollars. That's the largest project that we've ever done through this fund. It was important for your district. You know, we went back, we looked and the bathrooms needed to be done. We didn't have a conversation about whether we should do shelters or whether, you know, it needed to be in another district. We needed a complete project when we were in it.

So this is strictly just emergency?

This is strictly just it's broken, and we're going to go fix it.

And we're talking emergencies?

Yes. This is really what is driving emergencies. We're about to be an emergency, and we just have never had ongoing funding within the last couple of years to actually have a cycle. We've never really had a plan. It's always been it's broken. We'll try to do this. We'll try to do that. And when the money is gone, the money is gone. So we're just trying to get really strategic about it. And as I mentioned, you'll see the Parks Master Plan is going to start to help you understand how we talk about categorizing some of those products because those are renovations. So this is maintenance and renovations are much bigger than that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Representative Acevedo.

Thank you, Mayor. Randy, thanks for this great list. I am wondering how many projects are going to roll over from year one? Is it the 20th?

in previous assessments from our list of 32 that's what we are aiming and I've kind of pushed the staff to make sure if we say 32 projects are getting done in FY 26 that 32 projects get finished so that's our goal 32 and then 20 for next year and then we'll spend like I said right now we are doing an assessment of all the buildings across the city and We should have 25% of those of the 304, which is about 70 something. And then that will tell us, give us more projects to look at.

Okay, so, yeah, so I guess most of these 32 projects are already finished because we're at the end.

We've only finished six, actually. So we have, I think it's 18 that are under either procurement or actually under construction. So that's the majority. Hopefully within, I'm hoping by August, we'll see those 18 turn from in progress to completed. And then that's when we'll see the big jump from it being, you know, still in queue to being completed.

Okay, so then most of them will be finished within the fiscal year?

I expect all 32 to be finished. Okay.

Okay, I trust you.

One of the conversations we had, in terms of when the team was doing the rollout, it's like with the senior centers, we don't want to have to close. So trying to think about the season, I think last year, we had like the bathrooms for one of the rec center pool, like, okay, we would have to close it down. So they're trying to make sure that we're kind of thinking about those things, too. And so it may impact some of the schedules. And we know just about all of them on the list.

OK, yeah, I did notice that. One other thing, and I told you when you briefed me, I just want to see the amounts for all these projects. I know you're kind of giving us the large amount for fiscal year 26, 5.8 million. For the next year, it's like 4 point something million, 4.1 million. But I kind of want to look at the itemized list of how much each of these things are costing. I think it gives us an idea of okay. Well We're gonna replace a roof and this is how much this roof cost and we could start sharing those stories with our constituents and The amount of time that it takes and the work that we did. I think this is a really good story I just want to have that missing bit of information Okay, thank you so much Any other questions for Randy

Randy, thank you for the presentation. Thank you. All right, Ms. Nunez, let's take item number five.

Item number five is discussion and action regarding ratepayer protection through the city's intervention efforts as utility filings become more frequent and complex.

