City Council - Special Meeting

Everybody to this special called meeting, the Temple City Council for Friday, May 22nd, 2026. It's about 20 minutes until eight. And on the agenda today is conduct the City of Temple budget review meeting, including but not limited to discussion regarding the proposed fiscal year 2027 business plan and an overview of the proposed fiscal year 2027 annual budget. Ms. Myers.

Mayor and Council, this is a continuation with our operating budget strategic priority highlights. So today we have presentations from our public safety departments and our high performing organization departments under both Sean and Tracy's leadership. So we have a series of presentations for you today. It will follow the same format as last week where the departments are highlighting their top priorities. You'll see an icon on the slide if the department head team collectively rated that one of the top 50 priorities across the entire organization. And we do ask if you will pull up your rating tool and rate as we go along so that we have that feedback and data to help us as we put together the proposed budget for the upcoming year. So if we don't have anything preliminary, we're gonna kick off with the police department. All right? Thank you. Thank you.

Mayor counsel, um, I'd like to, uh, Coy Brown, chief of police, uh, deputy chief Allen testing will be doing the presentation. Okay.

Well, good morning. Good morning. So our strategic initiatives that we presented, you know, cover not just FY 27, but the, the, the entire strategic plan period up through FY 31. And so I want to highlight those for you. And all of our priorities align with staffing needs that we're presenting to you. And there's 14 different priorities presented on this overview slide. And then I'll dig in deeper on each priority as we move through. I promise you I won't take a full 30 minutes to do this. So our first priority is up staffing in police officers and police lieutenants. Over the next between 27 and 31, we have a need to add 12 new officer positions to patrol and increase our lieutenant staffing by three. So just to highlight something that we've done this year, in January we realigned patrol and went straight to a 12-hour shift programming by doing so we were able to at the same time add two more patrol districts to the city so we went from a patrol districts to 10 which had been a long-term plan of the city to do so and it add more coverage on on the west side of temples shrinking some of those districts on the west side of temple But the other plan that we had going along with that 10 district plan was to go to 10 hour shifts. And so these added staff members would bring us to a point that we could transition to the 10 hour shifts. So we believe that by going to the 10 hour shifts here, we could benefit the department by reducing officer fatigue and improving their performance, strengthening the supervisor and accountability with the added three lieutenants, putting a lieutenant on each of the patrol teams on the 10 hour shifts. and then lowering our overtime expenditures. I would highlight that through the plans that we put in place this year in January when we made the transition, we were able to dramatically drop our overtime usage through that initiative. We also believe that it improved on our recruiting and retention. and enhance community service delivery. I think when you have a well rested officer, they tend to be more polite and social with the community when they're fatigued. That's when we tend to have our issues with officers getting a little grumpy. things like that, and we get complaints. So having them well rested impacts customer service dramatically. We probably shouldn't have a gun. Our next priorities are related to our animal services unit. With the expansion that was done to the animal service unit facility, we have a need to add more staffing inside of the facility to maintain the cleanliness and health of the facility. We, even with the added space, we are at capacity most of the time with animals, which requires a lot of daily cleaning. They come in every morning and spend about the first two hours of every morning just cleaning and sanitizing the shelter. that added staff would help in that process, put less stress on the staff trying to get that shelter open to the public. We also have a goal long term of potentially opening to six full days instead of having a half day on Saturday, being able to expand our hours down the road. So hopefully that have more access for the public to come into the shelter and adopt animals out. But we need to staffing to support that that endeavor. So we also you know as the city grows We'll need a new addition to the field officer position And we asked for that this year, but it's one that we could delay into a future year if necessary

So the priority is on the two techs?

The two techs is our priority in FY27. The field officer we could put down the road a little later. It's not an absolute necessity for next budget year. Our next request is a program manager for grants. We feel that we're missing out on a lot of opportunities to fund police public safety operations through grants. There's federal grants out there that we could pursue. There's state grants out there that we could pursue. And there's even grants from public sector entities that we could pursue. But in order to do that, we need someone that's focused inside the agency to help us write those grants, monitor those grants, and ensure that we maintain compliance with those standards. And we had an issue this past year with a COPS grant that we were working through, and that really highlighted we didn't have a dedicated staff member. Thankfully, we had our admin assistant for budget and the PD, and then with the finance department, We were able to work through that and ensure that we were able to report and we were in compliance with the grant standard, but it was a struggle because we're picking and pulling across different departments to try to come together to ensure this. We think having one person in charge of that and monitoring our grant programs would ensure compliance once we receive grants, but also enhance our ability to go after these funding sources that we don't do very proactively right now.

Are these grants, are most of them for so we can get funds for things we already do or to do new things with?

It'd be for new things. So I mean, one avenue would be a COPS grant. But we long term plan is down the road is to add more cops officers to the department to do community oriented police services. There are funds through the federal government that we can apply for cops grants to fund officer positions. But it is highly regulatory. There's a lot of reporting that goes into it, things of that nature. We want to ensure that when we apply for these grants that we're well-positioned to make sure that we can provide those, that we can show our compliance and report back effectively on those grants.

Would the grant writer also be in charge of the compliance piece or would that fall to somebody else in the department or to a whole other department?

No, we want to have one centralized person. We'd absolutely still have to work with finance and other departments, but that one person would be our internal person that would reach out to finance or to admin chief and ourselves. There's components of those grants that we have to write compliance statements for, things like that, but they would be the one that checks the schedule, knows when reports are due, things like that, know what what grants are coming up that we could apply for and be actively searching for grants that we could apply for. So they'd regularly be looking through the different grant programs to see what's out there that's being pushed out that we might be eligible to go after.

Are there any grants available for things that we already do? And what I'm getting at, is there a way to get grants that would actually pay for this position? Or is it all new programs that grants are for?

I haven't found a program that would pay for this position that we're asking for.

But is there any grant like something we're already doing? Is there grants that would help us fund something we're already doing? It's a grant. I had to find a grant.

Typically, grants don't allow what's called a grant. private sector grants, you know, foundation grants and things like that vary much more widely than federal and state grants. But typically, granting agencies are looking to fund new or expanded programs and not to

because there's a lot of strings attached to that. That's how this position would really help with that.

Wasn't there a request in the last budget or two for a grant writer in community and housing? Did that get filled?

It was not funded yet.

Oh, okay. Okay, thank you. Go ahead.

Our next request was for an admin assistant and accreditation manager. We are currently accredited by the Texas Police Chiefs Association. We're managing that accreditation through our professional standards unit lieutenant with the assistance of the sergeant in the unit. We are able to manage that program with the current staff, with that lieutenant overseeing that. But there's been a long-term conversation about going after a CALEA accreditation, which is a national accreditation. It is our belief that if we go after and pursue that CALEA accreditation standard, that we will need someone that's focused on that, on our accreditation programs to make sure that we are able to achieve both. Our plan would be not to go after CALEA and drop TPCA. It would be to manage both and do both. And where some of their standards in TCPA and CALEA are similar, there's some that are dramatically different. And so it's quite a lift to manage both at the same time. So this is up here as a future item that we would like to pursue, especially if we continue to receive direction to go after the CALEA accreditation. But it's not something that's that's needed immediately.

So am I missing? What does Kalia stand for?

