City Council - workshop

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. so so you Thank you. Thank you.

Welcome to our day to see if we can get this budget behind us and in front of us. At this time, I'd like to, do we have any comments from anybody? Jennifer. Thank you. Okay, city manager, Chris Hillman, if you would please.

All right. Good morning, Mayor and Council. Everybody ready? This is the best day of the year. Is it not? I can just see all the excitement on everybody's face. Dennis, I think you said you had a thought.

I can't because my person who's going to second it has left. I was going to make a motion to approve the budget and have no more discussion. David's supposed to second it.

I'm just going to rule these out of order, so let's just go on.

Well, good morning, Mayor and Council. It's good to be with you. Thank you so much for being here with us. As you know, this is our annual budget retreat. This is where we do a walkthrough of the city manager's proposed budget. Right up front, Mayor and Council, you can see here two very large books in front of you. This is some light reading for you over the next month and a half as we... walk through with you what the proposed fiscal year 27 budget is. There is a lot of hard work, and I know each of you know this, but I just want to recognize just how much work goes into preparing this budget. And if I can, could I please have the budget and strategic services team and our finance team stand up? These are the folks that help make this a reality each and every year, so thank you very much for... All the great work. Lauren and Brett do a great job in leading and guiding and directing both of these teams, and it is with their guidance, with their inputs, with their recommendations that what you have in front of you is a proposed budget that is a structurally balanced budget that is a responsible budget and that also say is a very transparent budgets and here for the next few minutes mayor council what i'd like to do is just walk you through what these books are and what it is showing not only you as a council, but most importantly for our residents, so our residents can know and see in black and white and in full color in a lot of pages exactly how their tax dollars are being spent, for what purposes, and why they're being spent as they are being spent. First couple of items right up front, the agenda is in front of you. You all are very familiar with this agenda. This is pretty much the same format that we use each and every year during this meeting. This August meeting is always to walk through the proposed budget. The May meeting is what we call our budget and strategic plan review. That's where we talk a lot about our strategic focus, what your priorities are as a council that help inform Not only myself, but all of staff and the department directors as to what your priorities are, what's important for you in terms of service level service expectation. And focus areas for the investments of our residents tax dollars. For the agenda, I'll be talking a little bit about what the budget goals are. I'll be walking through this book just to give you an orientation on the books so you can know and understand what's in here. It is a lot of pages, but right up front there's some excellent summaries that help really provide a good overview of how the budget is set up and what is included in it. We'll be talking about the budget goals and I want to just take a few moments. I think it's always important to stop and just reflect on the successes that we have had as a city over the last year and what we can look forward to. coming up in this next year so for the agenda we're going to be walking through a general fund overview we'll be walking through all the compensation and benefits we'll then be going through our enterprise funds with water and sewer our mdu and our solid waste we'll walk through our internal service funds which is fleets it and our cip Later this afternoon we anticipate having the chambers come in to talk about their contracts and their budgets. We're also going to have. a discussion on the economic development funds that Philip will be leading. And then per charter, we always want to ensure that each of the charter organizations have an opportunity to present their budgets to you. Their budgets are exactly that. They are their budgets. Some of those charter organizations have boards, the ICVB and the arts, so those boards and those directors work together for months to put together their budget and by charter. Those budgets are reviewed by you as a council and directly approved by you over to those charter organizations. I include them as part of the city manager's recommended budget, so that way you have it all in one singular document. And I just want to say thank you to all the charter organizations They are very accommodating and working with me. They sit down and walk through the same process that we go through with all the other departments from the future and focus, the line item review. They help me know and understand what their needs are. If there are needs, specifically resource needs, and in particular general fund, resource needs. What I do as the city manager is I set the capacity aside to pay for those resource requests that those charter organizations are requesting. And then when they have their budget presentation and conversations with you, they then can have those conversations. And you know that the resources are there if you all decide to move forward with those resource requests. I just want to make sure that those resources are always set aside. which gives you the ability to have those conversations with those charter organizations and make your determination individually for each. We will then be looking at the cost of municipal services benchmarks. We always try and look at how we compare with what other cities are charging, not only for their utility fees, but their property taxes and what an average assessed valuation is for each one of their residential homes and how that plays out for an overall cost of services on average for property taxes as well as utility fees. And then at the very end for our future and focus, we don't have any direct presentations on that, but that's just a way for us to capture all of our strategic components. So if there are any other additional discussions or any of the additional focus areas that you as a council have that we have not addressed in the budget, we wanted to make sure that we captured that on the agenda that would enable you to have those conversations and tell us what you're all looking for. At the very end, there are going to be a couple resolutions that we would request that you consider and take action on, specifically the tax rate and as well as there is a long-term care facilities and a child care and a food establishment ordinance that will be part of your discussions as well. So Mayor and Council, right up front, if we could have the budget goals put up, please. Thank you. The budget goals were pretty simple, but very important, right up front, as we always have. And as we always will do, we are presenting to you a structurally balanced budget, which means our expenses are matching in our operations funds. The revenue is coming in, so we are not using fund balance to pay for operations. We're not using reserves. So we want to make sure that our budget IS APPROPRIATELY SCALED TO WHATEVER REVENUES WE HAVE COMING IN, AND THAT'S FOR OUR UTILITIES AS WELL AS FOR OUR GENERAL FUND. WE ALSO WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT WE TAKE CARE OF OUR EXISTING EMPLOYEES, AND WE CONTINUE TO FUND OUR STEP, OUR COLA, AND OUR MARKET, AS WE HAVE DISCUSSED BEFORE. OUR EMPLOYEE PROGRAMS, OUR PUBLIC SAFETY ARE ON A STEP PROGRAM. THEY'RE ON A 5% STEP. for our general governments they have a merit step program that's at three and a half once any employee moves through their steps they are then held at the top step there are then opportunities based upon markets which is what we do is a study each year for our civil service our public safety employees we do a market study each year and then we make adjustments to their pay per position based upon what we're seeing in the market. For the general government positions, we do not do a market study each year. We do a COLA, and that COLA provides an increase to help pay for those cost-of-living increases, but it also helps us keep up with what other adjustments cities are making to general government employees in their STEP programs. So it's a way for us to stay competitive and to make sure that we have the best and the brightest, which we do have here in the city of Irving. And that definitely helps play to the fact that we have a very steady workforce. Again, we had, I believe, the lowest turnover rate of any of our comparable cities in the Metroplex this last year. So with the culture that we have and with the pay programs that we have, we are able to provide a very stable, culture in one that provides opportunities for personal, professional growth for our employees. We also wanted to make sure that we're implementing the final allocation for our Let's Play Irving. We had already set those dollars aside. They were going into non-bond CIP. Those dollars are now not going to be going into non-bond CIP this next year. They are now going to be moving forward to help pay for the new positions that we will be needing when we open up Mustang and when we open up Center Park later on this fiscal year. So we're very excited about those two opportunities. Again, we set those dollars aside years ago and we've been using them for one time purposes. Now we're going to be pulling those out, bringing them into the operational side and helping to pay for the new positions for the opening of those two new facilities. We also want to make sure that we're funding capital projects to maintain city owned facilities. Mayor and Council, as you know, A lot of our facilities were built decades ago. And we have been very focused on improving and upgrading a lot of those facilities. Our fleet facility is a great example. The fleet facility was built, I believe, in the 1940s. And we finally are tearing that down and rebuilding a brand new fleet facility. But we're seeing that all over city in many different ways. And we're going to continue to focus in on those capital facilities, city hall, As you know, is it continuing an ongoing conversation which will continue to talk to you about over the next several months with what those costs are and what we're seeing? And again, some different options there. The future in focus for our operational enhancements. We are going to be funding the second year of our police staffing plan. Again, we had set those dollars aside. as well they've been going into non-bond cip and now they will be moved forward to help pay for year two of the police staffing costs we also have some unfunded mandates although it says unfunded funded mandates it's really just unfunded because they're not funded the traffic paint reflective striping the magistration which we'll be talking a little bit about here in the a few presentations from now, and some cancer screenings that state law has identified. We're also going to be strategically utilizing the DART GMP funds. We're going to be using those for VIA. As you know, we have our contract with VIA to provide our 225, our 255, and our circulator routes. But we're also going to be setting aside, for the lack of a better term, I haven't WORKED WITH MY COMMUNICATIONS TEAM YET ON AN APPROPRIATE NAME FOR THIS, BUT RIGHT NOW WE'RE JUST GOING TO CALL IT SIDEWALKS TO THE FUTURE. I'M SURE APRIL'S GOING TO HAVE A MUCH BETTER DESCRIPTIVE PROGRAM NAME THAN WHAT I CAME UP WITH. BUT WE'RE GOING TO BE SETTING ASIDE $2 MILLION FOR OUR SIDEWALKS TO THE FUTURE PROGRAM, SO THAT WOULD BE A GOOD KICKOFF. AND I THINK DAN IS VERY EXCITED ABOUT HAVING SOME OF THOSE DOLLARS TO BE ABLE TO START FIXING SOME OF OUR SIDEWALKS AROUND THE CITY, AS WELL AS SOME ADDITIONAL DOLLARS FOR OUR STREETS. using the GMP. So we're going to be funding the Via, our sidewalks of the future, and a few extra dollars as well for our streets. And again, those have to be used in a way that helps benefit mass transit here in the city of Irving. And we're also going to make sure that we're funding our collective bargaining agreement with the fire for year two. There's also some service enhancements that we wanted to address relative to the community priorities. Most of these we've already talked to council about and you've already approved us moving forward with these programs, the short-term rental inspections program, the risk-based health inspection program. We're also looking at building two new pickleball courts up at the Cimarron area, some economic development programs in downtown markets and placemaking for the Heritage District, and other supplementals, which we'll be getting to here in a minute. If I can, what I'd like to do next before I do a walkthrough of the actual budget book, let's just take a moment and we have a video prepared that walks through our future and focus accomplishments for this last fiscal year.

This serves as the city's organizational framework, fostering a culture of strategic planning and data-informed decision-making. Let's look at some of the city's highlights from fiscal year 2026 through the five pillars of Future in Focus. Vibrant economy. Wells Fargo opened a sleek new corporate campus across from Toyota Music Factory with office space for more than 4,500 employees. Irving also welcomed a true Texas icon, with H-E-B opening its first store in Dallas County along 635. The H-E-B family also opened its budget-friendly brand, Jovi's Smart Shop, in South Irving. The city continued its commitment to redevelopment initiatives in the Heritage District, with Experience Main Street bringing thousands of visitors to the area. The city's enhancement incentive program helped small businesses in downtown Irving, with Alma's Cafe bringing a new flavor to the Heritage District, and JPT Graphics unveiling a creative new mural to its building. Infrastructure investment. Year nine of Road to the Future continued, like the MacArthur Boulevard project. Drainage Solutions for a Better Tomorrow projects also continued, with the city receiving more than $35 million in state funding for the next phases of the North Delaware Creek project. Sense of Community. Parks and Recreation hosted more than 50,000 visitors at special events, including a record crowd for Irvick's Sparks and Stripes. More than $2 million of a Texas Parks and Wildlife grant was awarded to enhance the Campion Trail. And Lenat Spurlock Park opens, providing a peaceful recreation option in South Irving. government sustainability. The city maintained the property tax rate at a 58.91 cent per $100 valuation, balancing the budget with $343.5 million in the general fund. And the city issued $38 million in general obligation bonds, funding a number of projects, like the Conflans Road extension between State Highway 161 and Valley View Lane. an improved facility for fleet services at Briary Yard, and upgrades for IT's transition to the EFJ radio system. The city also launched the Irving Connector by Via, restoring routes 225 and 255, and introducing the Loop at Las Colinas, after successful negotiations with DART resulted in the city receiving a portion of the sales tax allocation to be dedicated towards general mobility programs. safe and beautiful city. The FY26 budget included enhancements to public safety staffing, adding 12 fire department and 11 police department personnel. The Irving Police Department opened the new Tactical Training Center, ensuring Irving PD officers are trained with the most modern techniques. And the Irving Fire Department opened the new Fire Station 8 on Riverside Drive, serving an area that has seen a 50% increase in calls in recent years. Code Enforcement's Keep It Clean initiative helped beautify neighborhoods, keeping residents informed of potential code violations. As serving prepares for the FY27 budget year, Future in Focus ensures the city prioritizes what matters most, delivering exceptional services and promoting a high quality of life.

My thanks to April and the ICTN team for creating that video. Yes, ma'am.

Abdul, did you have something?

Thank you, Mayor. You mentioned $2 million for the sidewalks and the streets. That is from the GMP?

Yes, sir.

Money?

Yes, sir.

And what would be the total of which we are going to spend on sidewalks and streets?

Right now, we have $2 million set aside for sidewalks and another $1 million from the GMP dollars in streets.

IN ADDITION TO WHATEVER REGULAR?

IN ADDITION TO OUR ROAD TO THE FUTURE THAT WE ALREADY HAVE PLANNED. WE DON'T HAVE ANY OTHER DOLLARS FOR SIDEWALKS THAT WE'VE BEEN SETTING ASIDE, SO THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF A NEW PROGRAM.

SO THIS YEAR IS GOING TO BE $3 MILLION MORE THAN LAST YEAR? YES, SIR. THANK YOU.

LET ME FOLLOW UP ON THAT. THANK YOU, ABDUL. CHRIS, IN THE PAST, WE HAVE DONE SOME WORK ON SIDEWALKS. I KNOW THAT DAN IS VERY FAMILIAR WITH IT, BOTH IN HOAs AND SOME OF OUR COMMUNITIES. And one of the ways we did it, we did it through a grant program. Are we continuing that process?

No, sir. We don't have a grant program for private sidewalks or private streets. We cannot use public dollars for those private areas.

That's not my understanding of what we did before. But, okay, let's move on. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay, so we have here in front of you, Mayor and Council, two very large books entitled Book 1 and Book 2, sort of like Thing 1 and Thing 2 from Cat in the Hat. What I want to do is do a very quick walkthrough of Book 1, and I think through this walkthrough you'll be able to see and know and understand how the budget book itself is set up and structured. And if you just open the front cover, you're going to see right up front in the first section a message from myself. It walks through sort of very, very high level approach of what we did with the budget. As you keep going, you're going to see the organizational chart for the city. And there are a lot of terms that are in the budget book that may not be understood. For those that aren't daily working inside of a municipal budget, most of our residents may not understand what some of these nuanced terms are. So we wanted to make sure that as they're looking at the information in the budget, they know and understand what the categorization is and what those terms are. So you're seeing a glossary of terms that talks about the original budget, projections for any one particular year, 2023 or 2026 or 2025 in this case, or 2026 in this case. It walks through each one of those. It then walks through a report description so you can see and know and understand each of the different areas of what is being described in the budget, the revenue and expenditure line item summary, fund summary, the next year budget detail reports, talks about the supplemental request forms and how we use those. It then talks about, in terms of a budget and brief, it helps our residents know and understand how our property tax is established and set up and what those values are and how they interact with the exemptions, with the total taxable value, and what our tax rate is, which is set by council. You then going to get some summary slides and graphs of how those property taxes are broken out by category, whether it's commercial, residential and business personal property. It then walks through how the entire property tax bill. Is divided out between the city, the school districts and the county. It walks you through a discussion of our tax rate, which in this budget is at $58.35. I'm not going to get ahead of Brett. But I will say this, there is going to be one change at least to this budget. I'm happy to report that Brett was able to work with the county and set up a process where he will be letting you know that we will be able to maintain the current tax rate as we had it this year. based upon Brett working with some of the debt service calculations with the county. I'm not gonna get ahead of him, but we just learned that Friday afternoon. So we'll be walking through that in detail and what that means to this budget. And we'll be talking about some recommendations for that. The city sales taxes, as you can see, that is broken out. Shannon will be going through the details of what those numbers are, but I will just take my 30 seconds to get on my soapbox here one more time. The city collects, as you can see, about 12% of the total sales tax rate. If you take every dime of property tax that we collect here in the city of Irving, every dime, that's business, that's residential, that's business personal property, and you take every dime of sales tax that we create and that we collect, take that full amount, double it, and that's almost the amount that the state collects just in sales tax. Based upon the products and services that we collect sales tax on, what that doesn't include are the products or services that the state charges sales tax on that we are not allowed to. The prime example of that is automobiles. Any car that's purchased at any one of the number of dealerships that we have here in the city of Irving, the state collects their portions of the sales tax, but we do not collect any sales tax on that. So the state is collecting more than double of every dime of property and every dime of sales tax that we collect. A state that has a $32 billion surplus previously and a $25 billion surplus previously. If our residents want to know who the tax and spend problem is, it's not the city. It's the state. And I will say that over and over again. And I encourage our residents to call their state reps. and talk to them about that because the state is constantly looking at the revenues that we collect to cities that don't impact their revenues and are looking to significantly decrease or even to stop some of our expenses while they have the dollars coming in more so than obviously what we do as a city. And if you take every dime of property tax that we collect that goes to our general funds, that's taking out what we set aside for our debt service of property taxes, it's taking out what we set aside to our PIDs and our economic development agreements. If you take every dime of those property taxes, it is not enough to cover just our police and fire. Of the almost 120 million that we're collecting in sales tax, we need to take another $40 million of our sales taxes just to make up for what we are spending in police and fire that property taxes don't make up for. So all the remainder of the sales tax and the other revenues that we have pays for every other city service that we have. So as we constantly hear, constantly hear from the states that municipalities are mismanaging their funds, that our property taxes are out of control. And as a city, we will always try to make sure that our property taxes are reasonable, that our property taxes are appropriate. We know and understand that we need to keep them as low as possible, but still provide the services that our residents are asking for, that they've elected you to provide. Again, every dime of property tax that goes in the general fund doesn't even cover police and fire and we need one third of our sales taxes just to complete those two budgets. That's how important it is to maintain those revenue sources that we have in order to maintain the basic services. That we have here in the city with police and fire. As you go through the summer, you see the sales tax collection history. How that has increased. You can see the general fund revenues, where they each come from, from property taxes, sales taxes, et cetera. That's to the general fund. It walks through the water and sewer, the MDU, and the solid waste. If I could direct your attention, please, over to the budget overview, which is on page 16 of the budget overview. We call this the Rick Stover one pager. It's now turned into two pagers. And what this does is this is a line-by-line walkthrough of the general fund, where it starts out, here are the new revenues that we are anticipating, revenues that are going to go up, revenues that are going to go down for the general fund. And it walks through those increases and those decreases. And then it gives you a net total change of general fund revenue. So for the fiscal year 27, what we see coming up is for the general fund, we see in new revenues, $18.417 million. And then what we do is you can see the expenses and you can see line item by line item in summary form how that 18.417 increase is being absorbed through the various increases. That we have already talked about and that we will be talking about from the step programs for general government, police and fire. The police staffing year to the Let's Play Irving year two. You can see the pensions. It just goes through line item by line item. So you can see what is coming in and then how it's going out of those increases. And we'll be walking through in detail each one of those during this day. You then get a summary sheet of the revenues, a summary table of the revenues. And then on page 23, you get all the different departments. and what the revenues are and the expenses are by department. You then get on page 24 the budget overview, the position walk forward, and then the position change summary on page 25, as you can see. Most of those positions are positions that we've already anticipated and discussed. with you that is the fire collective bargaining agreement the police staffing plan year two the parks and rec let's play irving initiative and then we've also talked about the code enforcement and we've talked about the inspections as well and then there's a few other positions which we'll be walking through as well that have been added as part of the supplemental process so you can see the increases there most of all that is in public safety you can then see the supplementals These are the additions or the service enhancements that we're anticipating that are in the proposed budget. The general fund is in green on pages 26 and 27. And I apologize on 28. And then the special funds, whether that's The special revenue funds, the court fines, the police seizure funds, et cetera. There are different funds that we have along with the utilities as well. So that is the summary. Then if I may, I'd like to walk through how the actual budget itself is set up. And last year, we picked on the finance department. So this year, we're going to pick on the code enforcement department. Thank you, Shane. Appreciate that. So if I can invite you in your budget books to turn the page or section, I should say 22 labeled code enforcement. Code enforcement is a good example of revenues that do come in to a department so we can identify each one of those revenues. And then I'd like to walk through how all those expenses are detailed out and the process that we go through over the last three to four months of literally going through line item by line item. So if you go to. Section 22, which is code enforcement. And these are the departments are set up in a similar fashion, but code enforcement is a good example of, again, having revenues come in. There's a service enhancement with the inspections that we've already talked about. The user council has directed us to move forward with. All of that is captured here. So on the first page is the revenue. Oh, my apologies, thank you. I'm just gonna move the keyboard. Thank you, sir, my apologies. The first page is a revenue summary. So you can see that revenues do come in through the code enforcement office, specifically with multifamily licensing fees, swimming pool permits, et cetera. You can see that it's anticipated that there's going to be about $1.6 million of revenue coming in to help pay for some of our code enforcement efforts broken down. And then you have all of the actuals from 2023, 2024, 2025. You have the actual year to date for 2026. You have the projection for 2026. If there are any changes from a budgetary perspective for 2026 as well. To the budget, you have the original budget, so it gives you a very detailed history of what's gone on in the past for each one of these revenues. It'll be the same for the expenses as well as what we're projecting ahead. Then you see the proposed budget. You can see the percentage increase or decrease of that revenue or that expense, and then a summary description of why that is either going up or going down. So that's with the revenues. If you flip the page, you then get the expenses. And you can see it's broken out through salaries, personnel benefits. Again, the same columns starting back in 2023 actuals going all the way over to the 2027 proposed budget. You can see the percentage change of each one of those. Different line item expenses. And then you see a summary description of why that either went up. Or went down. For each one of those. And you can flip through and you can see in the end that their total expenses are $3.4 million. And it's a 13% increase because we are enhancing those services. We are increasing those inspections based upon the program that we had talked to you about. That state statute is requiring us to move forward with. And then you have from the summary sheets a very detailed line item by line item run through of all the revenues and the expenses again. So you can see for the revenues, why those revenues are going up and how those revenues were estimated. For example, for the first line item 430200, We are adding budget scenarios. The current fee is $300. Which is going to bring in 67,000 and it walks through how that is going to change with an increase of $40,000. So you go through. Each one of those revenues and then you get to the expenses. And that begins with the personnel. And again, you can see how they are going up or going down and what those costs arm. And I will. Reference you to, for example, some of the details. If you go to page 9. Of the detail report for code enforcement. Instruments, this is a charge that fleet charges over to each of the different departments. You can see what the fleet charges. We talked about the toll tag costs, what those are. Oh, I'm sorry. We are in section 22 for code enforcement of book one.

OK, I'm going to stop this right now. I've got three books of size and I gotta tell you something. I'm lost right now what you're doing. So if I've got to go up to my office and get the other two books, I'm going to do it. So please tell me where we are.

Mayor and council, you are in book one. It says book one.

You didn't bring it down. It's upstairs. I've got it right here if you want to look at mine.

Go ahead.

