City Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome everybody to the City of Farmers Branch City Council study session for Tuesday, June 16th. Our first order of business are public comments. And I have one person signed up to speak. When I call you up, you'll have three minutes to speak. When the light on the podium turns red, that will be your sign to stop speaking. And be sure to state your name and address when you do come forward. The first speaker is Max Broderick.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Council. I just wanted to congratulate our mayor for another term. Going forward, I think this city will benefit from his experience and skill set going forward, and business will flourish in our town. And it's a very unique town, Farmer's Branch. If you look around, it's a lot different than Dallas. A lot different than Carrollton and a lot different than Addison as well. I just wanted to say how much I appreciate the flower gardens, the rose gardens, the fountains. the ice arena, all the things I love about Farmer's Branch. And I was wondering if maybe during the council session this evening we could talk about, or in the future, an update on what's happening with DART and what's happening with the Four Corners, Tom Cusick's situation. I haven't been researching it, and it would be nice to have updates on all those good things that are happening, especially DART. I still see those big buses out there with no people in it. If they could shrink them, it would make better use of their money and our money. But I love the Rose Garden. I love everything about Farmers Branch. It's a very unique city, and congratulations to Terry. He's got a great skill set, great experience, and I think it'll benefit the city in many ways. And thank you very much. Thank you.

That's all the folks that I have signed up to speak tonight, or at least at study session, I'm sorry. So we will move right into item C1, which is to review and discuss consent and regular agenda items. Councilwoman Gonzalez.

Nothing for me, Mayor.

Councilwoman.

Nothing for me, Mayor.

Nothing here.

I'm sorry, and let me just acknowledge Councilwoman Villafranca is remote this evening, so... Councilwoman, do you have anything?

Nothing for me, Mayor. Thank you.

Very good. Councilman Neal.

Nothing on the consent, Mayor. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up is item C2, discuss and receive a presentation on the fiscal year 26-27 budget update, including fiscal outline, revenue considerations, strategic investment areas, and ongoing budget development topics.

Good evening, Mayor, city council members. My name is Jay Patel. I'm the finance director for the city, and today we'll be continuing our discussions on the budget development process for the upcoming fiscal year. Currently, we're conducting internal reviews of each of our department budgets, going line item by line item, ensuring that the request of each of our department's budgets align with the priorities of our city council. Our overarching goals remain the same, to conduct a transparent process for the public, council, staff, all to be on the same page related to priorities to be addressed for the upcoming fiscal year, as well as ensure that our resource allocation aligns with the priority of our city council. We wanna continue to provide you all with these incremental updates to really show you all what we're working on and what step we've reached within the budget process throughout the process. Just a brief overview of what we've covered so far. You'll see depicted by the red check marks on the left hand side of your screen, and some of the topics that are yet to be addressed and discussed with you all. Fees is one of the areas that I'll be presenting today, as well as compensation. And the rest of the areas will be in the coming study sessions. I always like to show this slide from a point of perspective in regards to understanding the portion of a resident's tax bill that comes to the city's farmers branch and the services rendered for that taxable amount. It's also very important to note the exemptions that are provided by our city council to our residents, which are widely used. Approximately 70% of our residents utilize the 20% homestead exemption. and 30% of our residents receive the senior disabled exemption, which the next slide will show how that translates into dollars paid by our residents. So you'll see that this, we've gone over this slide, but it has three categories, your tax rate as well as the net payment for your tax bill, dependent on which exemption that you are provided. It does a great, I feel like this slide does a great job in terms of depicting that the tax rate cannot be viewed in a standalone manner. There's added components to the rate itself, including exemptions, and then the service levels differ for each of these communities, as well as their infrastructure needs. Some have a water wastewater system, some make contract elements of their infrastructure needs. The needs differ, therefore it's hard to look at these rates on a standalone manner, by each community. Sales techs, this line item remains stable year over year. We're within 1% of our collections on an annualized basis, which is leaving this projection flat on a year over year basis, but it's something that we'll continuously stress test. And in the upcoming study sessions, we seek to provide an update on our revenues and expenditures for the upcoming fiscal year. So we'll be sure that we're continuously stress testing all of our revenue line items. Perfect. And then some of the priorities that we've addressed thus far. You'll see on the top left-hand part of your screen is the pedestrian traffic improvements, allocating $1.8 million towards that initiative, as well as the infrastructure needs that will be addressed on the right-hand portion of your screen. The increasing our allocation towards our water wastewater system from $9 million to $12.8 million, bolstering our IT maintenance allocation, our city facilities maintenance, utilizing our existing allocation, but prioritizing that based on the results of our facility study, which was conducted this fiscal year, as well as the community initiatives we seek to incorporate within this proposed budget. Our firehouse theater renovations, we're allocating $25,000 towards that initiative, as well as the community garden and minor home repair programs, which we seek to facilitate within our existing budget. On this slide, I do regret to inform our council members that at this time in our budget process, we're not able to recommend raises for our city employees. And we've gone through this, we've tested every option to this point. And starting in February, we considered up to a 3% merit-based increase for all city staff. That number was later modified to 2% and then later modified to up to a 1% merit increase. Thereafter, we started having tougher conversations in terms of we asked our directors and our deputy directors if they'd be willing to forego the raise for their upcoming fiscal year in order to maximize that amount being provided to our general city staff, which was accepted, but although we're still able to make any additional compensation adjustments within this fiscal year based on where we are right now. It is important to note that public safety step increases do remain in place. Therefore, our public safety officers will continue to receive that 2% to 5% increase based on where they are on their step plans, as well as It's important to note that we're currently finalizing our healthcare costs for the upcoming year. We recently concluded our RFP, and we're finalizing the numbers related to the RFP for the cost for the upcoming year, and we expect those costs to go up for our healthcare. And we intend to absorb those costs as a city, rather than pass those added costs on to our employees, in addition to not providing any city raises, is the intent currently within the budget process. And that brings us to our fee updates that we're proposing for the upcoming fiscal year. The first one is simply a verbiage change. We seek to update the solid waste fee to a landfill closure reserve fee, which much better aligns to the intent of what those funds are to be used for. They're going to a reserve account to facilitate the closure of our landfill. So aligning that fee, the naming of the fee, to more what the intent of the fee was to be. And secondly is a follow-up item for some of our discussions earlier this fiscal year as it relates to our credit card fees. I informed council in late January or February in relation to We are applying the fees that were enacted by city council, the two and a half percent credit card fees, but our existing software does not allow those fees to be applied uniformly. There was a large portion of our customers, which are the auto pay customers in our utility billing system, weren't having these fees applied to them. In order to fulfill the intent of council and ensure that we're applying these fees uniformly, staff did additional research and we found that these fees can be applied through our credit card processor as opposed to our software provider. Although they do require a 3.5% increase, which is the reason that staff is suggesting to increase that fee amount for our utility billing customers from 2.5% to 3.5%. And with that, I'd like to conclude my presentation. I'd be happy to answer any questions you all may have.

