City Council - Special Meeting

Welcome everybody to the City of Farmer Springs special called council meeting for Tuesday, June 23rd. First item of business are public comments. I do not have anybody signed up to speak at this time, so we'll move right into our regular agenda. Item C1, consider approving Resolution 2026, that's 089, canvassing and declaring the election results for the June 13, 2026 City of Farmers Branch runoff election for the Office of Mayor in issuing the certificate of election and take appropriate action. Okay. I'll entertain a motion.

Mayor, seeing no presentation by the city, I move to approve resolution R2026-089. I second, Mayor.

Thank you. We have a motion and a second. If you would, please indicate your vote accordingly. Oh, I didn't see it over here, okay. Motion passes, thank you very much. Next up is item C2, conduct city council orientation for newly elected and existing council members and review governance, legal, and ethical responsibilities and requirements.

Hi, good afternoon, mayor and council. Jeffrey Ross, director of human resources. Here to talk with you today about harassment and hostile work environment awareness. We're actually right in the middle of doing this training for the rest of our staff this week. And by the time we're done over the next two weeks, we'll have given this presentation about 20 times. So we're going to move fairly quickly through it. and we'll be available for any questions that you may have about it. So the way that I usually like to start is by talking about some of the data that always represents this is always kind of a very real threat to any organization and it's no different here at the City of Farmers Branch. And so some of the data that we have that's been recently updated since 2025 Is there were 88,201 claims of discrimination, harassment, retaliation, things of that nature made to the EEOC, which is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. They were made to them in 2025. This is the federal arm of the government. that takes in all complaints related to these sorts of things coming from the workplace. Now, we look at that number, and that's a pretty big number, and if we compare it with some information from a separate study that was done, 85% of people who experienced this sort of thing They never file a formal charge either with the EEOC or the Texas equivalent, which would be the Texas Workforce Commission. 85% of people never file a charge and 70% of people never report it ever, even internally to a supervisor, a colleague, anybody. They just choose to live with whatever's happening with it. And when we look at some of the data from the previous year, so the EEOC recovered $660 million over the course of the year, and most of that started with people making jokes, making comments, saying things that maybe they shouldn't be saying, doing things that they shouldn't be doing. That's where all of that comes from. There was an increase in retaliation claims specifically in the last year, and that's due to a number of different reasons. They rose pretty considerably. There was also a pretty big increase, a three times increase in religious discrimination claims that were made. And whenever the EEOC does get involved with these sorts of things, they have around a 97% trial success rate. So I always open this presentation, no matter who I'm giving it to, with this data because it helps to kind of put into context the reason why it's so important to talk about these sorts of things. Okay, so another question that we always like to answer as part of this specific presentation is oftentimes we hear our elected official employees. Are they not employees? What are we considered? So really under most of Most of everything that's out there, you're considered an agent of the city. And that's the term that's used in all of the materials. So agent can be found in a number of different things, including Texas Labor Code, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Basically, it's anybody who represents the city in an official capacity, some type of official representation of the city. And it's everybody from employees to governing bodies is considered an agent. So at all times, you should consider yourself an official representative of the city. And I'm just going to kind of go quickly through this, your code of ethics and the city charter. Just like the city employees, we have a personnel policy manual that we follow that has all this different stuff in it. You all have your own code of ethics along with the city charter that kind of outlines some of these things for you all to follow. Same thing with the code of ethics. It covers a number of different things. There's also some state and federal laws that no matter what our role is here, really, no matter what level we hold, no matter what we do here, we're all subject to very specific things that we need to be aware of. Some of those things would be Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which is the federal law that essentially establishes all of the protected classes. It outlines things for hospitals. work environment and discrimination and harassment and things of that nature. There's also things known as the Americans with Disabilities Act, protections for pregnant workers, protections specifically for people age 40 and older. And then the state laws, there's some specific laws in Texas to be aware of. And most of the civil rights laws in Texas, as it relates to the workplace, this mirrors a lot of what's in the federal language. So you'll see a lot of the same language. There's also the things covered by the Texas Open Meetings Act and the Texas Whistleblower Act. So there's generally two types of harassment that we're on the watch for. And the first one is called quid pro quo, and that's like for this and that, and that usually involves some type of trade for something and, you know, if you do this thing for me, I'll do this thing for you sort of thing. And then the other one, which is the most common type that happens in any organization really, is called hostile work environment. And that's whenever somebody says or does something that's discriminatory, it's harassing, it's retaliatory to another person and that person feels offended by it or they're feeling like their job is being disrupted or impacted by it. Oftentimes these things start not intentionally hostile. They start maybe as just as a comment or a joke or maybe even an expectation that somebody might set for somebody. And then it escalates from there and gets progressively worse. So to qualify, what the EEOC is going to, or the Texas Workforce Commission is going to look at, for it to be a hostile work environment, the behavior has to be based on somebody's protected class under the law. And those protected classes are going to be things like race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability, or somebody's genetic information. And it has to meet a couple of different standards. So first it has to be really that the behavior that's happening is severe enough to disrupt the employee, to make it harder for them to do their job, to make it feel like maybe even they need to quit because the behavior is just so severe. And then the other is the behavior is pervasive enough to form a consistent pattern. And that's what that term pervasive means. It means that it keeps happening, keeps occurring, keeps going over. Even if it's been said, hey, let's not do this thing anymore, it keeps happening. That's kind of the definition of pervasive. And this is an or situation with these two standards. It can be either severe or pervasive. It does not have to be both at the same time. Some examples could look like if we're questioning people