City Council - Regular Meeting

Good morning. I will call our budget work session to order. Happy Friday to everyone, and I'll turn it over to Jay Chapa.

Good morning, everyone. So you should have received an email last night with budget responses from Tuesday, the information that, we hope you covered the information that the council asked for. One of the, here in a second, I'm gonna ask Brad to come up and go through the presentation that he's put together. on the overall impact to our rate payers and taxpayers from the individual fees. But one of the items in the budget response is the list of services that council brought up on Tuesday, concerns about the cuts and the impacts. And so I asked the lab to work with the individual department heads to come together to put what it would look like to bring back positions that are being impacted or programs that are being impacted to lessen the services. That's in your budget response book or budget response you received. And I just laid at your spot the cost equivalent for each of those areas along with the tax rate equivalent if the the desire was to increase the tax rate. So the tax rate equivalent for each of those items. One of the things that I did include that didn't come on Tuesday, but I've had several council members bring up to me, was pay for performance for general employees. And so we included that. This would be still having it start half mid-year, but it'd be 4.5% average for everyone non-executive below assistant director, and a 4% for assistant director and up, is what's the equivalent in here. We went ahead and included that for you so you could see what the impact is there. But with that, I'm gonna ask Brady to come up and go through his presentation.

Good morning, Mayor and Council. Brady Kirk, Assistant Director with the Fort Worth Lab. So on Tuesday, we gave you a very, very long report that included all of the fees which were recommended to change in FY27, but today we're coming to you with a much shorter and more focused overview of just those fees and rates which impact every resident that lives in the city. And beyond property taxes, it's really a short list. So we're only talking about the stormwater fee, water and wastewater rates, solid waste rates, and the environmental fee. And then at the end, after I go through those and how that's gonna affect the total cost to residents on an annual and monthly basis, I'll give you one quick summary as well of any other fees, depending on which city services a resident chooses to engage with, they might have to pay. starting with property taxes i think you've seen this these figures many times already but within the recommended budget there's a 3.2 percent increase to the tax rate which is about five percent and that five percent tax rate increase since that's smaller than the amount that we've lost on the taxable value of an average home that means that an average homeowner in the city would pay less to the city in FY27 than in FY26. So that amount is about $16.69 per year. And not that people pay their property taxes on a monthly basis, but if you break that up over 12, that's about $1.39 per month. So about a 1% decrease. The stormwater fee, we showed you in June that we are recommending a 5% increase to that fee, and that's to help fund some flood mitigation projects, increase capital project partnership participation, and channel asset management position. And so that 5% increase is going to be 36 cents for a typical home on the monthly water bill. And if you spread that out over the year, that's about $4.32. And moving into water and sewer rates. So on the water side, there's about a 5% increase to the fixed monthly charge, but this year there's no increase to the volumetric rate And that is for the cost of service. So really for all these funds after the property tax, none of these are general fund fees. So for water, storm water, all the others, the revenue that they earn pays for the service itself. And so this, like the other ones, is to pay for the cost of service. So on the water side only, that's about 70 cents per month to an average homeowner. and $8.45 per year, which is less than 2%. And on the wastewater side, there's a similar increase, closer to 6% on the fixed charge. And then there is a small, less than 1% increase to a typical homeowner on the volumetric rate. So those two combined would be about 63 cents per month or 750 per year, which is very similar, a little bit less than 2%. On solid waste, it's a little bit larger because we're focusing on a long-term outlook of this fund. And we've talked to you about whether or not the current solid waste rates that people are paying are really enough to pay holistically for the service that they're getting. And that service includes long-term capital planning. So this is a recommended 20% increase. So to a typical household with a 96-gallon cart, that'd be $5.15 per month. which is a little bit less than $62 annually. And then finally, the environmental fee, which is another fund separate from the solid waste fund. On this front, we're recommending about an 11% increase, so that's one quarter per month and $3 per year to a typical household. When you sum that all up and you compare that to city manager's recommended tax rate of 70.2 cents, but also take into account how the taxable value of a typical home has fallen, you've got about a 1% decrease to the property tax bill, which is more than half of the whole equation that a typical homeowner is going to be paying, and a 6.6% increase to what people are gonna be paying on average on that monthly water bill. And what it all shakes out to is a little bit less than a 2% increase annually. So that's $5.70 per month that the typical household might see and a little bit more than $68 over the course of the year. Then moving into other fees, these are not fees that a typical person would pay in the course of their daily lives, but out of that 150 pages, probably 100 and something was just development fees, because there's so many development permits. So the Development Services Department is instituting about a 5% on average across the board fee increase. And due to rounding or whether there are specific cost recovery considerations, some of these might increase by a little bit more than 5%. But the good news is that this increase was done with the support of the Development Advisory Committee and the Real Estate Council, with whom DJ's department works very closely. And these aren't 100% only in development services. They also, there are development fees that other departments collect. So for example, there's a fire alarm permit that the fire department collects. But these are not something that a resident would pay normally. Maybe if you were buying a brand new built house, this might affect you if you were doing a major home repair. But I talked to DJ and he said that on a typical home, this 5% across board increase would affect the cost of a newly built home by less than $100. So out of hundreds of thousands, that's a very small portion of that cost. And then getting into some other fees which residents may pay if they want to use these services. A lot of the balance of the fee increases were in golf, just because they have so many categories for the various services that they provide. So for the first one, or parks and recreation overall is what I meant to say, but the first one is golf, and that's an increase to the junior pass fee. And golf, just like those other funds we talked about, water, storm water, that's a fund where the revenues that the golf fund collects pays for the cost of golf services. So this is just cost recovery. And these other categories would be in the general funds. So for community centers, there's a lot of fees increasing. There's a lot of fees decreasing. It's part of a study that department did and just overall streamlining these and trying to make it a little bit more efficient and straightforward. And then some similar changes to the other services. So the log cabin village, for example, the nature center, maybe if you want to have a birthday party at one of our community centers or If you're taking part in an athletic league, some of those might have gone up. Thank you, Mayor.

