City Council - Regular Meeting

Secretary have everything you need? We good in the back, Miss Kristen? Everything live. Okay. Welcome everyone. Would like to officially uh call us into uh session here, recognize a quorum and kick off our business meeting here for today. Um we are going to go ahead and open up uh Greg Dao. Uh if you'll come forward, everyone please stand for the invocation and remain standing for the pledges. Thank you for this opportunity. Let's pray. I pray for our city leaders who are in positions of public trust, especially this city council. Give them courage, compassion, and guidance. Help them to navigate difficult issues with unity and respect. encourage them to work together to make wise decisions and to extend dignity to all people. We need their leadership. Father, if any of us has influence, if any of us are in positions of leadership, may we use that for the betterment of others. to help the helpless, to protect the vulnerable, to give hope to the discouraged, to share grace in all circumstances. Father, I ask that you guard all of our hearts. When evil is at our doorstep, fill us with goodness. When we are tempted toward pride, strengthen us with humility. When anger seems like a solution, fortify us with peace. When fear arrives unannounced, embolden us with courage. When our hearts start to harden, bathe us in joy. When darkness creeps in, repel repel it with your light.

When selfishness is near, overwhelm us with generosity. And what does the Lord require of those who are leaders, whether it be this council or anywhere in our community? May the words of the prophet Micah capture our hearts to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. Amen.

To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands. One nation under God, indivisible. Liberty and justice for all the flagged.

Thank you all. Appreciate you, Greg. Um, at this time we have uh three proclamations and one certificate of recognition. Um, gentlemen, if you guys will join me downstairs, we're going to start with Older Americans Month. I don't know if the mayor is hinting something since he gave me older Americans month to to read. proclamation. Whereas May is older Americans Month, a time for us to recognize and honor older adults across the city of Amarillo and the Texas panhandle and their immense influence on every facet of American society. And whereas through their wealth of life experience and wisdom, older adults guide younger generations and carry forward abundant cultural and historical knowledge. And whereas older Americans improve our communities through intergenerational relationships, community service, civic engagement, and many other activities. And whereas communities benefit when people of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds have the opportunity to participate and live

independently. And whereas the area agency on aging of the panhandle ensures that older Americans have the resources and support needed to stay involved in their communities, reflecting our commitment to inclusivity and connectiveness. Now therefore, we mayor and city council of the city of Amarillo, Texas, do hereby proclaim the month of May 2026 as older Americans month in Amarillo. And in line with this year's theme, champion your health. Encourage individuals who take an active role in managing their health through self- advocacy, preventive care, and informed decision-making that supports independence. We call upon all residents to join in recognizing the contributions of older citizens and promoting programs and activities that honor the opportunities, including purpose, exploration, connection, and staying active and engaged that come with aging. given under our hands and seal of office this 12th day of May, 2026. [applause] [applause]

Good afternoon. Thank you, Mayor Stanley and council members. We appreciate you giving us the opportunity to be here. My name is Deborah King and I am the director of the area Agency on Aging for the Texas panhandle. Older Americans Month is celebrated every May to recognize the contributions of older adults, highlight aging trends, and reaffirm commitments to supporting their health, independence, and well-being. This year's celebration theme is champion your health. We invite all individuals aged 60 and over to the annual Panhandle Older Americans Month celebration on May 21st from 9:00 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Region 16 Education Center service center building located at Hillside and Bell. It will be a wonderful day dedicated to celebrating older Americans, recognizing the tremendous contributions they continue to make in our communities, and sharing fun, engaging ways to embrace health, healthy living, healthy aging, and staying active through every stage of life. We encourage everyone to give us a call um by registering with us. It's free to register. The whole day is free. A lot of fun, food, and fellowship. register and please bring a guest. Um, we'd love to have you there. I also want to recognize our planning committee, all these green shirts up here, because they have organized a day filled with amazing activities, education, laughter, and connection. We hope to see you there. Thank you. [applause] Thank you.

Allan, do you want to bring your crew up? All right. National Public Works Week. There's a lot of folks up here that keep this city running and they keep it running well. Proclamation. Whereas public works professionals focus on infrastructure, facilities and services that are of vital importance to sustainable and resilient communities and to the public health, high quality of life and well-being of the people of the city of Amarillo. And whereas these infrastructure facilities and services could not be provided without the dedicated efforts of public works professionals who are employees at all levels of government and the private sector who are responsible for rebuilding, improving and protecting our nation's transportation, water supply, water treatment, solid waste systems and other structures and faci facilities essential for our citizens. And whereas it is in the public interest for the citizens, civic leaders and children in Emerald, Texas to gain knowledge of and maintain an ongoing interest and understanding of the importance of public works and public works programs

in their respective communities. And whereas the year 2026 marks the 66th annual National Public Works Week sponsored by the American Public Works Association. Now therefore, we, mayor and city council of the city of Amarila, Texas, do hereby proclaim the week of May 17 through the 23rd, 2026 as National Public Works Week in Amarilla and encouraging all citizens to join with representatives of the American Public Works Association and government agencies in activities, events, and ceremonies designed to pay tribute to our public works professionals and to recognize the substantial contributions they make to protecting our health, safety, and advancing our quality of life. Given under our hands and seal of office this 12th day of May, 2026, [applause] normally I wouldn't accept this on behalf of public works, but we did a little bit different this year as Alan Harter, our director of public works right there, came to me and said, you know, we're missing a piece, and that's our utilities department that we need to add to this. And so in most cities, utilities would be considered public works as well. So we added them to the mix and I thought that was a really good idea. And then Allan said, "Would you please come up and accept this on our behalf?" So the people behind us that you see here represent public works, which are streets, traffic, drainage utility, fleet, solid waste, landfill, uh, utility op, and then our utility operations include water distribution, wastewater collection, water production, wastewater treatment, and the laboratory. It represents around 600 employees here for the city of Amarillo that keep our city running on a day-to-day basis. Being a former public works director, I can't tell you how proud of the work that this group, this team behind us does are well deserving of this proclamation. And would you please just join me in a round of applause for them? [applause]

[applause] One, two, three. Our next proclamation today is for the friends of the library day. I know that uh I think our li some of our library staff is here and there may be some friends of the library that are here as well. So this proclamation reads whereas the first meeting of friends of the Amarila public library was held on May 20th 1951 and whereas for 75 years the friends of the Amarila public library have strengthened the Amarila uh public library and enhanced services for the citizens of Amarillo and the Texas panhandle. And whereas the friends support key programs such as the summer reading club, English as a second language classes, memory cafe, girls who game, story times, STEM programs, and similar educational and enrichment activities. And whereas the friends invest in materials and resources including storytime rugs, murals, maker space supplies, and fable the library dragon. It raised funds through book sales, amicon, and books to Broadway. And whereas the Amarila Public Library has received 11 awards of excellence from the Texas Municipal Library Directors Association, reflecting the

enduring support of the friends of the Amarila Public Library. And whereas the friends of the Amarila Public Library exemplify volunteerism, literacy advocacy and community partnership and support of public service uh public library services. Now therefore, we mayor and the city council of the city of Amarillo, Texas, do hereby proclaim May 20th, 2026 as friends of the library day in Amarillo and honor the 75th anniversary of the friends of the Amarila Public Library and a recognition of their long-standing service to the citizens of Amarillo and the Texas panhandle. Well, I can't add much to what Les already told you, but as you can tell, the friends have done a lot for us over the past seven and a half decades. And on behalf of the staff, I just want to say we are so incredibly grateful for their generosity and support all these years. So much of what we do would not have been possible without all that they provide to us. So, y'all definitely deserve to be celebrated.

Okay, if I could have everybody here who is affiliated associated works for the bridge. Um if you guys would come forward. So the the bridge children's advocacy center um as they make their way up here um this [clears throat] is a certificate of recognition. What we were doing earlier is, you know, we had like older Americans month and and we get an opportunity to read a proclamation. So council can proclaim a month or a week or a day, but then there are times when I feel like, uh, an organization and council may feel like an organization needs some special recognition. And so, um, I was fortunate to be able to participate in a groundbreaking. the bridge is uh fundraised, I'd say 80% of of their goal for a new facility. And most people um don't fully know what they do, but they they attend to some of our most precious and valuable assets uh in our children um in this community and some of their darkest times. And so what you see represented here behind me is some of the finest people that you get to live with uh in the city of Amarillo. and they work very hard and it's my honor to to uh recognize you guys here today in their board. In recognition of the recent groundbreaking for your new facility and in celebration of the healing begins at the bridge capital campaign, the city of Amarillo hereby recognizes the Bridge Children's Advocac Advocacy Center for its steadfast commitment to serving children and families in our community through advocacy, protection, and healing centered services. This new facility represents an important investment in the future of well-being of Amarillo and the surrounding region uh and stands as a meaningful symbol of hope, healing, and collaboration for those impacted by child abuse and trauma. The Amarillo City Council and Mayor Cole Stanley extend their appreciation for your

organization's continued service and for the positive impact that this project will have in strengthening support services provided in partnership with the community, including and alongside the Emerillo Police Department. Presented this 12th day of May, 2026 by the mayor and city council of the city of Amarillo, Texas. You guys give a big round of applause to the bricks. [applause]

So, the chief is kind of begrudgingly coming up with me, but um thank you, Mayor Stanley and Councilman. Um we're really excited about this project because it does bring both of our agencies into the same house so that we can [clears throat] collaboratively work cases to help children of sexual abuse, physical abuse, and neglect. Um, the Texas Department of State Health Services 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Study says that one in six children in Texas will be sexually abused by the time they're 18. So, [clears throat] we have a lot of children that we need to be protecting. Um, in Randall County, there are 36,131 children under the age of 18. And in Potter County, there's 29,89 children under the age of 18. So, taking that statistic, Randall County will have 6,022 victims of child sexual assault. Potter County will have 4,968 children under the age of 18 who are victims of sexual assault. That's a lot of children. And so, we are poising oursel to be ready to have those children come in and receive services and become whole again. Um, by moving into this new building, APD will be moving in with us. children's protective services. We're expanding mental health and medical services so those children and families can get those full wraparound services. Um over the last six years, Emerald Police Department has brought 4,896 children to the bridge to be forensically interviewed. So with them being in house, that is going to save those investigators approximately an hour of travel time each way. That equates out to $220,000. 300 320 220 $320,000. So that's a lot of money that we're going to save and the time that they can be working with children and families. And so those young children are our most vulnerable. And so we're here in the

community serving the top 26 counties. But we're excited about partnering with EML Police Department. And behind me is all of my staff. Well, not all of my staff. Most of my staff. Some of them are really out working. and our board members as well. So, we're excited about that and I'm going to pass it to Chief Hoverver. So when you cohabitate and you colllocate these professionals all in the same room, what you do is you get a better case, you get better communication, you get a better overall product, but what you really do is you get a better environment of trauma-informed care to provide those resources all in one location so that victim doesn't have to go anywhere else and they can get the treatment that they need in one spot. It's all about being victim centric and I'm proud to be a part of this entire group and I'm proud to be a part of Amarillo that stepped forward to put this together. So thank you [applause]

Okay. Um, ladies and gentlemen, we appreciate your patience. We appreciate your willingness to participate in that and honor those individuals. Um, public works especially, we just take it for granted. Every morning we get up and the shower is, you know, hot and things are running and toilets flush and we drive to work and we get going. And so it it's incredibly important to honor them. And so when you guys applaud, it means more than you know. So, um, we've successfully made it all the way to to announcements. Uh, we've already called ourselves to order. Does anybody have any announcements they'd like to make here today? Yes, sir. Mr. Path.

Yes, Mayor, members of council. I appreciate this opportunity. Um, a little over an hour ago, we we held a press conference with local media. And so, we uh took questions regarding our utility billing matters, the April bill. And so, with this, I wanted we're trying to get the message out to more individuals. And so we had the press conference but some individuals may not saw that we we are we did live stream that. So is on our Facebook page. I wanted to repeat it here today in case anyone here in the room had not heard that. We'll also put the message on on social media and we will also be emailing to those who we have email accounts for in our billing software. But again I wanted to repeat this today and for those who may be here to talk about the utility billings matter. So, with this, uh, many citizens have reached out with concerns about their April water and sewer bills, and I'd like to address that today. We hear you and we know you're frustrated, especially if you tried to contact us and could not get through to us. I'm truly sorry for that experience and for the concerns these bills have caused you. We hear you when you tell us that your bill does not look right, and we know you are frustrated and you want answers. Our team has been carefully reviewing the the billing system and customer accounts and we have identified some issues affecting certain customers. For example, two examples. Uh some bills in our billings district 14 displayed incorrect water usage graphs due to duplicate read entries though appears that actual bills bill usage appears to remain correct. Another example is some customers experienced shorter billing cycles in March and longer billing cycles in April during the system conversion and rollout which may have caused some additional usage to fall into higher billing tiers for certain accounts. These two are examples that we've identified so far, but I want to stress we are continuing to look closely at the data. If we find any errors or any other issues, if those are identified, they they will be corrected and adjustments will be made in to impacted accounts. Uh the main point I want to say with this is you

will not have to pay for more than you actually used. As we work through this process, you will not be disconnected for non-payment of these April bills and you will not experience late fees uh related to them. While this review continues, we do recommend that you make some type of payment so that your balance does not grow too large uh once everything is resolved. Our staff have been working diligently under very high call volumes and we appreciate everyone's patience and understanding as we try to assist everyone. The utility system, including the billing system, is very complex and requires a great deal of effort to review. With a teamwork of many of multiple departments and our outside vendors, we are working hard to understand all the concerns and the issues so we can bring you solid information as quickly as possible. With this, my plan is to have a report to the city council that that identifies everything we know by that point at your next city council meeting on May 26. In the meantime, my plan is to have is my plan is to work with my team to provide updates to the citizens this Friday as well as middle of next week. And so we'll be working with media, working with with the social media team here to discuss how we'll be doing that. And so, but my plan is to send information Friday and middle of next week. Like again, I'd like to just say once again that we that for all those who have concerns, for all those who who who have experienced frustration, we hear you. We know you're frustrated and we will continue to do all we can to review concerns, to explain what we find, and address any issues that we'd identify. So today, if anyone during public comment uh uh would like to talk about utility billing issues, we do have some employees here. Uh uh Rich Gion and his team are here. So once once once they have concluded, we'd be happy to meet with them. Uh we can step aside in the hallway and we happy to meet with them and talk about their specific situation. So that's available today if anyone would like to do that today while they're here. So thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Path. We appreciate that. Council, do does anybody have any remarks or anything they would like to add to that? No. Okay. Um, Mr. Path, thank you for um, you know, the press release and getting in front of the media. Thank you for reiterating that here. Um, our friends in the in the back from the media. You know, we'll we'll do on cameras with you after to continue to reiterate um, you know, that we understand uh, we have discovered some issues. Those issues will be resolved. Um, this is not our customers fault. Uh, many of the the the ones that we're seeing, um, you guys are emailing hundreds of emails. We want to take every one of them. If you're here today and you're going to give public comment, um, please continue to speak and and sometimes it just feels better to just say it out loud, but more importantly, let us get your information, your address, uh, your account number or or your utility bill. let us get you in the system so that we can individually take care of you as a customer. Um this is an enterprise. I know we are we are working as a government but this is an enterprise and it has to be ran like a business and in business your customers are the most important thing you have. You know next to solid employees and and our customers we work together with this. Miss Jennifer's in the back and and I just want to state out loud, we understand that those ladies and gentlemen that are working in utility billing that this is not their fault and that we as customers, I myself being one, um want to show a great deal of patience and understanding with them as they've been inundated and just continue to work tirelessly on that. So, thank you uh ladies and gentlemen for your patience and thank you Mr. Path for continuing to get in front of this issue. We look forward to a total resolution. Um, we are now at item number three, which is public comment. So, we would love to hear from our

public, Miss City Secretary, if you'll read us into that.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you for participating in today's city council meeting. We value your input and appreciate you taking your time to share your thoughts today. Each speaker will have three minutes to address the council during public comment. At 2 and a half minutes, a single beep will signal 30 seconds remaining. When time is up, the timer will beep continuously. Please stay within your allotted three minutes. We will be using both podiums today. When your name is called, please make your way to the open podium. When it's your turn, state your name and whether or not you live within the Emerald City limits, and then you may begin providing your comments to council. For topics not on today's agenda, the Texas Open Meetings Act limits how council may respond. Council may provide factual statements, ask for the issue to be added to a future agenda, or refer you to the city manager so staff can visit with you about your concern. If you would like to speak today, but haven't signed up yet, please come see me at the table and fill out a form so we can add you to our list. At this time, we'll invite up our first speaker, Jerome Scholes. And after Jerome on deck will be Charles Little. How about Caroline Stout? After Caroline will be Leonda mostly. Little

Okay, Mr. Little, you Sorry if we've missed you. Please come forward, sir. Um, we'll go ahead with this lady right here. And then, uh, you're next, sir.

