City Council - workshop

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Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Do we have any citizen comments on the our agenda items where are we where is she? John that was quick Okay, let's go ahead and move on. City manager, city operations?

Yes, sir. We have two operations update. The first one is going to be last month on ICTN. April will be providing that update. And the second one is an infrastructure summit update that will be provided by Melissa.

Thank you, Chris. Good morning, Mayor and Council. April Reiling, Director of Communications, pleased to present to you last month on ICTN for July. But before I get to last month on ICTN, which features several public safety facilities opening, the loop at Las Colinas promotion, as well as some outstanding family community activities, we're really emphasizing sparks and stripes. Our video content that we produce every month, which you will see there are 43 videos produced by ICTN, they are not the only team members producing video. We have a social media coordinator. We have a communication specialist. We have other team members in communications who are producing things like reels and stories for social media. So for the month of July, total across all city social media platforms, we produced and published 232 videos. in one month, and that's across five different social media platforms. Total impressions or views of those videos in one month is over 746,000 views. Total engagements, meaning people who are liking, commenting, or sharing our video content across all social media, totals over 80,000 engagements. So 80,000 people are liking, sharing, and commenting on our videos. Regarding the Sparks and Stripes live stream from July 3rd, we had over 9,800 total views on that live stream, 157 likes on that video, no dislikes. YouTube does allow you a thumbs down. We don't get thumbs downs. We only get likes. We had 50 live chat engagements that the team was chatting back and forth with people who were watching that live stream. And we had six comments. And I have one I'd like to share with you. Quote, very nice job Irving, exclamation point. Much better camera work than the guy that covers Fort Worth every year. that has yet to figure out how cameras zoom for fireworks need to be set wide. Two thumbs up. So even the camera professionals out there in the world are really appreciating what the ICTN is doing on our live stream. And thanks to the awesome work for that team that evening, we gained 46 YouTube subscribers just from that stream alone. So with that, I'd like to air the July edition of Last Month on ICTN.

Your ICTN team produced 43 videos in the month of July. 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.

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

We thought it would be fun to look at Tom Landry through a lens of as a human and as kind of his role in football, not just as the coach.

For over 10 years, we have offered Kids Camp, which is an affordable way to come see a new movie every week.

I love it. I love it like the actual library gets all these activities for the kids.

We've got an ambulance for medical response. We've also got the fire boat on the lake and the off-road ambulance to respond on the trails when people get hurt.

The threats that police officers are seeing in our country today are unlike any other. And so being able to have flexibility in the training, dynamics in our training is paramount.

We're still main stage in Irving, Texas, in the beautiful Irving Arts Center. I think the public can really get a lot by coming out to theater.

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.

Stay up to date by subscribing to our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash the city of Irving.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you.

Next we'll have our summit update. Melissa will be coming on up to tell us what we have going on.

Good afternoon. Thank you, Chris. Melissa Baker, Public Works, Transportation and Traffic. Stephanie will be passing out our final brochure for this year's infrastructure summit that the city hosts. It'll be August 31st, this coming Monday and Tuesday, September 1st, at the Irving Convention Center. I do want to just point out and take a couple minutes to say we are in the black. So we are very excited and we are at capacity. So a great news on both fronts. Also wanted to say that we have a tremendous international attendance coming. Thank you to you, Mayor. Several, several U.S. consulates from different countries are in attendance. So we're very happy on the international front. We'd also like to thank the Chamber because of their sponsorship and just overall their support to prop us up and help us. Also, the Convention Center staff, who is tremendous in this, and then the Public Works Transportation team, who really leads this effort. So it is an all-front, everybody on deck to get this across the goal line. We did want to say we do have a great federal presence this year and a legislative presence that's tremendous. So we are really excited. Come out on Monday and Tuesday and join us.

Thank you, Melissa, and I appreciate all the hard work that the team of Orlando, Dan, I guess Dan is out of the city or vacation? Conference. Okay. And Melissa, where's your right-hand young lady?

Stephanie over there.

Appreciate it. A lot of work. It's also a lot of coordination that goes on. We have not only the Chamber participating with us, but also the North Texas Commission. So it's really good to see it all coming together. So any questions from anybody at this time? By the way, each one of you members of the Council are invited to the dinner Monday night. It'll be from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Each of the five tables will be hosted by one of the council generals that will be with us. So I'll give you a chance. So I took the liberty as your mayor to kind of place you. So I thought where you might have interest. And any of you that can't make it, please let us know because we'll try to fill it in with staff. Thank you again.

Mayor, if I may, I just want to recognize Nathan. He also was on the team that helped us out. Yes. and won't forget him.

Good. Okay. Thank you, Melissa. Thank you. Because there's no other questions. Chris, do we have anything else? Are we done?

No, sir. Thank you. Okay.

Good. I'm going to take us through the review of the regular agenda, then We'll move into, or would you rather move right into your presentations? It's your call.

No, let's go ahead and move through the regular agenda, Mayor. That would be my recommendation.

Very good.

Okay.

Okay. Our City Council agenda for this evening, this 7 p.m., we will have public hearings on item number one, which will be the city operations update, obviously. Secondly, the administrative comments will be focused on the fiscal year of the budget, our budget. That item will be, this is recommended by the Financial Services Department. It supports future in focus government sustainability and protect the city's financial integrity and credibility. Second, the public hearing gives the Irving taxpayers an opportunity to comment on next year's proposed budget. And third, the notice of public hearing has been published in the Daily Morning News. Item four, previous public input opportunities on the FY2026-27. Proposed budget included public hearing in June 2026 and online input through Citi's website. The next public hearing is scheduled for September 3, 2026. And finally, number five, the fiscal year 2026-27 budget is scheduled to be adopted on September 10, 2026. Any comments or any input from any of the members? Okay, we'll move on to item number three. Public hearing, public hearing number one on fiscal year 2026-27, proposed tax rate, administrative comments. Item one, the item is recommended by the Financial Services Department and supports future in focus government sustainability, protect the city's financial integrity and credibility. Of three, the public hearing gives the Irving taxpayers an opportunity to comment on next year's proposed tax rate. Item number three, and if I'm not mistaken, I've already covered all this, so we'll be moving on, except item three of three is very important. It's the fiscal year 2026, tax 27, proposed tax rate, which is at $.5891 per $100 value. Item four, the notice for public hearing has been published in the Dallas Morning News, and I had mentioned we are scheduled for the next public hearing September 3, as well as the final hearing and adoption on September 10, 2026. Consent agenda, item number four, approving work session minutes for Thursday, July 26, excuse me, July 30, 2026. Item 5, approving regular meeting minutes for Thursday, July 30, 2026. Item 6, resolution expressing the intent to consider adoption of the 2025-2027 City of Irving fiscal year budget on September 10, 2026. Item 7, resolution approving the City of Irving investment policy administrative comments. Item 7-1, the item is recommended by the Financial Services Department that supports future in-focus government sustainability. Protect the city's financial integrity and credibility. Impact. The approval of the investment policy will be in accordance with the state law and allow staff to continue to safely maximize earnings for the city. Item three, state law and the city of Irving investment policy require annual review by the city council. Item four, the last council review was on August 28th, 2025. Item five, in accordance with state law, the listing of the authorized brokers and investment training providers has been provided to the council. Item six, Staff is not proposing any material changes to our investment policy this year. The resolution be approved, hopefully. Okay, item number eight, resolution, approving and adopting the Tarrant County 911 District 2026 to 2027 annual budget. Administrative comments. Item one. The item is recommended by the police department, I should say the Irving Police Department, that supports strategic objectives number 4.1, safeguard public safety, security, and health. Item two, impact. Tarrant County 911 District is requesting its members be approved and adopt the district's annual operating budget. for 2026-27. Okay. We're at a point now where I will not continue because I think one of my members says, don't have to read it. I'm not going to read it anymore. So you can see it, okay, because I think I've summarized it. I'm just so used to reading every damn thing in front of me. Okay. Okay, guys. We're on it. Let's go to the next one. Item 9, resolution approving the outcome. Agreement for the services between the City of Irving and Keep Irving Beautiful Inc. KIB for the Keep Irving Beautiful program fiscal 2026-2027 in the amount of $72,880. Item 10, resolution, approving the interlocal agreement between the City of Irving and the Dallas County Reclamation District, DECURD, for cost-sharing on the Caldwell Boulevard at Hackberry Creek Bridge, which is CSP 125LR-26F project. Resolution number 11. Awarding the contract to Estrada Concrete Company LLC in the amount of $513,227.50 for the Caldwell Boulevard at Hackberry Creek bridge concrete rip rep. That's R-I-P-R-A-P, I think I said it right, rip rep. An RCP repairs project. Item number 12, resolution approving the professional services agreement between City of Irving, and Good Fulton and Farrell Inc., GFF Inc., in the amount of $1,551,926 for architectural services for the Joint Public Safety Facility. Item 13, resolution approving professional services agreement between the City of Irving and Matrix Consulting Group in the amount of $161,500. for Irving Fire Department growth assessment and master plan update. Item number 14, resolution approving a sole service agreement with Exelum Water Solutions USA in the amount of $140,000 for parts and services for FLYGT, I guess I want to spell it, F-L-Y-G-T, FLYGT, branded equipment to operate and maintain wastewater pumps and equipment. Item 15, resolution approving interlocal cooperative agreement between the City of Irving and the City of Dallas, the Tarrant Regional Water District, TRWD, the Upper Trinity Regional Water District, UTRWD, and The North Texas Municipal Water District closed for funding. The studies identified mediation agreement between Region C and Region D water planning groups. Item number 16. Resolution approving and accepting the proposal of Viking Printing LLC in the amount of $3,675,050 for the Beltline Elevated Storage Tank Rehabilitation Project. Any comments from anybody at this time? Seeing none, bids and purchasing item.

If I may, I'm sorry, just two questions. If I'm sure I didn't understand number eight and this is for education purpose. Of adopting parent County 911 district.

Sorry chief, there we go.

Sure, you come up here if you want. Yes, Sam Hall, assistant chief from police. Hit it. Okay. Sam Hall, Assistant Chief, still not on? The light's on. There it goes. All right. Sam Hall, Assistant Chief, Urban Police Department. Speaking on the Tarrant County 911, this is Sherry Decker. She's the Director of Tarrant County 911 in O'Neill. He's the budget guy, so he can tell you about the budget. But what exactly questions do you have about the...

I don't understand the item. What is it?

Okay. You can explain.

First of all, thank you for allowing us to come before you today. In July, the Tarrant County 911 Board of Managers, which Chief Hall happens to be a member of our board, approved our 2026-27 budget. And the Health and Safety Code 772 requires us to go to our top four most populated cities that we support and have them approve our budget as well. And so that's why we're here.

Okay, that makes sense. Thank you so much.

Yeah, it's kind of complicated, even though it's Tarrant County, and we're in Dallas County. We're partnered with the Tarrant County 911 system.

We support your 911 system for your citizens.

That's where that little money on your cell phone bill goes.

Fifty cents. Thank you.

Thank you. And the second question I had is the concrete riprap on number 11. Is that a repair we're doing? That's why we're putting a riprap? Just wanted to know why we're doing a concrete riprap on that bridge. Yeah, I mean, this is specific to – is this a maintenance or repair, or this is capital?

Yeah, so I think it's a riprap contract. So this is a – so riprap is a big rock that we put on the bridge that helps to keep erosion.

This is a contract.

All right, thank you, that's all good Okay bids 17 item 17 resolution renewing the contract with Echo Cove Enterprises LLC DBA Ritchie Company in the total estimated amount of $300,000 for imprinted promotional products. Item 18, resolution renewing the contract with Fire-DX GW LLC in the amount not to exceed $122,500 for advanced cleaning, inspection, and repair services for firefighter bunker gear. Number 18, resolution approving the vendor member contract with Stevens Printing Inc. for printing services, JOC. Item 20, resolution authorizing an expenditure with Stevens Painting Inc. in the total estimated amount of $203,000. $166.41 for exterior painting of the Irving Arts Center. I got a question.

Yes. I just got a simple question. Are we just going to repaint it the same color? Just out of curiosity, because I was a little surprised when they first painted the Jack Huffman building. Yes, sir. It is the exact same color. Okay. All right. They want no surprise.

We ran out of the orange paint, Dennis, from the Huffman.

Okay. Resolution 20. I think I've already handled that one. 21, resolution approving the expenditure of Facility Solutions Group, Inc., in the total estimated amount of $129,759.00. for the installation of generator, communications tower, and related hardware. Item 22, resolution, approving the expenditure with Mart Inc. and the total estimated amount of $380,850 for the repair and remodel of Valley View Municipal Complex Building B locker rooms and Building A restrooms, JOC. Item 23, resolution approving the vendor member contract with National Works, Inc., and authorizing as needed expenditures in the total estimated amount of $750,000 for manhole rehabilitation, JOC. Item number 24, resolution renewing contract with HD Supply, Inc., DBA USA Blue Book in the total estimated amount of $142,000 for Vita-D-Chlor tablet supply. Item number 25, the resolution approving purchase from the Texas Kenworth Inc. DBA MHC Kenworth in the total estimated amount of $581,162.94 for a two 2026 Kenworth K370 cab and chassis with M&B paint body. Item 26, resolution authorizing the purchase from SHI Government Solutions, Inc. in the total estimated amount of $522,000 and $59.72. for Arista transport network switches. Item number 30, resolution renewing the contract with Comdex Consulting LLC.

All right, 27, resolution authorizing the purchase for Motorola Solutions, Inc.

The total estimated amount, $121,963.53 for 15 APXXE portable radios. Item 28, resolution. Yes. Okay, John.

Just a question on item 27. I imagine it's probably for Chad. So is this basically just kind of rounding us out on our Motorola offerings while we're getting twins set up?

No, sir. So the fire department, these are 15 radios for the fire department that is replacing aging handheld radios. The fire department has no desire to move away from Motorola for their actual handheld radios. They like them and will continue to support them in that way. So these are just replacing small ones.

Okay.

Very good.

Thank you.

Okay, 28, approving vendor member contract with Test Forces USA, Inc. for technology hardware equipment and products. Item 29, resolution authorizing the purchase from Test Force USA, Inc. in the total estimated amount of $240,397.96 for VAV services analyzers. Item 30, Resolution Renewing the Contract with Comdex Consulting, LLC, and Total Estimated Amount of $2,400,000 for Fiber, Hardware, and Components for the Two-Year Period. That ends those bids. At the end of the day, we're on to Item 31, Ordinance. Amending Chapter 8, entitled, quotes, Minimum Maintenance Standards, close quotes, of the Code of Civil and Criminal Ordinance of the City of Irving, Texas, by limiting the amount of time, doors, and windows of structures may be temporarily boarded. Item 32, Ordinance, First Reading. approving a negotiated settlement between Atmos Cities Steering Committee and Atmos Energy Corporation Mid-Texas Division regarding the company's 2026 rate review mechanism filing. Item 33, Ordinance Granting a Franchise to Waste Advantage Partners LLC for solid waste collection services beginning on August 27, 2026 and ending on August 26, 2029 pursuant to Chapter 33 of the Code of Civil and Criminal Ordinances of the City of Irving, Texas. Item 34, Ordinance Appointing Judges to the Irving Municipal Court. Individual consideration item.

Yes. We do have all three judges. They are here and present, just to acknowledge that item. Would we like to then introduce them? No, they're just here. They wanted you to be aware that they're here in the gallery. Okay, well, if you would stand up, please.

Okay. I guess we probably ought to ask them to... Okay, thank you very much. Thank you, Kayo. Okay, we're on to number 34, ordinance appointing judges to the Henry Municipal Court. We just met them. For those of you that may not know this, they've been on board for a while. So this is a reappointing process at this point. And if I'm not mistaken, it's for two years. Am I correct? Yes, that's correct. Okay, thank you. Okay, we're on to Individual Consideration Item 35, Ordinance. Public hearing and first reading and ordinance amending Chapter 33 entitled Refuse, Garbage, and Weeds, Section 33-33 and 33-34 of the Code of Civil and Criminal Ordinances of the City of Irving, Texas, providing the new solid waste services rates and fees. Item number 36, ordinance, public hearing and first reading. An ordinance amending section 41-57 of articles nine entitled municipal drainage utility system of chapter 41 entitled, quote, water and sewer system, close quotes, of the code of civil and criminal ordinance of the city of Irving, Texas. Setting a new schedule of drainage charges Item 37 ordinance public hearing and first reading an ordinance amending chapter 52 entitled water and sewer rates of the code of civil and criminal ordinances of the city of Irving, Texas providing a new monthly water and sewer rates and We're on to zoning cases, Jocelyn, but before you do that, Judge Acuna, would you introduce our other two judges with you? I'm trying to be a nice guy. What the hell is this? All right. Thank you. Jocelyn.

Just the work session, you got the work session right there. Yeah. There you go. All right, we have eight cases tonight. The first two cases. I think you have to talk really loud. The volume may not be up very well. The first two cases are companion cases. These are at 215 East Airport Freeway. The first one's a comprehensive plan going from regional commercial to mid-density residential. Staff recommended approval. P&Z was approval seven to zero. No letters in support and three in opposition. So this is here at Wingren and 183. It's an old hotel site that was demolished a few years ago. And then a good amount of property on the 183 frontage was acquired for the expansion of 183. It's a regional commercial now, currently. And here's pictures of the site. And then the zoning case is to rezone it from an independent living facility and assisted living to a multifamily residential for low density uses with many variances to allow for fences and setbacks along 183 and several along the 183 overlay and the multifamily standards. Staff recommended approval, PNC recommended approval seven to zero. There were no letters from support and three in opposition that equaled to almost 49% within 200 feet. However, the super majority vote does not apply for approval because of a recent state statute change. Again, here's the site. Future land use. Here's the opposition. So the property to the north is an existing multi-family complex. They were opposed basically because of supposed competition. And the neighbor, both the owner of 6 and 11 is the same. And they just had various concerns about some easements and access for area 6. And I'll describe those in just a second. So this is the formal SP2 site plan. It does have on the second page of the site plan will have all the variances. This is the concept plan that is tied to the site plan. They do have to build to this per Section 313. A few notable items on this, there will be 52 units. They do have three independent spaces for parking. That was one of the original concerns when it came through PNZ first is they didn't have any parking spaces. This one, there's a electric box, a pretty large electric box that feeds the property next door that was in opposition. And that was one of their concerns is having access to that electric box. They have a little clubhouse here, a ball court, some play area with playgrounds, a dog park. They will have a wall, an eight-foot wall along 183, which will provide for that dog park and some outdoor space. Another concern of the adjacent owner next door, who, again, also owns this corner property, was the easement that was remaining from the 183 property. acquisition, and so they did accommodate that within their concept plan. And then finally, along Wingren, there was some concerns about traffic on Wingren. This development can't fix some of those traffic flow issues, but what they did do is move their gate back so they can queue about five cars here. and also have separate lanes for the owners and for the visitors to try to keep the traffic moving through a little bit faster. So those are some of the major changes. This is multifamily because it's all one lot, but the intention is to sell each of the residential units, which are essentially some single family, some duplex, but to sell those individually as condos. Just the landscape plan, some of their intentions to plant trees along the property lines, shrubs in the middle, and that type of thing. And they will more heavily tree this open space here on 183. Part of the concept plan is doing a community framework, so this just shows where some of the facilities are that would service the site. They'll zoom in on their clubhouse plan with a volleyball court and some parking. They will have some of their amenities they're providing or a work center, a doctor's area, a gym, so they are meeting the amenities that are required in Section 313. And here's just some illustrative layouts of the residential units. Each unit will be providing a two-car garage, which is required in the multifamily standards, at least the number of spaces. So I'm not going to go through all these one by one. There are a lot. The first one is to allow low-density multifamily as a use in the 183 overlay. That is currently multifamily is not allowed in the 183 overlay. They had to get a setback and variance to the fence height in order to have that 8-foot masonry wall along the frontage of 183. And just some variable items in the Section 313 are the building height. Currently, it's an eight-story minimum. They will be two stories up to 20 feet. All of the units will be three-bedroom. They'll have just some variances to landscaping on the east side, a little bit of open space. Their amenities are not providing a pool. They will be providing the walking space, playground, and dog park, and their bicycle storage will be in individual garages. And again, some of the properties, or some of the pictures. And with that, I'll be happy to answer your questions.

