City Plan Commission - Regular Meeting

district five cares so ashley thank you for coming tonight thank you all for being here tonight we wanted to talk about the budget and i want you all to be informed about the budget and what the city is facing and what we're trying to do and uh for those of you like me who've lived here for a long time and i know your fifth generation uh fort worth in We want you to know what is happening and how we spend the money and try to spend it well and try to be very prudent in the decisions that we make. So tonight, the person who's responsible for putting all those numbers together, because y'all know it takes me a little while to understand them, but is our amazing city manager, Jay Chapa, who is here tonight to not only help answer the questions, but walk us through some of this. And so let me introduce you to Jay, and Jay, take it away.

Thank you so much, Council Member. Well, good evening. Thanks for coming out tonight. I'm just going to provide a little bit of an overview, and then I'm going to turn it over to Christiane Simmons. She's our director of the Fort Worth Lab that's responsible for budget and performance at the city. She'll go through a presentation. But just a little background, if you've never paid attention to the city budget or how all that works, under state law, we're required to put together a balanced budget. So we're not like the feds where they can run a deficit budget. and have to pay interest, and it has to be a balanced budget on an annual basis. And the budget for the city is, total operating budget's about $3.3 billion. All right, so that includes all aspects of the city. So the city's kind of like a conglomerate where it has different lines of businesses. And so you have the general fund, which is what everybody kind of pays attention to. The general fund is basically our property taxes, sales taxes, and other general fees that fund like police, fire, the things you think about the city when you think about what the city does. Police, fire, transportation, public works, parks, libraries, those kind of activities. And then, but you also have all these other funds, like the water department, it's a utility, stands on its own. The aviation department, which is our three airports, that stands on its own. Our solid waste. Yes, it's here. I met him earlier. Our environmental services, that includes the solid waste fund. So we have all these different funds. The thing is about it, when people say we have a shortfall in one area and we're talking about how we're gonna address that shortfall, people think, well, that's just this amount and you gotta get it from 3.3, you have 3.3 billion dollars, you can find that savings. Well, the issue is that you can't take dollars like from the water department to pay for police or fire or transportation public work. It has to stay in the utility. So when Christiane goes through the presentation, she'll kind of define some of the issues that we had this year as it relates to the general fund and why we had a shortfall. related to the general fund and what we're talking about. So at the end of the day, as part of the budget, I am recommending an increase in the tax rate, but a lot of that has to do with how TAD, Tarrant Appraisal District, changed up how they do appraisals. And they were the only group in the state, the only appraisal district in the state, that's actually doing what they're currently doing with the single-family appraisals. But with that, I want to be available for questions. As Christiane goes along through the presentation, feel free to raise your hand. This is being live streamed. We actually, this is the eighth of 10 meetings. We've been averaging about 200 people on the live stream and about somewhere between 20 and 50 people in person. So if you have a question, we'd like to get you on the mic so that make sure that it's recorded so that Folks, hear it. And they're also all available on our website if you want to go back and look at a previous one. So I'm going to turn it over to Christy Ann. She's going to go through the presentation. And thank you for being here.