My name is Caroline Stout. I live within the Amarillo city limits. Thank you for allowing me to speak on the very important issue of mass surveillance of our citizens. Agenda item 4.7. I strongly oppose the proposed expansion of the verata camera system because I believe it raises serious fourth amendment concerns and creates a dangerous level of government mass surveillance in our city. According to the agenda, this proposal would install 18 strategically placed cameras across the city city purportedly for proactive policing. Now, you claim that the goal is to monitor activity and identify suspicious behavior, but that is precisely why my neighbors and I are concerned that it tracks the movement of citizens. This expansion of an already implemented surveillance network is much more than just a few security cameras protecting a couple intersections. This is a citywide surveillance network designed to continuously monitor and catalog the movements of ordinary Amarilloans like me. I am deeply deeply concerned that over time surveillance systems like this can seamlessly reveal where we work, where we worship, where we seek medical care, attend political events, or who we associate with, all without a warrant. Now, the Fourth Amendment protects Americans from unreasonable searches and government intrusion. And while supporters may argue that this that activity in public is not private, courts have recognized that prolonged digital surveillance of citizens goes way beyond a reasonable expectation of privacy. And there's also the added issue of data collection and accountability as this data system through Verata is a cloud-based system designed for long-term data storage under a 10-year agreement. And we

deserve answers and guard rails about who can access this footage, how long it's stored, whether it's shared outside of Amarillo, and what safeguards exist to prevent misuse or citizen targeting. A lot can and has been done in the name of public safety, but our constitutional rights matter, too. And Amarillo should not normalize mass surveillance of its citizens simply because technology makes it easier. And for each and every one of you that vote in favor of expanding a dangerous surveillance network in our city city without strict oversight and privacy guard rails. I will make it my personal mission and the personal mission of my friends come election season to make sure that each and every one of your voters knows that you support mass surveillance and data collection by big corporations. Thank you.

Thank you, ma'am. [applause] Charles Little. And while Charles is giving comments, we will invite Lavanda Mosley up to the empty podium.

Charles Little, 5016 Navajo Trail, Emerrella, Texas. Um, I was going to comment on the water situation. Uh, I went downstairs yesterday. They said that they would have somebody call me. Somebody called me back and came out to my house, removed my meter to test it. They said, I said, I can't be down there this afternoon. I watched him take it out. He said he's going to put it on the shelf and test it, but would leave a note on there to call me back so I could be there to test it. That didn't happen. I got a text back from him that said the meter was fine. They said I had to do this test to get this problem figured out with the billing, but it's going to cost me 30 bucks. So now this after this news conference, where are the people are they going to make me pay this 30 bucks to have that meter tested? Because that's it what they said my options were to correct this billing problem. So are the water people here now? I can give my account number.

Yes, sir. We want to take it. Okay. We would invite Bruce Hill up to the empty podium and Levonda Mosley may begin her comments.

Good afternoon. Um I think most of you know I was here to talk about the water situation, but um Mr. Path has given public comment on that and I got an email at 259 that says that those bills are going to be put on hold. And so I appreciate the fact that they are looking out for people that cannot make those high bills. Now, um, listening to his comment, um, I hope that we're not going to make every citizen that has a water problem pull their meter and have it tested for $30. That seems a little um, pro it's nonproactive. I mean, we know there's a problem. Let's not make all the citizens pull their meters, see if they have a water leak. let's get past a couple of months and see if there's a continued uptick in water before we say you might have a leak. Um so with that said, you know, I always want to be a solution and not a problem. And so that's what I was going to talk about today. Um on the agenda though, you do have the the public um waterworks that was recognized today and city council Donnie Hooper and the um city manager got an email from me a week ago and I just want to publicly say that those guys work hard. We had a water man break. We noticed it at 7 o'clock on a Saturday morning. Those guys were out there. They worked hard for 12 hours. I don't know that there was a break um that they took that there wasn't a man on our premises working on that. So, I would say, you know, for citizens, we're always out to get the city, but remember the guys that are in the field working. Offer them water, offer them snacks. Those guys are working hard. Um we appreciate everything that they did for our community to get us back up and running. Um and we appreciate the fact that um you recognize them and Yep. and that they do a good job. So those guys are where the rubber meets the road and we appreciate it in our community. Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Mosley.

On deck for the empty podium will be Mike Ford and is Bruce Hill. If not Mike Ford, you are next. And on deck will be Catelyn Gibson. See if I can find the taller one. Mayor, council members, on behalf of nearly 4,000 members of the panhandle taxpayers for transparency, I rise to address what may be one of the most serious undisclosed conflicts of interest in [clears throat] recent Amarillo history. Public records show Talon LPE performed 60 environmental soil borings for Firmeny immediately before this council approved the Fermy water agreement. At the same time, the city publicly identified council member David Prescott as Talon LP's founder, president, and CEO. Yet, despite that direct business relationship between Talon LP and Furman, there was no public disclosure, no recusal, no abstension by Council Member Prescott during the October 14 and 28 proceedings. Texas law requires public officials to disclose substantial conflicts of interest and abstain from related deliberations and votes. Amarllo's own code of ethics likewise prohibits council members from participating in matters where their private business interests intersect with their public duties. And let us be clear these [clears throat] soil borings the about these soil borings they were not random holes in the ground. They were early stage engineering and environmental characterization supporting the largest industrial project ever proposed in the Texas panhandle. Now, there's nothing wrong with a council member operating a successful business, but when private business intersects uh interests intersect with public office, the law requires transparency. Disclosure and recusal exist to protect public trust. What makes this matter even more troubling is that Council Member Prescott did not simply remain silent. He actively promoted the firmy

project from his from the dis while criticizing council member Simpson's concern for additional time to study the agreement and its implications for Emerald's water future. But this issue extends beyond council member Prescott. The issue of public issue also deserves answers from mayor Stanley and the council. Emerald's governance and ends policies makes clear that the city manager works for the council collectively, not for the mayor acting alone. Yet the mayor directed city staff to work with Fermy on this agreement without the knowledge or consent of this of the council and before public even knew anything was taking place. That process deprived both this council and the citizens of Amarillo of the transparent and formed governments required by the charter and the city's own policy. And I finally must say this to council member Reed Tips and Simpson. Silence in the face of unlawful and unethical conduct is not neutrality. Public office carries an affirmative duty to defend the integrity of this institution when it is threatened. The citizens of Amarillo deserve answers. They deserve transparency and they deserve accountability. The citizens uh so today, Councilman Prescott, I'm calling on you to do one of two things. Either publicly explain and apologize to the citizens of Amarillo for your failure to disclose and recuse yourself from those proceedings or resign your office.

[applause] on deck for the empty podium will be Ashlin Major and Catelyn Gibson may begin. Uh yeah, my name is Caitlyn Gibson. I do live in um the Amarillo city limits and um for purposes of minutes I would if it's possible I would just like you to note that I second everything that Caroline Stout said about agenda number 4.7. Um I also just listen to everything this gentleman said. Um and I would say I share in his concerns. So for purposes of minutes if you can note that as well I would appreciate that. Thanks. Yes ma'am. Thank you for speaking.

[applause] On deck for the empty podium will be Heather Moors. And Ashlin, you may begin.

Hi, I'm Ashlin Major. I do live in Amarillo and I'm here today to formally request that you cancel the water contract that you entered against the will of the people of Panhandle with Fermy America. I've chosen to bring this forward today as I would like to give you time to consider this request. Firmy America has proven themselves to be an unstable business built on little else than high hopes and money. With no permanent CEO, no tenants for the massive building they're constructing, and no permanent plans on how to recover and move forward, it is in the best interest of the people of the panhandle that you write your wrong in this matter and vacate the agreement while you still can. Thank you.

Thank you, MA'AM. [applause] ON DECK WILL BE Alan Fineold. And Heather, you may begin.

Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Heather Moors and I do live uh live within the city limits of Amarillo, Texas. I'm here to briefly just air my concern about the water bill and I appreciate your attention and your uh description of what you plan to do. You have already answered some of my questions. Just very briefly, [clears throat] my March bill, uh, they said I used 13,000 gallons. My April bill, I was told I used 48,000 gallons. That's a huge, huge discrepancy and especially when you consider the fact that I was out of the country for three weeks during that time frame. So, um, you just about answered every question I have. I am just curious though and we can talk later how any discrepancy since I will owe and probably pay more than I should how that will be handled on the next bill.

Yes. If you'd like to get with Mr. Gion, we can talk about that. Okay. Y thank you very much. And council I I did I did verify with staff we are waving the the testing fee for meter testing at this during this time period. That's great. Miss Heather Rich is right over here to your left. Thank you for your opportunity. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. On deck for the empty podium will be Jerry Solis and Mr. Fineold. You may begin.

I'd like to have you gentlemen u obtain a few sheets on the water and sewer monthly rates. There are a number of water issues which should be discussed extensively by the city. I am making my fourth or perhaps fifth request that the city have a special meeting that would allow the citizenry to focus particularly on water and wastewater issues and that if necessary you set aside two to two and a half hours on some day of the week, Saturday if no other day is available to hear the citizens and have an exchange of views. Meanwhile, I will talk today about wastewater issues rather than water issues which I will address in the next meeting. There is a minimum monthly charge for wastewater service. Now, the water service has a minimum monthly charge because it is a meter fee or an alleged meter fee which is supposed to take care of all the meter issues that you have. I wonder why the city after installing a metering system that cost almost $30 million is hing having difficulty getting a proper fix on the uh water use of various citizens. But I will wait to address that the next time. this time. Minimum monthly charges for wastewater. If you have a 5/8 inch meter, it's $2169. I'm going to call it $21.70. If you have a 1 in meter, which some

residents do, it's $2241. I'm going to call it $22.40. I will refer again to the frugal water user who pays a penalty for frugality for water use and pays an even larger penalty for wastewater use. If you were a commercial user and you used 1 million gallons of water and you happen to have a 2-in water meter, your approximate cost per thousand gallons of waste water disposed would be $3. If you were a frugal wastewater user using not more than 1,000 gallons, your monthly charge would be $21.70. That's more than seven times as much as a commercial water user who uses a million gallons per month. Thank you. [applause] On deck on deck for the empty podium will be Mike Fiser and Mr. Solis. You may begin. I echo and agree with the concerns of the citizens that were here before me expressing their opinions. My concern is for the city of Amarillo. We are the city of Amarillo. We elected you to represent the city of Amarillo and you need to protect the city of Amarillo. It starts at a low level and then it goes up. And our part is to come and express our concerns to you. Your part is to address those concerns aggressively. And as far as the water bill goes, you know, that's a big concern going on right now because uh the economy the way it's going, the

state of the country overall expenses are going up. And so to be addressing something that's shouldn't have been the the problem wasn't there before until we did this system and I don't know how I didn't vote for the system. How it got in place I don't know but if it's a lot of waste of money and then wasting more money to address the issue that didn't even exist before. So my concern is just the city of Amarillo. Let's focus on the city of Amarillo and keep it flourishing. That's what your concern is, making the city grow and make more attractions come in. But let's do it right. And then another thing as far as the cameras go, I do am concerned with the surveying or monitoring people. But let's put if we do that, let's put it in the right places. I I live on Aendale by Aenddale Elementary and there's a street that runs from Aenddale to Bell. It's called Westgate. And those people treat that street as a freeway. And there's kids that walk home through there. A lot of kids. So if you're going to do cameras, let's do it at the school area so we can monitor the people that need to be monitored and to protect the children because this all ties in with bridge. I mean, the protection of the citizens and all that stuff. So let let's do the right thing if we're going to do it. Everything that we do should be done for the right cause, not for the greedy cause. That's all I have to say. Thank you very much. Thank you for doing your job. [applause]

On deck for the empty podium is Madison Bole. And Mr. Fiser, you may begin.

My name is Mike Fischer. I live in the city limits of Amarillo. You know, I I spent about three hours trying to figure out how not to say Donnie Hooper sucks at his job. So, what I what I came up with is Donnie Hooper, you're terrible at your job. Most of the recent things that are going on are all under his under his watch. The parks with the uh prairie dogs, the city two city pools closing. Uh, and now we got the water department problem. And the one I'm here to talk about today is the the traffic lights. So, last week on Thursday, so we're uh five days ago, uh, there was a rollover in front of Lowe's and I've been [clears throat] up here talking and I guess he he's got some sort of vendetta against me. I'm not here to solve Mike's problems. This is about other people. And I guess Mike's never going to win. I we're not going to show Mike that he's we can't change those lights. Then Fischer's going to rub in our f. Not one time have I rubbed in anybody's face when you guys change something. Not one time when somebody lost that I wanted to lose did I rub their face in it. I'm not here for that. That light at Lowe's has 140 foot clearance north and south to and that what that means is to get out of the way of harm's way. It's 140 ft from the stop line to where your bumper is out of the way. That that would mean at 45 mph speed limit, you would need 2.1 seconds to clear that intersection without being hit. If you barely went into that intersection when the light turned red, so if you were legally in that intersection, I timed that light. It's 1.3 seconds. So 0.8 seconds. So, you're only about halfway through that intersection. So, that's probably why a car imagine you're on your way to see

the prey dogs and you're you're going to feed the ducks and and you're whistling and tap tapping tapping your toes on the way to the park and next thing you know you're upside down in your car. Now, let's go to yesterday planes and tent. I put a video up on my website that shows the intersection and this goes that he's going to explain how these lights work. I'm gonna get three minutes. He's going to get 30 minutes. Of course, he's going to win. Let me rebut this guy after he talks about the lights. Last night I filmed it. Go watch it. It's defective. They implemented this automated system in 2018 that he said would make our city so efficient, so effective. you would enjoy your experience driving across town. That's pretty much what he said. It's in it. It's on my website also on my page that that that intersection the on the headed westbound. Every time anybody goes through the intersection in any direction, it trips it and then the arrow to turn south turns green and the westbound light turns green and it turns every single time. It's defective. The sensors are defective. So, why was there a rollover? It's probably because everybody know

Mr. Fisher, Mr. Fisher, let me let me see what I can do to help you here today. Miss uh please everyone, Mike, thank you for speaking today. Let me see what I can do to help you here today. We're going to have a productive conversation. Thank you for speaking, sir. on on deck for the empty podium will be Joe West and Madison. You may begin. Mayor, if I may real quick, I'd like to reiterate that if there's any personnel issues, those can be brought to me directly. So, so thank you.