Thank you very much, Jay. Councilwoman Gonzalez?

Thanks for the presentation, Jay. Nothing for me.

Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Can we go back to the credit card fee? Yes, absolutely. How is that going to show up on their bill?

So there'll be a separate charge on their bill. Based on our initial conversation, the fee will be a standalone entry on their bill. It'll be on their bank statement. So it'll show up as two separate transactions when they conclude their transaction.

Absolutely. Councilman Reid. Thanks, Jay. Love your presentations. I'm not expecting to have this information now, but if you could provide to us, either through memo or a subsequent presentation, what the cost would be for a 1% or 2% compensation increase for staff?

I can do that. 1%, we're... We're looking at approximately $450,000 for city staff. And that's for all city staff. So $450,000 would be all encompassing for 1%.

Okay, so I assume 2% would be double that?

That's correct. I'm quick like that. Yes.

Okay, great.

There's a slight bit of compounding, but yes, it is very close to that amount. That's correct.

So we're looking at approximately $450,000 or $900,000 to discuss. Okay. That's great. Thank you. Absolutely. Council Member Villafranca.

Yes, thank you so much. I appreciate your report, Jay. This is a little bit concerning. I can see that you have really tried every possible scenario for providing a cost of living raise for the staff. And it certainly is well earned. I think that we're going to have to be a little bit more judicious in coming months and probably for the year and how we spend our money. and that this is really important for all of us to be aware of that. I appreciate your report, thank you. Yes, ma'am, thank you.

Councilman Neal.

Thank you, Mayor, thank you, Jay. I appreciate your honesty and forthrightness with regards to the raise to the employees or lack thereof for this coming year. I know that's a tough decision to be made. And I understand that the healthcare costs for employee will also be increasing. And if you don't have that information now, when will you have the information as to how much is going up? And not only how much is it going up by, please share with us in the future how much employees are paying towards their health care and insurance as a percentage of the overall cost. Absolutely.

And I apologize. Go ahead. No, go ahead. That is the item that we look to address in the upcoming study session is we expect to provide a full overview of the most recent RFP.

It's been my recollection that there was a period of about 10 years where employees didn't pay any of the increases that have been ongoing until now. the most recent year or two, so it's helpful to know that we're maybe considering a catch-up period for that. And just a quick thought or comment on the increasing the credit card fee from 2.5% to 3.5%. Do you have any idea what the value is or what the cost is? overall of that 1% that we would basically take in? Is it 50,000, 100,000? I mean, how do I assign an amount to that 1% increase? And furthermore, is there something that we might be able to do in the budget such that we wouldn't have to increase by 1%? Maybe there's some other avenue that we could do within the budget. As you say, times are tough. Families are struggling across the world. So I just think that every little bit that we might be able to help or find other ways might be something for us to look into.

I completely agree. And the intent of increasing that was primarily just to apply that fee uniformly and fulfill the intent of council why they wanted that fee implemented. With the 2.5%, we face limitations with our software, which excludes a portion of the intended audience for that fee.

So if we were to change software, could we find a better software to minimize those fees? Or have we looked into anything like that? Sure.

So the software in question is our master ERP software. So in terms of all of our financial systems, our utility billing system, it's the integral software for where a lot of our processing occurs through.

Yeah, I understand. I mean even I mean software across the board technology It's just increasing and increasing and I'm just trying to minimize how much we push that down onto our residents to the degree that we can so That's really the only comments and hopefully we can have more discussion in the future on some of these things Thank you very much. I appreciate it. That's all mayor Okay.

Thank you I'd like to ask a follow-up question in regards to that. So I just want to make sure I'm understanding properly Were there some services or credit card processing providers that we were paying 2.5% to? And then some that we were paying a different amount to?

The amount that we're paying as a city is much greater than, I don't have the exact percentage in front of me. I would have to refer to my previous presentation and rerun that analysis because I wouldn't want to rely on it.