Okay. Yes. Yes. So if I can reference you to page 10 of their budget detail. These are just examples of the details that we go through for each line item to show you the thought process of how each one of those line item numbers was created. Because if we're going to... be putting numbers down in this budget. We want to make sure that we detail how we came up with that number. And you can see, for example, on page 10, how for professional services, what went up for mosquito spraying, the annual agreement with Dallas County at 82,000, lien recordings at 12,000. You can even go down to travel and training on page 11. And it details each of the different conferences broken out by airfare, hotel, registration, membership certifications, et cetera. So we really want to make sure, this is just an example, that when we ask our departments to put together line items and we review those line items, that our residents and that you as a council can see exactly how those numbers were created. It is a very detailed, very thorough, and very exhaustive budget, which is by design and it is on purpose. Because if we are going to be spending our taxpayer dollars, we believe that it's very important for our taxpayers to know exactly how each one of those dollars are being spent. So, Mayor and Council, that is a simple brief summary of the books that you have in front of you. Again, you have two large books, book one and book two, that walk through all of these different line items. Book one is the general fund. Book two are going to be your internal service funds, your enterprise funds, et cetera. So, with that, Mayor and Council, that is the overview. That is what you have in front of you. We'd like to then spend the next little while with each other walking through in more detail what's included at a higher summary level, but I wanted to let you know here's where all the detail is. If you have questions, let us know. If you don't understand a number, please let us know. We have great individuals that have been working on this for months. They can help answer any questions that you have. And with that, I'd like to go ahead and invite up Shannon, and we can start walking through the general fund, if there aren't any questions for me. All right, we good? All right, thank you.

Thank you, Chris.

Good morning. Shannon Phillips, budget manager. For a point of information, I do want to point out that the budget books, books one and book two, as well as our budget presentations. They're on IrvingTexas.gov slash budget under the fiscal year 26-27. So for those watching online, those versions are available. I want to piggyback off of Chris a little bit and thank our mayor and council for your guidance on this budget, as well as our city executive team, our directors, our budget specialists. Those are our MVPs because they gather all the documentation for us. Our CIP team, Dorinda and Maddox, our compensation team, Eddie and Amber, and then my staff. the budget fiscal friends. If you all would stand up one more time. We got Krista Segovia, our budget administrator. Frank Slaughter, our senior financial analyst, and Missy Moak, our budget analyst. And so today I'll be walking through the general fund revenues and expenditures. We'll go over the budget process. We'll look at the change from last year. That's the walkthrough of the one pager. And then we'll look at our current year and our next year proposed. Our budget process, we start the budget in March. That's our kickoff. That's where we give all the departments their budget documents to begin working on. They work on those for about 30 days, and then we get those back early May. The budget and strategic planning meeting is May. That's where we get council's feedback on your priorities for the budget year. In June and July, that's the city manager's departmental line item review. And contrary to what you heard, they are not as tense as you may have heard. Excuse me, but we do go through the budget line item by line item. Public hearings are on the budget in June. These are some informal budget hearings. These are not required by state law. Then in July 25th, that's when we get our certified tax roll. And that's the revenue that we base the budget on for the general fund. We're at budget retreat today. That's where we present the city manager's recommended budget to council. We have two required public hearings about for truth and taxation. Those are august the 27th and september the third. Then we adopt our budget on september the 10th and then october the first begins fiscal year 26 27 looking at our current year The general fund revenue projected, our certified role that we adopted was $45.2 billion. As of July 26, the value now is at $45 billion. Our protests and our lawsuits, these also lower our property tax revenues and currently we're expected to end the year at $2.7 million. Sales taxes, again, projected to be above our current budget by a little over 7.2%. Our inflation is, in fact, into this revenue. We are expecting a positive impact from World Cup. However, we won't get those revenue estimates until tomorrow. Increased revenue sharing with our businesses on the DFW Airport. That's also contributing to the extra sales tax income. Other revenues that are projected to be above budget are some of our lease income for acquiring the 909 Hidden Ridge property. And then in our Atmos Gas franchise fee, they had a mid-rate increase in June, and so we're seeing an increase there. Looking at our expenditures for this year, we're projecting to be about 4.7 million below our adopted budget. The majority of this is our vacancy savings. As of May 31st, we have 79 vacancies, 44 of those are in police. We've been very aggressive hiring our police officers, but we've had some challenges with our detention officers, our animal services personnel, and then our 911 telecommunicators. Also, our public safety actual market came in lower than budget, so savings about $1.1 million. We budgeted 3.5%. However, as you can see, the actual average for the police was 2.84% and fire 1.39%. Any inflation of tariffs or supply chain costs that we've known about have been absorbed within the budget. Moving on to fiscal year 27, the proposed budget. This is the proposed budget summary, our recruitment and retention of staff. The budget includes a 1.5% cost of living adjustment for eligible general government employees, 3.5% civil service market for eligible civil service employees. We do have an insurance premium increase of 3%. We budgeted fuel for this fiscal year at $4 per gallon. Any inflation and unfunded mandates that we are known at the time, we have included those in the budget, accounted for those in the budget. Our future and focused key needs, we have shifted to just maintaining our current service levels. The tax rate has been lowered to our adjusted voter approval rate at the 0.583. And we have presented a structural balance budget. changes from prior fiscal year. This is the walkthrough. Starting with our revenues, what we do, we take our adopted property tax revenue from fiscal year 26, which was $158.1 million, and we compare that to the adjusted available revenue to fiscal year 26. Our valuation, again, was $45.52 billion at the .5836 rate. that will generate approximately $273.4 million. However, all of that revenue does not come into the general fund. We have to allocate portions to economic development incentives, and that's about $15.8 million, to our TIF combined, about $17 million, our debt service at $64.3 million, and then our POB debt service, $10.5, and then the change from our protesting Penalty service is a reduction of an additional 240,000. So that brings our available property tax revenue to 165.6 million. Other changes from the prior fiscal year for revenues, we've got our available property tax increase from fiscal year 26 to 27. That's about $7.5 million additional dollars. We have our sales tax increase of 8.8. Again, that's due to the revenue sharing agreement and just higher pricing. You pay more for the cost of things purchased in Irving, so we're going to get additional revenue. Our interest income, we're holding that flat at 3.75 percent, so that's a reduction of a little over $80,000. Our cost of service contribution increase, these are the dollars that are used for general fund resources and other funds. and that's an increase of almost $649,000. Other revenues, we've got some new revenue sources, again, for the short-term rental enforcement program, our risk-based inspections and parks and recreation non-resident fees. And that brings us to our total adjusted change in revenues from fiscal year 26 of $18.4 million. Going to the expenditures, as you can see, almost 15.6 million of that eats up that 18.4. As Chris had mentioned when he originally was talking, we go through, we got our steps for our employees and then pension increases and other benefit increases. But these all can be summarized into categories. Our prior year carry-fors are $3.5 million. That's our police staffing for year two and our Let's Play Irving initiatives. As in fiscal year 26, we did set aside funds to cover both of those initiatives. So now they are offset by the transfer to non-bond CIP that we used for one time. cost for the startup of these initiatives. And so you'll see an increase in salaries and benefits. However, when we get down to the end or when you're looking at your budget book, you'll see a big reduction in the transfers out. Our current year-based budget needs of $12.1 million, again, that's our steps and merit, the COLAs, the collective bargaining agreement, overtime increases, special incentive pays, health and life insurance increases, and then pension changes. And these are just attributable to increases in new personnel. And you'll hear more about compensation in presentation D1 a little later. Moving on to our operating expenses, that's an increase of $6.4 million. The main two drivers of our operations are our structure and equipment maintenance of $2.2 million. That includes the $4 a gallon for our fuel and then the cost of service allocation of the $1.5 million. That includes the increase for the increases in our vehicle and equipment replacements as well as our IT replacements and IT operations. So that brings us down to a total change in operating expenditures of $22 million. Our other finances and uses, these are our transfers out. There's a reduction of the $5.3 million. Again, the majority of this is where we funded our Let's Play Irving and our police staffing of almost $3.6 million. We did do a transfer to NUN by CIP in anticipation of the business personal property exemption change. So we anticipated a loss in revenue of $840,000. However, it came out to be 543,000. And so that gets us down to our adjusted operating expenditures of $16.7 million. So with that 16 point, after that we have almost 1.7 million left over. And so we funded some future and focus key needs. We have new positions and personnel reclasses. The magistration process, this is the staffing only, the unfunded mandate. The Irving Department of Arts and Cultural Preventive Maintenance projects request. Some third party custodial services and our FTO paramedic pay. So that gets us down to total expenditures of $18.4 million, and the budget is structurally balanced.

So, Madam Council, in sum, what you see here is with the new revenues we have coming in, once we take out the $12 million that we use to take care of our employees, that's just the annual cost increase, plus the additions of, the service enhancements and the increases of just the operating costs, fuel costs, utility costs, et cetera, the amount of money that we had left over for new supplementals, new service increases is $1.7 million, which unfortunately doesn't take us very far. And again, that's what we have been highlighting over the last several meetings. is I'm beginning to see that number continuing to dwindle. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised with the impacts of SB2 beginning next year, assuming that the legislature holds steady, which I don't think they're going to. I think they're going to continue to reduce our revenues, if not even limit our expenditure increases. But assuming all things being equal, I can see a potentiality that we will not have enough dollars to not only not have service expansions, but it may be eating into what we're paying in the basics of just for our employees, as well as what we're just seeing in operational increases of cost of goods, fuel, whatever it might be, just those inflationary impacts on our operations in the general fund. That's what I'm seeing in the future. then add on top whatever the legislature may do. So as we set up this budget and as we continue to look forward to future budgets, which some of the news that Brett will be sharing with us here in a little while, some good news, we need to be using those dollars to set aside for what we know is already coming from an expense perspective, at least on the public safety side, just for the staffing. let alone anything else that the legislature may be throwing at us in this next session. So $1.7 million, that's what we had left to do operational expansions.

So when we're looking ahead to what the state's going to do as far as restricting municipalities and revenue generation for taxing purposes, I think what we're going to be I think all cities are going to be facing some budgetary constraints. And I know that, Chris, you talked about earlier looking at what other cities are doing for pay and such. I would think there's going to be pressure on all cities as far as what's available for compensation, for COLA. And I guess in the future we need to be looking ahead to be aware of what that's going to do for us. Because on the one hand, like... We were having these increases, and as you said, you know, our turnover rate is very low, so I think that we're above market, generally speaking, as far as compensation goes. And there's certainly benefits for that. You have employees that are happy to be here, and we love having them, and we don't have all these vacancies. We have the personnel to actually move things forward. But I guess we need to be aware, I suppose, of what the market's gonna hold in the future, especially as the state is clamping down on the ability for cities to tax.

I would agree. I think market adjustments, as cities continue to feel that tightening, it'll be interesting to see what those market studies show us and what other cities are doing. As I've been talking to other city managers, Most cities still this year are anywhere from that 2% to 4% range. We're in the middle of that. We are keeping up with what other cities are doing. Our pay and benefits are competitive. There are definitely other cities that are higher. There's many other cities that are lower. That's why we're at the 80th percentile, is we want to be not at the very, very top, but we want to make sure we're very competitive. that when you add in our culture and the work ethic that we have here, we are a very attractive and employment opportunity, especially for the personal and professional growth opportunities. As I've mentioned before, Mark, and I know you and I have talked about this, what is really helping us is a city right now. What's helping us keep up with a lot of what we need to be doing is the new growth that we're experiencing each and every year. We're getting, I think it was 600 million or 500 million in new growth valuation that came in this year, Brett and Brad, which is good. And our sales tax increases. Now, some of that is just inflationary. So sales taxes are increasing because costs are going up for our residents. But then again, we're receiving more revenue, but our costs are going up proportionally as well. So those are the two things that are helping us. If we stop growing and we don't see that new growth, I think that's when the tightening becomes even more felt. That's probably the best way to say that.

Chris, let me talk about TIF 1. And I thought the ratchet down ended at 640, 60%, 40%. Now we're looking at 50-50. Are we going back? What are we doing?

No, sir. Good question. We are still at the 60%. Okay. And what that is highlighting, and Shannon, if you could go back to what that is, what that is highlighting is when we went from the 77.5%, which is what the first 20 years of the TIF was, we then went to 70%. Correct. Now we're at 60%. What we've been doing is we've been taking that ratchet-down valuation that has moved from TIF 1... over into the general fund, through that ratchet down. We're sending it over into two different buckets. One is over to economic development.

Is that the EDA?

That is for the economic development incentives. That's what we use for the EDIAs for incentive programs. And Phillip will be showing you what those numbers are here later this afternoon and what valuations we have there. So the good news is that ratchet down has occurred. We're taking half of the value of that ratchet down, putting it into economic development that we can use anywhere in the city. The other half of that has been going into non-bond CIP. That's just to help pay cash for projects in the general fund. What that is showing is in order to balance the budget, again, this is before we knew and understood what we now know and understand from Friday afternoon. we had to reduce the amount of what we're sending over into the non-bond CIP by half of what we had been doing. So we needed half of those dollars to help balance the operational side of the budget. So there's fewer dollars going into the non-bond CIP bucket of that ratchet down. We're holding the valuations for our economic development incentives the same. That's what that's explaining.

Great. I appreciate that, Chris, because I think we have a vehicle that can protect some of that tax that we've pulled into the tip. You know, I'm really glad because at the end of the day, this makes a lot of sense, which you just did. So I'm good with that.

Thank you. And our proposal is staff, and we still need to get that finalized through the TIF board and through you as a council. We are going to propose that we hold steady at that 60%. Thank you. We still need to finalize that, but we're going to continue. We're still at 60% as planned for this next year. We're going to hold steady on that, but we're going to propose that we maintain that rate.

Appreciate it. Thank you.

Okay, this is a pie chart of our general fund revenues. Again, our general fund is at 341.9 million. Our two largest revenue sources are property tax at 165.6 million or 48% of the budget. And then our sales tax at 113 million. Franchise fees is our third largest one at 19.3. This is some additional information on the two revenue sources. Again, the property taxes are up 7.5 million or 4.7% from last year. Our sales tax are up 8.8 million or 8.4% from last year. Together, these two make up 81% of the general fund budget or 278.6 million, and that's an increase of 6.2% from last year. Our property tax year, we certified as of January 1, the value was $47.5 billion. Again, you'll hear more about property tax in C3 when our Chief Financial Officer, Brett Starr, comes up. That's a $2.3 billion increase from our prior year. Our new construction, it really should be $570 million, and that's a 5.2% total increase from last year. Our property tax rate component is broken out into two components. We have our INS or our debt service that pays for our principal and interest, and then we have our M&O that funds our basic city services. Annual property tax for the city of Irving only is $1,815 annually for every single family market home of $469,998. That includes the 20% homestead exemption as well as over 65 or disabled exemption of $65,000. So that totals about $151 per month. Our total property tax allocation, it is broken out between the city. The school district and the county, the City of Irving only receives 23 percent of those property tax revenue with the school district receiving the largest percentage of 50 percent. And that 23 percent is what we use to fund our basic services like public safety, public works, our parks and our libraries. We have three school districts in the City of Irving. The largest being the Irving ISD, we have the Carrollton Foreman's Branch ISD, as well as Coppell ISD.

Let me ask a question on the school funding. Do we have a sense of the impact on voucher? Because it's still coming out of our tax base, because it subvents up to the state. So do we have a sense of that?

I don't have any sense of what the voucher impact is on the school district. I'm not sure of the finance.

Chris, I'm looking at the total amount. We know what that 50% looks like, but then if I'm not mistaken, the voucher is on top of that 50% because it's going subventing from us up to the state and then the state is doing the voucher.

We'll look into that.

I think it's going to be more than 50% when we look at it because that's a tax impact to our taxpayer.

Thank you. Mayor, I have a question.

Yes, Mark.

For this chart, this breakdown, we know that the county is looking at a 12-cent tax increase, the school, Irving ISD, 12.5-cent tax increase. Any idea of how these percentages will change if a lot more tax revenue is going to the county and to the school district after November?

Not specifically. I think the breakout will probably still be the same.

are pretty proportional to it, but... We'll do that analysis. We'll just assume that both of those pass, and we'll set that up for you.

Yeah, I'd be curious how much the... with the percentages, how that changes this.

That's a good question. That's interesting.

Thank you.

You're welcome. Going on to our sales tax, again, it's our largest general fund revenue source. We have a diversified sales tax collections. Again, we mentioned that about inflation being factored into that revenue growth as well as the increases from our revenue sharing agreement. The sales tax allocation for the city of Irving is 8.25 cents. And again, this chart is referring to all the funds, not just the general fund. So one penny would go to Irving is about 126.1 million, the other 1% to DART. The remaining 6.25% or 788.1 million goes to the state of Texas. This is the sales tax collection history for the general fund only. Again, we've had a steady increase, but you can see between 2021 and 2022, that's where we had our largest increase, and that was mainly due to inflation. And so it's increased steadily since then. These are sales tax top ten industries. Our three top ten are retail trade, which is sales from business to consumer, our wholesale trade, which is business to business, and then our information data centers and other information type facilities. Those have been our top three, and you can see during this period shown on the table, our collection history has been pretty stable and it's weathered a lot of the economic downturns that we had during the pandemic and also during just coming out of the pandemic, they still remain basically stable. People didn't stop shopping, they just changed the way that they shopped. Our other revenues account for 19% or $63.3 million of our general fund. These revenues include our franchise fees, fees and permits, our fines, our charges for service, interest income, and other miscellaneous revenues. Our two revenue sources that you've been presented with are short-term rental enforcement, of $340,000. This will fund three full-time positions. And then our risk-based health inspection program of a little over $228,000, and that will fund two full-time positions. These are expenditures, again, the same as the general fund revenues at 341.9 million. It's broken out by our service type. You've got police at 120.1 million, fire at 86.6, and then parks and rec is the other largest department at 25.8 million. Non-departmental, this is our department where we put a lot of citywide expenditures. It's not attributable to just one department. So this is where we have our cost of service as well as our transfers for our IT and our VIRF and the health insurance. We have our transfers for debt service and other ongoing one-time capital needs to non-bonds, CIP services. as well as our economic development incentives to the Economic Development Incentive Fund. We have our transfer to our risk management fund for risk management. Citywide utilities are here as well, our electric, our heat, and our water. Outside services, these are for our legal, actuarial, and other management-type contracts. And then our other, that includes our bank charges, if we had a fuel reserve, any legislative travel, memberships, citywide printing, food, and other non-items that aren't classified in any of these other categories. And in fiscal year 26, we did have some charges for police and fire that were included in non-departmental. So you saw last year, there was a big drop in non-departmental. So for transfers, cost of service, utilities, building maintenance, anything related to police and fire, we moved those charges into their individual departments. Expenditures by classification. We are a comprehensive service industry. All of our authorized positions provide a service. Salaries and benefits account for 72% of the general fund budget. We have a little over 2,100 authorized positions. We added 74 new positions this year. Those are in our parks and recreation, our police, fire, code enforcement, CIP, human resources. inspections and transportation. In summary, we have reasonably underestimated our revenues. We provided additional property tax release. We increased that exemption to $65,000. Our featuring focus is aimed at maintaining our current service levels. We've absorbed any current legislative or unfunded mandates that we've known about, and we have presented a structurally balanced recommended budget. Any questions?

Great. Thank you. Any comments from anybody at this point? Let me, Chris, you and I have had this discussion. This is for you, John Block. The whole area of technology, it's not so undepartmental. It cuts across more and more. And I think we're going to have some challenges, basically, what's going on at the state level vis-a-vis data centers and how that's being pretty much held up for a while. As well as, just something I want to kind of just put out there, I think, as a way that that may be a very direct cost that's growing, not going down. So for whatever it's worth, Jan, you and our city manager may want to talk a little bit about it, because I'm concerned about that one area. Any comments? Thank you, Mayor.

Yes, this is coming to a committee near you soon, some of these discussions. But I think you're absolutely right. It's going to be an area that's continuing to grow. And our cost regarding the data center and what the state's doing there, it's frustrating because that's a historically a very useful source of tax revenue for us. I'm hopeful that we'll be able to affect some good legislation down there and get some of these smaller data centers moving again. But we'll see. There are a lot of questions about resiliency and the grid that the state very rightly needs answered first. But in terms of the cost side of things, I think you're absolutely right. And it's something we should be looking at, not just from

perspective of sustainability and being able to keep up with the increased costs but also how do we how do we do that while simultaneously using it as a tool to keep other costs down as well so great hey Chris it just it's just something out there and we know that and so let's hopefully we can figure out which way we we're going to be able to move because I have kind of a concern but it's not something that's immediate but it's something that's coming so

We were able to have a couple conversations yesterday with some of our visiting legislators and just put that on the radar screen. It's interesting to see where the state is either at or not at, depending on who you're talking with. At this point in time, which may change after the election, we'll just have to see how all that plays out. But, Mayor, you've nailed it. We're sort of in the middle of what the state is trying to do and what the feds are trying to do. And I think as more and more discussion occurs as to what data centers are and their impact and how they can be managed, hopefully we'll be able to get some good legislation that comes in through the state side. In the meantime, we are, I believe, very well set up here as a city to be able to allow for them and the uses in the areas that you as a council have identified. So we're ready and prepared, but we just need to see what the state and the feds are going to do. Great. Thank you. Dennis.

Thank you, Ann. Thank you, John. Yesterday we got a pretty good example from one of our legislators whose name I will not call. But as we were talking about data center and this person had the wrong concept of what the data centers and how they affect this the grid and how the data centers is robbing all of the residents of, you know, electricity. And it made me realize that we've got to educate these legislators on, you know, the effects, really the effects of, you know, these data centers, you know, really and not what they think in their minds because I saw that yesterday and I was like, wow. It helps also as council members that we ourselves make sure we educate ourselves also so that when our constituents are talking to us and they don't have accurate information that we can kind of help steer them in the right directions to try to hopefully get them to help us with our efforts at the state legislature next year. I just wanted to say that because I thought about that when the comments were made about the data centers and, you know, we don't need them, we don't need them, we don't need them. Well, we definitely need them. But it's going to be crucial for us as council members, each of us, to educate ourselves, be part of making those network connections like we did yesterday with some of the legislators that were with us on the tour. So I would encourage you council members, every opportunity you get, connect with these state legislators and help them understand how they need to help us.

Thank you. Let me, I think you all stopped at cities, am I correct? Well, they've had a data center for a lot of years, and it's going to grow. And so these are the kinds of impacts that I think we need to be, and they're our largest employer, by the way, over 6,000 employees. I was very taken when I visited them about a week ago. And the thing about where they're at, and they have over 20 acres to grow if they need to grow a major data center. And that's something we need to be kind of cognizant. But I want to say something. I've had feedback now in the last couple of weeks that we're now being looked at as kind of the example of a city that took on the data center and we went with our ordinance over two years ago. So those of us that were part of this, and you remember that, and so do you, Mark, We are now being looked at, you know, you guys took it on and you put the kind of wraps around it. And so I just think we ought to think about, you know, we did the right thing, but we're not done. And so, Chris, thank you for also taking it out. Appreciate it. Okay. Thank you.