All right. Good evening, everyone. Like Jay mentioned, my name is Christiane Simmons and I'm the director of the Fort Worth Lab. So we do the city's budget. We also do data analytics and performance. So kind of a multifaceted group. But I have my budget hat on today and I'm happy to be with you on budget, even though budget sometimes is boring to people. It's not boring to me. And I'm going to try not to make it boring for you on a Monday evening. So here we go. So every year in budget development, there are always certain themes that emerge. And this year, you may have heard some coverage on this, really the theme is about the activities at the Tarrant Appraisal District and how our city's population growth isn't necessarily translating to property tax values and revenues. And so we began, we know about Tarrant's reappraisal plan, you may as well. So the city actually sits in four appraisal districts. But Tarrant is our biggest. We get about 92% of our property tax value and revenue from Tarrant. And a couple of years ago, they readopted this every other year reappraisal plan for residential properties. And so our values have been frozen in Tarrant for two years. And we knew that, of course, from the budget perspective and began to forecast really conservative growth. What we didn't necessarily anticipate or have precedent for was while values are frozen, they are also granting a lot of protests and a lot of mid-year litigation value loss was occurring as well. And so while we were only projecting about 2% growth, even with all our new construction and development, we actually came in less than 1%, so 0.89% growth in the property values. And as you'll see, the general fund is where we have our deficit, and that's because about 60% of our general fund revenue comes from property values. And so that's the situation we found ourselves in. So like I said, we were projecting a gap from the beginning, but then that gap really grew through the process once we found out our certified values from TAD, which happens at the end of July. And so we were trying to be of course fiscally responsible as one of our core priorities and so we have to balance the budget like Jay mentioned and so we looked at reductions across the general fund but also have contractual increases we have to pay for police and fire and try to keep up with the city's growth, minimize service level impacts and that's how we sort of will get to the tax rate increase. And I'll walk you through kind of what that looks like. This is a graph that we added kind of about halfway through the budget public meetings because it was just not clear to some people even after the presentation, like why are we really in a situation with TAD? So this could help in some cases. So this is an appraisal district comparison between Collin, Dallas, and Tarrant counties. And it's the last few years of average taxable value for a home. We get this number from the appraisal district. And so you can see... as we're all growing in each of these counties. Collins' average taxable value is growing, as is Dallas'. And then you see on the Tarrant side, because of the activities of that particular appraisal district, you can see it's been fairly flat. And then this year, values are falling, actually, the average taxable value. This doesn't mean their plan is, like I'm not making a judgment on their plan. It might be working exactly as intended based on this graph, but this is just an example of how we stack up with Collin and Dallas. And so you can kind of see our values are falling in Tarrant because of their adopted plan, which is why later when I show you the tax rate increase, tax rate increases, but your value is decreasing. So that's why you actually don't pay more next year on the city side for an average taxable homestead. Okay, so we'll go through a couple of numbers. $3.3 billion is the total operating budget. Jay mentioned that figure. And it breaks out across a number of different types of funds. So the biggest is the general fund. So that's 1.1 billion, 1.15. And it's about a third of the total budget. And I'll show you a graphic later that kind of helps narrow down what we can kind of influence But the general fund is the biggest, and that funds things like police and fire, transportation, code, parks and libraries. So a lot of the things you think of as like those core city services. Another big group of operating funds is enterprise funds. So those are our second biggest category. Those are funds that operate more like a business. So they're funded not by taxes, but by like user fees and rates. So the biggest of those, for example, is the water department. So the water department is funded by water rates that you... get on your water bill. And then the third biggest sort of category of the operating funds are the special revenue funds. Those have a restricted purpose based on the dedicated revenue source. So an example of this is CCPD, so the Crime Control and Prevention District. The dedicated revenue source for CCPD is the half cent sales tax, and then the restricted use is crime control and prevention. So certain type of revenue, certain type of expense. So that's why it's not as easy to solve the general fund budget problems. It's really difficult to solve them even when the budget number is big because you can't dip into those kind of restricted other funds. So those are kind of the three biggest. So about 7.5% growth across the budget, kind of a mix of growth across the different funds. And I mentioned the process and how the gap sort of grew and changed throughout, which makes sense. So in April, we were projecting about a $49 million budget gap. That's when we started our early budget work sessions with council. If you really want to go and look at those, you certainly can on the Fort Worth Lab site, which I'll QR code for you at the end. You can look all the way back at those early budget work sessions and see us talking about the $49 million. So that was primarily due to coming up short on the property tax value side. We continue to get values through the summer from the appraisal districts, and we massage the forecast as we go. Along the way, we were asking departments to respond to the budget gap so we could try to close it. So one of the first things we did was ask departments to reduce their budgets by 1%. So in my department, the Fort Worth Lab, we actually give the departments in the general fund a target budget that they have to meet. And so when we deliver that target budget, we reduced it by 1%. So it was just kind of an initial belt tightening. Departments had to meet that reduced amount, so we got about $7.8 million in savings just from those kinds of cleanups, which is a good practice for departments to do every year anyway in a big budget. Sometimes you find pockets of inefficiency. I'm hearing a voice. 3% reductions were the next phase, and that's something we asked general fund departments to do, not right away. They didn't have to meet a 3% target, but they had to submit ideas that equaled a 3% budget reduction. And every department had to do that. We excluded civil service salaries from police and fire. but we did do one and 3% reductions. And then once we got our budget numbers or certified value numbers from the appraisal district, that's when we really had to look at deeper reduction. So those were things like we looked at furloughs, for instance, we looked at freezing and eliminating vacant positions. We reduced the amount of pay for performance for general employees. So not civil service employees or uniformed, but like general employees in the general fund. Those are all things that came in and out of the budget as we went. The budget as it stands now, one of the deeper cuts is that reduced pay performance pay for general employees. Um, it was recommended to be a 3% at mid year. So one and a half percent, it's usually 4%. Um, and I'll show you in a minute council wanted to reinstate a little bit of that. Um, but that was one of the things we do not have furlough days right now in the budget, but we do have a number of vacancy eliminations and freezes. We always look at revenue as part of the process, so departments look at fees and revenue sources and make sure that they're still accurate and competitive. And then, after all that, we were still at about a $37 million gap, and that's when, in order to minimize any additional service level impacts, when we were already cutting into things like parks and libraries and code, we opted to propose a tax rate increase. which was at the time of the recommended budget, 3.2 cents. So current year's tax rate is 67 cents per $100 valuation. This would be 70.2. And this is the way that that tax rate kind of breaks out. So if you've been around some of these meetings, you see this breakout before. So like, for instance, from February and March and April, we were talking about the bottom portion of this chart, which is the debt rate. That's the rate that supports the bond programs in our other city debt, past bond programs and things. But today we're really talking about like the top branches. So the operation and maintenance portion of the tax rate funds the general fund. So police, fire, again, all those departments I mentioned. And in Fort Worth, we actually further break out that portion of the tax rate into operations and capital departments. So operations, think of it as like the main source for the general fund. And then capital, that seven and a quarter cents is called PAYGO, the PAYGO portion of the tax rate. That's cash funded capital maintenance. So rather than doing capital maintenance via debt issuance, we do it there. Transportation and Public Works is the largest user of PAYGO. Parks has some PAYGO, and I'll actually show you the PAYGO budget here in a bit. We wanted to maintain, obviously, the debt rate and maintain the PAYGO portion of the tax rate because we don't want to take away from capital maintenance or capital growth in the future. Since the time we proposed the budget, that was August 11th, we have had a couple more budget work sessions with council, and it really is a work in progress. Even now, it's a work in progress. I know your council member last week, or maybe it's been two weeks now, was like, well, I haven't had my budget meeting yet, and I want to hear what people say at my budget meeting before I make any decisions or go on the record here. And so I know that council members have been listening and attending these meetings. But a couple of things that we seem to have a majority of agreement on with council right now that are different from what we recommended, are a couple of restorations listed here. So the original recommended budget, one of the things in it was to get rid of the Alliance PetSmart Adoption Center. That's a city partnership with PetSmart. So it's like the offsite adoption center. That was one of Code's 3% reductions. Remember, we had to ask for a lot of different ideas. So that was one. It's not that anyone was super excited about it, but you have to make these tough decisions in the budget. So we thought, well, we can send the animals back to the shelters and it will impact service levels and the live release rate, but maybe that's something we can live with, but it wasn't. Most of council and a lot of residents too at the budget meetings are like, no, don't do that. We did provide council the cost on the tax rate to put that service back into the budget. And we seem to have a majority there. We also have a number of employee positions. Remember, I mentioned that we were looking at vacancies, like positions that have been frozen this year or vacant for a while. But there are some of those that were very directly impacting programs and services that face residents. think of like parks maintenance, code inspections, transportation and public works, some different positions there, recreation, I'm trying to think of others, development services, so like customer service for people coming in to pull permits that we've really been working on over the last few years. And so we, council really wanted to know more detail about service level impact, so we asked each of these departments, like hey, if you could put anything back in the budget that would make the biggest service level impact, what would that be? And so you see the list of numbers and positions there. So code put six back, development seven, et cetera. And then I mentioned employee pay for performance, restoring that to its previous level of 4%, still delivered at the mid-year, so it's really a 2% budget impact. So the cost for restoring all of that that we told council, this costs $4 million to put these items back in, and that would change the tax rate from 70.2 cents to 70.565 cents. And again, it's still a work in progress, but this is kind of where we're sitting as of right now today in the budget, 70.56 cents. And so all that growth would still go to the operations portion of the tax rate to restore those positions, to put the Alliance PetSmart back in, and to work on employee pay. So that's where we are today. And this just shows that it's a really work in progress. So we had a balanced budget. Council wanted some things back in. We increased the tax rate recommendation as a result. And I'll just go through a couple of highlights here. City Council has five strategic priorities, so we try to group things in that way when we talk about them. So we'll start with safety. Police and fire are absolutely the priority in this budget. That is very indicative of what we see and hear in these meetings and in our different surveys. So perhaps you took the budget priority survey earlier in the spring. If you did, thank you for doing that. We love to engage all year long. And so we always hear police and fire and 911 emergency all at the top, right? So in this budget, all of the additions are really in those areas. We did do one shift in the budget, which has to do with the Fire Hope Team. So if you're not familiar with the Hope Team, it's homeless outreach prevention and education. There's a police component and a fire component. This is the fires component. And right now they have a team of four firefighters, like sworn firefighters doing that work. And whenever firefighters who are trained to put out fires are not doing that, they have to be backfilled in a fire station on a truck. And so we proposed, the department proposed, and we agreed, and then council seems to agree, is to shift those four firefighters back into fire suppression activities and continue the hope work through the mobile integrated health team, which we acquired when we started working with EMS MedStar. And so that actually has a budget savings because we're not having to pay the overtime to backfill those four positions. So that's one shift that's like not necessarily an addition, but a savings, but not a,

a service level reduction, if you will.