Mark. Justin, I think for the queuing of vehicles, it's two lanes, five cars each? So it's ten altogether?

Yes, that was the intention, is to have one for the owners and one for the residents. Okay. And he says there will be a full-time guard or attendant here at the gate.

I know that was in response to the neighbor's concerns about queuing on Wingren. So 10 cars off the road, I think that was a good accommodation. And for the entrance point, there's still that little corner that's owned by Dr. K, I guess is his name.

Yeah, that's this property here. So he owns this property and then the property over here to the east.

So the little bit on the corner is just going to sit there kind of as a no man's land.

It's his prerogative to do with whatever he can.

Well, I mean, I watched the P&D meetings, and I was impressed that the owner was working with the neighbors, and there seemed to be a good dialogue there, and accommodations were reached, and it seemed to be a good product as a result of all that. And then for the height of it, it makes sense. You know, it's intended to be a retirement community. We can't control age restrictions as a city, but that's been something the community's been talking about is the need for senior living. Thank you.

Anybody? Oh, excuse me. Yeah, Adam. Thank you, Mayor. In fact, I was just going to say almost the same thing. Could you just maybe, for the residents around this one, could you just talk about how the owner has worked with the Neighborhood Association and give a little more context behind maybe the history of this parcel? It doesn't have to be extensive, but yeah.

Yeah, I wasn't in the meetings, so I don't know what was said. I do know that the Neighborhood Association did come to the first P&Z meeting where it was postponed, so we could continue to work through some of these items. And I believe they did communicate afterwards. And so probably some of these changes were a result of hearing them and understanding. A lot of the problems on Wingren are- far beyond what we can do here. There's just having maybe some de-cell lanes on 183. There's a lot of things that the city would love to, you know, have TxDOT help us with that aren't on the table right now. But those are, you know, beyond what this development would be able to take care of.

Yeah, I know that that intersection is...

It's a quick turn once you get off 183.

Yeah, it's a real mess. And I know it's beyond, like you said, it's TxDOT and there's a lot of other interests at stake in that intersection. So I am glad to see that they moved the entrance to this community a little further north down Wingern Road. And is there anything else that might, I guess we've already gone through the process of evaluating Maybe a separate exit on, I guess that'd be east?

They can't have access onto 183. That's prohibited. There's really no need to. There's no benefit to, and nor do I think the adjacent owners interested in having access here. Because it's over 30 units, they do have to have a second point of access for emergency services, and that's what the southern point is. So the only entry is here, but the exit is here and here, and fire will be able to get in here if they need to. But this is not going to be a primary access point, just an emergency point.

Okay. Well, yeah, I'm glad to hear that they worked with the neighborhood and the residents adjacent. So, yeah, thank you. Thank you, Mayor.

Okay. Anybody else? Thank you.

Next case is at 1701 Landmark. This is zoned R75, and its request is an SP for R75 for an accessory building with several variances. Staff recommends denial. Peensy recommends denial, 7-0. No letters of support and one in opposition, which is about 5% within 200 feet. So here's the site. It's just west of Loop 12 and a little bit north of 356. Residential. The opposition was from directly across the street. So this property, it was originally built, I don't know the year, but it was originally built as a garage. And somewhere, I believe the previous owner had converted it into a living unit. This was found because it was listed and being used as a short-term rental online. And so that's how it first came to be. I'll show you some pictures here in a second, and you've got them in your slides as well, of what the posting was for the unit. But... This was originally a garage which could be in this location. Once it converted into the accessory building, that's when some of these other variances got triggered. So the first request is to allow a guest quarters as an accessory use. The applicant specifically requested guest quarters in their application and therefore that is the way we processed it. An accessory building cannot be in front of the main residence. Again, a garage can but the accessory building cannot and so that is a variance. They need a variance for the side setback and the height. So they need about a 5 1⁄2 foot side setback variance and a 21 foot variance for height. Here's the floor plan. So there's an existing garage. You can see in the pictures their garage doors are still in place. Part of that is still used as a garage, and part of it had been converted, and it is a two-story, one-bedroom structure. So again, here's the two doors. This door appears to still be garage and this is the living area. We'll zoom in. So these are some pictures from the short-term rental listing. I don't know if they're dated, but this is what the building looks like apparently. The kitchen does not have a dishwasher, does not have a real, it looks like a little one cook stove here, but does not have a cooking unit, does not have an oven. It just has a small refrigerator and microwave in the upstairs bedroom. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Mayor. How is this different than an ADU, if I may? Because I see bathroom and I remember from my PNZ days that once you have a bathroom, that's ADU?

A guest quarters can have dwelling facilities. So a guest quarters is basically an extension of the house where your mother or your family or your friends or whatever can stay. But the thought is that person is welcome into your home, maybe has a key to your home, is going to eat with you, is going to watch the football game, is going to do something with you. Whereas an ADU is an independent unit. They live by themselves. You have no engagement other than maybe a financial engagement. But that's essentially the difference. And a full ADU, if you want to use that term, would have the full kitchen with the range and the cooking facilities and everything that would make it a full independent structure.

So theoretically speaking, we just have to take the applicant's word for it that this is a guest unit because it may be used as an ADU.

It's difficult to regulate activities, regulate who is actually in there. So that's why we process it as a guest quarters because that's the way they represent it.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you.

Okay.

Thanks. I got a couple of questions. I was trying to find it. So this originally was permitted as a garage. Did I read that right?

Yeah, it was permitted. The garage, the structure was permitted. I don't think by the date, but yes.

Okay. So the consequences of this being denied, what are they?

Essentially, just like we've had a few other ADUs, they would have to convert it back to a garage or a storage structure.

Okay. Does the owners know that, the applicant know that? Has anybody shared that with them?

We usually are very complete about telling them what their options are.

Did they express any, like, okay or a willingness to do that?

Usually they want to go through the process to see if they can keep it. Right.

Okay. Okay. Any other? Okay. Thank you, Chelsea.

Next case, 1310 West Pioneer. It's SP1 for drive-in restaurant. This is actually the old Sonic over on Pioneer. They want to go to just a straight C and neighborhood commercial district to rebuild a restaurant. Staff recommends approval. P&Z was approval 7-0. One letter of support and none in opposition. So again, here's the Sonic on Pioneer right next to Angelos. It's future land use commercial, several different zonings around it, mostly commercial. Again, it is the Sonic. They plan at this point, from what I understand, is to keep the structure. So they'll remodel the structure into a dine-in restaurant. So the parking will be based on their seating. So if they use some of the outdoor spaces patio seating, that will be counted toward their required parking. So it'll be up to them to just make sure that they are within the parameters of the requirements. Surrounding properties. With that, I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Questions? Okay.

All right. Next two cases are companion cases. The first one is the address of 4790 and 4800 Regent. The first one is a comprehensive plan, future land use change from business office to manufacturing warehouse. Staff recommended approval. P&Z was approval 7 to 0, no opposition or support. So this is up in the Freeport area. It's, as we all know, an area that's kind of in transition, has a variety of relatively permissive zoning districts, and that's why they're moving forward with this and requesting this change. The future land use as we, let me go to another map. In 2023, I'm sure you remember, those of you who were on council, we had a discussion on the future land use for the area. When we changed from business district to business office, we had proposed to take the majority of the Freeport area to manufacturing warehouse. It was discussed and requested that we more closely evaluate not just the zoning, but the uses on the ground. which pulled back to the business office, which is in the pink, and then the manufacturing warehouse, which is in the purple. So the site where the subject property is is in the green square. This is a map of the base zoning district. The lighter purples, so the darker purple is the ML districts, mostly the ML20 in this area. The lighter purples, the freeway districts, both of which allow both offices and a warehouse distribution use. The very, very light purple, like where the site location is, are the CL properties for commercial office. And this, the existing land use, mostly, again, the darker pink are the industrial uses, a lot of just small warehouse, and then the office uses in the lighter pink. A little comparison of the CO districts and the ML20 districts of the different uses. So the CO is what's in place today. ML20A is what they're requesting. So the future land use map, of course, today is the business office. And then for the zoning, they're requesting to rezone from commercial office, and there's a piece of it that's currently ML20A, and to take all of it to ML20A. Staff again recommends approval. Peensy was approval 7-0, no opposition or support. The site, future land use. Again, the base zoning, and that's the basis of staff's support, is that everybody, they're kind of a donut in the middle of it all. This is a SP2 for CO, but for the most part, the properties around it already have the entitlement for the warehouse distribution uses, and they were kind of an island, and so that's the reason the staff was in support. Again, the comparison. And there is a nursing school in there currently. The applicant does not intend to take down the building anytime soon. They just recently purchased it, so they're trying to just align their entitlements with the properties around them. So the nursing school, the applicant can say how long the lease is for. I believe they intend for them to stay as long as the nursing school wants to stay. pictures of the site, pictures in the area, and I'll be happy to answer your questions.

Mark? Jocelyn, so the owner doesn't have any intentions at this point to change the use. What's prompting the request at this point? Any idea?

I think they just, since they purchased it, they just want to have their entitlements be consistent with what's around them. And then if somebody, like they own the two office buildings, the reason the one on the south is included is because they, for some reason, the zoning line goes through the middle of the property. They were talking about somebody who wanted to office here and then maybe expand their distribution up onto this property. That's not a done deal, but that was a thought. I think they just wanted to have a consistent entitlement with the surrounding uses. They can tell you a little bit more, but that's what we were told. Okay. Okay.

Mayor, may I? Yes, come in. I had a brief conversation with them. They do plan on repurposing it.

Okay.

All right. I think this is our last case. 2305 West. I'm going to get two more. 2305 West Northgate. It's an SP2 for R6 single family and professional office. Wants to go to neighborhood commercial. Staff recommends approval. P&Z approval 7-0. No opposition or support. This is the corner piece here at Northgate and Story. Once you see the pictures, it's topographically challenged, and that's why nothing has been built here yet. Even the single family obviously hasn't moved forward, so it's going to be tough to develop. But it is, on a map, a good site for just a typical local commercial use. So it is future land use. It's business office, but it does allow the zoning district. And so here's the map. They'll have to do some severe grading and some major retention walls. And they'll have to really work with this and work with the city and the floodplain and make sure they can develop the site. And then the single family is zoned and platted here. But again, it's been more of a challenge. And just the properties to the north, east, and south. And I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Questions? Okay. All right.

This is our last case. It's a fence plan case, 614 Lexington. It's a single family zone district. They are just wanting to do an eight-foot fence within the 15-foot side yard of a reverse frontage lot. Staff finds it does not meet the criteria listed in Section 1517. P&Z recommended approval 7-0, one letter of support and none in opposition. So here's the site just south of Pioneer. And so, again, by right, and the reason this is a trigger is because the house to the south faces Wells, faces the side road, and therefore it's the front yard of that house. They can build the fence on the 15 foot setback, but they want to build it just four feet from the property line. And so that's their request, is to be able to build their fence within that 15 foot required setback. And there are some criteria in Section 1517 about violating the intent, whether it adversely affects properties, and whether special conditions exist and staff did not find there was anything special on this site that did not allow them to meet the ordinance. And this is the subject house. So here where the chain link fence is currently is they will just replace the solid fence on the same site. in the adjacent house. So this is the property line of the neighbor. It's already pretty grown up and so we always look at visibility to see if that's going to be an issue. They talked about a corner clip maybe at P&Z but it was determined that wasn't necessary and the neighbor doesn't seem to have a problem with visibility. And just some of the surrounding properties, be happy to answer any questions.

Yep. Mayor, thank you. Jocelyn, you know, we get these reverse setback a lot. Is there something we can do to kind of get these moving a little bit quicker than not going through this process?

So by ordinance, these are required to be special offense plans through that process. If you want to do the same thing like you did with carports and send them through the Board of Adjustment as a special exception, we would have to do an amendment, but that could be done.

Okay. Thank you. That's going to be a future agenda item for P&D.

It is. It is, yeah. Well, we're not proposing anything there. We're just talking about the regulations. Yeah.

Okay. Excuse me. Dennis? Are we through? I got a question back on 132C landmark, just a question.

Okay.

So the guest house, what has to come out of this for it to not be considered a guest house and basically could just simply be a garage?

They would, for it not to be a dwelling unit, they would have to take out, so you can have no more than two rooms to be a dwelling unit. So they have to take out walls. They'd have to take out the shower. So, you know, in a storage structure, you can have a sink and you can have that type of thing. That's not a problem. But the showers, the issue, closets, the bedrooms, it just would be a very large storage structure.

Okay. Yeah, because I think it's important for the applicant to know You know, what options they have and how far they have to go to make this go back to a garage without having to just completely gut the whole thing.

They'd have to gut most of it.

Okay. Go ahead.

Go ahead, Mayor. I'm only referencing back to the P&Z because I remember something similar. And they had put a bathroom, and we just had a problem with that, that there's a bathroom that's what's making it ADU. In this case, if they remove the bathroom, keep the sink, could they not make it their recreation room? If they keep the walls, because I think they have two rooms, right?

They have this living room downstairs, and then upstairs is the bedroom. So...

Two-story? It's two-story.

Yeah, there's stairs going up and stairs going down. So I'm trying to see if in the... Yes, on page 34 of the agenda packet. So dwelling accommodation is a kitchen that has a dishwasher, oven, stove, or range, which it doesn't have any of those. Indoor bathtub or shower, so you can have the toilet and the sink, you just can't have the shower. The built-in HVAC, natural gas in more than two rooms, and then a closet in any room. So that is what a dwelling unit is. So they would have to take things out so it's no longer a dwelling unit.

So if they made upstairs, theoretically, they made upstairs a storage unit and used downstairs as a recreation space, do they have to take the wall down or they can reclassify upstairs as storage?

I mean, sometimes people will use a yoga room or an office or something, so it can still be an accessory building to their house, but then all those other variances to height and setbacks and location in the front of the main house, those variances still have to be granted. So even if you don't grant the guest house allowance to where it has the bedroom and the shower and everything, you'd still need for that structure to remain as an accessory structure would still need those variances.

That's an existing structure, right?

As a garage, it's an existing structure.

All right, thanks.

Okay. Any further questions? That completes, I think, your presentation, Dawson, at this time. Item number 46, resolution of reappointment to the Dallas County Flood Control District number one. And this item was recommended by the Secretary's office, the impact. of the city council appoints three of the five members to the Dallas County flood control district number one. The flood control district number one board recommend the reappointment of board member Donna Leipzig. Okay, that concludes these items. I guess we'll move on to our agenda items per stated, Chris. And... Excuse me. Was there any other comments? Okay. At this point, we're going to move into City Hall remodel update. Am I correct?

Yes, sir. We have Ashley coming up to give Council an update on our City Hall remodel.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Council Members. I'm Ashley McDaniel, the Assistant Director of the Capital Improvement Program Department. And I'm here to talk to you today about the current status of the city hall remodel plans that we've been working on. So I'm going to go over all the plans and the update and then open it up for discussion, sir. So what we're facing right now with our remodel is a overwhelmed city facility. It breached its design capacity in 1990, and they moved county operations out at that time to make it work. Currently, we're housing 360 personnel in a city hall that was designed for 300. even with us moving our communications and HR teams out. The anticipated growth for City Hall over the next 10 years should reach around 400 personnel. And this is support staff to accommodate the expansions of our public safety, necessary legal updates from the surveys that we've done for the staff. We're looking at a deficit of about 62,000 square feet simultaneously to accommodate the events that happen here along with the additional staff. We're looking at 218 parking space deficit Previously in our renovation plans, when we originally looked at this, we had a $20 million budget, and the plans we looked at with the number was to do the basement, the fourth floor, the ceiling grids on all floors, lighting on all floors. On the fourth floor, we were going to go to the CMO, comms, city secretary. Third floor, we were doing modifications to code enforcement and human resources. Second floor, we had some conference rooms to turn into offices. In the basement, the IT area was going to be converted into amenities, conference space, break room, and further IT offices. And then finally, we were going to update all the floors with their bathrooms. Going over the basement, as you can see, two-thirds of the entire floor, with the exception of the print shop, some storage, and our mechanical and electrical bays, was going to be renovated into vital amenities that we need for city personnel. The second floor renovation plan, because we were going to get the offices and the conference spaces in the basement, we were going to take two of the conference rooms and convert that into needed storage and office space. As most departments have had to take the existing storage space they had and turn that into offices, combining break rooms, storage, and work spaces into the same areas. On the third floor, we were taking the southeast corner of the building where human resources is exiting, and that's going to become the new IT space as we move personnel from the basement to that floor to accommodate their growth. And in addition, on the northwest corner, with the brand new and lovely conference space we're gonna have in the Huffman building. We're gonna take that and provide it with some small renovations to code enforcement so that they can house their offices in there. The fourth floor, our initial concept saw us doing renovations to finance the old comms space, city manager and city secretary's offices The new plans that we've had to adjust for that have changed a bit. Then bathroom renovations. The old existing bathrooms on all five floors would be updated. Unfortunately, due to critical structure updates, leaks, and other things, we've had to use about $600,000 of the $20 million for building operations between HVAC electrical roofing envelope and plumbing replacements. The new plan that we're going to be using with the money is a like for like code only required and necessary system updates. I want to stress these are not comprehensive and they will address only some of our issues. The first and most important is the HVAC replacement. We're looking at $11.65 million to do a full system update for that. Pull out all the old systems and replace it with a new modern standard. One of the reasons we're doing this is, as I said in my strategic presentation, we can't do a piecemeal approach as the system is already at the end of its lifespan and it has been discontinued for manufacture of both the Freon that's used as well as the systems.