All right. Good morning. Lauren Hale, Director of Budget and Strategic Services. This presentation is going to go over the changes to the general fund departments from this current fiscal year to this next fiscal year. So in each of these slides, you'll see some funded and unfunded supplemental requests Each year we get about $20 to $30 million worth of supplemental requests that we consider throughout the process. And these are the ones that we have approved to build into our general fund. So as Shannon mentioned, and you're going to hear throughout the rest of the presentations as well as the one that has the personnel costs and increases, We've decreased a couple of our rates, our pension rates, our life insurance rates, maintained our cost of living adjustment and market adjustments for the civil service, and we've increased health insurance from 2% to 3%, which you'll hear all about on Letcher D. And we have also increased our fuel price per gallon. Debbie will cover that in the update to the VRF fund. We've increased overtime and utilities as well. 400,000 of that utilities increase is related to the Let's Play Irving, which we had pre-budgeted in our transfers. So department by department, the first thing, arts and culture, that we've added is a supplemental. We built in the capacity for the preventative maintenance funding for recurring $250,000 for their preventative maintenance projects that you'll hear more about from Todd's presentation later this afternoon. In the city manager's office, this is one of the departments that when you're looking at last year's budget compared to this year's budget, the numbers are a little bit different in terms of just overall decrease versus increase because this is one of the departments that was impacted in the organizational restructure. So IPO's office shifted to department 18, which is a different tab, budget and strategic services. And there's just been some minor operating increases specifically due to ICMA conference being scheduled twice. Our training seems to be a little higher in this department. In terms of your budget book one, our magistration related staffing supplemental is behind the city manager's office tab currently because we've been holding all of the staffing in one bucket in our non-departmental. And this $519,000 covers the costs for one judge, some alternative judge hours, and then The PD overtime staffing as well as our court clerks that would go into effect if this was approved. And between now and the approved budget, we will be shifting each of those staffing into the appropriate department. In the city attorney's office, we had no supplemental requests. Their primary cost increase was due to an IT project from the current fiscal year that was previously funded in our IT fund balance and shifted over to their line item. Our mayor and council budget, we reallocated $10,000 from your training and travel to the parks, recreation, travel for our youth council travel to the National Leagues of Cities. We're just shifting where it's being budgeted out of.

I got a quick question on that. And I don't know, Chris, and really I guess I need to wait until the mayor gets here because we actually gave a number. But then we found that it's going to cost more than the $10,000. And then Al and I talked, and Al had mentioned about possibly getting some private funding to help offset that difference. So I don't know if he mentioned that to you or not.

I have not received that yet. And we can make whatever changes that you would like in your budget on this. And we can identify additional revenue if there's going to be some private funding or the council would like to transfer more out of its travel and training over to that. We can do that as well. So we're very flexible.

So I can get you the figure that was sent to us.

Sounds good. Thank you.

And then we've added the membership for the U.S. Conference of Mayors. City Secretary's Office, there's no supplemental requests, but we did increase in elections. So this line item has gone up by about 200,000. It's more in line with the actuals that we have been seeing, and Shanae can cover that in her budget presentation with you all. But this line item projection matches with a four-year average. Budget and strategic services. This is a new department that was created in the reorg. So it has the budget division that was shifted from finance as well as the IPO innovation division that I just mentioned from CMO. There's no supplementals, but this year, instead of last year, we had about $40,000 in professional services. That's due to that resident survey, which comes every two years. So that one's been zeroed out. CIP, so like Shannon mentioned in her previous, we've shifted some of our operating expenses from CIP as well as our non-departmental to cover the utilities, the maintenance, and other appropriate costs related to public safety. So out of the CIP budget specifically, $545,000 were shifted out, and they're accounted for in the fire and the police budgets. The supplementals that have been approved, which include the horizontal CMART support and third-party custodial and just some HVAC services technicians and things like that, they are all in support of the focus of ensuring proper care and maintenance for the new facilities, which City Manager Hillman mentioned in his budget goals.

This is a good example of the focus and the priorities that we're looking at in maintaining our existing facilities. as well as we just added 260,000 square feet of office space, and we need to make sure that we're maintaining that as well. So that is why you see these increases here.

For code enforcement, the main changes are the short-term rental inspections programs that were discussed on the June 25th council meeting. You can see that we've also offset that with the expected revenues. In communications, one of the major changes that they're seeing is just a 10% postage rate increase that's impacting our resident mailers, such as Spectrum and Neighborhood News. They also received a couple of reclasses, which just means that we've kind of adjusted the payer's salary or the title of the position to better align with the things that they're doing. Community and active economic development. Um, this one's a new department 59 created in the reorg where economic development has shifted from department 55 and housing and redevelopment kind of shifted from 58 to combine. Um, their supplemental items are funded through the TIF and general non-bond CIP. And so you'll see those in the economic development presentations. Financial services, they were amended during the reorg as well. So their risk team shifted from HR to finance, and then the budget from finance to budget. And so they also received a couple of reclasses. Fire Department is seeing increases in special pays, their protective gear, their radios, headset replacements, also the cancer screenings that Chris mentioned is about $170,000 per year for those annual screenings and just other operating costs. This is also another area where we moved a lot of those utilities that Shannon mentioned from non-departmental. And so in the budget this year, they're getting more money set aside to that bunker gear replacement so that we can start to meet our goal to be able to replace them hopefully in the next couple of fiscal years. And then they've received an FTO paramedic program as well as some VRF, some fire administration vehicles out of the VRF and some payroll assistance. Fleet, they are an internal service fund, but the biggest change here is the change to how we have budgeted for gas. We were previously budgeting at 290 a gallon. We're budgeting at $4 a gallon, and that's about a $700,000 increase in the general fund, and Debbie will cover fuel changes in her presentation. HR, this department was additionally amended during the reorg because risk moved to the finance department. They've had some minor operational increases just due to legal expenses in their line items, but we've also added a third HR manager to better balance workload. IT, they had a $1 million increase in their transfer from the general fund. One of the bigger things that we're seeing in IT is just the increase for computer replacement and our increases in our software maintenance agreements. And so this year's strategy for computer replacements was to actually remove it out of our operating expenses and then fund them by tax notes. And so our projects that Chad's going to cover in his presentation are funded from Fund Balance. Inspections their change includes 2 new staff and the operational redesign of the health inspections transition to risk based. So we covered that in the 611 council work session meeting, and you have 2 action items on the council agenda today to adopt the ordinance that repeals their fees and replaces it with new ones in the consolidated fee schedule. They actually saw an operational savings due to locking into their new library contract, their Polaris contract for five years, and they received one reclass. Municipal Court has historically shifted one court-martial kind of back and forth between their court security fund and the general fund. We've also done some things where we've split it 50-50, but due to the imbalance in the court security fund this year, we've transitioned it over to the general fund so that that court security fund can regrow its reserves. Parks and Rec, this is just the accounting for the other additional 10,000 that we've moved from your budget to Parks and Rec, but we can amend that between now and adoption. And then this is shifting in the 832,000 that we set aside for the final part of Let's Play Irving. So that goes live into salaries and operating expenses this year. Planning had minor operating increases, including legal fees and required public notice posting. And so we'll be amending their fees to recover some of that impacted costs. So when we do adopt our full consolidated fee schedule before budget, you will see that in there. The police department, so similar to how we did Let's Play Irving, we set aside the $2.7 million for year two in their staffing plan. And this year we've moved it out of the transfers and into their operating, their salaries, and their benefits. This department as well, when you're looking at the comparator from last current year to this year, their building maintenance costs and their utilities have gone up because we moved in from non-departmental. This year, we've also kind of carried forward the practice of strategically utilizing our SEAS funds to allocate dollars to different equipment. And so in the next slide, you'll see that they had 14 requests, and those include patrol rifles, reality-based training submissions, refurbishing their dispatching consoles, training supplies, things like that. And so you'll see that they actually found some cost savings by eliminating a position and then it covered their reclasses that they were looking for as well as lead poison testing and then that additional equipment at the bottom is the seized funds that we were able to use. Traffic and transportation. So they have another one of the unfunded mandates this year requiring retro reflectivity at a specific minimum. And so we're seeing an increase of additional paint and glass beads in their operating line of 75,000 as well as we added two new staff to be able to actually get the work done that's required. Oh, and then you'll also see that we have the ADA plan here for traffic and transportation. That's that $2 million for sidewalks that will be utilized out of the DART fund. And that is the overall changes of the general fund.

Thank you. Any questions? Yeah, Bob.

Yeah, that was just an old slide. Traffic. So this is a traffic intersection control project that we were able to move up $3 million in geo bonds in the schedule so that we can identify the dollars. So traffic is kind of up near the Valley Ranch area. Traffic plans to kind of look over that project. Here comes Dan.

Dan's coming up to walk through that.

You're moving pretty quick then. Yeah.

Can we front up the trip?

Dan Vedrill, Traffic and Transportation Director. The Neighborhood Traffic Management Intersection Control. We're reviewing an intersection in the Valley Ranch area where we've received complaints over the years about speeding and difficulty crossing Valley Ranch Parkway East at Ranch Trail. We're focusing in on that one. That's it.

Yes, sir.

Yes, sir.

The new sidewalk ADA plan progress, we spoke when we met. Is that the one that's coming out of GMP funds? It is. ADA-compliant sidewalks. And does that also change the signal light or the crosswalk sign to add the beeping?

And I have an exhibit I can distribute if you all would like to have it. What we're looking at there is we're going to look at those – Our goal at this point is to look at the more old elementary schools in and around Irving where they do not have the proper sidewalks or ADA ramps. Start with the oldest first and start working around until we can get to all the different schools. We're going to start on that first.

Do we have an ADA requirement to have and I don't know what you call it, the crosswalk, like walk, don't walk sign?

We have those at all intersections.

Do we have the requirement to have it for folks that cannot see, like the beeping one? Yes. Is that a requirement of ADA?

Yes, absolutely.

So is there a project to refresh our equipment for that?

Well, we'll do that on an individual basis, but whenever we upgrade our signals or upgrade our pedestrian signals, we'll certainly add that as part of it.

Do we get any resident requests in certain areas?

We have historically, and we'll actually work with that resident one-on-one. We have a number of them, residents throughout the community. We'll actually walk the path with them. We'll teach them how to utilize the system. So, yeah, we have that all over town.

Appreciate it.

Yes, sir.

Mayor, if I may. I know $2 million sounds like a lot of money and is a lot of money, but in reality, when you go out there and you look at the intersections we're doing, we can probably do 25 of them, 25 to 50, and that's it for the $2 million. So when we did the ADA transitional plan like three years ago, four years ago, I believe the overall cost was $147 million for all our sidewalks to come into compliance in our buildings. So the $2 million we're getting now from GMP and all the funding that we continue to pump into it, We're meeting that transitional plan so we can meet the federal requirements. So we're on board where we should be. So we continue to eat away at it.

In these GMP dollars that will be coming in from DART, now, again, that's only for the next five years. That's all we have. Those are going to continue to increase. I think it was 48 million, 48, 50 million, somewhere around there total over the five-year period that we're going to be receiving. Those are gonna be the dollars that I'm gonna focus in on using to really bolster up the sidewalk program. It has to be used within a certain distance of a transit stop. That's gonna be most of the city. So we have in our city, As Dan always says, it's a target-rich environment out there. Yes, sir, it is. And so it's not going to be lacking of different projects. The dollars won't go as far as fixing all of them, but this is going to be a good way for us to get started and focus in on these one-time issues using these one-time dollars from DART to help really get this program going.

Mr. Hillman, I have an exhibit that I'll pass out.

I'll just make a quick comment, if I may. There's a big ask in these areas of sidewalks and roads, and we have very limited constraint, and Dan, I think your department does a really good job balancing it, so I really appreciate it.

Yeah, let me also make a comment. The whole ADA is something we've been dealing with for a lot of years and will continue. We get more and more, I think we're able to eliminate some of those impacts, but when you look at South of 183 and you want to see... what you just brought up, Valley Ranch and Hackberry look really nice, okay? So the impact is huge across the city in the southern half. So at the end of the day, you know what? We're very aware, and I think that I'll just leave it to the pros to make sure that we can get it done on a timely basis. Okay, thank you.

If you look at your exhibit, I need to go look on. I need to get off of that real quick, if we can. I'll show you with the mouse where I want to go. This is the map that you have in front of you. Everything that's hatched or opportunity zones for sidewalks and for ADA. Everything in these hatched areas right here. This is what's part of the GMP. It has to follow bus routes, which you see in blue, within a certain distance between the various rail stations. So what we'll be doing is looking at schools in these areas here, within these hatched areas. And I have a large exhibit over here that I'll bring out here later where you all can see where the actual schools are. And we're going to look in the south side of town first, because that's where the older schools are located. So that's how we plan to start it, and then just start working from the oldest to the newest.

Yeah, thank you, Dan. You know, it's really important. That's why I brought it up broad, because I know your focus, and I think I know the district a little, and it's appropriate. But we've got a much bigger ask, as you probably know. Luis, you're down there. But keep working with Dan. Thank you, Dan. Yes, sir, Mayor.

Thank you very much.

Dan, the program we had at one point, like partnering with individual property owners to share the cost of sidewalk repair, we don't do that anymore?

We've only done it on hazardous sidewalks.

It's still in play?

Yeah, it's not just as easy. Yes, what we've done is this. We'll fix a hazardous sidewalk, and if there's a specific other part of the sidewalk where the resident isn't happy with it, we've assisted in that. But it was originally set up to do drive approaches, so.

Okay, and there's funding in place for that program?

It's a half and half. Okay. We'll give an estimate, and then the resident will come up with a half of the price, and then we'll come up with the other part. Okay.

We have money in our budget for that 50% that's on us, yeah.

Yeah, I think that's a critical point. It really points out what we call a public-private partnership so that it's being shared. That's where I was going on that. Okay. All right. Thanks, Dan. Yes, sir.

Real fast. Mayor, I think what I was referring to is years ago we used to provide... sidewalk money for some of the private developments, and I think the most discussed one at the time was Hackberry. We no longer do that because those are pure private streets and pure private sidewalks. We stopped that program. So I don't understand what you're saying. That 50-50 split is yes, we do that, but we don't provide any grant dollars over to private sidewalks in the gated communities that we used to. Got it. Thank you.

Good morning, Mayor and Council. Brett Starr, Chief Financial Officer, here to talk about the tax rate. Before we get into what has changed since we met at Audit and Finance on the 30th of July, just to give a brief refresher for the general viewing audience, some tax rate terms. Maintenance and operations rate is the portion of the tax rate that funds the general fund. Interest and sinking rate is the portion that is allocated to debt service. Those two components add together for our total tax rate. There are three calculated rates that are required to be posted by state law. The no new revenue rate is the rate that provides the same amount of revenue on existing properties as in the previous year. It replaces what used to be known as the effective tax rate. The voter approval rate is the rate above which an election must be held to exceed that rate, and this replaces the old rollback rate. The rate is currently 3.5% above the no new revenue rate plus the current year's interest and sinking rate. Prior to 2017 Senate Bill 2, the rollback rate was 8%. The adjusted voter approval rate is the voter approval rate plus any unused increments from the prior three years. Just running through the tax appraisal calendar, the budget for fiscal 26-27 uses tax year 26. It's called that because it is the value of all property in the city as of January 1st of 2026. Running through where we've been to date, on April 15th, we received a preliminary estimate of value with little detail. Often when we get that early in the calendar year, there's no business personal property information or it's incomplete. On May 8th, we received the first estimated value report, or EVR, followed by May 25th's second estimated value report, which is the most complete estimate before property protests and lawsuits, and we use this rate for budget revenue estimates. On July 25th, 2026, we received the certified report. This is the final number used to calculate our tax rates and revenues. Many accounts are still under protest, but the number is low enough to provide useful revenue estimates, and we factor those protests into our ultimate revenue calculations. Many lawsuits are undecided at this point or even will be undecided going into the next fiscal year. THE 2026 CERTIFIED ROLE WAS $47.52 BILLION. THAT IS 7.17 BELOW THE PRELIMINARY ESTIMATE THEY GAVE US BACK IN APRIL, BUT ALSO 5.17% ABOVE LAST YEAR'S CERTIFIED ROLE OF 45.18 BILLION. THIS ESTIMATE OF THE CERTIFIED ROLE INCLUDES $570 MILLION IN NEW CONSTRUCTION. And this year, commercial real estate plus business personal property values equal 68% of the total value, and it's been as high as 71%, but we are seeing residential values increase and commercial business personal property not increased quite as much, and so the total impact is 68%, and this is still well above many of our peer cities in the Metroplex that we compare to, which are more of a bedroom community. Irving has a large corporate and manufacturing presence along Loop 12, 114, and so on. So there's a lot of business, personal businesses in Irving that have a significant impact on our property tax rate. So some of our current constraints on property tax revenues, Senate Bill 2 limits maintenance operation increases to 3.5% plus new growth. We do get a three-year look back of the unused increment. The look back we've been using for tax year 2022 expired last year. That was 4.17 cents. It allowed us to maintain a constant tax rate from 2023 to 2025. This year's unused increment from last year is only 0.71 cents. However, the total tax rate for this year does not need to be lowered to meet this year's adjusted voter approval rate. If we did reduce the M&O revenue, it would primarily come out of the general fund because TIF allocations, economic development incentive agreements, or multi-year agreements, and debt service are all difficult to change in the short term. So changing the rate means changing the amount of dollars that go into the general fund. Looking at the mechanics of the adjusted voter approval rate, Senate Bill 2 allows cities to bank the unused increment if the adopted tax rate is below the voter approval rate for up to three years. For 26, I said the unused increment is .007099. We can apply this in whole or part to the next year's budget or the next two years after that, fiscal 28 and 29. The unused increment stays with the tax year. It's not decreased if you use it in a future year calculation. You can see here that we have no unused increments for 24 or 23, so that is the only unused increment we have available to us over the last three years. So we presented audit and finance on the 30th, which was slightly different. LESS THAN A WEEK AFTER THE TAX ROLL CAME OUT, AND THE INITIAL CALCULATIONS IN THE DALLAS COUNTY TAX OFFICE RECEIVED ON THE 28TH HAD A NO NEW REVENUE RATE OF .5138 AND AN ADJUSTED VOTER APPROVAL RATE OF .5835. TAX RATE CALCULATION IS 11 PAGES LONG, CONTAINING 83 CALCULATIONS TO DETERMINE THE TAX RATES UNDER STATE LAW. THE COUNTY TAX CALCULATIONS DETERMINED THAT OUR CALCULATED DEBT SERVICE RATE WAS NOT THE .1597 RATE WE HAD BUDGETED, BUT MATHEMATICALLY WAS ONLY .1541, AND THAT REDUCED OUR ADJUSTED VOTER APPROVAL RATE. IN THIS CASE, THE ADJUSTED VOTER APPROVAL RATE IS THE NO NEW REVENUE RATE, PLUS 3.5%, PLUS ANY UNUSED INCREMENTS, PLUS THIS YEAR'S DEBT RATE. staff has adjusted the debt payment schedule for the upcoming 2026A tax notes to match the county calculations required to meet that .1597 debt service portion of the tax rate without increasing the total issuance. So what we did is we front-loaded the schedule of principal repayments for that tax note to match the calculation to get our... debt service rate up to 1597 and so now a revised adjusted voter approval rate is now point five eight nine one seven four or seventy four seventy four one hundred thousandths of a cent Higher than the rate that we had that we adopted last year That's slightly above the current rate and the original proposed rate that we went into the budget this year So in some mayor and councils we've been on this roller coaster ride with the county of

which rate we're actually using. I really appreciate Brett's going to talk with the county, trying to figure out how, because I think his question is, how did you come up with this number? It's based upon this debt service issue where we are appropriately conservative as we estimate what those assessed valuations are coming in. We want to make sure that as we're issuing debt, we don't issue more debt than what we have the ability to pay for. Unfortunately, under SB2, that that can be penalized unless you issue more debt. So that's why we're using tax notes to be able to make some adjustments there. And that's what Brett was able to do. We now know and understand. So this next year, we're going to be able to adjust our schedule as well. But for this year, we're able to make the adjustments to be able to keep what we had originally thought and what my proposed budget was going to include of maintaining the tax rate. With the adjustments that we did receive last Friday, we are able to do that. So my recommendation is going to be is that you maintain the current tax rate for the next fiscal year. Now, you have a budget that has been structurally balanced based upon a lower tax rate. For the general fund, that's going to be about $1.9 million that will be over and above in terms of revenue by maintaining that rate. There's going to be about $600,000-ish, I believe, over to the TIFs and economic development. But for the general fund, my recommendation is that we put those dollars into one-time non-bond CIP dollars. Next year, we already know that we're going to have increases in our police and our fire staffing plans. So at a minimum, those dollars will be able to be used for those purposes down the road. So that's going to be my recommendation is that we hold that. This year, we'll put them into non-bond CIP. We'll use them for our facilities and get some one-time projects done. There's going to be a little bit less than that. You'll be talking with Judge Acuna here relative to magistration and some of the judges. There's going to be another change there. He'll be walking you through that. I would recommend we do take some of the extra needed dollars for a proposal that he has out of these additional funds to help cover what he's going to be looking for. Other than that, the rest would be going into that non-bond CIP and then helping us pay for those staffing plans that we know we have coming up next year. So again, I appreciate, Brett, thank you to you and your team going in there, talking with the county, figuring out what's up. It's a good news scenario that we can continue to maintain that rate, which is, again, inappropriate, as low as we can keep it, and still maintain the services that our residents are looking for, especially when it comes to public safety and having those increases that we have identified.

I will just say that we went into the certified role this year not having a clear picture of where four of the data inputs came from from the county tax office. I now understand three of them. And so the one that's still under... Doesn't make sense to me. I'm going to go back and visit with them after the crunch is over and we don't have 50 entities screaming for their tax rate calculations at the same time. So we'll go back and meet with them after September and figure out how they're calculating the returns on prior year lawsuits and adjustments because it doesn't match the numbers they gave us in May or in June. So really curious to see where they get their final numbers from.

You know, Brett, you know, I learned a lot with you, and I want to thank you. And I know Dennis and David in particular will be going through the same. So thank you. I appreciate it. But, you know, it's something that does keep coming up, and I'm concerned that we're going to see it again because it's on the list that TML showed last year that was not passed, and that's that three-year look back on our budget and what we can do going forward And that's something I do think we need to be really cognizant of. That may come back, and so we may have to work that one. But thank you, Brett. You've done a great job. And thank you, Chris.

So going forward, looking at the rates, as last year we proposed $58.91 with a split for maintenance operations of $0.4294, an interest and sinking rate of $0.1597. This year's no new revenue rate. This changes every year based on the calculations. We're now at a $0.5138. Our unadjusted voter approval rate without that three-year look back is $0.5828. So that is... 0.6262 hundredths of a cent below the current tax rate. The adjusted voter approval rate of 589174 is 74 ten thousandths of a cent above our proposed rate of 5891. So we're proposing the same rate as last year, 5.589100. Not going to 589174, we're forfeiting $36,000 in revenue. So, as you saw back in audit and finance, I don't propose going up to the exact rate. I don't want anyone to come in and challenge that we missed a decimal point somewhere. So, keeping the tax rate the same seems very appropriate. That's what we've been budgeting for all year long, and so now we have the constraints from Dallas County Tax Office to be able to do that.

David, do you want to jump in?

Yeah. Just from my knowledge, how many decimal places is statutory that you can go to?

They go out six. Six is the number? Is what we get from the county.

Okay.

And so you'll see a few cities go out six.

Okay, gotcha. Thank you.

I do wonder if that's... I'm sorry, Adam, I missed you there.

Go. Oh, excuse me. Quick question. On the, what is it, the 74 ten-thousandths of a? Uh-huh. Do we get to bank that? Yes.

Yes, we will. Okay. So next year, the rate, the bank will be .709974. Okay. Great. Thank you. Oh, actually, no, it'll be 7173 or something like that, 7173 out there. So, yeah, we'll get to bank that.

Thank you, Mayor. Quick question on the slide prior to that, 2026 preliminary versus certified role. The preliminary value versus certified value, and there is a difference from 51 to 47. That means that the valuation is going down?

Yes. So what happens is the county will propose this year's rates in April and May. Every property owner will get a notice of what their value is on their property, and they'll protest. They'll either file a lawsuit or they'll go to the county and go through the appraisal review process and get those lowered. And so as people protest their values throughout the summer, the preliminary number is reduced considerably. DOWN TO THE CERTIFIED VALUE. SO THAT CERTIFIED VALUE REPRESENTS THE DIFFERENCE REPRESENTS THE SUCCESSFUL CHALLENGES FROM PROPERTY OWNERS AGAINST THE ORIGINAL VALUE THE COUNTY APPRAISAL DISTRICT PROVIDED.