And then there are some ads for the FHIR budget. So FHIR has contractually obligated overtime through their labor contract that they were not necessarily, we call it like right-sized for. So we added funding to their budget to meet what their overtime obligations and spend are, is, are. And same for Fire Fleet. So we've seen, and maybe you have too, like the cost of vehicle repair and maintenance and fuel, like those things are up for the city right now too. And it's a theme across the city, but Fire just has some of our more expensive vehicles to maintain and repair. And so we did add funding to Fire's budget so that they had the right amount there. On the police side, we added 76 patrol officers. And this is because as the city grows, we really try to keep up with police staffing, as you can imagine. And so we kind of have an internal staffing study that we've paid consultants to do it before, but now we kind of know how to do that math. And so we revamped their staffing study this year with the new chief, and it showed that we needed 76 more officers in patrol. And they will actually be funded in CCPD for next year because they have to get trained and come through the academy and stuff. And that's where that happens. But then they'll come on to the general fund in the following year. We also created 30 corporal positions in patrol. So this actually changes 30 officers into corporals. So they'll still be operating and fully functional out in patrol. But it provides a promotional path for an officer to stay in patrol. Right now, if you're an officer and you want to promote, you actually have to leave patrol and go be a detective or a corporal in like a specialized unit. But the chief really wanted to see a promotional spectrum for people that would like to stay in patrol. So that also helps with that issue. Okay. And then the other department that's kind of nested in community safety is emergency management and communications. And so I think like 911 and also emergency management like citywide. But this year, in the current year, they piloted this technology with Axon 911, which is assistive call-taking technology. So if you call for non-emergency, your call right now gets like AI triaged so you can get to the right spot. And that helps with workload metrics for the more complex 911 calls. We have a lot of turnover in the call taking and dispatching function, as you can imagine. And so we've seen some good results from that program. So we're funding that, recommending to fund it fully in fiscal year 27. All right, infrastructure. So we'll move away from community safety and into some of the things that are taking a hit in the budget. I talked about maintaining the seven and a quarter cent portion of the tax rate. That's the PAYGO portion. Again, we want to maintain our investment in cash-funded capital, but as values fall and we keep the rate the same, we actually have a little less money. It doesn't... you know, garner as much revenue. So there is a small PAYGO reduction, 2.8 million, which is tied to that static rate. And that is, Transportation and Public Works is still funded, Parks is still funded, but there are a couple of buckets that take a reduction, and I'll show you that detail in a moment. This budget also authorizes the pavement management fee. It won't start hitting a water bill in the next budget year, but it allows the departments to continue to work toward that. So you might have heard that talked about as street maintenance. Same thing, but pavement management is like the official name of it. And that's meant to reflect that it's not so much reactive, just maintenance and going out to repair things when they break down, but really managing the pavement like at a whole life cycle, like planning proactively for the life cycle of pavement across the city. And there's a table over there if you'd like to learn more from Lane about pavement management fee. She's a smart engineer and she can talk to you all about it. And then this budget also continues water significant capital program and investment. As you imagine, as the city grows, water is a regional utility and has growing costs and capital. And so there are various capital projects in this budget, including the Marys Creek Water Reclamation Facility and continuing a cast iron replacement program. So community investment, this is a priority where there are a lot of public facing things that were up for like 3% reductions. And so you can see already my strike through there on PetSmart because that was one of the original things that is now back in the budget it looks like. But overall in this priority, we're trying again to minimize service level impacts and also balance the budget while avoiding widespread closures of libraries and community centers. So If you pay much attention to municipal news, a lot of cities are grappling with rotating closures of libraries and community centers. We really didn't want to do anything widespread there. Closing Alliance, that's off the table now, it seems. We do take a small reduction in the priority repair program, which comes out of neighborhood services. That is a three percent reduction, so it's a two and a half million dollar program. They actually have another two million in grant funding. So it's not a program elimination by any means, but certainly a small reduction. mobile tool shed program. Some of you may be familiar. We actually just started this program in fiscal year 25 and invested in it this year. Again, this is not an elimination of that program, but they're a team of four. And so code's proposal is to remove one of those people and send them back to code inspections. And there may be a service level impact from doing so. So perhaps right now, if you call for a tool, it might come in two or three days and maybe it's now gonna come in five or six days. It just depends on the availability of those inspectors and those code officers.

I'm sorry, what is the mobile tool shed program? Brian, you wanna talk about it?

How's it going, everybody? Brian Dougherty, co-compliance director. That is a program where we have a set of tools that had been donated from, we've worked with Home Depot, Lowe's, Tractor Supply, and anyone willing to donate them. And you can go online and check out a mower or a weed eater or a shovel. And the idea is that I seriously doubt there's a lot of people conspiring to like all grow their high grass and be in co-violation. Most of the time it's because people are too busy or they got their kids, their spouse, their job, just like all of us have. And so if you don't have the means to mow your grass, you can check out a mower. You go online, you can see what tools are available and when and you check it out and they come to your house, drop them off, show you how to use them. And typically drop off is on Friday and pick up is on Monday. With the reduction, to talk about that a little bit, the program is more dependent on the tool availability than it is the staff administering it. So that is where a bigger hang-up is, and we're trying to expand the inventory. But as far as getting it out there, yeah, it may be a small delay, but it's more dependent on the tools. But that's the program in a nutshell, is it's giving people the resources to correct their code violations. Any other questions? You sure? My next question would be why. Why? I have a great answer for that. Typically with code violations, if I write them a citation, which would be the next one, or for us to mow it, it's not going to get that into compliance any faster. Same thing if a house needs to be painted and I'm writing them a $500 ticket. Is it going to get into compliance any faster? It's not. Most of the time people aren't doing this intentional. I've ran a program similar to this in other cities, and it cut down the city's cost by up to $30,000 to $50,000 a year in what we spend to mow. So regardless of how you feel about that, it inherently saves the city money. And most of the tools were donated anyways. It's just trying to get compliance. The goal is not to penalize people. It's to get everything compliant.