All right, is there a motion to approve this item? So moved. OK, good afternoon.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Carla Nieman for the record. I'll be opening the presentation, but I'll be handing it off to both Oscar and Robert, members of our office. The purpose of this presentation, Council, is to ask for authority from the Council to change the way that we are filing interventions in the multiple utility filings that we're seeing in the last couple of years. So again what the purpose of the presentation is to really to explain to the public what our role is in all of these filings and how the city takes the position to protect the ratepayers as well as to the role that the city plays in intervening what the city's jurisdiction means when we intervene at these cases at the state level but also under our home rule charter and the authority that the council has intrinsically to set rates at the local level and then I'll have both Oscar Gomez, and Robert Aguinaga go through some of those specific issues. What I wanted to really emphasize for the council and for the public is, what do we mean when we say the city intervenes? It's a very technical term, but it just means we join in the filing at the state level. And these are some of the topics that we are discussing, the public policy decisions that are being considered when we intervene in these cases. So we talk about quality of life, specifically as the rates impact our rate payers, correct? And then we have the discussions about both the electricity and the Texas gas infrastructure. which is something that we hear a lot about whether our utilities can provide safe and reliable utilities to our citizens we talk about economic mobility and what it looks like in terms of both all three utilities being able to expand to provide additional services to an expanding city the public benefit in regards to what it looks like to continue to have that growth And then finally the good governance structure which specifically ensures that the costs that are being requested by both of our utilities are in the best interest of our community. Now what happens if the city doesn't intervene as you all know we have those conversations often and if the city doesn't intervene. A lot of our utility filings will go unchallenged, which means that the local rate payer doesn't have a voice in terms of being represented. Traditionally, I will tell you that the state of Texas does have the Office of Public Utility Counsel, which is intended to serve as the public advocacy group at the state level on behalf of our customers. However, that portion of the Commission doesn't necessarily have their finger on the pulse in regards to what is happening at the local level which all of you do right and understand the impact of a utility filing at the local level folks that are in Austin sometimes miss out on the intricacies and the nuances that are taking place in El Paso and that is why We are very proactive in asking often for the city to intervene in a lot of these filings. We do Handle as much as we can internally, which is a lot of monitoring of cases. However, I When we intervene, we do spend some expense in hiring experts. And we talk about experts. They're not just lawyers. We do hire some lawyers, but we hire engineers. We have financial experts that are traditionally forensic accountants. And then we also hire members of the community who have interest or have an expertise in utility corporate structures and how utilities traditionally function and the best practice of a utility operating in the environment that they operate in, right? IT ALSO GIVES US AN OPPORTUNITY TO NEGOTIATE ON BEHALF OF THE RATEPAYER SO WE DON'T INTERVENE, WE DON'T GET A SEAT AT THE TABLE AND HAVE ANOTHER BITE AT THE APPLE AS I LIKE TO SAY BEYOND JUST THE CITY'S ORIGINAL JURISDICTION WHEN WE NEGOTIATE AT THE PUBLIC UTILITY COMMISSION. What would happen is that these cases would simply go unanswered or they would move forward without without our cities the city's voice At the table once an intervention is filed is passed So you'll hear from Oscar and Robert the deadlines are kind of are very tight in terms of our intervention so if we don't intervene again, the city loses the opportunity to intervene and And I wanted to spend some time talking to you about the work that we've done in the last four years between 2023 and 2026. Specifically, since 2021, we have had 41 proceedings, both at the electric and the Texas gas, mostly on the electric side of the house. Approximately, and this is a conservative figure, we have been able to achieve about $85 million in taxpayer savings. We're missing about $15 million. It's more like $100 million in the last couple of months in additional savings that we've been able to achieve for the rate payer. Now, when we have these conversations, many times we talk about whether or not the city will receive reimbursement of an intervention under state law. we are allowed to receive our reimbursements on our rate cases. So any of those rate cases that we intervene in, we are able to be reimbursed. However, we have what we call CCNs, which we've heard a lot about in the last couple of weeks with the McLeod Generation Facility. A CCN is a certificate of convenience and necessity that is traditionally what a utility files when they're trying to create new infrastructure like Newman 6, A cloud. We saw a few solar and battery-powered facilities that are asking for these types of certificates. That is what we do when we intervene. Those are not reimbursable to the public. However, we believe that it's important to join in those cases simply because if we don't join at the beginning, The costs become exorbitant and what happens when we become involved in a CCA and we're able to either settle or or have The Public Utility Commission set a cap on the amount of expense that the utility is proposing as you all know costs skyrocket from the time that they propose a project at the time they finished building a project and that's the reason why we Frequently request permission to intervene in these cases that now that the cost recovery that you see there at 35% is We're still pending about $2.26 million in reimbursements. What I will explain to you in that sense is that the Public Utility Commission reimburses up to a certain point. In a rate case so for example the rate keys that we just finished with El Paso electric this this year we were only reimbursed up until the middle of of last year. The rest of the reimbursement we won't see until the next rate case so we split the expenses on rate cases so you don't see the reimbursement happen immediately, but it happens over to rate cases and then you can see the rest of that savings here on the breakdowns on those 4 cases that we were able to achieve additional savings. Now, I wanted to also highlight this is what a typical bill looks like. This bill is from 2021. It's a residential bill. But I will tell you is that we have seen in the last four years a significant increase in the number of utility filings. And if you see at the bottom of that utility bill, you see the line item of all of the cases that demonstrates to you all of the interim filings that El Paso Electric has been adding to your bill. So just so you get a sense of what that looks like. Here is a slide that shows you what has been happening from 2017 to the present so in the last 4 years alone we have seen a doubling of the number of filings that El Paso electric has filed so as you can see on average, none of their filings were over 10 except even in 2009 now we're seeing It's only July and in 2026 we're already at 14 filings. What we are telling the public and the council is that clearly El Paso Electric has changed their strategy from how they previously operated and they have decided that it is in their best interest to double the number of filings that they are seeing. and that is the purpose of our presentation here today, to change the way that our office interacts with the utility and the ability to just move forward on a much faster basis to intervene in these cases. I'm gonna hand it over to Oscar now, unless you all have any questions for me at this moment.

We'll wait till the end, Carla. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Council.

Oscar Gomez with the City Attorney's Office. I'll be going just very briefly over the city's jurisdiction over utilities and how they've obtained that authority. So first of all, I wanted to touch up on the city's authority or this concept of original jurisdiction and where it comes from. The Texas Constitution, the Charter, and state laws all support this concept that we have here in this slide. And what it basically does is it allows the city to review utilities and their filings, operations, the rates that they set. But most importantly, it allows the municipality, in this case the city of El Paso, to maintain local control over utility proceedings. I also want to just mention that, like Ms. Neiman said, these proceedings are highly technical and are very extensive. In simple terms, it's like looking at a typical civil case or a criminal case. The process is very lengthy and it's important for the city to act and intervene in the cases because it's been given this authority by the Texas Constitution. I also want to mention here the two other regulators in the state, and that's the PUCT. It's the Public Utilities Commission of Texas and then the Railroad Commission of Texas. The PUCT has authority over electric filings. The RRC in this case has authority over natural gas filings. I also want to mention that when a utility filing begins or wants to set rates or build a new infrastructure, they must file with the city and with the state regulators. And the cases, simply to put it, they run concurrently. It runs with the city and with the state at the same time. And we go through the motions of the case. whether requesting information, deposing witnesses, going in front of a judge and things like that. Those happen at the same time with the city and the state regulators. I also want to mention that although the city has original jurisdiction and has the ability to do certain things that are highlighted here in this slide, we also remain active throughout, participating throughout the filing process with the state regulators. So it's important, like we mentioned before, this intervention, which I'll highlight, This rights and authority that the city has but it's important to intervene and since the beginning because it allows the city to exercise various rights at all cover in the next in the next slide. And so how does the city exercise its authority? Like I mentioned before, the most important thing here to consider is the ability to intervene. This provides the city the ability to advocate for the rate payers locally and within the state regulators. Once we intervene and once we begin this process, we are able to do some of the following here in the slide, like review, analyze the rates that the utility is proposing. At some instances, state law provides the ability to suspend. In this case, I want to highlight the natural gas filings. The city has some ability there to suspend. We also have the ability to conduct hearings locally and then also participate in hearings at the state level. Request, like I mentioned before, testimony records and supporting data. As Ms. Neiman said, the city has the ability to hire experts and at this point is when we analyze and we provide testimony to the PUC or to the RRC in this case to support whatever the city's position in the particular filing is. We also have another, I think it's very important to negotiate settlements and participate in contested proceedings. In this case, we're able to negotiate the settlements and not only will that provide some relief for the rate payers, but it also highlights the ability for the city to advocate for the rate payer as well. And then the last the last item enforce compliance with applicable laws Our city code has a specific chapter just designated to utility regulation so I think it's important for the city to to continue to advocate for its ratepayers and exercises authority that's been given by the the state and After this I'll go ahead and hand it over to Robert. I you know to continue. Thank you