or we're more skeptical of them based on their race or their sex, if we're overly critical of information because of maybe somebody's accent or our perception of their citizenship status or their religion, or if we're overly stringent or scrutinous of some employees or citizens or whoever and not others. And so I want to point out, and it's one of the most important pieces to point out, is that just because some of the behavior isn't based on a protected class doesn't mean that it still can't cause a problem for the city. So really any type of hostile, demeaning, aggressive behavior can still cause a big problem for the city and has real liability associated with it. So some of the different types of behaviors, I'm just gonna go through this very quickly here, and we've been over it before, but that would include things like non-consensual physical contact, especially if we're touching people without consent. Non-verbal behaviors, things like rolling your eyes, dramatic sighs, making mockeries of things kind of just through our body language. Virtual harassment, this one is kind of, especially since COVID, this is one of the most common routes. it happens through text messages emails social media comment sections all sorts of different places cyber stalking which is where people are creating fake social media accounts to to mask their own presence or be able to gain access to somebody else's social media and verbal behaviors. Far and away verbal behaviors are the number one thing that spark most of these things that happen, and that's when we use speech that intimidates, threatens, or we try and instill fear in people with it, coercive statements, innuendo, sarcasm, and offensive jokes. or comments about another person. And so what some of that could look like is when we make comments, observations, when we're talking and dealing with people day to day, our decision making and our behavior with those people should never be based on their protected class or any characteristic that is unique to that person or any group of people. That would be whether that characteristic is protected under the law or not. And then other things to be on the lookout for is bullying, intimidating, or abusive behavior. This would be something like treating someone differently because of their unique characteristics or their protected class, controlling behaviors, body shaming, nitpicking, or being really overly stringent with one person and not others, mimicking or mocking an employee's words, or relating past or current events to someone's own experience, race, nationality, et cetera, and have to talk very briefly about the number one claim and the number one finding from the EEOC and the TWC, which is known as retaliation. So retaliation happens when somebody does something that they're allowed to do. There's a lot of different activities that are protected in the workplace, and that would include things like reporting misconduct, participating in investigations, speaking up about legally protected topics, and when somebody does one of those protected activities, they suffer an adverse action for it. We take some kind of action against them, and that can look like a lot of different things, but it could be some things that may seem kind of benign, like maybe we don't let that person speak up in meetings or participate in the same way that they used to anymore. We're becoming really, really stringent on their work output or what they're doing at work. We ignore their phone calls or their emails. or we may even just openly defame them, something like that. So because they've done something that they were allowed to do, and retaliation is very, very simple and it's the reason why it's the number one finding and claim, it's because somebody essentially does something they're allowed to do and we take an adverse or disparate action against them. And you see the arrows here because it can actually become kind of a cycle. Somebody does something that they're allowed to do and then they get retaliated against sport, and then they report that retaliation, and then they suffer further retaliation for reporting that retaliation. So sometimes we see it just kind of go in a cycle. And why it's the most common finding is really the standard for demonstrating retaliation is less than it is for proving discrimination or harassment, just because those things require certain levels of, you have to have some type of of evidence to be able to demonstrate that it's happened, but with retaliation, really the standard is the person did this thing and they were allowed to do it, and they somehow suffered an adverse action because of that thing. So consequences and implications of this is an important part. So under the Texas law, we committed an illegal employment action, if anything, harassment, discrimination, retaliation, if any of those things occur, and we either knew or should have known that that behavior was happening, and we fail to take immediate or appropriate action. That's when we would be liable as an employer, and we can suffer things like reputational damage. Civil lawsuit liability is always going to be out there. And based on the severity, it could even look like jail time or criminal charges, especially if it's something that turns physical. And an important thing to note under Texas law is as an agent representing the city, if an illegal employment action occurs, you knew about it or you should have known about it, you didn't take immediate or appropriate action on it, can be personally sued outside and separate from the city, meaning you're responsible for your own lawyer, court costs, defense, all that sort of stuff. And that's a little bit, that's specific to Texas law. and not necessarily in federal law. So what to do if you experience it? We always tell everybody the best thing that you can do is tell the person to stop whenever possible. And if you feel safe enough, you know, let them know that what they're doing is not okay. And if you can, find some type of way to document that. Send an email and something else saying, hey, you and me had this thing. I'll let you know I wasn't comfortable with it. And this is documentation for that. But what we want you to do regardless, you may not always feel comfortable enough to tell the person to stop, but we want you to report the behavior regardless. And so when you do that, there's a couple of different ways to do that. So if what you're seeing is happening to a city employee, you want to report it to the city manager, preferably by official city email so we have a record of it. If the action or behavior is happening to somebody who's not an employee, then that really falls under your code of ethics in section 2-284. And then your responsibility, just like everybody else's as an agent of the city, our comments, our behavior, our speech, our actions should never be tied to somebody's personal characteristics, something that's unique to them. or a group of people, whether that is a protected class or not, we shouldn't be doing it. We should also never retaliate against people for doing something that they are allowed to do. And we always say that prevention is always better than reaction. And so we're all responsible for our own behavior. And there's always things that we can do ourselves to make sure that we're behaving in the way that we want to behave the best. And sometimes we just ask ourselves some of these questions because we're all guilty of it at some point. Reflection is really an important part in prevention of these things happening further. And no matter your level here, no matter what we do, no matter if it's part of the governing body or anything that we do for the city, we can all create things for good or for bad.