Thank you. All right. So let's see, where'd I leave off the neighborhood improvement program. So this later, you're going to see neighborhood services listed as a general fund department, and you're going to see a reduction and you're going to be concerned. Maybe a lot of people have been. Um, so I'm going to say it now and then I'll probably say it like two or three more times. So the Neighborhood Improvement Program is a neighborhood services program. It's funded from PAYGO because typically there's a capital investment that occurs. We select one neighborhood a year based on this data-driven process about the neighborhood and poverty and education levels and all kinds of things. It's a $4 million program delivered over three years. And the first year is typically spent with the neighborhood. planning for what that neighborhood needs, because every neighborhood needs different types of investment. So perhaps one neighborhood needs additional sidewalks so that kids can get to the park safely. Some neighborhoods want certain cameras. Some neighborhoods want better lighting or some combination of all of that. So what we've seen is we fund all four million up front, but we don't ever spend four million in one year. We spend one million in the first year or less, because it's a very heavy planning year. So the reduction that you see in neighborhood services is actually about smoothing that funding distribution. So it looks like a reduction for year one, because we're taking the program from four million to one, but it's actually just to smooth the delivery of what's already occurring naturally with the departments in that planning year. So in year one, you'll see like a million dollars in investment. Year two for that neighborhood will bump up to a million and a half or two, depending on the plans, right? And then finish that funding in year three. And then the intention is that every year we'll still pick a neighborhood. And so it'll be like a staggered funding delivery. So that's why that one will look a little funny when you see it. But it helped balance the budget this time. Oh, yeah. Okay.

Sorry.

We've opened the floodgate. Go ahead. No, you're good.

OK, neighborhood improvement programs. You're telling me that we're paying for a neighborhood to get cameras put in? Sometimes.

Why? Because the neighborhood requests it. Anyone can talk about any of that. But yes, that's the reason. So some neighborhoods want that. Some neighborhoods maybe don't. But typically, the cameras are part of the neighborhood improvement program. Oh, here comes a city. Oh, here comes Dana.

Sorry. I want to make sure I heard the question. It was about cameras in neighborhoods? Yes. Yeah, so Dana Bergdorf, Assistant City Manager. Thank you. Sorry.

So we're trying to cut the budget, and we're spending, what was it, $4 million is what you said, for people to have cameras in their neighborhood?

No, the cameras are the least expensive, one of the least expensive items. Most of the dollars end up going towards sidewalk improvements, park improvements, other public safety improvements for folks to be able to use their neighborhood. I was told if I wanted a sidewalk, I had to pay for it and put it in myself. It depends on whether you're in an income-qualified area and also whether you're selected by the city council because of crime, poverty, education attainment, whether the neighborhood gets selected for improvement.

Thank you. Good question. Anybody else? Okay. Thank you, Dana. All right. And then in the current fiscal year, we piloted a program called NetForce, which was Nuisance Enforcement Task Force, and there were three pilot properties. And the city's sort of tagline for that program was to become a nuisance to nuisance properties. And we've been reporting on that to council over the last six months or so. This is a program led by Code Compliance, but with... assistance or heavy intervention from police, fire, I feel like I'm missing some, environmental services, for instance. So there was an apartment complex and motel and another thing in the first three. We've seen good results from that program, and so Code did request to make that program permanent through addition of dedicated personnel. Right now it's been sort of an auxiliary function with an existing staff. Guys, that was really good. I am a licensed Zumba teacher, so if you wanna see something entertaining, or not entertaining. Okay, we'll move to economic development. So primary reduction here comes from the reduction of a transfer from the general fund to another special revenue fund that's called the Economic Development Initiatives Fund. have transferred over the last couple of years $5 million from the general fund to this fund. And it's a business attraction strategy fund. Some cities that we compete with in the Metroplex actually have dedicated sales tax for economic development. We do not. We dedicate our sales tax to CCPD, for instance. And so this is sort of the city's answer But because it's not necessarily a forward-facing service delivery impact, that was one of the things we thought we could take a reduction in the budget. And so we've reduced that from 5 million to just 500,000 for fiscal year 27 as a balancing strategy. The budget in economic development also continues the partnership with local chambers, and that includes delivering the small business development program. We transition management of the Will Rogers Memorial Complex in this budget. That is a note because you may have seen some of that news in the last few months. So they'll be managed by a third party under a management agreement. And then in economic development, we are adding one position to help support the neighborhood revitalization efforts across the city. This is like just a last priority is responsible growth, kind of like a catch-all little. Oh, sorry. I'm just looking at my screen. Do you have another question? She doesn't.

Okay. Oh, wait.

Okay. Now, see, you lost your chance because now there's going to go a mic back there.

Okay. Next.

So the Will Rogers situation. Yeah. So the city's retaining ownership of the property but not the management of the services. Is that what that? That's correct.

Yep. Oh, here he comes, yes, that's correct. Yep.

Yes, that's correct.

So it cost us less to have someone else do it?

I think the main reduction there is because there's a reduction in the overall budget for public events, because we're closing parts of the convention center. Because the convention center is going to get expanded, so the arena's being torn down. And so we're not going to have as much rental revenue. So the budget's smaller this coming year because of that. On the Will Rogers side, This is part of a, it's been like a five-year plan. We did a study back in 2019 on how to become more efficient overall, and that Will Rogers Complex overall, the idea is that we would then have one management group that would manage all of the facilities for all of, especially the equestrian side, because we already have a contract with the Stock Show that's been around for like 100 years, where they already do one whole month, they take over. And so it was kind of inefficient. They come in for one month. City staff is not doing that for that one month. So when we went through that whole process, the idea is that if you had one group doing the whole thing for the whole year, it would be more efficient. And don't tell the councilwoman this. Cover your ears, Deborah. From my perspective, every time we're having negotiations with a private group on rental of the facilities, when they don't like it, they go to the council members and seek for a better deal right through politics. This now will have an actual contractual obligation, and all the rental deals go through that management company that takes it in. So it's done a lot of places. Dallas had their convention centers managed by a third party. But in this way, we can be more efficient overall, less moving parts.

OK, so I've been around for a minute. We've done this multiple times. We go in and out. So what's the difference this time?

This is the first time we've done it for Will Rogers. What group are you talking about, or what?

Well, because we've done it for the Convention Center. I don't remember if it's been done for Will Rogers.

No, Convention Center's run by the city.

Now?

It's always been run to the city, ever since we bought it from Tarrant County in 1995.

Okay, so it used to be run by the county.

It used to be Tarrant County Convention Center, and the city bought it from them.

Okay, gotcha.

No, and we're not selling Will Rogers. The idea is if they're able to increase revenues. So Will Rogers is subsidized by the hotel tax. It only covers 35% of the costs are made by the events directly. The rest of it's covered by the hotel tax. The idea is if they're able to push up revenues, reduce costs, so that percentage goes up to 40, 50%, we'll then have funds available to put back into Will Rogers for capital costs. Because there's a lot of, they're 100-year-old buildings, and the maintenance of them are really high. So it's a way to try to get to that. That's the goal.

Didn't San Antonio try this with the Alamo, and now they're trying to tear it down?

With the Alamo? I think that's owned by a private foundation, not by the city. I think it was never owned by the city. It's been a private foundation, I thought. But maybe I'm wrong.

I don't totally know.

I don't know enough about it.