Good afternoon, Robert.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Robert Aguinalda, Assistant City Attorney. So I'm just going to go briefly over some of the more common types of filings that we see in our office from the utilities. So the types of utilities cases that we see most often, the first types are those CCNs, that Certificate of Convenience and Necessity. These are mostly El Paso electric filings, and it's going towards new infrastructure construction. The other type is the general rate cases. This is seen both in EPE and the gas company, Texas Gas. And this directly affects the rates of the rate payers in our customer bills. Any type of interim filing that we might see. This is, again, mostly in El Paso Electric. And these are temporary rate increases from one rate case to the other. GRIP filings. This is the interim version of the Texas Gas. And that does go to gas infrastructure, but does impact rates between the gas rate cases. And then there's an assortment of miscellaneous cases, mostly seen through El Paso Electric, that could potentially have rate impacts depending on their source. So just a brief overview of the types of utilities we have here. The first one, El Paso Electric. El Paso Electric is what we call a vertically integrated utility, meaning that they do everything from generating the power to transmitting the power out to the substations, and then finally distributing it out into homes and businesses. So because they're vertically integrated and they do these different aspects of it, you do see a lot more filings from El Paso Electric because it generates, transmits, and distributes, as well as setting the rates. When we look at El Paso Electric filings, they mostly fit into three categories. The CCNs, whenever El Paso Electric is looking to create some sort of new infrastructure. An interim filing, whether it be GCRF or DCRF, some sort of interim rate filing that comes after the CCN. So when they're trying to collect on the new infrastructure. And then finally, the rate case, which occurs approximately every four years, but could happen sooner. And that's going to set the base rates that the interim rates then add to. So when we're looking at CCNs, and this is going to our ask in the motion as to why we would like that authority to intervene more frequently, we are seeing more of them happen as we go through. And Ms. Neiman showed you that chart as we're going through. We're at already almost more than every one other year, and we're still only in July. We've seen nine CCNs since 2021, and in 2026 this year, we've already seen four, and we are expecting more. It usually costs around $23,000 for the city to intervene. As Ms. Neiman mentioned, these costs are not recoverable. HOWEVER, WE FEEL THAT IT'S VERY IMPORTANT TO INTERVENE ON THESE BECAUSE THIS IS OUR FIRST STEP TO ADVOCATE FOR THE RATE PAYER. A LOT OF TIMES WE WERE ABLE TO INTERVENE AND BE SUCCESSFUL IN EITHER LOWERING THE OVERALL COST OF THE INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECT OR OBTAIN CERTAIN PROTECTIONS THAT ARE GOING TO BE IN PLACE THROUGHOUT THE LIFE OF THAT INFRASTRUCTURE. So this helps lower the cost at the next step at the interim filings and then at the final step at the rate case. So even though we don't get to recover at this stage, this is our first and a very good opportunity for us to secure savings for the rate payers at this first step. The next part to that is the interim filings. These come after the CCN. So once the infrastructure is operational, the utility can become or begin collecting on that. So once that power plant is done, They can file a GCRF, the generation cost recovery, to begin collecting back on that and they can set a rate here. So this is one that we do get to get reimbursed about. The average cost to us is around $28,000 on these. But we do get to have a voice here and intervene to see what type of rate we can set and help the rate payer at this point. So this is our first point where it actually begins showing up on the bill at these interim filings. The turnaround on these can be quite quick as low as 30 days on some and that's why one of the reasons that we are bringing this motion today so that we do have the opportunity to file it quickly when we do get notice so that we can begin working on these as soon as possible. The next one is the major one, the rate case. This one, as I mentioned, comes more or less frequently and about every four years, as I mentioned, but can come sooner. This is the one that sets the base rate case and it takes into account all that has happened prior. So all the infrastructure that's been created, all the new filings, all any type of item that the utility needs to collect back on, is where they file into this rate case and this sets the base level that the interim filings add to as you saw in the customer bill that Ms. Neiman provided. These are much more costly and are much more technical and take a much longer time. This last one with El Paso Electric's rate case cost the city over a million dollars. Those are recoverable. Lastly, there are a number of miscellaneous filings that El Paso Electric typically makes throughout the year. They average around $23,000 on the cost of the city. Some of these are possible that we can be reimbursed through either settlement or by state law. And they range from anything from a new rate type of filing, the most recent that we've seen that we brought to the council as the high-low tariff rate. It could be something that goes to like the system resiliency plan, in which we were able to secure about $20 million in savings for rate payers on that, or even a more typical yearly filing such as the military base discount, which is coming soon. Next to the Texas Gas TGS. TGS is not vertically integrated like El Paso Electric. This one is only to distribution. It does not produce the gas. It does not transmit it over long distances. It really just accepts it and then distributes it into the homes and businesses. And if you see in this picture here in that lower right, that's what we call a city gate. And I believe that some members of council were able to go on that tour with us or TGS showed one of these. where they receive the gas from their supplier. Those are the white pipes in the background to the Texas gas ones in the blue pipes, which then go out to the individual homes and businesses. One of the main interim filings that Texas Gas has is their GRIP, their Gas Reliability Infrastructure. So again, this goes to whenever Texas Gas develops new infrastructure and they can begin recovering off of these between the rate cases through this GRIP filing. State law does not give us much of an ability to intervene on this. The last one that they did file, we used our authority as a homeroom jurisdiction to suspend, and then it ultimately goes off to the Railroad Commission. And then, of course, their rate case that also just recently finished up. These are not as involved as El Paso Electric, again, because it's not vertically integrated. This last one did cost the city around $350,000 on this one. These, again, come much more infrequently, only two since 2021. With that, I will turn it back over to Oscar.