The fire panels, they are currently a

hodgepodge that has been worked out over time, over the last 50 years that the building has been in place. Many of the components don't properly communicate with each other and it's difficult to add or adjust them as we do building renovations. So the plan is to bring the fire panel and the fire protection systems up to code. The roof refurbishment. The City Hall roof has reached the end of its lifespan, but it would cost about $2 to $2.2 million to do a full roof replacement. If we spend somewhere between $350,000 to $550,000, we can buy ourselves another five to seven years with the existing roof. We've identified necessary garage, plumbing, and electrical repairs that need to be done, which is in the amount of $850,000. Unfortunately, due to these critical system repairs and replacements that we're going to have to do, it has left us only about $5.15 million in funding to be able to do the initial planned renovations. As such, the plan is to just move IT to the third floor, do the limited system upgrades, and bathrooms on all five floors. Third floor renovation plan, focusing only on the IT space and what we need to get the field offices into cubes, plus the bathroom renovation. The fourth floor, instead of doing a full renovation in the space, we're going to take the space that comms has moved out of and we're looking at possibly moving IPO or another small team into their space and just doing a minor refresh of the area instead using the existing floor plan and the existing offices. The things that we're not going to be including in this is ceiling grid, the lighting, anything else. As I've said previously, the ceiling grid and the ceiling tiles are a system that's no longer been manufactured in years. The plan that we're going to use is as we need new spaces, we'll find the money to replace them. We'll take the tiles and the grid from those spaces, essentially cannibalizing them to use around and as replacement in attic stock. The most critical parts of these infrastructure failures is, as I've said, the original 1976 post-tension garage has entered what we refer to as a patch fail cycle. We're looking at somewhere between $1 to $2 million annually so that it can remain functional in the spaces that we need. The original HVAC system, as I've touched on, we're looking at as a high priority replacement, especially when we have Texas summers like this. The electrical plumbing and IT infrastructures are well beyond their expected lifespans and present immediate high operational risks. Some of the examples of this would be that we have a sewer pump directly below our IT server room. We have old conduit that's been pulled and we need to get it fixed before it causes further issues with the building. We estimated that it's going to be somewhere around $30.47 million to replace and restore the fundamental operational baseline of all of the systems. We're going to be spending $14.65 million in this project, which is going to leave a $15.82 million deficit that we're going to need to work out for replacing the rest of the systems before and as they fail. The key takeaways of this presentation that I'd like is the original plan included needed amenities and quality of life improvements, the bathrooms, the basement, the lighting, the ceiling. These are all items we need for both retention and recruitment of employees compared to what other businesses as well as municipalities are offering their personnel. The reduction in project scope is due to us doing the best we can with the funding that is available. An important item to note is that neither our current plan nor our current plan are going to adequately address the city hall space requirements that we do need. And in many cases such as the roof, this is a temporary solution to buy us time with this facility. A final item I included in this is, as we spoke about, was looking at all the plans and what's available. So this chart shows us three additional options, purchasing and operating a new building, a Class A office building, building a new city hall, or doing the renovations that were identified in the 2022 study. As we say many times, the cheapest time to do anything was yesterday. The second cheapest time to do anything is now. If we are looking at purchasing and operating a new building, we're looking at about $60 million in revenue, rising to somewhere between $76 to $95 million over the next 10 years. Renovating City Hall, and this is adding additional annex space, constructing a new building to go along it to assist. It's gonna start at about $113 million, rising up to an average of $162 million over 10 years. And then, building a new city hall in the area we are looking at about 243 million dollars rising up to somewhere between 320 to 375 million dollars over the next 10 years with that available sir okay

In Marietta, if I may, real fast. Yes, go ahead, Chris. We're not looking for decision or determination. We're just providing an update on what money we have and how far it will go, or in this case, how far it's unfortunately not going to be able to go. Costs continue to rise, and options continue to get more expensive. So I just wanted to provide you that update, and we'll be happy to answer any questions.

Okay. Dennis, and then David.

So when I look at this chart, see these three options, I personally definitely know the new city hall is out for the most part. I mean, realistically, without a bond package.

And, Dennis, just as a note, when we were putting together those estimates three years ago, it was at $200 million. Right. And it's gone up about 20-some-odd percent just in the last three years. And that's what we had generally anticipated and estimated when we were talking about it back then. It's just going to continue to go up.

Yeah, the reality of it is we can put a Band-Aid on this sore, and we're going to have to rip it off two or three years later to try to fix it again. I don't like wasting money. And I think we as a council and city leadership, we need to decide what we're going to do, and then we all need to just do it. And I know we can't decide for the voters if they decide to vote down bonding, but we need to figure out a way how to either put an annex onto this bond building, which is what I have always advocated, build a new annex, add space, new space somewhere, add another parking garage or parking whatever, but to just put a lot of money on fixing something temporarily that we are going to have to fix five years from now at an even higher price makes no sense to me. So I really would like for us to explore that second option of an annex onto this piece of property to get the extra space we need. When you talk about buying a new property, I mean, where would you buy that building at other than up in Las Colinas? And you know that's not going to fly with the residents. So I would really suggest that we do look at trying to figure out how we put an annex onto this building to get that extra space and technology that we need. And that's where I stand on it. David.

Thank you, Mark. We're good. Are you good? Mark.

Well, yes, you have the chart there, so acquiring a new office building seems to be the most economical, and it's also the most effective, I think, as far as serving the needs for space. And as far as when you consider that either substantial renovations, a whole new redo here would be needed in order for the building to be functional. When you consider that there is probably offices available further north, then I think that is a good option. And as far as community engagement, I hear what you're saying, Dennis, as far as some members of the community would always want to keep the city hall located here. But when you consider people like in Valley Ranch or further north, you look at the accessibility of a city hall, then having it centrally located would be very beneficial for the city as a whole. So those are my comments.

Okay. Chris, do you want to make an argument on your part? Which one do you think?

No, we're going to continue to look at and review options, and we're going to try and hit all the couch cushions to see what dollars we can pull together. At this point in time, we're just going to continue on our renovation approach with City Hall. Okay. Okay. Go ahead.

Okay. We can't keep kicking this can down the road, okay? I've been on here where we've kicked cans down the road, you know, and even any kind of plan, it's going to be probably a couple of years or so even before you can do it maybe. But if we don't start planning now, we can get two years down the road and then we start planning for some two years later. So at some point, you know, I mean, trust me, these things need to be done, you know, these renovations. But that's not going to solve this problem that we have with this old building that's not large enough. And we've got to start coming up with some kind of vision, plan, or whatever to do something. We just can't just say, okay, we'll just go ahead and fix what we've got now and then. We'll forget about it then. Two or three years from now, we'll have another presentation about how we need to add more space and fix something. And then we'll say, well, we'll just kick the can on down the road some more. And we need to stop kicking the cans and make some hard decisions and do something that we know needs to be done.

John. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Ashley, for the presentation. Ashley or Chris, as you were looking at these numbers and not looking at an option to recommend, but just putting the numbers together, were you looking also at the costs associated with an annex on this property?

Yes, sir, we have.

Yeah, I remember that, I imagine. Yeah, I remember that Komatsu originally had that.

That was 100 million, and then Komatsu, that did include the annex piece. It was just under 100 million. A little bit higher than that now, I think it was 113, 115 million, somewhere around there.

Yes, sir. And that's why I brought this. This was one of the options, the option I put on, that was the 113 million. That was this option with the revised cost to give us the additional annex as space. And that was how we were going to get the space, sir.

And this slide was the original Komatsu estimate, and it's roughly 20% higher now?

Yes, sir. Okay.

Yeah, I mean, looking at the numbers, Dennis is right. Well, I think it was Mark that was saying it. Yes, but you said different things. Mark is right that the 60 makes the most sense. Realistically, looking at buying another building, that does mean law schooliness. That's going to be a bridge too far for me supporting that, but the numbers aren't wrong. So I think we do need to stop kicking this can down the road, though. I do agree with Councilman Webb on that. But I guess you're not looking for policy direction here, are you?

We're just looking for input and thoughts and perspectives. If I can, Mayor, just maybe walk through with Council just some of the financial considerations. Chris, hold on a second. Adam's got a point. Oh, I'm sorry.

Oh, no worries. Just if we did move City Hall, acquire new property, in that scenario, what happens to this property? And is there any consideration to making this like a strategic – you know, a high-quality center for downtown or the Heritage District, something like that. Like, could we consider some kind of backfill at this location in with the strategy for the City Hall funding or something like that?

Yes, sir. When we went out... Okay, Chris, go ahead. Thank you, sir. When we went out with the question to the voters if they wanted to build a new city hall. We had identified as the location of that the property that we own in between Irving Boulevard and Second Street, just on the other side of the Delaware Creek here. The question was at the same time, the same question that you have now, Adam, is what would we do with this property? The thought was, and what we presented to the residents back then, was that we would turn this into a mixed-use development type of concept that would be adding in whatever that eventual vision would be, whether it would be living units, commercial, office, some sort of mixed use. I think there was some public space. There had been some initial general very broad thoughts, but nothing too detailed. But the thought and the idea would be that we would look to turn this into a development that would help benefit downtown, whatever that final vision would be. From a financing perspective, there's a couple of constraints that I think would be helpful for council to know just from the dollars perspective and what sources of funds that we would have for any of these scenarios. It used to be that cities would issue certificates of obligations or COs to build city halls or if they were resident-approved, GOs. A session or two ago, the state legislature took out the ability of city halls and I believe it was also courthouses, if I remember correctly. I'm looking for Mark. Maybe Mark can confirm that. But I think there was two facilities in particular. The list was huge that they wanted to not use COs for, and I think it got narrowed down to just not using COs for city halls and court buildings. There's a continuous discussion down at the state legislature to, again, Expand that list of what CEOs cannot be used for So if we were to build a new City Hall At the current estimated of 243 million we would have to go out and ask the residents To approve of a general obligation bond. We tried that and the residents overwhelmingly said no don't do that If we move forward on the renovation and the annex I I would have to get with legal to see if, because that is a renovation and maybe just an addition of some space, I'd want to confirm with KO and our bond council just to make sure that that's not necessarily a new city hall, but that we could potentially use COs for that. But in either scenario, whether it's building new or renovating, We're going to have to use bond dollars to be able to do that, or we just accumulate $243 million in cash or $113 million in cash by next year, and we can go ahead and move forward on that. We don't have that cash. We don't have those options. So we would have to go out there and borrow the dollars. As we've talked about with a lot of other things, at the current tax rate and with what the current authorizations already are that the residents have approved in the last bond package, Our CIP dance card, as I like to say, is full for the next five to six years. There's no capacity to add in any additional projects unless you didn't then want to do the current projects that the voters have already authorized and identified, and we've made a commitment to completing and finishing in 10 years. So that would be the tradeoff. So from a funding perspective, especially on the new city hall, Dennis, to your point, unless we go out and ask the voters again for a geo-authorization to build a new city hall, I don't see that as a financial option. It's just not possible to do. And if the voters have already said no, I believe that that is exactly what they said. Don't build a new city hall. I don't think it would be appropriate at this time to go out there and ask the voters again because they've told us very adamantly that they did not support that. So I think we're really at option two or three. Do we renovate or do we look to maybe purchase and operate something else? And we'll continue to look at each of those options, but right now we have some immediate needs, the HVAC issues, the roof issues, the patch and fail with the parking garage, and unfortunately we're the manufacturers that made all of those pieces of equipment and just the general age of the Equipment itself, it's making it difficult to find the replacement parts, etc. So we're just going to have to build brand new. When you get a building that's 50 years old, any building, whether it's a city hall, an office building, even a home, eventually what you have to do is you just have to go in and you have to completely redo all the basics and all the foundation. It's just most things are built that last about 50 years. So whether it's plumbing, electrical, garages, roofs, and at times you have to go down to sort of the bare studs and sort of rebuild everything and put in all new electrical. If you could see the rat's nest that is the electrical in this facility, just over 50 years of adding computers, et cetera, that this building was just not designed for when it was built because that just didn't exist back then. Our teams have done a great job maintaining it. It's doing a great job. It's been doing a great job. But eventually, at some point in time, you just have to make a major investment in the facility just to make sure it lasts the next 20, 30, 40, or 50 years. We're just at that stage. It's just the age of the building and where we're at. Okay. I got it.

Yeah, go ahead. So as I sit and think about it, and... And I don't want you to give me any locations or anything, but do you think there are some possible buildings in our city that we could look at purchasing to be a new city hall? Because when you look at the costs and, you know, and I'm one of those who, you know, I mean, city hall is like six minutes from my house, so I've been kind of selfish, you know, when you start talking about moving it, right? Yeah. Really, when you really look at wisdom, and I agree with you on this one, Mark, when you really look at the wise thing to do when you look at your city, I mean, when City Hall was built, half of what's passed, probably 114, wasn't even there. But now you do have another city basically past 114, so you might have to take into consideration that you might have to relocate your City Hall further north to get not only the facility that you need, save the money you need, but then also be fair and equitable to all citizens of the city. So, you know, I could live with, I know I've got to run for election next year, so, you know, but it ain't going to bother me one way or the other, you know, how they vote. But, you know, at the end of the day, I think the wise thing to do is possibly look at what's going to be the most economical and wise thing to do overall for the long run is to possibly look at trying to find another building.

Dennis, I think maybe one of the better ways to answer your question would be the city did just purchase for its police and fire the new headquarters, and we purchased an existing building. It was 260,000 square feet, and we were fortunate enough to pay $100 a square foot, so we paid $26 million for an office building. That would probably be the best example.

How many total square feet are we talking that you would need for a city hall today to meet the needs that we have and for the future?

Our best estimate, sir, is we're looking at 190,000 square foot is what we would need.

So we just purchased a building that has almost.

Thank you.

Okay.

Yes, sir. 70,000 square foot more than what we're looking for.

Wow. And police and fire have already claimed all that, by the way.

I say kick them out.

Well, let me make a comment because, Dennis, you're making sense. Okay. Can you believe that?

Take a picture of this.

See what happens when you become a mayor? Anyway, it is right. Let me say one thing. If this building was built by Ian Pye, we'd have a different decision process. Just look what's happening in Dallas. That is not the case. So I'm prepared to tell you right now, not even kicking the can, I want to stomp it flat. Get rid of it. Done. So what are our options? And then there are some things that I think we need to really consider. Obviously, I don't want to call it just a new city hall. Maybe it ought to be called something that's more multi-purpose in nature in the common. That means a planning process. Jocelyn, you ought to be all over this right now. So number one. Number two is a new building, period. Because when you look at the life of it and the return on investment, God, Luis, I'm sounding like you, ROI. I'm serious. I want to eliminate the can. Let's get rid of it. I don't know how we do it here, but it's done. Focus on a new vision of what we want to be known at Irving. And location will be helpful. And if it's up north or halfway, one of the things I liked about Hidden Ridge, as we looked at that building, It's exactly center of the city from south to north, east, west. So it says something. And it's between major arteries. So I'm giving you my insights, my thing, where I'm at. I think that if you're in agreement, I'd like to have us, and I really think we need to look at what's the vision. Where do we want to go with this? It's not about, oh, well, we're leaving South Irving. We're not leaving anywhere. We're going somewhere. So I think that's where I'm looking at. New building, potential. If we have one that can fit, then guess what? We ought to think about what's going to go in there, what's going to be part of it, and then move on with it. So that's my point. So for what it's worth. Anybody else want to have any comments at this point? All right, Chris, get with your guys. Yeah, Mayor, I'll talk for a little bit.

But thank you. Yeah, it is at the very center of Irving where we're moving the fire and police headquarters. You can see the map right there, and it's a good point to the center of it. I think the other thing is, you know, looking at downtown Irving, and we've been talking about redevelopment since 1970, since I was born here. And if we look at moving from this building to a new building, we have a major piece now that we own major properties, which in the past we really haven't. And that's to me is a big spur for down here that we can actually do something on our terms rather than asking everybody to go redevelop a lot of buildings that frankly need to be torn down. But we can go out there and really look at it for a better fiscal for the city, a newer building, plus really look downtown and do something special down here that we haven't been able to really accomplish other than our streets look beautiful. I mean, we're primed for it, but we just need to get that next step going. So I think there's a lot of strategic things we could get done in one fell swoop.

Okay, Abdul.

Is next door to 901 available?

That building? I don't believe it's listed for sale, no, sir.

Okay, well, I think we... Stomp this cat. We got rid of one. Let's see. But it's really about our vision of where, you know, let me say something to you. I'm going to be doing my first State of the City in January. And I've played with the theme, and I'm going to kind of let you know what I'm thinking. It doesn't mean we've set it up, but honoring the past, building to the future. That's where my head is and that's what we're playing with. So think about that where we are as a city council and where we have an opportunity to kind of move into the future. The next 250 years, I'm not sure, 50, maybe 200. But let's try to do something that is really visionary. Let's, you know, we talk about what we want to have down in the stadium site. I mean, we've got some real opportunities to really come out of the I guess I want to call a shadow. So that's my input for what it's worth. Unless anybody else, anything else? City Manager, try to bring us a vision, would you? With the new location, new whatever, and let's see what we come up with. Because it doesn't make any sense to dump more money in this tired building, okay? Okay, thank you. All right, let's move on. I think we're on to the water, number five, water and sewer fund overview.

Todd, I don't know if the microphone is on, sir.

Can you hear me?

Are we good?