Trying to remember? Okay, yeah. Maybe it's California. No. I hope not. No, it's not. No. That's fine. I'll make something up. Commission on accreditation. Thank you. People are backing me up. Our next priority is to fund a civilian supervisor position for our crime scene staff. Currently we have four crime scene staff members in the department. They fall under the direct supervision of our violent crimes investigative sergeant. That sergeant also oversees seven other corporals and six detectives. So his span of control is stretched with the four crime scene techs. We're managing it at this point in time, but we think as that unit continues to evolve and dedicating a supervisor to that unit supervise them and manage them would enhance our services. We continue to add new technologies to the department. We're currently working on pursuing a contract to bring NIBIN, the ballistic, we've talked about it I think before about being able to look at shell casings and basically the ballistic fingerprint of a firearm. Uh, we're looking at a, a lease program that right now that we, uh, instead of us having to go once or twice a week to Waco to run that, bringing an in-house system into the PD. Um, so we're continuing to add new technologies and things to the department, having a supervisor, uh, who's, immersed in crime scene functions would help that unit as we continue to evolve and take on new technologies and tasks. One of our big issues right now is is electronic technology is really booming in law enforcement and having technicians well educated and technically proficient to provide investigations into that is much needed, but also having a supervisor that can provide direction and all would greatly support those those four crime scene technicians. And just, you know, looking, this is not in the FY27 to 30 or 31 plan, but just putting this on the radar of future needs for the expansion of our investigative unit. We right now we we program and focus this toward our property crimes unit, mainly due to that's the largest number of crimes reported is is related to property crimes. But as we go along, and in future years, we may need to add an officer to violent crimes, and maybe just three officers to property, property crimes, something like that we will need to adjust and and and flex as possible to see where we actually need them as we continue in future years. But we know with the increased population and the increased caseloads that we're receiving, this is gonna be a long-term need is to add detectives to our units. We're doing well right now. Our overall crimes are going down in Temple. So the last couple months as we've watched this year, Our crime rate is dropping, and so that's a plus. So that may stave off some of these additions, but it's something to just keep in mind that we're going to need going down in the future. And then also looking at FY 31, we were looking at adding five more officers to our community police services unit. This unit does a lot of our community engagement, also addresses our homeless population and directs our homeless population to resources and deals with those needs. There are also that somewhat of a quick quick reactionary force force that when we need a unit to come in at short notice to cover something that's going on that's the unit we normally go after to that has the most flexibility in their schedules to be able to provide services so as we the city continues to grow this is a unit needs to grow to meet the future demands of of the department in the city and provide those community engagement opportunities and deal with emerging issues. And along with that as well, as we expand that unit with adding five more officers, we would need to add another sergeant to that unit so that we don't have a span of control issue We'd have to have basically two units with a sergeant over each unit in the COPS section. That concludes what we have to present, but we're open to any questions or concerns.

Remind me, if you have a lieutenant for patrol, are they also patrolling?

They're mainly the handle of the administrative business of that patrol team. But they do go out and patrol when they have time available. But they're also there for critical instance, high profile. case, you know, on-scene support. They're more in an advisor role to the officers and sergeants to guide them in the field day-to-day.

So they do administrative, and then when they're not doing that, they do patrol? They do patrol, and they support our... If an officer needs a backup, is that who's probably going to come?

They can come and back up, yes. We do it all the way through the department. You'll see the chiefs out on patrol from time to time backing up officers on calls. That's why we come in uniform every day to work. So if we need to, we can go out and help them.

A quick review of the current staffing at the animal shelter. How many people, how many by job title?

We have the animal services manager. That was a position y'all added last year. Amy Strunk is the animal services manager. Then we have two supervisors. We have the animal shelter supervisor. James Martin is moving into that position. We have a vacant animal field services supervisor we're trying to fill, so that's the one that James was in. Under the shelter, I think we have five or six, I'm trying to think off the top of my head, staff members under the shelter, and I think it's four staff members on the field services side. So 15-ish people, sounds like? 13, 14, somewhere in there, yeah.

Okay. Yep.

We're looking it up.

Looking it up. OK. Thank you. Sorry about putting you on the spot.

No, I'm trying to look at my board and my office, and it's not coming in clear right now. 12. 12. There's 12 positions.

So as Chief said, there's a manager, the two supervisors, and then there is a all of my officers. Remember the breakout between typically in the field or the shelter, but they help each other out as well. So there's a total of 12 staff with nine of them being the technicians for either the field or the shelter.

Okay. Very good.

this wasn't part of the budget um but it's something that i i was talking to sean i think we received an email about the flock system and i read an article or i think maybe i saw something on tv about the shooting in austin recently and i thought it was so interesting that austin had suspended their flock system and they spent hours looking for those teams that were driving around shooting people but the minute they

drove past mainer city lines you know the flock system flipped on and they were able to find them so for me that just sort of solidifies that we're doing the right thing so and our i would say our systems are our implementation of flock and even dfr we've been about three weeks into the one unit of the of the three is up and running um is is of is impacting crime and temple and driving it down And speaking to the flock cameras, our most recent murder, we were able to pick up the suspect vehicle before and just after the murder on flock in the area where the murder occurred. It is directly connected to solving that case. So flock is reducing crime in Temple, but also helping us solve crimes that have occurred. So I would request y'all continue to support it as much as you possibly can.

And we do have one of the drones are up.

We have one drone up and operational. Uh, we have two more that we need to get up and operational where we, with some of the weather trying to get the sites prepped, um, has delayed us. Um, so once maybe the rainy weather subsides a little bit, we'll be able to get, get those up and running.

But we gave all, we have all the funding for the towers and everything for that.

Everything's funded. It's just a matter of getting them some break in the weather so we can get the sites established.

Blender you next I don't have a rundown I don't have a schedule okay they get to choose

Okay. Don't cross her, don't cross her. Did you make it to graduation in time, Landy? I did.

Good.

You were late, did you blame it on us? No.

I heard it was one hour, which is surprising. They said Troy did it in one hour.

Yeah, they go, they move with a purpose sometimes. But yes, it was a nice service. It was, of course, my wife, if something starts at six o'clock, we have to be there in line to get in at like four o'clock. So that was kind of the rush yesterday.

I mean, her baby's graduating.

The first baby, too. Hopefully we can chill out just a little bit for the next ones, but I don't suspect that'll work.

Third with the third reunion you'd have to go.

Before Landy before Landy goes I just have a question on our on our ranking here. There's three different. It says three police officers patrol but that's three times is that one one and one or is that nine.

And animal tech. All right.

So there is nine. So is this different years then?

We're wanting to add three at a time.

It's not the coming year budget.

It's the plan. Do you mind switching back over? He had the layout on one slide.

Yeah, I saw that.

There was three in 27, three in 27.

On here for our ranking because it says three police officers patrol and then again three police officers are those for each year then So that's but we're ranking them separately here The first

And the same with Shelter Tech. Okay.

I appreciate this system. It works very well, but it might be helpful. Like, so, uh, you know, on the, on the slide, it's broken out by fiscal year. It might be nice to put fiscal year here because I would think in fiscal year 27 and 28, for me, I would say those three officers are very important, right? Sooner, but then you would want a little bit more flexibility maybe in future years, which I know you'll get that next year, creating the budget. Does that make sense?

It does.

I think that's what's confusing me. If it said 26-27 or 27-28, I wouldn't, but I don't know. It's...

The reason they're separated and it's not going to say 12 is because they're not requesting to have 12 all at one time. Right. Although I think they probably would take that.

All three of them. We know that's not financially relevant. Right. Understood. Understood. You're back up, Landy. Sorry.