I'll hit just a few highlights on responsible growth. This is the last priority and then we'll move on. So I mentioned vehicle and equipment stuff. So we do replace vehicles and equipment in the general fund. This happens out of property management's budget and it's called VRF, Vehicle Equipment Replacement Fund. So if I say VRF, that's what it is. We are still going to be replacing vehicles and equipment, as you can imagine. But one of our balancing strategies this year is to shift that replacement into tax notes. So it hits the debt side of the budget instead of the operating side. So this is a general fund relieving activity or balancing strategy. So later, again, you're going to see property management taking a big decline. And that's the primary reason why. The city also increased its employer contributions for group health. So we've seen health care costs for employees rising very high over the last couple of years, particularly in pharmaceuticals or pharmacy costs. And so the city council has adopted a number of strategies to get the group health fund right size. But part of that is increasing the employer contributions. Did not want to pass that cost on to employees. So when you see Some of our departments that are flat or their budgets are even reducing, that's actually with that 40% increase in health costs in the departments. We continue to see public information requests growing, the open records process, and so this budget continues to provide support for that open records function. We talked a little bit about vehicle and equipment, or vehicle and maintenance costs. I mentioned FHIR specifically, but the budget funds inflationary costs across departments where necessary. for vehicle and maintenances, that's not a word, maintenance. We always look at fee structures as part of the budget, which we'll talk a little bit more about that. And then for City Hall itself, reducing some City Hall maintenance and parking, like for the building and the parking garage and lots as well. Again, on the property management side as part of responsibility in balancing the budget. So we'll pause just for another minute on general funds, and so that's kind of where our focus is today. This is general fund financial summary. So revenues on top, expenditures on the bottom. At the bottom, very bottom, you can see zero, which is because we're a balanced budget. So we balance our expenses based on projected revenues. Property tax we've talked a little bit about. So just very modest growth in property tax across our four appraisal districts, but primarily Tarrant. Sales tax is the other biggie in the general fund. So between property tax and sales tax, it's about 80% of the general fund. So we do have some healthy sales tax growth, about 5%. You'll see that when we look at CCPD as well, because that's their primary revenue source. So that helps a little bit with offsetting the property tax issue, but of course it's not nearly as big as the property tax revenue. On the expense side, I'll show you departments, which might be more helpful, but notable for the expense side is that about 70% of the general fund is salary and benefits. And of course a lot of that is police and fire. And so let me show you expenses by department. I have a graphic that might be easier to read, but if you like a table, here's the table. This is an alpha order departments in the general fund. First column is fiscal year 26, so that's current year adopted budget, and then fiscal year 27 recommended. About 4.5 percent growth across the budget, but a very wide range of reductions and flat and then growth. So I will show you that sort of graphically, but let me set one little stage here. So we've talked a lot about the budget 3.3 billion, but that's not where we reduce from. We have a much narrower pool to reduce from. So this is a graphic that our friends in communications made. that attempts to show why. On the left hand side you see the total operating budget of 3.3 billion. The general fund is about a third of that. The other funds there are mostly restricted to specific purposes. So we talked about enterprise funds, like you can't use water revenues to pay for police salaries, right? You can't use aviation funding to pay for code compliance, that kind of thing. There are a couple of exceptions, and we've tried to take advantage of those exceptions where we can. I'll give you an example on aviation and fire in just a minute. So in the middle, we get to just the general fund. So we've winnowed like that third into the middle. And 57% of the general fund is public safety. So that's police, fire, and emergency management communications. And those folks, police and fire in particular, have labor contracts. We're required to continue to pay them at their contractual rates of pay. And so when it comes to balancing the budget, then in the general fund, that really leaves us on the right-hand side. The right-hand side is every other department in the general fund. And that's why when we look at the community investment priority and some of those, you know, like we looked at on the highlights, that's why you see some reductions in places like parks and libraries and code, because it can't really come from 60% of the budget, so it has to come from that other 40%, or 413 million on the right. So here are increases and decreases for fiscal year 27 by department. if more helpful than the table. So you see fire and police at the top. You're getting the theme here, right? So fires growth, I know it looks like a lot, 52.6 million. So I'm just going to tell you sort of the big rocks of what makes up that 52 million. 30 million of that is the general fund subsidy to EMS, right? So remember that the city acquired MedStar Emergency Medical Services in July of 2025. So this has been our first full budget year with that group in the city. And so it is not a self-supporting service. It's a special revenue fund. So it's paid for about 60% of it is paid for with like billing. for those healthcare costs and services, but not all. And so while the city will continue to work on that, right now the general fund is subsidizing that service by $30 million. So that is part of the 52. Another part of the 52 is the placeholder for the fire labor contract. So right now the city is in negotiations with the 440, which is the fire's labor union. And so we have a placeholder where we think the agreement might land, but we're not quite finished with that yet. And then I mentioned that we'd added some fleet costs and overtime costs to fire as well. And then they also get their regularly scheduled pay increases that are like step increases. So every year of service, you bump up a percent or two. Police's growth is almost all their contractual pay increases, 26 million. And then I mentioned those, the corporal positions are a tiny piece of that, for instance. And then the third biggest there is emergency management and communications. This is actually their first year to be like a full department on their own. So they have some allocations for health and IT that they weren't there before. But really the big portion of this 1.2 million in growth is that Axon 911 pilot. It's about 500,000. I'll do the bottom three, because we've talked about most of these. Property management on the very bottom, that is the shift in vehicle and replacement funding. Remember, out of the general fund and onto tax notes or on the debt side of things. Economic development, that is really all tied to the transfer that we're not doing at the $5 million level anymore out of the general fund. taking that 90% reduction there. And then neighborhood services, again, the neighborhood improvement program year one, two, three delivery. So that year one reduction, that's what ties to that amount. So those are the top three and the bottom three as far as department increases and decreases. All right, we're going to move out of the general fund to finish up. Oh, yep.

I know I missed a little piece of that, but can, yeah, on that slide. So neighborhood services.

Yes.

So normally the full three year number would be in there and this year you're just putting first year in there? Correct. So is that real reduction or no?

No, yeah, so it's yes and no. So it's a real dollar reduction, but it's not a service level reduction. So it depends on which way you're asking. Yeah, it's a real dollar reduction. So we would normally fund the entire $4 million in year one. Instead, we're funding $1 million in year one, and then we'll fund the next $3 million over the two years. So it's a staggered dollar delivery instead of an upfront dollar delivery.

So why are we doing that, and why are we changing it? That's a good question. Oh, go ahead.

Sure, so I can answer that.

You're paying, you're doing the marble thing.

So Tarrant County Appraisal District is going to this every other year. Yeah. APPRAISALS. THAT'S RIGHT. WE HAVE THE GAP. SO THIS COMING JANUARY THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO APPRAISE AGAIN. SO WE BELIEVE THAT THAT'S GOING TO ALLOW US TO THEN HAVE THE FUNDING. SO THE IDEA IS THAT WE'LL We only fund the $1 million that's needed for the first year, and then next year we'll fund the remainder for the additional years for that, and we'll start the next NIP that will also be one year. So it becomes more of a true program as we go forward funding on a year-by-year basis. Because we have this budget issue next year, we're trying to smooth that out. And we have to... We have to start thinking about how Tad's doing the appraisals and start trying to match our budget to that every other year because we're going to be in this situation where we're going to have a bump up, then we're going to be down. We're going to be a bump up. It's a difficult thing to do when you have to pay police, fire, and all that every year. Yes, ma'am. Over here.

you said, but it sounds like you just said that we're reducing the dollar amount, but we're gonna have the same amount of services.