Brady, before we leave this, and I don't want to throw you off your pace. If you prefer to take questions at the end, I can. I'm making notes. But on the other fee increase categories, I do want to get some more detail as far as the increase of junior pass fees and how that impacts clubs. Right now we've got First Tee down there. We also have high school-based clubs that come in there, rely on Rockwood, for instance, in my council district, to practice their programs. And I know in the past they have told me, and I communicated this to Dave Lewis as well, they're concerned about the fees, and now we're proposing an increase. So I'm wondering what kind of effect that's gonna have on them.

Sure, I'm gonna ask Dave to come up, and he already is.

Good morning, Council. Dave Lewis, Director of Park and Recreation.

Yeah, really, there's a few things going on there. So we, as with all fees, we benchmark all fees in each fall in order to prepare fee changes. With the junior fee, we found that there are only two other municipalities or courses near, courses in our vicinity that even offer a junior pass. And like with all of our fees, we strive to be the median for that. And so raising that fee gets the median First Tee has its own fee in an arrangement that we have with the construction of the building, and we also, through an interlocal agreement, we offer the ISDs a special rate as well. Some of them were taking advantage of the Junior Golf annual pass fee, because it is much lower than the fee that we offer them as a discount to be on the course, but really the increase in the Junior annual pass fee should not affect either the First Tee or ISD, because we have special pricing for them.

All right, that's good to hear, thank you.

Sorry, talk about the fees for the increase for birthday parties. Has that risen substantially or?

Yeah, I think the birthday parties are mostly at Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge where they actually didn't have a birthday party fee before, so fee rentals. So a lot of this is just cleanup. We wanna obviously offer fees that are in accordance with the ordinance. Some of it's just cleaning up what we do, changing the title of some things. But again, it's all benchmarked community centers, Log Cabin Village, Fort Worth Nature Center, they benchmark all their fees against similar facilities in the region and across the state.

Can you send us the new rate? Is it in here somewhere?

Yeah, it's in the packet you got two days ago with all these fees. We could send that separately. The 171 page? Yes.

It's embedded in there.

Not the 400 page, okay.

Just for the record, I want to make sure when we talk about the fees that are changing at the nature center, Does that include the non-resident increase in fees? Did we talk about that? Is that happening?

Yeah, we have not. We've changed a number of fees, but we avoided a non-resident fee because it is a tourism facility, so we want to make sure that it remains attractive to people who don't live in the city to use the facility.

But we are doing the veterans free access. Okay, thank you.

I don't think you got to it yet, or maybe you barely mentioned it, the fire department lift assist. I know that's been a topic from several council members, so I don't know if Chief Horton's here or anybody wants to speak to that decision. That would be helpful.

I think you're going to get, Christina said, more detail on that at public safety committee. in the near future? We didn't have a fee, so we wanted to include a fee.

Yeah, we're aware of that.

Going forward. And so the Public Safety Committee was going to get a full presentation on that to see if they want to recommend lifting, increasing it even more, or what you want to do with it going forward.

But when will that briefing happen on public safety?

Yeah, it'll be in September. This next meeting.

And I guess just backing up in time, is that gonna be before these decisions are made in the budget so we don't know if we're gonna increase it more beyond 750 or not?

Yes, we should be able to just then make the amendment for the budget ordinance.

Okay. Okay. Councilor Larsdorf, do you wanna speak to that at all? You're welcome to.

I mean, I don't know if it'd be more prudent just to go ahead and just skip Public Safety Committee altogether and just bring it directly to work and then ask the Mayor and Council for a decision because I'm pretty sure that's something we're all gonna be able to get behind because it's something that's been needed for quite some time.

It's a question on the amount. So as staff, we were recommending the $750, but we wanted to take it to you all to see if you guys wanted to make it even higher to this Public Safety Committee. And it'll be whatever the committee recommends, we'll add that into the budget ordinance that gets approved. And then from there, after the Public Safety, then do you want to take the work session or from just straight to the budget? Straight to the budget. Whatever your recommendation, we'll put it in as a budget recommendation. Perfect. It'll go straight into the ordinance, it'll get approved, and that'll be the new budget.

whatever is the most streamlined process to get that implemented.

I just wanted to have feedback from some of the council members that brought it up.

Related to this, on the next slide, we have EMS fee increase, and that's an existing fee. So would that be also taken up by the Public Safety Committee of ours as well? Yes. Yeah, I think that's going to be discussed as well. All right.