So with that, pause and take any questions. Thank you very much for your report. Councilwoman Gonzalez.

Nothing for me, thank you so much.

Councilwoman Bennett.

Thank you, nothing for me.

Councilman Reed. Thorough as always. Thank you. Councilwoman Villafranca.

Thank you, Jeffrey. I appreciate this a lot.

Councilman Neal.

No questions, Jeffrey. Thank you very much. Very good.

All right. Thank you.

Okay, good evening everyone. My name is Jay Patel, I'm the finance director for the city, and today we'll be presenting our annual budget 101 presentation. And I know you all sat through multiple budget study sessions with us thus far, so I'll do my best not to be repetitive on the concepts covered, but I do want to connect the dots of the various concepts we've covered thus far in order to set a mutual foundation for us as we approach budget adoption season. Ultimately, I just want to focus on fitting all the pieces together to get us all on the same page moving forward. One of the slides that I traditionally touch on, but I think it forms a lot of context as to the story that we participated on an annual basis. You'll see the early stages of our budget development process really start in those December, January months from gaining input from the community, our council members, through surveys, city-wide tours, our strategic planning session, and that ultimately sets the tone for staff. We don't start submitting our budgets until all of these pieces are complete, and that way we know what's expected on a departmental submission level. and that's when all of the departmental review and the budget formation starts to transpire through the spring summer months leading all the way to July when our certified property values are obtained and that's kind of the final piece of the budget process or the budget submission process for us to compile our final document to submit to council by July 31st. Thereafter, We go through the tax rate and budget adoption process in the month of September, and the new fiscal year begins in October 1st. During the November months is where we really finalize that budget book for our GFOA submission, our Government Finance Officers Association submission, which we've received a certificate on an outstanding budget for the past over 20 years, so definitely a great opportunity Definitely hats off to our finance staff for that accomplishment and the consistency of that process. Just a high-level overview of all the funds involved within the budget book. We have a $170 million budget, and here's the buckets, the categories, just the various types of funds that we're working with within the budget book itself. First and foremost, your general fund, which is the city's main operating fund. And you'll see the various services involved in each of those categories. Our primary investment, our largest investment out of our general fund is public safety, our fire and police investments, followed by the general government category, our city administration, finance, economic development, planning, et cetera, as you can see on the screen. followed by culture and recreation, our parks department, and thereafter public works, which has much to do with the street maintenance aspect as well as the sustainability and public health parts of that fund. You'll see these special revenues and restricted funds labeled within the other funds section. Hotel Motel Fund, which we'll dive into throughout the presentation, but derived from room revenues from people who visit our city, and that percentage of that room revenue is restricted and goes into the Hotel Motel Fund, which can later be used to generate is required to be used to generate additional heads and beds for our community, essentially to create additional inflow or traffic for people visiting our community. And the enterprise fund, the business-type fund, which is expected to self-sustain its operations, not just operating, but the capital included within those funds. And then internal service funds, these can be viewed as A suite fund, in the sense that the inflows into the fund should meet the expenditures going out. So just take, for example, the fleet services fund. The charges are distributed based on the service level provided by general fund, the enterprise fund. So everyone's paying their fair share into the fund to pay for the expenditures that are derived with them. a high-level overview of various components within that $170 million budget. And you'll see it's three primary categories on your screen. The largest category is the general fund, approximately 54% of that, followed by the water and sewer fund, and the capital projects fund. Those are essentially the primary component of most cities' budget process. Therefore, it's paramount to understand the inflows and outflows within these funds primarily. Just to dive into that first largest portion, which is the general fund, and I'll focus on the revenue side first. In terms of revenues, 50% of our revenues in the general fund is derived from property taxes, and that's split. Approximately 30% on the residential side, 70% on the commercial side. 25% from sales and use tax, and then you'll see the other 25% broken down within those various categories, primarily your charges for services, which are derived from landfill fees, EMS, various other charges for services, which we charge our residents for services rendered. Secondly, on the expenditure side, you'll see where our allocations are split within the general fund, and that's those four categories which I mentioned earlier, our largest being our investment and public safety. And this is a walkthrough of the process itself, or the timeline. You'll see that we receive our certified values in the month of July, here right around the corner, and that's when a lot of the calculations begin. The tax assessor The appraisal district submits the certified values, and the tax assessor and collector is who calculates the various rates for us to plug into our budget process. And there's three rates that are calculated from the tax assessor. Our INS rate, which is the interest in sinking component of our tax rate. So your property tax rate has two separate components, your maintenance and operation, which funnels into the general fund, and your interest in sinking, which offsets your debt service obligations for your city. The INS rate is what's calculated by the tax assessor who calculates the exact rate that we need to pay our debt service obligations for that given fiscal year. The second rate is the no new revenue rate, which is a like for like comparison for revenues derived from properties between both fiscal years. And the like for like is where it gets a little tricky because there are two carve outs within that amount. Once, the first carve out is we, essentially any property that was taxable last year, that's no longer taxable this year, because we're comparing like for like properties, therefore we can't take into account properties that were on the tax roll last year, and not on tax roll this year. So that amount is carved out of the no new revenue calculation as well as new construction properties because those properties were not on the tax roll last year and they are this year. Therefore that no new revenue rate is a derivative of how can we capture the exact amount of revenue we did in the previous fiscal year based on the same amount of properties in question. And lastly is the voter approval rate, which is your INS rate, which the tax associate calculates for us, plus 3.5% times your no new revenue M&O rate. the maintenance operations piece of the no new revenue rate plus 3.5%. Those three values will be calculated and provided to us in August and will be a part of the presentation and our discussions going forward. Council votes in August to set a maximum tax rate. Therefore, we set a ceiling. Throughout the process, we can go above the ceiling, but we can go under at that point. And then the hearings in the month of September and bills are mailed out in October. And this seesaw effect is very important for us all to understand in terms of as values go up, your noni revenue rate's gonna go down because in order to generate the same amount of revenue from an increased appraised amount of properties, that rate requirement would be less. And you'll see the opposite On the other side of things, if our appraised values go down, you're no new revenue, the rate required to generate the same amount of revenue from those properties will increase. In a breakdown of the calculation involved, you'll see, first and foremost, the assessed value of all city property, less exemptions, is gonna provide us with our taxable value. And the revenue derived from this taxable value is on a per $100 basis. Therefore, to calculate the total property tax revenue, we take our taxable value, divide that by 100, and multiply that by our tax rate to give the total property tax revenue. And the average tax bill is a brief example of that calculation in play. You'll see that 452,788 is the average home value within our community. And to calculate the annual tax bill for an average parcel in our community, you would divide that number by 100 and multiply that by the tax rate. There under that, you'll see the amount that's based on our homestead exemption. Not senior, just the homestead exemption. And that's calculated based on the 452,788 in parentheses times 0.8. So to take off the 20% homestead exemption and then the rest of the calculation follows divided by 100 times the tax rate. The senior exemption within the same parentheses you would take the 452,788 times .8 minus $100,000 to calculate the senior tax bill amount for any given fiscal year. Sales tax history, you'll see that our sales tax collections have been strong over the past decade, but it's important to know that This revenue is very dependent on economic conditions. Therefore, projecting it on a conservative basis is paramount because much of the revenue collections generated from sales tax is largely derived on macroeconomic conditions that cannot just be controlled from within our city ourselves. We've experienced strong tax growth, but maintaining that conservative projection going forward is important to ensure that we're not putting our city in the wrong footing, or over-promising our budget revenues for the upcoming fiscal year. Water and sewer fund, onto the next major fund that we have. There's three primary components that go into the water and sewer fund. The rate, the rate that we charge our residents, the consumption that's consumed by residents, and that varies on an annual basis depending on rainfall and varying other factors on an annual basis. And then the money we pay for the service, that's operating costs as well as the capital expenditure. So all of these three legs of the stool need to work together to ultimately drive the success of the Water Super Fund. Just a brief overview of the fund itself. You'll see the revenues derived from the charge for services there on the revenue column. And then the expenditure is broken down into two primary categories, your administrative cost associated with that fund, as well as the operating cost, which is the capital investments into the system, as well as the water purchase cost and the water treatment cost resulting from operating the system. Hotel-Motel we touched on earlier, but these are revenues that are derived from room revenues from hotels within our city. A certain percentage of those room revenues are are put into a restricted fund and then can be later utilized to generate additional heads and beds or additional traffic, inflow traffic or tourism within our city. They cannot be used for general city operations brought back into the general fund or they can't be used as any sort of subsidy but to generate those additional heads and beds. And it's levied under the Texas Tax Code, Chapter 351. Debt service. Currently, for this fiscal year, we have $7.87 million in the debt service amount payable. And that's broken down to two categories. You have your self-supported portion of your debt service amount, which is one which is our series 2022 CO, which was for our multi-sports center. And the commercial lease revenue is derived from from the Multi-Support Center offset the debt service obligations, therefore leaving the term self-supporting, therefore it's not backed by property taxes. The 5.63 is not self-supporting, therefore it would be backed by property taxes, and it's offset by the IMS portion of the tax rate calculation. And CIP, or Capital Improvement Plan, my favorite part of the budget book, and quite frankly, any budget book that I open, this is the first part that I'll go to within the budget book, even before the general fund, just because it signifies the joint investment within our community, what our long-term plan is, and where we want to allocate what projects we want to work on for the sustainability and growth of our community. Therefore, you're going to see road projects, water infrastructure projects, facilities projects, streets projects. It tells us where our long-term investments are going to be within our city. You'll see that within 40 pages in our budget book, from pages 209 to 249, but it's very interesting in terms of it tells a story about our community and where we're choosing to invest our dollars long-term. And then the fund balance really brings it all together in terms of that financial plan or what that financial outlook is going to look like, not just for this fiscal year, but the upcoming fiscal year. Therefore, every year we estimate for this current fiscal year, what do we expect revenues and expenditures to be? where's our estimated fund balance for revenues and expenditures, as well as the upcoming fiscal year, and where that fund balance can be expected as a result of the next fiscal year. And you see the target balances at the bottom for each of our funds. You'll see that the preferred 90-day for the general fund listed, as well as the various other thresholds that we've established for each of our funds. This was a major component in us us getting that triple A bond ready in terms of the healthy reserves we have in our community and we can, we're planning for the future and we can that we're setting ourselves up for growth in anything that may occur within our city. I really like this slide. It's the first page in your appendix, but it really puts together the book in terms of what our long-term vision is and what we expect these funds to end at any given fiscal year. And with that, I'd like to conclude my presentation and have you answer any questions you all may have.