This is our last slides for this presentation. We just want to point out a couple of key takeaways from this presentation, and that is that utility proceedings, as you noticed from this presentation, directly affect the customer's bills. many El Paso's have seen those line items in in the and for example in El Paso electric and the gas gas utility they've increased and there's constantly charges there that we see connected to all this filings that the utilities have done so the next key takeaway would be the city is the first regular for customers within the city limits city limits like I've discussed It's very important that the city exercises original jurisdiction and that's why we're the first regular basically in this type of proceedings. Then number three, without city intervention, customer interest may not be fully represented. As authorities provide to the city, we played on a very important role in securing some protections for the customers. either by suspension of rates, settlements, or just basically challenging whatever rates come forward from the utilities. The last point I want to discuss is the city's participation has reduced requested rate increases. As Ms. Neiman mentioned at the beginning of PowerPoint, There has been significant savings for the rate payers, specifically within the last rate case from El Paso Electric. We were also being able to negotiate some customer's protection as reflected in some cases where there's some cost caps or some other benefit for the rate payer that has been negotiated. Customer protections and then improved overall utility accountability. And with that, we would like to make a recommendation to have council authorize this motion, and that is to authorize the city attorney to intervene in electric and natural gas regulatory filings, including certificates of convenience and necessity and interim filings, which Robert discussed in the presentation, and that is to protect the El Paso rate payers. Thank you, council.

All right, a couple questions. So Oscar, these filings are coming 30 days or less, right? They're coming so quick that you're needing the authority to file.

That is correct, sir. They're coming pretty quickly and from what we noticed and what the presentation demonstrated is that within just only the last year, they pretty much have increased significantly. And that's the reason we're here today, just to be able to act quickly, intervene. we've discussed earlier interventions basically the first step and it gives us the ability to just continue on that process process as far as the proceeding moves forward with the city or the state regulator

Okay, and since 2026, there's been four CCN filings?

That's correct. And we expect a couple of more this year from discussions with El Paso Electric.

And the average cost to intervene is about $23,000? That is correct, yes, sir. And are those reimbursable, those fees, or not?

They're not reimbursable at that stage, but I think the important thing to highlight there as far as the CCNs is, as Robert discussed in his part of the presentation, it's the first step for a utility to build infrastructure. And so it kind of gives the city the first shot at challenging some of these costs that will eventually be recovered through an interim filing or a rate case. So I think that's very important that although the costs are not reimbursable, that is highlighted as far as our authority there for those type of filings.

OK. Representative Chavez.

Mayor, if I could just add a little more to what Oscar was just explaining. The flip side of the coin is also remember that if we don't challenge that expense, we are often successful at capping the expense. But for our intervention, the rate payer would pay more money. So the offset is our expense versus what our utilities look like at the end of the day on that bill, right? That's what we're really attempting to mitigate, the cost that the rate payer is going to bear.

OK. Representative Chavez.

Thank you Mayor. Thank you Oscar, Robert and Ms. Neiman. One of you could maybe answer this question. Do all rate cases result in a rate increase to residents?

MOST OF THE TIME THEY DO IS JUST HOW MUCH OF A RATE INCREASE. THE UTILITY NEEDS TO BE GIVEN AN OPPORTUNITY TO EARN A RETURN AND TO EARN THEIR INVESTMENT AND TO RECOUP SOME OF THE COSTS THAT THEY'RE INCURRING TO PROVIDE THE SERVICE TO THE CUSTOMER. HOWEVER, THE QUESTION IS HOW MUCH CAN THAT INCREASE BE? AND SO IN THE LAST RATE CASE OR THE ONE THAT WE'RE CURRENTLY IN AND IT'S ABOUT TO CONCLUDE There was a request for $85 million. We were able to lower that by $50 million. So there is an increase, but it's substantially less than what the utility filed for.