SO THAT IS ALMOST $3.6 BILLION.

YES. OR 7% DECREASE FROM TOTAL. THAT IS TYPICAL. WE USUALLY SEE THAT. IS THAT NORMAL EVERY YEAR? WE USUALLY SEE THAT BETWEEN 6.5% TO 7.5% EACH YEAR DROP. So we've gotten very good at estimating that when we get that preliminary value and figuring out where we're going to end up. And so you never budget off the preliminary value because it's too high. So we've learned to adjust down about 7% to 7.5% every year so we're not caught unawares when the values drop.

Thank you. Chris, you were talking about us being conservative and issuing the debt, but it's caused some of these issues. Are you looking at them being more... we're willing to issue the debt in order to, so we don't run into these issues again next year? We don't want to be in a position where it's such a close call.

Yeah, so tell me if I'm wrong here or throw something at me. We're going to be strategically using short-term tax notes, and that's going to be two-year or three-year tax notes. So our cost of issuing the debt is going to be very low, but we can use that increment. So it will be a slight interest cost. Tax notes aren't that expensive and on such a short term. WE CAN USE ANY OF THAT REMAINING INCREMENT TO HELP BALANCE THAT OUT AND STILL MOVE FORWARD WITH OUR FACILITY PLANS. DID I SAY THAT CORRECT?

YOU DID. ALSO ADD THE TIMING. IN THE PAST, WE'VE ISSUED THE SHORT-TERM TAX NOTES FOR, SAY, FIRE TRUCKS AND I.T. INFRASTRUCTURE AT THE SAME TIME WE DO OUR G.O. AND WATER AND SEWER BONDS. Based on this, it behooves us to shift that back about three months. And so what you're seeing with these 2026As that will be coming forward in September, they're what was originally planned for fiscal 26-27. We're going to issue those at the beginning of the year to take advantage of this increment and front load the debt so that we can pay more into 2027 to maintain that 1597 tax rate. And so you'll see the tax notes come in early. And what we're able to do is we go out to the rating agencies in June, get our ratings, and that carries us forward so we don't have to go out and get a separate rating or separate for the tax notes. We can carry that rating forward for a couple months. We're also probably going to do a private placement with a bank to get those tax notes placed. It's a little easier to get that done without a competitive sale. at the recommendation of Hilltop, our financial advisors. And so we'll be adjusting the schedule of those tax notes, the repayment schedule, to match what we need to have to maintain our interest and sinking allocation.

You had mentioned before that there was like a six-month period of time that mattered for when the debt issuance could be applied to? Can you explain that again? I'm sorry.

So say, for example, we waited until June of 27 to issue these tax notes. The first payments wouldn't come due until sometime in fiscal 28. And so that would not affect the calculations of how much debt we're paying in fiscal 27. So by issuing in this calendar year, we're able to schedule those first debt payments. So the first year's repayment for the money we're going to borrow in September will be next August. And so Not voters, but bondholders are not looking to buy bonds and have them repaid within a month. They like to have some duration on there. They're willing to invest their money for a longer term, and by selling at the beginning of the year, that gives us the ability to structure those debt payments so that they come due in the next fiscal year, and that affects our calculation of the debt service rate.

Excellent. Okay. Thank you, Rick. Keep going.

All right. Let's see. I'm pretty close to being done with this presentation. Oh, yeah. So our proposal is to maintain, as Chris said, maintain the total tax rate of $58.91, maintain the $15.97 debt service rate allocation. THIS ALLOWS US TO COMPLETE THE 2021 BOND PROGRAM WITHIN 10 YEARS. WE HAVE BEEN SEEING RISING COSTS IN CONSTRUCTION AND MATERIALS, INCREASING THE COST ESTIMATES FOR MAJOR PROJECTS, AND IT ALSO ALLOCATES THE REDUCED RATE FOR PENSION BONDS BACK INTO THE CAPITAL PROGRAM, MAINTAINING THE TOTAL OVERALL RATE OF 1597 AND INCREASING THE AMOUNT WE'RE SPENDING ON STREET AND SIDEWALK PROJECTS TO $30 MILLION PER YEAR IN ROAD TO THE FUTURE. IT WAS AT $20 MILLION A FEW YEARS AGO. WE'VE BEEN RAMPING THAT UP. Two years ago it was $25 million. This year it was $27.5. And so for the proposed budget, it will be $30 million in bonds for street projects. This is a look at how it breaks out using the 5891. $47.5 billion at a tax rate of 5891 gets you $279.9 million to allocate. We apply a discount factor for collections that don't come in within the fiscal year of 98.5%. It leaves us with $275.7 million to allocate. 167.5, that will go to the general fund, 16.2 million to our economic development incentives, and 17.2 to all six of our TIF funds combined. Those top three numbers make up the M&O portion, or 72.89% of the tax rate. The remaining part of the tax rate, $64,289,000 goes to general debt service, while $10.45 million goes to the pension obligation bonds debt service. And those two numbers add up to the $1,597. All told, that's about a $13.5 million increase from the prior year, or 5.1%, 7% up. Mark?

We talked before about, you know, The INS rate obviously has to be high enough to support the repayment of our debt. And if the voters approve bonds and we sell those bonds, then we have to adjust the INS rate in order to cover that. That's a state calculation that's mandated?

Yes. Well, the INS rate is predicated on the debt service principal and interest payments of all your outstanding debt. Okay.

And then so if you – you sell so many bonds, then you have to increase the INS rate, then you have to reduce the M&O rate in order to be within that 3.5% tax increase cap. Yes. Unless you go to the voters.

Unless you go to the voters. Okay. Thanks. Brett Rolfes, now the 3.5% is still just on the O&M side, is that correct? Yes, that's correct. So that's the no new revenue rate. But to Mark's point, that voter approval rate is what impacts the INS. So if we needed to go higher than that... and it's above the voter approval rate where we wanted to end up, we'd have to go out or then lower the MNO. Is that correct?

Yes. And one of the things that Senate Bill 2 does allow us to do is pay for our debt. The Senate Bill 2 does not want us to default on our debt. That looks bad. So they set it up so that that would not be an impact in the calculations. We'd always have the breach to pay our debt.

David. Thank you, Mayor. And this is kind of my point of the language on a ballot initiative, especially if we look at doing a bond committee next year that if you vote for this, it will be a two cent increase to your tax rate. Because they don't care about M&O or I&S. It's what is my tax rate. And I think that's important for us to look at. This year we're going to be hit with a vote in November on 12 cents in our school tax and whatever Dallas County comes in. We're going to not be on the ballot, thank goodness. But I think looking forward, as we've been talking about, not this year but next year with your bond committee, when that's decided on, of that language of making sure that the voters know if you vote for this, this is your rate. And I don't think that's going to be the same thing with the school district or the county. It's just going to be vote for 12 cents. Mm-hmm.

That is correct, and thank you, David. Traditionally and historically, the city has received authorization from the residents for what I call these large omnibus bond programs. And whenever old debt falls off and whatever assessed value increases we receive any given year, that's then the capacity we have to issue whatever debt we can issue. We have not historically raised the tax rate in order to ensure that we get those projects done The challenge with that is at times it takes us 15, 18, 20 years to finish the projects that the voters have authorized us to do. The cost of those projects skyrockets in that interim time, and we usually don't have enough money through authorization to be able to complete those projects. What's more is with the SB2 complications, it limits it even more extensively and impacts the tax rate calculation, as you can see, So my recommendation is, as we look for this new bond authorization coming up and starting that bond process, that we limit it in time frame. This current authorization, we said we're going to do it in 10 years. That's a lot different than it has been in the 16, 18, and 20-year time frames. but that we also, to your point, say if you approve this, it will be a tax rate increase because you as the council have to be able to go out there and get the projects done and not play games and mess with the 11-page monstrosity that is the tax rate calculation and how all this moves in and out. based upon SB2. The residents just need to know if you want this done, this is what it's going to take. And it may not be a full two cents or one cent, maybe half cent, whatever it is. We'll do that calculation. But whatever it takes to get those projects done in five years, this is what your tax rate is going to be. And it may not be these large omnibus. It may be needed, and I think it will be a much more targeted, specific, and identifiable bond program for very specific projects. And you do that every five years.

Yeah, and I think the The real point of all of this is that because I know what you had to do during the bond committee I was in, that was over 20 years ago, and then you look at where we are right now with the existing, and you're still having to massage it, I guess, to try to get it forward. That's going to be critical, David, before we then go with the bond committee because the minute we go that way, there's going to be some expectations. But I do want to say, you know, I really appreciate what you guys have been doing because I've sat here and figured out, you know, I keep hearing structured budget, and I keep smiling and saying, okay, now it's very clear that it's tied to the tax rate, because if you can't tie it to that, you're in trouble. And so, thank you. Keep going, please. We're going to take a break as soon as this section is done, okay?

All right. So just to give a comparison of what the general fund impact would be at the various rates, as I mentioned earlier, if we went up to the full voter approval rate of $58,9174, that would get us a net $34,690. IF WE DID NOT USE OUR .71 CENT INCREMENT, THAT WOULD BE A DECREASE OF $2.9 MILLION. AND IF WE LOWERED THE TAX RATE DOWN TO THE NO NEW REVENUE RATE, NO NEW REVENUE, IT WOULD BE A $35 MILLION DECREASE TO THE GENERAL FUND. SO WE PRUDENTLY PROPOSE THE PROPOSED TAX RATING. AND AGAIN, ONE CENT ON THE TAX RATE GENERATES $4.68 MILLION. This looks at the average residential market value of a property in Irving has increased from $440,550 last year to $469,998. And as Chris Hillman has pointed out in his adventures in real estate, you're never going to find a house in Irving for $469,998. It's going to be much lower or much higher, but calculated that's where the rate is according to the county. So the impact on the residents, if we go with our proposed tax rate at $58.91, it's the same tax rate as last year, but because it increases the average property value, that will be another $109.33 added to the residential tax rate. This factors in both the homestead exemption and the over 65 disabled exemption. You can see we've upped that from $60,000 to $65,000. The homestead exemption is capped at 20%. I'd like to see the legislature increase that cap. That would be lovely. But I don't see that happening. It's been at 20% for as long as I've been doing this, which is over 20 years. So you can see the various rates. If we did the adjusted voter approval rate, that would be an increase of $0.23 above the $109.33. but going back down to the voter approval rate would be a savings of $20 over a year for the average market value for residents. In conclusion, our proposed budget is proposing to maintain the prior year tax rate of $58.91. Operations and maintenance rates and debt service funding rates stay the same. We're shifting 14 hundredths of a cent in debt service from the pension obligation bonds to CIP. That's in my next presentation. and we are recommending that you will adopt a rate of $58.91 as the rate not to exceed, not to be exceeded for the fiscal year 26-27 budget. In discussing with KO, there was a word in here that said today. You don't have to do it today, but you do have to do it within the next week. So if we're going to call a special call meeting to adjust the tax rate, we'd have to take that rate at that meeting, or we can do it today if that's your pleasure. And this lays it out. Just to get you familiar with what would happen if we did call an increase in the tax rate that goes above the voter approval rate, the last day to have a special call meeting to call for an election would be Monday, August the 17th. You would have to take action today to call that meeting to allow for three business days for that meeting to be posted. So today, either we... set an amount not to exceed on the tax rate, that's one of the agenda items, or we call a meeting for next Monday to potentially adopt a rate or set a rate that does not, a rate not to exceed that is above the voter approval rate, in which case we'd have to call a special election. Thanks for all the good news.

You're welcome.

Any questions? Okay. All right. Let's move on. All right. And really this one shouldn't take as long. So talking about projects and debt service. As I've been talking about, the 15.97 cents will generate $74.75 million in revenue for debt service. We're allocating 13.74 cents to capital program debt and 2.23 cents to pension obligation bond debt. POLICY DIRECTION HAS BEEN CONSISTENT FROM COUNCIL IN THE PAST IS THAT WE SUBSTANTIALLY COMPLETE THE BOND PROGRAM FOR 2021 WITHIN TEN YEARS. THE 2026 BONDS, AS CHRIS MENTIONED, IT TOOK QUITE A WHILE TO GET THAT DONE. IT WAS SUBSTANTIALLY COMPLETE IN 22-23 WITH ONE PROPOSITION STILL HAVING SOME UNALLOCATED OR UNISSUED BALANCE. ONE STILL IN THE TAX RATE EQUALS 4.68 MILLION. You can see here the pension obligation bonds, debt projection. When we set these bonds up, we kept the payments equal rather than escalating. And so as the value of the tax base grows, the amount of tax cents we need to cover our debt decreases. We started at 2.97 cents back in 23, and each year it has gone down for total decreases of 0.74%. hundreds of a cent to date over time as the debt is maintained at about $11 million and the value of one cent increases each year. You can see it here on this graph over the life of the bonds. Green represents debt service allocated to CIP at 1597. The orange represents the pension obligation bonds. You can see that they decrease each year until 2042 when we pay off the portion that is allocated to the TMRS and the supplemental benefit plan bonds. And all that's left for the next six years are the fire department pension obligation bonds, or the fire pension bonds. And so by 2647, I will not be here by then, we'll have paid off the pension obligation bonds.

Real fast, Mayor and Council, I am still receiving inquiries from other cities about what we did and how we did our pension obligation bonds. Again, we're saving over the life of the 20 to 25 years about $125 million worth of cost. And I just had a meeting last week with Six other city managers and two of them asked, what did we do? I walked them through that. One of the benefits was back then we had very low interest rates, and they're not as low now, so they'd have to do that calculation. But word has definitely gotten out there on what we did, and other cities are looking to see what we did and if they could do the same. So, again, it was a very wise, prudent policy direction from you, and just thank you very much for that guidance and direction. And it's helped set us up for very successful pensions. In fact, two of our three pensions are now more than fully funded at this point. So we're in a good, solid position. We hope to stay that way.

I would just like to plug that usually if you're selling pension obligation debt, you're doing it in a position of desperation because you can't fund them any other way. We did it in a position of strength. We basically refinanced the house and got a very favorable interest rate to save costs over time, and that has really benefited us. I don't recommend doing it normally, but we did a really good job with this. Debt capacity analysis, we work with Hilltop, our financial advisors, and we update the debt capacity regularly. As I mentioned, our current assumptions to maintain that 1597 total debt service tax rate, we are prudently budgeting four to three PERCENT ANNUAL AVERAGE GROWTH IN THE TAX SPACE. WE'RE LOOKING AT 4 PERCENT THE NEXT TWO YEARS, THEN GOING DOWN TO 3 PERCENT AFTER THAT. WE BUDGETED 5 PERCENT THIS YEAR, CAME IN AT 5.17, SO I FEEL OUR MODEL IS PRETTY ACCURATE, BUT IT DOES LEAN TOWARDS THE CONSERVATIVE SIDE. WE ALSO ARE BUDGETING 4 TO 4.5 PERCENT INTEREST RATES ON OUR FUTURE DEBT IN TERMS OF CAPACITY, BUT THIS YEAR'S INTEREST RATE WAS 3.68 PERCENT, WHICH IS DOWN FROM 2025, SO THAT'S GOOD NEWS. We issue 20-year debt for most projects. For the public safety joint facility projects, we did 30-year debt because those are going to be buildings that will usually last longer, 20 years. And we typically use up to five-year tax notes for capital equipment financing. In this year's budget, those are adding ambulances in addition to fire trucks and some information technology, and also I think the paint striper for traffic and transportation, all funded out of tax notes. A fully loaded ambulance is now in excess of half a million dollars. Sorry, not B, M, not B. But anyway, that's still a significant chunk out of the budget. We'd rather finance those with tax notes at a very low interest rate and not have outsized impacts on our vehicle and equipment replacement contributions. So our debt capacity supports general issuances for 26-27, $33.5 million in general obligation bonds, 20-year bonds, $17 million in public safety joint facility bonds for 30 years, and $14.77 million in tax notes. And as I mentioned, you'll see those tax notes come before you in September to authorize with issuance in October. And the other bonds will be issued in the usual May-June timeframe next year. So our model determines our overall five-year bond issuance amounts. We've increased funding for Road to the Future from $20 million to $30 million, and we have large capital projects usually spaced out to provide mostly level debt. It does fluctuate from year to year. As you all know, the Let's Play Irving in 23-24, we funded Lee Center and Mustang Aquatics, multi-generational facilities, Fire Station 8 construction, and the gun range. This year, we funded Fire Station 9 construction. And the Public Safety Joint Train Facilities, Operations Center, Dispatch, and North Police Station will all be upcoming in the budget in 28, 29, and 30. The inflation of construction equipment costs increases the probability that funding will not be sufficient to complete all the projects that were proposed in the 2021 bond election. We can either fund those with certificates of obligation while the legislature allows us to do that. There's still some restrictions on those, or we'll add them to the new bond proposal. We're looking at a new bond election proposed for May of 2028.

I'm glad if I may, Mayor and Council, on the... joint public safety training facilities bonds. Those are the dollars, the bond authorization that we're going to be using for Hidden Ridge, the Hidden Ridge property. Right now that's under design and engineering. We funded that. That will be completed next year or so. When it comes time for the redo and the renovation of that building, those are going to be the dollars that we're going to be using to help do that. In the meantime, Orlando is working with the Chiefs to go in there and use the building as they can, as is, so that we can get some use out of that building, and he'll be continuing to coordinate that. And then we'll start the renovations of that building once we have that capacity. We knew that was going to be the case. We knew it was going to be about two years before we had the capacity to pay for those renovations with the bond authorization. But that worked well because we knew we were going to take about a year of design and engineering just to know how that was going to play out.

So looking at our debt issuance schedule over the next few years, We did front load our construction of the three Aquatics and Recreation Center projects simultaneously in 23-24. That's why I keep 24 on this graph to show that front loading. We did reduce our issuances for the prior two years. What we're finding now is that we now have the capacity to fully return to our average capacity of about $60 million in bond sales in the fiscal 26-27 proposed budget. We are on track to fully expend all the money from the 21 bond authorization by 2031. You can see here, dark green is the 20-year geos, blue is the 30-year. Both those are the current authorizations, and there's just a little bit left in 2031 where we've programmed out. And everything in light green is geo debt notional. We don't know what the council will decide in terms of a bond package, what the future bond committee will recommend, but we are planning ahead at about $60 million, and I have to tell you, I think that's low. Based on where we are now, it might be closer to $65 million a year that we're able to afford at this current tax rate. So we'll be looking at that as we analyze the values for next year and where we think we're going to be in terms of what will be proposed in terms of a bond package. Road to the Future at $30 million, I think, is completely doable. We could even structure for $35 million if we wanted to do that. I just threw that out there. I haven't talked to Chris about that. I think the capacity is there to do that.

I think there may also be some interest in building a new library branch. Possibly so.

There is added capacity in this structure. And as I said, the tax notes for capital equipment projects are increasing. We're going from about $7 million to $16 million per year. Fire trucks are not getting any cheaper. Ambulances are not getting any cheaper. And some of the other major capital outlays we're seeing, especially if you're doing building repair and maintenance, HVAC, roof replacement, that sort of thing, those also are eminently eligible for short-term tax note use. And as you can see here, our general debt projection goes down every year. Blue is existing principal. Maroon is existing interest. And so as those bonds are paid off and as our capacity increases, we're able to project future debt out to layer in on top of that as our old debt pays off. If you look at our total debt structure for the entire city, not just general INS, about... About 52% of our debt service budget goes towards general projects. That's GOs, COs, tax notes, that sort of thing. $488 million in outstanding principal for general capital, $140.4 million left in pension obligation bonds. In green, you see here, these are our utility funds. Water and Sewer System has $212 million in outstanding debt. Drainage Utility, we've issued three years' worth of those Texas Water Development Board bonds very successfully at low interest rates or no interest rate. So they're on the books at $167 million and almost $5 million in direct sanitation project bonds. Yellow represents all the hotel occupancy tax bonds Convention center debt still has 83 million dollars left entertainment venue 51 and Almost 17 million dollars in the convention center hotel. We have some OTHER, IF YOU CALL IT, THE HERITAGE CROSSING SANITATION BACK BONDS, $11.9 MILLION ON THAT. THOSE ARE PAID OUT OF THE GENERAL FUND, NOT OUT OF DEBT SERVICE. AND OUR THREE PUBLIC IMPROVEMENT DISTRICTS HAVE A COMBINED TOTAL OF $17.7 MILLION. THOSE WILL PAY OUT BY 2023. So as you can see, over half our debt goes to general capital projects and pension bonds. The utilities make up 32%. Hotel occupancy tax has decreased from about 15% over the last couple of years down to almost 12.7%. And then our other debt is just under 2.5%. Looking at it in tabular form, if you will, you can see the net debt outstanding for each of our categories of debt, the funding sources used to pay them off. We're projecting another $560.7 million in new debt between general obligation bonds and water and sewer debt, and another $15 million in MDU, but we're also looking to pay off $401 million in existing debt over the next five years, so a slight increase in our debt service. requirements, but we are paying off the debt rather rapidly, and as you see, the bottom half of this table, we're not anticipating any future debt for any of those items, and so all of those will continue to decrease until those amounts are paid off. Any questions? Questions?

Thank you, Brett. Excellent. I mean, and now I have to say something to you, Chris. I really like the way you focused on five years. because anything beyond, we're really kind of Kentucky Winding Time. But thank you, because great presentation. Why don't we take a 10-minute break? We'll be back in here on the hour. Okay, thank you.

Future in Focus serves as the city's organizational framework, fostering a culture of strategic planning and data-informed decision-making. Let's look at some of the city's highlights from fiscal year 2026 through the five pillars of Future in Focus. Vibrant economy. Wells Fargo opened a sleek new corporate campus across from Toyota Music Factory with office space for more than 4,500 employees. Irving also welcomed a true Texas icon, with H-E-B opening its first store in Dallas County along 635. The H-E-B family also opened its budget-friendly brand, Jovi's Smart Shop, in South Irving. The city continued its commitment to redevelopment initiatives in the Heritage District, with Experience Main Street bringing thousands of visitors to the area. The city's enhancement incentive program helped small businesses in downtown Irving, with Alma's Cafe bringing a new flavor to the Heritage District, and JPT Graphics unveiling a creative new mural to its building. infrastructure investment year nine of road to the future continued like the macarthur boulevard project drainage solutions for a better tomorrow projects also continued with the city receiving more than 35 million dollars in state funding for the next phases of the north delaware creek project sense of community Parks and Recreation hosted more than 50,000 visitors at special events, including a record crowd for Irving Sparks and Stripes. More than $2 million of a Texas Parks and Wildlife grant was awarded to enhance the Campion Trail. And Lenat Spurlock Park opens, providing a peaceful recreation option in South Irving. government sustainability. The city maintained the property tax rate at a 58.91 cent per $100 valuation, balancing the budget with $343.5 million in the general fund. And the city issued $38 million in general obligation bonds, funding a number of projects, like the Conflans Road extension between State Highway 161 and Valley View Lane. an improved facility for fleet services at Briary Yard, and upgrades for IT's transition to the EFJ radio system. The city also launched the Irving Connector by Via, restoring routes 225 and 255, and introducing the Loop at Las Colinas, after successful negotiations with DART resulted in the city receiving a portion of the sales tax allocation to be dedicated towards general mobility programs. safe and beautiful city. The FY26 budget included enhancements to public safety staffing, adding 12 fire department and 11 police department personnel. The Irving Police Department opened the new Tactical Training Center, ensuring Irving PD officers are trained with the most modern techniques. And the Irving Fire Department opened the new Fire Station 8 on Riverside Drive, serving an area that has seen a 50% increase in calls in recent years. Code Enforcement's Keep It Clean initiative helped beautify neighborhoods, keeping residents informed of potential code violations. As serving prepares for the FY27 budget year, Future in Focus ensures the city prioritizes what matters most, delivering exceptional services and promoting a high quality of life.

talking to the town. We're all residents here and we just want to know what are we doing and is the city council doing the right thing or the city leaders doing the right thing?