Thank you very much, Jay. Councilman Gonzales.

Thank you, Jay. I did have a question, but then as you went on, you answered it, so thank you. Councilman Bennett.

Thank you, Jay. Thank you. No questions. Thank you. Councilman Reed. I'm good, thanks. Councilman Villafranca.

A couple of quick questions. In slide five, just out of curiosity, it's interest and rents, 2%. Are you able to expand on that at all?

Interest earnings, yes. Interest and rents.

At the very top on the...

Yes. The interest earnings portion I can speak to. The rents, I wouldn't need a budget book, but let me follow up with you on that if that's okay.

No worries at all. And then fines, forfeits, and assessments. Can you just give me a general idea with that? The forfeits mainly.

Forfeitures. Top left, yes.

If not, it's okay. It's not anything... pressing, but maybe I'll set up a one-on-one and you can school me. I would love for you to school me a little bit more.

That is perfect, yes ma'am. I'd be happy to.

And then I think it might be slide six. Nope, the next slide, I'm sorry. Cecil. Actually, I don't know which slide it is. It's the slide that talks about homestead and senior exemptions. And I have spoken to many people that quite a few people actually that are not aware. Are these things that are able to be done retroactively, like homestead and senior exemptions that you're aware of?

I don't believe on a retroactive basis, but it can definitely be applied for in terms of any future tax bills.

So they have to do that at the beginning of the year? Residents have to do that at the beginning of the year, do you know?

They can do it any time during the year. Any time, okay. Yes, they can do it.

I didn't know. Thank you, I appreciate that. Absolutely.

Councilman Neill.

Thank you, Jay. Yes, I do have quite a few questions. Mayor, I heard you made the comment earlier, and you may not have this answer. Maybe our city manager could help or chime in. You made... sorry about that made the statement that our tax revenue is generally 70 business 30 residential and it's my recollection as i look back in the history of farmers branch i think that percentage was a little higher than 70 percent if i'm not mistaken 75 maybe even approaching 80 percent do you have any idea or does anyone have an idea as to why this number's coming downward i know we've built out the west side and we have more residential over there but Are we just not keeping the businesses here? Are we not getting enough from the businesses? Are we giving away too much in economic development incentives? What's sort of the explanation as to why it's a downward trend, if you happen to know?

No, I don't want to mistake. I do know a lot of our property tax appreciation is driven by the commercial portion of our portfolio, but as it relates to that distribution over time, that...

It's just something in my mind. I'm thinking, okay, what's wrong, or is something wrong, number one, or why is this trending in that direction? So it's something I'll have to try to figure out. Yes, slide 11. He talks about water and sewer overview. My slide 11 has the numbers, the revenues. Oh, yes. It says 11 up in the left-hand corner for me. Can you help me understand what is the $790,000 for other charges for service? It's close to a million dollars. What other charges? fit, what kind of charges would fit any other charges of service for service? I can provide that for you. Yeah, you could get back to me on that. Then, also if you want to get back to me, maybe in the future we could have another discussion for our residents regarding the water bill and how the sewer calculation, that has changed. And now there's some concern by the residents. So if we could wrap that together at some point in the future for that, just for the residents. And then on page 12 with the hotel motel overview, the net income is we have a positive balance, $154,000 there. Is that so far this year?

No, that's based on our currently adopted budget.

So is that, those funds available to be utilized? I guess I'm not sure.

Yes, for our budget, I mean, yes, definitely on the purview of the council in terms of...

So if it were the budget, I'm sorry, if it's the council wishes we could take, I don't know, $10,000 or $20,000 out of there and fix the firehouse theater issues, concerns, is that... That's where my thinking is. Would that be something if it's the will of the council to pull from that fund? Yes, sir. Okay.

You'll see that 154 play out in basically the hotel-motel, that second and last. You'll see that added 154 for how that's going to transpire in our long-term plan.