Thank you. You're crossing off some of my bullet points for me. Next one, municipal court fees. So there are some new fees that involve civil parking. There's a technology fee to support that and one other one related to civil parking. And there's an increase to the boot fee. These are city services you do not want to engage with if you can avoid it. And then credit card fees, last year we authorized the city to let vendors just pass those fees directly on to end users. So instead of taking them in as revenue, paying them out of our own pocket, we're just letting the end users pay for those. So we authorized 2.5% last year, because that was enough for our existing city vendors. There's a couple vendors that if we were gonna pass those on, they would be a little bit higher than 2%, so we're recommending giving authority to go up to the statewide maximum, which is 5%. And then finally, beyond the solid waste monthly charges that you saw, there are a few extra fees on there. If you have something like an overloaded cart, there's an extra charge for that. Bags outside the cart, I think that's the one where we had something funny like 12 of them in the whole city in a whole year, but that fee is going up. And then nothing out trips to where if you've requested pickup and then you're not there for them to come get it, that fee is increasing as well.

Brady, do you know what the actual collection charge is from a credit card company, what percentage?

So for ours, you're talking about their own cost?

Yeah, what they're passing on to us that we're not gonna pass on to customers.

Typically it's 3%, but there are, so last year the council approved us allowing a direct charge pass through so that when a person pays, they pay with a credit card, they would pay that fee, whether it's 2%, 2 1⁄2, the actual fee. It's not an upcharge at all from the city. The issue is not all our systems. All our systems are getting upgraded, and we have some, and the vendor charges more than 3%, up to 5%, sometimes 3 1⁄2. So we're having to cover the difference. So we're just trying to get Just be made whole? Made whole, basically. We're not making any money just to be able to be. And so it's, it's just the actual cost. Some of them are four percent.

Why do we have multiple vendors?

On the systems, it's a, it's like, um, you have a different vendor, for instance, on the water side than you have on the city side. You don't do, because of the systems, the types of systems that are used.

Just so I understand, so you're saying a flat fee of 5% no matter which system they're accessing? No. Or they'll be charged the associated with the system?

Exactly. And all of them, we went up to 5% because we don't have any that are, well, state doesn't let us go at 5%. We're just trying to be made whole from the city side.

That makes sense. Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Brady. Any questions or comments on the summary of fee and rates right now? Yes, Council Member Flores.

I do forget which slide it was. I think I know the answer to this, but I just want a confirmation. Solid waste charge, slide six. There's an asterisk note based on typical home using 96-gallon cart. Is that also inclusive of the recycling cart as well?

Yes, sir.

Okay.

Thank you.

That's it. Everybody gets a recycle cart with that. I was asking because the 96 cart, you know, or size, rather, I mean, you have an option to upgrade into a large cart.

Council, it looks like you also have updated budget responses in your packet. If we want to have Christiane walk through those, that might be helpful.

Sure thing. Good morning, Mayor and Council. Christine Simmons with the Fort Worth Lab. So just three budget responses in your packet last night. The first is an updated version of the vacancy eliminations and freezes budget response, adding in the column for the total team personnel and the number of those positions that occur across the department. That was in response to Council Member Flores' question and maybe others about what kind of team strength is left if we do eliminate or freeze a position. So that data is there for you. The second budget response is about gas lease revenue, gas well revenue. It outlines the policy and our typical process for appropriating those funds and a little bit of the history of kind of what the order of magnitude of those funds has looked like. And then the third budget response is the one that Jay mentioned where we worked with a couple of select departments based on your questions Tuesday to ask them, you know, with judiciously, like what positions would you add back? knowing we're balancing the budget, but really looking again at the service level impacts for the programs that council has asked about and that we've been hearing sort of similar themes in the community meetings. And so you'll see code, development services, library, parks and recreation, and Transportation and Public Works. Each of those directors and staffs worked over the last couple of days to say if I could add something back here is what it would be. And then the Fort Worth Lab staff layered in some service level impacts that we gathered from the departments and we produced the handout that you have, which is the tax rate equivalent of adding those back so that you can kind of have this menu in front of you and say, you know, these are really important things and know how that would affect the tax rate.

And again, the one item that's not written up is the pay for performance piece. The total of all the items would be an impact of 0.364391, which would still put the average bill less than the current year's bill, but it basically lessens it by half. It would be $8 versus $16. That was added to the tax rate.

talk about the seven positions for the Public Safety Communicator 2, that's seven out of 13, just so people understand what's happening there.

Sure, so that, so traditionally that area has a lot of turnover, and so we have typically, I don't know, seven to ten positions that are vacant all the time. We're always recruiting. We're still recruiting now. We still have vacancies, and so the idea was just to not fund the salaries so that we could have that savings because they're basically always vacant anyway.

The library page position, it says there's 12 positions but total personnel is six on the team and so I'm confused about how that works.

Yeah, so you would add those together. So we're recommending freezing 12. There are six additional and then sort of as across the whole department there are 41 pages. And in library's response this week, they did ask to add back just a couple of those for consistency and staffing in a few locations.

OK. So I want to have a, can Dave Lewis come on up? Because I have some parks related.

You said no, I'm just kidding.

Not on a Friday morning, yeah.

He's out.

He walks the other way.

Hey, Dave. I just, I'm looking at this maintenance worker because we're cutting a lot of those positions and then the recreation assistant position, it looks like we're cutting a lot of those, but they have a lot of positions in that. So can you walk me through what the maintenance workers do and realistically what we can expect the reduction in services to look like without those six maintenance workers.