So the city intervenes, but who is the ultimate decision maker?

At this stage, in the proceeding, like I mentioned before, the cases move through the proceedings concurrently. Ultimately, the PUC, in this case for an electric company, it's the ones that hold the decision ultimately. However, we do have the ability to challenge and even at that stage we also have the ability to appeal if the decision is not favorable. We think that it could be challenged further at the court level.

So the council's authority lies in intervening. That's the ultimate authority we have as a council is to intervene in rate increases, rate cases.

Yes, that's correct. I think the takeaway that I would have from this PowerPoint is that the intervention part of it. Yes, ma'am.

Okay. Of the 14 rate cases from this year alone in 2026, have we intervened in all 14?

I have from my recollection, I believe we've been arena and most of them. Yes, ma'am. And that's because it's been various CC and so we discussed previously. It's kind of the first shot of that. We've had other interim fallings that follow where there's actually going to be some cost recovery from the utility from the rate payers. In that case, most of the cost there will be recoverable for the city. But I believe we've been arena in most of those cases already.

And when we intervene in one of these rate cases, what is the average timeline for those to get resolved?

It depends a lot on the type of case it is. Typically, I would say six months to a year. It all depends on the type of filing, but we've seen six months to a year to get a decision from the PUC.

Thank you. Ms. Newman, could you explain to the public, so when there is a rate case that comes forward and we intervene, at what point do the residents see the rate increase in their bill?

So traditionally, on a rate case, they see it soon after the Public Utility Commission makes the decision, and then it gets finalized. So it's about a year later that they start seeing the rate increase.

Okay, I think it's good for the public to have that timeline in mind. So the 14, for example, for this year, we're not going to go through each one of them, but have they seen any rate increases from those 14 just from this year alone that you know of?

I don't have the particulars in mind, because remember, they're 14 this year, but some of them may have ended. I would have to give you a more thorough accounting of what is already on the bill. The rate case is already on the bill, that we know for sure. The other question you asked, we didn't intervene in one case earlier in the year. EECRF, what does EECRF stand for again? The energy efficiency cost recovery factor. We did not intervene in that filing.

Okay, but the majority of the time we're intervening.

We've intervened in all the rest of the cases.

Okay, thank you. Thank you for the presentation.

Representative Nino.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for the presentation, and I know that previously I've mentioned the reasoning of us having these conversations, intervening, and overall I'm grateful for the question that Rep. Chavez mentioned in regards of who has the final authority. It's either PUC or the Railroad Commission, but then even then, we could still contest it through going through the appeal process. I just have a couple of questions. When it comes to original jurisdiction, who has original jurisdiction within the El Paso Electric Service Territory here in Texas? I mean, we have the city of El Paso, but we also have other municipalities, right, that run through the same service territory. Do the CCNs go through the entire territory, or is it just for the city of El Paso?

So as far as jurisdiction, that will be limited to city limits, right? The city has original jurisdiction within the limits. As far as other municipalities, I'm not sure. It would depend likely on what type of corporate structure or corporation they are. So we are a home rule. I'm not sure regarding other municipalities what type of either they're a home rule. municipality as far as the CC ends go. They affect the whole the whole El Paso electric market right wherever there's the service toward the service territory where they provide service it affects that. Ultimately, we've seen in the past some CCNs where they're for a particular purpose or within the city limits. However, in the last couple of filings, we've seen infrastructure being built in other parts of the state that with their here in Texas or in New Mexico that it will affect Texas Texas residents and customers not with not only within city limits, but the red, you know, wherever the territory expands here in Texas.

But when it comes to doing an actual intervention or intervening, pretty much any customer could do an intervening, right? Yes. Now, the reason why I was asking about original jurisdiction, I was curious to know about the other municipalities such as Coro, Horizon, do they participate in the intervention process as well?

So we've seen, for example, in this last rate case, we've seen other government agencies like the school districts. We also see private entities intervening, some of the large private entities within El Paso and even nationally that have facilities here in El Paso that will intervene and challenge whatever the rate increase or whatever. For example, in this case, El Paso Electric would want to recover. So it's not only the city of El Paso, but other parties within the service territory do intervene in these cases.

And do we collaborate with those other entities who intervene?

They're part of the of the the proceeding. We do intervene. We do engage in discussions with the other parties, specifically when it comes to, you know, some settlement discussions or negotiations to see, you know, what the part the other party's position is in this particular proceeding. Yes, sir.

Okay, great. So a regular resident has an opportunity to intervene just in the same process as city can, the city does it on behalf of the city of El Paso as for its residents, but other entities, school districts can also intervene in the entire process to advocate for their own constituency or residents as well. Is that correct?

That is correct. And the base rate case proceedings, the larger cases that we see typically every four years, that's where we see the most interveners at those particular cases. Maybe at the CCN level or the interim filing, there's not many interveners there. But at the base rate case, there is an increase in interveners at that stage. Yes, sir.

And do we ever share any costs with anyone else who's intervening, such as another entity or school district that decides to do an intervening process? Do we share any costs when it comes to litigation?