A town hall conversation on the future of public transportation and data centers in Irving. Supplies for success. It does feel like we're being taken care of. Mountains of backpacks with all the school essentials going to the Irving kids who need them most before they head back to classes. Those stories plus a new tactical training center preparing Irving police to protect the public now on City Source. Hundreds of volunteers stuffed thousands of backpacks to make sure Irving kids have the school head start they need. Hello, and welcome to City Source. I'm Nick Lawton. That story's still ahead, but we begin with a town hall meeting where residents got an update on the new Irving Connector public transportation and heard how the city is tackling one of the biggest topics of today, data centers. More than 100 Irving residents came to a town hall hosted by council members David Pfaff and John Block. On the agenda, an update on the new transit service Irving Connector.

What does transportation look like? Is it better? Is it worse? We'll give you feedback. But also you'll get to see the people behind the scenes on that as well.

As presented at the town hall, more than 1,800 riders have taken Irving Connector routes 225 and 255 since it launched in June. And 135 people have hopped onto the loop at Las Colinas in the three weeks it's been operating.

The Irving Connector has been absolutely great. It's helped people that are disabled like me and other people where I live.

The town hall also addressed the City of Irving's approach to a hot-button topic today, data centers.

The data centers, I am totally against data centers. I just think it's not safe for the city.

Everyone is using data today, and we do need it. We just need it to be done in a safe way.

City leaders laid out to residents the requirements Irving has on zoning, land use, noise and water use for the data centers already in town.

You know, we have four data centers approved in the city, two of them in operation. So they've been around for a long time.

When people see, especially data centers in their community, the things that they're asking for their city to do to protect them, we've already done here.

City leaders also assured that the biggest data centers, those more than 10,000 square feet, can't come to the city.

At the hyperscale centers, we don't have that amount of land in Irving. So that really can't happen here. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be concerned. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't have created our standards because we care about our community.

It was a town hall conversation that left many with the hope for a stable future for Irving, city leaders and residents alike.

They're our boss. We're the link between them and the city. So it's very important for that lane of communication to stay open.

And you can see the City of Irving's data center regulations for yourself by logging on to irvingtx.gov slash planning and irvingtx.gov slash data dash centers. City leaders say they'll keep studying the Irving Connector to see if they can add more ways to streamline transportation, including better connections between Irving Connector vans and DART. And speaking of the Irving Connector, we got another look at all the places you can go on the loop at Las Colinas. My colleagues Robert Sheik and Susan Stevens join me on the loop.

I'm Susan Stevens. On Irving Spotlight, we regularly highlight all that's available at the Toyota Music Factory. The Loop at Las Clinas makes it super easy to see a movie, catch a concert, or grab a treat. The vans are great for visitors staying at one of the hotels in the area to experience all you can do and see in the Urban Center.

We're here in one of my favorite parts of Irving, and now there's a new easy way to get here. It's the Irving Connector Loop at Las Colinas. It takes you all around the urban center area. So you can come down here if you want to come down to Water Street, maybe check out the awesome mustangs of Las Colinas over at Williams Square, and then come back over here and maybe go grab lunch, dinner, whatever it is. I'm going to go grab some lunch right now and then hop back on the Irving Connector Loop at Las Colinas to get where I need to go.

I'm Nick Lawton with CitySource. Another great thing you can do on the loop at Las Colinas is connect with a DART train. There are two stops along the loop where you can make the connection. I'm at Las Colinas station right now, which is an easy transfer to the Orange Line to get to DFW Airport or go into Dallas. And another great thing about this loop at Las Colinas stop, when you step off, you are right on the Lake Carolyn Promenade. It's one of the reasons they call it the Irving Connector. And you can catch up on all the recent stories we've done on the Irving Connector on our playlist at youtube.com slash the city of Irving. Well, keeping their edge when it comes to public safety, that's what Irving police are aiming for now that their new tactical training center is operational. Robert Sheik takes us inside.

Irving police officers, including Chief Derek Miller, are getting in some morning target practice. This is inside the new Police Tactical Training Center, a facility designed to allow officers to train for a number of different scenarios.

This facility is more than just a gun range. This facility is a tactical training center. The threats that police officers are seeing in our country today are unlike any other. And so being able to have flexibility in our training, dynamics in our training is paramount. And so a facility like this allows us to do those things.

We document every shot we take. City leaders toured the new facility and watched as officers demonstrated some of their training exercises here.

It's unbelievable the amount of training that they go through and the skill level they already have.

And the only way you make that happen is train, train and train.

As police training continues to evolve... This facility allows Irving PD to stay at the cutting edge of modern tactics, part of the city's commitment to public safety.

We want to make sure that we're making great investments into our public safety facilities. Just last week, we opened our brand new Fire Station 8. This week, we're now opening up our brand new tactical training facility. It really shows how important it is to continue to invest in our public safety.

An investment to protect and serve Irving with highly trained officers. Robert Sheik for CitySource.

Construction is underway on the new Mustang Park multi-generational facility. Our cameras were there as the contractor installed some precast slabs. Next up, the project's going vertical. Structural steel installation is expected to take four to six weeks, finishing in mid-September. That's when there will be a beam signing ceremony. We'll, of course, keep you up to date on all the latest progress. Every single piece of this backpack mountain went toward making sure no Irving child was left behind going back to school. The Irving Schools Foundation's annual Supplies for Success Drive is a day hundreds of volunteers helped prepare for. getting the perfect backpack for the new school year. That's an experience these volunteers for the Irving Schools Foundation want to make sure every kid gets. They'll climb a mountain of donated backpacks to do it, even though there's a few cave-ins.

School is hard as it is, so not even having the basic, you know, things that you need to get by, I mean, that's tough. So if we can do anything to help out, we're always happy to do it.

At this Supplies for Success drive, hundreds of volunteers...

Good morning.

There we go, thank you.

Good morning, Mayor, Council, and city staff. My name is Crystal Segovia, budget administrator, and I'll be sharing with you today a presentation on compensation adjustments. So to begin, I will discuss step merit changes for 26-27. So as a way of reminder, the city operates on a step pay schedule with each step advancing 3.5% for non-civil service and 5% for civil service. So for 26-27, we will continue to fund step, which is also known as merit increases for our city employees. The impact to the general fund for step increases is a little over $2.8 million. The increases specific to the civil service is 1.3 million and police increases is 800,000 and fire is 538,000. Market and COLA increases for 26-27. For public safety market adjustments, the city completes an annual compensation analysis of our benchmark cities in order to maintain our public safety employees at the 80th percentile. So this fiscal year, we're budgeting a conservative estimate of 3.5% increase or $2,575,000 increase to the general fund. Non-civil service employees, they do not receive that annual market adjustment, and instead they receive a cost of living adjustment. So for 26-27, we are budgeting a 1.5% COLA, and this increase would be around $970,000 to the general fund.

Crystal, if I may, just as a quick heads up for the Mayor and Council, again, each year we do a market study for civil service, so we know we are at the 80th percentile. each and every year for civil service. What we do not know is if we are at the 80th percentile for all the general government positions, because we do not do a market study each and every year like we do for civil service. About every five to six years, we do engage an outside consultant for a class and compensation study, which addresses all positions, including general government, and we make adjustments. And we did that About three, three and a half, four years ago. When was that?

Yeah.

So we're coming up on the time. We were thinking that it would be good to bring in a consultant this next year. We didn't have the dollars, so we'll focus in on that for the fiscal year 28 to have a class and comp for all positions in the city and general government as well. So right now we don't know if we're at the 80th percentile for general government. The COLAs help keep us up with what the competition could be doing. If you may recall, because of that approach, when we did our last class and comp study, about 50 to 55 percent of all of our general government positions were already within that range. That does help, and it didn't have quite as big of an impact in order to catch up. That's how we approach the general government. If we do have positions in general government that need some fine-tuning now and then, whether it's a water position or maybe a dispatch position, in years past it's been lifeguard positions as well. If we see we're getting really out of sync in terms of the market, we'll make individual adjustments in between those class and comp studies just to make sure we can continue to hire and be competitive for those different positions.

Let me ask a question on that, Chris. My assumption is that we're pretty flat when we start to look at retirements and movement and recruiting, so that we can pretty much predict within a, what's our couple of percentage point? Give me a sense of how you really focus and where you get to it.

We are pretty consistent with what we see in retirements each and every year. We don't have big swings one direction or another, which is good. So we can anticipate that and manage that. Thank you. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Moving forward to benefits. The health insurance change from 2627 resulted in a 1.27 million city and the retirees and is applicable to all the plans. And the next component of the health increase is from plan selection changes made by employees. And that's a $220,000 increase. Lastly, to account for new positions, the cost increased for health insurance nearly $440,000. I also just want to make a note that additional details on the health insurance will be discussed in the next presentation, D2, health insurance update. For pension plan changes for 26-27, we saw an overall decrease to all three plans. TMRS had a rate decrease from 10.75 to 10.51, or $97,000 decrease. SBP saw a decrease from 0.7% to 0.68%, or $33,000 reduction. The FRRF retirement program had a decrease from 12.78 to 12.62%, or 64,000 decrease. And so all these pension plans, they are effective January of each year. So overall, the pension budget did see an overall increase. And that's by $1.76 million, and that's due to the fact that we added 55 new positions, and we also have to account for the increased pension costs when it relates to funding step, market, COLA, and overtime. Other benefit changes for 26-27? Life insurance saw over a 50% rate reduction from 0.132% to 0.06%, and we saw savings of $108,000. Unemployment saw a rate increase from 0.7% to 1.4%, or $130,000 increase. And that concludes our summary of compensation adjustments. If you have any questions. Questions? Mayor?

and then David.

Thank you, Mayor. Going back to the insurance plan, and let me know if there's something we're going to cover later, what does it look like for retirees? What does their health insurance look like, and what's the possibility of making that easier?

I believe that will be, I think there's some slides that show the retiree portion. As of now, THE RATE INCREASE WILL GET PASSED ON TO THE RETIREES.

A COUPLE OF YEARS BACK WE MADE SOME SIGNIFICANT ADJUSTMENTS TO OUR RETIREE HEALTH CARE WHERE THE CITY IS MAKING HIGHER AND ADDITIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO HELP OFFSET THAT DEPENDING ON THE CALCULATION OF YEARS SERVED IN IRVING AND TOTAL YEARS IN THE RETIREMENT SYSTEM. And so those adjustments were made, which did provide some, I think, pretty good significant relief to some of the challenges that the retirees were experiencing. Now, did I miss something there?

All right, thank you. David. Yeah, thank you, Mayor. Was there any driver for the unemployment rate increase?

Good question. It's not based on our unemployment history. We're part of a group of other entities. So even if we do well one year or the next, we still get deemed no matter what. So we've looked up some information and we can definitely pass that on to you. But our unemployment, I believe, went down for the city, but we are part of a network of groups. So we can't really control that increase each year.

Right. And this is state unemployment, correct?

Yes.

For state dollars?

Texas, yeah, Texas Workforce Commission.

Thank you. Question, anybody? Okay.

Good morning, Mayor and Council. I'm delighted that you guys are already warming up with questions around the health insurance update. And so we are here to give you a little bit more information about the health insurance update as we move into the next year. As you are probably very aware, we partner with Holmes Murphy as our broker to help us move through the insurance analysis, making sure we're being conscientious about how we rate with the national market, the state market, and local other municipalities that are similar to us. And so as a result, we'll dive into that information as a part of this particular conversation today. I want to introduce you to our Holmes Murphy partners. We have Ben Clark, who is a statistician, and he's going to tell us a lot about the rates. And then we also have Sean Quindlen, who is going to talk about the changes that we've made, the adjustments, and why we thought these were the appropriate moves for the city of Irving. So I'm going to have Ms. Sean kick us off.

All right, well. Good mid-morning to you all. Thanks for having us. Happy to be here. I'm going to kick us off with just a few metrics on what's happening in healthcare before I turn it over to Ben and he talks about your budget specifically. I'll set the stage of what's happening as it relates to healthcare trend in general. So in this great state of Texas, we get the lucky pleasure of having the fifth highest inflation across the nation. And DFW has the highest medical prices across the entire state of Texas, which we are right in the midst of that rising health care span. National medical trend is currently about 9.2%. 3%, and that's across the national market. How the City of Irving compares is that you're rolling 12, so if I look back 12 months from where we are today, you're rolling 12 trend is right at about 4%. So you are actually performing better than national market. Does not mean you aren't seeing cost increases because you are, it just means that your cost increases are less than what we're seeing across the national market as it relates to medical. For pharmacy trend, the national pharmacy trend is 11%. The city of Irving's rolling 12 is 5.6%. So again, better than a national market. If we look at what's driving medical costs for you and for you in particular for the city of Irving, it's really your large cost claimants. We are seeing significant prevalence in costs as it relates to cancer conditions, cardiovascular conditions, and also chronic kidney disease. And some of that chronic kidney disease that we see within your population kind of carries over into what's driving your medical, your pharmacy expenses as well. The number one and two indicators in the pharmacy space of what's driving costs, and that's not specific to Irving, but you apply also, are GLP-1 medications. In particular, GLP-1 medications that are being used for the primary diagnosis these days is diabetes, but what we know is that we are also seeing those expensive GLP-1 medications having other clinical indications, so things like sleep apnea, fatty liver disease, and also pending indications for things like Alzheimer's and osteoarthritis. And as those medications are deemed clinically efficient for other conditions, we will see more use and increased costs. And then the second thing driving pharmacy costs across this entire, your population and across the nation, is really specialty medications. There are very few individuals who take specialty medications. Most of those are injectable medications. And very few people take those medications, but the cost is significant. So that's an area where you have a small percentage of your population that drive a large percentage of your pharmacy spend overall. So while the healthcare marketplace is just seeing record, this is record level national trend increases for both medical and pharmacy, the city of Irving, as I referenced, you are performing better. And so we wanted to just give you a few tidbits on why, what we're seeing in your claims as to why you're performing better. One of the primary things as you look at how you manage your costs for medical and pharmacy is making sure people have a connection to primary care physicians, helping to know when someone has a disease or a specific disease state earlier on because that helps us with managing the cost. It helps the member with better outcomes. The way that Irving is successful in that area is really through your clinic. you have high engagement within the clinic, and that gives your employees access to primary care resources. We also see within the Blue Cross Blue Shield medical plan high interaction between your members who have a primary care physician. And, again, that helps us with preventing risk, preventing disease, and then when it's detected, it helps us detect it earlier, which means it's a better situation for all. We also think, because you all have had a consistent plan design over the recent years, there are some entities in which we're seeing plan change after plan change or even vendor change at contract renewal after vendor change. When there is consistent change within a population, members don't have an opportunity to be educated on how the plan works, where the doctors are located, what doctors that they should access. You all have been successful in being consistent in the plan design and the benefits that you offer. And what that leads to is a more educated workforce of people for healthcare. So people know where to access care, how to access care, and you provide them with tools and resources to help shop for that healthcare. So overall, healthcare costs are rising. The city of Irving is doing well compared to the national market. So now I'm going to turn it over to Ben to talk through your specific claims and financials.

Good morning. So what we have up on the screen right now, on the left you'll see medical claims, on the right, I'm sorry, claims with Rx rebates. And so those Rx rebates are a method for lowering overall drug costs back to the city of Irving. What we're measuring on each of these charts is your trend. So the purple line that you see is a rolling 12 average of claims per capita. So we're dividing out by the total enrollment over that time. We can see that we're currently sitting at 1407 in medical and Rx claims without rebates. Rebates then take about $200 off of that, down to 1231. The yellow line you see there is a best fit to that data, and the slope of that line indicates the trend. So historically, over the last five years, we've experienced a trend of 6.7%. Once we account for those rebates, it lowers our overall trend to 5.1%. This is combined for medical and Rx. So we had those numbers split out by medical separately and Rx separately on the previous slide. In the most recent 12 months, our claims have cooled off a little bit. So you see that orange line there? That's our most recent 12 months. We're roughly flat, a 1.1% increase. It's actually a decrease once we account for those rebates. And those rebates have increased due to the mix of drugs you've had. So with those increased GLP-1 usage, The increased specialty usage, we get higher rebates on those drugs, which helps to offset some of our costs. When we put all of this into our revenues versus expenditures, up on the top section there you'll see the revenues. Down at the bottom, you see the expenses. The 2526 adopted budget is there on the left. We budgeted for 1,960 employees with total funds available of 51.5 million. That includes that starting fund balance on the top line of 11.25 million. Our expenditures, our expenses below that, we budgeted for 38.5 million for an annual surplus of about 1.6, bringing that total fund balance to 12.9 million. Our re-forecast there in that second column, that is our estimate for where we will end this year. Our revenues are coming in a little bit higher by about 300,000. That's due to an increase in the employee contributions based on the mix of where employees enrolled and how much they're contributing. as well as a slight decrease in the retiree contribution, and then we've worked in there the interest from investments. That brings our overall funds to about 51.8. Our total expenses are coming in better than we expected at 37.8, so our ending fund balance will go from 12.9, where we had estimated it last year at budgeting time, up to about 14 million. The projection with no changes in that third column, we're now projecting for the following year, for the fiscal year 2027, at 2,020 employees, so a slight increase of about 60 positions there. That projection with no changes is assuming no changes to the employee contributions. Now, you'll see the employee contributions increase. That increase is entirely due to the headcount increase of 60 individuals. It is not due to a change in the employee contributions. That puts our total funds available at 55.8 million, including that 14 million in starting fund balance. Our overall expenses will come in at 43.34 due to those increases we're seeing in overall cost. That takes us to an ending deficit of 1.5 million, brings our fund balance back down to 12.4. The highlighted column there, the fourth column, are projection with changes. We're now assuming a 3% increase to the city's contribution to the health fund, as well as a 3% increase to the employee contributions. On the following slide, we'll look at what those employee contributions look like. That takes our annual deficit down there at the bottom from 1.54 million to 278,000, bringing our ending fund balance to 13.7. So a much healthier experience for the overall fund. The following years you see projected out to that fiscal year 2030, we're assuming a flat 3% increase to the city's contribution, a 3% increase to the employee contribution. You'll see that there at the bottom. Overall, it does run at a slight deficit for the following years. Those things will be adjusted for in following budgets. That takes our ending fund balance in 2030 down to 5 million, but again, we'll be making changes in between. So looking at what those employee contributions are doing. Your three plans are listed over there on the left, your blue choice or your richest plan, your blue quality plan, which is a narrow network, and then your blue edge HSA, your high deductible health plan down there at the bottom. The enrollment is listed over there on the left. About half of your enrollment is in that blue choice plan with about a third in each of the blue quality and blue HSA. Your fiscal year 26, I'm sorry, your 25-26 employee contributions are listed in that second column, with the 3% increase going into 26-27 in the following column. So you'll notice the monthly change for that employee only on the Blue Choice plan is only $3.44, up to about $20, $20.50 for bringing your whole family onto the plan. The cost share is then outlined here on the following page. So what we have in that first column is your enrollment, again, for the three plans, your employee contributions for 26-27 in the following column, along with that city contribution over in the Third column, fourth column. And so in this case, both, sorry. In both the employee and the city case, we're adjusting by 3%. The overall cost share by tier is listed in the following column. So the employee is picking up about 11%, about 12% on that blue choice employee only. The family picks up 22.6%. the overall contributions by plan are then listed on that plan cost share line under each plan so we we subsidize the blue choice plan to the tune of about 81 the employees pick up 19 it's 84 for the blue quality plan 94 for that hsa plan in order to drive enrollment into that high deductible plan knowing that those employee contributions are very low The overall effect of this, when we combine everyone together, we've got an 86-14 split. So the city is picking up about 86% of the total cost in those contributions. The employees pick up 14%. This is an uptick from last year where we were at about 79-21, and that's due to the inflation that we're seeing within the health plan and keeping these minimal increases to the overall employee contributions. I'll pass back over to Sharma.

Okay. The next couple slides are things that you all have previously approved. We thought we'd take a quick second while we have your attention just to recap those. And we thank you for the approval. Zero Health will be a new program available starting October 1st of this year. That program, just a quick reminder of the highlights of the program, it allows you all to bring, first I'll start with the fact that it's voluntary. So employees can make the determination as to whether or not they access the benefits of zero health. The benefits associated with zero health include removing out-of-pocket costs associated with certain surgery procedures should an employee take advantage of the zero health program so it will remove the employees expense and then it will reduce the expense for those surgical procedures to the city since you're self-funded every dollar every time someone has a surgery you're writing the check for that and so this allows you to pay a lesser expense for some of those surgical procedures. It also enhances the member experience. The members get a hands-on concierge-type service to help support them while they are considering whether or not they want to use the Zero Health option. It works alongside the health plan, so there's no member disruption. So while Zero Health will organize the surgical procedure, Should someone need therapy afterwards or any additional care, they just fall back into line with their Blue Cross Blue Shield provider. So this is a very positive voluntary benefit available to your members. What we hope is that over time we see increased utilization of zero health. As more employees and plan members take advantage of the zero health solution, we anticipate additional savings to the city. And the member always saves in this example. So if our projections are accurate, and honestly, I'd love to see us exceed our projections, but should we get a 10% adoption rate? So just 10% of individuals who actually have a surgery in 2028, if we get 10% of all of those surgeries through Zero Health, we estimate savings of about $1.2 million back to the city. The next item that has also been approved, thank you again, is the change in the employee life insurance partner. So we went through a full procurement with your procurement team. We received four responses from the market, and as a result, we've selected Hartford as the new life insurance provider for the city of Irving. The benefit for the city is that your employee paid premium, so what you pay for basic life coverage was reduced by 55%. That will bring savings to the city. And we were able to have those rates guaranteed for three years, so that we know that you'll realize that 55% savings across the next three years. We also achieved savings for retiree life insurance. The retiree life insurance rates will be decreasing by 54%, also a part of the marketing. So again, favorable. This is a quick look at the voluntary life rates. Voluntary life insurance is paid for by your members. So the city does not pay this cost. Members pay. But through the marketing efforts, we were able to also reduce what your employees pay. So we've had reductions on both sides. The employer paid life expense will be reduced and what employees pay for their life insurance will also be reduced. And the rate of decrease varied between 22% and 36% in reduced rates. That concludes our update. Please let us know if you have any questions.

Yes, could I? Go ahead, Adam. I'll go after you. Thank you, Mayor. I had a question about the pharmacy cost versus medical cost drivers. Okay. And essentially, do we know the effectiveness of GLP-1s on reducing the other medical costs? Is there any correlation there? And if so, could the city- strategically invest in increasing that plan or that benefit.

Happy to.