Okay, yeah, let me just open this conversation. I'm hopeful we'll have more conversation down the road about it on the fund balances. I think it's slide 15. And I think I brought this up last year and I would like to know the council as well as the city. We have a general fund balance there of looks like about 90 days of a target and we seem to be over that at this point. Can you explain why we're at 90 days as opposed to 120 days or 60 days or? Anything in between?

That is, so 90 days is the most commonly recommended best practice amongst the GFOA, within GFOA's best practices. Now I can, my most recent city, it was a 120 day policy which we established, but it differs from community to community and the expectations from the council at that given time. But 90 days is the most common.

Right, and I understand that may have an impact on our AAA bond rating. Do you know what the number would be, or if you could get back to me on this, at what point, if we were to lower that number, would we impact that AAA bond rating? I can look into that. If we were to go to 60 days, we could save seven, eight million dollars right there. is where I'd like to go, but if that's going to impact our AAA bond rating, maybe there's a happy medium we could discuss in the future.

I'll follow up with that. I have to research from best practices and the bond rating perspective of that as well.

Okay, great. Thank you. That's all I have, Jay. Good job. Thank you.

A few follow-up items, but I will get back to you.

Does anybody else have any other questions for Jay? Seeing none, thank you, Jay.

Absolutely, thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. My name is Ariel Wallace, your communications manager, and we're going over some media engagement guidelines with you all. So the purpose of today's briefing is to provide the Mayor and City Council with clear understanding of expectations for media engagement, reinforce goals, accurate, unified, transparent communication throughout the city, as well as ensure alignment with the Texas Open Meetings Act, the Public Information Act, and the media relationship policy for the city. So here at Farmers Ranch, we have a council manager form of government, meaning that council sets the policy and the city manager oversees administration. And our media engagements also reflect that form of government, meaning that the council speaks for policy and staff to the operations of the city. So here are a few roles and responsibilities when it comes to media engagement. The council represents policy direction and obtains information through the city manager. The city manager is the primary spokesperson for operations and ensures that the messaging is consistent throughout the city. The communications department will prepare and verify that the information shared is accurate. And the directors provide expertise. But they do not issue any statements on the policies of the city. Our overarching principles for media engagement. We want to ensure that the information that we're sharing is accurate. It is very important that what we are sharing is truthful and transparent to our residents. And by transparency, we mean that we are clarifying between our personal views versus our council positions on issues with the city. After that, we want to make sure that we maintain our professionalism. We want to maintain friendly and respectful tone, which will help with our media relations and making sure that we foster positive and helpful relationships with the media. So we have three main media outlets. We have national media news that covers issues of national interest. We have our local news media that covers local issues in North Texas. like our NBC 5s and Fox 4s. And we have our community news media, which our main one is the Branch Herald, which covers community news and events for Farmers Branch. Next are some do's and don'ts of what council members may do and should avoid when engaging with the media. Some do's, you can express your individual views on policy. We do discuss You can use disclaimers when views differ from adopted action, but again, just make sure you're transparent and that it is separate from what the city is advising and saying that this is my personal opinion and not the city's opinion. If you are brought with a question by media and you may not have all the information or you just don't feel comfortable answering, you can say no comment when appropriate or refer them to the city manager who you don't have all the details. Finally, whenever you speak with media, please notify the city manager and just let him know who you spoke to and what did you say, so we're all transparent and on one accord. Here's some things that you may want to avoid when engaging with the media. Discussing any personnel procurement, litigation, or confidential matters. Implications of quorum consensus outside of the posted meetings. Issuing any statements conflicting with adopted city policy. and sharing non-public information. Again, going back to just making sure you aren't discussing any personnel, procurement, litigation, or confidential matters with the media. When handling media inquiries, any operational questions need to go to the city manager. Any policy-related questions, you are allowed to answer, but again, as we said earlier, please notify the city manager of what you told the media. Just again, so we're all one page. And any sensitivity issues, you need to stick to the coordinated talking policies and points that are developed by the city manager and the communications department. So when those sensitive issues do arrive, just making sure that, again, we're one city, one voice, and that we're all sharing the same information about that topic. Our crisis communications expectations. Emergency communications flow through the Emergency Operations Center. During emergencies, a separate crisis communication action plan is activated. Communications support through the EOC, the Emergency Operations Center, during a crisis. It is recommended that council members avoid independent statements during crises, and it's important to have one voice during emergencies. So if there is a social media post, For example, last Friday, these roads are closed because of the flood. It's important that when you are sharing information, it's coming from that city page and just to make sure that the information's accurate and residents know they can go to this one location during the emergency. So what are some things you can use social media for? Of course, promote city programs and events, repost and share any of the city's social media posts and any initiatives that we have going on. It is recommended that you respond to comments with statements of fact when your residents are asking you questions on your social media posts. And it's just a good habit to make to make sure city branded content is fact checked. and trainings and continuous improvement for our social media policies. We have our annual review of the guidelines, which is being presented today to you at orientation. And just want to make sure you know that our information is updated when presented to you all. You have the latest social media policy for you all. And thank you for allowing me to present to you today. If you have any questions.

Thank you very much. Councilman Gonzalez.

Thank you, Ariel. You did a great job.

Councilwoman Villafran.

Thank you, Ariel. Nice job. Is it possible to get a copy of the city communications policy? Yes. Thank you.

Councilman Neal.

Nothing, Mayor. Thank you very much, Ariel. Nice job.

Thank you. I do have one question. That is regarding media that we send releases to and whatnot. If staff or residents or even the council, for that matter, see that there's a particular bias on some media, how would that be handled? Who should we address that with?

So your question is bias from what the reporter is reporting on about the city, not necessarily something that we're sending out?

Correct.

Again, that kind of goes to just building our media relations with that reporter sometimes. it's recommended that, well, not reach out, but just kind of, a lot of the times the bias comes from the reporter not knowing the city well, and then just having that connotation. And so sometimes just introducing the reporter to some of our initiatives and policies, some of the more positive things that the city is doing. Again, we're not going to bombard them and say, why are you saying mean things about us? But there are some procedures that can go by just improving that immediate relationship with them.

OK. Thank you. It's always so much fun to come down here and not get to sit down.