Okay, I'm gonna talk about the Water and Sewer Fund, cover a number of different topics. So I'll talk briefly just about our department in general, and then I'll jump into the fiscal year 27, what our operating expenses look like, our CIP for water and wastewater, our operating revenues, which are based on our proposed rates that we talked about here about a month ago. I'll cover the rates, also cover a little bit of the benchmarking, and I want to talk a little bit about payment processing, something we're seeing some increases in cost and have some thoughts about how to handle that as we move in the future. So our department, we have three different utilities. We have a water supply, which I think most of you all are very familiar with. We're delivering water from East Texas to Lake Louisville. We also deliver water for the Ebertrini Regional Water District and all of their customers. And each of these utilities that we have, each of them has their own expenses and their own revenues. We have a water distribution system for distributing drinking water to all of our customers, all of our pumps and tanks you see throughout the city, and then our wastewater collection, collecting that wastewater and then ultimately sending it on to TRA. And just put a little bit of a list here. It's not everything, but these are the major facilities that we all operate and maintain. We have 17 pump stations between water and wastewater, 1,500 miles of pipe. 19 storage tanks, and a whole lot of other stuff, manholes, valves, hydrants, etc. And we complete our mission with 181 full-time employees. So just a couple of quick things before I jump in the budget. We are an enterprise fund, so that makes us a little bit different than some of the other city departments. And that all of our revenue comes from the rates and fees that we charge our customers. We don't receive any tax revenue strictly based on the services that we're providing. And so when we set the rates up, we have to make sure the revenues are going to be high enough in various weather conditions to exceed our expenses. And so that's part of the rate setting process. Couple other key things when we meet with our bond rating agencies once a year, they wanna see that we have extra revenues are generated from our rates. And so one of the key things is cash reserves, making sure we have 120 days of operating reserves available at all times. And that's come in handy. We've had some major emergency repairs in the past. I can remember several of them that were 5 million plus where we had to have some cash to get through that. And also occasionally we'll get a really wet year where we need some extra cash to help us get through the year as well. So it gives us some flexibility. And then debt coverage, they want to make sure we have additional revenues coming in above and beyond what our annual debt payment is. So not just meeting that with a one-to-one in terms of revenue and what we owe, but a 1.8 times additional revenue over what our debt payment is each year. The benefit of that is it gives us some extra cash that we can turn around and invest in our infrastructure, as we'll talk about here in a minute. So these are the major categories in our budget. O&M, what you would expect, salaries, benefits, materials, power, those types of things. Capital, which is going to be our annual debt service from bond sales. We actually have some annual cash-funded projects as well. We call that non-bond CIP. And then contracted treatment services, we call those pass-through costs because those are costs we're contracting for treatment for wastewater and water through TRA and through Dallas, and we pass those costs directly on to our customers. So this is what those categories look like, and it's been a third, a third, a third roughly for quite a while. The one that's growing, you can see in yellow, is TRA, wastewater treatment. It's getting really expensive to treat wastewater, and it's going to continue that trend in the future. But this slide shows our overall expenses that we're projecting, $158 million. About a third of that's going to be capital, and again, that's going to be our debt, service, annual payment, and our cash-funded capital. And what you see in green, that's our O&M. And you can see our salaries and benefits are only 11% of our overall budget. So this table here takes those same categories, and you can see what we have in the current budget, fiscal year 26, and then what we're projecting for 27. You can see the dollar change and percent change. Salaries and benefits, we talked about that at the budget retreat. We've got a COLA proposed and some insurance increases. Supplies, utilities, outside services, a couple things driving that. All the materials that we buy, whether it's pipe, valves, fittings, meters, everything, just with inflation continues to creep up in cost. We also have an increase to fund an upgrade to our billing software this year as we need to move to a newer version. The bill payment processing costs are going up, which I'll talk about a little bit more at the end of the presentation. And then just some additional costs for some equipment out at the Lake Chapman Pump Station as well as some of our other pump stations. You can see the changes in the transfers. That comes from our finance department. That's for services that other departments are providing our utilities. Debt service, non-bond capital is going up a little bit as we try to keep up with inflation. And then you'll see wholesale water actually went down a little bit this year. That was a little surprising, but if you go back and look at the previous couple of years with Dallas, I think we were up 15 to 20%, so this is really just kind of evening out some of the increases we've had in the past. And then TRA is a little better than what we thought at 3.4%. If you look at the projections the next five years, it's going to get back into the 6 to 10% range, but a little bit of a break this year. So this shows a pie chart with our capital program, and it's roughly a third wastewater mains, a third water mains, and a third what I say miscellaneous, that's tank work, metering work, pump station work, et cetera. And the key thing to point out here is about 42% of our capital program is cash funded. So the good thing about that is we sell less bonds, and it helps keep our overall bond cost in check. So water system CIP, I'm not going to go into detail for all this, but certainly answer any questions you might have. But it shows that our capital program this year is about two-thirds water and about a third wastewater. You'll see funding for water main replacements, road of the future projects where we're replacing utilities along with those road projects. The next couple, those are water master plan projects, and then you'll see some tank projects every year, and then we've got some meter replacements and our EMI project, which is a big effort for us that's coming up here this fall, something we're working on right now. Wastewater a little simpler, but still mainly pipe projects. I'd say the big one to highlight is our lower Delaware Creek pipe replacement. That's a system that we've been working to replace over the last 10 years. This is one of the last segments to work on. And this will be multiple projects. This is the first phase of that at 6 million. Revenues again are designed to match our expenses and so you'll see most of our revenues are going to come as I mentioned earlier from the rates that we charge our customers so you'll see the big black and blue that's our water sales and then what you see in green that's from the rates we charge to collect and ultimately treat the wastewater. Also some other revenues you'll see there's a little bit of revenue coming in from Upper Trinity for transporting their wastewater. And that'll grow a little bit as we bring Lake Ralph Hall online here in the next few years. So moving on to the rates, this is the five-year plan and we're in year four of that. It's tracked really well. A little bit surprised that it's tracked as well as it has. We've either stayed with the rate that we projected or it's been a little bit below on the five-year plan. This year, we were supposed to be at 6.4. We're at about 5. And when I talk about rates, it's all based on meter size, the volume of water, the volume of wastewater. It's going to vary depending on what type of customer you are. Doesn't mean everybody is going to see a 5% rate increase. That's based on a 3 quarter inch meter. 10,000 gallons water, 8000 gallons sewer. And that's a benchmark that the Texas Municipal League puts out every year. That's that's what they compare utilities across the state with. So that's why we use that in our five year plan. And this just shows it broken down into water and wastewater. You can see a much bigger rate increase over the last four or five years, even going back before that on wastewater. If you go back 10 to 15 years ago, we'd gotten behind and allowed the wastewater rates to not rise along with the level of expenses. And so when that happens, the water utility has to help fund the wastewater utility. So we're trying to get that balance back out so that the wastewater rates actually fund the wastewater system, water rates fund the water system. And we're getting close on that. This just shows a few different examples of bills. And, again, it really depends on what type of customer you are as to what your rate increase would be. We have a lot of customers that are that first category, 3,000 gallons of water, 2,000 wastewater. These are going to be smaller homes, maybe somebody single or in the wintertime with no irrigation. So you can see that increase is a little less than $1, 3.5%. If you take our average customer, so if you take all the usage in the residential side, divide it by the number of accounts we have, that's where that next one comes in. So that's 12,000 gallons of water. This is an average over the entire year, 5,000 gallons of wastewater. You'll see what the increase is. It's a little over 4%. And I would say that's more typical of the next line, which is that TML average, the 5%. And then a customer that uses a lot more water in the summer, since the water rates aren't going up as much as the wastewater, you'll see that increase drops down to a little less than 4%. So a lot of variability just depending on how much you use and what type of customer you are. But I would say in general, the average is going to be between 4% and 5%. These are just some bill comparisons. I know we showed these to you a month or so ago when our great consultant was in, but this shows the minimal bill that we offer, and we try to keep this low for customers that really want to try to conserve and keep their bill low. You can see it doesn't go up much. It's a little less than $26 for a water and wastewater customer. Moving up in terms of volume, 10,000 gallons of water, 8,000 gallons of wastewater. This is a TML benchmark. It gets up around 107. And none of these projections are going to show increases for other cities. And I would suspect everybody on that list, their rates are going to go up this year. So we're still, you know, in the bottom bracket of that. And then if you look at what our typical customer really is, we are at the bottom of that benchmark. And then another benchmark Dallas does with all their customers. You can see we're right down there at the bottom with Dallas and Louisville and Carrollton. So we're down around $80 for that benchmark. And you can see the high up there is up around $200. So big difference. So now we've got just a couple of slides left. I want to talk about payment processing since that's something that we're seeing some issues with. And if you go back 10, 15 years ago, most of our customers were paying by cash or paying by a check. And over time, with our changes in our billing system and capability, we've been able to add a lot of different ways for customers to pay. Credit card, PayPal, Venmo, ACH. I know now I think we have Apple Pay, Google Pay. I mean, it goes on and on. It just seems to grow and grow. And so you're seeing a lot more customers take advantage of these alternate payment methods, which is a good thing. We want to be flexible and provide this, but there is a cost with that. So we have a payment processing vendor that's under contract, and their contract is coming due in the spring, and so we're starting to look at that and see if there's some things that we want to address with that. And you can see here that the fees are tracking actually at a faster rate than what the number of transactions that we see are. And part of the reason of that is we're seeing a lot more people take advantage of these rewards cards. And we get hit with a higher fee if it's a rewards card versus, I'd say, a regular credit card. And there's a different term for that, but that's essentially what it is. So if it's a transfer out of your checking account or let's say one of the more typical cards, I think we pay $1.59 a transaction. If it's one of those other cards, we pay 2.95% of the total bill, which is what you're seeing here. We're seeing a lot more commercial customers essentially pay by credit card than what we used to see. So right now we don't have any limitations on the number of transactions per account per month and we have no limitations on the maximum payment limit per account per month. One of the things that we are seeing, we'll have customers, because they get points by increasing the number of transactions per month, they may have 20 transactions to pay a $50 bill. So we'll get lots of $1 transactions, and every transaction costs us $1.59. So obviously that's not a... a smart way to do business. So we're looking at bringing that down to a maximum of four transactions per account every 30 days to try to limit some of that. The other thing is we're seeing, like I mentioned, a lot of commercial accounts paying by credit cards. We have some as high as $100,000 a month paying by credit card. And we get hit with essentially $3,000 for a credit card fee for that. looking at what other cities are doing, trying to benchmark and get more information. I think all utilities are starting to deal with this. Excuse me, but looking at should we set a limit of, you know, a maximum of 10,000 dollars for payments or 15,000 or some other number, you know, what does that look like? And, again, obviously we want everybody to pay. Credit cards are convenient. But the fees are continuing to go up and up and up and just trying to look at a way to make it fair and still allow these different ways to pay. But really, you know, what should the rules be on this?

And right now we really have no rules.

You'll see some credit cards that will limit payments to $25,000, but some will allow even higher than that. So what we'd like to do is we're collecting information on all this right now, so we'd like to get all that information, come back and share that with you, look at some different options. We can talk about what other cities are doing, but try to make some changes with a new policy to try to rein some of this in. But really just for today, I just wanted to make you aware of it. It is something that we've seen go up quite a bit. If you look at this in 10 years, we've gone from processing fees of $250,000 a year to $1.5 million. So it's a pretty big increase. And with that, I'd be glad to answer any questions you might have.

Questions? Mark? No, I agree to getting ahead of it and seeing what other cities are doing. I mean, we shouldn't allow that, so. It's all about the miles on credit cards now.

Yeah. That's why they're doing it, and you'll get very large charges.

I don't know what the standard is. You know, whether you can just, like, not allow credit cards for commercial accounts or...

There's a couple different options of maybe capping the amounts that we could put on there. There's a number of different options we can look at and come back to you all on some different... And you're going to benchmark other cities?

Yeah. David.

Yeah, I capped everything at $2,500 when my company... I recently just had a restaurant had a credit card fee instead of cash, and I thought that was not allowed by the credit card companies, but evidently it is now. So, you know, if they want to use a credit card, charge them fees over a certain amount, too, as an option, but that's a tremendous amount of money we're paying in fees to a transaction where these sophisticated companies can send ACH or check just as easily, so.

All right. I think Fahad was on first.

I'll try. Fahad was on first. Thank you, Mayor. It's completely norm now to pay a processing fee. I don't remember paying any government entity a fee for my businesses, for tax resale, for utilities that have not paid processing fee. It's the new norm. Pass on the charge.

Thank you, Mayor. One notable exception I can think of off the top of my head is when you pay for your vehicle's registration every year, they charge you an extra dollar to do it with a card. Question about some of the alternate payment options. So like PayPal, Apple Pay, all of those, what kind of fees are we seeing on those? Are those generally lower, higher, average the same? No fees. What are those looking like?

I think I'm at Genesis to help me. But I think those are all the way our contract is written today. And that's all negotiable. I think those are all like $1.59. It's mainly these higher reward type cards, which is what everybody's using that are hitting us with when they jump into that different category, it jumps to 2.95% period. So you go from a small $1.59 to now you just pay a percentage of the bill.

Yeah, I mean, that's interesting that it would be that way, because I deal with payment processors a lot in my day-to-day, and typically when you move to the higher levels, it goes down. You know, so like the industry standard is 30 cents and 2.9 percent, and once you get Once you're processing over a certain amount, it drops down to first 2.7, then 2.5. That's the industry standard across every payment processor I've ever looked at. So it's interesting that the vendors in a captive market are reversing that. Just

And there are different ways. We can certainly look at that. Our contract with the current vendor expires in the spring, so we have a little bit of time. But we'll look at some different options, and we can talk about those. As you mentioned, there's lots of different ways. Part of it's a strategy as to how you set it up.

Absolutely. And I've worked with you guys long enough to know. You guys have the best interest of keeping taxpayer funding running. keeping that spending, being good stewards of that money. And so I have full faith in your department in choosing the best vendor. I was more commenting on just it's amusing to me that in the private market, they're competing for business, and in the public market, when you have more business, they're just taking more from you.

I will say in our industry, there's only a few people that typically bid on our type of work because you've got to integrate it into the billing software that we have, and a lot of them can't do that or don't want to do that. So it's usually the same two or three players that you deal with, even if you put it out for a bid. So here's some limited, I would say, on what we can reach out and look at compared to maybe a Different type of business.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you. Yes.

All right. Another thought just came to my mind based on what David was talking about is, you know, ACH, but then debit card. Debit card almost costs nothing. Again, like you said, it depends upon how you negotiate and stuff. I pay 50 cents flat for debit cards. So our cost for debit card is considerably less than and they still have a card in their hand that they can type in. So another just thought.

No, that's true. I think ours is less as well. Okay.

Let me ask a question. Because, you know, there's a lot of ways that you can actually see what's happening as far as, I mean, what happened with FIFA, people were coming from around the globe and they couldn't believe that they had to tip. Because they don't tip in France or Italy or whatever. Or Spain. Anyway, so my thinking is, you know, it's really interesting. I don't know, and Kale, you may have a legal side of this one. And that is, you know, one of the things that a couple of the HOAs that I'm part of, both in Doesn't matter where I am. It's in the U.S. Okay. Bottom line is you can establish a reserve account and you put money in every quarter or whatever you're doing because when you look at water and sewer, that's a captured market, period. Number one. Number two is when you look at who are really the rate payers for the most of them is the land owner, the... single-family dwelling owner, maybe, you know, could be multi-family, whatever, but it's really a locked market. And I'm wondering, from a government standpoint, and I don't know if we can do this, especially at our level, is there an ability so that we cut out the handling costs or the fee costs that you have when you have, you pay with a credit card, you even pay with a debit, it doesn't matter. Because the banks and everybody in the financial institutions are finding ways to make a little bit of money, but make a lot of it over a period of time, and that's how they're doing it. My question is, can we provide our water users that are paying every month, et cetera, et cetera, our, let me call it differently, a franchisee, and can we handle it internally, which means, Brad, you're going to go nuts when I say this, but you're going to be handling the financial institution. I'm just asking a question because we do two things. It shows our individual property owners and payers of these services that we're trying to help them and lock it in. And there may be that kind of an activity that might be of interest. I just don't know if we can do it, number one, legally as a government entity. I can tell you that Department of Defense and VA are looking for ways to do exactly what I'm talking about. They're actually outsourcing payroll processing, things like that. So, question, I don't know if we can do it. Cale, you have a thought on it from a legal standpoint?

I don't without looking further into it and probably talking with the team. I've not heard of that for a local government, you know, us taking on or providing some type of bridge between, you know, avoiding those costs. We'll take a look at it.

Well, you know what? Whether we like it or not, we're in business if we're doing a franchise or we're doing some other things that are providing services to the individuals that live here. So maybe I'm thinking out of the box. Maybe I'm on my visionary path. mentality lately, so maybe I'm thinking too far out of the box, but you know what? I'd like us to take a look at it. What's the limitations that we as a municipality can do as far as dealing with franchises and reserve accounts, things of this sort? David, you ought to be all over this with me. Okay, good. You okay with this, Chris, at least looking at it, you and K.O., and seeing what we can add?

Yeah, we can look at it. We'd have to look into the regulations. It's almost becoming your own financial institution, which there's going to be some discussion points there for sure. But I'll talk to you a little bit more, get a little bit more information, and we'll look into it.

And maybe I've got TIF on my mind again to keep our money over here instead of the state getting it, okay? And that's another way. So anyway, just a thought, okay? Okay. Thank you. All right. Any other comments on this? Bright ideas or visions?

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we've got municipal drainings and utility budget retreat presentations. And I think after that one, we'll take a short break, okay?

Good afternoon, Trevor Crane, Director of CIP. Today I'm going to go through our municipal drainage utility fund. So overview, we'll talk about revenue and expenditures, our rates, current rates, any significant changes from fiscal year 26 to 27, and our capital improvement projects debt service. So starting out, this is our 26-27 proposed budget. We are presenting a balanced budget. So you can see there in the pie chart, the majority of our funds are going to debt service and then followed up by salary and benefits. Our MDU five-year rate plan. So the rate plan was adopted June 27, 2024. Fiscal year 26-27 will begin year three of that five-year plan. Our fiscal year 25-26 budget revenue was a little over $18 million. And our proposed revenue for 26-27 is $21.5 million. So this is an estimated increase of about $3.2 million. This will continue to support our capital projects, our operations and maintenance, and our MDU program progress. Quick snapshot of the rates. You can see in the kind of yellow tan there in the middle, that's our proposed fiscal year 26-27. And you can see we're raising it a dollar every year as a part of the approved plan. So these are a couple of significant changes. Our FEMA Community Rating Center or the CRS program, we talked about that at a TNR committee a couple months ago. But this is a program that rewards the city for doing more to reduce our flood risks. Participation in this program will provide property owners in the floodway discounts on the mandatory flood insurance that they have to have. We also instituted a post-construction inspection program, so this is going to ensure that our stormwater systems installed during development projects are properly maintained and continue to function as designed. This program will help reduce flooding, prevent pollution, and comply with our state stormwater regulations. Dennis. So moving into some of our capital drainage projects and debt service, these are the projects that are funded or in progress. I won't read through all of them, but as you can see, we have a lot of projects that are being funded by outside funding sources. So there at the top are TWDB funding. We allocated $24 million to West Irving Creek Phase A and then $21 million to Irving Creek Phase D. B and C are currently in progress, and that had $70 million of external funding. We're also looking at some additional external funding outside of TWDB. FEMA has a BRIC grant program that we're pursuing, and the goal would be to apply that $20 million to North Delaware Creek. These are our capital drainage projects that are unfunded, and they are in order of priority. So a lot of projects here, drainage continues to be one of our driving factors in projects that we need to complete. We have a total of about $141 million worth of projects currently programmed that are unfunded. And with that, I can answer any questions.

Questions? Comments? Okay. Thank you. Next.

Mayor, did you want to take a break? You mentioned after that presentation. Yeah. Thank you.

I was already moving to solid waste. Okay. We'll be back at, what, about 20 after?

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'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. Your ICTN team produced 43 videos in the month of July.

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.

Michael's home office is right here in town, so we've had just everyone so excited about this store.

We thought it would be fun to look at Tom Landry through a lens of as a human and as kind of his role in football, not just as the coach.

For over 10 years, we have offered Kids Camp, which is an affordable way to come see a new movie every week.

I love it. I love it like the actual library gets all these activities for the kids.

We've got an ambulance for medical response. We've also got the fire boat on the lake and the off-road ambulance to respond on the trails when people get hurt.

The threats that police officers are seeing in our country today are unlike any other. And so being able to have flexibility in their training, dynamics in our training is paramount.

We're still main stage in Irving, Texas, in the beautiful Irving Arts Center. I think the public can really get a lot by coming out to theater.

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.

Stay up to date by subscribing to our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash the city of Irving.

Unstructured Play is a chance to talk with a children's specialist about early literacy, child development, health, and nutrition. It's all available here on September 2nd at the South Irving Library at 1030 a.m. Discover With Me is designed for children ages 1 to 3 and their caregivers. Movies on Main is back here at Heritage Park. Every Friday in September you can see a family-friendly film at 7.30 p.m. The first two movies are Toy Story 4 on September 4th and Sheep Detectives on September 11th. Each event includes a movie-related activity. Cultural currency showcases innovative ways artists use money as a medium to explore value and worth. Bills and coins are repurposed into engaging artworks here at the main gallery at the Irving Art Center. From humor to fantasy to desperation, the emotional impact of money is considered.

Blowing the dust off the latest edition of the Campion Trail in Irving. More than two years after Phase 1A of the Elm Fork Extension finished, now Phase 1B is nearing the finish line.

Our connection between the north part of Campion and the south part of Campion.

Contractors and inspectors walk to this newest part of the trail to look out for anything that still needs doing.

If everything's clean and neat, of course, everything's picked up, make sure everything grades out right like we want. If there's any chip in the concrete pathway, we want to get that fixed.

And even on this walkthrough day, residents showed their own approval by hitting the trail.