So in the case of diabetes, there's absolutely a lowering of medical costs. In particular, it The GLP-1 effect makes a person more responsive to insulin, so they take less insulin over time, and there are less side effects due to that insulin consumption. As far as GLP-1s for weight loss are concerned, they have been on the market for about two years now, a little over two years now. And so the amount of data out there is kind of limited. However, UHC provided, they have the largest network in the US. They provided a longitudinal study last year where they adjusted members' health spend for when they started taking this drug. And what they saw was a 91% increase in overall cost after taking a GLP-1 in per person cost. About 71% of that is coming from the increase in pharmacy cost which is expected because they're on 1100 a month drug the other 20 is an increase in medical cost and it's unclear at this time what is driving that increase it may simply be physician contact that now the person is on this drug they haven't been taking care of themselves beforehand now they have physician contact they're getting treated for more things However, there's not enough data at this point to say what the cause of that increase is. The expectation is that over time it will lower medical costs because you're treating a chronic disease. And so you should have less cost in a surgical setting, you should have less cost for other treatments, but we're just not seeing that yet.

Interesting, thank you.

Okay, David. Mayor, thank you. Just a few things on the numbers. We have 2020 employees. Does that include retirees, or is that the people on the plan?

I believe that's only the active population. Page four. Yeah, I think the summary slide here, so the numbers that you see on this slide should be related to that. This is the active budget. When we did not...

I'm so sorry.

This is related to your active population, and what we missed in saying is that your retirees will also see the same 3% increase, and we keep a separate budget and separate rates for the retiree population.

And where is that in our budget? Or are they paying 100% of their health care cost?

I believe it's, I think, in the contributions.

Is it in the summer?

That's their contributions on the revenue, but...

Oh, for the total cost?

I don't know if we have the... I'm not sure if we've got the summary in your appendix. We would have to check with the HR team, but we can send you a summary.

Okay, and I could go on and on about national health care costs and things of that nature. Mark Cuban here with Cost Plus Drugs has been taking a lot of contracts around the country and looking at them and helping them out. State of Colorado, different areas. Chris, I think he sent you a... A few of these things, health care costs are crazy. And he's a local with the pharmacies and things of that nature. But I think if you look at one thing in the budget, we've got to provide great health care for our employees. But who's taking all the money at the end of the day? And that's one of the big questions I always have with any of the health insurance.

And I can speak to that really quickly. So the city of Irving has its pharmacy marketing procurement for next year, so it's on our radar for pharmacy. At that time, we will be fully evaluating the marketplace, the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Pharmacy solution. You all are with Blue Cross and Blue Cross has the ability to integrate that Cost Plus solution into your plan. The things that we as your consultant need to look at is how do we steer people there? We know that one of the things that we're seeing with your claims is that your cost drivers are really on the specialty side which are not available through the Mark Cuban Cost Plus solution. It's generics and yes we can save money with generics but we have to change plan design because we need to drive the people there, right, in order to use the Mark Cuban Cost Plus solution. So one of the things that we'll be doing in 2027 when we thoroughly evaluate the market, we'll be looking outside of like the traditional delivery of pharmacy health care. So Prime will quote it, of course, but we'll also look externally at other national PBM retailers to understand Does the city of Irving have an opportunity to realize additional savings on the pharmacy side? And the Mark Cuban solution will be a part of that analysis. So we may come back to you to say we looked at it. What Ben's team does is they will reprice all of your drugs using the Mark Cuban cost plus solution and then help you understand here's the price of the medication, but there's also... ingredient cost.

We don't need to get into the details in this meeting, but I just want to make that point and look forward to seeing what you come back with. Thank you. No problem.

I've got one question and a comment. I guess the question that I have, I'm looking at the Hartford downtown. that it's a 54% decrease in impact financially. Can you give me a sense of where that's coming from? Is it a graph of we're dying off faster, or are we more in it? I don't have to worry about it. I'm a retiree from the Army, so I'm good.

It is not for, it is not for, it's not related to deaths. And quite honestly, the more deaths you have, the higher your rate, the more your death incidence, the higher your rates are. The decrease of 50% is the result in the rate that you pay. So you pay a per 1,000 rate of coverage. And so we were able to, when you go to market, people bid in on your business. And Hartford came back with the best rate. So they reduced what you pay for the same level of coverage that you have. And that reduction in rate is the equivalent of that 54% decrease. So you're paying less for the same coverage.

Thank you. You're welcome. I was wondering, because that's a nice... Negative number, I guess. There's a second thing, and I'm looking into it because I had an interesting conversation with a mutual friend that is talking about the IRS has given up to 15% deductions on employers based upon whoever they're dealing with on the management side. And I'm curious about that. Are you familiar with that? If you're not, I'll find out more about it.

No, but if you could give us specifically what that IRS deduction is and just let us know, we would 100% look into it to understand.

Yeah, no, let me do that because I've been wanting to talk to Chris and Nyler just in case, okay, my HR director. It was really interesting. I have no concept on what it really is. But it is a ability for, and especially a government agency like a city, that might be able to knock down 15% as to not only the cost but a reimbursement on taxes of that individual and not healthcare tax. So it's something I'm just kind of, it just tickled my brain a little because it just came at me about a week ago.

It blows my brain as well, so let us know what that is, and we will happily look into it to determine whether or not you're eligible.

Well, I know I'm saying this because Chris always is looking for a way to save money. Right, Chris? Adam.

Or excuse me, Rod. Thank you, Mayor. A couple quick questions. Have we considered on-site health screening for our employees, either optional or mandatory? How would you want to talk about that?

So we do throughout the year have different vendors come on site to perform certain types of screening. And so we have had this year screening in relation to cancer as well as screening in relation to breast conditions. And so we do that from time to time. One of our greatest opportunities is with Crossover, our vendor that we brought on last year so that our employees have access to a clinic. And that clinic is located reasonably close to this facility, but they also have facilities around the Metroplex that our employees have access to. They provide not only pre-screening, they also provide primary care ability. Certainly the employee can still have a primary care professional inside Blue Cross Blue Shield, but they also have that opportunity in crossover. So those are some of the things that we have moved to.

I appreciate it. I was referring to like annual exam and screening on site so that they are more aware and be more proactive. That's one question, and then the other one is do we have telehealth available for them so urgent care trips can be reduced?

Yes, sir. So yes, we do have access to telecare. And then as it relates to the screening, one of the strategies we're deploying for our IWINS program, which is our wellness initiative across the city, we are moving more to exactly what you are talking about. So from the standpoint of knowing your numbers, to help position you to a year over year, quarter over quarter, be in a position where you can understand the return on investment that you're making in your own health. And so we're attaching that to our wellness program as a part of how we move forward and transition that program.

And the last question I have is, do we have additional mental health support for either all employees or especially employees that are more at risk, like public safety?

Yes. One of the things the city of Irving does very well is provide a variety of mental health offerings. So we have an independent EAP offering through comp psych that any employee, regardless of if they're on the city's benefits or not, they can participate in i mentioned crossover to you one of the benefits that they offer is they also have mental health available through their services within blue cross blue shield there are additional mental health providers and the city itself has a public service wellness unit that is specifically focused on our folks who are in those public safety wellness areas or public safety areas sorry and those folks offer on-site hands-on critical service to our public safety group they also offer 24-hour access and they also offer emergency access and so it is a very amazing opportunity that the city has built that historically specifically to face into our safety folks

Thank you. And that public safety wellness unit is a city function that is not contracted out, and it is in coordination with the peer support group, and they do a great job in ensuring that those reach-outs are not only done for the first responders but for their families as well.

Yes, Mark. I had a question about the retirees. Do they drop off their insurance at 65 and go on Medicare?

Yes. They can. You also have a post coverage solution. There's also a post coverage solution available, so pre and post. They have access to user benefits.

Okay. So they can stay on our plan, but then how does that work?

If they maintain your plan and they're not working, they typically also may have some form of Medicare. The benefit is coordinated for any dual benefits that they have in place. But they still have access to your plan if they elect the coverage.

Okay, but they're not required to leave our plan to go on Medicare? No. Is that standard for government employees? Yes. I think most private employers make people leave their healthcare at 65.

We can do some research on what other cities do, and we'll put that in a re-file.

Okay, thank you.

First, I want to thank you. This is really important information, but more importantly, Our city fire department and police department, which actually was originally paid out of the police department, and of course Chris grabbed it and we now have that capability to help both our fire and police for any kind of potential PTSD, but it also applies to the family members, if I'm correct. And we've been recognized as the only and first city that did this out of our own So I think that's something we all ought to be very proud with. Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Mayor and Council, we have on the agenda to go into water and sewer. However, we do have the Irving Las Colinas Chamber representatives here, and they are prepared. Oh, and the Hispanic, I'm sorry, I didn't see the Hispanic chamber. And so, oh, there you are, thank you. We can go to section I and have those presentations and then go to lunch if that works for the mayor and council.

Fine with me. If you request it, let's go ahead and move it. All right, very good. Thank you.

Thank you. I can just make one kind of introductory comment as the Irving Las Colinas Chamber is making our way forward. We currently have service contracts with both the Irving Las Colinas Chamber and the Irving Hispanic Chamber to provide economic development services. Those are five-year contracts. We are entering into this coming fiscal year the last year of those five-year agreements. We will be bringing forward discussions with the council at work session this fall regarding the renewal of those contracts, what the contracts currently say, get council's feedback as we begin to negotiate renewals of those contracts. With the Hispanic Chamber, we also have a lease agreement, which corresponds to their five-year contract, which is also up for renewal at the conclusion of the upcoming fiscal year. So that will be a discussion that we can have. I think the Hispanic Chamber, we're going to have that discussion at the September 10th work session. And then for the Irving Las Galenas Chamber's five-year agreement, we'll have later in the fall. Okay. Thank you.

Welcome, Beth.

Mayor Zapanta, good afternoon. Members of the City Council, City Manager Hillman, and City staff, I'm Beth Bowman. The privilege and pleasure to serve as the President and CEO of your five-star Irving Las Colinas Chamber of Commerce and the Irving Economic Development Partnership. I'm here today to discuss our fiscal year 2026 2027 public funding requests tied to our fee for services contract for economic development services as well as international affairs sister city services. In addition to your budget notebooks, we provided you a briefing packet. I'll just go through that very quickly. There's a memo that details our requests. Contractually, we had to provide you our budget request back on May 15th. We did that. Also, there's a copy of the presentation deck that I'm going to go through related to our economic development services request. Behind that deck is our economic development services work plan. So this is into the details of how we're going to spend those taxpayer dollars throughout the year coupled with our private sector dollars to accomplish our goals. Behind that tab is our International Affairs Sister Cities fiscal year budget request. Accompanying that presentation is also the detailed work plan, how we're going to accomplish those goals. And then just as a courtesy, we put in there the actual contract that we have. That assistant city manager Sanders just spoke to for economic development services along with international affairs and sister city services so you have all this information together we also include a copy of the Council approved Irving Economic Development Strategic Plan. This is really the roadmap that our team uses throughout the year, all with the focus of retaining and recruiting jobs home to Irving and then continuing to bring capital investment home. Mayor Zapanta, I'm joined today by my boss, our chairman of the board, Harry Lake, who's also president and CEO of Koa Partners, headquartered here in Irving, and one of our past chairs, Brad Watson. So I thank you for being here today. And then the individuals that choose to continue to advance our mission, the professionals I work alongside, Diana Velasquez, who leads our economic development efforts, And Joe Chapa, our Vice President of International Affairs in Sister Cities. So any compliments you can direct my way, complaints you can direct to the audience. All right, so just a couple of baseline from the economic development services. The objective, we are working to grow the commercial tax base as well as maintain it while creating and retaining jobs for Irving Las Galenas in the North Texas region. We focus on marketing. We're here to amplify our community's story. We want to retain and expand businesses. This is very important, right? We're proud of the businesses that call Irving Las Colinas home. We want to support them as employers expand and encourage capital investment that their companies are deploying to happen in our community. We also have the pleasure to recruit businesses home. We focus outside of Texas within our target industries identified in the strategic plan. We have the pleasure to serve as a single point of contact, really the liaison between business and government, the one-stop shop. We're pulling up that red tape to roll out the red carpet to continue to serve our businesses, and I believe our community's competitive advantage is our people. So from management to our police chief and our fire chief, Mayors of Ponta, members of council, y'all are always willing and ready to listen to business industry, but also work together to keep them in our community and allow their businesses to grow. We work with stakeholder coordination, so working with our partners at the Irving Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Las Colinas Association along with private sector investors into economic development. We help with site selection. So these are professionals. Speaking to one site selector is the equivalent of having 26 CEOs around a table. These are individuals that are strategically working alongside companies to help them with their real estate decisions, workforce consolidation strategy. And our team's job is to make sure they have the most recent information as it pertains to our community. Then we also have the pleasure to work through really kind of the minority of our projects, but those companies that want to activate local tools and resources as well as county or state, we have the pleasure to work alongside City Manager Hillman and his team to communicate the incentives that are available and then continue to bring forward projects Projects for your consideration. I do want to underscore mayors upon to you and your council ultimately have that policy authority just as at the state level and governor Abbott and our lieutenant governor and speaker have the authority as it relates to state incentives. This is just a snapshot looking back on the return on the public investment over the last five years. What the city has invested into economic development services, just under $12 million. What we have created together as a team. Just over 67,000 jobs, 2.7 billion in capital investment has been generated, and 22.8 million in property and sales tax generated right here at home in Irving. So driving 193% return on the city's public investment into economic development services. We're going to continue this next year to implement the five-year Irving Economic Development Strategic Plan. This year we're entering into year three. Assistant City Manager shared earlier we do have a fee-for-services contract with you. We are entering into year four of that five-year contract. It's set to expire September of 2027. We want to focus on maintaining staff alignment as it relates to the Irving Economic Development Strategic Plan. We're laser focused on delivering contractual key performance indicators. We have the pleasure to present in front of you mid-year and end of year how we're performing against those KPIs. Making sure that it's a positive return on the city's public investment into economic development and we're very thankful for the private sector brands such as Vista Energy headquartered here in Irving or Coa Partners that privately invest in our economic development efforts. We continue to conduct outbound engagement and priority domestic target markets. So markets that are thankful for their regulatory environment may be not performing as well. So companies looking to be in environments that are more pro-business and where their workforce feels safe and their families have access to quality of life amenities. We continue to evaluate tools and resources that we need to compete and then again benchmark against competitive communities and the changing economic development trends. And I trust each and every one of you know if you read the local media outlets or your paper or follow on various social media channels, The North Texas region is one of the most competitive economic development regions in the country. The companies that call Irving Las Colinas home, every other community wants them. The companies that are here are truly aiding and running our global economy. These are the measurable commitments under our fee for services contract. You can see it's very specific from business recruitment to business retention, site selection, marketing and advertising services, and really the heartbeat of our community working alongside our small businesses day in and day out. This is just a snapshot of our historic public funding for economic development services. This year, per our board of directors requests, we're just asking to maintain the public funding. But you can see in previous years that we've been very mindful when there might be stressors that the city is going through, such as the global pandemic. And we took a voluntary decrease on our ask. This is our proposed budget, so where the bottom line doesn't change, we have shifted some of the line items, and you can see the variance columns. We don't have a particular product. Our people are our asset, right? They are the intelligence, and we are selling services, but the people deliver those. We are the advertising marketing arm and we're looking to cost effectively deliver that story. Continuing to invest in technology, we're recommending to increase hosting slightly as we're seeing more interest in this market. Participating in outbound trade missions, especially with Mayor Zapanta's experience on the corporate side, as well as international. and then a decrease in other expenses. Mayor Zapanta, members of council, that concludes my report as it relates to our economic development requests related to our fee for services contract. I'm happy to take any questions or I can go into our international affairs, sister cities, public funding request.

Yeah, thank you, Beth. Before we do that, there's a question that I have because I know that we participate, and if I'm not mistaken, I think, I'll let you make the number, I don't want to make a mistake on that, as to the participation every year with the governor, Governor Abbott's trade missions, et cetera, and that whole international economic development piece that he's running. I'm looking at here, I'm wondering if we shouldn't plus that up a little bit. What's your concern? one way or another?

So, we have various entities in which we partner within, right? So, in Irving, we're partnering with our Convention and Visitors Bureau, Las Colinas Association regionally. We partner with DFW Marketing Team and the North Texas Commission. At the state level, Mayor Zapanta, as you're talking about, is the Texas Economic Development Corporation. So that's the private sector arm of the Texas story to market and tell the Texas story on a global scale. So we are financially invested in that organization, which allows us access and the ability to partner alongside Governor Abbott and his team.

As we tell the Texas story or laser focus on complementing that story to focus in on Irving Okay, I guess my real bottom line question is There's probably going to be more activity in the coming year, and I guess maybe I'll Hear from your chairman because I would like to make sure he has a chance to visit with us at the end of this total presentation on behalf of the chamber. But maybe that's something that Chris and I ought to talk about with the council, because I think it's important that we, because we're focused forward to try to bring in international business, just like what we're going to do at the summit with five council generals from across the world, not just south of the border. And maybe we take that up in that one. But I'm concerned also because the The governor is really focused on doing more, and they're not short trips. They're either to Asia or to Europe, et cetera, and they have a major cost. And I do think it's important when we are going forward, and with your leadership of the council, I should say the chamber, is that it's important that we participate, and there may be some more that we may want to look at. I guess I'm thinking to plus it up. But I don't want to do it until we have a little discussion on it, okay, Chris? And with you and your chair, okay? Okay, just wanted to raise that because I think we need to be playing more there. Next.

Okay. Thank you, sir. We'll move on. So continuing with our international affairs sister cities request. So just as a reminder, this is a separate fee for services contract. As we just kind of reminders of assumptions and considerations as we develop this budget, continue to activate the Irving Economic Development Strategic Plan in which international is a key priority and strategy. We want to continue to fulfill the obligations of our international affairs sister city fee for services contract, which also does expire in September of 2027. Providing staffing consistent with that Irving economic development strategic plan that mayor and council you have approved. and then continue to evaluate the tools and resources for international economic development success. And yes, Mayor Zapanta, to just continue to compliment what you shared earlier, there is heightened attention for global corporations that are based outside of the United States to continue to invest within the United States. So our team, we do anticipate participating in more outbound international missions. Again, with the goal of driving jobs and capital investment home to Irving. The international goals for our team, continue to expand relationships with international companies. We have about 150 that are here at home in Irving, Las Colinas. Continue business assistance for importing and exporting goods, so supporting businesses that are in this business. Be aggressive on the business retention and expansion program. Continue international business recruitment. I'll just continue to underscore our first priority is we want to keep our businesses that are at home in Irving, in Irving. And then we have the pleasure to work on the recruitment side. And continue to expand partnerships with organizations with international trade focus. Our KPIs are listed here. So again, very clearly stated what our team is going to work on as it relates to our fee for services contract. This is just a snapshot of the last public funding cycles that the city has publicly provided to support international affairs. in sister cities and you can see the request from our board of directors is to remain flat here with our ask with $418,330 for our international affairs sister cities services contract. The details of our budget, again, the total expensive bottom line does not change, but there's some variance between line items. While we have reduced advertising and marketing, we've significantly increased trade missions, other expenses, and then rent within our space at the towers at Williams Square. Mayor Zapanta, members of the council, that concludes our international affairs sister cities public funding request. I'm happy to take any questions that you might have.

Okay, I've got a couple. One, I think it's going to be important, because the history of the international was really based upon sister cities. And sister cities, obviously, with the six locations we have in both Europe and across to Mongolia, for that matter. I think it's important that we are now expanding the reach that we need to consider plussing up. whether it's trade missions or definitely some of the other, and I'm going to speak to that one directly. The 13th of, if I'm not mistaken, and Joe, you may have it, the actual date of our 30th anniversary with Leon Guanajuato.

September 13th, sir.

And I think that's something... City manager there and council be really up opportunity for us and we've reached out to the governor as well as the mayor of Leon, Guanajuato to consider Once we clear it here that we invite them to have our 30th anniversary here because of the painting that was both presented here and by the way the actual The letter that was signed was signed by also not only the mayors of our two cities, but also by President Fox of Mexico and President George W. Bush at that time. So we have a real opportunity, I think, to highlight our relationship with that kind of commemoration. So I'm not sure. Something that, Chris, that I need to ask the question is, In these kinds of budgets do we have the ability when we invite a major? Representative from another country or a city or a state in this case our sister cities to host them Financially as well, I'm talking expenses of Probably flight and hotel etc You've met can I follow up with you on that one?

That's a good question and I'll find out for you and would you place okay?

Because I really think that's important and if not I We can also talk to how we can have some of our private sector players, because we have two of the largest in Mexico right here. In fact, I think, where's our chairman? He may be happy to announce that he's got Avocados of Mexico there, one of the people in his building. And then, of course, you have two other major players, Mission Foods, which is the largest in Mexico and globally in and that area of chips, flour, and corn. But the other is we got bimbo now is coming in. So we're starting to grow our international piece. And so I'm feeling that we need to look at it. We need to see how, Chris, we can talk before this year's up so that we can get ready for next year and beyond. But one of them was to see if we could do that. If not, then we need to find ways to have those kind of invitations. Because now we're going to have five, well, actually six council generals representing six different nations that will be here with us on the 31st. And I guess I think it's just something that we ought to be leveraging wherever we can because that's going to be international economic development. So, Philip, you ought to be smiling. Anyway, so Chris, just something I think I'd like to visit with you more about. I think you all would agree with me. I know David will because they have great golf courses all over the world. You know that. Anyway, okay. With that, thank you very much. Our chairman, please. I do have a question, Mayor. Oh, I'm sorry.

Yes. Luis. Well, appreciate the presentation. Obviously, we've HAD MANY PRESENTATIONS ON THE CHAMBER IN GENERAL AS WELL, AND THERE'S ALWAYS A VERY CLEAR VALUE PROPOSITION. IT'S LIKE, WELL, THIS IS WHAT THE CITY INVEST, THIS IS ALL THE BUSINESS THAT WE ATTRACT, ET CETERA. WHEN IT COMES TO THIS SPECIFIC PROJECT, THE SISTER CITIES, AND GOING FORWARD, IS THERE A SPECIFIC ROI NUMBER THAT YOU HAVE WHERE CERTAIN DEALS OR CERTAIN TRADES OR FOREIGN INVESTMENT WOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED WITHOUT THAT PROJECT SO THAT WE CAN EXPLAIN TO CONSTITUENTS what's going on, and how we expect that that will evolve as a lot of reshoring happens. Because what I read from, I feel like I'm missing a little bit of information here. I read a lot about a lot of relationship building. But it's important that that relationship building always leads to things that are really meaningful for taxpayers. So that's where I'm coming from, if you could answer that.

So thank you, Councilman Canosa, for that question. I think first, let me start with who are our sister cities. I think Mayor, you know, definitely shared we have six sister cities in Irving, you know, across Europe, Asia, North America, so from England, Finland, France. Italy, Leon, Mexico, and Mongolia. Joe Chapa, our Vice President of International Affairs and Sister Cities, him and his team are constantly evaluating other cities that want relationships with Texas, specifically Irving. And we do want to make sure there's strategic reasons for entering into that type of formality. In terms of specific projects, with the minimal resources that we have going into international, today we're really maintaining the relationships that we have with the six sister cities and looking to explore. As post pandemic, you know, global economy, there's more international companies looking to reshore, come home to Irving. We do see an uptick in international attention and looking for international investment. But some of our peers that have sister city relationships, they're taking outbound. community delegation into those sister city markets physically. Under Mayor Zapanta's leadership, he's extended invitations to his peers within these sister cities to welcome them into Irving, Texas, tying to the summit. So I think that's a great start. Our team, as we receive information from our sister cities to participate for in-country missions, we will send one team member there to activate and build relationships with their existing industries, looking to do business in the United States, specifically in Texas, and for our case in Irving. Ongoing dialogue, Councilman Canosa. The opportunities here, you know, our sales cycle is very long on the economic development side, probably two to three times that on the international side.