Okay, we're going to reset the room here for just a quick second. Uh, everybody's been super respectful of everybody else's time. Mr. Fischer, you and I have engaged on this topic for well over a year, probably two years. I understand it's a passion of yours and and we appreciate that. We we're not we don't mean any disrespect to you. We we have for some time allowed the microphones to turn off after 3 minutes and 15 seconds. And we'll continue with that practice uh just to run an efficient meeting. And so we appreciate everybody honoring and respecting everybody's time. So we'll go right back to public comment. Thank you. [snorts]

Hello, my name is Madison Bole and I am a citizen of Amarillo. I live within Amarillo city limits just down the street. I'm here to speak against agenda item number 4.7 in your contract with Verata Systems. First of all, I have found it abhorrent that your constituents have to come up here and appeal to your best judgment and beg to be represented. We elected you members of city council to represent us, but it looks like y'all have preemptively decided to sell us out to private corporations before you even take the stand. Marcotta and other AI cameras treat every driver or pedestrian as a subject of investigation absent any suspicion. Mass collection precedes any crime, which inverts the Fourth Amendment's premise that government intrusion requires cause. There's large little There's a huge difference between being casually observed by your neighbors and having all of your movements tracked and cataloged and stored indiscriminately. That is the difference between being seen and being surveiled. One is freedom and one destroys freedom. Do your job and stop agreeing to these private corporations and their intrusion on Amarello. This is our city and we elected you to protect it. I'm tired of coming up here and begging you. You say protect the children, but then when youth come up here to ask you and beg you to protect our city, you sell us out so we won't be able to live here in 20 years. I want to live here, and I'm tired of feeling like I'm being pushed out, but my own representatives represent us. Dang. [applause] On deck for the empty podium will be Claudet Smith and Joe, you may begin.

Good afternoon. My name is Joe West and I live inside Amarillo city limits. Supreme Court has said that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the whole of their public movements. And when the government collects information without suspicion over weeks in a way that can reveal people's otherwise private habits and routines, that violates the fourth amendment. Michael Soyer with the Institute for Justice said, [clears throat] "I would like to request that the city of Amarillo cancel all contracts and future requisitions with Axis, Flock Safety, Granite Drone Technologies, Pen Link, DJI, Verata, and Fermy America. I request cancellation because the lack of because of the lack of citizen oversight on how these technologies are being implemented, the use of seized assets to fund our own surveillance state, and the overall apathetic responses from our local representatives when your voters disagree with your corporate favoritism. You're not doing your jobs except for people or businesses you can extract value out of or get accolades from. Personally, I find it disgusting. I'd urge you to remember that your governing is dependent on the consent of the governed. And I doubt you'd have that much consent if folks knew the sort of things that are already happening because of how stupidly we're tackling this AI bubble as a society. Police officers are stalking ex-lovers, current partners, and romantic rivals using flock safety cameras, and it's only being found out after something happens. AI regularly misidentifies objects such as Doritos bags for guns in schools. Flock safety executives got caught spying on children's gymnastics and swimming lessons. Login information from all the businesses I mentioned is freely available on the dark web and on Russian cyber crime websites. None of you are prepared for how much your decisions and rubber stamping will cost my neighbors in hardship or in tax

dollars when you're settling with some hotshot civil rights lawyer over and over again. It might not be during your terms, but we know how these things shake out. And it's never good or cheap for the government that does the violating or for the taxpayers. I used to think it was conspiratorial to think that drone assassinations by the local police department would ever happen. But then I learned about Philadelphia and the move bombing which happened 41 years ago today or tomorrow. Any sane society would take that as a sign not to give the police helicopters or drones. But even if some senator's kid gets hurt, I doubt we'll take it like a threat. I'll doubt we'll take a threat like a militarized and unaccountable police force seriously. In conclusion, I think in cancellation of these contracts is the best way to get reelected, a sign of good stewardship of our tax dollars, and a pledge to once again be proper statesmen for your neighbors and their interests, not some billionaire who hangs out with people in the Epstein files and blows up his own companies while micro doing ketamine. Looks real good, y'all.

[applause]

On deck for the empty podium will be Elaine Oliver and Claudet. You may begin. Okay. Um, what we are witnessing with the water billing disaster is not just a minor software inconvenience. For weeks now, residents have been dealing with numerous issues which I'm not going to go through and repeat all of them because we've kind of discussed this already. Um, but some residents have also have large have had large unexpected amounts autodrafted from their accounts. Um, and they're struggling to pay other bills. So, I highly doubt the city's going to be able to do anything about that. They're not going to refund them. If anything, they might say, "We'll put it towards your next bill." So, what are those people left to do? Um, others who are finally getting through the massive call volume are being told to hire a plumber, which some of them actually have and have been out of pocket for that as well, when it's very obvious this this um issue is with the city and not the citizens um at this point. So, uh I [clears throat] say all this because unless the citizens speak up, the only thing that this mayor and council know is the candy coated version that that department wants you to know. Uh you guys don't usually speak directly with them. you usually speak with the city manager and so you're getting the candy coated version and so that's why I encouraged people to come out today and and speak about the issues they were having not only so you guys could hear but so Grace and Path could hear as well. Now I do want to acknowledge Jennifer Gonzalez and the city manager for promptly returning my calls about my issue although it has not been resolved yet. I'm confident they're still working on it. Uh but respectfully Jennifer and Grayson Path cannot personally troubleshoot thousands of frustrated residents one by one. That's not a sustainable solution to a systemic problem. And frankly, with um dis disruption this widespread, it's difficult for the public to believe um that this is simply just a minor glitch. Whether this resulted from oversight, incompetence, or something more intentional, the public deserves accountability and transparency. Which brings me to another concern. When the media requested interviews regarding the issue, the city declined until today. Apparently, that does not help calm

public fears. Uh people want reassurance that the city recognizes the seriousness of the issue and is actively working towards solutions. And I'm not just here to complain. I also want to offer solutions. I I recommend that you immediately place a step-by-step like YouTube tutorial or something directly on the utility website if there is one. It it's not right front and center because I didn't find it. uh that shows residents how to find their u new account numbers, create accounts, reenroll in autopay, etc. Troubleshoot problems. Um create a a clearly labeled known issues page updated daily. Increase temporary staffing and call back support. And uh Grayson has suggested updates um to the council every week. Yeah, that's great. But no one really watches these council meetings. I mean, for the most part. So whatever those updates are should be front and center on that page where people can go and find it. And while I recognize that this suggestion could have a fiscal impact, I also believe residents need a fair reset point, not in endless individual disputes. The city should consider a temporary flat rate billing solution for this affected period while the system issues are fully investigating investigated and corrected. The city can address the software software vendor side afterward. And I guess I'm out of time, so

thank you.

[applause] And Miss Oliver, you may begin.

Okay. Good afternoon. I'm Elaine Oliver. I live in Amarillo. I've lived here for 45 years. I love Amarillo. I moved here from California. I didn't like it at all when I first moved, but I adjusted. It's a great place to raise a family and wonderful people. But my concern, I don't have any fancy script wrote out or anything. It's just about me and my money. I live on social security. I got a $416 water bill this month. Last month it was 160. I didn't even look to see how many gallons difference. It was just the money that about gave me a heart attack. And I'm not at the right age or I am at the right age. [laughter] So, I just hope that you guys do do something very seriously about this because $400 for my water bill is more than my gas, my electric, my internet, and my phone. And I can't afford to live there anymore. I'm going to have to move either back out to the country where I moved in from where I didn't have a water bill or move period. And I don't want to do that. So, thank you for your time and please promise all of us that you will do your best to get this handled, please. Thank you.

Yes, ma'am. We appreciate you. [applause] We want you to have confidence we're going to get this reconciled. Mayor, that concludes all of the individuals that signed up today. Okay. Um, do I have anybody else here who would like to offer public comment today? Thank you for everyone who spoke here today. Uh council, this would be your opportunity if you'd like to give any remarks. I'd like to make a statement of fact uh to Mr. Ford. Uh let me walk you through exactly what Talon's involvement was with the Firmeny America project in 2025. [clears throat]

So let me ask so Mr. Ford, I know you're walking forward. It's not an opportunity for the mic to be turned back on. So, uh, he's just making a statement to me. He said, I would just welcome you back to your chair, please. He just said he's addressing me. Well, let me let me correct that. He's addressing his remarks here today in this forum. So, no direct mouth, Mr. Mayor. He said he's addressing me. Yeah. No, sir. And I have an opportunity to respond. No, sir. Actually, what he said specifically was he was going to address the remarks that you st on videotape. I guess we can watch it later to see exactly what he said. If you don't mind to go back to your chair, please sir. Thank you. This is really nice. Really [clears throat] impressive. Thank you, sir. Please sit.

This is the type of gasing. Would you like to continue? I would. Okay. I would like to continue. Thank you, Mayor. Let me walk you

let me walk you through exactly what Talon LB's involvement was with the Firmeny America project in 2025. TalonLP was engaged to perform environmental investigation as a drilling subcontractor by Terracon Consultants. Our scope was narrow and technical advanced environmental soor borings on private land outside Emerila city limits. these borings to 10 feet and a few exceptions to 30 feet. We turned over all the s soil samples to Teraccon for analysis. Talon did not drill wells or perform any groundwater related work. Talon had no direct contractual relationship with Fermy America. Talon did not drill wells or perform any groundwater related work. This subcontracting work was completed in late summer and early fall of 2025. Ferm's project was not formally presented to the city council until October 14th, 2025, and the council's vote on water rights did not occur until October 28th, 2025. After my company's work had already concluded, the city's letter of intent was issued June 27th by city administration. The non-bindingou was signed September 25th by the city manager. The council casts no vote on any of these documents. The city of Amarillo provides water service to thousands of customers and nothing in Texas statute, city ordinance, or ethical standards under these circumstance circumstances prohibits a council member from doing business with an entity that does business with a water consumer of the city, particularly one whose water rate was set by contract at twice. Let me say again, twice. the standard commercial rate, a structure that benefits the city, not

firmy America. Under chapter 171 of the Texas Local Government Code, a conflict of interest exists when a council member has a substantial interest in a business entity and a council action would produce a specific economic effect on that interest. distinguishable from the effect on the general public. Talon was not the party contracting with the city. The council's vote to was to authorize the city manager to execute a water supply agreement between the city of Amarillo and Fermy America. Neither I nor any member of my family have any stock or financial interest in Fermy America. There are no legal requirements to disclose or recuse. In retrospect, I could have made a statement at the October meeting. Absolutely. I could have, but it was not necessary. End of my comment.

Okay. So, thank you. So, at this time, at this time, we're going to take a 10-minute recess. Mr. Ford, if you'd like to join me in the back chambers, I'd be glad to visit with you oneon one. Uh, 10 recess.

after a called recess. Calling ourselves back into session into order. We are moving forward with our consent agenda. We will address um the uh item 4.7 which has to do with the the cameras and get a little more context on that. So, we are going to go ahead and pull 4.7. And then um item 4.15 is not ready. That is um a grant uh that hadn't quite gotten the the correct paperwork. So, we're going to ask to remove 4.15 council. And uh Chief Hoverver, I know I didn't u we didn't talk or anything before this, but I I just um would love for our citizens to hear a little bit more about the current flock system, maybe when it came into being. Would you mind coming forward, please, sir?

Thank you, Chief,

Mayor, and Council. Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity. Um, I don't know exactly when the current flock system uh was put in place. It was before my my time here. All I can tell you is how we're using it now, and more specifically, what this item is and what it's not. Uh the first one is the these are simply traffic cameras. They're going up at intersections. Uh some of them are actually replacing some older aged equipment. Uh but they're traffic cameras. They're not ALPR, which is an automatic license plate reader. It's simply nothing different than a regular camera that you see in front of us today. The second part is retention. It's only going to be retained for seven days and it it gets ingested into what's called Fus, our uh video management system and after that it drops off. There's also an audit trail. Anytime an officer looks at that camera for a specific reason, they have to put in the reason why and it collects the data how long they look at that camera and for the for the audit trail and and for the reasons why meaning they have to put in a case report number uh or a traffic stop number or uh it's it's in response to something that has already occurred. It's not being used to surveil. Uh it's not a proactive tool in that aspect. It's simply just used after a call for service has occurred. Uh the 10-year contract is simply to have where this piece of equipment breaks or fails. So, they come in and fix it. And the cameras are not being shared outside of our local partners, which is Potter and Randall County. Uh again, this is not a this [clears throat] is not a federal thing that that uh anyone else has access to other than what's connected to our actual fuses system. The whole idea behind these cameras are

actually to improve public trust. It's after a call for service when those things occur. The idea behind it is provide to provide us specific details after that call happens on a specific car or bicycle or offense that occurs. It's an opportunity for us to have specific locations to get our officers there faster. When seconds matter, especially when you're when you're talking about violent crime or traffic collision, sometimes people don't necessarily know exactly where they're at. And with the use of these cameras, we're we're able to pinpoint exactly where they're at so we can get the help and the resources to that exact location.

Chief, thank you for that. Um, Mr. Freeman, uh, Deputy, you may have the the best resource just in memory of uh, were license plate readers uh, brought in 2018 2019? I believe it was around 2019. 2019. Before that, the other camera systems were red light cameras. Correct. And they were probably what 2010 2010s 2012 somewhere in there. Um the red [clears throat] light cameras are no longer around. Correct. Okay. And so Flock uh probably wasn't the company that was used in 2019. No, I I don't recall [clears throat] the name, but I know it wasn't Flock.

Okay. And and so um in in all things surveillance, right? I mean, we hear about uh 15minute cities um everything surveillance. Uh there are a lot of legitimate concerns when it when it comes to tracking and tracing uh a digital currency um where your money now is on your your device or your phone or worse than that ladies like where where there is no device any longer where where the implant is placed on your person and and you're now operating through that. These are these are realistic concerns, right? Um in being a free people, uh we have to have freedom of speech, freedom of movement, and freedom of privacy. And so like I I'm not saying that everything has to be turned off and that we can have nothing of of any value as far as tech, but I'm also not saying that just everything we want to put out and and we could just go full boore and not not cross that line. So is there a balance there of what is healthy for our community? And so, uh, Chief, if I could, I I would like to talk a little bit about like where are these cameras currently placed? And then, um, I get questions of is that looking in somebody's backyard? Is that can that look into their house? Do you have like a thermal imaging on that camera? Um because there are certain techniques that I would say you know the police department has in a crime fighting organization where if you are uh operating against a criminal element and and you are going to attack that that structure you you may implement a a number of of technologies but what we're talking about here is just what is permanently placed across the city of Amarillo.

So I don't have the exact locations we can get those for you. uh I do believe are in the range of about 200 traffic cameras. Okay. Uh and those are at the again those are at different intersections uh not uh in private locations, not facing uh private uh backyards and things like that. They're actually placed just about maybe right above head level. So they're only right around seven to eight feet tall. So they're not even on a on a taller post. They're at a lower point than even the traffic signals. Okay. And then those cameras, they purge every seven days. Yes, sir. And and then we we only archive what we have for

an actual offense that occurs. Yes, sir. When there's physical evidence uh that are that is provided on those cameras, whether it's a crash or or whether it's a vehicle leaving a location that an offense just occurred, uh only at that time do we actually retain those videos. So, as far as uh surveillance and being able to to use facial recognition, see a person, be able to track their whereabouts across town, right? Or or key in anything. Our LPRs are very very valuable. License plate reader um in solving crimes. You guys have uh apprehended plenty of criminals using those as well as return stolen vehicles. Um what is the technology that's in the flock camera right now? in the flock camera. That's the license plate reader.

It's just the license plate reader. Correct. Okay. So, in in like if I drive through um I remember the old red light camera because I could see myself as it took a photo of me, right? And my license plate. And so, um in in the aspect of this, is there facial res recognition in any of our flock cameras? No, sir. Not on the flock cameras.