Yeah, there's two sets of maintenance workers that we're talking about. One group is with the athletics division, and we have built those back in essentially for six month freeze for the year, meaning we can get through the winter, but we gotta hire them back to get them into the spring. And the other maintenance workers are, spread throughout the different park operation divisions. We have seven divisions, north, northwest, southeast, and all of those. We built back some of those, so really looking at, and this kind of helps to look at the overall strength of that. It's hard to quantify really what the difference is. The way we've talked about this over the last couple weeks is if you have four people that are changing trash, excuse me, where they might be able to do that in two days, now it'll take them three days, so obviously, It's a little bit slower for that but there may also be some things that they don't get to. It's really hard to quantify exactly what that looks like. The good news is we have only seen a slight uptick in complaints via our apps and emails and phone calls but restoring that back should have less of an impact than was originally frozen but it's really hard to quantify exactly.

So it's things like trash pickup. What I'm trying to figure out is does this mean when a swing breaks it takes longer for the swing to get repaired or is this like internal you know, equipment repair or we don't know.

Good question. Something like a swing repair generally would be our skilled trades technician, which is also on that list. It's why we've requested to build those back. We have two trades crews. One does maintenance and one does small capital projects. And what we would do if those aren't restored is actually shift some people from the small capital projects crew into the maintenance repairs. So it may slow up some of our small PAYGO projects, but it would make sure that we're staying on top of repairs and maintenance to amenities within the facilities.

Okay. And then let's talk about recreation assistance now. It looks like we have a lot in the department. There's 95, but we're getting rid of nine out of about half of them. half of this particular team, I guess, so.

Yeah, and the way they've divided it up is the team would be essentially the community center. So that's the strength of an average community center. It's not the strength of all of them. And so it's really that's being spread out. And the combination of recreation assistance, community center aides, they all work on programming. They all work on answering phones, hosting people. with a programmer being more, and an assistant being more heavy on the program side, with an aide being more on custodial services, answering phones, and so really it's trying to find the balance between those. We believe that this new proposal would have very minimal impacts. What we're trying to do is really re-look at things and shuffle to make sure that we're covering things. I think what's just as important is looking at the program data and really having a better understanding of when community centers are needed. Are we open times that we don't need to be? Are we opening too early, staying too late, open on days that the community hasn't expressed an interest in really needing that center? So that's part of our exercise too. All of that analysis is part of regular recreation programming development, but we're really doing a much deeper dive right now to be more efficient.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

This is not a Dave Lewis question, so you're off the hook.

Okay. Mine pertains to development services.

T.J.?

Don't leave, Dave.

He's going to be close. I would say get in line. Stay in the front row.

Yeah, sit in the front row. Okay.

DJ, as far as development services, the customer service rep too. I know that in recent years we've been trying to increase the flow of processes in your department. You've done a lot of work towards that. I want you to talk about this proposed reduction in force. How does that affect you? Does it affect you? How are you gonna compensate?

Okay, good morning, Mayor and Council. Thank you for the question, Council Member Flores. Yes, we have been trying to increase customer service reps to increase the flow on the fifth floor and people in and out online. What we plan to do to compensate with these cuts is to try to lean on technology we've been working with i.t and some of the resources that they have to look at like chat bots and other solutions that we can put online that can get people off the phone obviously without that you know the call time or the call hold time will increase but with technological solutions, we think we can kind of keep development moving forward. There may be a slight impact on wait times in the lobby, maybe also with plan review or moving things from like TPW to water to development services, but we're gonna try to compensate with technological improvements as much as possible and process improvements as well.

All right, are any of these proposed cuts, do they impact the X team? No, sir. All right. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. I heard from multiple residents about making sure that we did not do away with any services in Parks and Recreation. It's a forward-facing department. So are you comfortable that these cuts will ensure that we don't do away with any of those services? And I know that's a broad question, but I wanna support this, but I can't support it if we're gonna lose services to the community.

Yeah, the new proposal minimizes any impacts. And again, we have to do more homework to really understand community need in each of the locations. So I'm confident that we can still provide the same level of service. It's just being more efficient and effective and really understanding community need better. We look at all of our community centers differently. They serve different audiences with different needs, and so really customizing that and making sure that we're serving those local residents, but in a fashion that they need, and making sure that we're not staying open when we don't need to. That's a really big part of it, but it's also maximizing those spaces. We always say the community center supervisor's job is to make sure that that community center is bustling from open to close. How do you do that? You offer programs that people are interested in, and how do you do that? You ask them. And so it's really just making sure that we're understanding that community need.

Well, and that's good. So three of the people that I heard from were ministers who rely, believe it or not, heavily on the community center for activities for their youth. And so I just want to be sure that I can reassure them that we're not going to disrupt some of those activities that they think help deter crime and keep their folks busy.

Yeah, it's great to hear and I'd love to hear from them directly on what is important to them and what their needs are and making sure that we're able to meet that.