Okay. So, in essence, residents are now covering that. It's a convenience fee for using credit card, basically. Okay. And I do the same thing in my business. I charge 3.5% if somebody wants to use credit card. And... I hate to do it, but it's a fact. I just can't continue to absorb these additional charges, and I can't imagine, I have no idea what we take in terms of fees from residents who do pay their bills via credit card. So I don't know, but... If we have that number, it'd be nice to know maybe in the future. I do want to thank you for changing the verbiage on the fee associated with the landfill closure. Because it is not a trash fee and we've never charged for trash in the city. And so that was a difficulty from day one because then people started saying that we were charging for trash. And I just want folks to know and understand that The day is coming. It's still down the road, but the day is coming when the landfill will be full. And so in order to prepare for that, this fee is a closure fee. Agreed. Thank you.

Anything else? Just a follow-up on the credit card fees. I know you don't have the exact number with you, and I understand that, but if I recall... The city right now is paying approximately $600,000 to cover the delta of what we take in and what we pay out in credit card fees. That's distributed across all residents, even those that don't use the convenience. And it also doesn't, like you said, doesn't cover those who have automatic payment of their utilities. So this creates more of an even playing field for those who utilize the convenience of paying with a credit card. Is that a pretty accurate statement?

That is a great point. Yes, those fees would be absorbed by those who are effectively not paying through credit card because of that delta. So it's a very accurate statement. That's correct.

Okay, great. Thank you very much.

Council I would just remind you if you have questions about this or any other budget item to Talk about that discuss those in your one-on-one meetings with the city manager Jay. Thank you very much. Thank you Next up is item c3 discuss and review the farmers branch Manske library policies and proposed updates and determine if any revisions are necessary I

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Robert Diaz, Parks and Rec Director. I'm here to talk through library policies this afternoon. And I have some folks with me I want to go and introduce. I've got Kathy Alvoid. These are all library board members. Paul Schultz and Stacey Baker. And then Michael Lynch is our interim director. And he works for LSS, Library Systems. So we'll go ahead and go through the presentation. And if you have any questions, we've got these folks here to help answer those for you. Just some background. The reason we're bringing these to you is currently we've never taken the library policies to council before, but there has been some changes. The Texas Administrative Code, Texas State Library and Archives Commission, their accreditation requirements changed last fall. And so the focus of those requirements focus on circulation, collection development, technology use, and information security and privacy. All that being said, because of the new state requirements, the library board has gone through these policies. Actually, this has been a project that's been in the works for many years. With these changes last fall, we've kind of pushed through having the board review these policies. That's what we're bringing them to you for discussion today. So really the point of today is kind of to talk through these policies, and then we would bring back a final copy for the council to approve at a later meeting. Like I said earlier, the primary focus areas from the state are circulation, collection development, technology use, and information security and privacy, and that's based on another Texas government code, section 552.124. Currently, and we do show this picture, all the policies are on the website, so people can access those at any time. And typically what's happened is when library and staff have had any updates, they've just updated the website, and then staff refers to all those policies on a pretty regular basis. Just in general, I wanted to just kind of just the overall emphasis of these policies. Basically, we're enhancing privacy protections, formal appeals procedures, streamlining rules of conduct, revising material challenge processes, updating the safe children provision, and then updating some of the interlibrary loan and circulation practices. None of these are major policy shifts. It's just really a lot of cleanup, and that's really what we've been discussing with the library board. And I think we're two. Just to kind of give you an idea of what was in your packet, because I tried to make it as less confusing as possible. There's just a lot of information to kind of throw at you. So the library board did look at these policies at their February and April meeting. At the April meeting, they reviewed those. So you have a copy that's the board reviewed policy. And then we were able to give those to the city attorney. Then they reviewed them. And then you have another version, it's actually the final clean version that's got all the policies from both the board and the attorney's version as well. And so, like I said, I've got library board here and I'll answer any questions you may have.

Thank you very much. Councilman Gonzalez.

Hi, thank you guys for working so hard on these. So this is new, correct? First time this is coming to council?

New coming to council, correct.

Okay. Just if how often will they come? Let's say one of the policies isn't really working out the way the board thought it would. How often will they be able to kind of look it over or from internally?

I'd like to be able to take these probably on an annual basis. So since now we're going to go through the not having the council approve these, I kind of put it in line similar to how we do our standards of care for youth programs. Those usually come to you in the fall for review. We have to do that on an annual basis per the state. So. Because we're doing these at this point in time, say we approve these, the council approves these this summer, we would probably not do it this fall, but probably bring these back to you next fall and we'll get on that pattern where we'll be bringing them to you. So the library board would give them an opportunity to look at any updates over the summer and then bring these to you in the fall, similar to where we take the standards care, kind of keep them on that same rotation.

Okay, perfect. Thank you. And thank you guys for working so hard on that. Appreciate it.

Councilman Bennett.

So September of 25, this was state legislated, right? Correct?

It's through the state archives, correct. Correct.

Do we know for next session if they have anything else that they're going to switch up on us for this specific issue?

It changes, and that's one of the reasons we probably would want to bring these to you on an annual basis. It's ever-changing at the state level in regards to what changes that could be coming down, and we want to keep the policies in line with whatever the state's going to be doing. And not to say we can't bring anything to you sooner. If we see a change that needs to be done, we can always bring it back at any time to have the council look at it. All right, thank you. No problem.

Councilman Reed?