Right, but basically what you're saying is that so far... We don't have any hard numbers to really evaluate this specific item.

Yeah, let me do that. I'll answer, Louise. It's ROI. Because I'll give you the numbers, okay? We were able to maintain avocados of Mexico that took a whole floor, eighth floor. Would you want to talk about that? That's the largest in the country and also was a sponsor at. So that's what I'm asking. No, let me finish. Let me finish. You asked a question. I'm going to partially answer it. You want to hear her or you want to hear me? Thank you.

I was asking her for the numbers.

Well, I'm finishing it, okay? The second one is Mission Foods, and they've elected to stay, they were going to leave us. And so the council waited in and made sure we maintain, that's jobs, that's tax. And if you want to leave hard numbers, maybe you ought to bring it to him so that he sees it. And then we can go down with how many of those companies now have been bringing supply chain. I was at a thing that you all really made it happen with, guess who, Boeing. A French company came in, and they are now located. Why? They wanted to be part of the supply chain. And that's, what was it, 400 jobs plus relocating another 200. if they start to develop the relationship, not just with Boeing, but with Envoy. That's in our area. So it's jobs, it's employment, et cetera. Now that I've answered that in part, maybe you can come back and have Luis Canosa's numbers a little bit harder, okay?

We can get you just, Mr. Sharon, if I can.

Yes, so following up on that, yes, the question that I asked is what numbers do we have that are specifically related to this project that wouldn't have happened with this project that do have a meaningful impact for taxpayers. That's the question. I'm hearing something different here from what I was hearing. So if you bring some numbers back, I would appreciate that.

Councilman Canessa, I can follow up with you and the entire council to make sure to specifically call out our international wins that we've had just this past year. So that's typically what our team's reporting on mid-year and at the end of the year, but I can definitely bring back that specific information.

If you can do that and show how specific budget items within this, you know, within THIS SECTION OF THE CHAMBER BUDGET MADE THAT HAPPEN OR WERE INDISPENSABLE FOR THAT? JUST SO THAT WE UNDERSTAND, LIKE, SORT OF HOW THE FUNNELS WORK.

YES, SO SPECIFICALLY ON THE INTERNATIONAL SIDE, YOU'RE LOOKING AT OUR ABILITY TO AMPLIFY, ADVERTISE MARKET, TELL THE IRVING STORY. SO YOU CAN SEE THAT IN THE LINE ITEM FOR THIS NEXT YEAR. WE'RE RECOMMENDING JUST OVER $36,000 TO GO TOWARDS THAT. And then specifically on trade missions. So this is we're recommending $20,000 be dedicated to that. That allows our team to travel outbound into international markets and specifically tell our community story and build and develop relationships to ultimately bring projects home to Irving. on an international scale. So as you can see, it's very minimal dollars and really proud of the incredible work that our team does jointly with our economic development team to bring those international wins home to Irving.

That's good. No, I would appreciate that because the first part of the response wasn't as exciting. So yeah, I would appreciate to see some numbers.

One of the things that's really exciting is the University of Dallas does the report on the return on investment that we report on twice a year. And so for the sister cities budget, it's over 130% return on investment, which is Extraordinary. And then on the economic development front, it's 160 percent. So those are hard numbers. Extraordinary returns. I'll paste any of the benchmarks you can throw out there. But we can get you more additional data as well. So I think it's very valuable. Great question. As it relates to specifically on the international piece, and by the way, my name is Harry Lake. I'm the Chairman of the Chamber. I'm glad to be here. My family lives in Irving. Our company is headquartered in Irving. We export our services throughout the country, but we're headquartered right here. This is where our heart is. Our two boys go to school here in Irving. I have a senior in high school, so God willing, everything goes well. The college search goes well, but... We thank you. Our family thanks you for doing the people's work right here and being fiscally responsible. I actually think the fact that we haven't or the Chamber hasn't increased the budget three years in a row, it's very difficult. Given the return on investment very high, 160%, 130%, usually you want to put dollars into those buckets and amplify that. But I give Beth and her team phenomenal credit for being financially diligent on just doing so much in a hand-to-hand combat environment that we're all in. A lot of you know that through the hard work that she's done, as well as the support from City Councilor earlier in our purchase of urban towers, thank you to Assistant City Manager Sanders and his efforts, we were able to attract MUFG, which is the largest Japanese bank, you know, out there. And so they out beat any other bank out in the country of Japan. They're moving to urban towers with no additional incentives, by the way. So we don't ask when you don't need it, right? The investments have been made. we just amplify that some cases you do need incentives and a lot of the surrounding communities in our in our area do provide ample incentives but i will tell you that beth and her team do a phenomenal job uh selling our city and then we're out there at the front lines and it is not easy Some of you may have seen the articles out there about announcing the win that Irving got with the largest bank in Japan. I will tell you that these reporters are trying to taint you, not so much celebrating the wins that we're getting in Irving, but some of the problems other cities around us are having. And so the thread was more like, hey, people are leaving Dallas and all those things like that. Right now we're winning. We're not always going to be winning. I'm telling you, and the best way to shore that up is constantly investing in areas of economic development, and this is your city. So the fact that they aren't asking for a raise is extraordinary, given the wins that they've gotten with the amount of money that they've been working with. So I'll pause there. I don't know if I'm answering your question, Mayor, but I thank you for your constant support and your unique skills to amplify that message throughout not only our country, but our international markets.

Well, Harry, you put it right where it needed to be because at the end of the day, it's all about economic development and trying to bring that capability here both. Not just jobs, but the ability to maintain because we are in a very competitive area here. And I think that's the critical thing that we're still maintaining and adding. And especially with you, with your acquisition on that beautiful urban towers, so thank you for that. Thank you for your personal efforts, and I appreciate that very much. So thank you.

Mayor?

Yes. Thank you.

I moved without any incentives, by the way, to urban towers. I deserve at least free coffee.

It's a beautiful building. Yeah, exactly. It's a beautiful building. Thank you for upgrading.

You didn't ask for an incentive. I'm impressed. Okay, thank you. Chris, anything else that we want to talk about at this point? I don't know, Beth. Are we done? Or do you have any final comments?

We're done with our presentation, but happy to answer any questions.

Well, I think there's somebody I would like to introduce. That was your former chair, a dear friend when he was with Vistra, and Brad Watson. Brad, please stand up and say hello. Good to see you. And if you have with that... comment with that great voice of yours, I'd appreciate it.

Thank you very much Mayor. Brad Watson, My first career was in television news at Channel 8. Then I worked in local government affairs at Vistra there for 12 years and retired last year. But I will say that my love for this community and making it better and greater is still part of me, and so I remain a member of the Chamber. Let me just say, Mayor, first of all, thank you for the opportunity to see all of you today. Thank you to this council for the continuing support for the Chamber. To follow on two points. One, you know how hard it is to keep a budget flat. And Beth and her team are doing that, and they've done that since I was chair from 23 to 24. They're an economic development machine, and so I thank you for the continuing support there. One more point that came up today. I accompanied Governor Abbott on his trade mission to India two years ago, wearing two hats as chair of the Irving Chamber, but also as a member, a representative of Vistra, which is a Fortune 500 company. It's a power generation company, and the largest in Texas and really in the nation for competitive power. And I can tell you, having seen Diana and Joe at work on the ground there in Mumbai and Delhi, you've got to be on the ground there. You've got to be making these personal relationships when you go with the governor on these trips to be there in front of other government and business representatives to plant those seeds that may not reap returns immediately, but that starts conversations and those relationships are developed over time. Councilman Canosa's question is right on. What concrete can you show me? It often isn't a return on investment immediate, but it's over time. And that's why the continuing investment in the Chamber is so important. But thanks again for the opportunity to see you today. Thank you, Brett.

Any other questions, sir?

No, I think we're fine. Chairman, do you have any other last-minute comments? Because I know you're working on a couple of other projects. Anything you want to bring up to us?

Do you want to break any news here today, sir?

No, just to echo everything. Thank you so much for your work and everything. And if there's anything we can do to serve, let us know.

Super. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it. Anybody have any other comments? Yes.

Thank you, Mayor. Yes. But a quick question. What is the process of adding any other cities or any other countries into the sister cities process?

So, very thorough. We're looking at, you know, two to four years in terms of vetting. If you have any suggestions, that would be the first step. We also, when we are meeting with our businesses and industry that are at home in Irving, any time our businesses make a suggestion, our team goes to work to explore that. So, Joe Chapa and his team work day in and day out. then when we believe we have a strategic opportunity, we would go through the formal process, which is pretty extensive, to bring another sister city consideration in front of Mayor Zapanta and the council.

I just, while I was listening to it, I just thought about the Emirates from Dubai has a very large interest and investments at DFW's expansion of the terminal, mostly in the cargo section. They wanted to make DFW as their regional hub for the cargo distribution. So there is a stake from Emirates into DFW. So would we consider Dubai as a possible sister city?

We will consider any city that you suggest through that process. One of the first areas that we check is, does that city have an existing sister city relationship? If it does, it's a one-time relationship. We can look at friendship, but the first step is, do they have a current sister city relationship? So our team will look into that, and we can definitely circle back with you, sir. Thank you.

Yeah, let me just close. Good point. The Consul General from Ukraine is bringing three companies from Ukraine that are looking to work with a manufacturing company here in Irving. He will obviously be with us on the 31st. There's a direct result in how we then can promote, and I think that's a good example. We'll also have the Panama Canal. both former ambassador along with their council general. Why? Panama City would like to consider us considering a sister city with them as well. So there's a whole promotional side that we're not able to really figure out What's the final result until it starts coming our way? But I'm going to stop with that. Thank you both, all three of you. Brad, good to see you. Hope to see you during our break. Thank you. Okay, I think we have one more to go. Am I correct? We have the Hispanic Chamber?

Yes, Carmen Guzman is the interim CEO of the Hispanic Chamber. And while she's making her way up, I think there's an update to the presentation that was included in the packet that Carmen had asked us to pass out to the council. So Imelda is passing that updated presentation out. Just by way of reminder, as with the Irving Las Colinas Chamber, we have a five-year fee-for-service contract with the Hispanic Chamber. This coming fiscal year will be the concluding year of that agreement. It will expire in September of next year. We are going to undertake discussions starting this fall with both chambers to renew those contracts, and as I said, on September 10th we'll be coming to the Council at Work session to have a more thorough conversation about what the current fee-for-service agreement is with the Hispanic Chamber, what that might look like in the future, along with discussion about an extension of the lease that they currently have at the Huffman building. So, Carmen, I'll turn it over to you.

Good afternoon, I am Carmen Guzman, the interim CEO for the Irving Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Good afternoon, Honorable Mayor Alzapanta, distinguished council members, and city manager Chris Hillman, and assistant manager Phil Sanders. I always step away from here, right? And I just kind of noticed around that you had other assistant managers, excuse me for not knowing you personally, but thank you for this opportunity. So first of all, thank you certainly for considering us to continue to service this incredible contract for the small business owners and entrepreneurs. in the city, my favorite type of people for the services that they provide for the city. So thank you again for the opportunity to present the Irving Hispanic Chamber of Commerce fiscal year 2026 annual work plan. Of course, we're not asking for an increase. The annual work plan represents for us, for me, in my leadership capacity, a shift to a more proactive, data-informed, and business-centered approach to economic development services. I and the Chamber are committed to implementing a structured, measurable, and results-oriented model that moves beyond program delivery to include ongoing business engagement, feedback, and resource engagement. And so I hope that you had the opportunity maybe to peruse the actual economic development plan. A lot of thought went into it, a lot of time to really make sure that we cover the five areas that we're responsible for in the service contract. Which is small business development, business retention and expansion, marketing and communication, entrepreneurship and small business. And then of course the growth of Irving and the Heritage District and of course the city at large. Let me just make sure I can move this here. Okay, so these are the areas that we are committed to strengthening as a small business economy. I want to definitely stress that since looking through the service contract with myself and the board, that we understand clearly what that contract is asking us to do. And that this plan, without a doubt, covers every single aspect in detail and in intentionality for growing the entrepreneurs of this city and the small business economy to making this a better city for economic development. Hasn't been the case in the past, but we are not going to talk about that. But I want to stress that we are definitely moving forward in a reinvention and a more impactful way to service this contract. So let me go to the next. So these are going to be a couple of examples. I just pulled out a couple of examples of some of the areas that we're going to cover. And what we're doing through growth and the education series is that we were really thoughtful about the levels and stages of the different businesses in Irving, entrepreneurs, someone that's starting, someone that's in the middle part of their experience as a business owner and above. And what we did is that we went and determined which educational services will directly impact the folks. So what we were seeing in the past is that we were having events and everybody from the one who had an idea for a business to the one that is ready to Pass on their business, we're all in the same room, receiving the same information, it wasn't relevant. So for us, what we're looking for during this year particularly is impact. We want to provide value and it's all measurable. We also have put together some incredible surveys. We will be surveying the folks before and after they do the workshops and the sessions. We have our own KPIs that we're measuring as well along the year. So everything is measured, tracked, so that then we can come back and say, these are the things that we found. This is the data that we have for you as a city. How would you like to move forward? And we definitely intend on leveraging these strategic partners. We have the city and the services. We have the colleges and the high school. We're looking at really leveraging score. We have a relationship with Goldman Sachs, so we're looking to really be intentional about building those relationships so that we can service this contract to the best of our ability. So by leveraging these partnerships, the Chamber will expand access to expertise. We're really looking at how do we bring in those experts to speak specifically to where the businesses are in their journey. And we definitely want to connect businesses with city resources and programs. So we're working closely with the former MWBE program, which is now the procurement program. And we definitely want to create meaningful opportunities. I want to create meaningful opportunities for resources and other opportunities for small businesses. Let's see here. So we hope to do that through this accountability and management. model that we have here, of course, we are responsible for that KPI. We are monitoring that score. We are making sure that we're meeting our numbers on a monthly basis, not only for the chamber, but also for the businesses that we bring in that are being educated and trained and are being provided opportunities across the city. So we want to definitely track, review, and report on what that looks like so that we can make sure that the services that we're providing are responsive and impactful. And of course for us, we intend to not only meet, we intend to exceed every numeric performance measure in the economic development service plan. That is the way the annual plan is structured. And so we're very intentional about making sure that we go above and beyond these numbers because we know we can with our partnerships. So the expected outcomes are these. We certainly expect to increase engagement with Irving's small business community. And the way we're doing that is we're actually going out to businesses ourselves. We're creating more programs that speak to the different levels of need. We are definitely improving that procurement readiness with partnering with the city. We definitely are creating and crafting programs that are going to increase the visibility of South Irving and the Heritage District. And we also want to do bigger programming across the city. I'm sorry and I went out of order because this is just, so definitely to expand access to city services and business resources and the way we intend to do that is to definitely understand what those services are and resources and definitely target the small businesses that need the services. And certainly strengthening the entrepreneurial pipeline. We want to definitely connect people, provide referrals, and be more impactful, intentional about what we're doing. And certainly we want to measure those liberals aligned with the city's contract. So this is the budget that we intend to have. First of all, thank you so much for giving us this because we were able to really now dig down deep as to how we are going to leverage these funds and investments for providing better targeted, more valuable services to the entrepreneurs that we see every day and the small businesses that we are going to implement. So the contract investment for us is designed to produce clear measurable outcomes for the community. Rather than funding activities in isolation, the investment is structured to deliver tangible results. So we're going to be helping small businesses. We want them to access critical resources, improve day to day operations and expand marketing opportunities and achieve sustainable growth. We do intend on having a much closer relationship with entrepreneurs and small businesses. And let's see, let me see if I covered that. And I cannot reiterate again To say thank you for giving me the opportunity as a long term board member, because I do have a strong passion for servicing the entrepreneurs and small business owners that I've met and the ones that I'm going to meet. So I want to say thank you, the Irving Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and I as the lead for now. I'm really honored to serve alongside the city. championing the business community and I certainly and the board looks forward especially the board that we have we definitely look forward to continuing our partnership to advance economic opportunity and to foster of course the business growth and create lasting impact across the city. And Mayor Zapanta, city council members, assistant city managers and city managers. That concludes my presentation. I welcome questions about the annual plan or anything else I can furnish information on.

Okay, Luis, you have a question. It's the same kind of question that you asked. How did you know that I had a question?

You're reading my mind now. I read yours half the time. Well, I appreciate that you guys are, because we had some conversations where we just didn't know where the money was going. There was little transparency. It seemed like a hangout. I do appreciate that there seems to be activity, that there's a lot of things that are going on, and that helps us evaluate whether or not it's worth, you know, it's something that the city wants to do. So I think it's going in a good direction. I still have some, you know, some concerns on whether or not the residents are getting the value that they would be expecting. And a lot of people in my district, I talk to them as like, Hispanic what? Never heard of it.

Right.

And that's of course an ongoing problem. I'm sure you're aware of that But it is what it is.

So I appreciate your work regardless Absolutely, and thank you for bringing that to my attention because we are looking to do a more robust Communications piece with our new newsletter has to be redone We understand that and we definitely want to champion the small business owners that are winning and they will continue to win and the approach that we're taking to ensure that that we're providing the substance that they need. So this year is going to be a crucial year for us, right? Not only in completing and exceeding what's necessary, but also to set ourselves up for the next five years if we are in that situation.

I want to first thank Sam Reed. Where are you, Sam? Sam and Carmen brought their members of the board, and I think we had a very good meeting about a week and a half ago. And Luis and council members, so you know what this is all about, they are gone through a transition period in the last year. And they've changed up a lot of leadership, if not all of it. And I want to thank Sam in particular for taking the lead on that and really helping them through this process. So they are on their last year of transition. And so it's something that I really have to say that they have a focus, they know what they've got to do. And I committed to help them whatever way that I can personally because we need this kind of small business advocacy here in this city. But there's other groups, and we talked about that, that we may want to be focused on as well. And that's, I guess, Phillip, something that I know you're thinking about because there are other groups that would like to get more involved. within our small business community. But Sam, thank you. And Carmen, good luck on this next year transition. You've got a good plan, but you've got a big hill to climb because I don't mind saying this, your previous leadership was not up to the job, and it's that simple. So good luck. Anybody have any other questions? Yes, Mark.

Yes, Carmen. One thing we talk about for Irving is making it a great place to live, work, and play. We're talking about these measurables. You mentioned the interactions with the schools and the colleges. An important measurable, I would think, is what is being done by the chamber to provide jobs for our local residents, internships for the students. Is that something that the chamber does and I guess that's a question too, I guess, for the Irving Las Colinas Chamber as well. That's an important measurable. I mean, we want businesses here, obviously, to provide jobs generally and to contribute to the tax base. But what kind of impact does it have for students in the city?

Well, for us certainly one of our measures is to be intimately involved with the students, providing mentorship, goal setting, exposing them to entrepreneurial opportunities. So that's something that we do intimately with them. And I've been asked actually to be part of their district improvement plan. I did meet the superintendent, and so we're going to move forward with. Enlarging what that looks like for students, the entrepreneur opportunities. And also for North Lake College, we are leveraging the continuing education programs. And actually they also have a workforce development initiative that includes how to use drones, construction. So we're looking to partner and be more at their disposal. because of the resources that we have in terms of training, small businesses, anything we can do to identify students that they need. And we're also leveraging the talent that they have. So one of the things we've been talking about at the Chamber is to leverage the talent of the college students around media, recording our events, also helping us strengthen the newsletter. And we will also want to make sure that our board is a reflection of the community at large. So we'd like to bring a student on board. entrepreneurs that are just getting off the ground so that we can be better informed from an experience that folks are truly having to ensure that the programming that we're developing is intentional. So that's what we're looking to do.

Yeah, thank you. And one thing that we hear about as far as like what are the factors for whether a business decides to come to Irving or somewhere else is the availability of talent in the vicinity of it, the city itself, and of course in the surrounding community. And definitely would like to see that amplified to the extent that we can have students that are knowledgeable and trained to be able to go into the workplace and That helps the businesses and makes us even more desirable for more businesses to come.

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. Yes, David. Mayor, thank you. Pardon me. As we know, 68% of our revenue is coming from businesses here. And first of all, thank you, Brad and Harry, for being here. Beth and your team for all the work you do. This is tantamount that we continue this miracle. If you tour other cities... around the state, around the nation, we are blessed to have a very, very good corporate and small business community here. And Sam, you could probably talk about how lonely it is to be a small business owner and having the resources of a chamber to go to to get the training and sometimes just to cry on someone's shoulder is invaluable at the end of the day. So both chambers, thank you for being here, and thank you for what you do, and we need to make sure we keep this economic miracle in Irving going.

Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

I think this concludes this section. Am I correct, Chris?

Sir, my recommendation is that we break for lunch.

We can go for lunch. We'll see you back here at, what do we need, 15, 20 minutes?

I was thinking maybe meet in about five minutes back here. I'm kidding. Mayor, would 1.30 be okay for mayor and council? Is that enough time?

You want 1.30? Good. We got 1.30. See you back.

Future in Focus serves as the city's organizational framework, fostering a culture of strategic planning and data-informed decision-making. Let's look at some of the city's highlights from fiscal year 2026 through the five pillars of Future in Focus. Vibrant economy. Wells Fargo opened a sleek new corporate campus across from Toyota Music Factory with office space for more than 4,500 employees. Irving also welcomed a true Texas icon, with HEB opening its first store in Dallas County along 635. The HEB family also opened its budget-friendly brand, Jovi's Smart Shop, in South Irving. The city continued its commitment to redevelopment initiatives in the Heritage District, with Experience Main Street bringing thousands of visitors to the area. The city's enhancement incentive program helped small businesses in downtown Irving, with Alma's Cafe bringing a new flavor to the Heritage District, and JPT Graphics unveiling a creative new mural to its building. infrastructure investment year nine of road to the future continued like the macarthur boulevard project drainage solutions for a better tomorrow projects also continued with the city receiving more than 35 million dollars in state funding for the next phases of the north delaware creek project sense of community Parks and Recreation hosted more than 50,000 visitors at special events, including a record crowd for Irving Sparks and Stripes. More than $2 million of a Texas Parks and Wildlife grant was awarded to enhance the Campion Trail. And Lenat Spurlock Park opens, providing a peaceful recreation option in South Irving. government sustainability. The city maintained the property tax rate at a 58.91 cent per $100 valuation, balancing the budget with $343.5 million in the general fund. And the city issued $38 million in general obligation bonds, funding a number of projects, like the Conflans Road extension between State Highway 161 and Valley View Lane. an improved facility for fleet services at Briary Yard, and upgrades for IT's transition to the EFJ radio system. The city also launched the Irving Connector by Via, restoring routes 225 and 255, and introducing the Loop at Las Colinas, after successful negotiations with DART resulted in the city receiving a portion of the sales tax allocation to be dedicated towards general mobility programs. safe and beautiful city. The FY26 budget included enhancements to public safety staffing, adding 12 fire department and 11 police department personnel. The Irving Police Department opened the new Tactical Training Center, ensuring Irving PD officers are trained with the most modern techniques. And the Irving Fire Department opened the new Fire Station 8 on Riverside Drive, serving an area that has seen a 50% increase in calls in recent years. Code Enforcement's Keep It Clean initiative helped beautify neighborhoods, keeping residents informed of potential code violations. As serving prepares for the FY27 budget year, Future in Focus ensures the city prioritizes what matters most, delivering exceptional services and promoting a high quality of life.

Big State had a big presence in the city of Irving.