Thank you. Dave, I had similar concerns and received the same communication. I wanted to also inquire about community centers that have after school programs and things of that nature that have different organizations that are already convening there regularly for whatever reason. Will those be given priority or also considered

Yeah, we have not recommended any reductions to any of those programs at all. The only thing we're looking at is again streamlining some of the hours if we can determine that the community doesn't need the facility. One of the topics we're talking about, there are four or five facilities open on Sundays. All of them are open on Saturdays. Is it still necessary to be open those days? When we start looking at the data, some of the usage is low on Saturdays, so is that something that's necessary? But we need to ask the community that question and think about kids are back in school. Do you wanna go to a community center program on a Saturday after that busy week? Maybe. but that's what we need to better understand.

And not to belabor the point, when you say we're gonna ask the community, is there a formal method in which you're going to survey community use?

We don't have a formal one planned, but each community center does survey on their own, and then it obviously is a lot of the anecdotal stuff when we go to neighborhood association meetings and the various stakeholder input that we get. Some of it's anecdotal, but some of it is through surveying as well, but not one big survey. We do that about every five years. We test community need as part of our strategic planning.

Outside of a formal survey, is there data that you can pull, like check-ins, check-outs? There is.

In our system, we have all of that, whether it's rentals, whether it's drop-in, or actually registered use. That's the data that we're looking at. That, in combination with Placer AI, they kind of overlap a little bit. So we can tell when people come in just the traffic, and we can also see who's actually registering for programs as well.

I think my preference would be that we rely heavy on that data, because I think sometimes preference what people voice is their preference versus what their actual habits are might be different. So I want to make sure that that's, if we have that ability, that it's factored in. Absolutely.

Anyone else for Dave? No. Thank you, Dave.

Front row seat or? You just might stay close.

You just never know. Yeah. And maybe I have a question for DJ again, if you don't mind. DJ, you alluded to working with IT on different solutions that are maybe internal already available to the city of Fort Worth. Do you feel like we've properly extinguished all options that are outside maybe vendors that we're not currently working with to pilot some of this work?

I'm not sure, Mayor, to be honest. I think that'll come to light when we start doing some of these lean process analysis. And obviously with these cuts, we need to look at how we keep the same level of service for our customers. So we'll be looking at all options, right? If there is a third party that can do something faster for cheap, then we'll definitely be looking at that.

Yeah.

You know, I bring that up because council members, each of you probably have interacted with different vendors at NLC meetings or TML, et cetera. I would encourage us to bring any of those options to DJ and his team so he can holistically look at what's out there. What's interesting is a lot of these companies will let you pilot at no cost to the city for a period of time. You still have to have the manpower on your end so that it's not actually creating more work for your team. So we recognize it takes time. to the extent that this body can be helpful in bringing options to you, I think I would encourage us to do so now and let them start thinking about that in the next fiscal year. Council Member Crane, did you have a question? Go ahead.

Hey, I just wanted to check with you as part of this budget, haven't scrubbed through it, but do any of the proposals come forward to you have any services or hour cuts for the RISE Community Center Library?

No, not currently.

Thanks, appreciate it.

Any other questions, Council? No? Go ahead, Council Member Larson, go ahead.

I was just going to ask, well, first, from last meeting, we went back and watched it. I just want to thank you, Mayor, and the colleagues who stood up for PetSmart Alliance. Because after I was watching, of course, it was way after that. So no. So certainly hearing a lot from the residents on that one, too. So long live PetSmart Alliance. Thank you for that advocacy. And also to really make Amanda mad, too, because she likes to go in there. I don't want that. Yeah, so definitely do not want to make her mad. Couple things I'd like to learn more about. As we reach out to the residents and we let them know about some of these possible fee increases and although some tax rate goes up, although they may be paying less, it's really hard to justify a lot of that as we spend on public art. I know that's a hot topic and one that's hard to bring up. But it's really hard to look them in the face and be like, oh, by the way, we're gonna ask you to spend more on some of these fees while we're in a deficit year while paying for these. So I know we clearly know the process for moratorium. I don't know if that's necessarily the right way for this, but what does it look like as far as temporarily suspending funding for some of the larger public art projects that haven't been contractually obligated yet? I know it's different because it's tied to the bond, but what does that look like as far as deferring that to possibly a year when we can pay in arrears on a, more positive budget year, what does that look like?

Well, I think the council could take action not to fund those, but like you said, there's capital, so it wouldn't really help a general fund or any of the areas where we're asking for fee increases. Right. The dollars just wouldn't be spent and I guess they would be used for capital instead.

Yeah, I think that'd be the key there is, you know, understanding we can't move that back to general fund. But I think it also has a lot to do with just the perception in the, you know, when we're saying, hey, guys, it's really tight here. Again, we tell somebody, hey, we're kind of broke right now, but we're going to go out and have steak and lobster. It's kind of a bad perception, in my opinion. It's important still, but I think it's a bad.

I think there's a legal question since we went to the bond hole, you know, to the. and they voted for a bond that included public art. So I'm not sure. I'm looking at Dennis. He knew I was looking at him. If there's even a mechanism for that.

Would that be even allowable since it's already designated to public art?

That's the thing. I'm looking more for a temporary pause. So maybe not do it this year or next year, but at a year where we can actually afford it.