Thank you for the presentation. Thank you for the hard work that you folks do. And I know the Manske Library is well received not only by residents, but people in neighboring cities because of the programs that you do. It's a fantastic addition and shining star for the city. So I look forward to reviewing the policy guidelines and moving forward. Thank you.

Councilman Villafranca.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Robert, for this presentation. Really appreciate it. And special thanks to the library board and all of our boards and commissions that give of their time to make our community the best community it can be. I've spent a lot of time at the library the last couple of weeks, and I am just amazed and impressed by how many people visit our library from everywhere. all ages, all walks of life, and from different cities. We have people from Carrollton, Dallas, Irving come to visit us. So I know you're doing a great job. Thank you to the library board and thank you to you and your team.

Councilman Neal. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Robert. Just real quickly for those who may be watching, just for some added clarification on to what Dr. Burton had mentioned was that these changes are to bring us uh... in alignment with the state library archives parameters and It's nothing that we have to do. It's just something we need to do as a part of the state legislature from September 2025. With that being said, are there any costs involved to the city with the administration or management of these new guidelines? I know we've had the attorney look at it, so there's probably some attorney fees to look over and red lines and stuff. But beyond that, from maybe a management perspective or tracking anything, that the state has put upon us that we now have to do something that we didn't account for?

Not that I'm aware of at this point. Just like you said, the review of the policies, and we'll probably, going forward, need to have that review as part of our process. So that would be... Because we already had policies in place, it's really not adding anything new to the operation of the library. Since these were pre-existing, they just are something council really didn't have any purview over.

Okay. All right. That's all I have. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Anything else?

Robert, thank you very much. Thank you, sir. You're welcome. Next up is item C4, discuss a revised policy pertaining to city responses to repetitive Public Information Act requests.

I get to do this. There are two buttons on this. I'm sure I'm going to get it wrong. All right, so the reason why we're doing this at all, state law allows us to adopt certain provisions in our Public Information Act response policy that are typically operational or administrative in nature. The only reason why we need council involvement is because the law that allows us to adopt this tweak basically or pretty much says that the council must approve it, and so staff can't do it operationally. And so this is a rather long PowerPoint, only because that's what happens when you have AI help you out. And so I'm gonna skip through a whole bunch of it. Public Information Act, as you all know, gives the public, any member of the public, the right to ask us for thorough and comprehensive records. We have certain limitations in connection with that which is confidential or that which we can withhold from disclosure under certain circumstances. But by and large, the basic rule is that every piece of paper, every electronic record, and every file we have is public information, subject to those exceptions. The one thing that, wow, I went too far. So, historically, Public Information Act requests were fairly simple. You know, you pull out the file, you take the document out, you put it on a copy machine, then you make it available to the requester. Nowadays, it's much more complicated. Not only has the volume of Public Information Act requests over the past five years or so increased tremendously, but the complexity is different now. It's not just a piece of paper anymore or a paper file. Now it's electronic records, texts, social media postings, video records, things like that. Some requests can involve extensive staff review, thousands of pages, hours and hours of time. Come on. Recently we have received dozens of Public Information Act requests. We have in one specific instance received about a dozen requests from one specific requester. It has involved hundreds of pages and easily over 1,000 pages of records in response, and it has involved hours and hours of staff time, and it's the same requester, and it's not just one request, it's at least a dozen requests, along with follow-up requests. We have an obligation to respond, and we're not going to fail to respond, Our failure to respond has certain legal consequences that we can talk about if you want to, but I will say they're not good for the city. The problem is that under the Public Information Act, the legislature, which does not really like cities very much, authorizes, they establish a schedule and they authorize the Attorney General's office to impose a cost schedule. We are only allowed to recover or to charge 10 cents a page if the request is less than 50 pages. If it exceeds 50 pages, we can charge 15 bucks an hour for staff time in responding to it. If it's IT information, if it involves data manipulation or data transfers, we can charge $28.50 an hour, plus we can charge overhead of 20% of whatever the other charges are. It was less than 50 pages, it's only 10 cents a page. If the requester says, I don't want it in paper, I want to see it in electronic format, we can't even charge copying charges. This is far less than what we actually incur when we respond to Public Information Act requests in terms of staff time, in terms of equipment, materials, labor. It's a losing proposition, but in theory, the records belong to the public and we are here to serve the public. If the estimate of costs will exceed $100, then and only then do we have the ability to ask the requester to provide us with a deposit up front of the estimated costs. And there's a series of steps that we have to follow to even do that. But if we do, then we can get the costs up front, then we can do the work, provide the information, and then recover some of what we actually incur in terms of labor, materials and overhead. The problem is the statute allows us to adopt a rule that only the Council can approve that allows us to impose certain limitations for repetitive requests from the same requester. The only reason why, again, we're asking Council to do this is because the statute does not allow staff to do it operationally. It has to be approved by the City Council. If a requestor is consuming more than 36 hours of personnel time within any given fiscal year, or 15 hours within any given month, then we can, we can't refuse to provide the records. We can simply adopt a couple of extra procedures that ensure or guarantee some kind of recovery. The policy draft that is in your packet, shows you what the rules or the new provisions would be. We'll track staff time. Once we hit 36 hours or 15 hours within any given month, regardless of the number of pages or the number of hours spent, we can ask the requester to provide a deposit up front. They got 10 days to pay it, they pay us the money, we do the work, we send them the records. We can request a photo ID under some circumstances, but we can ensure that it's the same person, not using a third party to ask for additional records from the city. These rules do not apply to 501 organizations, it does not apply to news media, does not apply to elected officials acting in their official capacity. It's a fairly simple policy amendment. It's not going to cure everything. It's not going to allow us to recover our actual costs. It just gives us the ability to every once in a while make sure that if we have somebody who's giving us request after request after request to make them pay for it up front, they'll still get the information. They just got to pay for it up front.