Okay. Um, [clears throat] I I know we're not going to solve this here today. I I think what what I'm looking for is to start a conversation, not to just have one and close the door. But as we have to deal with certain technologies in the community, my hope is to strive for a certain balance. Uh there is a certain level of trust that's extended to our badged officers and APD and sheriff's departments and and we we do trust them to a certain extent. We also hold them accountable and we require them to tell us what they're doing. And so the Ark uh is the regional crime fighting center and we've had uh tours down there for people to be able to go in and see what is being done. I would invite those that are interested to contact myself or city managers um so that we can coordinate that so that you can see how that data is being stored. And then let's do let's get not a a specific map of everything, but let's get a comprehensive understanding of where are these positioned, what are they gaining, what are they recording, um what do we find helpful, and then where is that balance where we know we're not following somebody to their place of residence or their business? And and let's start there and see if we can find a balance um before I think we we overcorrect one way or the other. I I know they're beneficial to uh crime fighting and and I know we've had them since 2019.

So, Chief, thank you for letting me expound on that. Council, I'd ask if you have any. Just correction, it was 2021 when we started. 2021 was the license plate readers 2021. So, going on about five or six years. And then the red light camera company was Vera Mobility. Okay. Thank you for the additional information. Council, do you have anything you'd like to add? Uh yeah. Uh, Chief, just um probably two questions. Does anybody or or does the police department monitor those cameras 24 hours a day? No, sir. Okay. And even if we did, what information are they going to gather other than cars going through an intersection?

That's exactly it. That's all. Okay. Council, anything further? Thank you, Chief. Appreciate you. Thank you for the citizens that are u listening and and we we understand the concerns. Um consent agenda is before you um and and find to include 4.7 asking for the removal of uh 4.15. I move to approve the consent agenda absent 4.15 as presented. I'd second. I have a motion from place four, a second from place one. Uh any further discussion? All in favor, please say I.

I. Any oppose? Motion passes. We'll move forward into our discussion items. Up first for discussion, we have Miss Shannon Talison coming forward. Um we will hear a TCEQ agreed order. Yeah, Mayor, if you don't mind, I might preface this with with something. This was an item that was requested uh by Councilman Prescott, but this is not something that's new. It's not something that's hot off the press, if you will. And I told Shannon I was going to give this preface to it because this is something we've actually been working with and Shannon's been working with TCQ all the way back since 2022. So, just wanted to throw that out there and I'll turn it over to Shannon.

Thank you, Council and Mayor Stanley. Um, Donnie, I I know that I just wanted to bring it to light and no like gotchas or anything like that, but just as an informative deal. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. was more for the public so that they understood where this was coming from and and what would happen if we don't move forward with the wastewater treatment plant, you know, with the updates and things. So, thank you. Thank you, ma'am.

No problem. So, uh today I wanted to talk a little bit about the proposed agreed order um issued by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality regarding the Hollywood Road Wastewater Treatment Plant. The city of Amarillo was in receipt of the proposed agreed order on March 30th of this year for violations that occurred in 2022 and 2023. I want to start the conversation by talking a little bit about the violation history. So really the violations need to be broken up into two specific areas. There's the violations that occurred before the 2022 or 2023 flood event and then there's violations that occurred after the 2023 flood event. So, um, from April 24th to June 1st of 2022, the wastewater treatment plant at Hollywood Road, uh, experienced multiple discharges, multiple unauthorized discharges. Those unauthorized discharges were both for wastewater and for sludge being discharged into the receiving stream. There were also multiple effluent limitation violations associated with this issue. So, a little bit about what happened. On April 24th of 2022, the TCQ did a compliance investigation of the wastewater treatment plant. And during that investigation, they observed that sludge was discharging from the discharge point. Um, that is the primary discharge point, one of three primary discharge points for the wastewater treatment plant. in the image up here on the picture uh right at the bottom where there's kind of a little rock assembly, you can actively still see sludge as a part of what was at the site whenever we went back out and did a site investigation the following day on April 25th of 2022. So what caused that violation specifically associated with the solids overloading is that the plant becomes overloaded with solids at a certain extent whenever you have wastewater

flows that uh continuously come to a plant. Um what I try to kind of give people a perspective on is um kind of imagine if you have a coffee pot and you put too many grounds in the filter. So, you're still going to have water moving through that filter. However, at some point, those solids will overflow into your craft. A very similar situation happens at a wastewater treatment plant when you can't perform a function called wasting. Wasting removes all of the old spent sludge from the system. You still have to have sludge to operate a wastewater treatment plant effectively, but it's something called activated sludge, meaning it has a bacterial colony um setup that is specifically helpful to the overall process of the wastewater treatment plant in itself. So in this situation specifically, the filters were backed up which reduced the overall flow. The wastewater treatment plant cannot be shut off. It functions off of gravity. So you're continuously having flow come into that plant whether or not those filters were backed up. And in this situation, the filter media was completely clogged and it allowed for that overflow including the sludge solids to exit the plant through the standard discharge routes. Um, additionally, um, very similar to again whenever you're talking about, um, just a a plant backing up, everything will eventually hydraulically back up into the previous tank. So, there is a low point of the wastewater treatment plant and that low point is the equalization basin. Whenever the rest of the wastewater treatment plant is overloaded, it backs up all of that water flow into the equalization basins and the equalization basin then overflows overland and goes to ply lake 40 through gravity. So that is the overall cause of what occurred in the uh April 2022 situation.

So to give you a little bit of context about the resolution by April 28th we had ceased the unauthorized discharge to the outfalls and clean the respective areas. TCQ was back on site on April 28th of 2022 and issued that this situation was resolved as of that date. By July 30th of 2022, we had ceased all unauthorized discharges to the Plyia Lake 40 and clean the area of the respective solid or the respective wastewater um overflow that went into the PIA lake. Um to give a little bit of context about the wastewater when it exits to the PLA lake, it has been partially treated by the point it gets to that location. It's not disinfected. It hasn't gone through that standard process. But after water is out in the environment for a certain subset of time, the UV uh nature of of just being out in in a visible area at some point starts to break down the bacterial counts and things like that that occur naturally in a wastewater stream. So by July 30th, we had ceased the unauthorized discharges to the PLA lake. By February 27th of 2023, we had developed and implemented procedures for local notifying local govern government and media notification for spills. Whenever you see us issue a public notification for any spill, uh the criteria is anything greater than 50,000 gallons that is near a public water supply or private water well. Any of those we have to immediately issue public notice. It is a requirement of the TCEQ. Uh, anything in excess of a 100,000 gallons, we have to issue public notice regardless. This must in must include our local government. It must include media notifications, and I must report back to the TCQ who all we notified in the events of these situations. So, when you guys see those public notices come out for unauthorized discharges in excess of 100,000 gallons, I am following the state law regarding how we have to report those for the simple fact we operate a wastewater

treatment system. Um, finally by May 10th of 2023, we had disposed of all sludge and we actually went out and plowed 18 in of the ply surface. So, we turned it over to bring that fresh soil from underneath back up. Uh, fun side note, we had actually also planted a substantial amount of western wheat grass, which is uh something we can utilize to mitigate soil contamination. Um, and it reduces the amount of like chlorides and salts that can accumulate in soil. We had planted that in May 10th of 2023 and then in like what was it the 23rd of May that it just started raining. So it washed all of our our uh wheat grass into the center of the basin. So that was unfortunately not a successful attempt to uh recolonize vegetative uh solutions in that ply lake. So at that point in time, TCQ did notify us that we had three key points of violation associated with that um those unauthorized discharges. The first one was the failure to notify appropriate local government and officials for a spill that exceeded 100,000 gallons or more. Uh failing to prevent discharge sludge to a receiving stream. And then lastly, failure to prevent unauthorized discharges of waste water. Uh by nature, we receive notification of enforcement. We received our notice of enfor enforcement on March 15, 2023. So why are we standing here in 2026 talking about an enforcement order? TCQ has kind of been plagued a lot like a lot of other entities that they've had an immense amount of staffing turnover. The enforcement division of TCQ had a tremendous amount of staffing turnover. So though they have had this enforcement action in their hands, they haven't had the staffing to be able to issue the enforcement as it stands to this point. Um, so let me get into a little bit of what happened after the 2023 flood

event. TCQ completed a compliance investigation of the Hollywood Road Wastewater Treatment Plant on September 6th and September 7th of 2023. The primary findings and there were a multitude of them. There were roughly 13 findings as a result of that compliance investigation and it affected every central operational point of the wastewater treatment plant. Aerration basins, dissolved air flotation, primary and secondary clarifiers, sludge digesttors, blowers, filtration units, bar screens, chlorine contact basins, and equalization basins were all identified as in violation. Now, why were they in violation? The TCQ references Texas administrative code whenever it comes to wastewater treatment plant operations. You can't simply have a tank there that is holding water. The tank must operate as designed. And what we were experiencing in this situation is so many failures had occurred at that plant following the flooding event that the plant was not operating as designed. So even though the units were physically there, they were not operating. And that's the issue we had associated with all of those uh control mechanisms being identified as in violation. Additionally, and unfortunately, we did have additional unauthorized discharges to Ply Lake 40 um during a separate event following the flooding. Uh but again, I can give you context pertaining to the uh purpose or the reason behind that. So, um I apologize. I kind of jumped the gun there. So all of this is just again the 12 alleged violations of nearly every treatment unit on the facility and then one alleged violation of four separate unauthorized discharges between September 20th and September 23rd. All of those violations, if you go back and look, were publicly notified as required by the previous uh enforcement action we

had in 2022. So what is the primary issue we're experiencing at the wastewater treatment plant in September 2023? So your primary clarifiers um are are very essential units in your overall treatment process. What they do, what the whole component of wastewater treatment is, is you slow down the water. You put mechanical and biological processes in place and you allow the water to essentially have the solids fall out and then the items that float come to the surface. So inside of a primary clarifier tank, there are rakes at the bottom and there are supposed to be scum rakes at the top. This treatment train that you're looking at in the photograph is the north treatment train. This is the treatment train that was built in the 1960s. That treatment train by design um the two basins on that side of it share a gearbox. So even though one of those two basins was repaired and functional because they share a gearbox, when the other basin doesn't work, neither of them work. So predominantly what we're experiencing in this situation is that of the two basins, we had successfully repaired one of those two basins in uh February of 2024. However, they are still not operable as designed today because we can't repair the second one or we have to fully repair the second one to be able to get both of them to work as designed. going back to that TCQ violation statement that this equipment has to operate as it was designed. Um, additionally, so these this is a picture of the aeration basin. Um, this visible matting that you see on the top of the picture, this is very indicative that your primary treatment process is not working effectively. So, water has already come through the bar screens. It's already come through the primary clarifiers and now it's in the irration basin. So this matting you're seeing in this picture is the solids that should

have been removed by the primary treatment component that is now h had the opportunity to affect the aeration basin. The aation basin is the heart of the wastewater treatment plant. I need the aation basin to work effectively because the biological activity happening inside of that basin is the fundamental treatment process of wastewater treatment. So, if you see scum matting on the top of a of a a second or an irration basin, right off the bat, all you have to know is that basin is not healthy. That basin is not working the way it's designed. Why is it not working the way it's designed? In addition to the fact that the primary treatment was not effective in this situation, the uh basin itself has has additional issues. the concrete is falling and we actually have breaks in the airlines that feed the air to the diffusers in the bottom of those aation basins that give the bacteria the oxygen they need to be able to break down the waste even further. So, in this situation, um, in addition to just the primary treatment not working, we had obvious breaks. You can go to the north treatment train today and you don't even have to walk out on the concrete and you can actively hear the air leaking from inside of the concrete. Inside of the PVC of the concrete or inside of the concrete, the PVC is broken. The problem is we genuinely did not know from an engineering standpoint whether or not it was safe to access and go out to the actual location on the aerration basins to evaluate how to do those repairs. Um we are evaluating that currently through the use of engineers and um architects to try to identify if we can go out and physically repair those. This is a very very essential spot in the in the operation of the treatment plant also for a safety mechanism. airrated water you can't swim in. If somebody falls into these aation basins, they're they sink immediately. There's no buoyancy in

the aation basin. So, we've intentionally said that we don't want people walking out on these aation basins with failing concrete because we definitely don't want to lose a staff member to this. So, predominantly those are some of the fundamental problems with the aation basin that still exists today. The equalization basin. So, in this image, this is following the flood event that occurred in 2023. What you can't see in the picture is immediately to the I'm terrible with left and right. Immediately to the right of this picture, um the the sludge drying pad is located to the right of that picture. What happened is as the flood waters ran across the plant, it actually pushed that sludge pad into that equalization basin. When it did that, you can't immediately drain those things and clean them out. they're actively working. So the the process we were looking at in this is that when you have sludge inside your equalization basin, you also start to build up excess ammonia values and those have to feed back to the headworks of the plant. So already you have an excess ammonia amount of ammonia which is a permit parameter that's coming back to the front side of the plant. Um so this was an additional issue that we had as a result of the the flooding situation. The sludge digesttors. There are four sludge digesttors at the wastewater treatment plant. It was identified in late 2022 that the digesttors which we thought were active and working were actually full of hardened sludge. So they were not functional which helps to understand why we had those 2022 violations. Um at the time TCT come out and did the compliance investigation, we were actively in construction repairing those digesttors. However, the construction was delayed because during the construction process, we also had to condemn the boilers. So then we had to go back through procurement to add additional uh boilers to the overall

project. So let's talk again about resolution. By September 23rd of 2023, we had again ceased the unauthorized discharges to the ply lake and clean the area. By February 8th of 2024, we repaired primary clarifier number two and got it online. Again, when I say online, that does not mean it's operational. It is online. It's holding water and it's allowing for gravity to take place to pull some of those solids out, but it's not operating the way is designed. By March 20th of 2024, we had cleaned the equalization basins and removed all sludge and disposed of it as required by the state law. And then by September 11th, 2025, we had repaired all four digesttors and the final filters. Um, additionally, just having mentioned how much waste water had been discharged into Plyia Lake 40 at that point in time, one of the things that TCQ wanted us to prove to them was that the Plyia Lake was not full of trash and clutter and it was still a a healthy and active PIA lake. We actually partnered with APD and utilized uh drone photography to take pictures of the air of the Ply Lake 40. uh it was dry on October 16th of 2024 and we can show that is free of debris and supporting vegetative growth. So again, in terms of what we've done to try to remediate that, we have been an active participant to ensure that we're doing everything in our power to try to bring back the health and um uh ecological uh efficacy of the PIA lake. So now let's talk about the pro proposed agreed order. First and foremost, what is a proposed agreed order? It is a draft order that allows the city the ability to identify any additional repairs that have been completed since the compliance order took place. TCQ enforcement division issued us our proposed agreed order on March 30th of this year regarding those 2022 and 2023

alleged violations. They also proposed an administrative penalty of $324,335 for those violations that occurred in 2022 and 2023. The city was required to submit a response by April 29th of 2026 regarding what uh we had resolved. We reported ahead of time. Uh we submitted our report on April 14th requesting to resolve that the bar screens had been adequately repaired. Secondary clarifier number six had been adequately repaired and that we had actually replaced the dissolved airflotation tank with a new rotary drum thickener technology which is a much more efficient and effective technology. So [snorts] um that apologies that picture that is the bar screens in the picture. They are operational. I know it's it's hard to understand just looking at a picture whether or not it's operational. When these bar screens are not operational they're literally like sideways in the rake. So you can actually see that they're they're as they're designed up inside of the containment units that hold those bar screens um operational. This is secondary clarifier number six. Uh one thing about it is if you look at um comparatively to the primary clarifier picture that I had earlier in the presentation where you saw that active matting on top of it. This is clean. This is clear. That is what a clarifier is supposed to look like. Um and then this is the new rotary drum thickener technology. Again, part of the the overall issue that occurred in 2022 when I was talking about the plant being overloaded with solids, this technology removes 40% more solids than the old DAFF units did, the old DAFF tank. Um, so right off the bat, by having two of these units operational, we have an exceptionally better process of treating the wastewater that's currently coming to that plant facility than we did in the past. So another important thing that came from the proposed agreed order,