Same services because what's happening now, traditionally we would do all $4 million and put it into a pot and then spend it over three years or four years.

Are you talking about people providing these services

Almost all of it goes to one-time infrastructure costs. What Dana mentioned, the neighborhoods, like sidewalks. So that money is used to hire a contract. So what happens the first year, the first six to nine months, is we meet with the neighborhood to find out what are the biggest issues in your neighborhood that you'd like to address from an infrastructure need. And so it's sidewalks, it's street lights, it's park lighting, it's those kind of things. Once you get that plan put together, then the funds get used to address those over the next three years.

So they're allocating the money but not spending it in the year that it's allocated.

right it's been it's been put into us so that can it can be there for that neighborhood and so that gets done over time this is year seven year eight of the program he's got to get through first it's it's year seven year eight of the program

Well, I had a couple. One was, is there any, take any general questions at the end, but maybe this might be the department I wanted to talk on. I've been to a lot of these bond meetings, budget meetings these over the last 13 years, and the one thing we never discuss is wasteful spending. Now, right now, I challenge you or anybody to confront me in public and do a meeting and tell me, Why do we need to keep community engagement? Because council and mayor gets a full-time salary. That's their job. Secondly, the police oversight, the monitor oversight. I was involved with getting our police oversight back in years before Chris Nails became council member. We didn't get what we want. Now that I think about it, we don't need a police oversight. It's a waste of money. These people are making more money than the Attorney General of Texas. It's a waste of money. Can we talk about wasteful money? I'll tell you what. I've got 30 minutes of talking about wasteful money, but that's enough right there. There's two departments that we could close. Waste. Now, if you want to talk to me publicly and debate that, I would love it. Or anybody in the room would want to debate that. I would love it. Thanks for the feedback, Bob. Thank you.

I didn't hear a question, so. Go ahead. Sorry.

Right. Yep, feedback. Feedback noted. Okay, ready to go on? Oh, yep.

You talked about the big rocks and the variances. In that 52 million, I didn't hear any additional headcount for fire. So the 52 million, how much is an increase per head? Because we're not going up any headcount, any FTEs.

No.

And how much of that is an increase for All their equipment. So it's going to be either headcount or non-headcount expenses.

It's about $30 million tied to the EMS subsidy, right? Then it's about $10.5 million or so, $11 million, toward salaries on the labor side for the contractual obligations. So that leaves about...

Yeah, it's about three million in fleet and another eleven or eight in overtime costs.

So it's right-sizing the actual costs of the overtime that's being utilized in those kind of things. No headcount increase.

Okay, I was looking at my spreadsheet to make sure that was right. Yep, go ahead.

Yes, this is in reference to the CCPD funding. I know it's kind of small back here, but what you all have stated, number one, has the CCPD funding changed in the last couple of years? Because it's looked like more funding is going back to the police department and other departments when we could not see what the percentage was for the community, the neighborhood assault.

Should be getting that too in a second. This is just general fund dollars, not CCPD.

I wanted to go back to the CCPD funding when they was talking about the maintenance of the vehicles.

The CCPD doesn't have maintenance of vehicle. I mean, for police vehicles, it does. Police vehicles, yes.

Yes. Yeah, so the vehicle and equipment maintenance I mentioned was just general fund, so not CCPD yet. But we can talk about CCPD. So is your question about the growth in CCPD over the last few years and how that money is allocated? Yes. Got it. Okay. Yeah, we can... I'll talk about... Yeah, I probably won't get into that level of detail, but yeah, we can talk about... like the different initiatives and how the money spreads.

Yes, because CCPD funding was originally for the communities, and a lot of it has been taken out. So like I said, we can't see the small print, but we have discussed earlier about the CCPD funding. That's all.

You want to go on? I think she gets to a slide here.

Yeah, so you might not be able to read this. And I don't know that this will get you to the level of detail you're looking for. But top line here is CCPD. So current year budget, $138.6 million. Next year's budget, $145.5 million. That growth is in school resource officers and bike officers, for instance. So that's police funding and school resource.

Are you talking about the community funding to nonprofits that's part of CCPD?

Yes. Just the CCPD funding for the neighborhoods, because that's originally what CCPD- When you say the neighborhoods, what do you mean?

Do you mean for officers?

No, for the community, the residents.

So CCPD is only for crime reduction- is only for crime reduction and prevention programs. And so it all goes toward police equipment, police training, police technology. And then there's a portion, up to 10%, that can go to what they call partners with a shared mission. So there are nonprofits that do work to try to prevent crime or reduce crime and those kind of things. So that's about it. 10 million of the overall funding? There's an unofficial policy that the council kind of passed that it can't be over 10% of the overall dollars, but it's been about 10 million last year, this year, and the same amount more or less for next year.

Okay, you wanna keep going? Wanna go backwards? All right, we're actually almost done with formal slides, so we'll have more time, too. Okay, so, Enterprise funds. So the enterprise funds, as a reminder, are those that operate kind of more like a business. So not funded by taxes, but funded by user rates and fees. So I mentioned before the biggest of these is water. So you see water there on top, $674 million this year, growing about 9% next year. That's not water rate growing 9%. That's water's budget growing 9%. And that's just due to contractual costs, capital. I'll show you in a minute kind of how the actual rates will stack up on the average taxpayer, average resident bill. Solid waste is another enterprise fund. So this is residential garbage collection and drop-off stations and dead animals and all the things you think of with solid waste. Also about 15 percent growth there. That is due again to contractual costs with waste management, our primary or our trash vendor. Also long-term planning for the replacement of the landfill, so some capital planning related to both short and long-term planning, but particularly landfill replacement. The stormwater utility is another enterprise fund, and we have a table for stormwater as well here, if you haven't visited, Jennifer. Stormwater is another fee that you see on your water bill, and they are continuing a planned fee increase schedule in order to do more midsize flood mitigation projects, as well as more channel inspections and a lot of that life-saving work that comes with. flood mitigation and risk management there. And then we have municipal airports and parking. So airports, those are the three city-owned airports. The example I mentioned before, it looks like they're growing 22%. And they are seeing increased use, but really a lot of this growth is to help offset the costs of those two fire or airport related fire stations. So that's like a good news story of using another fund for eligible.

Homestead exemptions, they have disability freeze, all that. And so what we're showing is when you take all that together, the average value of a home in Fort Worth based on its value. So all that's kind of calculated in. What we generally do is we, well, we're still trying to figure out what TAD's doing. So that's what's made it really hard looking forward. But we always, looking back, you could always have a correlation with market, right? What our house is selling for and those kind of things. That's been disrupted over the last three years. And so we do take all that into account. We have the percentages of the homes that aren't gonna go up any longer because they're frozen as far as the tax is paid. So all that's part of the calculations that are used.