Questions? Thank you. Councilman Gonzalez.

Are there any other cities that have adopted this making people pay?

All cities I shouldn't say all, my experience has been that most cities will in fact, when a request exceeds 100 bucks or 40 pages or becomes, when one request becomes voluminous, then they will look at doing a statement of expense and asking for a cost deposit upfront. In terms of repetitive requests, I shouldn't say it doesn't happen often because it really kind of does, but I'm not familiar with any city that has adopted a policy amendment like this that imposes, it's not a stop at 36 hours, it's just, step back and ask for the money up front.

And for our staff to have to estimate, I mean I know it's kind of random, Now are they taking more time having to try to estimate how long it's going to take them to research this, to try to come up with the cost?

That's a good question. They're going to do the work anyway, one way or another. And so generally it's a little bit more time to come up with a statement of expense. It's not extreme, but at least they're going to do it anyway.

Right.

And so I don't believe it. I think staff would probably be a better person to ask about that, but I don't think it's extreme.

Okay. Yeah, I'm just kind of concerned that now we're adding an extra step to them.

I think that we probably already do this. I mean, I think tracking staff time is a fairly simple process. Staff uses an internet-based service called GovQA. Requests are sent in by email through this facility, through this online system, and the system will provide the ability to, I believe, to track staff time. In terms of getting an estimate of the number of pages, we're gonna have to do the work anyway. Generally, if it involves multiple departments or different areas, then staff will circulate that to the departments, get an idea about how many pages are involved, and they'll get the input and then respond through GovQA.

All right. Thank you.

Councilman Bennett.

I mean, if they're going to ask for 12 different PIRs, then we need to cover our expenses, unfortunately. So although we may not like it, it is the cost of doing business.

It is a constant thing. Actually, that's something that most cities recognize, all cities now recognize. I mean, we've gotten 150. I think we get roughly 150 or up to that much every month. PD gets more than that. In most cities, it's tremendous. The volume of records requests is tremendous. And it's not just limited to paper copies. It includes videotapes and body-worn camera videos, things like that. So we will never recover the actual costs that we incur in responding, but this is a public service that we have an obligation to provide by state law. And our refusal to do it has, like I said before, certain sanctions that we don't want to address ever, ever. So, yeah, this helps a little bit, not a lot, but a little bit. Councilman Reed.

I understand the requirement to provide this information and we urge transparency, but I do feel, especially over the last couple of months, there's been usage of the requests that have been more punitive towards the city and members of staff and what have you. I think it would be a great tool to eliminate frivolous requests. Because there are people taking advantage of it to attack someone or a group or what have you. And the staff does put a lot of work in it. You look at four hours of IT time, because most of these requests are text records, phone records, email records, so they're all IT-based. So four hours of IT work right there covers that $100 threshold.

Oh, easily.

Not to mention anything else. So I think anything that we can do to... recoup the costs as much as possible and try to limit frivolous requests would be beneficial for all parties.

I can't agree more. There is a case out there that specifically says that it involved a school district in the Hill Country that specifically said that the Public Information Act can be used by citizens to harass the city. It's recognized by case law and by state law. Lately, staff has been under tremendous strain taking their functions away from core city services to addressing these kinds of things. I don't know if it's cyclical or if it's just time of year. human nature, I don't know, but it has been a tremendous strain on staff. We can't eliminate frivolous requests. We have to address all of them equally. If they ask for records, we have an obligation to respond, and if they're trying to harass us, and sometimes we believe that they are, maybe. All we can do is live with it. We don't really have a choice. This policy change only addresses repetitive requests from the same requester. If we've got 50 different people that gang up on us, we don't have a choice. And so for a lot of cities, you know, the Public Information Act request over the years has evolved. Didn't used to be quite as its use wasn't quite as widespread. But, you know, after the pandemic during and then after the pandemic, oh, my gosh, it's tremendous. But this is the right that citizens have. And we acknowledge that and recognize it and live up to it.

OK, so the application of of a fee that is. only for repeat requesters, or can it be for first-time requesters as well?

No, no, no. The fees are the same. The fees don't change, this simply allows us to ask for, to submit a statement of expense and allow for a cost deposit up front before we undergo the work. Ordinarily, we can only do that under limited circumstances if it comes out to be more than 100 bucks. If we have multiple requests and we haven't received payment for prior ones, we still have to, at this point, we can say we're not going to give you these records until you pay for other requests that you still owe us. But the rates are just the same, and the workload is still pretty much the same. It's just we have the ability to stop and say, you pay us first, and then we'll do it.

That way we're not going to get caught in the... And perhaps I obviously phrased the question incorrectly. So is the upfront payment request only for... people who've made multiple requests, or can we apply it to even an initial instance?

We can only apply it to someone who, or to a request that involves an estimate of more than $100. If it's a repetitive request, Joe, the policy change will allow us to impose an upfront payment, regardless of the estimate. I mean, if it's 50 bucks, we can ask them for the money upfront.