All right, so the last time I did one of these training sessions, it was about a month ago from another city, the presentation took about two and a half hours. Primarily it's because there are lots of questions. I think as we go along, if you've got questions, by all means interrupt and I'll answer them. I'll try to reserve time at the end so that we can also talk about any other issues that you might have. But as we go along, feel free to ask questions. We'll talk about the Open Meetings Act, the Public Information Act, conflicts of interest, and Robert's Rules in sequence. First is the Open Meetings Act. An open meeting, as you know, is any gathering of a quorum, which is defined by state law as any gathering of a quorum. Generally, a quorum is defined as a majority of the members. Farmers Branch has a charter provision that says a quorum is four. That is currently under consideration by the Charter Review Commission that may or may not be addressed at the next election. But as it stands right now, a quorum of the council is forward, including the mayor. A meeting is any gathering of quorum at which public business is discussed. There are some exceptions. If there is a quorum present at a social function, if the purpose of the gathering is purely social in nature, technically it's not a meeting, even if city business is incidental or discussed incidentally, of course no formal action could ever be taken. Other circumstances that may or may not constitute a formal meeting are I don't know, HOA meetings or PNZ meetings where a quorum of the council happens to be present. For social events, nothing wrong with that if it's purely social in nature. Nothing wrong with having a quorum present. Be aware, though, I had that situation come up about a year or two years ago in another city where a council member invited a whole bunch of people, including other members of the council, to a suite that she had rented at the racetrack in Grand Prairie. I think it's in Grand Prairie, right? She called me 1st and said, is this legal? And is it okay if the form of the council shows up? Well, it is the purpose of the gathering, purely social initiative. Well, of course it is. Will you be talking about city business? Of course not. Will you be voting anything? Of course not. Well, be careful, but sure you can and they did. The next day, or 2 days later, social media exploded with photographs of the council members all together outside of a posted formal meeting. So you can have social events. You can have a quorum present, but be careful. for other board and commission meetings where a quorum happens to be present or for HOA meetings or any other type of event where you see a possible quorum present. I think if we know that a quorum is going to be present, the city secretary will post what's called a possible quorum agenda just to be on the safe side. If we don't have a possible quorum agenda posted, The hypothetical, which is a true-life scenario, is a PNZ meeting where you all want to know what the PNZ is doing and what they're talking about. I had one once, I had two council members sitting in the front row. Nothing wrong with that, that's not a quorum. A third council member then enters the room. I get a little bit nervous. And then when the fourth member shows up, now I'm starting to sweat. If you see that happening, my strong recommendation is it's not illegal. Do not sit next to each other. Do not communicate with each other. Don't chit-chat at all. Don't sit anywhere near anybody else. If you do, it's going to look like you're having an illegal meeting. Just don't sit next to each other. Don't talk to each other. The AG's Office's Open Meetings video used to have a segment where they also say, don't get up and address the board or commission. I think that's a bit on the extreme side. But if you do find yourself at a meeting and you see at any event for that matter, and you see that a quorum is present, don't hang out with each other. Be safe and not sorry. We all know what a walking quorum or a daisy chain is. It's a series of communications that involve a quorum, even though each individual communication may be among less than a quorum. If three members are present and they discuss an issue, and then one of them then discusses it with a fourth member, that's a daisy chain. If one member talks about some issue, a specific issue with another council member, who talks about that with a third council member, who in turn talks about it with a fourth member, that's a daisy chain. If one member talks about one issue with Councilmember A and then talks about it later with Councilmember B and then talks about it with Councilmember C, that involves four members and that's a quorum. That's the walking quorum or daisy chain concept. Texas law regards that as a criminal violation of the act. That is something for which you could go to jail. Therefore, if it ever happens, don't do it. We've had this conversation in the past where if a council member calls you and asks you about something that says, and they say something like, I've discussed this with other members, or even if they don't even say that, your first question should be, have you talked about other council members about this topic? And if the answer is no, then knock yourselves out. If the answer is yes, then you need to drill down. How many people have you talked to? Can't be more than 2 others, meaning a total of 4. That's important. And you need to be really diligent about that. So. The daisy chain or walking quorum concept can occur not just with face-to-face communications, but also occurs in the context of telephone calls, emails, or text messages. So if you are communicating in any combination of them, if you're communicating with somebody else by an email, And then they communicate with somebody else by email, and then it involves a chain of four. That is still a daisy chain or a walking quorum, a violation of the act. And it's because it's in writing electronically. There's the proof. There's the proof. With that in mind, the agenda, when we conduct meetings, we are required to follow the agenda. You cannot discuss in an open meeting anything that is not on the posted agenda. There are two exceptions. The first is to place an item on a future agenda, and we have an agenda item that talks about that. The second is to answer or ask questions of fact or policy to staff or to members of the public. That exception is rather vague, and it is very easy to run afoul of the Act's requirements. And so, when we have someone speaking during citizens' input or citizens' comments, It is not unusual for them to ask questions. And even though technically responding to a question of fact or policy is not a violation of the Act, the problem is that when you do answer a question and somebody else will answer a question or ask you about it, it is so easy to violate the Act by engaging in a conversation with somebody who's speaking at the podium during citizens' input that the standard recommendation is don't engage. They may ask questions. I had a council meeting last week where different city where somebody says, if you don't answer it, I'm going to regard that as being a negative response. And then he'd ask the question and he would stand there and he'd wait for an answer. He was baiting the council. Fortunately, they did not take the bait. Do not engage with speakers during citizens input, even if it's something important that you think you need to address. In some circumstances, some council members might at the conclusion of citizens input make some comments and try to address some issue. I'm still worried about that because if it's not on the agenda, it could be a violation of the act. So you just have to deal with it. I'm sorry about that. Public attendance means that anybody in the world can attend a council meeting. Anybody, anywhere can attend our meetings. They can record, they can videotape, they can bring a court reporter with them. They can use their cell phones and do this all day long, right? The only limitation on that is that if the recording or the attendance or the participation becomes unduly disruptive, then you can impose limits on it. The only circumstance I've ever seen where it was a problem was when we had a whole bunch of media personnel. They would sit in front of the dais and hold microphones up. That's okay. They can do that. I've had a whole bunch of meetings where a member of the press, a reporter with a cameraman, would be in the room, usually on the side of the room, videotaping. Nothing wrong with that. But they can't be interrupting. They can't be shining bright lights, that shit. They can't be jumping up in front of the dais with their microphones asking questions. But anybody in the world is allowed to record, to videotape, to bring a court reporter with them. We cannot stop them. They have that right. Closed executive sessions are also the other area under the Open Meetings Act that could constitute a criminal offense. If you participate in a closed or executive session and it is not permitted under the Act, under the Open Meetings Act, your mere participation makes you responsible criminally. I can't tell you how many times somebody has said to me, well, I