No, absolutely. Thank you all for having me this morning. Real quick, I did want to talk about the system as a whole, and I mean the City of Temple first responder system. I won't take up too much time on this, but a couple of weeks ago, there's a gentleman named Adam Beard. He retired as a chief here several years ago. He was working out at the summit on the elliptical, and he passed out. A man behind him named Paul Stewart. What did I say the first guy's name was? I've already screwed this up. Adam Beard. Adam Beard. Okay, good. I got that right, man. I'm nervous. I had a long night. I had an early morning. But anyway, Adam Beard passed out. A man named Paul Stewart behind him noticed that he had passed out. Paul Stewart is a driver of ours that has retired several years ago. He pulls him off the elliptical, starts doing CPR. This is at the summit, by the way. Does CPR on him. Staff gets an AED that we have provided, we have funded. They do CPR on him with staff. The AED does one shot, brings him back. He goes to the hospital. Excuse me. PD, fire, ambulance has arrived. He's awake and alert. He's talking. We get a chance to be there because one of our other chief officers that now works in general has called us directly and said, that's Chief Beard. Y'all need to go see him. And anyway, so we get there. He's talking. He recognizes us. We tell a joke. And he goes to the hospital. And I can say all this now. I've gotten permission. But has a quintuple bypass and is slated to go home sometime this weekend. And I just wanted to say as a city, that is amazing and that is what we're supposed to be doing. And I think we can be proud of ourselves. We have retired members that are still part of our, still citizens in a city facility with a city funded AED with city responders saving his life. So,

It's so disheartening, though, that he was working out, and he fell out. He was doing all the right stuff.

We always see him there, right? But there's those family history things that you can't quite beat with exercise and diet sometimes.

Yeah, for sure.

but no we're uh we're very proud of that i'm very proud of this city for being able to uh uh adam beard did not have a small influence in my career here uh so it's it's very special to me that that uh that we were able to take care of him while we're talking about funding it's cool if if this council had not have funded that aed he may not be here yep absolutely okay so I feel like I may have not done the assignment right, because all my stuff's for 27. That being said, we'll get started, and we can sort it out at some other time, I suppose. So this is a summary of our priorities. I'm just going to go ahead and go through them, and we'll talk about each one of them. So Fire Station 7 relocation and construction. This is already in the plan. We have already pretty much completed design. So what we are intending to do, as I'm sure you all know, is relocate Station 7 out west past 317 in the Kleinite and Adams Road area. So that relocation, one of the things we were kind of waiting on was to see if that relocation would cause problems back towards the interior of the city, back towards Um, you know, the loop and everything. We did some mapping and we think that it's going to be okay. We're also going to be able to pick up some areas to the west. It looks like we're going to pick up some of that densely populated. I think that's windmill farms to the north. Some of that a little better be able to respond a little quicker there in some areas to the south. Um, The other thing that's going on at station seven station seven is an older station. Uh, we haven't really done a whole lot of remodeling there. That being said, PD is taking over the, uh, the west side of that station and it's going to be for a PD purpose. They also have some larger vehicles that they need some indoor storage from. So the quicker that fire can move out of that station and move into a new station over there off of Klinite, I think the better off we all are as a first responder system. This came in a little bit too small. I don't know if you all see this on your screens. So we asked GIS to do a five-minute map for us. the purple star dash line is where we're saying or where they're saying that 7 will pick up some coverage and the blue solid blue is what the coverage of current station 7 is again moving out west if we were to come towards the city if we were to come east towards the city we also have 8 and 5 we're okay moving forward with Station 7, even without having to build Station 9 concurrently, which was one of the concerns we were looking at.

That's great. You get a lot farther out there.

All right. So minimum staffing for Squad 4. This is one that we have been looking at for a while. Station four does remain the busiest single unit station, so we have engine four running out of there. We also have some other stations that are busier. Station three and station one are busier, but they have either a rescue or a squad running in conjunction with a truck out of those areas. We generally look at how many calls the station runs. And once they get to a minimum of an average of 200 calls, we really start looking at adding a second responder unit out of that station. And that is where we are at with station four. Where Station 4 is currently located, it also puts them on a bit of an island. Station 1 and Station 3 have to cross some major thoroughfares to get there. And I don't know if anybody's ever tried to go from 3's district to like South 31st Street. But you really have two ways. You can come out to the loop, or you can try to snake around in forest in those areas back there. It's not a very quick response. So the other thing that this would do is this would allow us to have what we call two in, two out, should a fire incident occur in Forest District. able to have that two in two out a lot quicker and what all that is is that is a safety guideline from nfpa saying that if you have two people dedicated to fighting fire interiorly that you have two people on the outside ready to affect rescue currently we don't get that so we we there are cases with uh with a life safety issue that we would go ahead and enter structure uh but um Two in, two out is an important concept for us and firefighter safety. Also, and I think this is the last thing here, but future staffing of Station 10. So these personnel, which the staffing would be a driver and a firefighter on each shift, so three of each, that staffing would move over to Station 10 once it gets built. So we would only have to hire a... hire a captain in that case and station 10 is supposed to be south 31st 93 area so that would help out with those isolation issues current station four four minute map

Or is the southern road. I think we've said that a few times, right? As we continue to grow south and then south and west, it's really making those trips quite a bit longer, I guess. Response time, that's what I'm looking for.

And certainly as those, especially down old 95, Alan, I can see your house from here. Paseo Del Plata, right there.

I'm around the corner, too, from 5.

The relocating 7 shows they get to my house faster than the current 7.

That's right.

All right. So construction of Fire Station 9. We're locating this on Old Waco Road and Old Waco Lane, not to be confusing. So our proposed, it's proposed, of design and construction so we can be ready to staff that station in 2029. We do have a I knew I was going to forget this word, but we promised we would order a fire truck and that should be here in 28, what is the term for that finance?

Back order.

Intent to order or intent to purchase. Intent to purchase, thank you. It did intent to reverse. Very good intentions to buy a car. Is this a...

We have construction for nine on here to rate, but not the staffing. Do they go together, or am I missing?

This is the operating cost associated with Station 9. So this is going to be the staffing, the electricity.

So this is?

Yes. And same with Station 7 that Landy covered. This is the operating cost associated with the construction of those stations, not the capital.

So Old Waco Road and Old Waco Lane. Yeah. Are we ever going to get one name for Old Waco, Old Howard Research?

Yes. Yes?

Yes. What's it going to be? OK. Yes. I mean, it's all out early. Old research Howard's way? No. No? OK. I like that, yeah. All right. Who's Howard? Why does he get his name? I know. Who is Howard?

So this is the reason that the station is the station is going to be a lot bigger. It's going to be more like central station out on the west side, one of the regions that we're

Did we get another poll? I'm sorry? Did we get another poll?

It's being designed as a single story, so that would be a little awkward. Thanks. I don't know if you can see on your maps, Coverage firefighters. So not long ago, we found that maybe we were a little understaffed when it came to being able to reach minimum staffing consistently. So what we had to do was we had to force people to work. So in the fire service, we have a concept called minimum staffing. So right now it is 30 people that will move up by the end of this year because of our battalion chiefs and those accountability officers that go with them. But what that means is if you don't get relieved, you don't go home. That was happening a lot. I don't have an exact number for you and I apologize for that. But what we started doing was incorporating coverage firefighters into our staffing plan. Now I'm working another 24 hours and I have a day with my family, whatever day that ends up being, and now I have to come back to work. So we have continued to put these coverage firefighters in our staffing plan. These coverage firefighters are slated for 27. We are requesting that they stay in 27. it may seem like a lot of folks, but we have people on vacation, we have to let people off on vacations, people get sick, we have tiffness programs, which I'll talk about a little bit later, but an interstate mutual aid system. We have guys in military things like that. So we do kind of run up against this minimum staffing level a little bit more than we'd like to. And this is a way that we can come back to combat that. And also when we are able to staff over minimum, We've heard from a number of the spouses. This is very important to them. They're missing their people at home, you know.

will be over the ratio again, so to keep that, these really should be married together to keep that ratio correct, because you're gonna be adding six additional officers, so you would need to, you would need to add three, and then you would have capacity for three more, but if you, before you would need to add again, but you, ideally, you would stay ahead, not behind, So this is really kind of paired with that station for staffing.