Okay, so just seeking clarification. So one person makes one request. Yes. We know that the fees will be the fees. Can we request, even if it's the first request, the estimate's going to exceed $100, can we request the payment be made up front, or are you proposing that we only do it for people who are making multiple requests?

As it stands right now, state law gives us the authority, if one request comes in, the first request from one requester, and the estimate for response will exceed $100, then and only then can we ask for a cost deposit upfront. If the requester has submitted multiple requests, that's gonna take more than 36 hours a year or 15 hours a month, regardless of the number of pages or the cost estimate, we can ask for, on an ongoing basis, payment of everything upfront, regardless of the $100 limit. That make sense?

Understood.

Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Villafranca?

Yes, thank you so much, David. I appreciate that update. Are there any other levers that can be placed? You know, for the record, I want to clarify that we're able to charge them $15 an hour, but our cost is much, much higher than $15 an hour. Our city attorney refused all of these and our city attorney is earning more than $15 an hour. As are our staff members. And so I really wanna make sure that we are looking at all of the levers possible because now for the loophole people, Now we can create, I mean, are we able to require that people present an identification before we're able to release information to an actual person?

Now, this policy will allow us to ask for photo ID so that we can make sure that it's the same person submitting multiple requests. But even the statute has an out in that regard. If they just pay the money up front, then they don't have to give us an ID. But this gives us the opportunity to ask for photo ID to verify that it's the same requester.

Are there any other levers that we can place?

We have a policy in place now that is a part of the agenda packet. That's pretty much as far as the law will allow us to go. There really aren't many. The legislature doesn't like cities, but this is a benefit. I mean, it's part of public service. It's part of the job that we have to do. So this is as far as we can go. Very well.

I feel badly for the city staff. I mean, they are so taxed. There are like thousands of pages that are being requested, and the city staff is being taxed, which means that the work of the city is not being done because of people... Just last council meeting, I requested to know how many public information requests have been made in two months' time. It was 266, which seems like a very large number. I appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you.

Councilman Neal.

Thank you, Mayor David. I like the direction we're going here. I'd just like to follow up with a few questions. Do we have any historical breakdowns, say, over the past, say, three years of requests excluding the public safety? Do we have any data to show us excluding public safety?

I don't know if it exists. I don't have it with me, though. I've not asked that question.

Okay. And... You mentioned that these costs and fees are controlled by state law. Is that correct? That's correct. It is just our option to do the estimating of how much time would need to be spent and apply those rates to that time. Is that correct?

You're talking about the proposed amendment to the policy? Yeah. State law doesn't... The schedule that you see on the screen right there is one that is imposed by state law and adopted by the Attorney General. It's published in the Texas Administrative Code. This policy amendment is authorized by state law, section 552.275 of the Public Information Act. Chapter 552 of the government code. It's not something in the attorney general's cost schedules, the administrative code. This is something that state law allows us to adopt if we want to. It doesn't change the rates that we can charge and the things that we can charge for. It just gives us the ability to ensure that a repetitive requester will pay for everything up front, that we're not stuck in the hole even farther than we already are. That make sense?

Yeah, I'm just thinking if, as Councilman Gonzalez mentioned about our staff having to do an estimate that's going to take X amount of time, once it reaches some threshold, we're then allowed by these regulations of the state to apply $15 an hour labor charge, data manipulation charges. That's correct? Am I understanding that right?

Yes.

So they could either overestimate or underestimate And how would we address that if they were to overestimate something? You then charge this person and you find out it's less. Is the fees refunded to them, the difference? Yes.

Actually, the state law contains provisions that deal with that. If we undercharge by less than 25%, we can tell the requester that we need the extra difference after we produce the records. If we overcharge, then obviously we refund the money. If we overcharge by too much, then the attorney general can get involved in that.

Okay, and if we get to the point where the requester has to, or we've asked them to make a deposit or a full payment, can they make that payment in cash?

Sure they can.

Or any other tender, PayPal, Apple Pay, credit card, all those would be acceptable?

Gold and silver, no, not gold and silver. Whatever lawful means, whatever means we accept payment for.

Okay, and so when it comes to making a payment, we're asking, according to this new red line policy, we're asking for a photo ID, is that, or not in all cases, or like how can we get around having to show a photo ID?

The policy change applies for repetitive requests from the same person.

Repetitive requests from the same person?

Yes, one from a requester who's taking up, let's just say more than 15 hours in a given month of staff time. If they're asking for more than 15 hours worth of time through a series of requests, at that point, we can say, we need to see flood-awaited to verify that you're the same person that's been asking us for all this information. Under those circumstances, with this policy, we can do that. They can get around that.

Are we allowed to ask for a photo ID regardless? Anyone that submits a PRR, we'd like to see their ID to see who? No. No? We cannot ask that or we can?

No.

You cannot? Okay. Yeah. Okay.

No. We can only ask one question of a requester, actually, if the request is vague. We could ask them for clarification.