When the freeze happens.

Well, it's based on age. So we get the data from TAD, and TAD provides the data, and we have spreadsheets, our folks have spreadsheets that show all those homes that have the freeze on it.

Let's see, where did I leave off? So yeah, we update the capital plan. It's a five-year rolling plan. So for fiscal year 27, it's a $1.03 billion capital plan, with the large majority of that being water. So you see water there at the bottom clocking in at just under $800 million. But across the five years, about a $3.8 billion capital investment happening across the city's departments. So if you ever hear the budget expressed in terms of like $4 billion, it's because it includes the operating plus the capital. And we've talked a couple of times about PAYGO. So this is my last little mention about PAYGO. So again, this is funded by that portion of the tax rate that is seven and a quarter. And it decreases by 2.8 million because again, we left this rate flat. So with rate flat, falling values, a little less revenue. You'll see Transportation and Public Works has a little more funding than the current year. They take up the large majority of PAYGO for streets, sidewalks, signals, all kinds of things, bridge maintenance. So all their capital maintenance. And then another one people get concerned about is park and recreation. So they're mostly flat in next year's budget as well, just a slight reduction there where you really see the pay go decrease. And again, this is like that one year funding thing is in neighborhood services. So again, that 4.3 million represents the entire cost of the neighborhood in the neighborhood improvement program. And so when you see it reducing to one, that's that year one spend that we're trying to kind of flow based on what they're actually doing and also based on TAD's schedule and trying to smooth some funding there. And see everybody else. I think that's it, yes. So fiscal year 27 recommended budget 4.35 billion between operating and capital. This is the public engagement schedule, which you clearly saw at some point. So thank you again for being here and for your attention. You are more than welcome to come to any other meeting that we have this week. We have another two in districts three and 10. We also have a budget public hearing tomorrow at two o'clock at city hall. So if you would like all the council members and not just your council member to hear your feedback, you're welcome to, can they still sign up for that? I don't know. I guess they can. Yes. Do you sign up to speak? No. Yes. Never mind. You can come and listen. Yeah, and you can stream that as well. You can also look back at any of the other district meeting streams. They're all on the city's YouTube page. On the left-hand side is the Connect Fort Worth page, which is all things city of Fort Worth engagement, so all the different things we have going on, but the budget's kind of like the star of the show right now, as you can imagine. And then on the right-hand side is the City of Fort Worth, the Fort Worth Lab, which is my department, the budget page. We have a girl who does a really great job keeping all of the work session videos, all the written responses, all the presentations, including this one you can find there. And so you're more than welcome to check that out and see all the detail that you would like, especially if you need a good bedtime read. Look at that fee change budget response. Let's see. Someone's already yawning. Okay. Okay. So I'll leave it here in case you want to scan the QR codes, but that's the presentation.

Two things I wanted to touch on real quick. One, and just to be completely transparent, when you look at the fees, the biggest part of the fee increases is solid waste. So I want to give a little background on why that is. So last year the council basically approved a four-year plan on the solid waste fees because the city went for 22 years without changing the solid waste fee. Right? Inflation has done that over 22 years. And what the city did, what we did was use up all our reserves and not create a fund to deal with where are we gonna drop our waste when our current landfill fills up in about 14 years. And so, in an effort to start looking forward, so that we don't end up in a situation in 10 years where you have to do $100 a month, so you start paying somebody else for landfill drop-off fees because we don't own the landfill and can't control it. There's a plan that we put in place to go over a four-year period to have incremental increases to try to catch up to where we need to be. And the idea is that over the next few years, we're going to partner with other municipalities that also are in the same situation in the region to find a new place to have a landfill. for all the trash for Fort Worth and whatever other cities we end up partnering with to kind of lower the cost of that capital. So that's the biggest part of the increase on the fees, and that's the reason. Secondly, the Alamo. So the Alamo was never owned by the city of San Antonio. It was bought by the state of Texas in 1883. They turned it over to the daughters of the Texas Republic to run. for almost 100 years, didn't quite make 100 years. It was going sideways, so the general land office of the state of Texas took it over and has been running it since 1985, I think, or 1975. So it wasn't... The general land office might be selling it. It's a state-owned property. I'm glad you asked the question, because I'm a history buff, and so I looked it up while I was back there.

Oh, it was just about the QR codes. So I can scan that right now. But if it goes away on my phone, how do I? Because you can't see the HTML. I mean, whatever the URL.

Oh, down there.

Yeah. Yeah. Put that in black as well.

Oh, yeah, I can put it in. Yeah. So it's Fort Worth, Texas dot go slash FY 27. You can also just Google like city of Fort Worth budget and it'll get you right to that spot.

If you have the my Fort Worth app, you can also get through that from the my Fort Worth app. Click news and it'll hyperlink you to there. So I you got a question.

OK. All right.

So it sounds like we're getting the shaft by Tad. Did we ever do a study on what the tax rate would have landed at if I as a homeowner, if my value as far as Tad was concerned kept up with Collin County, Dallas County? And then did we look at what that tax rate would have been? Sure. That I was paying what my brother is paying in Dallas as his value goes up? Understand the question?

Yeah, I understand. So actually, homes in Dallas County are a lot higher appraised, so overall taxes in Dallas County are higher. But the city has actually lowered the tax rate eight out of the last 10 years. values were going up with our growth and with market demand all that so the city has been lowering its tax rate unlike some places where they just leave it flat and they collect the whole thing right I think we've been we've been good stewards of trying to make sure that that we stay competitive from a actual taxes paid when you look at the the city's number of employees and the general fund per For the thousands of people that live in Fort Worth, we're the lowest of any major city in the state by far. But in Dallas, it could be. The tax rate could be higher, and we'd still be less than other counties, other cities. So Fort Worth's not the only one. You said we got shafted. We're not the only. I mean, Arlington. Tarrant County, all of the local governments, all the schools are in the same situation where they're trying to figure out. And so if you read the paper or watch the news, Arlington's raising their tax rate and cutting, North Shreds and Hills raising their tax rate and cutting. I mean, everybody's having to do that in order to balance the budget because of just the, well, we didn't foresee especially when I first heard about their plan, is that they were just going to freeze it, is that they were going to accept the level of protests from citizens, which, as an individual, you have the right to protest. I'm not complaining about that. But the fact that they would say, we didn't raise your value in two years... houses are going up in value, yet you ask for a protest, you protest for the 15% loss and they give it to you. And they basically said that the appraisals in Tarrant County are 15 to 20% below what they should be.

So what would that tax rate be if our houses were truly- If everything stayed the same, it would be probably around 77 cents.