And generally speaking, as far as with the overstaffing, I mean, you're not making two of them work at the same time, so you're saving overtime really is how much is it costing in the budget to do this? Am I making sense?

You are making sense. We... there is a link between overtime and coverage firefighters we have not we have at this point have not felt comfortable reducing overtime budget to to fund these positions because we're still finding that the overtime budget there should be a relationship of their schedule. They have built-in overtime to comply with the Fair Labor Standards Act. Even if you had everybody on staff, nobody was sick, nobody took a vacation, you are going to have overtime because of the way that their shifts work. They work more than I guess that's just the way the schedule falls, I guess, because they have to come back to work before the two weeks are over, or the week's over sometimes, right?

They've already got one 40-hour shift, and they don't. necessarily need to wait five days to do another one. Yes, sir. That's how you're going to always have some overtime.

It's complicated, very complicated.

That makes sense.

But they have, your work here is 2,812 hours?

2912. 4912.

Just about 100. And that's where the FLSA overtime comes in. And what did they note on your TIFMIS? Part of that reimbursement covers your backfill of the positions too, right?

Yes, ma'am.

Yeah, that was... Landy covered that well at the SAB meeting the other night about how we do get reimbursed for TIPMIS even for our vehicles and stuff, right?

Yes, there is a...

staffing stabilizes a little bit.

But this should help. We should be able to at some point help alleviate more overtime than is necessary.

Especially if you keep

also not to make them have to work when they don't want to i mean that's part of the job they get that uh just uh especially there for a little bit uh kind of late this year that was happening frequently yeah i mean it happens sometimes happens in my industry too but it's it's bad when

somebody has a vacation with their family planned and whoops you can't go some event they can't leave having to do it sometimes is different than having to do it almost always conversations with the association that's an important topic that's why I'm hitting on it so much because yes I've heard

All right, second set of turnout here. So we do currently have a plan to get all of our firefighters a second set of turnout here. The reason why this is important is as scientific studies come back, they're showing a positive link between the products of combustion, which are embedded in our soil bunker gear that we have to wear to fight fire, There's also some things coming down from the state that they're also associated with our National Fire Protection Association standards that are going to require us to take actions after that bunker gear has been soiled in a fire, which essentially includes we'll have to put that bunker gear in a airtight sealed container if it's going to ride in a cab with us. I hope I've done a good enough job of explaining that. But yeah, the big thing kind of driving this is we don't want to end up in a situation where we are having somebody, I don't know, in a tote or a gigantic Ziploc bag dragging their soil bunker gear around and then have to put it back on for another fire that they have that shift. Or any other issue that they have that shift.

Are there any grant opportunities to help with this cost? It seems like gear might be

something that would qualify so the real answer is i don't know um we haven't got a chance trying to be honest i just don't know okay we can explore that um i don't believe that it was something that we had explored when chief randall was there and just to give you an excuse i hadn't had the time to really Sure.

No, I get that. I just, people are more difficult to get grants for, but sometimes items gear could be something. Maybe you could talk to the police, see if they can get their new grant assistant that crossover.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

This is a recurring cost in a way.

they have to be replaced so we are needing to we're needing to to make sure everybody first has a second set but then we'll also need to on an ongoing basis double our replacement budget because instead of just one set for firefighter being replaced we'll need two sets replaced so it is something

Replacement generator for station six. So the current generator doesn't, really the deal is the current generator doesn't And I don't know if you get that. Yeah, I just called you out. So I'll just say, when we were there, when we had to try to operate there, when we have adverse weather conditions, operating there without an HVAC sometimes or all the time is not an ideal situation. So a lot of times we'll bring that unit back down to Central to run out of Central. We would like to upgrade this. and get it to where a generator would run the entire building. Just like it does in most of our other stations. I do think we have some stations where it's still, their generator doesn't run everything. But that's the request here. Kind of a ongoing thing that we'll have to talk about is station six is now in a place where they're gonna have some access issues getting to the loop or certain portions of the loop, getting to the interstate. And then if they, going north on Range Road, if you go north on Range Road now, the way the loop is, you will have to turn under and go back. You'll have to turn right, go under the bridge by the railroad tracks, and then head back west before being able to turn back around at Winland. If you go south, trying to get to the interstate, I would say, though, if there is interest in moving that station, that if we're going to upgrade this generator, there's a time, I think it's between three and five years that we should, but if we're looking at relocating that station long after, I'm sorry, if we're looking at replacing the station long after five years, we should go ahead and replace the generator.

I think Range Road has two sets of tracks over there. It's tricky.

All right, an additional squad for wildland and TIFMIS deployment. So I was giving this presentation to a department head, and I was like, I don't know. Oh, God, don't tell me I just forgot it again.

Texas, God almighty.

Interlocal Fire Mutual Aid System. Thank you, ma'am. See, there's a reason I'm not the fire chief. Just the interim. You'll get these acronyms down. I know. I think I know what TDM is, but I'm not even going to try to say it now. We are looking for an additional squad to help out with the Tiffin's program. And the Tiffin's program is a is a system that we that we are involved in that we will get deployed our people will get deployed and sometimes our units will get deployed on a Tiffin's deployment. Usually these are for like grass fires or fire danger, high fire danger incidents. Sometimes they are for general emergency People in our units are reimbursed for these deployments. There are a lot of good things that have to do with these, like getting our guys experience. Again, the backfill is repaid for, so we're able to pay our guys a little bit more. The interlocal working, because they're working directly in teams with other departments and everything like that, So we think that this is overall a good program and we would like to have a unit that I'm gonna say dedicated to this, but even when it's not being deployed by TISMIS, it is a unit that stays here that we can use here for whatever we need it for. So that would be essentially a brush truck is what we're asking for. So it's really just this amount is just a brush truck? $160,000.

But if we have the crew, can that same crew be part of the overstaffing?

So, and that's kind of when I talked about the additional staffing earlier, the coverage firefighters, this would be one reason why they would be here. We don't associate crews with this unit particularly. It's just a unit that is available for calls out in the state. Like if we got deployed today, this unit would go on that with whatever personnel we send with them.

So the crew is not Joe, Bill, and Sue. It's some people pulled from the department.

It is. We have a team together that have grass training or several areas of training, right, depending on what the state needs that we would send with this particular unit.

How often does that happen?

I would say in the summer months, it happens very often. We have a team deployed. I don't want to give you a percentage, but over half the time, easily. I would venture a guess more than that.

That's what's done at Pepper Creek before July 4th.

That's the training. This is training for those guys, yeah.

so we have to cover the cost if we're not, I mean, if it's just sitting there and not being used, but when it's getting used, so it's not the full price totally.

Yeah, so I would think that over the course, over the lifespan of the unit, it would be possible that the unit would get paid for by reimbursement of TIFness funds. I'm not an accountant, obviously, so I don't know how all that works.

Some of it will be, and sometimes it's not going to be used, so. and we don't get reimbursed when we send our best friends to town.