I'm glad you mentioned that goes right to my next question here. For the benefit of council as well as those here, can you explain our response to such a request that is so wide ranging and is not narrowly focused in any way? What sort of parameters we have to ask them to narrow or clarify? What sort of guardrails do we have there? Because if someone just asks for...

all my emails for the past ten years and i mean it seems a little bit much so it is we have any options as far as narrowing uh... the request but the option really the option will fall back on the request of the request is a little bit as if it's more than a hundred bucks and we're going to ask them to do a cost deposit were required to provide them with a statement of expense for estimate of expense cost estimate The form and the language and the information contained in that cost estimate is dictated by state law. We give the option to the requester to narrow the scope of their request or pay the deposit. We give them options to... except paper copies or electronic versions. Electronic copies are cheaper. You don't have to pay for copying charges. But we do give them the option to narrow their request. If the request is vague, we can ask them for clarification. But if it's clear what they're asking for, there's no point in asking for clarification. We know what they're asking for. I've had some requests that have involved cost expenses of thousands of dollars. They asked for so much information that I had one once where the estimate was like a little over $7,000. That was from a law firm and they just paid it. But we hadn't produced the records, we didn't have a choice.

Right, so taking away the cost aspect of this, somebody could ask for every email ever sent By anyone in the city, if they're willing to pay that cost.

Yes.

My question would be, can we not reply to the core requester and say, is there a specific subject matter you'd like to see in those emails? We cannot put any guardrails around any of that.

Only allow to ask them for clarification if the request is vague. If it's clear what they're asking for, we really can't.

Okay, so there's no way to us to request that the requester narrow their request, only if it is vague.

If it's vague or if it exceeds 100 bucks.

Yeah, I'm trying to eliminate the cost. It might be somebody out there with deep pockets willing to pay whatever.

I got you. Because it's going to take a lot of time and a lot of effort, we don't have the ability under state law to ask them to narrow the scope of their request. We give them a choice. If they want to, if it's going to cost a certain sum of money in the cost estimate, we'll say that. But if they choose not to, then okay, it is what it is.

Let me switch a little bit direction here, and that being on the repeated requests. If a different person asks for the same or has the exact same request, a different person How is that handled? Is it just the same as the other original request? We've already done all the work.

It should be cheap.

That's what I was wondering. Are we going to charge them the same amount, or we've already received payment for such information that we no longer have to charge them for that?

We'll charge them actual costs. If it cost us, if it took 15 hours for the first request, but we've already got the information resident on a hard drive, it's going to take 30 minutes for the second one, and we're not going to double charge.

Okay, so you're not going to charge that second person for the exact same information that was requested.

Exactly. Now, if the same requester has asked for the same information again a second time, we can refuse to produce it because we've already given it to them.

Right, right.

But if it's somebody else, no.

And so in that scenario, if... somebody asked for that a record they made a request and they were about to make a subsequent request that is identical, then we would have them pay twice or not?

You mean if the same requester asks for the same information a second time? We can refuse to produce it by sending them correspondence that says we've already done this.

Okay, and if they were to slightly tweak it, would we have to start all over again?

No.

Like if they change the date range or instead of this month, I want that month or...

We charge actual costs, actual personnel time.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. All right. Thank you, David. That's all I have right now, so I appreciate it.

Well, I didn't expect a Spanish Inquisition.

Well, let me try to put a little clarity on some of this. Sure. So I recently had a request that was made of me, and I turned in to you 1,430 pages of of documentation that needed to be copied by a staff member, reviewed by the city attorney, redacted by the city attorney and myself, I don't get paid to do any of this, and then another series of copies after redaction to go to fulfill the request. This took many, many hours of staff time to execute.

The time that you and I put into it was the tip of the iceberg. Correct. Given the idea what staff had to go through to get that done.

Correct. but yet we had to do it in order to fulfill the request. There was also, I turned in another 98 pages of text messages for a very broad request that was made by a resident, or excuse me, that was a request that was made. I don't know whether it's a resident or not, doesn't matter. Whoever makes the request, resident or not, is entitled to the information. Now, you mentioned that We don't have recourse, but we do, because if a request is so broad in nature, we can ask the Attorney General for an opinion or a ruling as to whether we have to fulfill the vague nature of the request. Sometimes they will seek to specify or they'll provide the guidance of whether something is overly broad or not.

Um, state law allows us to ask the attorney general for an opinion with regard to whether or not we are entitled by law to withhold disclosure if certain exceptions under the act apply. I don't know if we can just go to the AG and say this is a whole bunch of work. We don't want to give it out. Can you tell us if it's too broad?

It's not that it may be too much work, but it's also important to know that council members are responsible for retaining documentation for two years. Yep. And that's a rolling two years.

Yep.

And so if somebody made a request of any one of us today, they could go back to two years in 2024.

Well, understand the difference. As temporary custodian of records, each of you are required to maintain for a period of... whatever the records retention requirements are, usually two years, information or documents that you have in your possession. If the city has a copy of it, then you're relieved of your obligation. Your obligation is to retain for generally two years. If you still have, though, something that's longer or older than two years, you still have it, and you still have to produce it. If you don't have it, then you haven't violated the records retention requirements and your obligations as a temporary custodian.

So as I provided to you going back, well, for a total of four years. Thank you. And because I simply don't have everything, even though I had a request that was made that went back to 2016. Yep. Okay. If you got it, you got it. I'm just saying this for the benefit of the audience and those watching to know that these requests have been made and they're being made repeatedly, and it is our obligation to fulfill them.

Yes, it is. We simply don't have a choice. Like I said earlier, we will never recover the actual costs of compliance, and a lot of the costs that we actually incur are simply not recoverable by law. This is a right that the public has. For a lot of cities, we recognize that this comes with the territory. It's part of the cost of doing business.

It is a right that the public has. However, I will say that some people have probably abused that right and are using the privilege to request these documents as a punitive step towards inflicting... some type of mental stress on others.