So traditionally, the costs are provided to the public commission. So every entity that participates in a rate-making proceeding submits their filings. And then the PUCT decides what expenses are going to be reimbursed. And then all of that gets rolled back into the rate. And then everybody pays out. So it's not necessarily It's a proportionate share of the distribution is what I'm saying that has been brought back to the rate payer. In regards to your prior questions, Representative, historically we see the Texas, there's an industrial group that is often at the table with the city of El Paso, even at the CCNs, which is usually representing Western refining and some of the recycling facilities. The large manufacturers are often at the table with us in the CCNs and in the interim filings, but for the rate cases, you see some of the smaller cities, Vinton and Horizon are often in the case, as is the city of Socorro, and then, of course, EPISD and the county for the rate cases.

Okay, great. And is there cost savings whenever we collaborate with them when it comes to all their, our expenditures of legal?

I wouldn't call it cost savings because they all hire their own lawyers and everybody hires their own experts. I will tell you that in my experience I have seen Most other interveners benefit from the fact that the city usually takes the lead in intervening and providing the best defense or the best arguments to oppose some of the expenses.

Great. So us making the decision to intervene, just like any other filing that we've had this year, we're essentially not just helping El Paso, but the entire region as a whole, because we are advocating also on behalf of them, and we have our consultants, our experts, really advocating for more protections for our community.

Absolutely.

Okay. I have no further questions. Thank you, Ms. Neiman and Omar.

Represent Canales.

Thank you, Mayor.

Very small thing, I think it's important for people to understand, and it was gone over in the presentation, but if we can put it in as simple terms as possible. On any given filing, but let's say in particular on a certificate of convenience and necessity. You know, we've thrown around the acronym CCN a lot. Can you explain what happens from the point where the filing is made with the Public Utility Commission by El Paso Electric? Like, can you walk through the steps for someone from the public who has no idea how any of it works? Like, who sees what, when, and what does the procedure look like?

So in that case for a CCN, like I mentioned before, it kind of works similar to a regular, you know, a civil case, a criminal case.

What is, if I can stop you quickly, what is a certificate of convenience and necessity? Like that's one of the most common filings that we get.

Yes, that is one of the most common filings. And that type of filing, what it does is allow the utility to build new infrastructure within their service territory. In this case, since El Paso Electric serves here in El Paso, whenever they want to build a new facility, either generation, transmission, they'll go ahead and file this type of filing with the city and with the PUC. And that kind of begins the whole process of the case, if you want to call it that way.

And that's to evaluate if that investment is prudent for the system?

That is correct. So that's the ultimate question, whether it's prudent and necessary for the service as a whole, the grid, in this case. And so the actual filing is what begins the case. There's a notice to the public. There's a request for information. That's another step of the actual procedure. There's negotiations. There's a hearing, like I said, very similar to a case. There's a hearing with an administrative law judge, which will provide a recommendation to the PUC and at some future date, the PUC will hear this case. and determine whether to take on that recommendation, approve, deny, et cetera, on the case. But like I said, it moves very similar to that. And there's those various steps there. There's analysis of the cases sometimes run hundreds of pages. They're very technical. That's when the experts come in and help the interveners, in this case, the city. That's pretty much the process, how it moves.

And the administrative law judge who hears that case first, that's a state appointed judge? I believe that is correct, yes, sir. And the Public Utility Commission, the PUC, that's the state regulatory body for electric utilities? That is correct, yes, sir. And how are they in their seats?

I believe they're also appointed

So they're appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Texas Senate?

That's correct. That's right.

OK. So I just, again, I think it's important for people to walk through that process. Now, if it was a very similar process, but if it was a rate case instead of a certificate of convenience and necessity, so then it's a rate making procedure, the city council actually gets to make a decision. locally as the, as the original jurisdiction, uh, regulator. That's right. What happens, uh, as it did in this past rate case, if the city council decides to deny the request.

So in that case, the case will move to the state regulators for appeal. Like I said, typically the utilities file with the city of El Paso and with the state regulator. But at that point, if the city acts to deny that particular case, then it will move to the state. The other thing I just want to mention really quickly is the difference between the rate case and the CCN is that in the rate case, there's actually an effect on the customers. There's actually going to be a charge for the customer's bill. The CCN, at that stage, there's no cost, not yet until there's another filing, an interim filing, which will come down at a later time.

Right, the CCN essentially gives them the ability to incur the cost in the future, but there's no direct cost that comes from it until later.

That's correct, yes, sir.

And so then if the denial from the City Council is appealed to the Public Utility Commission, they go through the entire process that you described earlier of the hearing with the Administrative Law Judge, and they make a recommendation to the Public Utility Commission, who ultimately decides... on the case? That is correct. Yes, sir. And then one more time, you did mention it. Even when the Public Utility Commission, if they make a decision that one side or the other feels is unfavorable, there's additional recourse? What is that?

That is correct. So the city at that point will still have the ability to appeal just to regular court. If at that point we think that the result was not favorable or could still be challenged at that point.

And that appeal is typically with the state district court in Austin?

I believe that's correct.

Okay. Yeah, I think it's important for the public to understand that part of the process. I know it gets a little tedious explaining it because it's a lot of steps. And I mean, even this stripped out a lot of the steps, right? There's a whole back and forth of filings of expert testimony and other arguments that happens over a period of several months sometimes. You know, we had, for example, El Paso Electric in the last rate case come here to present and to answer questions. That's a step that we've taken more frequently in recent years in order to try to get some of the public's questions answered and some of our questions answered about their filings. But again, like I said, I think it's important for the public to understand least how the the process works and who ultimately is making these decisions because you know on all of the the filings at least during my time on the council that have come before us where we had a local decision to make I think in in all cases except for one minor filing the City Council has Voted to deny either to suspend rates at first and then to deny the proposed increases But ultimately those decisions get appealed to the public utility committee Public Utility Commission, I think it's important for people to understand the process. Okay. Thank you, Mary. Thank you.