Well, it's just and what we talked about that the department had retreat is when you we definitely like we about how we prioritize making sure we are getting what we need to take care of. Our primary focus has got to be on our own community and then on the ability to help at the state level. The state has made that more difficult for us.

as an old flight attendant, you put on your mask first, and then sit on the other one.

And just so I can say this, we do decline other neighboring communities have the same so belton in that case would step in so yeah so there's a regional uh team and so in that team i know it's us i think belton has some folks i know colleen and harker heights have folks uh and i'm not exactly sure

local mutual aid agreements that we have individually with the surrounding departments where we provide aid and receive aid from our immediate neighbors. This is typically deploying to someplace So this is over and above our local mutual aid agreements that we maintain with our surrounding neighbors.

So have you ever made a mistake? I have. I showed this presentation to Chief Perez And the first thing he did when I came to, this was originally not the first question he asked me is, why is this nine? And I said, well, there's a whole history of the department that I could go through to tell you why it was nine. But what I've been in discussion with Chief Perez and what we've been able to identify, even with some conversations that happened a couple of weeks, is this is probably This should be top five probably for us realistically. Anyway, so battalion chief over professional standards. So as the department grows, we are putting more and more on to our existing chief officers. That's myself. That's mostly Chief Bush, frankly. So we get more people. We get more equipment, more bunker gear that we need to have, all those things. More vehicles. Chief Bush essentially does the tracking and the maintenance. He doesn't actually do the maintenance. He does the coordination of the maintenance. Vehicles, apparatus, equipment, all those types of things. He's about to have three more direct reports to go on top of that with the three battalion chiefs that we're putting on at the end of this year. So all that. is currently shared between the chief officers. But again, sorry. But anyway, one of the things that we're asking for is a battalion chief over professional standards to take some of these duties off of him. And this would be somebody who handles logistics, getting vehicles back and forth to where they need to be if they need to go to Round Rock or to Lane or up to Freightliner to be repaired, if we need to run equipment out the station, supplies, equipment supplies. But even outside of that, some of the things we've identified, and this is where I was talking with Chief Perez, is As far as the professional standards side, we have OGs that we try to keep up with, but we're just having a hard time with the current staffing that we have upstairs. Reporting, some of the reporting that we do, is probably not as helpful as we would like it to be. I think one of the things Chief Randall's did a good job is he came and reported to y'all maybe quarterly or maybe biannually. But a lot of that information is good information, right? You know how many calls, you know we're reaching our, sorry, we're increasing our call volume. So that should tell you that maybe we need some more people, maybe all this. But what we're not telling you and what we're having a hard time reporting is whether or not we're meeting key performance indicators. And we have not done a great job of identifying those and reporting those to you. And what I mean by that, are we getting trucks to places on time? Are we getting out of the stations on time? Are we getting EMTs and ambulances to call in a time that is generally accepted by our national standards? This position would help with that. We don't have disciplinary issues or anything like that. We're the fire department, we're all good guys, right? But when we do have something, we don't have a professional standards person to make sure that a write-up is consistent with policy. We just kinda take the write-up and assume that it was all good because nobody has, I don't wanna say nobody has the time, but we have time that is dedicated to other things that makes these, priority is very, very difficult to get on top of. I don't know if I've done a good job of explaining that very well, but there is just a need for another chief officer position that we can build from in our department and build down other positions that will take care of logistics, that will take care of... We're running a little on fumes upstairs. By the way, this was business plan 29. We are requesting it now. Oh, and accreditation would be the other thing. We'd really like to get accredited and we're having trouble getting to those pieces where we can make that, where we can get that information and make that jump to be an accredited department through best practices, Texas best practices. Okay, I feel like I've gone way, way long and I apologize. Replacement for a 2009 F-350 vehicle. This is in the business plan for this year. This will be squad four, long and short of it. We have asked or we have talked to Sherry about if we can't staff the Tithmas vehicle, maybe this one can stick around a little bit to be our Tithmas vehicle. And really that is the ask. What this unit will do is we will replace this with a squad unit consistent to kind of what we already have at station one. And we will, anyway, it'll just be more purpose built rather than this, which we call the tip and squad for a lot of different reasons. But this vehicle, it currently hauls some of our trailers. The new vehicle won't, it'll have a skid in the back and it'll be used first out for medical response at station four.

That's a pretty old vehicle. How many miles does it have on it?

It doesn't have a lot. I think it's sub-70,000 miles on it, which is why we'd like to hold on it for TIFMS if we're not going to get a TIFMS CD.

Does the TIFMS vehicles have some sort of equipment requirement?

They do.

And does this one, does this F-350 already meet that requirement?

All right. One of the other things we're asking for out at the training center, one of the things we've identified throughout the city is we're We are building four story three story apartment complexes, hotels, motels, and they have an interior stairwell. We've identified this as a as a gap in our training. Our training tower does not have a stairwell that that allows us to train for the types So what we're asking is to add an exterior stairwell to the training tower so that we could add this to our training repertoire, for lack of a better word. It'd be exterior, so we could also use it for other types of training, which either is a high-angle training where we'd be able to take somebody off of a stairwell, these types of things.

So does it just go up one side or around?

It would just go up on the east side of the structure where kind of the area that points towards the fake station or the train station. All right. And our last thing is we're asking for an additional staff vehicle. And this staff vehicle wouldn't be assigned to anybody. It would just be there for... for those things like we run logistics we run training uh we have uh i'm sorry i said we run training we send people to training and sometimes those I think that's the last thing. Obligatory fire fighter picture. Do we have any questions from y'all?

Go get some sleep.

I certainly appreciate y'all putting up your hands. It's been a week. But thank y'all very much.

Thank you, lady. Thank you. I have a question from the police chief. Do we still, the generator number six kind of reminded me of this, but do we still have substations? We had one at Renata Square. Do we still have those around town?

Yes, ma'am. We still have the substation at Renata Square, and we also have a substation at Canyon Creek Townhomes.

And those aren't staffed.

They're not staffed. They're just, they're just there for the district officers to be able to go to those locations. We have technology there so that they can set in those locations and do reports, et cetera. So it just keeps them in there, those district areas and not needing to go all the way back to the PD to, uh, do reporting and stuff. So if something happens, it's a quicker response than having to go from the PD all the way back down and say to Canyon Creek or back out to, you know, the east side. they can respond from those substations.

Has that been a deterrent for issues?

I think the added presence has been helpful in those communities to keep those officers and just having the vehicle when the officers are in those facilities working, just having their vehicles seen in those areas serves as somewhat of a deterrent.

Thank you.

Okay, sounds good. About, what, 15 minutes maybe? Be back here at 9.15.

Okay. Good morning. Good morning.