municipalities have the opportunity to request something called a supplemental environmental project. The purpose of a supplemental environmental project is to allow municipalities to retain penalty monies in within your city. So rather than paying the TCQ a $324,000 penalty, we can apply for a project to maintain and keep that funding inhouse. We have already submitted an application and we have received a tenative approval uh to offset 100% of the that penalty amount. Um the project that we were uh requesting is the replacement of the influence screw pumps. We've had the influence screw pumps since February of 2024, but the installation of these 10 ton screw pumps is very time consuming and very dangerous. So, we have we have postponed it and we've now requested to onboard professional services to install these pumps on our behalf. We have installed one of them and we installed it May 15th of 2025 um with the help of um AFD. They came out and observed while we did the installation of the one pump. What this will do is this removes the bottleneck that happens in the headworks of the plant. So whenever you have water coming into the wastewater treatment plant, it automatically bottlenecks in your um initial headworks because it has to go up these Archimedes screw pumps. The Archimedes screw pumps have like 4in gaps between the wall and the screw pump. So hydraulically we're not getting enough water up those screw pumps. Um, I think the old ones that we pulled out, um, had had actually degraded to where they were only moving 7 million gallon a day from each screw pump. Each one of these new ones is rated at 15 million gallon a day. So, when the plant's whole permit is is 12 MGD, you start adding these screw pumps, it completely removes the bottlenecking and stops us from

having opportunities to um overflow flow the plant at the headworks of the plant. So, what's next? Um, TCQ's recognized the repairs and address that we addressed through the response. They notified us on April 27th that they did in fact recognize the repairs that we had submitted. Uh, a revised agreed order will be issued with the remaining outstanding violations. Those outstanding items are called ordering provisions. What an ordering provision is is it is a repair that you must do within a defined time that is issued by the TCEQ. Um the next step would be a final agreed order. The agreed orders must by Texas administrative code be signed by the top elected official or executive officer of a municipality. So that will be the next thing that comes. So what are the ordering provisions that we have left? Within 60 days of the finalized agreed order, we must remove all unnecessary solids and dispose of them properly. Additionally, we have 180 days to repair all aation basin diffusers, the air supply and the concrete in the north treatment train. We have to repair primary clarifier number one, which is the one that is holding up both of those two clarifiers from working together effectively. And we additionally need to repair um secondary clarifiers 1 3 4 and five. 15 days from the completion of each of those timelines. So at 75 days and 195 days respectively, the top elected official or the executive officer must sign a certification statement saying that they they have personally reviewed and agreed to what repairs have been done to this point. So I'm not waiting on them. We are moving forward on the task to repair those issues today. So the ordering provision will likely become effective following the TCQ commissioners meeting in July.

That's a tenative timeline for when we expect this to be finalized. Um but it could be August just in terms of of how long it takes uh to get the ordering provisions back and get it on the TCQ agenda meeting. So again, we have a goal in mind and our goal is that we want all of the repairs to be completed ahead of the ordering provision schedule even being issued to us. So that is what we're doing today. This picture that you see, this is one of the secondary clarifiers and the ordering provision was the repair of the rakes. So the the white bars you see at the top and the blue bars you see at the bottom are the essential components that we had to fix to get this clarifier back online and functional as designed. Um, so that seems like a really simple task, right? So I really wanted to point out one thing. Those white bars, just the white bars alone for secondary clarifier number three, which is already repaired. So we again, that's an ordering provision to have that clarifier completed, we did between April 20th and April 22nd. We have that cardigraph platform that we've talked about extensively and being able to provide you guys essential data to what it takes to actually fund and operate the utility. This is what we were pulling from Cardigraph. So between April 20th and April 22nd of 2026, we used 44 hours of city labor. We use 27 hours of contract labor and the rental equipment per day per use is included in that. So to replace that one component of that wastewater treatment tank, just those bars was $5,600 for to do that in two days. Um, so each one of those components, again, I have 10 clarifiers. I have 10 clarifiers and all of them have the similar components in them that we have to go through the process of taking down and repairing. These are actually pretty cheap aspects of the wastewater treatment plant. What

you can't really see in the picture is on the back side of that treatment train, there is a gate that actually operates and opens and closes that that tank from being able to discharge to the filtration point. That gate by itself is $180,000. So each one of these components, even though it looks like a pretty straightforward repair, it takes time and it takes energy. So, I just wanted to put into context that every step we're taking to go through the repairs of this plant, we are documenting through something we'll be able to provide you tangible data with at the end of this. So, at the end of this, it kind of begs the question of repairs versus expansion. These repairs are required to meet the regulatory requirements of operating an existing wastewater treatment plant. These repairs cannot be delayed under the premise that we're building a new plant because this is a requirement of the state for us to operate the wastewater treatment plant as it was designed. Now, the additional thing is that even if we make all of these repairs today and everything in that wastewater treatment plant is repaired, that is going to protect us from unauthorized discharges and from violating our permit. It does not fix the issue that we continue to have more and more flow inundating these plants as we move forward and as our community grows. So the new plant that has been mentioned numerous times, I think it's really essential to identify that that is an expansion of wastewater treatment technology that is an expansion of capacity. The wastewater treatment plant at Hollywood Road is not going anywhere. We have to keep that system operational and we have to keep it operational as designed. We cannot allow these systems to fail and then continue to request things like funding to be able to facilitate future growth for our community. So, I just wanted to give a little bit of closing context pertaining to what happens when we close this out

and we tell TCQ we're no longer in violation. The other answer is that we're not no longer in violation. We are still under notice violation for a compliance investigation in 2025. We are working very hard to keep that violation from going to the enforcement division and we are working to try to mitigate uh the plant being located in a 100-year flood plane. uh we have to have appropriately licensed staff to operate the treatment plant and at the time of the investigation we did not have the appropriate number of belicicensed operators and the last thing we have to do is ensure that we're taking flow measurements on a continuous basis. We've made measurable improvements on all of those fronts but again from a content from a from a point of when we're done with the enforcement the agreed order are we done having violations? The answer is no. We're going to continue to have violations on this plant and on River Road as we move forward because both of those plants have aged to the point that it's hard to keep them operating as designed. So with that, I'll take any questions.

Question. Councilman, the city is is so lucky to have you. Your technical knowledge, your delivery, and your passion for this project is incredible. So, thank you for a very welldefined and professional report out on a complex subject. I think everyone in this room learned something about the complexities and the size of our wastewater treatment plant issues. Thank you very much and I'm glad you're you're leading the team. Thank you. Other question?

No. Um, Miss Tison, great job as always. Uh, we have a ton of confidence in you. you you and Will both really stepped in. If we only knew half of what you're fixing, we we would be impressed, but obviously you you guys are tending to weigh more um financially. Uh am I correct in understanding and remembering that we budgeted large repairs for Hollywood uh treatment. We've got those budgets sitting there. We're we're not sitting here listening to, well, we've got a financial issue now. We've got to go and figure out how to fund all these repairs. you you are equipped um with the budgets that you need to continue to to repair this and move us forward before the new wastewater treatment plant gets here.

Or maybe Donnie, are we good question? We're good as we are now working on the things that she's talking about. And I think as she mentioned, we're going to have things that come up in the future that we're going to have to deal with. Uh we're we're continually monitoring that, making sure that we have uh steps in place that we can bring back to you. Uh whether that's creating a new CIP for something that's just failed at one of the plants or whatever it may be because again, you know, the thing that she said so well is it's a capacity issue that's making us have to rebuild. But for example, we can't take those plants down, but if we lose a switch gear in one of those plants, we're in trouble because we have to take the plant down and the plant can't function with that. So, we're we're watching all those things and we'll bring them back to you as we need more funding, but I think we're in pretty good shape right now.

I know it was a it was a technical production or presentation very well uh explained, but then I think you can walk away hearing like, well, that could be expensive. And so, I just want our citizens to know that we've planned and uh prepped for that and then everything else you're going to grow us into, you're working on. So, u Miss Shannon, thank you. Next item. Item 5.2, two traffic signal update. Mr. Harter,

thank you, mayor and city council. Alan Harter, public works director. I'm gonna have to talk to Miss Coggins about never making me present after Miss Tollison again. Um, that was really good and and very technical. Uh, I'm here today to speak about uh some concerns that were brought up uh several council meetings ago. I also want to address that concerns that were brought up over here today. We actively have staff, in fact, signal technicians are responding to one of those to investigate those concerns. And then I'm also going to be reviewing signal timing at the intersection that was mentioned just to make sure that's operating as designed. So, as you may recall on April 14th, city council requested an evaluation of signal timing at intersections with fatal accidents in the last 6 months. We actually took that all the way back to January of 2025 to make sure we got a very comprehensive look uh at all intersections with fatal accidents. We also have and especially because we have some new council members since we previously uh presented on this. Mr. Hooper and I presented in March of 2025 traffic accident data as well as just an overview of signal timing and how it works which I'm going to go back over again today some of that and then in April of 2025 uh at council's request we gave an evaluation of 45th and sony traffic signal timing for that we specifically hired a third-party traffic consultant to evaluate the uh yellow change and and red clearance intervals at that intersection uh and the results from that if you may recall from that presentation was they actually recommended that we reduce the amount of time we have there. We didn't take that action. We kept it uh the way it was. That way it would be consistent with all other intersections across the city of Amarillo and the way that we calculate and implement those times. So, I'm going to talk about the definition, purpose, and method for determining clearance intervals at intersections. I'm going to give a review of traffic fatalities at signalized intersections going back to January of 2025. I'm going to uh discuss findings from that evaluation. And then I'm also going to discuss the specific request regarding adding time to red clearance intervals. So all discussions about traffic control devices have to start at the Texas manual on uniform traffic

control devices. You've heard me talk about it a lot, the TMUCD. This establishes uniform criteria for the use of traffic control devices and ensures consistency for motorists. One thing that has actually changed since the last time we presented, this document is now state law. It never was before, but as of November of 2025, uh it was adopted as state law, as required based on the Federal Highway Administration's MUTCD. Uh this was actually a requirement that was mandated by the federal government that all states adopt their own version of the MUTCD, which has to generally meet the federal MUTCD. The state of Texas did that on in November of 2025. So now it is state law that we abide by uh that document. So to speak a little bit more specifically about yellow and red intervals, their intent is to ensure the safe transition of signals from green to yellow to red. Uh the yellow change interval is really simply just the length of time that a yellow signals displayed following a green signal. It lets drivers know, hey, your green signal is ending. You're about to receive a red signal. The duration for that uh is calculated to provide enough time for a vehicle to come to a stop before they get to an intersection or to safely enter the intersection before they are displayed a red light. The red clearance interval is the length of time following a yellow signal that all signals are red. Uh this is effective with the amount of time that it allows for a vehicle to travel from one side of the intersection to the other. gives time for anyone who entered the intersection while the light was yellow or hit the intersection when the light was yellow to safely make it to the other side. I think since we are talking about law now, it's important to point out that a recurrence interval is actually a optional parameter for the TMU TMUTCD as well as the Federal Highway Administration. Now, I don't know any jurisdiction, nor have I heard of a jurisdiction that doesn't implement red clearance intervals, but I just felt like it was important to point that out since again, we're not talking about guidelines now with the MUTCD. We're talking about law.

So when used for red clearance intervals specifically, the MUTCD requires that that determination of what that duration is be made using the definition here is or the term is engineering practices. The goal if the intent is ensuring safe transition of signals. The goal of engineering practices is determining a reasonable duration that doesn't compromise safety of the intersection while also retaining operational efficiency. Now there are several methods uh that are recommended by professional organizations and government entities for performing that calculation. Uh two of those and the most common are the institute of transportation engineers IT and the national cooperative highway research program who work in coordination with the US DOT and the federal highway administration. Uh these recommendations have changed over time really dating back to the 1940s is when we first started seeing uh equations being used to do those calculations. Um, and they didn't change for a long time. Frankly, those equations stayed uh pretty simple all the way until the early 2000s. Uh, and it really originally was just simply the amount of time that it takes a vehicle to travel from one side of the intersection to the other. That's still the method used by the city of Amarillo today. The equation is not complicated. Uh, that is is how we calculate it today. However, the stadium industry has changed a little bit as traffic volumes increased and we started seeing that uh there were more and more vehicles on the road and and trying to get vehicles through intersections efficiently was imported important. It was determined by some of these organizations that the red clearance interval duration was a little bit over uh conservative. And so what I have here actually the two most recent versions of the the guiding documents that that I referenced before it and NCHRP. What those documents, the most recent publications recommend is actually subtracting 1 second from the calculated red clearance interval. Uh the intent of that is to account for the reaction time at conflicting traffic. So if you're sitting at a signal and you have a red light and traffic's going by in front of

you, they get a yellow light letting them know, hey, it's about to turn red. They get a red light. There's now an all red clearance interval, an amount of time where the whole intersection is red, and that allows anybody in the intersection to get out of the way. When I get that green light in front of me, it takes time for me to perceive that that light has changed. I'm not immediately teleported into the middle of the intersection to hit a vehicle that's there. Uh it's it's standard agreed that the minimum amount of time for that reaction time is 1 second for me to recognize that, oh, I have a green light now to actually take my foot off the brake, put it on the accelerator, and then actually get into the intersection. So, that's the recommendation from both IT and NCHRP. Uh, it goes a step further and they actually recommend using a vehicle speed that's 7 miles an hour over the speed limit. Uh, when doing the red clearance calculation, you can imagine a vehicle that's going faster is going to get through the intersection quicker. Uh, so that would further reduce what that timing is. The city of Amarillo does not use that. That's the current most recent guidelines. We use the older Federal Highway Administration equations and recommendations. What the outcome of that is is that the city of Amarillo is using guidelines which are actually more conservative when what than what the current industry recommendations are. That's why when we hired a third party consultant to evaluate signal timing at 45th and Sony, they actually came back with numbers that were lower uh than what we had there. So that kind of summarizes what they are, how we go about calculating those durations. Now, I want to address uh your specific request about fatalities at signalized intersections and evaluating uh whether or not we had appropriate timing there. So, from January of 2025 to the present, there have been six fatal crashes at signalized intersections which resulted in eight fatalities. Three of those were motorcyclists and five of them were passengers and automobiles. Uh there were several contributing factors on some of those crashes. That's why there are more contributing factors than actual crashes. In three of those, speed was identified as a contributing factor and one of them alcohol was a factor.