The problem is that staff winds up being the primary victim. You know, innocent bystanders, you know, they're diverted from their core functions in providing municipal services. But the law allows it and we comply. Yep. Thank you. Thank you. All right, thanks. All right.

Next up is item C5, receive an update from the mayor and council members regarding board liaison information from outside organizations and other meetings attended. Councilman Gonzalez. Nothing for me, Mayor. Councilwoman Bennett.

I had attended two TML things, personnel records and, ironically, Public Information Act requests and fundamentals of employment law for cities.

Councilman Reed. Nothing for me. Councilwoman Villafranca.

Yes, thank you so much. I had the opportunity to attend the Carolson Farmers Branch ISD board meeting where I was able to visit with swearing in of Cynthia Noda and the swearing in of Carolyn Benavidez. I also attended the Builders of Hope 2.0 community meeting on June the 4th. I had my office hours, attended self-defense class, and I also had the wonderful opportunity to visit the Brinks Home Security ribbon cutting in District 3. And it's a great, great blessing to be able to have Brinks. They could have gone anywhere. They could have gone to Irving. They could have gone anywhere. And they chose to stay here. For those that don't understand the importance of this, 70% of our tax base comes from businesses. And they are, as far as I know, the largest provider of sales tax for our city. They did a great job on the build-out, and we're just really happy that they're here. Right now, I'm attending the Raise Your Hand Texas retreat and conference here in Kerrville, Texas, and I hope to be able to come back with some great information about all of the things that we're working on. I also want to congratulate Mayor Lynn and have a slice of cake for me. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilman Neal.

Yeah, just a couple of things. Had a couple of meetings with Firehouse Theater, one of which was with their director, David Moore, who I think will be speaking a little bit later on today, and I'll just let him cover those items instead of sharing them twice here. I also attended the Carrollton ISD swearing-in ceremony and attended a mayor's candidate meetup at the Oak Brook HOA. Thanks.

Thank you. So I participated with I-58 and their food giveaway for the month of June. I had the pleasure of being a part of the opening ceremony for the Korean Adaptive Sports Association annual sporting event. It's basically an equivalent to a Special Olympics that took place at our Dallas Stars Multisports Center. And there were about 500 participants involved in that from all over the country and even all over the world. Linebarger, which is our city collection attorneys, had an event that the city manager and I attended, and we got to meet folks with Linebarger and just talk about tax matters. The Metroplex mayors had their monthly meeting, and we heard a presentation on the use of social media by cities to tell your city's story, and some very good information was covered there. Of course, as Councilwoman mentioned, the Brinks Home Security had their ribbon cutting for their new office that's out at Park West. I had several meetings with residents regarding code issues that they've had. Builders of Hope had their meeting here at City Hall to talk about their program to new and interested folks. The Council of Governments had their annual General Assembly last Friday. The city manager and I attended that. The purpose of the meeting was to elect a slate of officers and approve bylaw changes. There were 140, I think 144 cities that attended that, and they're all voting members in the Council of Governments. Sunday, I had the pleasure of having lunch with the Dallas Tap Dazzlers. This is an article that appeared in the paper on May 31st. I just happened to see it, and the Dazzlers had already reached out to me to come The founder of this organization who lives here in Farmers Branch, Frances Dempsey, was retiring. But she started this group of senior ladies to dance and tap dance. And I'm telling you what, it was really fun. I'm so glad that I was invited. What a great group of women. I just had a blast with them at lunch. And then the MetroCrest Hospital Authority, we had our monthly meeting today, and we were actually at the Jewish Family Services in Addison and got a tour of that facility. And so that was that. It was very interesting to see what they do. That's all I have, so next up is item C. Mayor?

Yes. I almost forgot to mention that on June 6th, I did attend, as a representative of the city, the Spark the Stage karaoke kickoff at Firehouse Theater. It was a great event. It was well attended. I had to pivot a little bit. It was originally gonna be outdoors, but then the skies opened up just as the event was to start. But being... being the flexible folks that they are. They moved everything indoors and went off without a hitch. And I'm going to tell you, you missed an incredible evening. I sang karaoke twice.

And I understand you brought the house down, just to add.

I have a voice for the newspapers. So, and Brian from staff attended as well, and he did a fantastic rendition of Heard It Through the Grapevine. So it was a great event overall, and it was a great fundraiser for Firehouse Theater.

So I will direct the city manager to see if we can get a copy of videotape, and perhaps we'll show that at a future meeting.

I'll be selling autographed pictures, actually, out in the lobby after the meeting, so...

All right, next up is C6, review and discuss future agenda items. Councilwoman Gonzalez?

Nothing for me, Mayor.

Councilman Bennett?

Nothing for me, Mayor.

Councilman Reid?

Yes, I had requested that we put on the agenda a review of the monthly calendar. I was reminded by a resident today that there's a few events that we might have overlooked for some open months, so I just want to bring it up for discussion with Council.

Very good. Councilman Villafranca?

Nothing at this time. Thank you, Mayor.

All right. Councilman Neal?

Nothing, Mayor. Thank you.

Okay. I don't have anything for this evening. So with that, we will recess until 6 o'clock out here or resume here at 6 for the regular meeting. Thank you very much.

Mayor, did you want to say anything?

Oh, let me just add. The agenda was printed, and it's listed item E as a reception and front lobby area. We're actually going to do that on July 7th, prior to the July 7th council meeting. So just be aware of that. So thank you. We'll see you back here at 6.