Uh, customer care. So I will start with just like an overview of what our programs are and the surface services that we offer. Um, I'll be really quick. I think I have four priorities up here to show you today. So we'll move kind of quick, uh, three programs under the customer care department. Um, what we call customer care, or it's basically our customer service, which is the utility billing office. payment collections for utility billing. And then our fairly new 311 call center. You guys are familiar with that. Next program is utility billing, which is our billing and collections and water metering. And then our newest program, Solid Waste Service Delivery Support. So if you'll remember back in October, we took that customer service team for solid waste under our department. So they are responsible for solid waste customer support and then solid waste commercial billing. A little bit more about the customer care and solid waste partnership. So from the customer care and service delivery teams there, that program, uh, focuses more on just the customer experience and coordinating the service. And then Justin's team in solid waste operations is the field operations and the execution of that service. Uh, for FY 26, just a few of our numbers here, this is for the first seven months, uh, in the utility business office, we have processed almost, or as of April 30th, it was almost 6,000 new accounts. So of course that's not new builds and new homes, but that's people moving from one address to another. They're processed the same from a utility customer service standpoint. And then over 32,000 phone calls handled. Metering, we had 619 additional meters. So those are your new builds or new taps where we set new water meters. So that is in addition to our meter inventory that's in the field. And then solid waste service delivery, we are working on automating the service request process. A lot of that has been done on paper, with paper tickets and handwritten and handing to the field, which goes to a truck. And so we're working on automating service requests and then commercial roll-off billing process improvements. Uh, for the call center team, um, we have had over 16,000 first call resolutions. And what that means is this team has handled over 16,000 calls that we didn't have to send to a department. So that it wasn't a request for service. It was more informational or somebody might've thought they needed a service and we were able to resolve that, uh, with one call to us. We have a 95% increase in the self-service usage. So that's our TTX Connect portal and our mobile app. Those numbers aren't super high, but they're growing. And I'll show you kind of a line, a chart here in a minute. Um, and then we've centralized the coordination of almost 25,000 service requests. So those are those, uh, need to report a pothole. Um, there's a dog loose. I need to schedule a brush in bulk. Um, and that is 24,000 through both agent scheduled and then the self service usage and over 17,000 brush and bulk pickups that have been scheduled and coordinated. And I think Justin pointed out also, but I would also like to point out that with us, with our teams working together on this, we have had a 100% on-time scheduled pickup. It's working. Here are those interaction channels where I was talking about the self-service. So agent-handled interactions is on the top, and then the self-service usage is on the bottom. So agent-handled is mostly phone. But we do have live agent chat and SMS. We get some by email. There's a few that are internal requests that come to us. The agents handle those. And then the self-service on the bottom. Just another snapshot of what brush and bulk looks like. And you've probably seen this in Justin's presentation. But these are the requests by month for this fiscal year. So average monthly, almost 2,500. Um, and then for FY 27, uh, we are implementing new billing software for utility billing. Um, and then of course, just continued growth as more customers metering, um, that continued customer growth is continued workload for the metering department. 311 call center, again, the growth and brush in bulk, that has not been, the news on demand scheduling has not been live for a year yet. And so we're heading into our busy months and I look for that to really pick up here over the next three months. then solid waste service delivery implementation of improved commercial billing process that's going to go in hand with the utility billing implementation we're going to try to get those those are handled separately and in two different billing systems and we're we are going to bring those together into one billing system this is a picture of our org chart as we are proposing it for FY 27 and The items that I have in green are the personnel changes to our additions. And one is just a reclass. So I won't have a slide that shows the solid waste delivery team change, but all we're asking to do is to reclassify one of the service delivery agents or, or CSR to a team leader. And that's to align with the rest of our programs in our department. So for 27 personnel requests, uh, we have a community solution specialist that is the TTX connect or 3 1 1 call center agent, and then a utility billing coordinator right now in utility billing for approximately 38,000 water meters. We have one billing specialist. and a manager. That one didn't make the top list on the leadership priorities, but the community solutions did. So we are asking for those two positions to be considered. And then technology and facility requests. The TTX Connect portal and app were built, our current implementation partner was Salesforce. They built the app and the website for us on a proprietary solution, and we're asking to move that to the Salesforce solution, which is our CRM, our customer relationship management, so that it's in one place and easier for us to manage. We don't have to rely on that implementation partner for support going forward.

Can you go back a few slides to show the use of the app versus the call-ins? Yes.

just started using the app fairly recently for the for the a year pick up for a brush and bolt yes back in August when it changed yes but most as you can see most people still want to call and talk to somebody we I think we all think that people would rather use the app and the portal and we try to push that market that but people still call And I think as people get more accustomed to having to use that schedule, that we'll see an increase in self-service. Once they know it works, they've talked to somebody and they know what the expectations are and I know it works, I think we'll see an increase in that.

Does the app usage justify the $200,000 cost? I guess that's really up for us to decide.

I think, too, if we can focus some efforts on marketing that more and pushing it more. Right now, when we look at agent-handled interactions, we have four agents. And I know we talked about this before. But we take an average of like 200 interactions a day. Um, it's yeah. And, and that's a lot. Yeah. Um, and especially when one day last week we had two agents out one plan, one unexpected. So I had two. So then we're pulling from utility business office and everybody, um, even Melissa Reyes has jumped on the phone a few times so that we make sure we keep our, um, our call queue down. So I think if we can work to push that more and again as that grows and people trust the process That they'll use that more The top one is agent handled Yes, sir, we follow the regular city hours I saw that backwards earlier because I can't the colors are the same so I

Why the big jump in March of the agent-handled ones? Because I thought a while ago that was the app.

Probably brush and bulk may look at, yeah, if you look at the brush and bulk numbers from February to March, the request on the right.

But they have to, during that, did you have to pull people in just because of the amount? Yes. Not because someone was out? not because of what I'm sorry, not because somebody was out or anything. You had to pull people in just to help do that.

No, if I, if I have all four of them, they've been able to handle it so far. Yeah. But as we continue to grow, um, their last Monday we had 475 phone calls, not just interactions, not service requests, but just phone calls. And I had three agents.

How much do those agents have to deal with the app request? They don't. If we get them to the app, they're out of?

Right. The brush and bulk, we still review those as they come in before we put them on the schedule because they have to qualify for the pickup. And that needs to be done by a person. We look at the utility billing account to see if they have an active account and they qualify for the pickup.

So those are still reviewed? By these agents? by the phone call agents who reviews them if they come in on the app of Rush and Bulk?

It's someone that helps with that team. It's actually, we pulled a utility billing agent to help with Rush and Bulk so that the front line call center agents. It's okay. So that the front line call center agents don't have to stop and vet those.

Getting you there. Is it? Oh, there.

But so if we, the more we shift to the app, the, that saved personnel.

I think it'll level, it'll just level out. But again, we hope to increase the usage of the call center and the app for more than just brush and bulk. And again, I think as people, as the word gets out, we haven't done a huge push with the marketing team on the app and self-service because we wanted to make sure we can handle it first, handle the volume.

I really love the 311. I love that they have that. Somebody yesterday while we were in the meeting, a friend of mine asked, how do you get a hold of the dog catcher? And without me looking it all up, I was 311, I'll help you. Yeah, absolutely. It's been very nice to be able to pass out. Good. I don't have to.

We do have some business cards, too, that we can get you also that have a QR code they can scan to go straight to the mobile app, too. It's got the phone in it.

That would be helpful, too. It's been, to me, instead of me having to say, oh, go here on the website and look up and find this and this, I've used a lot. Call 311. They'll help you get to the right place. And that's been handy for a council member, I know.

Well, and if it's not something that is a city, a call about bell county voting yesterday and so we look it up for them and get them to and the good thing about chat and text messaging is we can actually copy a link and text it back to them so they can just click on it from their phone so if we find something we think would be helpful to them we instead of giving them information about county voting we send them to the county site and let them

That's awesome. I had an example of the opposite of that. I had some friends that lived here, lived in Belton and they left town, left the state for a few years and moved back and their address is Belton but they live in Temple and they kept calling Belton to get their water meter or their water turned on and they called me, do you know anybody in Belton that can help me? Your house isn't in Belton. They weren't telling them that, they were just saying we don't serve that address and

So we get a lot of those for east bell county too. And so we're able to, we have a tool and I couldn't tell you what it is, but my staff has a tool that they can look at an address and see who that water service provider is and they send it out.