Representative Acevedo

Thank you, Mayor. So I'm really liking this slide on 7, page 7. It is really startling to see just the last four years alone how many filings El Paso Electric has had. And we're halfway through this year and we're already at 14, right? So we're probably going to exceed that. To just make it simple, can we just focus on this year's 14 filings? Of the 14 filings, every filing that they have filed has potential to increase rates for El Paso Electric customers, right?

That's correct.

Yes, sir. And of those, we usually have an idea of how much each case can increase a bill, right?

Some instances it will be reflected in the filing what El Paso Electric estimates to be that charge in the future for the customer. Yes, sir.

Okay. I'm just thinking through how we can better present this information to the public because it is just really overwhelming. We're seeing so many. And when we've done rate cases in the past, we had a chart at some point that showed this is what they asked for, this is what they got. After we intervene and usually we've been pretty successful over the last few rate cases I think it would be really important to have something like this for like that for these filings were For the ones that we know that they say this is gonna increase the bill by five dollars and this is We're fighting this right now. And then this is what we were able to save I think that would be really helpful for ratepayers to have a better understanding of this very complex process And even if we have, I don't know, some of them, right? But let's say out of the 14, we know seven. Say if we don't intervene in these, these seven things will go through and your bill will increase by a total of $50 because you add all of them, right? Yeah. So I'm hoping we could get to a better place to explain this to people, because right now the economy hasn't been great, right? We've kind of heard that over and over. And I'm wondering how we could be a little bit more transparent with the public on our end. I think we're doing everything that we can, but this could be a good tool for people to access.

So representative, we actually do that every time, every step of the way on anyone, all of these interventions. We've been doing that historically. Yeah. The purpose of today's presentation is to simply notify the public that the filings are doubling in time and we need additional flexibility. But we're not gonna change the way we present these to the public. every time that there's a new filing the council has requested that we do a press release and we explain what the ask is and what it looks like moving forward and then as the case progresses we put out additional press releases as to how the case is progressing so that is not going to change at all and we've been doing that historic no and I continue to do it and I know there's a press release every single time but like for example how much how much has a person's bill gone up because of these filings and then the rate case that happened in the last year

I think getting those numbers out to people so they understand. They wanted $5 increases. We intervene with an average of $23,000 per filing and we were able to make that increase $2 instead of $5. And if there's one place where all of that is tracked rather than press release by press release, I think it would be really eye opening for a lot of people to understand where all that happened. I haven't seen it.

Have you already had it? Let me explain to you what the difficulty is with that, because it's the regulatory lag that we talk about. So many times you'll see the line item, and then the line items disappear when the rate case comes on. So while we do that historically on every rate case, they see it on their bill. And then once the rate case comes and it's finished, a lot of the line items go away, because it all gets rolled up into the rate case. That's not happening today as we speak because of the number of filings that you're seeing. So you're just seeing this tack on and then you'll have to wait for another rate case. So we're doing as much as we can to keep the public informed as the cases are progressing, what the ask is and what the savings is. But unfortunately, you're not seeing a roll up because they just keep adding. So we're attempting to stay ahead of it and we'll have to talk to our strategic communications office about how we change that conversation, but we're doing as much as we can to keep up with the filings and then notify the public of what that looks like. But unfortunately, what we're relaying to you is that you're not gonna see those line items deleted. When they used to delete in the past and you just see a few line items, you're just gonna continue to see these moving forward until El Paso Electric decides that they don't wanna keep filing these cases.

Okay, no, I understand the limitations, and it's nice to see these numbers in terms of how many are happening per year, and then how much money we're spending to intervene. I just wish we could get to, this is how it's gonna impact your pocketbook on a monthly basis, because bills are going up. That's kind of where I'm coming from on this. But I get the limitations.

Representative Lamont.

I actually like that. I wish that there was a way that when every case is resolved, that we would be able to tell how much of an increase each resident has. And do we have any control? I guess we don't have any control over the billing, right? Only water, okay. But yeah, I think that would be important for the public to know. I know there was an outcry over the weekend on the rape, people receiving their bills, and it was just really strong. And I guess the final thing is that El Paso Electric can file the rape case and we can intervene and we can fight it, but in the long run, the final decision is completely and totally out of our hands. I think that's important for people to know that we're not the ones that are deciding, gee, we're going to increase your electrical bill, that it comes from the outside. Thank you.

Representative Chavez.

Thank you, Mayor. And I think it's important to point out one more thing that hasn't been talked about. The fact that we have a lot of people at the city that have been working on rate cases for quite some time, but we also consult with outside counsel to just level us up and make sure that we're as successful as possible as we go to the state and in front of the PUCT. Ms. Newman, can you talk a little bit about what that outside counsel brings to the table?

Right, so historically we've had Norman Gordon, who has been our resident expert. Though he's not in our office, he's been practicing for the City of El Paso for about 50 years now in the utility world. And then most recently, Don Davey, who used to be a member of the office, has gone out on his own and he is now um the heir apparent once Mr um Norman retires which he has threatened to retire several times but we just don't let him um and that's really outside Council wise that is who we we rely on and then the rest of the work is done uh both by Oscar Gomez and Robert aginaga and then a few other members of our office who are starting to show additional interest in this area because it's um something that we are continuing to see increase, and we've had to add another section to our office for utilities because of it.