I love Campion Trails.

For the last 10 years, the Valley Ranch Green Club's been working to beautify their part of the trail, so much so that the National Wildlife Federation's certified them as a habitat community.

We've got native plants for pollinators, we've got native host plants, we've got native evergreens, and then we've got some non-native ground covers, but they all work together to provide a habitat.

Whether it's physical exercise or the mental and environmental benefits of seeing beautiful plants, residents are working together to connect across Irving, like the trail itself will one day do.

We can walk all the way to Las Colinas and have a coffee over there. Just come and enjoy the parks and come and enjoy the trails, and you will be amazed by how great they make you feel.

For CitySource, I'm Nick Lawton. I'll be shot. Anyone would be a little hesitant to jump in the pilot seat for the first time.

We're all set.

Lucky for these aspiring aviators, this is all a simulation in Irving. And all the rough patches are virtual.

We can do everything in this that we can actually do in the airplane and even more.

In honor of National Aviation Day, Envoy Air, a subsidiary of the American Airlines Group, is bringing in 10 contest winners to try their hands at a professional flight simulator. And with these sims at Avenger Flight Group in Irving, they can get a taste of the skies.

There's a lot that happens behind the screens. These machines are composed of lots of computers, avionics.

And the simulator can really put them through their paces.

engine failures, any mechanical failure on the airplane, emergency descents. We can do so much more than what we can actually do in the airplane.

And experience for the potential pilots of tomorrow that the pilots of today remember well.

I definitely remember my first Discovery flight, first takeoff, you'll never forget. So getting to see the reactions and the expressions on people's faces when they're getting to experience this for the first time.

ignites a spark in some and then also just, you know, fuels the flame in others. I really feel the pilots or future pilots that come here will go into the simulator and absolutely just thrive on, you know, what they see.

Moments like these showing Irving doing its part to foster the future of aviation.

The demand for training capacity is going to steadily grow. On a day like this, you can see the end result. But when we started this facility, this was a completely empty bay.

We have our flight simulators here in Irving. We have our classroom and all our training facilities in Irving. Airplane mechanics training, ground support trainings, all done right here in Irving, Texas. For CitySource, I'm Nick Lawton.

And now it's time for one of my personal favorite parts of CitySource. We are here with Pet of the Week here at the Irving Animal Care Campus. And we are joined not only by the campus's outreach coordinator, Egan Dobson. Thank you so much. We are joined by Harley. Harley right here. And if there's any Ted Lasso fans out there, I'm going to tell you right now, as far as Harley goes, ball is life. Ball is life for Miss Harley. And Miss Harley is 10 years young, which means she's already got some tricks up her sleeve.

Oh, yeah. Harley did come from a home. She is completely potty trained. I mean, ball is life for this little lady. She knows shake for both hands. She knows speak and lay down.

Oh, wow, okay. Full of tricks. Yeah, so if you wanna take and be Harley's forever home, you've already got plenty of ways to play with her. What would be the ideal family for Harley in your mind?

Really, anybody who wants to take it easy. Supply her with all the tennis balls that her little heart would be happy with. But Harley's a pretty easy dog. She's already set for somebody who's looking maybe even for a first time pet. She'd make a good fit for really anybody.

Oh yeah, absolutely. And if anybody sees little Harley right here and falls in love, how can they adopt her?

Yeah, they can come in during our business hours. You have to be at least 18, have a valid ID and a form of payment. For the whole month of August, our adoption fees are reduced to $25. And then we're celebrating clear the shelters on Saturday the 29th and everybody's free to go home that day.

Absolutely. Clear the Shelter Day is Saturday, August 29th. What can you tell us about the times and the place?

Yes, absolutely. So doors open at 10 a.m. and then close at 6 p.m. So people have a lot of time to come on out. We are obviously waiving fees. So everybody, cats, puppies, kittens, dogs are all free to go home. And we have goodie bags for everybody who adopts. And we're also doing free ID tags for everybody.

And that's fantastic. And of course, if you don't have it in you right now to adopt a fur baby, there are plenty of other ways people can get involved here. If they want to volunteer here, how would they contact?

Yeah, all of our things that you can be involved with in the shelter or post online, like volunteering, you just apply online. Same with fostering or even our Doggies Day Out program. Just apply online and we'll get you all set up.

And we've got a great pup date here about the last pet of the week that we just featured.

Trixie, Trixie got adopted. Trixie got adopted. What started out as a doggie's day out turned into an overnight stay for a doggie's day out, turned into a forever. And we couldn't be more happy for her and her new mom.

Absolutely. You have a few moments with these wonderful animals and then who knows, some magic might click and... you might just walk away with a forever friend. Yep, exactly. And, of course, if you want to check out all of the previous Pet of the Week segments, you can go on our YouTube channel and see the playlist for yourself. We've got a whole Pet of the Week playlist for you. That's youtube.com slash cityofurban.

Thank you.

Chris, are we ready to keep going?

Let's keep going, sir. We've got solid waste coming up next. Travis, we're going to talk some trash.

That's John Block's favorite.

All right. Good afternoon, Mayor, Council. Thank you. Travis Schweitzer, Solid Waste Services Director, and I will be covering the Solid Waste Services Fund. So we'll cover our 26, 27 revenues and expenditures, go over current and proposed rates, and I'll wrap it up with some brief information on some upcoming items that you see listed there, and then, of course, we'll go into any questions. So just as a reminder, just like the water utility fund, solid waste is an enterprise fund. It does not receive any tax revenue. All funding is generated from the rates and fees that you all set. We've got 121 full time employees with an operating budget of just around 23 million. Most of that 23 million is made up of equipment and people, personnel related expenses. Speaking of the people, specifically in our collection division, they perform 88,000 trash collections per week. You multiply that out on an annual basis, that comes to 4.1 million collections per year. Now, while they're doing that, they're collecting just right at 71,000 tons of trash per year. You break that down by the number of employees that are actually lifting that trash, those employees throw or that's what we call it vernacular in the solid waste industry, dispose of, collect approximately seven tons or 14,000 pounds per waste collection worker per day. So needless to say, they're very busy and we thank them very much for their work. This is our current and proposed rates. It's our five-year rate card. This was developed out of our 2526 cost of service analysis. You see the year 2026, our current year there. The gray column is next year where we are not proposing any rate increases in the residential, commercial, senior or place of worship rates. However, across our three different roll-off categories, 12 yard, 20 and 30 yard, we are proposing a $50 fee increase on those services. And then at our landfill, proposing a dollar tipping fee increase per quarter ton or $4 on the tipping fee per ton. So just as a reminder, with our residential rates and no increases there, it's the third consecutive year with no increases in the following categories. The residential rate remains unchanged at 35.25. The commercial opt-in rate is 45.75, remaining there. The senior rate at that discounted amount is 28.75. Again, no change. And the place of worship opt-in remains at 35.25. You see the increases there, $50 across our three roll-off sizes, and then the landfill tipping fee increases as well. These increases do require two council readings for approval. The first one is on tonight's agenda. We have the second one scheduled for September 10th. So where do these compare? Did a little benchmarking. Generally speaking, on our roll-off side of things, we're towards the middle. You see we're right between Richardson and Mesquite. And then over on the landfill side, we're between Denton and Arlington. So on both categories, we're relatively in the middle of things. All right, some upcoming items that we have. Our landfill, our sale of landfill capacity. What this is is where we sell landfill capacity to a private hauler and thereby generating revenues. Around three, three and a half million a year. uh our contract does expire uh september 30th of this year therefore we put out an rfp and it closed at the end of july since then we are evaluating uh responses and it says here potentially awarding to more than one holler that was true we set up the the rfp to allow for that um and was true when we were drafting this this presentation however uh we will be uh recommending a ward to just one hauler. That'll be coming your way September 24th or 27th, whenever that meeting is. We have our Landfill Gas Collection and Control System, RFP. That RFP development is underway. You'll recall a presentation with our consultant Biggs and Matthews at TNR a few sessions ago. We're currently reviewing the specifications that they've developed, and we're in the process of editing back and forth with them. Anticipate getting that finished up and moving forward, advertising an RFP for that sometime after the new fiscal year. That will also be a revenue generating arrangement as well. And then finally we have our long-term landfill plan. where we've completed a feasibility study, and we're currently researching potential property and funding strategies. And once we have all those pieces together, we want to come back to you all, give you a full briefing on that, and get some direction. And with that, I'll answer any questions.

Great. Questions? Anybody? David? I'm not asking questions. Okay. Let me... Let me ask a question that I've been thinking about because I've got to believe that the burden on your rate, even though you haven't moved it in the last, what, three years, am I correct? Yes, sir. I cannot believe that trash has stayed stable. I've got to believe trash, solid waste, there's got to be a level of increase.

Are you talking tonnage? Yes. You know, it's relatively the same. Interesting. I mean, it does fluctuate, but, I mean, we take into right around a total of just shy of 200,000 tons a year. Roughly 70,000 to 100,000 tons comes from our residential operation. That other 100,000 tons comes from that landfill sale of capacity contract.

Okay, good. Yeah, John. Thank you, Mayor. This is a topic that I do find somewhat interesting. We all enjoy trash talk on council. So, Travis, thank you for the presentation. A few years ago, we had some significant challenges with staffing within the department, and we were able to meet those challenges and get past them. Is that still something that we're good on?

Yeah, absolutely. When we created the waste collection worker position, it did away or really alleviated the pressure that we were under from employees having to have a commercial driver's license. Those waste collection workers work very hard, but they do not drive. They simply ride on the truck and collect the trash. And so we added a number of them, probably 20-plus employees. But in doing that allowed us to put each CDL holder as a driver primarily. Sometimes they do get out and actually collect trash, but they're primarily driving. And the collection workers are the ones doing the literal heavy lifting. What that did is it allowed us to compete with other CDL competitors where they don't have to collect the trash. They can just drive. And so it made us more competitive. We also increased wages during that time as well. We pay a very, very high salary. for the solid waste industry. It's probably the highest among municipalities, certainly in the Metroplex.

How much is that, Trevor?

I'm sorry?

What's the range that we pay?

You know, I don't have it on the top of my head, but it's...

I think it was around 18-ish. I think it's higher. For the ones on the back? It's higher.

We start about 19, maybe just under 20, just for the collection positions. And CDLs are 24, 25, I think, is where we start, and they go up from there.

Good.

Okay. Thank you.

You bet.

Appreciate it. Any questions from anybody else at this one? Let me ask a question on our landfill. We know what our life is going to be with that as far as what we're looking at. Are we Are we still out, what, to 35, 2035?

We've got about 30 years remaining life in the landfill.

30 more?

30 more.

Okay. Good. That's great news. Do we contemplate any kind of a reserve or something to kind of prepare for that eventually?

Yes, sir. And as we've talked with council about, we have several strategies that we're looking at relative to expanding the capacity. of our landfill and potentially we could add up and be up to 90 plus some odd years.

Yeah.

Good. Thank you.

That's the long-term landfill plan that I was referring to in the presentation. We don't have all the information yet for you all, but as soon as we get it, we'll bring it forward.

Great. We're hoping to come to you soon with some updates. Okay.

Great. Thank you. Fad? Thank you, Mayor. We briefly spoke about this. Do we have an audit system to make sure that our recycling bags are actually getting opened?

Not in this contract. The recycling contract is up in 28, I believe. And we're certainly going to put some heavier duty specifications on that next contract.

Thank you. David. Mayor, thank you. And Travis, just remind me, with 30-year useful life on the landfill, we... Recycling rates, I think I remember from your presentation last year, was from 11% in bags to 65% in cans.

Uh, that's, I can tell you, I don't remember the exact percentages, but anytime you move from bags to cans, your recycling percentage participation tonnage, it all goes up. Now your contamination also goes up as well, but everything increases when you go make that transition from bags to, to, to cards.

And I wouldn't mind getting numbers on that from maybe our consultants of just to see what, what the dollar savings is in just landfill space alone. If, uh, We did that as we're looking at new landfill space because it's a significant percentage increase.

It makes very much financial sense to recycle here in Irving, absolutely, because every bit that we recycle doesn't go into our landfill.

Right. So that's good. Kind of in the decision-making of a two-pronged strategy of getting more recycling done and the most efficient way to do it.

What are you suggesting, David?

Thank you, Trevor. Thank you. Okay. Fleet Services. Where is she?

Hey, good afternoon, Mayor, Council, City Manager's Office. I'm Debbie Jackson, Fleet Services Business Operations Manager, and with me is Larry Spain, the Fleet Maintenance Manager, and we're just going to go over a few things for you with Fleet Services. We thought this little background thing of 10 years, just to give you a little snapshot to let you know how Fleet's been doing in the last 10 years. We did something from 2016 to now just to show you that there's a 345 vehicle and equipment increase within Fleet within 10 years. We also went from 27 employees to 33 employees. We have an equipment mechanic ratio that used to be 61.1, which is now 66.1. And I will remind everybody, if you ever hear me talk, I'm going to tell you, we have all kinds of equipment, big, heavy. You just talked to Travis, landfill equipment, pumpers, engines. We do it all on fleet. Fuel stations, we went from 18 locations and 29 tanks to 18 locations to 27 tanks. And we have more tanks on the horizon. We just try to make it disperse throughout the city for different tanks in case there's emergencies. So we're working on that plan. Major impacts to the budget for increases for 2027, we have minor apparatuses, which is really just tools. If anybody knows the steel market right now and prices for tools, they've really increased. Motor vehicle maintenance is basically our motor pool, which is increases in fuel. And our biggest increase, which I don't think it's a shock to anybody in this room right now for fleet, is our gas and diesel prices, which is $720,000. And I've got a slide I'm going to show you in just a minute to give you a little bit more detail about that. Decreases to the budget we're having for next year is lubricants. And lubricants is on the same type of commodity like fuel tank fuel. So you might ask, how can fuel go up but lubricants go down? And that's because we've done strategic purchasing right now large amounts of quantity on lubricants to try to get us through the next 12 months because when the disturbance over in the Middle East happened, you know, we get a lot of DEF and some other products over there. So we decided to buy a whole bunch of it now to make sure that we weren't having a problem procuring it later, which we did. And also on our outside work, we're decreasing a small amount of decrease on that. We always say it is much cheaper to do things in-house than it is to do things at the outside vendor. We do it smarter. We think we do it cheaper. So fuel trending, okay? I find this really interesting. If you look at the numbers from October 1 and our last full complete month that we completed all the books for fuel was June 30th. And so in this snapshot, it'll show you. We do 50% of our fuel consumption here in fleet and in the city is diesel. 50% is unleaded. So whenever we go and budget a number such as $4 a gallon for fuel, remember that $4 is not just unleaded and it's not just diesel. It's a combination. And if you go to the fuel pumps today and you look at the prices, you're going to wonder how we do $4, okay? Remember, we buy from transports. We buy from the rack. we buy in large quantities and we save discounts. So because we had some good months early on with fuel, we were averaging like $2.80 a gallon. From October 1 to June 30, collectively between diesel and unleaded, we've averaged $3.12 a gallon. So I wanted to show you June 1 to June 30 because you're going to see there's a large jump there. We all know We all purchase fuel for our vehicles. So when you go to the fuel tank, you're like, how in the world can Debbie come up with that kind of number? Well, again, it's strategic purchasing from transports, right? So $3.85 was the average cost per gallon for June. The average cost per gallon without all the books being closed for July, but it was ranging $3.92. So we've budgeted $4 per gallon for fuel next year, again, We're hoping that prices go down with fuel. If not, I have it on good authority from folks that there are other avenues that we have to procure fuel if we need it. I'm very greedy. I always ask for a lot and then get talked back. But I always worry about fuel. Now, at this point, I'm just going to tell you a safe little reminder that if diesel gets above $7 a gallon, then you're going to see me panic. But until then, we're going to be fine. So vehicle and equipment purchases. We did a snapshot from 2020 on how many pieces of equipment we've purchased. And we've purchased 751 pieces of equipment. 677 have been delivered and 74 awaiting delivery. And then we did a little breakdown here letting you know the numbers. General government 445, public safety 306. Now, this is the slide that we find very, very interesting. So most of us know that since the pandemic, prices for vehicles and steel and equipment have doubled. Look at the price of a pumper for $775,000. Now we pay $1.7 million. We used to get that in nine months. Now we get that in 24 to 48 months, okay? Let's go down to an ambulance. An ambulance used to be $279, now $450. Used to be 9 to 12 months. Now it takes 12 to 24 months. When you get down closer to patrols, dumps, and other small pieces of equipment, those time frames are starting to stabilize, and they're starting to not be pandemic times. They're starting to be... They're coming back online to what we used to have. However, if you notice the prices, the prices don't come back. Capital improvements. As you all know, we have a new fleet facility. This is done in a three-phase approach. The first phase was completed October of 2025. Second phase was completed June of 2026. And the third and final stage should be completed before January of 2027. And a friendly reminder, as y'all were talking about the building that we're standing in now and how old it is, The original fleet facility was constructed back in 1950s, and we must say goodbye. All good things must, you know, at one time you have to put them away. So same thing with City Hall, right? So with that said, I threw a whole bunch at you quickly, so I'm open for questions now.

Questions? John.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Debbie. Thank you. Always a pleasure to have you here.

Thank you, sir.

Both of you. Question on the ordered versus delivered numbers. That ratio, does it break down pretty evenly across public safety and general government as well? Or is it more in one?

It's more public safety than it is for general government on waiting for delivery, yes, sir.

Okay, thank you.

And as you saw on that chart, man, the times are crazy.

David. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you so much. What do you do with old or out-of-service cars or

vehicles or is there a good resale market for these things or okay oh man i've got to show you some pictures one day uh we drive them hard we drive them long and uh then we auction them off and it's always i guess my parents always told me uh one man's junk's another man's treasure right so we ride them hard we put them off into the auction and people pay for them And I would say 2020 through 2023 resale value was excellent, excellent for some of the stuff that I'm like, I can't believe people paid for. We're starting to see those numbers come back down. And that's because all these new people, a lot of folks are deciding not to do the auction stuff as much. They're going and buying new vehicles because they're doing so many incentives to sell those new vehicles, right? But it's a yo-yo that I've seen in the last 20 years in fleet. I think after the hard year we've had this year financially, I think maybe our auction prices are going to go back up next year. But, yeah, I'm surprised on some of the money we get back from them. And all that money goes back into the Equipment Replacement Fund to help fund the next amount of purchases.

So just so you know. Okay. Great question. Dennis.

Yeah, I saw that your ratio of equipment to mechanics was 66 to 1.

Right.

Do you ever outsource any of the maintenance or, you know, work on these vehicles?

So this is our motto, okay? Years ago, and you were here years ago, so you know, Fleet was shelling out so much money paying for outside vendors, right, because they didn't have the skilled technicians and mechanics to do the work, right? Right. So what we've been trying to do over the last several years, Larry and I, is try to get things back into place, doing it in-house, right? Because you've got to build up your guys. Let's just say the fire department takes five to seven years to train someone how to do fire equipment. And I'm not talking top of the level, right? Okay? So with that being said, we're trying not to send our stuff out. So what happens is something breaks down. Warranty, we don't touch warranty. I don't want any of the guys touching warranty. If we suspect it's warranty, we send it out. Sometimes we have to fight with manufacturers. We find out there's something we did, they did, you know, the department did. And sometimes we're responsible for some of those, what we would consider, or we tried to fight for, for warranty. And in that case, we're going to have a little bit of outside services, right? We have accidents, and we have auto body. We don't do any auto body, okay? So that's a very big chunk of our outside services bill, paint and body. We don't do that in service, right? But for all the other mechanical repairs, we try to keep in-house, and we try to do. So we limit that amount of outside work that we do. But the amount of outside work that we do do is very expensive. Like, let's just say a pumper, when it gets in an accident, okay? There's $25,000 to $75,000 in body damage. A lot of work. Okay.