Two of them were for disregarding a stoplight and three of them were failure to yield while turning left. Really to break down the six fatal crashes, three of those were a vehicle turning left in front of oncoming traffic and being struck. One of them was a single vehicle incident in which the driver attempted to make a left turn uh left the roadway and actually struck a pole outside of the roadway. And then two of those were drivers who ran red lights and struck other vehicles. I have a map of where those locations were. Again, going back to January 2025. Those are locations where there have been fatal accidents at signalized intersections. Uh I think it's important to point out here that you don't actually see Western Mesa, which was specifically brought before council as an intersection at which uh signal timing potentially caused a fatal accident. Uh that is specifically because the fatal accident that occurred near there didn't occur in the intersection. So what you see here is actually a diagram from the crash report for the fatal accident that happened in early April. What it really shows you is that one unit, one vehicle was traveling southbound on Western Street. Another one was also traveling southbound, but on that adjacent, we kind of call it an access road for a lack of a better term. when they attempted to do a U-turn in front of the other vehicle. This would have been about 100 feet north of the signalized intersection where this happened. Um, unit one was was uh not necessarily cited, but it was identified that they were traveling at excess of 80 miles an hour when they struck unit 2. So that's why you don't see that as uh as one of the the intersections where there was a fatal accident. However, we did go back and actually evaluate the timing at that intersection regardless. Um, you've heard me throw out some numbers and and I want to just mention a few more when we talk about accidents. Um, 0.28, 15, 80, and 110. 0.28 was the blood alcohol content of one of the drivers uh in an incident. And I'm not going to say specifically which one. 15 was the number of seconds that one

vehicle entered an intersection after they had received a red light. 15 seconds later is when they actually entered the intersection and struck another vehicle. 80 is how fast the vehicle in this diagram was traveling. At least 80 miles an hour. And 110 110 m an hour at least is how fast one of the vehicles was going in a 30 mph zone uh before entering a signalized intersection, running a red light, and striking another vehicle. So after going back and actually looking at what the current program timing is, I personally reran the calculations using the Federal Highway Administration equations and found that all six intersections as well as Messa and Western meet the current requirements. They were programmed correctly. They were previously calculated correctly and are operating as they should be. Now, as we we do and will continue, any intersection that is brought to our staff or myself, just like we did today, we will gladly go evaluate that. I will gladly ask staff to bring us the uh what the program values are. We will evaluate that. We'll continue to do that where we have fatal accidents. Uh I'm not going to sit here and tell you everything will be perfect all the time, and I don't have a reason to go check that. I'll gladly investigate any concern that's brought forward. Our staff does that. That's not unique to me. Um, and I appreciate I'm being brought forward so that we have the opportunity to do that. The last thing I want to address is just specifically the request about additional time to the red clearance interval. So, should we add more time to a red clearance interval for safety sake? So, we went back, myself and assistant public works director Michael Badia, and we engaged traffic engineering consultants. We spoke to public sector traffic engineers. Michael is actually a member of the IT or the Institute of Transportation Engineers and have has several points of contact that work in other cities. Uh we reviewed professional organization guidelines and we also reviewed government agency guidelines and we found that uh not just overwhelmingly but across the board the answer was no.

Arbitrarily adding time to red clearance intervals uh is not recommended. It encourages more red light running uh and lowers intersection efficiency because it decreases the overall amount of time that vehicles actually get to travel through intersections. I even included some experts excerpts from some of the documents that I showed you earlier. specifically it. It is currently accepted by practicing professionals that excessively long change intervals can lead to increases in the number of drivers proceeding through the intersection on the yellow and potentially red. The consensus is that excessively long change intervals should be avoided to not only encourage driver compliance, but to also reduce impacts on intersection capacity. That relates to the efficiency of the point of an intersection is to get traffic moving through it safely. uh arbitrarily increasing uh the amount of time that vehicles have to wait does nothing but reduce efficiency. Uh and then from the Federal Highway Administration and US DOT, they identify consequences for too much time, referring to yellow and red clearance intervals that may encourage disrespect by familiar drivers as well as wasted time at the intersection. So my answer to that frankly is no. Arbitrarily adding time to the red clearance interval is not recommended uh because Amarillo's method for calculating those direct durations is already conservative. um compared to the current state of the practice. Uh and then the problems uh frankly that it that it aims to correct uh it actually has been identified by others that it can can actually contribute to those same problems. So with that I'll ask if you have any questions.

Councilman, what is the frequency to look at the the lights? You said you would gladly evaluate. Are we on a a system in the city where we're we're picking areas and or how do we make sure that at least all of the lights are looked at annually or semiannually?

Yeah, absolutely. So, anytime we get a a complaint about whether it's a light not functioning properly, if somebody thinks that maybe the detection that tells if a vehicle is there, maybe there's something wrong with that, our staff investigates that automatically. Uh there's 277 signalized intersections across the city. That's a a good number to make a note of. Every year, uh, our traffic department looks at the 10 intersections that have the highest um I believe the term is crash rate, and it's basically crashes per millions of vehicle that travel through it. Um, you know, if you just look at an intersection and say, well, that only had one accident, but if it has a low volume compared to one that maybe had 10, but has a very high volume, the intersection with one accident may actually have a higher crash rate. We'll go and recalculate the timing on those on an annual basis, those 10, not just the clearance intervals. We'll actually go and look at our our durations for green lights as well. Um, there really, frankly, though, is no reason for for those timings on the yellow and and red to change. Once they're calculated, once they're programmed, they don't change unless the intersection is reworked. Unless that width gets wider, um, that number is going to stay what it is. We all know in Amarillo that yellow is speed up, right?

Sure. I mean, it's it's just everywhere we go. How is the Does the APD have a response to red light runners? Are we I mean, this is we No one wants to wants to get hit. No one wants to obviously have anyone injured or damaged, of course. And I'll defer to to Chief Hover to speak to that. I don't know if he was still here or not, if he had anything to address that while while he's walking up. Yeah. One one last question before he gets here. What happens if we add one one second? Yeah, absolutely. One one more second. So now for these lives, what happened?

That's what I addressed that uh studies again people a lot smarter than myself, the Institute of Transportation Engineers, the NCHRP, Federal Highway Administration, USD have already identified it encourages red light running. People begin to expect, well, we know they arbitrarily added more time. We have more time. We can run that red light. Amarillo basically they did as a solid. They gave us more time to run that. It's only going to encourage more red light running. The other thing that it does is as we see traffic volumes increase, increase. Um it's going to increase the amount of time that you actually have to wait at that signalized intersection. 1 second doesn't seem like a one a lot of time, but 1 second north and south, then 1 second east and west multiplied by several changes of the signal over the course of an hour and then over the course of the day adds up to a lot of time that vehicles are now having to sit and wait at an intersection. uh because we arbitrarily added time to that uh red clearance interval which once again may not even actually uh increase safety. It might actually encourage more drivers to run the red light.

Could you restate your question one more time? Uh the question is um we we all we all see it. Yellow is speed up and multiple cars going through even on red you know on on turning lanes and different things. What is our response to? I mean, we we have a lot of fatalities. We have we have these wrecks. It's increasing. How do we if we add a second, everybody's going to run the red light? That's what I just heard. If we don't add a second, we still have people running red lights. So, how do we fix that? Yeah.

Yeah. Part of the realignment that I announced internally within the organization uh in March is uh a directed effort towards traffic safety and traffic enforcement. Part of that is increasing our patrol officers, our patrol staffing, but it also is increasing our traffic unit uh over the over the next course of 18 months. Uh my goal with that is to provide more officers more opportunity to be proactive uh in just that alone, right? to to be at some of those intersections, recognize uh the 10 top intersections that we have, and do our best uh to prevent some of that uh behavior from happening. Okay. Thank you.

When when we measure the intersection, is there a is there a um a distance that is recommended like where where do we start measuring that and then ending that intersection? Absolutely. Stephie, I actually had a hidden slide in here which I think might be very beneficial uh to bring up. I don't know if you can unhide that or not and then I'll go to it.

The intersection. Yes, the diagram. That's the one that shows it very well. That's our current practice uh for measuring intersection width for TR through traffic. It starts at the stop bar on one side and basically goes until you clear the far lane of traffic and that also adds the the length of the car in. So effectively if if the front bumper as it crosses the stop bar to the rear of your vehicle as it gets to the far side. Now it's important to point out there could be as there is at Western Mesa there could be another lane on the other side of that. That lane's controlled by a stop sign. It's not part of the signalized intersection. You do not have to clear that to no longer be in conflict with traffic that's going to receive a green signal. Uh an IT's documentation is very clear about that. that vehicles that are controlled by other traffic control devices besides the signalized intersection don't count into that and don't need to be. So, and just following that, um I'm just thinking on Coulter, we have a light that's like in the middle of the of the street. Actually, it's a little further down. Does that follow how do we follow? Because there's not a crosswalk there and there's not the the stop areas. How how do we

I have to know the specific intersection you're referring to to So, you're saying it's not a main arterial like you're saying it's Cter Street? It's right in front of um Lowe's. Thank you.

Yeah, absolutely. Lowe's lane. So, there is a stop bar going southbound at Lowe's Lane. So, we would measure it from the stop bar uh to the far side of that lane that goes east. That'd be for the north and south traffic. I actually looked into that earlier. I'm not going to say a number because I haven't actually gone out in the field and measure that just to see what does that look like. Uh the other way that you have traffic conflicting there is basically coming from the south. So, going northbound and making a turn. Uh at that point, whether there's a stop bar or not, and if there's not, frankly, there needs to be one. uh we would measure it from where vehicles typically stop which is going to be five tt back from the corner uh where they stop to the far side of what that travel lane would be. So if there's not curb and gutter on the other side uh it would be the far side of the travel lane.

Thank you. Absolutely. Can you kind of run me again through there several organizations that sound like consultants who who all have we run through this again? I mean what resources have we used when we've done our research? Yeah, absolutely. So, we've we've reached out to consultant engineers that we work with. Um, there's several that, you know, some of us have met at at conferences and things like that. Uh, I spoke to multiple actually over the phone to ask them that question. Is we received a request from city council to evaluate what would be the uh the result of adding or potential result of adding 1 second to our red clearance interval. uh which I also wanted to point out we effectively are doing uh by not following current standards which recommend subtracting a second from the calculation. Uh I also reached out to other uh municipal engineers that work in the Dallas and Houston area who see these things as well. Uh so uh contacted colleagues Michael Padilla our assistant public works director called several of his colleagues that he meets at it conferences. Uh then there are also the two documents those are really nationwide. Those are the industry standards is the uh the manual from the institute of transportation engineers that I brought up there. It has a very long name. Yeah. Guidelines for determining traffic signal change and clearance intervals. And then the national cooperative highway research program which works in coordination you can actually see it there on the kind of right middle of the of their uh page there is in coordination with the US Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration. So, we've checked regional, state, and national people who do this for a profession, and we can't find a single resource that says add a second to what we're doing.

That's correct. In fact, it's the opposite right now is what we're finding is you actually should probably be decreasing your time uh to improve efficiency. We aren't going to do that. I don't intend to do that at this time. Uh because we don't have any reason to believe that the way we calculate traffic signal timing is working. I think I showed that in those six fatal incidents, all of them had contributing factors that were not traffic signal timing. U how do you remember how much the study at 45th and Santi cost us? That is a great question. Not off the top of my head. I believe in the realm of $10 to $15,000, but I would have to to look at exactly. So it cost taxpayers 10 to $15,000 to tell us not that we need to add a second, but we need to take a second away. Yes, sir. Which we're not going to do. not going to win.

So, how many I mean, just it kind of sounds like I mean, how many how many manh hours have we put put into this? It sounds like you and Michael and staff have have put a lot of time, energy, and effort into this. Yes, sir. I I I can't remember exactly for the previous presentation on that. Obviously, several hours over the past few years. For this presentation, I personally probably put in about 15 hours. Michael about the same. Uh, I actually purchased uh copies for myself of that IT guideline, the NCHRP guideline I was able to find online. Um, some of our staff already own that IT guideline, but I wanted it myself. I wanted to have it. I wanted to own it. I wanted to print it out. I wanted to go through it and highlight it. I wanted to tab it so I know exactly where to go to find the facts. Yeah. Because I remember we went through all this before. Yes, sir.

We we did the study. Now we're back here again. just I don't know how we can be any more comprehensive and talking to people that are experts on this that are all telling the same thing. I mean is is is our conservative nature hurting? I mean you I mean should should instead of looking the other way should we be more conservative or I mean less conservative that to to take the second way or do we think we should just stay where?

I don't have any reason to believe that it's hurting us. Certainly not from a a safety aspect. It's not hurting us. Um there could be an argument made for an efficiency standpoint. I think that would have to be evaluated. not on an intersection by intersection basis. That would need to be evaluated across our entire network. Uh which frankly would need to be a a third party traffic study conducted by um a large organization that has a lot more resources at their disposal than just I do personally by myself. Yeah. So so it looks like after this we've we've determined probably red light timing is not at the top of the list is what's causing these accidents. That is my professional opinion. Could be a driver problem. Yes, sir.

Okay. Thank you. Just real quick, when when we go through NCHRP or IT, um are there are there like safety engineers that are engineers that are specifically trained in this space? There are traffic engineers that are specifically trained uh in this space. Yes, sir. And do we have any of those? Not on our staff. We consult out our traffic engineering at that time. That's some of who we spoke to is the consultants that we use as well as consultants we don't use. Okay. And just one last last clarifying piece, we don't go back and look at these unless there's an issue or once we automate them, we turn them on. We don't go back and adjust them or look

no need to adjust them. If nothing has changed from the, you know, the geometry or the speed limit uh of the road, there's no need to change them. Uh like I mentioned, if if there's a concern, we'll investigate that. I do have um we have new staff actually working in our our traffic office who is going back and and recalculating uh at several intersections, not just the ones that have had incidents. Uh but go back and just make sure that the calculations were performed correctly. The honest truth is once those calculations are done, if nothing at the geometry of the intersection changes, um it's going to be what it was programmed to be and nothing has caused it to need to be changed.

I'm not going to say one more question because they keep they keep popping up. Do you guys control that like in a central location? Is it telemetry? I mean, can you control like or do you have to go to each location individually?

No, we're able to do that from a central location. Um, that's our traffic management center. We're able to upload uh that information. The the data is actually all stored there centrally to on a database. So, that let's just say uh there is an accident in an intersection and and the the uh the traffic control box, the big silver box that's out there, basically the brains of that intersection is destroyed. We have a database that retains what the program times were, how that intersection was supposed to work. Uh so our staff will immediately go out, they'll put up kind of temporary stop signs or temporary signals. Once that intersection is is rebuilt, we get a new uh traffic control box put up. We can then just upload the data that was what it was before the accident and it'll continue working uh once again. So all 277 of these throughout the city, if you wanted to add for some weekend or at timing, if you wanted to add a second, you could do that.

It would be physically possible. Or you could take a second away. It'd be possible. Okay. Thank you, sir. Councilman, you have something else? Yeah, I do. I'm just as I put this through because if the recommendation is to take a second away, that's the current state of the practice is to take a second away. Yes, sir. Can can can I ask? We we talked through that it's at 1.3 seconds right now. Uh no. So it's it's calculated by the intersection. So currently both of those manuals actually recommending you do the calculation for what does it take a vehicle to go from the stop bar to the far side and then you automatically subtract 1 second from that and that's your red clearance.

Okay. So we're not saying we take a second away from a 1.3 second current. No, one is the one is a recommended minimum and thank you for pointing that out. Uh 1 second is the recommended minimum. So no matter what you calculate, no matter what you do, uh we always want to see a minimum recurrence interval of 1 second. And that and that's also just taking into account a 7 mph speed over what is the posted speed limit. So I'm saying it is also recommending doing that, adding speed to that velocity, which would decrease that time even further. Right. But it that doesn't account for somebody that's doing 15 or 20 miles an hour over the speed limit.

You're right. Someone doing 15 or 20 hours miles over the speed limit really isn't going to have a problem. They're going to be gone before they cross traffic. Um it's almost counterintuitive, but someone speeding when they hit the red light, they're actually not they're not even going to be near the intersection when the light turns green for conflicting traffic. Uh so we don't need to account for traffic going faster because it's non-issue. Okay. Anything further, council? Really appreciate the presentation. Thank you. Um, let me see if we could uh potentially look at something else. Um, Mr. Fischer, you're good. Allan, if you want to sit down. Thank you.