was just there. I didn't call the meeting and I didn't participate in calling the executive session. I was just there. Okay, that's participation. All of you, because the penalties are so severe, kind of have an obligation to ensure that your participation, your attendance, your mere attendance at a closed meeting is for a proper purpose. Ordinarily, Actually, always in Farmer's Branch. All closed sessions are vetted by staff and by the city attorney before we even post it on an agenda. Generally, you can feel confident that it's being done properly. If you have a question about it, by all means, ask. You kind of have that obligation to do that under the law because of the severity of punishment. We can only have closed or executive sessions for limited purposes. The Act outlines or delineates a series of purposes for which a closed session is allowable. And you all seen them, economic development, personnel, legal advice is the most common. The purchase or sale of real estate when an open discussion or an open session might affect our bargaining position, and then security devices and security measures. There are a bunch of other ones. Most of them don't apply to us, but generally those are the most common. We do maintain certified agendas. You have the choice to either record them or maintain a certified agenda. I have a board that always uses the tape recorder. That's easy. But most city councils will use a certified agenda. It's that document that you see me filling out while I'm talking, while everybody else is doing business. That's a certified agenda. At the conclusion of the meeting, I'll have the presiding officer sign off on that agenda. It does not contain minutes. Sometimes I draw happy faces in there. Sometimes I had a council once where the mayor, not this mayor, different city, would not stop talking. And I would write, oh God, please help me. He won't stop. I can do that because when the mayor or the presiding officer signs the agenda, I fold it up, place it in an envelope, and I seal it. It is a criminal offense to disclose the contents of that certified agenda for at least two years. So I can say whatever I want. The mayor often doesn't really read or approve it, so I can say whatever I want. I do ensure, though, that the time of the start and conclusion of the executive session is noted. I do indicate what the subject matter or the topic of discussion was. I do indicate or make sure that the date is correct. I identify who was present. And I also state in that certified agenda that no action was taken during the closed meeting and no action can be taken during the closed meeting. Often we will get a consensus, which is important because we need direction from the council. We can't ever vote in closed session. We can only vote on and take formal action in an open session, but direction is often given during closed sessions that staff can take and run with. And so, The penalties for violating the act are, I think, severe. Generally, closed sessions or walking quorum daisy chain violations are Class B criminal offenses, which means a fine of not less than 100, no more than 500, or a jail sentence of not less than one month, no more than six months. The mere fact of an investigation By the office for the attorney general's office is all that matters. Even if you're found not liable or no charges are filed that public information is out that you're being investigated for violating the acts. It's my fault. I mean, because I didn't monitor close enough, or I didn't make sure that y'all weren't sufficiently trained. But the mere fact of the investigation is damaging enough. So when in doubt, ask the question before you do it. The safe thing to do is simply ask me. I can't tell you how many times in other cities where council members have been engaged in an email conversation among a quorum, and then somebody says, well, now I'm just going to copy the... I'm going to join the city attorney on this thread because we might have a legal question. Then I'm looking and I'm sitting... A series of emails, daisy chain communications among the quorum of the council outside of a posted open meeting. And I just, I go into a panic. That's when I have to pull the fire alarm. So when in doubt, ask first. All right. So for the Public Information Act, the heading is incorrect. It's Public Information Act. Public Information Act deals with our records. The basic rule is that every record that this city has is public information. Everything that we have is presumptively public, and it doesn't matter what medium the information is recorded on. Every piece of paper, every electronic file, every audio tape, every video tape, everything that we have that is recorded is presumptively public information. The public has the right, and it doesn't mean just the citizens of the city, it means anybody in the world has the right to request copies or to access and view our records. There are a list of exceptions, but before we talk about that, this is something that we've had to deal with fairly recently. Historically, information on your personal devices, your own cell phone, your own laptop, or your own desktop computers has been regarded as being accepted from disclosure because it's not owned or controlled or created by the governmental entity. But the legislature changed that and so now If you are transacting official city business, using a personal device, whether it's a cell phone text messages, or your own personal laptop, not issued or given to you by the city, or you're using a personal email account. That is not a city email account. you can still be compelled to produce that information. If you're taking notes during a council meeting, your personal handwritten notes can also be regarded as public information and a request can be submitted that compels you to produce that. Because the law now says that all public officials are regarded as temporary custodians of records, what that means is that if you do maintain, I don't know, text messages on your cell phone, not your city's cell phone, but your personal one, emails that you send or receive, dealing with city business on personal computers or laptops. Because it is presumptively public and could be compelled to be produced, all you need to do is if you're not doing it on a city account, Copy your city email account. If you receive an email on your personal account from a citizen, they're asking you about city business and you want to respond to it. Nothing wrong with that, I think, so long as you make sure that you send a copy to your city email account. The reason is because staff has the ability then through IT to simply pull up that record. Since the city has a copy of it, you relieve yourself of the potential of being accused of destroying or tampering with official records if you delete it from your cell phone or you delete it from your email. You would be amazed at how easy it is to find an email that you think that you've deleted. I had a detector show me how to do this once. It was incredibly, ridiculously easy. So you have an email. You delete it. All right. Then you go into your deleted folder and then you delete it from there. It's still in your computer. You have no idea. I have no idea how you retrieve it, but it's still resident in your computer. And there is a really simple way to find it and to produce it. I had a mayor in the city once. So I knew that he had... personal records, personal emails that dealt with city business on his personal device. He flatly told me he did not have anything, and I did not believe him, but there was nothing I could do about it. But I wasn't investigating. I wasn't the AG's office, nor was I a detective or a DA's office. And they could get that stuff from you if they really, really tried and if they really wanted to. Best thing to do is don't use personal devices. Some city secretaries and city attorneys will say, don't take notes either. I don't know if that's gonna work in this city. But if you do, you have to retain them for at least two years. If a request is made for the production of those documents, you have to produce them, like it or not. It's uncomfortable, I know that. It doesn't seem fair. I recognize that, but that's the law. If you don't, then there are criminal sanctions associated with the failure to produce. The biggest concern I have is that it puts staff in a compromising position because it means that the city secretary, our records custodian, then has to tell the requester, we don't have these records, even though you're sure that they exist, or we cannot produce these records quickly for you. It's going to take more than 10 days. or something else that makes it even more difficult. So by using personal devices, you place often, more often than not, you place staff in a compromising position when a Public Information Act request is received. As you all know, because we had this conversation at the last council meeting, we can charge for responding to requests for information. It is always, always a losing proposition. We can never charge because we are bound by the law to charge certain amounts. We can never charge what it actually costs us to produce. So we have to look at that as being the cost of doing business.