Thanks.

Okay. I hope I answered that correctly because I give you more than you asked for, so I'm so sorry. Okay. Thank you, sir.

Chris, you have your light on. Thanks, Mayor. And thank you, Debbie and Larry. Really appreciate it. And you as counsel know, if you want the perfect yin and yang, you get Larry and Debbie managing a great system over there, and you all do a great job. Thank you so much for all you do. Just as an FYI, I'm working with Orlando and Debbie and Larry to see what we can do relative to the mechanics. We presented the proposed budget. There is a request for some more mechanics. We're trying to see what we can do within the parameters of what we've already proposed and presented, looking at maybe switching out some different expenses on that one. So we'll have an update potentially to you before you pass the budget, but just want to make sure that you know. we're probably going to be looking at a change there to see if we can ensure that we have enough mechanics. We're adding a lot of police vehicles, as you know, with our police staffing plan. There's other vehicles from other departments as well, from the utilities. We want to make sure that we have the appropriate resources over there in fleet because that is the backbone of what we're trying to do. So just FYI, there might be a little bit of a change coming up for you, and we'll let you know.

Great. It's always a pleasure having you, Deb.

Thank you, sir.

And I just want you to know that I really enjoyed when we went over to visit, especially now that I was just amazed how clean your operation is out there where they're working. And that says a lot.

Well, thank you. It's very, very, very important to me, okay, that it be clean because if your place is filthy, then how can you get something accomplished, okay? So I know the guys complain for the last 20 years that I've been in fleet. They're like, oh, she's a female. She's making us clean. I think it sets an image, you know? I mean, yeah, yeah, I make everybody clean. And we close down. Matter of fact, it's Thursday right now, and the guys have already closed down to start doing their clean. It's very important. So thank you for noticing that because it really means something to us.

Let me ask a question of mechanics. What's the range of... that we pay them. Just out of curiosity.

I believe it's $23.69 an hour that we start. Am I right? Okay. And for a starting mechanic. And then we have different ranges that go up after that. Mechanic two. We just recently, and I have to say thank you, Mr. Hillman, and to Brett, and to Niall. She's in the room. Very big shout out to Niall and HR, and we thank you for that. is we got a new classification for a few of the guys in the shop. Now we have a lot of people who touch heavy diesel, but we wanted to do something for those who were more skilled in heavy diesel. So now we have a new heavy diesel mechanic coating for anybody that's a mechanic three or higher that actually does heavy diesel. And that's a huge plus for us because we need to retain the talent that we have.

You know, one of the things that I'm seeing a lot of our military coming out of active duty or whatever, and a lot of them now being asked to think about coming into working truck drivers or mechanics or whatever. And I'm wondering, do we have a program where we can help? at least get the information out if you're going to be looking for that kind of – because you've got people that know how to drive big vehicles. You have people that know how to fix them.

Yes.

Et cetera, et cetera. And I'd be curious to know how many out of your – was it 33 I noticed?

Uh-huh, 33.

That are military or veterans?

Well, for one, Mr. Spain back here.

Oh, that's why you had him here. I was wondering why he was right there behind you.

I love military applicants. I love them. I think we have, what, four military? Four or five? But remember, out of 33 employees, those are not all mechanics. We have a parts room that has four employees, okay? We got two ladies up in the front office. As far as actual mechanics go, we have 23. So 10 of the other people are office people. uh... parts people fuel operations people there's a whole we have to go service fuel tanks ourselves i mean there's a whole uh... group of us that aren't just on mechanics right all that work is only being done by twenty three folks right and out of that we've only got four five I love military applicants. The problem with military applicants is, let me tell you what happens, okay, because I've hired them all the time that they've been at fleet, is they come to fleet right after they get out of the military, and I'm so happy to have them, right, because I love that they're structured. They have training. They're not complaining about punching a clock or being on time. I love that, right? But the problem is they then go off to be a firefighter, you know, and we lose them, you know. And that's great. That's great. My son's a firefighter, and that's awesome, so I encourage that. But it seems like we're a breeding ground for them to go do other things. And as team mom, I am happy for those individuals. I always say what's best for you and your family, we're happy. Larry and I are both, we cheer people on when they go do best for them and their families, especially when they go into a career, you know, like public safety. We're really encouraged of that, right? But that's what's happened. That's why we only have a few of our military folks left.

Well, that's good. You're helping them transition, but they're helping us too.

Yes, and as we've talked about before, you know I'm a big advocate for youth too. You know what I'm saying? We just recently had the PAL out and did a little program with the PAL, and then hopefully we get the PAL ladies to come out because I'm a big supporter of the Police Athletic League. I think it's a great thing that Irving does for the youth here in Irving. It gives them opportunity, and then hopefully we can get some employees down the road. I was really soliciting to those fellows the other day, right? So it's not just the military. I really like the youth factor of it. Keep people in Irving.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you.

Niles, you got notes on this, right? Yeah. Okay, thank you. All right, thank you. Okay, I think we're on to... Information Technology Fund overview.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. Chad Powell, Chief Technology Officer. And, you know, I just want to say it's not fair that the F in fleet comes before the I in information technology, because that means I have to follow Debbie every year. And I'll never be able to match her energy, so... All right, so taking a look at our technology fund balance, we're projecting a starting fund balance of $10.2 million. Our revenues for this coming year is $2.3 million, and I will note that as an internal service department, that asterisk represents all of our revenues come from transfers from other funds, so from general fund, the other enterprise funds, and other funds. So we are heavily dependent upon that. We are looking at 23.3 million in expenditures this coming year with the projected and healthy imbalance of 7.2 million. And then just taking a look at the graph, by and large, our biggest category of expenditure is going to be our hardware and software maintenance, followed by our staff. And then I wanted to take some time to talk about our IT projects for this coming year. We are very fortunate enough to have an IT business analyst that we onboarded a couple of years ago that serves as a proactive arm to our customer service to our other departments. So this business analyst is meeting constantly with all of the other departments throughout the year. to identify, determine what their operational needs are and then attempt to find solutions, technological solutions that can match. So when we open our call for projects in January, we already have a really good idea of what the needs are from the departments and what we can expect that they will be requesting. So for this year, we had 30 projects that were requested, and we, internal to IT, we sit down and take a look at them, and we determine first if it actually qualifies to be a project. In some cases, it's low-hanging fruit. It's something that we can accomplish. Under the current fiscal year, it doesn't have a lot of capacity attached to it. So eight of those did not meet the need to be considered an IT project to move forward throughout our process. So we, as an IT leadership team, we take a look. We definitely take a very data-driven approach to taking a look at the project request. The first thing we do is we take a look at the scope of the project and we determine the IT resource factor. And what that means is how much of a lift is this for our department? And how many people are going to be needed? How long is it going to take? What is the intensity while the project is active? And we give it a rating. And then we take a look internally at what our capacity is to be able to perform these projects relative to our existing workload. So in addition to just working on projects, there's also quite a bit of what we call keeping the lights on, maintaining our systems, making sure everything's up and running, and doing those sorts of things. So we factor all of that in. And then new to this year, we actually performed a preliminary recommendation for the executive team. So we combined all of that data, all of those resource factors, and came up with a recommendation for the executive leadership team, Chris, and the ACMs, and Brett, so that before we even talked about if we can fund this, here's what we think we can actually be able to accomplish this next year, money not being an object. So once we took the projects to the executive team for review, of those 22 projects, 16 are being recommended to be funded, and then six are being deferred until next year's consideration. And then real quickly, I'll just walk through at a high level some of these projects. ICTN, they have a back lot where their expensive vehicles and other equipment is stored, and they've had some break-ins. So this 36,000 represents getting cameras and additional security to secure their investment. And then our investment management software upgrade. This one's for finance. This is what manages our billion dollar portfolio. The existing software is currently old enough to drink. It's 21 years old now. And it's time to upgrade it. And I'm told by Brad that it's gonna pay for itself. So it'll be a good $60,000 investment for the software. Then we have the Fire Tablet Command. This is a technology solution for when we deploy to incidents that require some sort of incident command for fire. Currently they're working off whiteboards and all communication is done manually. This tablet command system allows them to be able to communicate better and track their assets that are deployed during incidents. Next is the FHIR ESO software replacement. This is FHIR's record management system as well as their patient care reporting. Starting in January one of this year, the federal government mandated specific reporting requirements when it comes to property loss. And unfortunately, this vendor has failed to be able to update their software to be able to run these reports. So it's an absolute necessity that we move on to a software that can actually deliver on the mandates that we can't deliver on today. And then we have our library public print and PC reservation software is probably not drinking age, but it's getting there. It needs to be replaced, and there's better solutions out there. And then one of our biggest software projects for this coming year is the court's case management software replacement. We've spent the last couple of years doing RFIs, requests for information, determining what's out there, finding those solutions, and we are ready to move forward with a new court case management software. This is one of those things where the court can't function without the software. In fact, they're actually closed today because we're doing needed upgrades to their current court case management software.

Chad, if I can. Sure. You can go back specifically on the course case management You can see how much is ongoing those of you in the IT world no one understand that it's one thing just to have the upfront cost to purchase Where we really get hit financially is in the back-end cost the ongoing cost and those are continuing to just go up and up and Chad and Lauren if I remember correctly, I think it's over five million dollars now that we are spending annually on just in these ongoing subscription type of software services. Many of these solutions we have to have. A number of these solutions are efficiency solutions that are helping us serve our residents more quickly. And we are saving money, but nonetheless, we are just continuing to see significant increases in all of these ongoing software costs. Keep an eye on that, but we're still going to do what we can to make sure we have all the right software. Just as an FYI, but $5 million. Am I getting that correct?

Combined with hardware maintenance as well, it's 8.6. So software makes up the majority of the 8.6. Thank you. And thank you. And that's a very good point on the ongoing cost. That's actually why I made it a point to add that to these slides. Well, I do have a question.

Yeah. I really appreciate you giving the background on that. The only thing I would suggest, and you might already be doing this, is to look at the benefit, economical benefit of cloud computing. Whenever possible, you know, consider that as appropriate. Obviously, being in SLG is tough.

Yeah, and we are absolutely doing that. We are no longer opposed to not having cloud solutions. We're looking for best value at this point. The other project from the court, not quite as expensive, they are looking to replace their virtual court platform. Unfortunately, the vendor that we currently have has changed direction in what they want their product to be. And so, the features and functionality of their future development does not align with what we need. So, we'll be looking to replace that software. And then I've bundled together, I did already mention the ICTN camera project, but there's also six other additional camera projects. And we actually lean on the Crime Information Center arm of the police department. They take a data-driven approach with these camera requests where they look at crime data and determine and prioritize which camera projects are going to offer the most benefit in terms of safety and security. And then I just also want to note that of the ones listed here, the most significant one would be the jail. The jail has over, I believe over 120 cameras and I may be selling it short. They are in desperate need of upgrades in the jail for their cameras so they can make sure that their prisoners are safe as well as their officers. And then real quickly, we have a police listserv replacement. So our police department actually does quite a bit of coordination with other Texas and regional agencies in coordinating for crime inquiries as well as when they do their personnel investigations for the recruiting arm. And this is a benefit to all of the agencies, but it's something that we pioneered and and started a very long time ago, more than 20 years ago. And unfortunately, the system's just no longer supported and we need to replace it. And it will be a cloud-based solution moving forward. And then West Irving Library has a need for a public announcement system. What they currently have is very limited and does not match and is not equitable with the other two branches. This will give them the ability to have scheduled close announcements as well as some other features. And then lastly, water utilities. I just want to brag on them for a bit because they have been one of the biggest champions when it comes to cybersecurity and particularly protecting their water and wastewater environments and their control systems. They've done a really good job the past four or five years. And this just represents a continual ongoing penetration testing and then following that up with remediation.

Questions? Open to questions. Comments?

Yeah, David. Yeah, thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Chad. On some of the things, too, as we're getting into the legislative season, I know that getting efficiency sometimes state law doesn't allow us and we have to do certain things. So I wouldn't mind, especially from the legal side and your side, any proposals that you see out there of things we might need to change because Fahad and I both went on the rides and it seems like a lot of technology could be used for especially putting in our police reports and things of that nature that are barred by statute. But it was from a computer background, it was staggering how archaic it seemed to me. Just seeing some of these things, and a lot of it was in statute from the state. If any of these things you see, if we don't work on it this year, maybe the next few years, but There's just so many good technologies out there to make us more efficient.

You know, I'm going to make a comment about that. Thank you, David. You got me. Because I've been trying to put things together. You know, we have three chairmen right now that are public safety. We got John on technology. And we got Abdul on community affairs. It would be a great opportunity for you guys to talk to each other and figure out because... from the public safety one, what you've just been bringing up, and you're going to be getting much more into the cross, what I call cross-roughing of the technology impacts. So I think it's all something you may want to think about, especially with how much we have out there with the police and fire in particular. So just a thought. Okay, thanks. Yes, Chris. Thank you, Mayor.

Chad, could you please go back to slide two real fast? Thank you. Mayor and Council, as you can see, our starting fund balance that we're anticipating is about $10.2 million. That's a very healthy fund balance. A few years ago, it was zero because it didn't exist. I really appreciate Jeff and Brett pulling that together a number of years ago and creating this fund, and we've done a really good job of being able to set dollars aside to help absorb some of the ups and downs and increases and decreases of what we see each year in some of our IT projects. What I do see for next year is our general fund is going to likely and it will definitely need to contribute more into its transfer over to the IT fund in order for us to maintain a good, healthy fund balance. So I'm looking at another million, million and a half dollars. So just as an FYI, just as we're looking at next year's fiscal year 28 budget, we're probably going to have to up that increase and transfer from the general fund by another million, million and a half dollars at least. So already next year we've got a million, million and a half already spent of any new revenues coming in.

Let me, now that you've got me thinking again, I notice Maura, you're here. One of the things that Maura has done with her budget and her strategy that I have a chance to sit in on some of the meetings that they have is she has a technology fund. Is that something we also have? That's what this is, sir. That's what this is. Oh, yeah, I'm reading it. Okay, I'll wake up. I got it. Thank you. Let me ask a question. The money coming into that technology fund, is that coming out of our general fund, or can it come out of others?

It's a mix of all the funds, sir. So this is an internal service fund. And so it doesn't have any external sources of revenue. So the general fund will do a transfer over into the IT technology fund. The water fund will do the same. Solid waste will do the same. All of those different funds. The general fund has the largest contribution. It's going to need to be increased next year. I don't want to go any lower in fund balance than what we're anticipating for the end of next year. I really want to keep it that way. And in order to do that, we're going to have to up the general fund contribution. So... There's going to be dollars that we just have to throw in and make sure our IT fund stays healthy.

I assume that you're actually trying to look at next year and the years out at what you think the impact might be so that you can get your city manager to put more money in the fund, so to speak?

We're always looking for strategic ways to manage the rising cost of technology. I'll just point out the presentation from this morning with EFJ. We're saving over a 10-year period $8.6 million. So we're always trying to look out into the future and see where we can save costs over the long term.

Great. Well, I've got to believe this fund is going to grow one way or another. Okay, thank you. We're on to the capital improvement project overview facilities.

All right. One more time. Trevor Crane, director of CIP. Today I'm going to go through our capital improvement overview. So I'm going to go through a couple of the different funds that projects are being funded out of. This is our general non-bond CIP for the 26-27 facility improvements. We've got $250,000 for horizontal construction manager at risk CMAR support. We talked a little bit about this earlier, but Since I'm the only one that's on the team right now that's done horizontal seamar, we're going to bring in a consultant to help walk us through the first project or two to make sure we're getting set up appropriately, establishing our policies and procedures and SOPs to make sure we're delivering those projects appropriately. And then $500,000 for bunker gear replacement for a total of $750,000. These are approved projects coming out of our Building Repair Replacement Fund, or BIRF. A couple of different HVAC repairs, the top four, bay door replacement, fleet building AC remediation, vent hood and fire alarm suppressant systems, new energy management systems, and the courtroom infrastructure modernization. Continue on this page, the magistration remodel, pickleball courts at Cimarron, the Verceda access control integration, and then updates to our construction specifications. All in all, a little over $2.5 million. This is our water and sewer non-bond CIP. So doing some upgrades to the customer services office, air compressor replacement, mezzanine work, some landscaping improvements at MacArthur and Northgate pump stations, the VVMC pond hardscape, and some environmental compliance furniture. And that totals up to $363,580. A couple of projects coming out of specialty funds. So these are all coming out of our infrastructure fund. The top one is nursing stations and station modifications. Second one is to work on our jail to look at some water leaks and do some repair works over there. And then some fleet facility AC remediation. And with that, I can answer any questions.

Great. Any questions? Let me... Maybe, Chris, probably you're the one that's got to answer it. On the magistration, is that current or looking forward?

That is going to be the cost. Those are the capital costs to set up the structure for the magistration process to occur, and that will be mostly in the jail. Then we also do have some changes to build out the judges' offices as well.

That's what I thought. Okay, thank you. Appreciate it very much.

All right.

Thank you.

Okay, I think we're now down to item number nine. K.O., if I could ask you to lead us off on this, I'd appreciate it.