Um, we'll hold you at the podium. Um, Mr. Fischer, come forward. Um, man, you you've got a a heart and a passion for safety. Um, I'm I'm hearing that that you know, and I see some rollover traffic, so you know, and you you've been in here before and you've said, "Look, this is life safety." So, here's what I'm looking at. Um, I I don't find you to be an individual that that doesn't doesn't really feel passionate about this and that you're not looking for answers. I just think you've convinced kind of yourself that these red light um distances and intersection distances are are the problem. And then I don't think you're convinced that there's not other problems. So I I think you're willing to look at at all things. I'm hearing council entertain like well what if for a weekend we just you know add it add one second to see what happens before we go

Councilman Simpson. How about one street? How about it doesn't have to be my street. I'm not here for me here. How about Bell Street? Add a second. Here's an opportunity. Um,

we do have some money set aside for life safety issues. We do spend small amounts of money on consultants and and then you're not going away, right? You've been at almost I don't know that you've been at every council meeting I've ever ran, but I'm going to tell you about 90 something% of them. You are very involved. I I'm not asking you to go away. Uh but I I want to say that like you are going to continue to bring this item forward and you're looking for safety and you're looking for resolution. So here would be a potential um everything from consultants to prosecutors to insurance, you know, drivers that drive without insurance. all sorts of good things that I think Chief Hover is is honing in on and and that that we're willing to look at. Would you be willing to serve on a subcommittee and you guys bring back some some other potentials? I mean, us looking at other items and and so everything from measuring the the distance to and and I'm just thinking like for you Fischer, uh you know, maybe it's John Adair, maybe it's Tom Shirley.

Sure, I'd be willing to do that. I what I think what I what I do in the computer world is and I think people are a lot like computers. We're pretty predictive. And when computers mess up, something happened. Something changed. And that's what's going on in Amarillo. Something's changed. We used to not have rollovers. You'd probably see it, you know, you probably see it once maybe a couple of times a year. It's now twice in a week.

I I know you send them directly to my phone and and you are constantly like what? And I am sitting up here going, "What is going on? Why are there so many?" And so we have we have poor driving performance and and I'm not saying everybody's a bad driver, but something has changed. We have distracted driving. Maybe we're not uh educating our young drivers the same. I don't know. Speed is an issue. Distraction's an issue. What I'm looking for is is answers. And here I've got a couple of individuals like yourself that care about Amarillo and and I don't want to work against you. I I want to look at all the potential answers. Now, you may not be satisfied when you walk away, but if if you will spend 3 to 6 months um and we could go ahead and formalize this and equip it with something, maybe you bring back an idea that we just hadn't thought of or that some consultant that um you know looks at metrics all day for a nationwide average wasn't willing to entertain. And then I am interested in public safety. It is our number one uh priority. And and that doesn't just mean police officers out there, you know, with a greater presence. It has to do with traffic and and safety and driving. I'm offering something there that I need to see if council's willing to support. I don't know that they are, but I I I needed to run it past you first.

I would I would be willing to do that. Can I I don't want to sit up here and take up all your time. Can I address one of the slides that the gentleman brought up just to kind of show you because I did a lot of research on that Mesa intersection. Now whether I I appreciate you uh understanding you're not trying to win your case. You just want to make one point. Make your point and then we'll move on. Which slide would you like of the Mesa intersection? Tell tell us what you're seeing there. Okay. Do you remember the gentleman here? He said we don't count the access roads. Okay.

In the measurement. Well, that that's a big deal because you still need to calculate that because if you're calculating the time on the amount of time that it takes to clear the intersection, well, if you're starting behind that access road, you add an extra 30t on each side. I see your point. I agree with you. You misunderstood me. So, thank you and thank you for saying that. He nailed it. Let's say you're traveling eastbound uh on Messa Circle. You do count the first the first one because you do have to clear that that starts at the stop bar. You do not count the one on the far side because that traffic is control controlled by a stop sign.

Right. Right. And I I have a point on that. Yeah, please do. I apolog. Yes, sir.

The person at the stop sign and this is my research and maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong. The research says that person at the other stop sign on the other side doesn't have to adhere to that stoplight. So they can just take off into the intersection. That's what I've seen. So we in that case we really have to count both sides. If that person doesn't really have to obey the stoplight, we still have to account for both sides. In my mind, you would and and I I get what you're saying about this accident didn't really happen here. Of course. And and I when I stated that that week, I said I don't know what happened. I remember I don't know if you guys remember.

I was just kind of guessing at what happened. So, let me let me You made a good point. Um we we agree. Uh Fiser, you feel like it's us versus them. You feel like it's staff versus you. I mean, you you're not afraid to come in here and and call things out, but then I also think you are highly intelligent and capable of bringing some solutions. So, what I'm doing considering that

I'm inviting you to participate. Um, here's what I'd like to do. Shoot me an email. Uh, get me maybe three citizens you'd like to work with. Um, and then let's put this back through the council. Make sure they'll bless it. I'm not asking for council to bless it here today. I'll put you on the agenda. uh we could identify either existing city resources that you could um utilize like staff or whatever metrics or man maybe we do spend 10 grand and and get a consultant with you to look at a few things but very common sense practical solutions and if we can make a few changes uh let's make an attempt here to work together uh I feel like you know in in kind of what I felt the need to do which was to call a recess earlier I can tell in public comment and in the way that we're we're working together, it's easy for you guys to walk out of here and feel like we're not listening. And and I'm looking for opportunities like this to engage with you and I want all the people that are willing to help and work towards good solutions involved. So, thank you for hearing it out. If you're good with that, send an email and then council not asking anything today, but I would take uh direction if you want to redirect or if you have a potential

No, but I I would say this. You know what? What and I don't have any questions for anybody here anymore. Y'all are good, man. Thank you. Appreciate you, Mike. Well, I mean, because what what I what I would like to see and maybe we could get this because we're making some assumptions here.

We we see anecdotal things happening and you know, does that mean we're having more accidents? Are we having worse accidents? I don't know. I I don't know what the statistics overall show. I mean, we've seen some things where we've seen something happen and, you know, we spent, you know, 1015,000 for a consultant. We spent, you know, on something that anecdotally happened in one intersection at a corner. We spent m man hours because we've had these and not to say that any fatal accident, but but but when we look at making overall changes, you know, what are we seeing? Are we seeing an increase of of accidents per capita? I mean, I I would really, you know, whatever research we're going to do and particularly before we're going to invest something uh our resources in it, I'd like to just be able to say here's here's some facts that show there's a a a problem here. And I don't know, you know, when it comes to fatal accidents, I mean, we one is too many, but I don't know if we have more per capita, if we have fewer, you know, per city. I just think before we start investing taxpayer money uh into things, there needs to be some real data that that is showing, boy, this is a real problem that we need to be addressing. And and one other thing, too, I'm I'm I'm not a fan of running experiments at stoplights on our citizens. That that I would not be in favor of. I think if we need to do something and it can be proven that it's uh that it's something that we need to do, then do it across the city. But I I don't think I would be a big fan of saying, "Let's go out and just test something because sure enough, we're testing one area, an accident happens." I mean, what what's that going to lead to us and our liability on that? So,

well, I appreciate that, Councilman. I think that's good direction. So, let's start with could we put together a good subcommittee that would look at databased decisions and let's measure from the beginning on how many wrecks we're seeing, what kind of accidents we're having, and then do we are we trending? This would be an easy thing for you guys to answer. Are we trending towards a safer street or are we trending towards a more unsafe street? Do we see more uh auto accidents now than we did 10 years ago? I know you to be a man that knows data and and you could find that and so be a great place for us to start. What I'm asking for council to consider between now and the 26th is uh is this something that we would support? because if we support it, um our citizens will have what they need to bring forward solutions, and that is what we're trying to do here in engaging in civics and community. So, thank y'all. Uh let's keep us moving. Item 5.3, Mr. Brady Kendrick, our favorite presenter, but I don't know. Can you are you keeping it short or is

this relatively short? You're still our favorite presenter. Uh good afternoon. I'm council. I'm here today to discuss.

Okay. a potential ordinance change um regarding off- streetet parking reg regulations along the US Route 66 Sixth Street historic district um in Sanento. A little introduction background on this. Um like I said, essentially we're proposing to eliminate the requirement for off- streetet parking for businesses that directly have frontage on Sixth Street like what we have in the central business district downtown. Um it's a long established commercial corridor that is zoned like commercial district which I'll come into a key point here in a minute. Uh that was added to the federally recognized Route 66 in 1926 and it is the most intact collection of commercial and um that possess historic significance with Route 66. And the boundary that that historic district specifically covers is um Sixth Street between Georgia and Fourth Street. So about 13 blocks there um in the red circle um there is the area we're primarily talking about today. Um so going back to light commercial district the way our parking ordinance is written is that unless you're in the central business district you're supposed to provide off- streetet parking spaces for your bit for non-residential use or for um any land use essentially. Now, a few years ago, some of you were on the council, we did pass some parking reductions for the neighborhood plan areas in certain parts of Route 66, but looking back, this is maybe an area we should have looked at a little bit closer for further reductions. Um back in 19 this has been a long issue a long-standing issue going back into the 70s 1995 specifically the planning department back then did look at do a little bit of a study on this topic and resulted in a policy interpretation but not a codified code if you will that essentially all land uses were designated along six as non-conforming retail and more intensive uses uh needed to provide the additional parking to the

greatest degree possible especially for those that operate past 10 p.m. Uh based on uh current code, as I said today, typically you would need to provide that off streetet parking, but a majority of the sites along that corridor are constructed were constructed and developed in the 1920s and 30s before parking requirements even existed and as honestly a time where street cars still operated and um the autooriented nature of our society really hadn't taken hold yet. Um we have rece seen renewed interest in activity along this corridor. Um in recent years and increased permit activity since 1977 we've had 15 uh zoning board of adjustment cases specifically rated related to parking with 11 of those being approved and two plan developments that were strictly because of parking. So when you see that kind of ZBA case load for a specific requirement in an area that's maybe a signal that there's maybe a little bit of an issue that we need to look at. Um challenges specifically arise when we do change of uses for businesses along that corridor such as a retail establishment changing to a restaurant that typically triggers a parking review. So staff has over the years has had to get really creative with trying to keep businesses moving in and out of Sixth Street. Um that way we can keep that corridor vibrant. Um and owners and businesses whenever we run into these parking issues either faced with potentially modifying their sites or limiting substantially the type of businesses that those sites can accommodate. And by modifying sites there have been over the years some buildings lost to create parking. So ultimately these codes over time could diminish that historic value along six. I thought this chart was a little interesting. We looked at the average lot coverage for specific areas in the city. The blue there on the left, that is in downtown. Essentially, you see an average lot coverage of 65%. Sixth Street, you're looking at about 51%. And you can kind of see how society changed

with the newer sites. The green bar there are some um more dated commercial corridors such as Southeast 10th and Emerald Boulevard, that percentage drops to 30. And then once you get into your Sony, Coulter, Georgia type areas, your lot coverage drops to 18. And so the way that we built sites has changed substantially through the years, especially with the rise of the automobile. So we thought that was pretty interesting. So like I said, our proposal is essentially apply the central business district parking regulations to the historic Sixth Street um corridor. We would essentially propose that for between Forest and Brian. Now, the reason we would go one block east of Brian past Georgia, I know there's been talks and we've about potentially changing that intersection there at Georgia and six. Um, I know there's not a specific project identified for that yet, but there's a potential that rightway would be needed for potential future projects at the intersection. So, we didn't want to um punish those businesses right there at the intersection. So that's why PNZ and staff agree that maybe going to Brian Street instead of Georgia would be a better boundary for this proposed parking change. There are approximately 200 on street parallel parking spaces along Sixth Street currently. Um and street parking is allowed in the city um except where it's prohibited by signage. And essentially today that's how Sixth Street functions. Most of those businesses really do not have parking. And so most of the patrons do utilize the parallel spaces that were improved along six back in the 90s and the neighboring side streets. So one concern that we always look at with code amendments is making sure we're not creating an unintended consequence or new condition. Essentially the patrons of six utilize the street parking almost exclusively already. So we don't feel like we're creating a new situation. Additionally, Sixth Street is essentially mostly built out except for maybe three to five lots and those are used for parking anyway. So, it's not like we're going to spur a lot of new

new construction, new restaurants. Essentially, Sixth Street does enjoy a relative high occupancy rate already. So, we don't foresee that we would create a dramatic increase of parking if this were to um be adopted potentially. And also um a big benefit is that we preserve that historic character of the district and what makes it special. Um applying modern codes and site requirements historic corridors. This is problem all over the country that cities deal with. Um this would create consistency for future staff and businesses along the corridor. Essentially right now we have a policy interpretation but if you read the code as it exists today all businesses in light commercial are supposed to provide the correct number of parking. And finally, essentially, most if not all those businesses along Sixth Street are considered non-conforming because of parking. This would correct that status. That way, in the future, if they suffered a loss and had to rebuild, that non-conforming status because of the parking wouldn't be a hindrance to a rebuild. And finally, um like some local examples, Canyon does not have off- streetet parking regulations for the square district um in downtown Canyon. And in the last couple years, Fort Worth and Dallas both have passed uh parking amendments that eliminated off- streetet parking for historic districts and/or buildings. So, this is a growing trend that we're seeing in um places around Texas as well. Uh regarding outreach, uh we did meet with the Sixth Street merchants last summer, about 50 of them. They were overwhelmingly in support. one of our staff members met with the Santo neighborhood association uh committee and they expressed support for it as well whenever we spoke to them and we have had have had this with the planning and zoning commission for two discussion items. So that's essentially the public and we have also met internally with public works traffic and with other city staff. So all departments have had a look at this and feel like it's a

positive thing to potentially implement. Um and with that, uh planning and zoning commission feels like, um the recommendation to apply that to from Forest to Brian would be the way to go, but we also wanted to bring this before you all before we went forward with something. Um and just one last map. Um essentially the polygons in red are the commercially um designated properties that front on Sixth Street um per appraisal district data. So essentially those would be the properties would apply to today. If a business that's residential today were to convert in the future, they would at that time get to have that same benefit. So essentially the proposal is for that corridor, all non residential uses would uh not be required to do off- streetet parking essentially mimic what we do in downtown. Uh with that, um I'll take any uh questions uh comments or feedback on this as we uh look to bring this forward through P&Z.

Concerns or questions? council. Is is this something when you're looking I know you talked to several organizations, but this is supported by the Sixth Street community. Yes, the the merchants uh were pretty well overwhelmingly in support along with the uh neighborhood community also the neighborhood committee also expressed support for this as well. Okay. Thank you. No problem, Mr. Kendrick. We appreciate it. Sure. Um no problem. I don't think we have anything else today. All right. Thank you. Okay. 5.4. Any future agenda items by council? Mayor, can can I circle back around just a minute on the Yes, sir. traffic. Yeah.

I think one and one thing I I would maybe like to see before we necessarily put something into action with with citizens getting involved and which I have no problem with. Uh but and I don't know how long it would take to but can we can we put a little I mean before we before we're getting people to say let's go solve a problem I'd like to kind of know what the problem is

uh so that we can direct in a proper fashion because uh if there's a problem there that we need to solve and we need citizens and staff involved that that would be great. What I don't want to do is necessarily create something and and use a lot of staff time when there may not be a problem to solve. So my my request would be as we're kind of navigating this issue if it if it doesn't take an extreme amount of time as we're figuring out how to best approach this, how you know what what is our situation? I mean are we seeing more accidents? Do we have more than normal? What what happens with them? And I'm not looking for an in-depth overview. But if we're trying to solve a problem and and and using, you know, even resources from our community and from our staff to do that. I I I'm in favor of that. But I just like to know beforehand what problem were we trying to solve or what what have we identified? And I just wonder if as we're looking at what to do next, if that's a possibility to have some information that just lets us know how bad is our traffic, how good is our traffic, uh, and and what problems would we need to address and be trying to solve. Yeah, I don't think that's an issue at all in um what I'm hearing you say is let's try to pull from the existing resources we already have and see what we currently have and and see if we can identify an issue or um what can we do that that we can identify an improvement?