And we, city council could take it to, no, 76 cents can take it to 77 cents without having to go to the voters for a vote. But that's if everything stayed, oh, it would go down. If our value stayed the same, we probably would have dropped another, last year we dropped a quarter cent, another half cent or more.

And then another question. The police budget is going up by about 23 million, is that right? Correct. Could you elaborate on what that money's going to, and then,

there any other line item on a budget that we cannot lower in the future like the police so police is basically going up for a little bit for the corporals right some for fuel because fuel costs are up and then the bulk of it is for pay increases for the nineteen hundred that's under a contract which is about a six percent average yes across the board yep

Locked into those we're locked into that 23 million.

Yes. Increase staff? No staff increase. Next year, there'll be... So we are adding 76 positions, but that was training the cadets, and the training gets paid by CCPD. So next year, we'll have the 76. The goal was they'll come into the general fund. So that's where the increase will be. The goal was to ensure, as we grow as a city, and we're adding... 20 to 25,000 people a year is that we keep our public safety response times and service at the same level. And so to do that as we're growing, we haven't added police in two years.

Yes, two years. We did the same kind of stagger.

So actual police officers haven't been brought into the police department as full police officers in two years. So it'll be a three-year gap before this next set of police officers comes forward.

So as we grow as a city, which is outstanding. I love that we're number 10 and shooting for number 9. As we grow, safety is the only thing that we want to maintain our growth with.

Well, no, we'd like to maintain everything, but at the same time, we'd have to increase the tax rate to cover the cost of everything else. Let's do that. Well, we are doing that, and the council actually is putting some stuff back in. I understand what you're saying, but at some point, elected officials want to get reelected when somebody shows up.

I'm talking in general. I don't, that doesn't matter to me.

Me either. Listen, this is my very first year on the council. And as Jay said, for the last 10 years, the city has lowered the tax rate. So I get on the council and we have to look at raising the tax rate. But we did it based on what I felt, what I heard from all of you all about what services we needed. I mean, we talked a lot about what would be acceptable uh to cut and you know what i heard from my community is we didn't want to do away with library services we didn't want to do away with parks and programs that were out there for you so that's why we joked about i said i was good with what we were doing with the budget but based on this meeting tonight i needed to hear feedback because i'm going to go into meetings tomorrow and say i sat with residents in my district And these things were, we said we could do away with this, but these things are not negotiable. So that's why we had the meeting tonight. And I'm not worried about getting reelected. My job is to take care of you all. And if that means that I'm only your council person for this one term, then so be it. But I'm going to make sure that I echo your sentiments when I'm sitting in those meetings. And Jay will tell you, we already... put some things back in. One of the things I know you all looked at is employee retention, is some of our salaries for our general employees. I worked for a corporation for 34 years. If somebody had not given me a raise, I'd be looking for another job. We need to maintain good staff and keep those employees there. And we value those employees. So we took care of police and fire, but I wanted to make sure we took care of general service employees. So we did that in the budget. And those are things that I need to know. If you saw something up here you didn't like, I heard that. I will carry those things back. But we have tried to work very hard. And I will tell you, city staff has been excellent. I was in charge of managing a budget. I was a revenue center. They have worked very hard to look at what our needs are. One of the good things is I love Fort Worth because it has a small town feel, but the reality is we're the 10th largest city in the nation. We continue to just grow rapidly. And we have to find a way to take care of areas in District 5 that I consider inner city, but there are also areas that are out by DFW Airport that are growing like crazy. And so it's how do we take care of established neighborhoods that are here while keeping up with the growth in other areas. So I am, yes, ma'am, you wanted to add something, but my staff is here. Would you all stand up, my staff, and wave their cards out there? I mean, you need to know how to get in touch with me because that's my job is to represent you all. And if there are things you want to share that you didn't feel like asking a question tonight, please either talk to me or the staff and we'll make sure that Jay hears about it. Yes, ma'am.

I'm a transplant. I haven't been in Fort Worth long.

Well, thank you for being here.

Well, thank you for having me. For the short time that I have been here, I've been surprised, I'll use that word, at how quickly developments go up and how quickly the trees and the parks and just the infrastructure, I don't know, but the vegetation here goes down. And they'll take a mighty oak and plant in replacement one of those, I don't know the names of the native trees.

Oh my God, I love you.

I love you. What is your name? I am so sorry. The parks and what have you. They look very nice, but I never see children in there because the playground equipment is not shaded.

So we are working on that. So I will tell you, and your name? Evelyn Bagley. Miss Bagley, I love you. The east side of Fort Worth, to me, is one of the most beautiful. beautiful areas of the city and we take the green space very seriously over here and so we have a whole tree ordinance you know you can't the growth is inevitable the way we are growing and so we have to make sure though that we are growing responsibly and we make sure that we are putting tree canopies in making sure there are things and you're right about the parks and I mean, who knew that we were going to have 106, 107 days? I wouldn't let my kids go out with no shade. We are working on correcting those with our parks department. Our director is here. And so we just work through those things. If there's a particular park that you're worried about, talk to me and we'll work together to make sure that we get the right amenities there.

The things that I'm talking about are things that's been done since I've been here. that cannot be undone in my lifetime. If you go to Germany and some of the other European countries, you'll see big places where they've actually built around a tree and they maintain the trees. It's almost as if the city wants to just cut it down because if you have it, you're going to be responsible for it. I don't know what the mentality is, but it just hurts my heart to see things that have been around long before I was on this earth just bulldozed away and put up something that looks like it's only going to last 20 or 30 years.

Well, we are working very hard to ensure that that doesn't happen. And in fact, we just did a park where we saved not only a plum tree, but we saved the pecan trees. And so I know what you're talking about. But we are making an effort to make sure that we do that and capture more green space So for the enjoyment of the residents. And we got one more question, and then I think our time is just about up. We'll break up, but I'll be here to answer questions. I'm sorry, Kolita, go ahead.

So this is related. The neighborhood services programs that are going out and fixing the lights in the sidewalks and cleaning up the tires, and they have a long list of stuff that they do.

uh... is that factored into those programs to try to keep uh... nature intact as opposed to bulldozing it and oh badly that's a texas thing at no absolutely so khalida i didn't start it but maddie parker started a green space program several years ago and i don't know the date but it is aimed at us capturing more areas that we can devote to green space more parks We just here in District 5 added a new park over in Woodhaven, right behind the library. So we are very concerned with preserving that and create... Midori, I see you smiling, because that, yes. But we're working hard, and I know with growth, things move rapidly, and people want space, and we see lots of land that used to be all pretty and green now, buildings going up. Well, we're making those builders, we're holding them to standards to make sure that there's tree canopy there, that there are certain things. So I agree, I won't say we save everything, but we're working hard to save as much as we can.

Okay.

And with that, I'm going to thank you all for coming. I tell them all the time, District 5 shows up. We are extraordinary. Thank you for caring, and we are here to hear about your concerns. And Jay, whatever I hear, you'll hear tomorrow. Okay, thank you.