Sure, Mayor, I'm happy to do that. All of you in your binders under tab number nine, You have a draft of some potential revisions to the rules of procedure. The mayor was particularly focused on town hall meetings, but there were some minor edits. I'll go over the minor edits first and then highlight the provision relating to town hall meetings. And, Mayor, I know you have some comments as well, and then we'll await direction. So the first set of edits are on page 10. And these are under types of meetings. As all of you all are aware, the state law has changed with respect to the posting time frame for meetings. It used to be 72 hours. It is now three business days. And so the edits that you see in section 3.1 and 3.2, the second edit, those are those corrections. Made a minor edit, the call for special meetings. Y'all are permitted to do that. a regular meeting so as you meet if you would like to have a special meeting you can do that but there was some language in there that all of the council members needed to be present so we just adjusted that that if a majority of you at a regular meeting would like to call a special meeting you have the ability to do that on page number four in section 3.4 under work session meetings this was just a clarification that the mayor pointed out to me This is work session meetings may be held in any appropriate location. They are generally held in this building or in another location open to the public. So we just cleaned up that language. If you'll just kind of, we'll come back to town hall meetings. Let me finish up a few other cleanup items and we'll come back to 3.5. If you'll turn to page number seven. That was another spot where it had the 72 hours, so we changed it to three business days preceding the Thursday evening meeting. On Section 9, and Shanae and I both looked at this language under the consent agenda, we just changed the language to match what you all do. So this is you are able to pull out an item from the consent agenda, and then those items are taken up individually. The language here was those items are considered on an ending resolution, which I think we were all scratching our heads because you all don't do that. Remember, these rules have been here for a long time, so we just matched it to what you currently do. Item number 10, and this is just under public comments, and it just was for consistency. This is the situation where you have multiple speakers that plan to provide same or similar public testimony. Those speakers, if requested by the presiding officer, and it was to match language we have elsewhere, and it's upon the consent of the majority of council, or if they so desire, designate one or more individuals, but no more than five to provide public testimony. So it's that instance when a lot of folks show up and you provide an opportunity for them maybe to have a few representatives and give them additional time. Section 6, this is under decorum and debate. We cleaned up just the introductory paragraph to reflect what you all do. And then these are your decorum rules. I do have a placeholder on this agenda. There was a recent Fifth Circuit case involving the city of Bossier City. And there are some provisions in our rules of procedure. That Bossier City had I often tell you all bad facts make bad law, but we are where we are in the Fifth Circuit so there are some provisions in our current rules of procedure relating to Prohibiting someone from making personal slanderous abusive remarks, which are no longer enforceable in the Fifth Circuit However, I mean I can explain a little bit more about that But this is just a simple edit just to take these out. We obviously will be tracking and just how the cases evolve, but also just how cities respond to this. And also I left in the threatening remarks and defined that here just so that we could address those kinds of issues. I think it's just a pivot that we're seeing from the courts of just saying, hey, you can in this limited public forum regulate conduct. We really don't want you regulating content. So I have some more thoughts on that, but those are my public statements on that. Those are the cleanup items. If we can flip back to page number four, the mayor had inquired about whether there were specific provisions relating to town hall meetings. So what we're talking about here is a meeting that is posted for all of council to participate. So just for clarity, If you wanted to have a meeting, if you're a district council member in your own district, that's not what this is talking about. This is talking about if there is a town hall meeting and it is posted as such that all of you are appearing, what are the rules that should be in place for those types of posted meetings where everybody is in attendance? So first and foremost, we define what those meetings are. They're for the purpose of engaging residents, receiving public input, or providing information on city matters. that there's no formal action taken. And y'all, when I put this together, I'm just really replicating some of the language that was from above in some of the other meeting sections. Town hall meetings are called by a majority of council at a posted council meeting. The time, place, and purpose of the meeting shall be stated in the notice and posted in compliance with the Open Meetings Act. The town hall meeting may be held or will be held at a city facility. These next several ones, I mean, these are the general rule. Y'all can set another rule. Second, that it would be scheduled at least two months ahead of time. I think previously staff had brought to you just in doing some benchmarking. These are helpful just because when you do those large town hall meetings that are citywide where we post it and do publicity, just some lead up so that they can get the, you know, all the background information available. And finally, to provide a blackout period, just town hall meetings won't be conducted between a candidate filing deadline and the later of the regular municipal election or runoff election just to prevent any claims or issues of electioneering. Again, all of those y'all can adjust, but the mayor asked for, hey, can we put together just some ground rules that if we are doing a city council town hall meeting, what are the general rules that apply? and certainly you as a quorum can decide otherwise. So that's as is presented, and Mayor, I'll pass the floor back to you.

Great. Thank you, Cale. Let me give you a couple of inputs. As I was going through looking at our charter and looking at the various protocols as to how we as a city council and me as your presiding officer of the council How do we then look at how we move forward together? Number one. Number two, I am a big proponent of town halls. But it's gotta be focused on the city in total. And we, as a city council, saying yes, we wanna take this up. That does not preclude any of you, myself included, to focus on areas that we wanna focus. But we bring it to the team, to the council, and we go together. There's another slice to this. I took time trying to decide who are the right connects on chairmen of the committees. We have six of them. And the idea was to really have a collaborative group, a group of three that sit there. Because that same group of three can then call for something to go on to our agenda. And so there was some pre-thinking that I want you to, that I haven't shared with any of you at this point. To really try to give us all a very sound atmosphere to work together and try to then respect each other's protocols and each other's respect. Number one, each one of us have one vote and that's exactly one vote to try to better our city and to better what we do together. The final thing is, hey, it's all about us bringing forward that we think certain areas. You know, I'm going to look at David. David was up front and out front and brought in John, who he should have because he was in infrastructure and technology, dealing with data centers. But look at all the things that are going on with data centers. So, you know, when we're ready to take it to the city, through a town hall, then we all got to be in play. And we got to know what the implications are. And so with that, I took the time to sit with KO. I talked to Shanae. I talked to Chris and Rachel. You had a view on this too. I wanted to be collaborative. And what's the impact on our staff as we then start to pull these town halls together? And so that's as far as I want to go. I just want you to know this is our This is how we should be conducting ourselves. And it's part of the ability for us to really focus on how we want to go forward as a council. So that's my input to you. So I took some time to try to put some structure. Okay. David.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor. And you're going to read through the I love process and procedure, and it matches to what we should be doing. So I appreciate this edit. Also appreciate K.O. letting me now do personal slanderous and abusive comments without fearing anything violating our ordinance.

By the way, you remember when this guy called me, don't you, that evening? John.

Oh, man. Oh, man. That evening, huh? Yeah. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for bringing this forward. I... I generally like the majority of what I'm seeing here. I'm a little hesitant about the item on town hall meetings only being called by a majority of the city council at a posted council meeting. I think generally that's a good idea for... Getting into a habit and a cadence of doing regular, larger scale, full city town halls, I think that's a great idea. It's a very public and publicized venue to be able to start to get the word out. My hesitation comes mostly from wanting to avoid putting limitations that might be too restrictive on councilmen who might want to have more smaller scale fora for public engagement. We haven't seen a lot of it, but it's just something I would be a little hesitant to close the door to. The other thing I wanted to bring up, and this is going to be changing topic a little bit, but not agenda-wise.

Can I stop with that right there, John? We talked about this, and this is not to preclude that. This is to when we are calling it, and it's going to be something that we know it's town hall means city. and that we as a city council then are behind it. It doesn't mean that an individual cannot bring forward what they want to then do within your areas or items. So that's not to be restrictive. I really want to put that out there because I thought about it. I talked to KO, and I've run it by a couple of both Rachel and Chris. This is just to put structure. It's our call. And at the end of the day, but not to preclude any individual council member wanting to put forward their thoughts. Not a town hall by the individual. Clear. Now, if you want to do it within your districts, you want to have some kind of a meeting or whatever, of course. I mean, that's our prerogatives as individuals that have been elected both From a district, there's six of them, and the three at large. So I just wanted to clarify that. I thought about it, we talked about it, and I think at this point.

So just for the sake of clarity, what I'm hearing is any member of council can do such a thing as long as they don't call it a town hall is what you're getting at.

Well, no, it's not that simple. A town hall is what it is, okay? And that's what this is all about. But each of us have the ability, HOA, go to your HOA, go to your neighborhood group, go to whatever you feel that you want to then bring it to that specific. But when you start to look at what's the impact across the city, that's why I did this thing called town hall. Because, you know, I watched what David and you did. But you were the only two sitting up there. This is a nine-member council. Okay? And that's important that we never forget that. And you have a couple of committee chairmen that were never consulted, not because of anything negative, because I think you guys were focused, and I get it. This is to preclude that, but to try to bring us together so that we're collaborative, period. And that's the genesis of where I went with this. Okay? So.

Okay.

If you're uncomfortable, that's okay.

All right. So the other thing that I wanted to discuss, and when I said off topic, I meant off the topic of town halls. I'm going to stay on topic of the agenda item, so don't worry, K.O. I would also be very interested in seeing an additional item in Section 3 here. to kind of flesh out some rules and procedure around committee meetings. Particularly, you know, we have very well established rules and procedure around who the presiding, who presides over the meetings for work sessions, for special meetings, and for regular meetings. We don't really have, there's no structure or anything around committees, is the back of the chair. decided by the chairman? Is it decided by the mayor? There's no structure or guidance on that, so just something that provides some guidance on the committee meetings, the council committee meetings. I think that would be a good thing to include as we look at revising.

Well, let me tell you why I didn't do it, because I thought about that, too. Okay? Why? Because committees may change. There may be not six next go-around. There may be five with the next two, three years from now. Who knows? But I thought about that, and I said, okay, what's the focus that we're trying to do? And having committees structured the way they are, if we put it and codify it, then we're stuck with those.

No, well, not codifying what the committees are, who's on them, just more about the structure of how the meetings are conducted.

Well, it's in here. K.O., you want to jump in on this, on the actual, how the...

If I could ask for clarification. So, for example, like in 4.1 under presiding officer, it kind of talks about like if the mayor is absent, who presides? Is that what you're looking for? So in a committee meeting, if the chair is not there because you really don't have a vice chair, how that would work? Mayor, we'd have to look at that.

What's the procedure? What's the procedure for who's the presider of the committee meeting if the chair is not there? Okay. In the past, it's been very rare that that happens. Yes. So...

But you know the procedure... that if I'm not here, it goes to Mark.

Right.

And then if Mark's not here, it goes to Dennis. And then if it doesn't, guess who it goes to? It goes to me. Number one. Yeah. District one. Yeah. That's the procedure. Yeah.

Right. But I guess the question is for meetings where the full council is not a member of the So for committees, typically committees now have three members. And I'm not saying we codify the number of members, but so it's a subset of all of council. And there's currently no rules and procedure around the precedence of who presides over the meeting. It's just you've got the chair and somebody else is going to take over.

Remember in there, too, on rules and procedures of meeting, all of us may attend and be part of that committee meeting.

Absolutely.

Okay? So it's there.

Of course.

I'm just trying to put structure in a way because remember what it was last year. It was four members on a committee. And I'm trying to then get it to where it's more. Because if you have three... either two are going to be in charge of going forward and saying, this is what we want or not, or two are going to say, no, that doesn't make any sense. I was trying to get it to, if you do four, then you got a different dynamic going on. And so that's, and you know, think about it. Maybe we come up with a different paradigm, but it's not in my estimation is you don't write in committee chairs. You don't write in committees. If you do that, you're opening it up for changes immediately on the next go-around, the next mayor, the next council, et cetera. So I'm giving you my thinking and why this is in front of you. But give us some more thoughts. I mean, you know, come with the ideas if you have something.

And, Mayor, I think you and I agree on that point. I have no interest in codifying who the chair is or what the committees are, what the makeup of the committees are, how many members are on a committee. it's good to have flexibility in that. But just like we have codified rules for the order of who's the presiding officer at a meeting of the full council, that's that question of What is the order of precedence of the presiding officer for a subset of the whole council in the committees? That's what I'm getting at. And that, I think, can be abstracted fairly generally.

But you know what? That's something we ought to think about. Yes. Because it's not been done. You know, one of the things that I always remember, and I may have said this to some of you, about a week and a half ago I went to basically a primer on revisiting, updating of Robert Rules. The city of Irving has never adopted Robert Rules of Order. Most cities in Texas have not, okay, just so that you know that. But there's a process and the procedures that are here that are built on a lot of Robert Rules. So I'm giving you a lot of my thinking, how I did. But, Cale, do you want to have more input on this? Same with you, Chris, on our discussions.

Mayor, I think that's a pretty simple edit, and I'd be happy to, I mean, this is just for discussion purposes, and based on the consensus direction of the council, I think I could bring back a simple edit to get to that issue, just so that there is clarity for the committee chair, if they're not there, how the person, the chair would be determined. I think I can put that together for you all.

And I think just ascending district number order is a perfectly fine, you know, if the chair's not there, we just do that, just like we do with Yeah, the rest of it. I like that, by the way.

See if you can play with that cable. Yes, sir, I'll do that. Chris and Rachel, you were in the middle of this with me.

I think Dennis may have...

Okay, excuse me.

Go ahead and leave. Yeah, I've got a couple of... Going back to the committee, the committees, I think we need to decide or... put in our rules exactly who is the authority to make a decision for the entire council when it comes to committee meetings. And I'll give you the example. We had it happen where one person made a decision for the entire council. And none of us had any, well, I did it because I was on the committee. But everybody else on the committee had no say so on an item that was kept from going forward by one person. We need to address that because that is not, to me, good committee governance. If you're going to invite all the council members to a committee meeting, but then tell them that they don't have any authority or any say-so in that meeting on major issues, that's a problem for me. So I think we do need to come up with some kind of where is the actual authority of a committee, that's number one. Number two, I just want to make sure I get some clarification because on the town hall meetings, unless the entire city council or unless the majority of the city council agrees, we pretty much have a window where we can only have town hall meetings from July to December based on this right here, unless all of the council members agree. I think we're limiting ourselves by saying that, that this is the only window you're going to have actual opportunity to have town hall meetings, unless you get the entire council to agree to it. That's not correct. It is correct.

No, it isn't. We have no elections. It's only in May. So you've got to back it off from May. That's the only time that we're talking about that.

No. It says... It says... No formal action will be taken by City Council. Let me find it.

It's at the end, Mr. Webb. It's the later of the city's municipal runoff election date. So the runoff election date can be in June.

Right. And then where it talks about between the candidate's filing deadline, which is in February. Right. And the other date, which is in July.

The date is May, the election. It says runoff.

It says runoff, too.

It could be June. Because we're trying to preclude an individual trying to do a quote-unquote town hall individual. That's why that is written in there.

Right, but I'm not saying it. But it also says you've got to give a two-month notice. So then you've got to back up from February backwards, which is going to put you basically in November or December. So you've limited yourself without getting the entire council to agree to only having town halls from July to November.

There's no relevance if you're not running. It's for a candidate, and that's when it starts. You can call it any time. You can call it during the election period as long as you're not a candidate. During that February to May period. By reading it. I don't read that.

If I may, I don't understand that it only refers to candidates. It really does read like anybody is not allowed except for with the consent of the majority of council. That's what it reads. It's not specific for candidates alone.

Are you hearing this, K.O.?

I am, and they're correct. It's like a blackout period unless you all decide otherwise.

Tell me what you are saying because you helped write it.

Yeah, no, it is written that there would be a blackout period during candidate filing season unless y'all as a council decide you want to have a citywide town hall meeting. So you're not prohibited, it's just the general presumption is that won't be the period of the year where there will be a town hall meeting.

If you're a candidate during that period.

Well, then I would need to clarify this language.

He doesn't say that. At that period. Well, let's clear it up then. I don't have a problem with that. He doesn't say that. Okay. Because that's not how I understood it.

Okay. So, sir, just to clarify, your prohibition would be just candidates, you don't want candidates to be hosting town hall meetings when they are running for office.

Yes. Why? Because that's electioneering. Okay. Period. Okay. Okay, so that's where we're trying to focus it. We still have the option as majority, that's five of us, of the council to call a town hall meeting during that period of time as long as one of them that's trying to get an individual to call a town hall. You can't. You've got to have five of us, the majority, calling it at any time. Right. Okay? So we've not taken that away from us.

Well, but the problem I have with it is also five people can stop it. a town hall meeting from being held if it's important to maybe a couple of council members. That's the problem I've got with it.

The majority of the council is speaking. It's real simple.

But then when we go to committee meetings, we don't say that.

When we go to committee meetings, we turn around and don't do that. The committee don't have the power to do anything other than recommend on our calendar, period. That's a different action. That's a different entity. Okay, so I want to be clear on this. Now, anybody want to open it? Come on. This is open discussion.

Yeah, Luis, keep going. Yeah, I understand that any town hall that is called town hall and advertised by the city as such with that name would have to have approval from the majority of council. So it's not just for people running for office within a certain window. It's across the board, right? Now, the other thing is that you started saying that you did not want to preclude individual council members from doing their own town halls. But then it turns out that that's exactly what's going on.

If you want to do your own town hall, you bring it to the council.

No, no, no. But you said something else. You said something else at the beginning where you were specifically saying, oh, I would never want- council members to not be able to do their town halls. But it turns out that we need to pull out something totally different.

No, no, no. I didn't say their town halls. I said their own ability to have meetings in their districts or whatever they want to do. Right, right. So we're going back and forth.

You're changing the name. So question, Chris, when it comes to, because I think this is, when it comes to a gathering to discuss a city issue that is important to constituents that a council member might want to discuss and inform, It doesn't need to be called town halls for the official communication channels of the city to be able to advertise it and promote it.

And I appreciate that question, Louise, and I think that was going to be one of the comments that I had. From a practical, pragmatic perspective, I can address it that way first and then maybe make a recommendation on some vernacular that might help the council in its discussion.

If we've got clarity, that's fine with me.

Let's just say as an example, a hypothetical, I wouldn't anticipate that this would actually occur, but let's just say nine of you, all nine of you, want to have an individual town hall in your districts in the month of September, just as an example. And then, again, the month of November for whatever topics or issues. From an operational perspective, depending upon the level of operational support, of communications, et cetera, that could become a significant impact on staff and just being able to manage that. I'm not saying you'd have nine of you in any one month's period, but I think that's going to be an important consideration as we look at that. A potential suggestion could be you have larger town halls, the town halls that are addressing large issues. I'll go back a number of years ago when we had a smoking ordinance town hall. And we called that meeting. We had a lot of people come out because that's in a significant citywide discussion. There are going to be times where you as a council, as a council member, for the lack of a different term, may just want to have, say, a district meeting as opposed to maybe a full-sized town hall where you just want to give an update of different goings on in your district. and maybe recognizing a difference between a town hall and the policies and procedures that you have relative to a town hall on a citywide issue versus a district meeting that you would want to have where you may, hey, Dan, can you come in and give us an update on MacArthur? And Dan would go up there and give an update on MacArthur. That might be helpful. It would be helpful for us as staff to know and understand those differences between, say, a full-size town hall versus a district meeting catching constituents up on a neighborhood or a district direct discussion. I hope that makes sense. And maybe differentiating between the two.

I didn't quite understand, like, because this seems to address all town hall meetings, not necessarily, but including district town hall meetings. So that would... But the question, I'm not sure, maybe I missed it, whether or not, if we cannot call it, if we want to do a district meeting for a specific informational purpose, are we barred from calling it town hall by this? Yes, yes. Right, and the question is, if we just call it informational coffee, whatever, meet and greet, is that something that the city can advertise there's this event hosted?

What we would want to do, what I would recommend, I'd want to come up with something recommended operational procedures that I could come back to council with to say, if it's a district meeting, here is what is staff we would propose on that type of support. Here's how we would or maybe would not advertise it, et cetera. And I'd want to get the council feedback on what would or would not be appropriate with that. Again, I'm trying to manage the impact on staff, because if we have nine town halls in a month, just as a hypothetical... When has that happened? It wouldn't. I wouldn't anticipate. But just as a simple... over-the-top example, I guess you could say, what is that impact, operational impact, going to be on staff to advertise, to set up, to do all that? Staff are always going to be happy to support and to provide the information and to be there to help answer questions and provide information. But there should be definitely a recognition of how much advertising should go in. or should not go in if it's just a district? How do we communicate in just one district, et cetera? Is that something that the council member can do? Is there an expectation that the city would be doing all the advertising? Those are important operational questions I'm going to want feedback from council on. And I think one way we can begin to maybe help categorize that to help separate out some of the different approaches operationally that we would take is to have maybe a terminology of town hall and then maybe if we want to use a district meeting for those individual meetings.

There would be a follow-up to that, which is if a council member wants to do a meeting and informally call a town hall but not necessarily demand any resources from the city or from staff, is that something that would be perfectly allowed, right, K.O.?