That's awesome. Cause if that would have happened and they lived in Belton and we're calling temple, then the fact that we have somebody to say, oh no, um, we don't service that, but Belton does. And here's the phone number. That's cool.

Yeah. It's been helpful. Um, again, the one yesterday that asked about the voting. Um, I'm like, no, we don't, we don't have information on our system on it. Cause it, it's not really ours, but now we do. Right. So when customers call in, they they're, we're able to make the rest of our staff aware of things that we can help people with, um, by just being brought aware.

That was morale. It's it's good. Good. Yeah.

The busy days. Um, they actually, they love the busy days. I mean, that goes by fast, but yeah, it's good. They were so enthusiastic. They seemed very happy. Yeah. When we took on that staff, it's a change. And I think they were uncertain of what was going on. And our current team was, how are these teams going to work together? But it's really been a very positive thing. We've made some great positive changes Uh, customer service on the solid way side, as far as how they're handling processes and how they're working with the call center team directly. Uh, we've made some really good progress. That is all I have. Happy to answer any other questions. Yes. All right. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am.

Heather, I'm sorry, one more question. On the build-out, I guess moving the... Oh, I did not talk about that. Well, moving the app to our CRM. Yes.

A couple hundred thousand dollars to do that. To move it and then support for it going forward from Salesforce and the implementation. We were paying our old implementation partner to support it, and it it was a process to get something done. If something went down or if there was an issue or we needed a change, it took a lot longer. If we need something changed or brought down or up, we need it done right now. And moving it to that Salesforce CRM with this other implementation partner will give us better access to manage that.

So is that $200,000 throughout the business plan years?

That is to move it and support it. For how long? A year.

Okay.

But it won't cost that much.

Going forward. Year over year, no. What's the cost difference between the, do you know what the current partner is being paid, the one that's supporting it now? I guess is, is that $200,000? Is that a net after, after the savings of not paying the other vendor, the other vendor, we were paying about $6,000 a month.

Okay.

And we had trying to say how to think how to say this. We don't want to use that partner anymore. And we have found a better partner that aligns more with what we're trying to do. The other one was, um, We, it was putting a lot of it back on us and we're not Salesforce architects and we're not website managers, we being my team. Um, and so that was putting a lot of it back on us and we were having to pay them and we were paying them and not really getting the results that we wanted. This other is more three one one focused instead of just Salesforce focused. So they understand our business and what our call center does. And when we're asking for something, they understand the use case. They understand what we need versus just what Salesforce can do. If that.

No, no, that makes total sense. And so that would end up being, instead of 194, 6,000 a month times 12 is 72. So that'd be more like $122,000, $123,000.

Well, and this new, the new implementation partner or the new partner going forward, I think it's 25,000 for the year for support.

So we get our money back in three or four years. We're breakeven. Yes.

And I get things done much faster and better. Yeah. Got it. And we can control it from the Salesforce side.

Sounds good.

The other thing I didn't put, I didn't move it to perfect. It was one of the leadership priorities. So, um, one of the other things I didn't talk about that was on there was a build out of the first floor of utility. billing, um, the we've been in that building since 2009. I just skipped right over that. Um, and we need to create some office space. Um, and so we've worked with Austin. He came over and looked and he's like this whole, you know, we have a lot of wasted open lobby customer area that we could reduce to close in some office space in the back.

Got it.

Thank you. Thank you.

okay my turn so my first ask is a lot of my asks are just to maintain the current level of service that I'm providing today so my first ask is for money for internet for data to all facilities this year we're starting to move over to sagra so there will be some cost savings with spectrum and astound but not knowing what those things are because as they drop off and as these come on this is the dollar amount for what it will cost for Sager for the year the next ask is to continue our subscription with ring central which will be our phone new phone system that we're implementing this year as well so again they'll be cost savings getting rid of our old phone system this is just the start of cost for the share My next ask is for additional funding for dues and subscriptions and maintenance costs. So these are increases and additions. So specifically these asks for our Palo Alto firewalls are increasing because we're adding more. Fresh service is our help desk software and it's based on users. Horizon AI is what we use for penetration testing. And Cortex is our XDR or our part of our security software. And then Proofpoint is security for email. So these are all increases.

So they're increases not to the subscription rate, but because of additional users?

Both, a little bit of both. Some of them have annual percentage increases that are obviously the higher the dollar, it gets more. And some of them are per user.

And these are just the increases?

These are just increases.

Not have a firewall, so.

Right, right. And then just briefly, I want to say we also find savings in there. So we were talking about the phone system and that our current system is a short care. So we will be saving 35,000 there. Our ruckus zoom. So these are a lot of our per user subscriptions. So we maintain at the end of every year, we go through and clean out users, those that maybe didn't get removed during the year or those that had been transferred. With DocuSign, we purchased an excessive amount of envelopes last year because we did some HR documents. And so we're not going to do that this year. We're using day four, so we can knock those off. So it's just, I guess, reconciliation. So there are some savings. That's what I wanted to show you.

If we rank this subscription to maintenance increases, that's taken into account the decrease? Yes, sir.

And then my reoccurring costs have also increased. You know, computers have greatly increased since we, we buy them every year, so we're on, our PCs specifically are on five year cycles. We buy X amount of laptops and desktops every year and we replace them in five year cycles, but we keep them, do that throughout the year. So PCs have increased, video surveillance cameras have increased, UPS, all of the hardware has increased. This is for increases for additional money for recurring replacements. And I just put a quick slide in here and what our cycle replacements are. They're industry standard. We use the same that everybody else uses. Also, we do find decreases throughout the year. Not a lot, but we do. One of our big pushes is to go to one device. We've had several employees with multiple devices. So support-wise, it's obviously easier to support one device. And if you need to be mobile, you need a laptop versus a desktop. So we're making that push, but we're waiting for the cycle replacements to come due, so we're not unnecessarily replacing PCs. So it's going to be a process. We're looking to move our faster, which is our fleet software, to a hosted environment, which will decrease the cost, which is really weird because that never happens that way. It's usually more. But it does decrease. We're implementing Geotab this year, which is taking the replace of Calimp, which is the devices in our vehicles that track them. And then cellular activity. We eliminate phones and devices after, I think, it's 60 days of no activity. If we can't find where the device is because people trade them and do whatever, then we just shut it off and wait for them to come tell us that they still need it. So we can track it down that way. It sounds terrible, but it's hard to keep track of them. Yeah, if nobody complains, we keep it off. And then obviously we reconcile our licenses every year. Data server, and I took Bryn's advice and took the center out of that just for the sake of wording. But... We, uh, we replay, we, on cycle replacement the, um, data server and the storage area network at PD. We used to replace on five year cycles and we have last year replaced at Fire 8 and City Hall. And we used to take those devices and refurbish them and put them in other places. Sherry was able to help us find the funding to not do that so we can increase our replacement cycle from five to eight years. So there's a savings there, although there's a big dollar amount on it. switches and access points it's again cycle replacements but I separated these cycle replacements out from the others just because the number is so high geotab we talked about these are the tracking devices that we're putting in vehicles we're implementing this this year so we just want to maintain that to keep that level of service Council chamber upgrades. So this has been a big topic of discussion for multiple departments and working with Jennifer and Sherry, there may be some things that we can do this year. So this dollar amount probably is not accurate. But what I'm looking for is to replace this, the audio, the video. We need to do other things within this room, but I am just asking to replace the technology, the equipment in here.