Yes. David, I'm going to let you go five more minutes. Then we're going to take a break. Then we'll finish this when we come back at six.

I'm looking at that. I'm not seeing the yellow and then the red lights. Just let me know. Five minutes. All right. So... The process for disclosure, we have a GovQA account. Anybody can ask for copies of records electronically. They can simply do it by a simple email. It's really, really easy for someone to do. We can only ask one question. If we receive a request for information, regardless of how voluminous it may be, regardless of how abusive it may seem or how unfair it might look, we can only ask one question. Could you please clarify this request? That we can't ask who they are. We can't ask why they want the information. We can't ask them anything else other than, can you please clarify? We have some methods or some processes or procedures that we can employ if the request is asking for voluminous records. And you know we can do some stuff if it's repetitive requests that we're being harassed by. The law allows government harassment through the Public Information Act. Much as I hate to say it, it's clear that it does allow that. And that, from our perspective, is simply a cost of doing business. We can claim an exemption. Tell me when I'm done.

Finish this slide.

OK. We can claim an exemption. The Public Information Act says that everything we have is public, presumptively public information. There is a long list of categorical exemptions. Some of them are clear, some of them not so much. And there's a distinction between information which is regarded as being privileged or confidential versus information that we are authorized to withhold from disclosure. Some things are confidential and we cannot disclose them. Social Security numbers, protected health information, dates of birth, things like that. Some things we can withhold from disclosure or not if we don't want to. simply because it is something that is authorized to be withheld if we want to. It doesn't mean that we have to withhold it. If it's confidential, we can't give it out. If it's something that is accepted from disclosure and not confidential, we can give it out if we want to or not. If we choose to withhold information that is not necessarily confidential but something that's accepted from disclosure, something that we could withhold if we want to, the process is fairly straightforward and it's a pain in the neck. We've got 10 business days within which to ask for an Attorney General's opinion. It must be in writing. We must claim the exemptions that we say that the records fall within. We have to provide copies of the actual information that we think are accepted from disclosure to the AG's office along with our request for a ruling. The AG's office doesn't like cities. They always err in favor of disclosure. And sometimes when you're sure that this is something that should be withheld, they will come back with a letter after a couple of months and say, you must disclose this information. If we disagree with them, we only have one choice. We have to file a lawsuit in Travis County Within a short a fairly short time frame and ask for a court ruling on it, and it's a pain in the neck and it's expensive So with that in mind won't take a five-minute break work. We're going to take a break till six Okay, then we're good thing you're gonna finish what we could finish We could have, well, I don't want to suggest we have another meeting at a later time, but training sessions often take a lot longer than 45 minutes to an hour. If we wanted to do that, something that I proposed, we've all kind of talked about every once in a while about maybe having a special training session dealing with Robert Scholes of Order and conducting council meetings. I think that might be a little bit more informal, but you all may want to consider it. going over formal training in a more, I don't know, when we have more time to talk.

I think we'd like, I would like us to do that. And so we can compare notes and find a date that possibly works for doing that. But I just, I want to give council time to take a break before six o'clock session.

Thank you. Okay.

We're going to take a recess until 6 p.m., and then we'll back out here to resume the meeting. Thank you. Thank you, we're back. And we had left off with our city attorney giving his presentation or portion of the presentation regarding council orientation. We're gonna resume that at another time. So I'm gonna read us into executive session at this time. two items, item D1, the city council will convene in a closed executive session pursuant to section 551.074, personnel in section 551.071, consultation with the attorney of the Texas government code to consider and deliberate and seek legal advice from the city attorney regarding complaints alleging violations of the city code of ethics against a council member for District 1 pursuant to Section 2-284 of the city's code filed June 8th, 2026, and item D2, the City Council will convene a closed executive session pursuant to Section 551.074 and personnel in Section 551.071, consultation with the attorney of the State of the Texas Government Code to consider and deliberate and to seek legal advice from the City Attorney regarding complaints alleging A violation of the city's code of ethics against council member for District 2 pursuant to section 2-284 of the city's code filed June 9th, 2026. So we will recess to the city manager's conference room and then we'll do that back out as soon as we're done with that.

Thank you.

And we are back, thank you very much. So we have one item to take action on as a result of, well, excuse me, let me just restate that. We have two items to address as a result of executive session. So regarding item D1,

Mr. Mayor, I make a motion that for the item D1, we instruct the city attorney to employ an outside attorney to perform an investigation into the complaint.

Second. We have a motion and a second by Councilman Neal. Any further discussion? Seeing none, please, if you would, please indicate your vote accordingly.

Any clarification?

Yeah, could we restate the motion? The motion was to move forward with a independent attorney.

Yeah, the motion is to instruct the city attorney to move forward with an independent investigation into the complaint.

Motion passes. Thank you very much. Item D2.

Mr. Mayor, I make a motion that we do not move forward with an investigation into the complaint. Second.

Motion is second in regards to not moving forward on item D2. If you would, please indicate your vote.

okay it's it's then to deny would be to deny moving forward right so we're denying it so the yes mode would be to deny moving forward

All right, so the motion on the floor is to not move forward with any further investigations. An affirmative vote in favor of the motion means to not move forward with an investigation. If you want to go forward with an investigation, you would vote no. If you want to not go forward, you would vote yes.

Thank you.

You may go.

Good.

Do you want me to hit the same button? Motion passed. For clarification on the abstention, there is no option to not vote. So the abstention, even though our rules currently provide that An abstention is not a vote in favor of or against. There may be some implication in the Robert's Rules of some effect of standing for our purposes tonight. The abstention simply is not voting at all in one way or another.

Okay. All righty. Well, that concludes all of our business for this evening, and so we will adjourn at 7.12. Thank you all very much.