Good morning. Dennis, Mount Croy City Attorney's Office. With respect to Jay's question about allowed use, of the bond funds, it was presented to voters as a may, may use up to 2%, so council does not have to allocate that money, previously allocated money. If a pause were implemented, as Jay said, those projects just wouldn't get paid during this period. We'd have to do a deep dive into the contracts to know,

I might offer, this probably is a good topic for the council to really wrestle with. So if I'm hearing you correctly, Jay, it wouldn't actually impact our ability to change this discussion on this fiscal year budget.

It has zero impact on our operating budget.

So if the body would be okay with it, because we do need to get through this budget process, let's push this conversation to a work session in September, October. and talk about it openly, and that way we're not derailing this, because I can already feel, you know, some people really want to keep it on track, and some understandably have a worry about perception, so that's one thing I'll say. If anybody wants to say anything about that, you can. Council Member Beck, I think you have something to say. No?

Okay. And just the other one, as far as like a budget response, or RFI, if you will, if we could just get a, because whenever I heard the credit card processing, obviously that perked my ears, because is a small fry, like I'm paying 3% for us, and my P&L is in dollars, so it's not much at all. And so a city our size, economy to scale, should be paying a lot less. And I understand we're passing it on, so it's easy for us to say, oh, well, whatever they're charging is what we'll pay.

For instance, development services, last year when I came on board, it was the first thing they brought to me, because they were spending almost a million dollars out of their budget to cover the credit card fees for the, for people that came in to pay with credit cards. Right. We try to push folks to do ACH or to do debit card. And so that's what we brought to city council that, that change. And like I said, different, we have different vendors on different systems as type of systems. And we're trying to kind of streamline all those kinds of things. And so the systems that have been, that we've been able to change to go ahead and pass, that forward has been done, we found that some of them are over 3%, and so we're having to pay it out of, we're collecting the dollars, but we were capped at 3%, because that's what we asked the council. This is just increasing the cap, so we got it made whole.

Well, I'd be interested, too, to see who's charging more than 3%, because I believe that Visa will actually charge vendors fines if they're charging a customer more than 3%, or more than 3%, so be really curious to see that, but certainly be some economies of scale there, and you know, The average large business is paying around two, 2.1%. And of course, if we're gonna pass that on, sure, but it's at least one less thing they have to spend. And quite frankly, if you're spending that much money too, you're smart about it. If you're lucky enough to have like a 3% cash back and you're only getting charged 2.5%, great. Of course I'm gonna use my credit card, right? You're gonna, like Michael said, you're gonna get your miles real quick. But I would just like to see what we're paying. Is that something that we put an RFP out on for credit card processing? Because that's...

Yes, I think we do it for the different vendors. Where's Reggie? Is Reggie here?

Maybe even getting one credit card processor for all of them and getting an even better rate.

Yes, that process has been RFP'd over the years. And as Jay indicated, it's a decentralized process. We have several systems that have been implemented over the years. Yes, the city has considered trying to standardize the process a bit, but we're a little bit behind in doing that. The credit card fees are charged by the various merchants, and there's not a whole lot we can do about that. I think the change is just simply to ensure the city is reimbursed.

Right, and my point there is just what the city can do, and that's negotiate those rates with those credit card processors because that is easily a negotiable thing. So that's one thing I'd just like us to look at because it's easy to say that's their rate, but we can find vendors who will charge a lot less because they want the business with the city of Fort Worth because it's a good account.

We can come back with some data on that, but it may not be as easy to negotiate that.

Through an RFP process, you can't.

It's kind of what you get in on the... I mean, it's business. If you want to do business with the City of Fort Worth, if you can offer 2%, we'd like to hear from you. I would want that business from the City of Fort Worth because that's a big amount.

It's also tied to the fees they charge us for being our vendor, right? So... one might have a better credit card fee to the end user. You should be charging them to be a vendor, right? I mean, you wanna do business with us. It'd be more expensive on a system side. Right. Processing the billing.

I don't wanna go too deep down that rabbit hole, but I know it's expensive.

Thanks. So as I mentioned, in front of you is an equivalent on those items that the departments came back. As you'll see, the average tax bill for what it's worth would still be below the current one. I've confirmed that there's, it'll be another, not almost to 1.5 million before we would get to an equal to the current tax rate or the current bill would match, the new bill would match the current bill. So that's the, at this point, you could still make the argument that the average taxpayer would pay less with our, if you wanted to increase the tax rate. based on what we provided today.

Council Member Beck. Yeah, I'm sorry. I just want to make sure that I'm clear. So if we look at budget response number 20, I'm not 20, 19, that had all of the positions. So what you're saying is this handout here is the cost difference if we brought back all of those positions?

No, it's the ones that are on.

Tied to budget response 21.

Proposed 21. Okay.

All right. So this one.

The add-backs this week when departments were trying to pick and choose sort of their biggest priorities for adding back, that's what ties to your handout. Okay.

Plus a pay for performance at mid-year for general employees. Okay. More of our typical.

Glad I asked. Thank you.