Thank you, Ms. Neiman. And I think, Oscar, you mentioned it briefly. It's a very complex process. We're learning along the way, too, just because of the amount of rate cases that have come before us as a council has been significant. And so we thank you for that leadership. But we also want to make sure that when we do go in front of the PUCT, since they are appointed by the governor and they are, you know, Commissioners that are very savvy in this in this field. We want to make sure that we have really good representation So we thank you for the work that the legal department is doing here as well as our outside counsel It's important that we protect our rate payers here locally. Thank you

Mayor, if I could just add one more item. We have been working on updating our ordinance that is in place for communications with the utility companies. It's a very old ordinance from 1977. and we have undertaken some of that work recently. We've shared it with El Paso Electric, and then we will be sharing it with the council more recent, right after. It will require additional filing notices with El Paso Electric and Texas Gas to give you additional notification prior to them bringing a case before the PUCT, as you can tell. It's fallen upon the city attorney's office to come to council frequently and brief you while you have not received that equal briefing from El Paso Electric. So we believe that as your authority under the charter, which gives you original jurisdiction, you could require that they come forward and brief you at the time of the filing in front of the council so that the public can hear it from them. And then you have the opportunity to question them as opposed to having to get answers from us. So that will be coming forward here in the next few weeks as well.

Okay, very good. Any further questions for the city attorney's office? Thank you guys for intervening on behalf of the rate payers. We appreciate that. All right, there was a motion and a second. Ms. Nunez?

And we did have Ms. Carvajal sign up, but I don't see her present. She signed up to speak.

Okay. Motion and a second. Would you call for the vote, please?

And we do have a motion made by Representative Limon, seconded by Alternate Mayor Pro Tempiero. Yes, or was it Minho? I heard somebody. Voting session is open. Representative Trejo? Aye. Thank you, ma'am. And the item has been approved unanimously.

And Ms. Nunez, you had it right. It was Representative Limon and Representative Fierro.

Okay, I'll note that.

All right, is there a motion to retire?

Move to retire on EX13X9.

Okay. There's a motion and a second to retire?

All those in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? And the City Council of the City of El Paso may retire into executive session pursuant to Section 3.58 of the El Paso City Charter and the Texas Government Code, Chapter 551, Subchapter D, to discuss any of the following. EX1, the City of Houston versus the State of Texas. Intervenors, City of San Antonio and City of El Paso, number D1GN23003474 and number 032300531CV, section 551.071. Yes to its letter that so it's still quite low. There's a city of a castle cost number 8 p 23 CD 1 32 DCG section 551 0, 0, 71. EX3, Anna Barnes versus City of El Paso and all United States Western District Court, cause number 3, 20B161, section 551.071. EX4, application of El Paso Electric Company to amend its Certificate of Convenience and Necessity for the East Wind to Rattlesnake 115KV transmission line in El Paso County, PUC. 59899 HQ utility dash 94 section 551.071. EX5 application of El Paso Electric Company for approval of an update to its rate schedule 33A and 33B economic development rate writer for a new data center. PUC 59948 HQ utility dash 93 section 551.071. EX 6, Discussion on Economic Development Opportunities in El Paso. HQ number 26-1184, sections 551.087 and 551.071. EX 7, DISCUSSION ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES IN EL PASO. HQ 26-ECON-1078, SECTION 551.087. EX 8, DISCUSSION ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES IN EL PASO. HQ 26-2130, SECTION 551.087. And he X 9 legal consultation regarding employment evaluation process and duties for City Council appointed employees city manager and city attorney H Q number 23 dash 1161 sections by 51.0 71 in 5 51.0 74 it is 3 10 p.m. Thank you. Thank you.

OK, Ms. Nunez, is there a motion?

Okay, all those in favor all those opposed anyone opposed and we're out of executive session at 6 17 p.m Item executive session number one no action for temple

Number two. Motion made, seconded, and carried that the City Attorney's Office be authorized to deny the settlement demand made in the matter of Isleta del Sur Pueblo versus City of El Paso 323-CV-00132 in matter number 3-23-CV-00132 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.

Motion made by Mayor Portim Chavez, seconded by Representative Canales.

Call for the vote, Ms. Voting session is open.

Representative Trejo? Aye. Thank you, ma'am. And the item has been approved unanimously. EX3?

No action.

EX4?

No action.

EX5?

Motion made, seconded and carried that the city attorney in consultation with the city manager be authorized to hire and retain outside counsel and any other necessary consultants and to file an intervention in the El Paso Electrics Company application for approval of an update to its rate schedules 33A and 33B economic development rate rider for a new data center under the Texas Public Utility Commission docket number 59948 in matter number high q utility dash 93 and to take all steps necessary including the execution of any required documents in order to effectuate this authority okay there's a motion in a second Ms. Nunez call for the vote motion made by Mayor Pro Tem Chavez and seconded by Representative Limon

Rep. Chavez?

Yeah, Mayor, just to clarify, I know that we are stating here in the motion for a new data center, but from, I just want to clarify with legal, are we voting on anything regarding a new data center?

No, ma'am, it's not a new data center. Okay, thank you. That's the title of the filing.