It was like walking into a place where you knew people and it was just a comfortable homey feeling.

Irving was a small town and Big State was the small town drugstore.

People would, you know, bring their grandkids in and say, well, you know, we came in here when we were little.

I have very specific memories about Main Street. as a three or four year old boy and being conscious that the sign was there.

In operation since 1948, Big State fueled many childhood memories.

My grandma and my brother and I going in there and my grandma getting her prescriptions and buying my brother and I a milkshake.

Milkshakes. School supplies. You don't forget the place where you bought crayons.

There's a lot of people that said that, you know, and was, you know, my dad, my deal, and then they'd show me pictures of them on the walls, which we had a lot of old pictures there.

The original Big State closed in 2014. Before long, Rick Fairless remodeled and reopened.

The sign that the city of Irving has now is the original sign. The only thing was I had to take the word drugs off there, and I added fountain grill on there.

It's a piece of sculpture for me, in a sense. Primarily it's the color. I'm a color freak. And it's just that strong red color and the shape. It has a nice abstract, very graphic shape.

Other Irving Knights also tried to keep the landmark going, but Big State finally closed for good in 2022.

When I would go down Irving Boulevard and I would see that Big State sign, it always took me back to being eight, nine years old and going in there with my brother and my grandmother.

It's a key part of the heritage, the history of Irving. Lots of memories there.

Then when the building again changed hands, it came time for the sign to come down.

The strongest memory I have of a big state sign is when I got the email that it had been taken down. And I almost literally shouted, you can't do that.

The Irving Archives and Museum and the Friends of the Irving Museums jumped at the chance to save a sign with such historical significance.

People would always have their comments about it. You know, they're glad they're seeing it going on, but, you know, the sign... hopefully it'll stay around in Irving.

I want people when they see the Big State sign, young people, old people, to know that that sign takes you back to a simpler, kinder way of life in Irving, Texas when it was a small town.

So to have the Big State sign repaired and in working condition in the Heritage Park seems to me the perfect place for it to be.

Go big states! The Irving Archives and Museum is filled with hometown spirit as the community comes together for a different kind of pep rally.

We are in the middle of a fundraiser. Tonight is the pep rally for the first in 10 Save the Big State sign.

One of Irving's most recognizable landmarks is getting a second chance to shine.

The Friends of the Irving Museums has been raising funds to help restore and preserve the sign and get it back up.

The iconic neon sign came down in January 2024, marking an end of an era for downtown Irving. Now the community is working to make sure that piece of history isn't lost.

When the building was sold and we found out that the sign was going to go to the Boneyard, we quickly raised enough money to buy the sign. The next step is to have it repaired.

We are going to restore it. We are going to make sure it's working properly.

And hopefully get the old big state sign hung up somewhere in the Heritage District.

The high energy pep rally featured live entertainment, game day eats, and nostalgic treats, all building up to the evening's big moment, a live tally of donations.

We are close to our goal, and so we're hoping today that we cross that finish line. We have a matching gift, and we should reach the goal today.

The evening raised more than $5,400, pushing the campaign's total to over $13,000, bringing organizers one step closer to their goal of preserving the cherished Big State sign.

For me, it's an Irving landmark. It's just been such an iconic piece of our history.

It has memories attached to it, and those memories come from people all over the country.

It's been around my whole life and grew up eating there.

For those that grew up in the community, it creates that touchstone point for them. But also for those of us that come generations after, it helps us recall what Irving was. Irving was this small town and it had a soda fountain and a drugstore and a main street. And I think that's really important for us to keep connected to.

Personal connections to the big state sign fuels community support.

I think just being a part of helping to save a piece of our history really helps us all still feel connected to the community and to the past.

Join the Crochet Club in the MIY Zone here at the Valley Ranch Library. Come and learn crochet while making a project. Supplies are included. Join in on the fun on August 11th at 3 p.m. Beat the heat at Irving's outdoor pools through Labor Day. For the rest of August, you can still enjoy a dip in one of Irving's pools on weekends. And before they close for the season, the pools at Cimarron, Lee, and here at West Irving Aquatic Center will be open on September 7th from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. It's the annual gathering of Texas sommeliers here at the Irving Convention Center. The three-day professional wine and beverage industry event focuses on education, tasting, mentorship, and community building. Texthome gets underway on August 23rd.

getting the perfect backpack for the new school year. That's an experience these volunteers for the Irving Schools Foundation want to make sure every kid gets. They'll climb a mountain of donated backpacks to do it. even though there's a few cave-ins.

School is hard as it is, so not even having the basic, you know, things that you need to get by, I mean, that's tough. So if we can do anything to help out, we're always happy to do it.

At this Supplies for Success drive, hundreds of volunteers work to give out thousands of backpacks. ISF leaders say the need in the community is great.

Unfortunately, I've seen it grow so much. When I first started, I think we probably gave out about 1,000 backpacks, and we thought that was so much, and we just were so overwhelmed by it, and now we're almost at 7,000.

So volunteers work for days to stuff every backpack with donated school essentials.

A glue stick, some headphones. They also have an eraser, colored pencils, crayons, markers, everything they need to get started for the school year.

And they work fast.

100 backpacks, yeah.

Less than an hour.

Less than an hour, yes.

And all those days of work? lead up to moments like these.

He's going to pre-K. It does feel like we're, you know, being taken care of as a community, coming together and doing this and seeing all the people here, especially the volunteers. It feels really good.

And thanks to generous donations and tireless volunteers, family after family left the Supplies for Success drive with a head start for their kids.

Our volunteers are pumped up. They serve. They are true leaders with heart because that's what we're here for. We're here to serve.

Just hope everybody has a great school year. For CitySource, I'm Nick Long. It's that time of year again for back-to-school haircuts. A season sure to keep any Irving barber shop busy. Same thing over there. But for Noe's Custom Cuts, this line fills up the next room over. And these back-to-school cuts are free.

As a kid, you know, we didn't have so much money either. It's really big for me to make sure, you know, everybody's looking nice for school.

A free back-to-school event that started 23 years ago inside Noe Araiza's barbershop has now expanded to the Lively Point Youth Center. One side bringing haircuts, backpacks, and food. The other full of vendors and prizes for all families.

Biggest one yet. 21 vendors. We have a DJ. I mean, all the food you can think of.

Those nearly two dozen local vendors answered the call, bringing Irving families what they need for their kids' coming school year, all free of charge.

We have school supplies. We've got composition books, crayons, glue sticks, pencils, pens, you name it, we got it.

And these helping hands touching the hearts of Irving parents in need.

Honestly, it's really heartwarming. I just had a baby, so I haven't been working these past couple of months and getting her back ready for school was like over the top of my head. So I'm definitely blessed with type of events like this.

That's what it's all about, working in the community and giving back to each one, teach one, each one help one. It's a movement paying it forward to any family in need from one Irving family that started it all decades ago.

I brought them up to help me do this. We've done this 23 years, and I feel like I've made enough money with the community, so why not give back?

Hopefully next year we come back out and do it again. Thank you.

For CitySource, I'm Nick Lawton.

Learn about sustainable energy in a seminar about solar panels and electric vehicles. Hear from a panel of Valley Ranch homeowners August 18th at 7 p.m. They will share information about sustainable energy infrastructure including lessons learned and best practices. DFW Fiber Fest 2026 returns to the Irving Convention Center for its 21st annual event. The weekend brings together fiber arts enthusiasts for classes, shopping, community, and creative inspiration. Explore it all starting August 27th. August is Clear the Shelters Month at Irving Animal Services. Adoption fees are reduced all month long, and if you come in on August 29th, all animals are free to adopt. Come and see all the cuties they have here at the Irving Animal Care Campus.

Three. Two.

We have a grand reopening at the store. It's the first in the chain that we've done here locally. We call it Project Beacon. So really excited about just the new floor plan, the layout, a lot of new product and just the celebration we're bringing locally.

It looks so nice in here. I'm probably going to live here for the next like five years.

The fresh floral, right? It's a new category for us. I'm really excited about that.

How are you feeling about this Michaels reopening?

I think he likes it. Michael's home office is right here in town. So we've had just everyone so excited about this store.

Our support center is local. Artistry is local, which is our framing, molding shop.

We help supply the imagination. So we feel joy for creativity and celebration. So we have everything you can imagine for all your creative needs.

This I'm probably going to make a blanket with. And this one, probably a plushie. I don't know. It's always a surprise for me.

I do painting. I also cross stitch. I do a little bit of everything. I also make t-shirts. Just a little bit of everything. I'm just like an arts and crafts connoisseur, I guess. I think it's important to express yourself and be who you are. So having this place here and having so much diversity in the store helps you take it out into the real world and be yourself.

I've been coming to the Original Sewing and Quilts Expo, I think, since I was about 10 years old. I think it's a really fun way to see a bunch of different quilts. There's classes, there's events. It's a sewer's paradise.

We encourage people to just sit down next to someone and start a conversation.

I wanted to check out all the new products, different fabrics and the manufacturers, and also meet with some friends.

We have young quilters. We have one, Angela Davis, who has been quilting since she was a little kid.

I always enjoyed creating growing up, and I'm definitely a creator at heart. The thing that I enjoy the most is how I get to use creativity through quilting. Watermelon's my favorite food, so that's what inspired the watermelons.

Art doesn't have to be a lot of detail. It doesn't have to be difficult. This is really just two fabrics. Each needle, each thread has their own special place. I ended up quilting music notes into this one. And I just simply titled it Miss Ross because it's a simple piece.

Creativity is for everyone, that anybody can sew, anybody can be successful at this, anybody can do this. All you have to have is the desire.

No red carpet and no golden statues, but that doesn't make this night any less prestigious. This year's Mayor and Keep Irving Beautiful Awards continues the decades-long tradition of honoring Irving residents and organizations who often go unsung.

We see people that we know and the impact they have, but like any other hometown hero, oftentimes while they're noticed, they go a little unnoticed, you know?

It's a great chance to really call them out, recognize them. So tonight, 10 awards are traveling from this table delivered by the mayor into the hands of those making an impact on the environment and in many ways across Irving.

Accepting the Educator Award is Neil Hoffman.

I think everybody has some passion. It's a matter of growing that passion, finding the joy in sustainability and keeping at that. I think that's how you can really find joy and passion in the environmental movement.

Taking home the non-profit award was the Irving Schools Foundation. Fresh off their latest supplies for Success Drive, that event put 7,000 backpacks stuffed with school supplies in the hands of Irving families in need.

I'm a product of Irving Schools. Being able to give back to the schools that actually helped me grow to be an adult and what they brought for me, it's just wonderful to be able to help the schools and the kids and the teachers.

Only one Irving resident could walk away with the last award.

I'm feeling very nervous. Margie Stipe's Lifetime Achievement Award goes to Susan Young Newman. Susan Young Newman has served as a proud ambassador for the Heritage Senior Center for many years.

You know, I always, if I see something that needs to be done, I try to be the first one to do it. But I didn't know you got awards for any of these things or anything like that.

And that Keep Irving Beautiful vision of honoring unsung Irving heroes aims to inspire tomorrow's impact makers who could be closer to these awards than they think.

Get out and get involved and find your path to how you can participate in your community.

For CitySource, I'm Nick Long.

Future in Focus serves as the city's organizational framework, fostering a culture of strategic planning and data-informed decision-making. Let's look at some of the city's highlights from fiscal year 2026 through the five pillars of Future in Focus. Vibrant economy. Wells Fargo opened a sleek new corporate campus across from Toyota Music Factory with office space for more than 4,500 employees. Irving also welcomed a true Texas icon, with HEB opening its first store in Dallas County along 635. The HEB family also opened its budget-friendly brand, Jovi's Smart Shop, in South Irving. The city continued its commitment to redevelopment initiatives in the Heritage District, with Experience Main Street bringing thousands of visitors to the area. The city's enhancement incentive program helped small businesses in downtown Irving, with Alma's Cafe bringing a new flavor to the Heritage District, and JPT Graphics unveiling a creative new mural to its building. infrastructure investment. Year nine of Road to the Future continued, like the MacArthur Boulevard project. Drainage Solutions for a Better Tomorrow projects also continued, with the city receiving more than $35 million in state funding for the next phases of the North Delaware Creek project. Sense of community. Parks and Recreation hosted more than 50,000 visitors at special events, including a record crowd for Irving's Sparks and Stripes. More than $2 million of a Texas Parks and Wildlife grant was awarded to enhance the Campion Trail. And Lenat Spurlock Park opens, providing a peaceful recreation option in South Irving. government sustainability. The city maintained the property tax rate at a 58.91 cent per $100 valuation, balancing the budget with $343.5 million in the general fund. And the city issued $38 million in general obligation bonds, funding a number of projects, like the Conflans Road extension between State Highway 161 and Valley View Lane. an improved facility for fleet services at Briary Yard, and upgrades for IT's transition to the EFJ radio system. The city also launched the Irving Connector by Via, restoring routes 225 and 255, and introducing the Loop at Las Colinas, after successful negotiations with DART resulted in the city receiving a portion of the sales tax allocation to be dedicated towards general mobility programs. safe and beautiful city. The FY26 budget included enhancements to public safety staffing, adding 12 fire department and 11 police department personnel. The Irving Police Department opened the new Tactical Training Center, ensuring Irving PD officers are trained with the most modern techniques. And the Irving Fire Department opened the new Fire Station 8 on Riverside Drive, serving an area that has seen a 50% increase in calls in recent years. Code Enforcement's Keep It Clean initiative helped beautify neighborhoods, keeping residents informed of potential code violations. As serving prepares for the FY27 budget year, Future in Focus ensures the city prioritizes what matters most, delivering exceptional services and promoting a high quality of life.

Big State had a big presence in the city of Irving.

It was like walking into a place where you knew people and it was just a comfortable homey feeling.

Irving was a small town and Big State was the small town drugstore.

People would, you know, bring their grandkids in and say, well, you know, we came in here when we were little.

I have very specific memories about Main Street. as a three or four year old boy and being conscious that the sign was there.

In operation since 1948, Big State fueled many childhood memories.

My grandma and my brother and I going in there and my grandma getting her prescriptions and buying my brother and I a milkshake.

Milkshakes. School supplies. You don't forget the place where you bought crayons.

There's a lot of people that said that, you know, and was You know, my dad, my deal, and then they'd show me pictures of them on the walls, which we had a lot of old pictures there.

The original Big State closed in 2014. Before long, Rick Fairless remodeled and reopened.

The sign that the city of Irving has now is the original sign. The only thing was I had to take the word drugs off there, and I added fountain grill on there.

It's a piece of sculpture for me, in a sense. Primarily it's the color. I'm a color freak. And it's just that strong red color and the shape. It has a nice abstract, very graphic shape.

Other Irving Knights also tried to keep the landmark going, but Big State finally closed for good in 2022.

When I would go down Irving Boulevard and I would see that Big State sign, it always took me back to being eight, nine years old and going in there with my brother and my grandmother.

It's a key part of the heritage, the history of Irving. Lots of memories there.

Then when the building again changed hands, it came time for the sign to come down.

The strongest memory I have of a big state sign is when I got the email that it had been taken down. And I almost literally shouted, you can't do that.

The Irving Archives and Museum and the Friends of the Irving Museums jumped at the chance to save a sign with such historical significance.

People would always have their comments about it. You know, they're glad they're seeing it going on, but you know, the sign hopefully it'll stay around in Irving.

I want people when they see the Big State sign, young people, old people, to know that that sign takes you back to a simpler, kinder way of life in Irving, Texas when it was a small town.

So to have the Big State sign repaired and in working condition in the Heritage Park seems to me the perfect place for it to be.

Go Big State! The Irving Archives and Museum is filled with hometown spirit as the community comes together for a different kind of pep rally.

We are in the middle of a fundraiser.

Tonight is the pep rally for the first in 10 Save the Big State sign.

One of Irving's most recognizable landmarks is getting a second chance to shine.

The Friends of the Irving Museums has been raising funds to help restore and preserve the sign and get it back up.

The iconic neon sign came down in January 2024, marking an end of an era for downtown Irving. Now the community is working to make sure that piece of history isn't lost.

When the building was sold and we found out that the sign was going to go to the Boneyard, we quickly raised enough money to buy the sign. The next step is to have it repaired.

We are going to restore it. We are going to make sure it's working properly.

And hopefully get the old big state sign hung up somewhere in the Heritage District.

The high energy pep rally featured live entertainment, game day eats, and nostalgic treats, all building up to the evening's big moment, a live tally of donations.

We are close to our goal, and so we're hoping today that we cross that finish line. We have a matching gift, and we should reach the goal today.

The evening raised more than $5,400, pushing the campaign's total to over $13,000, bringing organizers one step closer to their goal of preserving the cherished Big State sign.

For me, it's an Irving landmark. It's just been such an iconic piece of our history.

It has memories attached to it, and those memories come from people all over the country.

It's been around my whole life and grew up eating there.

For those that grew up in the community, it creates that touchstone point for them. But also for those of us that come generations after, it helps us recall what Irving was. Irving was this small town and it had a soda fountain and a drugstore and a main street. And I think that's really important for us to keep connected to.

Personal connections to the big state sign fuels community support.

I think just being a part of helping to save a piece of our history really helps us all still feel connected to the community and to the past.

Join the Crochet Club in the MIY Zone here at the Valley Ranch Library. Come and learn crochet while making a project. Supplies are included. Join in on the fun on August 11th at 3 p.m. Beat the heat at Irving's outdoor pools through Labor Day. For the rest of August, you can still enjoy a dip in one of Irving's pools on weekends. And before they close for the season, the pools at Cimarron, Lee, and here at West Irving Aquatic Center will be open on September 7th from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. It's the annual gathering of Texas sommeliers here at the Irving Convention Center. The three-day professional wine and beverage industry event focuses on education, tasting, mentorship, and community building. TechSom gets underway on August 23rd.

getting the perfect backpack for the new school year. That's an experience these volunteers for the Irving Schools Foundation want to make sure every kid gets. They'll climb a mountain of donated backpacks to do it. even though there's a few cave-ins.

School is hard as it is, so not even having the basic, you know, things that you need to get by, I mean, that's tough. So if we can do anything to help out, we're always happy to do it.

At this Supplies for Success drive, hundreds of volunteers work to give out thousands of backpacks. ISF leaders say the need in the community is great.

Unfortunately, I've seen it grow so much. When I first started, I think we probably gave out about 1,000 backpacks, and we thought that was so much, and we just were so overwhelmed by it, and now we're almost at 7,000.

So volunteers work for days to stuff every backpack with donated school essentials.

A glue stick, some headphones. They also have an eraser, colored pencils, crayons, markers, everything they need to get started for the school year.

And they work fast.

100 backpacks, yeah.

Less than an hour.

Less than an hour, yeah.

And all those days of work? lead up to moments like these.

He's going to pre-K. It does feel like we're, you know, being taken care of. As a community, coming together and doing this and seeing all the people here, especially the volunteers, it feels really good.

And thanks to generous donations and tireless volunteers, family after family left the Supplies for Success drive with a head start for their kids.

Our volunteers are pumped up. They serve. They are true leaders with heart because that's what we're here for. We're here to serve.

Just hope everybody has a great school year. For CitySource, I'm Nick Lawton. It's that time of year again for back-to-school haircuts, a season sure to keep any Irving Barbershop busy. Same thing over there. But for Noe's Custom Cuts, this line fills up the next room over. And these back-to-school cuts...

As a kid, you know, we didn't have so much money either. It's really big for me to make sure, you know, everybody's looking nice for school.

A free back-to-school event that started 23 years ago inside Noe Ariza's barbershop has now expanded to the Lively Point Youth Center. One side bringing haircuts, backpacks, and food. The other full of vendors and prizes for all families.

Biggest one yet. 21 vendors. We have a DJ. I mean, all the food you can think of.

Those nearly two dozen local vendors answered the call, bringing Irving families what they need for their kids' coming school year, all free of charge. We have school supplies. We've got composition books, crayons, glue sticks, pencils, pens, you name it, we got it. And these helping hands touching the hearts of Irving parents in need.

Honestly, it's really heartwarming. I just had a baby, so I haven't been working these past couple of months and getting her back ready for school was like over the top of my head. So I'm definitely blessed with type of events like this.

That's what it's all about, working in the community and giving back to each one, teach one, each one help one. It's a movement paying it forward to any family in need from one Irving family that started it all decades ago.

I brought them up to help me do this. We've done this 23 years, and I feel like I've made enough money with the community, so why not give back?

Hopefully next year we come back out and we do it again. Thank you.

For CitySource, I'm Nick Lawton.

Learn about sustainable energy in a seminar about solar panels and electric vehicles. Hear from a panel of Valley Ranch homeowners August 18th at 7 p.m. They will share information about sustainable energy infrastructure, including lessons learned and best practices. DFW Fiber Fest 2026 returns to the Irving Convention Center for its 21st annual event. The weekend brings together fiber arts enthusiasts for classes, shopping, community, and creative inspiration. Explore it all starting August 27th. August is Clear the Shelters Month at Irving Animal Services. Adoption fees are reduced all month long and if you come in on August 29th, all animals are free to adopt. Come and see all the cuties they have here at the Irving Animal Care Campus.

We have a grand reopening at the store. It's the first in the chain that we've done here locally. We call it Project Beacon. So really excited about just the new floor plan, the layout, a lot of new product and just the celebration we're bringing locally.

It looks so nice in here. I'm probably going to live here for the next like five years.

The fresh floral, right, it's a new category for us and we're really excited about that.

How are you feeling about this Michael's reopening?

I think he likes it. Michael's home office is right here in town. So we've had just everyone so excited about this store.

Our support center is local. Artistry is local, which is our framing, molding shop.

We help supply the imagination. So we feel joy for creativity and celebration. So we have everything you can imagine for all your creative needs.

This I'm probably gonna make a blanket with and this one probably a plushie, don't know. It's always a surprise for me.

I do painting, I also cross stitch, I do a little bit of everything. I also make t-shirts, just a little bit of everything. I'm just like an arts and crafts connoisseur I guess. I think it's important to express yourself and be who you are. So having this place here and having so much diversity in the store helps you take it out into the real world and be yourself.

I've been coming to the Original Sewing and Quilts Expo, I think, since I was about 10 years old. I think it's a really fun way to see a bunch of different quilts. There's classes, there's events. It's a sewer's paradise.

We encourage people to just sit down next to someone and start a conversation.

I wanted to check out all the new products, different fabrics and the manufacturers, and also meet with some friends.

We have young quilters. We have one, Angela Davis, who has been quilting since she was a little kid.

I always enjoyed creating growing up, and I'm definitely a creator at heart. The thing that I enjoy the most is how I get to use creativity through quilting. Watermelon's my favorite food, so that's what inspired the watermelons.

Art doesn't have to be a lot of detail. It doesn't have to be difficult. This is really just two fabrics. Each needle, each thread has their own special place. I ended up quilting music notes into this one and I just simply titled it Miss Ross because it's a simple piece.

Creativity is for everyone, that anybody can sew, anybody can be successful at this, anybody can do this. All you have to have is the desire.

No red carpet and no golden statues, but that doesn't make this night any less prestigious. This year's Mayor and Keep Irving Beautiful Awards continues the decades-long tradition of honoring Irving residents and organizations who often go unsung. We see people that we know and the impact they have, but like any other hometown hero, oftentimes while they're noticed, they go a little unnoticed, you know? It's a great chance to really call them out, recognize them. So tonight, 10 awards are traveling from this table delivered by the mayor into the hands of those making an impact on the environment and in many ways across Irving.

Accepting the Educator Award is Neil Kaufman.