So, again, I'm going to repeat that in case anybody didn't hear it. On the sheet that he sent you, that's this one here. The top line under restoration is increased paper performance. That is not in a budget response, but they articulated it here based on conversation this week. In addition to that, out of budget response 21 are each of these departments who went through and scrubbed which positions would have impacted services the most for us to consider restoring back into the originally proposed budget. And if you go up and you compare the budget scenario, you've got fiscal year 2027 recommended, then you have restorations, and you have a total there. And what Jay is articulating is if you move over to the right column under average tax bill, $1,643.62 and compare that to the current fiscal year 2026 adoption, you are still below or costing taxpayers less than $8.20 on average per year in their tax bill, even with the tax rate increases that are necessary to stabilize our budget and prevent furloughs, layoffs, and impacts to services. So at this point, the council really needs to wrestle with what's in front of them, which is does the body majority want to move forward with what was recommended originally for 2027? Do they want to wrestle with a 2027 with restorations number? And at this point, it would be really helpful to staff to give some direction on where we want to go. So at this point, I'll open the floor and we can have that discussion. Nobody wants to go first.

I'll go first. So, looking at the .7056, I think it's tough, but I think it's the reasonably prudent thing to do. It's pragmatic. I think staff did a good job of going through and really figuring out where we can cut without really affecting service. I mean, it's tough to increase any rate, however, We just have everything just got so much more expensive. And I think as long as we can really articulate going through the year, if this is what this body decides to approve, I think we have to be really diligent on the things that we do approve going forward and making sure that it is a basic city service and getting back to the basics. It's not a bunch of nice to have because it's going to be really. it would be a black eye for all of us to raise a rate, even though it's effectively still lowering their tax bill, perhaps, unless their home value did go up, and then turn around and give a nonprofit or give someone else millions of dollars at the same time. So I think it's really careful as we go. If this is what we do, we just have to be really diligent going forward on the dollars we spend and allocate.

Council Member Hall? Not to devalue what you said, Councilman, I think very often we substitute, we consider more raising rates and we start talking about non-profits and as we're giving them money. Often I hear this body and several colleagues suggest that we rely on non-profits to stand in the gap. I don't think it's fair to talk out of both sides of our face to say, let's look for nonprofits to do certain things and perform certain services, and then when we start talking about tax rates, start saying that we're giving money away to nonprofits.

Right, I guess just to, which I hear you. However, I have never had a single nonprofit come to our office and say, can we help you out with infrastructure, potholes, parks and rec?

So. No, but they are standing in the gap of social services and often in this room, we suggest that we call upon them to stand in the gap for us on social services. So they are not in the business of doing potholes. I'm just saying, I'm not devaluing your point. I just want to remind you, remind us that we often try to strike a balance with nonprofits and it's not fair to look at them like there's some type of charity case when we pay for their services.

But a nonprofit is in fact a charity case. I mean, it's a nonprofit. I'm not saying cut every nonprofit. I'm just saying we have to be very diligent and make sure that the money we are giving out is to ones who are gonna be good stewards of those dollars, and the service they're providing is one that, like you said, stands in the gap, which I completely agree, and there's gonna be some that are great, that are doing amazing work out there, and I wanna see this continue, because that will reduce the burden I believe on our system in many cases.

And so I'm going to not to belabor the point, but let's be specific in the future when we make those statements. That's all I'm asking. If we're going to throw that out there into the ethos, let's just be specific about which nonprofits we're talking about, which ones we're considering charity cases, which ones we're considering partners.

Well, and I know Council Member Peebles has a question. Maybe I'll ask Christiane or Brady, in the overall budget process and working with departments, I would assume that our departments really looked closely at additional services that were being provided external to the city or contracts that we had as a part of their 3% or 1% cuts. Do either of you have any additional comment you could make about that process or things that you saw from departments? And I'll turn to Council Member Peebles.

I would say as we went through the process and we asked departments to cut 1% and 3%, we did the same thing with partners that we provide funds to. They took the impact as well.

Do you have an example maybe, Jay, you could provide?

Sure. The clearest ones are the three chambers, the Fort Worth Chamber, African American, Black Chamber, Commerce. We went to them and say, especially at first we didn't ask for that, but when we got further into the process and we knew the gap was getting bigger, we said, we're looking for every dime in the cushion. So they all said, we understand, we'll look at it and we'll come back. And they all came back and said, yeah, we'll make it work. So we went through that process.

Thank you.

Council Member Peebles and Council Member Beck. Okay, so Mayor, I'm gonna start out by saying I'm gonna couch my remarks because my budget meeting with the community isn't until August the 31st. But based on the conversations that I've had with community meetings, The things that Jay brought us today are things that my constituents were asking for. They asked about making sure that we provided for parks and recreation. They asked that we go back and look at library services. I mean, one of the things, I was one of the council members that asked Jay about going back to look at taking care of our employees by making sure that we provided them opportunities for pay for performance because I understand employee satisfaction and employee retention. So, I would just tell you, I, I am comfortable and I couch that by saying I need to hear from the rest of my residents on the 31st but I am comfortable that Jay and team went back and did what I personally asked them to do because I feel like residents want these services provided to them and we need to and we are still giving them, we're still trying to keep their bills manageable and we came in with a rate that's below what they, I mean, with the tax rate. So I'm comfortable with this and Jay, you and your staff have done an admirable job. I know this was a tough one. I know we ask a lot of you but Today, I'm comfortable. Now on the 31st, it may change. Thank you. Council Member Beck.