Yeah, we yeah we can prepare a presentation to that effect. I mean I I don't want to spend $10,000 on a consultant and and 45 man hours on staff. I mean, I don't want but but if there's some way where we can get some information that's meaningful so we can say what are the problems and the issues that we're having. Yeah. I I think between our traffic division, street division, police department, I think we can pull that information. We already um there was a presentation one of the zones we gave you before had the trends in it over the past I believe five years. But we have a lot of that data available that we can pull back out pretty easily without spend a lot of time on it as far as fatality accidents, things like that over the past 5, 10 years, whatever you want to look at. not fatalities but just you know the number of accidents where are we trending on that and

we we have access to that data we could we could pull that thank you okay uh future agenda item anyone okay um we have concluded our discussion items we're going to move into non-consent agenda we may have uh one of us that's exiting here so I'm going to work this non-consent agenda item out of order I'm going to go ahead and pull up 6.5 and I believe it's Cody Bzin who is uh giving us that presentation. Mr. Ballsin, will you walk us through that?

Yes, sir. Uh good evening, Mayor and Council. Happy to present this item for you all. Um this is consideration of approval. Uh it's a first amended and restated agreement to an existing South Gateway tax increment reinvestment zone number three developer agreement with Adabberry Elevators LLC, Rocks Development LLC. Uh and this agreement is uh related to infrastructure investments within the zone. Uh so a little history on this agreement was originally adopted in May of 2024. It has an ending of December 30th or 31st of 2042. That's just the end of the tiers. Uh that just basically leaves it open for reimbursement throughout the whole time of the tiers um as as it's active. Uh the original agreement was focused on the northwest side of the zone. Uh later we'll go through we have four agreements that are in this uh tiers at this time. Estimated infrastructure cost and in this agreement was 4.67 million. Uh the original intent was to allow for the projects to be completed in phases and over time and get reimbursements over time with it. U the annual rebates uh would come from the growth of the tax base and the overall tier zone. Just so similar to any of our tier stuff, the the uh rebates come from the captured growth of that zone. Uh just a refresher of the zone. Again, this zone is in is intended to be uh highly uh focused on infrastructure improvements for the area because of the uh hindrances that it has. Uh this was the base year for this was 2022. Uh we had a base year value of 28.75 million. Um we do have three taxing entities participating. That's the city of Amarillo, Randle County, and Emerald College. And this is a 100% tax increment uh for years 1 through 10 and

a 50% tax increment for years 11 through 20. Um the uh estimated uh new taxable development. Uh this is what's in their financing plan was estimated to be one 123 million uh just over 123 million for the term uh of of the tiers. um the the initial proforma phasing projected to create uh 15 million in revenue over the 20 years. So this is that captured increment value. This is what was projected to be that the total captured increment value for the 20 years. Uh so current performance of it uh we have the base value up there um and and basically what those values were over time. Uh in 2023 our our value was actually over our original plan projected which is good. In 2024 we saw a hit um it didn't increase as much as the financial plan uh showed it to be. Uh so that was it was quite a bit lower on that one. uh 32 million instead of the 39.9 million that that was expected. Uh 2025 though values seem to be back up. However, taking this into consideration whenever we look at uh we we basically reapplied the knowledge that we have now and projected out our increment capture uh for the term as well uh to the end of the term. And we're actually looking at just uh 14.1 million instead of the 15.2 2 million that was originally expected. All right. Uh tiers three agreements, we have four of them currently. Uh in February of 2024, we have an agreement with Rocks LLC. It's infrastructure based around Culture and Oxford. Uh this was an 80% annual rebate for 10 years. Uh total uh rebate amount would have been uh 510,297.

Uh we do have another agreement that was May of 2024 and this one was Rock Development and Adabberry elevators. This is the one that we're talking about today. Uh this one had infrastructure improvements mainly focused on uh the north west side of the tiers basically north of the loop uh east of Coulter and west of I27. Um May 2024 we have the developers the agreement uh with AEDC for infrastructure improvements. This is mostly around the kids inc area. Uh and then May 2024 as well, we have another uh agreement with Adabore Adabbury Adabberry Elevators uh and Rockos development and this was mainly for their portion of infrastructure that's around the kids inc area. Uh and to note all of these added together, the amount of infrastructure rebate identified within these these four agreements is 15.75 million. Uh that's uh to note basically that is that is over what we're already projecting to receive throughout the whole the whole tier. So we will be expecting some of these agreements to not pay out that full rebate amount uh over that time. All right. So proposed amendments to this agreement. It adds a third developer, happy again LP, and they'll be responsible uh just like the other two uh entities in it uh for all terms of the agreement. Um it confirms the developers responsibility. So it basically uh for any infrastructure costs that are over that 4.67 million. So if they spend over that, the maximum rebate amount would still be the 4.67 million. uh restates the language uh uh that infrastructure may be completed eligible for reimbursement in multiple phases. That way the developer can kind of uh he knows what is going to come in and when it's going to come in, what's going to be needed better than the tiers does. So it it does give them a little bit of a

latitude there. Um clarifies the carry out balance of projects completed but not fully funded by the tiers due to timing of the developments and collections. uh it does uh it has a written approval process uh that's added into it that's that way it has a condition to receive the reimbursements at any phase of the infrastructure. Um and then additionally it adds an additional projects uh that are available for reimbursement. Uh this brings it to basically 5.7 million in options of of qualifying projects. However, again, just to to restate, the infrastructure cost re uh the rebate total amount that they can receive back is still just that 4.67 million. Uh this was the original map of the agreement uh showing the location of of some of the projects that were in that area. And then the revised map you can see uh expands upon it and allows some uh infrastructure uh the northeast side there. And then if you have any questions on that, I'll be glad to answer.

Thank you, Mr. Bolsin. Any questions? Council, can you go back to uh let's go one more? Go one forward. Okay. Uh so it adds uh an additional developer to this and then um it's confirming some responsibility for the 4.6 it's already agreed to. Um, as you come down there, can you describe to me that clarifies the carryover balance of projects completed? So, would that assume that you had a project that was completed after the 100% reimbursement termed out?

It Yeah. So, it it has kind of I guess two parts. The the carryover balance of projects completed but not fully reimbured. So the way that these uh agreements are structured is that an agreement is is um so like their original agreement that came in is rebated before the secondary agreements projects are being rebated. So in the February 24th agreement that 510,297.33 that gets reimbursed before reimbursements of that 4.67 67 million are um in that as well. Uh there's language in that that has a prata amount. So depending on uh you know multiple projects getting done within the same year, it has a prora on the value on what those reimbursements go to.

So it just changes who gets paid first in the in the line of once the monies are collected in the tiers. Yeah, it's not really changing it. It's just more clarifying it because it was Yeah, it was a little uh um not not quite clear in those agreements. So, it's just some clarifying language in that.

Okay. Um my question would just be uh and and my only real concern would just be identifying projects and making sure that those are accounted for. So, um, in the world of construction, if you had a change in the scope of work, so let's say that you had a $5.7 million approval for project X and it's coming in under budget at $4 million. um in tracking those monies and being able to see that those projects are being approved at tiers three and then anything that would need to come before this council um [clears throat] it's either a a change order that gets approved or it's an additionally identified project. So walk me through that right now in the way that we've got this amendment working. Are we going to continue to amend existing amendments or or how would we treat a change order if you ended up having uh savings on a project? So I would basically out of these two or out of these four agreements, there's two of these here that I expect to come back to you all. One is the one we're talking about now. The other one is Ammeral Economic Development Corporation amount. Now there was a holdover in these agreements whenever they were constructed that was similar to other tiers incentives. We tell them uh you need to meet this amount of private investment into the area to meet the agreement piece. Um, so what we're noticing, uh, AEDC's as well, um, they they have these projects they want to fund in here, uh, and get reimbursement on it. It was written in a manner that said that they had to spend that 7.57 million in order to even start getting reimbursements. Um, so basically at that point, if they didn't spend at least that amount, they'd be in in breach that contract or that agreement piece of it. There is language being proposed in this one as well as the the one that you would be expecting for ADC that that

clarifies this saying that they can spend up to that amount as reimburseable. So, um the amendment for this one is adding additional projects up to the 5 uh 5.7 million and optional projects that they can move forward. um but still only is eligible for that same rebate amount that was original in the original contract. So I believe some of the construction costs on these projects were lower and instead of just amending this to lower it down to that minimum amount, it's allowing them to spend more into that uh for the additional project infrastructure.

So I [clears throat] think I'm following. So existing infrastructure that was budgeted in a project and scoped in work uh could come in say under budget and if it does then they want to continue to spend that amount of money to get additional infrastructure in those same areas. Are they identifying those jobs as a change order or are they identifying those jobs as additional projects? Yes, they're identified as as additional projects and they're as okay as acceptable projects to

then those are coming back through the same process. They're going back to tiers three. They're getting a recommendation. I'm assuming tiers 3 is seen this amendment and and they've voted on it already. Yes, they basically tiers is agreed that the projects that are listed in the agreement are for the benefit of the tiers and it lists these as optional projects for the developer to go through and and his order um and his preference on which ones he wants to focus on based on I guess kind of the the retail of the land, the development of the land, what's what's being requested of that developer by a potential business or something. That way we don't direct it in one location, but a potential business

is talking with that developer and it's they're not even looking at that location. So, it gives them the latitude on that. Tiers has approved that $5.7 million option with all the different options in it. It's in the agreement uh as well. They're lift they're listed in there um as being optional. And then it writes in also that written approval process uh as a condition to receive the reimbursements of any infrastructure piece. So uh we would go back through the tiers to get okay the approval piece there.

Um either way uh projects are being identified they're being submitted recommended and then they're getting approval at tiers and at EDC or TEI and council or depending on which which source it's coming from. Yes sir. I think I think what we're talking about here is these projects are listed in the agreement as options. Um so all of those if you approve this those are basically options for them to go forward uh for rebates or reimbursement pieces to that. So you wouldn't you wouldn't see us come back with a specific project out of that. If they went forward did that project it's eligible for the the rebates. It would go through an approval process with the tier still

to codify that completion and rebate starting but other than that it would come back to council. So I am understanding you correctly like with this approval tiers will will still need to approve those additional projects or the the preference of you know one project over the other in the timing or phasing of it.

Yes. I don't think it it has a approval process for the timing and phase of it. Um, I think it's just the approval piece to the reimbursement uh once those are are done. So, I we do have uh Matt u with Rockrows and stuff here as well who's worked a little bit closer with Andrew on this. I don't know if he can clarify anything, but he is available. Um, you know, my main concern was just not having a lump sum total and then having different projects directed that weren't being accounted for um and approved um by the TEI board. They were more or less being directed just by maybe developers or different contractors. And so it sounds to me and and I want a confirmation, but this is being approved at the TEI board um regardless. And then today's our opportunity to approve this change that'll clarify some of these and expand this.

I I believe yes, the reimbursements piece um what's written there, the written approval process that's being added as the conditional to the reimbursements. Um so there's each phase that they're coming in is going to the tiers for that phase uh for approvals, but that wouldn't come back to council necessarily, right? Yeah. Yeah, I don't have a problem with the latitude of the TEI board along with developer being able to direct projects based on market and timing. Council, any other questions on this? Okay, Mr. Balls and thank you for answering our questions. Yes, sir. No problem.

Would entertain a motion on item 65. So moved. Second. I have a motion and a second um on item 65 as presented. All in favor, please say I. I. I. Any oppose?

Motion passes. 40 vote. Okay, let's go back up to 61. Uh Mr. Kendrick, you're back up. All right. Item 6.1. This is the consider uh a resolution um to abandon the dedication of an unaccepted public alley that is located uh within the city. Um this is the east 472.02 ft of the alley that was dedicated in units 1 and two of CWC Enterprises in Potter County, Texas. This is at the northeast corner of Interstate 40 and Lakeside Drive. Um the portion that be uh vacated essentially is there highlighted in yellow. Uh the developer which in this case is the racetrack uh convenience store chain uh bought the old motel site that was demoed there to the north and also the property to the east of the super eight there along I40 and is proposing a site um that's highlighted there in that red box that'll be one of their future locations uh here in Amarillo that they're planning to potentially break ground on later this year. And essentially they need to abandon that alley to create a unified site. Like I said, that alley was never built or accepted by the city. It was just dedicated per plat in 1977. Racetrack has agreed to uh dedicate an easement at no cost to the city to cover the existing utilities in that alley. Um since they are proposing to not build over it, so they will not need to relocate those. Um with that being the case, um no objections were expressed to the abandonment and uh staff is recommending approval of this item as presented. Very good. Mr. Kendrick, is this a public hearing?

Uh, this one is not actually. It's not a public hearing. Okay. Um, questions. Council for Mr. Kendrick. Would ask for a motion on 61. I move to adopt resolution number 05126-1 as presented. Second. Motion and a second. All in favor? I.

Any opposed? Motion passes. We'll move on to item 62. Uh Chief, over to you, sir. This is an application to apply for the JAG grant. My intention with this one as well as the next one on 6.3 uh is to purchase uh what's called Star Chase. Uh it's a technology that's used to help mitigate the risks of vehicle pursuits. anytime you have a high-speed vehicle pursuit, you want to do everything you can to reduce that risk, especially to the public. And what this would allow us to do is to equip some of our vehicles, what's called star chase. So, when that vehicle begins to elude uh or begin to flee, uh which is a felony, uh it would use a marker uh that's attached to the back of that vehicle, which allows us to create distance and space to keep let that vehicle keep going um and to create more a safety gap. Uh so hopefully at the end of the day that that individual decides to give up or slow down uh to reduce any of those risks involved in a vehicle pursuit.

Questions for chief on item 6.2. How does that attach to the vehicle? Uh it's a foam. It's like a big nerve foam uh dart. Um and it has a little bit of adhesive. Uh but it also has a magnet. Gotcha. Any other questions, council? Okay. I ask a motion or would entertain a motion on 62. I move to adopt resolution 05-12-26-2 as presented. Second motion and a second. Any further discussion? All in favor, please say I. I.

I. Any opposed? Motion passes. chief on the 63.

Very similar uh just a different type of grant but still has applicability uh for outfitting these same vehicles. My goal is to have 30 total vehicles. Uh and the first grant you saw there uh on 6.2 is just a small portion because it's shared with Potter County. Uh this one here uh is a little bit larger uh and has an 8020 match. So uh 80% would be the responsibility of the MBCPA which is a motor vehicle crime prevention uh and then the 20% would be upon the city. But again this is just a request uh to go seek that grant.

Okay. So I understand there may be a timing issue on that one for you to be able to apply for those. Yes. Uh you also don't have an amount down because we don't know it yet. Correct. So this is just uh an approval to go ahead and give you the opportunity to see if funding could be available. That's correct. Okay. And so uh gentlemen, that is a first and final uh recommended reading on this resolution. So would ask if you guys have any concerns on it. I move to adopt resolution number 0512-26-3 as presented. Second

motion and a second from place one. All in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Motion passes. Last item listed on the agenda here today. Um I don't see Mr. Quigley. Oh, you you're filling in for Mr. Quigley. Come on up, sir. Thank you, Chief.

My name is Jim Hillwig. I work for the transit department. I'm the planner. I've been in front of you council a few times. So, um this item is a first reading of a resolution to approve uh Amro City Transit's updated equal employment opportunity or EEO plan. Uh the update includes uh the formal designation of an EEO officer as well as additional Federal Transit Administration requirements related to documenting and tracking uh veteran and disability status. Uh the agency recognizes that disability and veteran status information is based solely on voluntary self-identification and may therefore be incomplete. However, ACT will continue working closely with human resources and make every reasonable effort to obtain and maintain accurate information on in compliance with FTA requirements.

Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Uh this is a requirement by the FTA. Yes, sir. Yep. Questions for Jim? Okay, we'll request a motion. I move to adopt resolution 051226-4 is presented. Second. Motion in a second. All in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Thank you, sir. Would ask for a motion to adjurnn unless we have any of further business. You guys need a journ. So moved. You're journed. Thank you.