Well, right, because this, I mean, I think that's for you all to discuss, but this is drafted as town hall meetings of city council. So what we're talking about in all of section three is, when do we call and post a meeting of the city council? So we're talking about city council town hall meetings. I think the mayor is trying to get some clarification on, If you're doing a citywide event, it should be an event that is agreed to by the majority of the council and not individual council members. And again, that's for you all to decide.

Let me clarify, and Chris, you really obfuscated something, and I'm going to say it right to you. Because at the end of the day, you and I talked about the use of personnel and its focus and bringing them out and having them participate. And if we're going to do that, that's got to be a joint effort that we think it's important enough as a town hall that is citywide to go and ask to have the kind of expertise there. Number one. Number two, if a... Stop and think. We have six districts. What are the three at large going to do? Okay? Understand what I'm trying to do is trying to have it so that it's orderly. Number one. Number two, what's very important... is that each one of the individuals, especially the district, have the ability to then deal with something that might be a flood problem. And we need to have somebody that's specific of our staff being there. This is not meant that way. This is within our... I mean, I do it all the time when I was doing my district because of the flood that we had up there in Hackberry half the time. So that's not the point, okay? But I hear where you're going. Bottom line is you are free to do inside your district If you're going to go and try to do something that has impact on the rest of the districts or citywide, that's what we're talking about.

Mayor, I believe you and I, or if I understand what you're saying, we're saying the same thing as I understand it.

Okay. Well, perhaps, but there's also been a lot of contradictions of statements, you know, and then the opposite, and then so I don't appreciate the lack of clarity. I don't appreciate the back and forth on some details that Dennis brought up, that John brought up. It seems like there's very little clarity. I'm hearing something else now. You don't understand what's there? I do understand it perfectly, but it seems like. Well, tell me where it's wrong. Tell me where it's not clear. So, for example, now you're saying that a person is, a council member is able to do their own district meeting. They always have been. There's no change. But the question is not, and this is what I'm getting at, the question is not whether or not it involves the rest of the council. The question is whether or not it involves city staff. Which is not necessarily the same thing.

That's part of it. That's part of it. That's not... Look, it doesn't have to involve city employees if that's what you want to have a meeting. Okay? That's not in there.

Right, but that's what would trigger these changes, essentially.

No, it did not trigger it. What triggered... If you want to talk about... There were no triggering. I'm looking at this to try to put some clarity in a town hall meeting, which is citywide. which will, in fact, have the full council, either the majority of the council or the full council supporting that effort. Why? The implication is we're going to be going and asking our city manager and some of our other players inside the city to actually support that effort. That's what I'm talking about. Now, when you do it within your own districts, that's up to you to do that deal directly with whoever.

But I got a question related to that. And, Kay, I want to give you an example. I'm sorry, but I got the... So I decided, of course, I'm district 8, so I'm citywide, but whatever. Say Abdul decided to have a meeting, district meeting, whatever you want to call it. He don't know how many of us are going to show up. What would you do? Would you post that?

Well, I guess the question, I mean, that's an interesting one. That's not really what's contemplated here. you know, if you're having your individual meetings, I think the thought is you are having an individual meeting. Right. I mean, unless you're notifying the city manager, city secretary, and myself, there won't be a posting of it. Because remember, there is a mechanism to call a special meeting. Three council members can call a special meeting. Typically, when you do that, the procedure is you reach out to Shanae so that she can poll the council to see if folks are available for a special meeting. So, if you were asking me how I'd interpret that, is then you're wanting a special meeting in a district so that we post it, so that we anticipate that a quorum of the council can be present. Right.

That's how. Well, that's what I'm getting at, because I'm going to have this meeting. I'm going to be talking about city business. Sure. And I could have five council members say they want to come sit in on it. But you didn't post it, because it was my meeting.

Right.

And if we didn't post it, we can't have a quorum there or it is violative of the open meetings law. That's what I'm getting at. Right. So we would need... That's the point right here. Right. If you've got three people that want to have a meeting, I would say let's call it a special meeting, and then we will poll the council to make sure they're available and then post it as a special meeting.

And that's what I was getting to. If it's a posted meeting, then does that mean if it's posted, do we advertise? Do we do everything? If you're just going to hold your district conversations, hold those district conversations. Right. And then you have to ask at least two of them to leave. Come on, Dennis.

I can go to any meeting that you guys are calling if you want to let me come. That doesn't preclude that. And I'm not talking as mayor, just as a city councilman. I mean, come on. We all have the ability to go to any meetings that we call, period. And if I'm wrong, tell me now, because I don't think so.

Well, Mayor, if I could just... Thank you. As long as there's not five of you. You can have four of us.

Right. Thank you.

Thank you.

So where are we? Do you want to work with our lawyer, and then you can have some clarity so that you know what we're doing?

We'll talk some more. There's obviously a lot of changes to be made here before I can be on board with it. because just as it's written, I won't support it. Have at it, okay?

Because you saw it the first time right now, and you've got all these changes, right? Have at it.

Well, I won't support it either.

Well, fine. You know what? Let's get with our lawyer. Put your input. Because if something is not right, then let me tell you, don't support it. But if you don't want rules and procedure for town halls, because that's what this is all about, then make your points known. Mark?

I think David was next. And David? Thank you, Mayor. A couple things. I do like the procedure. I'll just take, for example, this last town hall with the data center and the VIA topic. Rachel, Chad, Jocelyn, Mark, the whole staff is working hard. a lot of time on these events, the marketing team, all these things. And I pretty much just, you know, John and I just did it. Didn't come back to the council, and we should have. We should have said, hey, we got these dates. We wanted this topic. Is this good? We didn't have a procedure for it. And that's what I think this procedure fixed. Now, the next Saturday, I get invited by the League of Women Voters to do the exact same presentation. No city staff, no city money. No, nothing. I can do that on my own. I don't need to get permission for that. And that's the point of what this procedure is. If I'm using a massive amount of city resources, I should give you all the courtesy of saying yes and be in attendance and be able to add any topics or be involved with it. And I think that's what we're getting to here. So I like the procedure. The next thing I'll point out is 5.1B, Dennis, and this goes back to the committees. This goes back to anything we do. Three of us can put anything on the agenda. And if something comes out of committee that you don't like, grab two of us and we'll stick it on the agenda and we'll talk about it at the full council. So there are remedies to these things, even in committee procedures that we have at our fingertips. And I'll just finish. We're all trained on walking quorums. You know, the first town hall we did on the trash bins and the other two topics, we had I think six or seven of us there, but we wanted to talk about dart afterwards because it was a big hot topic. It was not on our agenda and thankfully I think Adam and Louise said they'd, you know, step out of the room to make it not a walking quorum. So, you know, that's on us is walking quorums. It's not on city staff. That's on us to, uh, manage ourselves to make sure there's not five of us in a room, uh, at any time. So, That's the kind of things on that. Can it be tightened up a little bit? And I agree with Luis. You want a district meeting. Is that a city thing? Yeah, I'd love to have the city promote it. So that might be a little addition. So work with KO on the addition on that. And let's set up smaller district meetings are great. I think the more we're out there, the more we're talking with the citizens, the better. So this is a good draft to me. Going to be modified a little bit? Sure. So let's just get the changes over to KO that you think and make the right move and put something in there. But there's remedies, and that 5.1B is important to always remember that we've got three votes. You can put it on the agenda at any time.

That's not what I'm talking about on the committee.

Well, the committee, and I was there, so it was just two of you, and it was a tie. Well, you could have grabbed me and Abdul and said, hey, I want to put that on the agenda the next meeting, and we would have said, okay, go ahead.

Right, but I shouldn't have to do that.

So that's a whole different procedure. I'll let y'all work on that one.

Mark? Just very quickly, I agree with Dennis on the committees as well. I share the same concern. Fahad was before me.

Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate the procedure and this thoughtful article putting together. I like it. I like I like it because for a few reasons. Number one, I understand where this is going, that this is for the entire council, and we're asking for the council to be present. And a massive amount of city resource went behind, and I saw the amount of effort that went behind the one that David and John led. I think some clarification is missing. I think that's established. So if we had that clarification, there's some things I heard that I liked and some things I heard. That I didn't like, but I would like clarification, and I'll just mention it. If I would like to have a meeting in Valley Ranch or Hackberry or Bridges, I should have no restrictions. If I want to call it Town Hall or Motherland Town Hall or whatever, I think I should be able to call it whatever I want. The word Town Hall should not be exclusive. And the other thing you said, Chris, was if you want to have a district meeting on a district matter, I don't think it should be excluded either. If my district folks want to talk about property crime, but it's not important to the other folks, I think I should be able to do that. Maybe that was not the intent, but when you said MacArthur, it just clicked me that I don't want that to come back. Maybe you didn't mean it that way, but I don't want it to come back saying, yes, you're having a district meeting, but the problem's citywide problem. So we're gonna address it in citywide council meeting. It needs to be clarified. Yeah, and I understand that. I just wanted to clarify that. And the last thing I will say is for those district meetings, maybe there could be some kind of compromise or agreement that we will only provide this support if it's a district meeting and not a council meeting. Maybe ICTN puts two posts up or something like that. So thank you so much. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. Yeah, I like the draft, and it's great for us to work off of. Just in hearing some of the comments, I would say that if you're doing your own district meeting and you bring staff there, I think that does, I agree with Luis, that transforms it into a town hall. Because the whole city can be invited. You don't exclude anybody because they're coming from another district. So I think that, yeah, once you bring staff in there, then you've turned it into your definition of town hall in this draft. So I think that, as you said, Mayor, that if you're doing your own meeting or town hall, whatever term you want to use, and it's just your own thing that you're setting up yourself without any staff involvement, there's no restrictions to that here. And also, as far as bringing in staff, I think that's where Chris is talking about if we're all just doing this all the time, even if you want to have it just for your district but you're bringing in staff, then that's imposing, that's burdening staff, and you don't know how often that's happening with everybody else, and that is taking them away from their duties. So I think the way this is structured makes sense because the whole council is the one that decides whether to have a town hall, and you can't have one within the campaign season. So I don't really think it's an issue of who's hosting it, which one of us individually is hosting it, because the way this is set up, it's the whole city council that is putting it together and hosting it, even though one of us may be the lead, I guess, in any particular one. And then walking quorum, you mentioned walking quorum, David. I think my understanding of walking quorum is when you have Different conversations with different people at different points of time, and then you end up through that process, even though it's not all at once, you end up having more than five or more talking about something. Is that right, K.O.?

That's correct. I think he was just saying quorum.

Okay, thanks.

I think K.O. mentioned this. I like the term council town hall meeting. Council town hall meeting. That implies that You know, all this is what we're talking about here. And I think amongst the council members, if there's a district council meeting, we can invite or somebody can say, you know, if you're holding one, I can say, hey, we're neighboring districts. You mind if I come? I'm now invited. And you take mayor, one other at large. We know that these four are coming. And it's kind of understood that others will not come because it will violate the quorum. So that could be another way to look at it.

My point to that is then you are telling council members they can't come to meetings where city business is going to be talked about. You're telling certain council members to keep from having a quorum. We're going to be talking about some city business in my district that could affect the whole city, but you're telling some council members they can't come because you can't have a quorum.

Well, and it gets far more complicated because if multiple council members have district halls discussing the same topic with different subsets of a not quorum, that is a walking quorum now.

So, yeah, it's complicated fast. I just want to ask, okay, I've been on the council 14 years or so. We probably had eight town hall meetings that I've attended. I'm not talking about how the staff would have the meetings with the citizens downtown for the visioning. I'm talking about pure town hall meetings, probably less than ten. I don't understand why all of a sudden we've got an issue that we've got to be going through all this to address town hall meetings. We don't have that many. So that's why I'm having a heartburn here. It's why all of a sudden now we have the need to have all these rules in place about a town hall meeting when we rarely have them. Unless we're planning on, okay. I mean that's fine, but overall though, unless we're going to start now having a lot of town hall meetings, historically we haven't had a lot of town hall meetings.

I think that's what Chris was saying. We just had two and now two more are being scheduled. I think what the mayor is trying to do is set up some procedures and parameters because it is a burden on staff. It takes a lot of effort to put those together. The electioneering is an issue too. The mayor has mentioned to me that you've heard other mayors say that that's happened in other places.

Everything that I put forward I've had an opportunity to get input from six other mayors, the ones that are surrounding Irving that we meet once a month. And they have all gone through this, and they've done exactly what I'm putting forward, because they're using the same type of procedures. Okay, at the end of the day, it's not to preclude anybody from doing your own thing within your own district at that point. So that's never been, but At the end of the day, you call a town hall and you use city employees because it's going to also be advertised and it's going to be, I guess we're going to put it in the, I guess we have to notice it at that point. If we do that, then that is exactly something that it should be in the preview of the majority of the council, period. End of comment. I think you all want to have some input, then have it directly with K.O. at this point, because he's the one that's got to then start to work it up. Okay? And that's fine. If it makes sense, it makes sense. If it doesn't, then it won't be part of us. Real simple. Because, by the way, at the end of all of this, we're all going to have to vote. We're all going to have to make a decision. Do we want this in this section? And that's fine with me. Every one of you have a vote. So... I just, I took this on because I really felt that procedure was missing. End of comment. And when you look at the other sections, that this is kind of the progression of really focusing on this. Because the minute that you use the full, and we saw it at the last town hall meeting, I saw it when Phil Riddle did it for the fire and for town center. We were all part of that. And I saw it even before that when you all did the thing with... You and Brad, we were all part of it, the whole council. We approved it. And it was, where was it? It was at the convention center. I mean, so I'm trying to put order in it as best we can, not precluding our individual abilities to be our council people, period. And then you're going to have to vote one way or another. But have your input. There's the guy that I work with right there. And I visited with, I told you who I visited with. And that was my way of trying to say, okay, let's put some kind of a rule of procedure. Simple. Okay? And I don't think we need to go any farther. Anybody else want to make comments? Mark?

Yeah, I think... I just wondered from Louise's perspective and maybe Dennis's too, if there was additional language talking about that doing your own thing without the city resources is excluded from the definition of town hall here. Does that get you?

Right, there's two things that would be interesting to consider. First, city staff and then city communication channels. If it gets advertised, what's the real cost? What's the downside for that? If it's something that is a city issue that is going to inform residents, we have The city advertised the other town halls. Why is that a big effort for city staff? I understand maybe if you want to do like three issues and you need half of the fourth floor coming, maybe it's fine to have a procedure for that. But it seems like I'm hearing that the intent is not to prevent individual council members from doing their thing, but that's the effect. That's actually what it achieves in the current format.

I completely disagree with you. You are free to do what you want to do. But if you're going to call it a town hall, there it is. You live with it or you don't. It's that simple. You'll have a chance to voice your vote. That time will come because this is moving forward and it'll be put. I'm giving you the sense. Talk to our council. He's the one that's drafting it. He's the one I sat with. but I also talked to the other people that were being impacted in a positive sense, not negative. I mean, this is not just something that came out of nowhere. This is an important procedural thing that I thought. Now, you all can vote for it or not. Let's get it done. Let's have our city attorney draft whatever he has to draft. Make your inputs and see if it makes sense, okay? All right, anybody else have any comments? What's that?

So the two that you mentioned that are, you know, tentatively scheduled, they're going forward until this goes in place, correct?

Thank you.

Okay. We're done with this? All right. Let's go ahead. I think we need to, we're done with our agenda. I think we need to be read in on our executive session.

Marin Council, the time is 5.09. The Irving City Council will convene into a closed executive session to receive legal advice pursuant to section 551.071.

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 helps 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. Your ICTN team produced 43 videos in the month of July. 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.

Michael's home office is right here in town, so we've had just everyone so excited about this store.

We thought it would be fun to look at Tom Landry through a lens of as a human and as kind of his role in football, not just as the coach.

For over 10 years, we have offered Kids Camp, which is an affordable way to come see a new movie every week.

I love it. I love it like the actual library gets all these activities for the kids.

We've got an ambulance for medical response. We've also got the fire boat on the lake and the off-road ambulance to respond on the trails when people get hurt.

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.

We're still main stage in Irving, Texas, in the beautiful Irving Arts Center. I think the public can really get a lot by coming out to theater.

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.

Stay up to date by subscribing to our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash the city of Irving.

Unstructured Play is a chance to talk with a children's specialist about early literacy, child development, health, and nutrition. It's all available here on September 2nd at the South Irving Library at 10.30 a.m. Discover With Me is designed for children ages 1 to 3 and their caregivers. Movies on Main is back here at Heritage Park. Every Friday in September you can see a family-friendly film at 7.30 p.m. The first two movies are Toy Story 4 on September 4th and Sheep Detectives on September 11th. Each event includes a movie-related activity. Cultural currency showcases innovative ways artists use money as a medium to explore value and worth. Bills and coins are repurposed into engaging artworks here at the main gallery at the Irving Art Center. From humor to fantasy to desperation, the emotional impact of money is considered.

Blowing the dust off the latest edition of the Campion Trail in Irving. More than two years after Phase 1A of the Elm Fork Extension finished, now Phase 1B is nearing the finish line.

Our connection between the north part of Campion and the south part of Campion.

Contractors and inspectors walk to this newest part of the trail to look out for anything that still needs doing.

If everything's clean and neat, of course, everything's picked up. Make sure everything grades out right like we want. If there's any chip in the concrete pathway, we want to get that fixed.

And even on this walkthrough day, residents showed their own approval by hitting the trail.

I love Campion Trail.

For the last 10 years, the Valley Ranch Green Club's been working to beautify their part of the trail, so much so that the National Wildlife Federation's certified them as a habitat community.

We've got native plants for pollinators, we've got native host plants, we've got native evergreens, and then we've got some non-native ground covers, but they all work together to provide a habitat.

Whether it's physical exercise or the mental and environmental benefits of seeing beautiful plants, residents are working together to connect across Irving, like the trail itself will one day do.

We can walk all the way to Las Colinas and have a coffee over there. Just come and enjoy the parks and come and enjoy the trails and you will be amazed by how great they make you feel.

For CitySource, I'm Nick Lawton. Don't be shy. Anyone would be a little hesitant to jump in the pilot seat for the first time.

And we're all set.

Lucky for these aspiring aviators, this is all a simulation in Irving. And all the rough patches are virtual.

We can do everything in this that we can actually do in the airplane and even more.

In honor of National Aviation Day, Envoy Air, a subsidiary of the American Airlines Group, is bringing in 10 contest winners to try their hands at a professional flight simulator. And with these sims at Avenger Flight Group in Irving, they can get a taste of the skies.

There's a lot that happens behind the screens. These machines are composed of lots of computers, avionics.

And the simulator can really put them through their paces.

Engine failures, any mechanical failure on the airplane, emergency descents, we can do so much more than what we can actually do in the airplane.

And experience for the potential pilots of tomorrow that the pilots of today remember well.

I definitely remember my first Discovery flight, first takeoff, you'll never forget. So getting to see the reactions and the expressions on people's faces when they're getting to experience this for the first time.

It ignites a spark in some and then also just fuels the flame in others. I really feel the pilots or future pilots that come here will go into the simulator and absolutely just thrive on what they see.

Moments like these showing Irving doing its part to foster the future of aviation.

The demand for training capacity is going to steadily grow. On a day like this, you can see the end result. But when we started this facility, this was a completely empty bay.

We have our flight simulators here in Irving. We have our classroom and all our training facilities in Irving. Airplane mechanics training, ground support trainings, all done right here in Irving, Texas. For CitySource, I'm Nick Lawton.