So I had the, I actually had my budget meeting yesterday and I don't know, Jay, those weren't plants, I promise. All of the things that I brought up on Tuesday, it was like they, every person hammered it home, but it was, we heard a lot about not wanting a cut in services, particularly when it came to code, library, and parks, which we all kind of communicated. I have never been comfortable with the fact that we got to this budget solution on the backs of our employees. It just didn't feel right with me. We asked so much of them already and if we're honest, government work is not one that comes with a lot of perks. They don't get bonuses. They don't get fun parties or cool swag. They're coming here for the love of the game and I wanna make sure that we're taking care of them. No one likes an increase, but we're already going up. You've already recommended 3.2 since increase, and this minor increase gets us to a place where we're not cutting services and we're supporting our employees. And I think, you know, and we still get below what their tax bill was last year, and I personally think that's a win for everybody.

Anyone else?

Yes, Council Member Martinez.

So my budget meeting is also coming up on Saturday. Will this information as a second tax rate option be included?

If the council kind of gives us direction today, we'll update to let everybody know where we're headed at least.

I would really like to see it included because people need to know that

know adding this will provide the least impact on services to piggyback on uh councilwoman martinez my budget meeting was actually held already this week when i was on tuesday night um if there's going to be some changes is there any way that i could call upon staff to maybe get a brief summary so that i could send that update to my constituents just to know that we have pivoted um to some extent with those conversations the numbers that we proposed

already have have changed sure we can we can put something together and and once we edit the presentation to include this is kind of where we're going it'll be updated on on the website as well thank you customer flores you know just to kind of emphasize uh some of these talking points that we're all having here um i my budget meeting is still upcoming um i'll be interested to see hopefully get some good participation uh what i will be looking for though is uh like most council members a little clarity what's important to you know our own constituents with that said um i wish we had all the budget meetings done because i think it would help us to reaffirm what our priorities are as a council because i'm still not clear on that i can articulate what's priorities in my district but that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to match up with everyone else's right so that's what i'm going to be looking forward to And I know that's what's intended, Jay, when all this is done and this exercise is completed. I'm looking for that. What do our priorities look like following these meetings, following having received public input? Because then I think we can start making more refined choices on where to cut, where to reduce, and where not to.

And I can honestly say after four meetings, and I made the comment last night, as Councilwoman Beck referred to, after two or three speakers and one person kind of brought their list of grievances, it mirrored exactly the conversation from this group on Tuesday. And so these items that were brought up Tuesday is exactly what we're hearing from the four meetings we've had so far, that folks are saying, Somebody said last night, at the end of the day, you're already proposing a tax rate increase. Nobody wants less services. If it costs a little bit more to get us back those services, we'd rather do that because it doesn't look like you're not gonna have a decrease on the tax rate. So just, it doesn't make that much of difference if it's not gonna change our overall cost overall. And that was a comment last night. But it's been consistent in every meeting. I would guess maybe 100 people so far through the four meetings, 120 people. There's been one person that says, and all they said was, I like lower value and I like lower taxes. And that was his comment. And everybody else, that's the only person out of all of them that has said that. Yeah, we have the survey results. And that chart that shows the departments that went up versus the ones that went down, that mirrors almost exactly the non-scientific survey that we put out to the public.

And so, Jay, if I could tell you, so I haven't had my meeting yet, but I told you I've heard from multiple people, and this is what I heard, and I just got a text that said, good job, go for it. So I think, you know, residents do watch this, and I hope people are listening or looking now, but... The consensus I have unless it changes on the 31st is that people don't want to drop in services and they're willing to pay a little bit more or see a little bit of an increase because they won't be paying more but see a little bit of an increase to get those.

Yes, thank you. I do want to support this recommendation. I know the conversation is still being talked around, other things that we can do. I want to talk directly to our employees, our general employees, because I think They are the heartbeats of our community and what makes the city run. Our parks department, our compliance, our street team. And there were concerns about raises or not getting raises. And we know cost of living goes up every year. And so this budget supports to make sure they can still put food on their table. And I'll remind you that Even the county last year did a tax decrease, but they also got rid of a whole department with 100 plus jobs. And I want to make sure that our employees know that we value you here. We're certainly not going to be cutting anybody's jobs or any departments. And if that costs us to raise our taxes, then that's what we're going to do. And so I can support what you have proposed today. Thank you.

Any other comments from council? No? Again, your staff's done an awesome job, Jay. I know this has not been easy. If you listen, really across the state and several other jurisdictions are all grappling with budgets, and I'm just really proud also of this body to at least give staff direction as we move forward in these future meetings. So it sounds like follow up that Christiane and her team will provide kind of a summary of what these changes look like to all council members. It'll be helpful at future meetings and also those of you that already had budget meetings as well. And then it might be helpful just one more time to articulate the timing of what we're gonna do in the next month before we vote on the final budget to give everybody time. You do have plenty of time. We just got this recommendation in front of you to allow staff to run with this rather than the original proposed budget.

So on August 25th, so Tuesday's regular work session meeting, we have a placeholder for budget follow-ups and items there just as part of the regular meeting. We have continued community engagement into next week with the last meeting occurring on September 3rd. We have a budget public hearing special called meeting at 2 p.m. on September 1st. So that's just with all of you at once hearing from any community members who would like to speak on the budget. and then you're scheduled to adopt the tax rate in the budget on September 15th.

Thank you. Any other questions on this topic before we adjourn and move into CCPD? Okay. Thank you to the team. We'll adjourn and move into CCPD. Thank you all.