Does that, will that fix some of the, when people are not being able to hear and online and stuff? Yes. Yes. And the microphones going out.

Yeah. So these batteries die. So I used to have to replace them twice a meeting. We got new ones. Now I only have to replace it once. Well, now that the meetings are going much longer, I replace them often, but yeah. And, and the microphones up there are super old and they're just not, not sensitive to pick you all up. I asked you guys to move up forward, which sucks, but it's just this old equipment. It hasn't been replaced. since I've been here in nine years. Your technology and my equipment back here. Yes, ma'am.

And we do have available funds that are, it's revenue that's restricted just for, that we can use for the improvements.

I should have mentioned that. Some of my slides, I have technology funds in parentheses, and then here I have PEG funds, so those are just different funding sources that need to be noted. Tracy said this is special funding. Do we have the latest, I'm sorry, in cameras?

Because I know on YouTube it's a little fuzzy.

Yes, we are asking for replacement cameras as well. Yep, upgrades. I did not ask for any staffing, but instead I'm asking for hours to work with vendors, so getting their help and they can help my staff, whether it's training my staff to do something or doing something for us, I'm asking for hours for consulting. So Esri, our GIS software, we purchased the Advantage program this year And it's basically, they consult us. They go through all of our setup, all of our data, our versions, our hardware. They go through everything and give us recommendations on what we can do for better performance, to be more industry standard, whatever it is. They give us that advice and then they help us implement those things. So we purchased it this year. I'm sorry, we purchased it last year, not this 26, but I'm asking for it again in 27 just so that we stay current. Block of hours for day force. Whenever we get new providers, we have to pay them to create links so that the softwares talk to each other. Niche, our place records management software, same thing. We're still in the process of implementing, but we're to the point now where we're not considered in the implementation process. We're considered maintaining. So if there's any new integrations that we need or there's any new... tools that we need we have to pay for them now so I'm asking for money for that and then Heather talked a lot about the Salesforce consulting hours she's going to maintain she's going to create this new site this is for new functions and features if there's any integrations that can be had so to get rid of the all of the manual work financial software I changed this for Bryn corrected me I think I had on the site originally that was almost 20 years or nearly 20 years and it's 20 plus years old it's very very old and it's definitely time to replace it and honestly I hate putting this light up there because I'm not looking forward to the work it's gonna take to get it done but it needs to be done I've got that request from a couple people actually.

No new tricks for that one, right?

And my last request is for funding to clean up my network closets we have several closets throughout the facilities and today some of them are Key locked some of them are not locked some of them are janitor closet with mop buckets in them some of them that we have a ride variety depending on what space we have and what we need to share but I would like to clean that up and have door access and cameras on them the cameras will help Not just activity or movement, but also temperature. If any alarms go off, anything like that, it gives me alerts so that I can get ahead of it. And that's my last request. I just put up here that the majority of my requests are to maintain a current service level. And some are contractual obligations. I won't tell you your contracts. Any questions?

Easy.

I'm trying to make it easy for you.

Trying to make it easy and quick. Yeah.

Very good. Thank you, ma'am.

All right. Good morning. General Services. Our core challenge for our department is capacity. We need more people. Facilities, we're maintaining 720,000 square feet of facilities and you'll see this number come up on future slides. Administrative load wise with just the increase, the growth of our city, we've got increased transactions. and operationally impact by the fact that we're not keeping up, we're being very reactive, and it's exposing us to risk and extra costs, especially in the HVAC world, too, is how that can impact us. So everything I'm gonna share with you today is fiscal year 27 requests, and I know that's not gonna be possible, but we are understaffed, and all of our requests are we need more people So this is our current org chart. We have Randy Hairston as one of our assistant directors and she's primarily over the purchasing side. Austin Maxwell, I think you guys have met him and he's here today. He was just recently promoted to assistant director, he has been just a life saver for, I mean such an asset for our organization. We didn't have anybody on staff prior to Austin coming that really understood the operation and construction of a building inside and out. Don't get into landscaping with him. That's not his thing. The pretty stuff, but he understands buildings. So if something goes wrong, he is going to have an idea on what's causing it or he'll know how to dig into it to figure it out and so forth. So this promotion to him as assistant director, so now he has some responsibility over facility services in addition to construction services is just such a good thing for our city, our organization and our department. So that fills a hole. So underneath Austin, he has our facility services division director, Tony Zavala. And underneath Tony, he's got facility maintenance, custodial services, and then one HVAC tech and one electrician. The one in Bolded around it, that is not in there. So those are our new requests, are what you see kind of bolded there. construction services division director. Of course, Austin vacated that position, but he's still doing both in there. And then we've got two project managers below him currently. I'm recommending we really to properly serve and do justice to our projects like we need to. We really need to fill that construction services division director position along with adding another project manager. The other thing that I've been asking for for the last few years is an energy and efficiency program manager. Again, we've got all these buildings, but we have no energy policy, we have nobody overseeing the alarms that are going off, and so we don't hear about, even though we should be hearing about things and fixing them before they really happen, we don't have the staff to do it, so. And we recently have on board with this, which is being a great support for us as an executive support coordinator. So we currently have 35 authorized positions. One is a part-time inventory specialist that we don't currently have, and we're not actively pursuing a filling. So right now we do have 34 filled positions. Our number one priority when we defined this was to add a second HVAC tech. So we currently have one HVAC tech and he is maintaining 54 buildings totaling about 720,000 square feet. That includes, of that 720,000 square feet, we've got eight buildings with large commercial units, and those are all those pictures off to the side there, if you recognize them. And that's gonna increase to 11 buildings when we get the historic post office back online, along with the police training buildings. Those two buildings are gonna have more complicated systems to them. In addition to those commercial units, we've got over 260,000 split units. So those are your residential type units. A lot of, the majority of our facilities, the smaller ones, even some of the larger ones, including this building, is all serviced through those residential type units. So we are blessed to have right now, Phil Pham is his name. He's been with us not quite a year yet. He is outstanding. And he is outstanding on the larger units, which is even a greater blessing. But all that to say, he cannot keep up with all the square footage that we have. If you try to look at what a municipal kind of benchmark standard would be, you need one HVAC tech for every 100,000 to 150,000 in square feet. So we've got 720,000. So really according to that, we need almost five right now. I'm just, I'm asking for one and Austin will say, it's like, give us more. because all it's gonna do is help us maintain and keep the facility operating better. I truly believe, as we talked to you during the CIP, we need to upgrade the chillers, the two chillers and the cooling tower over at the library. Those units, I was kind of surprised. I thought, oh, they must be 30 years old. No, they're just 20 years old. But we don't have the staff to maintain them. And so because of that, when you don't maintain them like you need to, all it does is it gives a premature almost death to those units. So we truly needed more help in this area. If we can't get the staffing and we may not be able to find another good ones, we've had trouble in the past with identifying qualified applicants to become part of our team, we'd need to contract out that work. So we would need to kind of, instead of having staffing, we need contracted services where we can at least have a program in place where regularly they're doing the things we need on especially those larger units. Now, we're keeping up on the filter changes. So we're doing that. That's the simple stuff because we've got the techs helping out with that. But otherwise, there's so many things we need to be doing on these larger units that we just can't keep up with. Right now, Phil is basically reactive to things that are breaking. So that's what he's doing. We also need more maintenance techs. And in the details, I don't know how it is on your screen, but there's probably four different asks here, whereas two people coming on board is one request, and then two other individual requests. But currently, we have three building maintenance techs. And they, again, they're maintaining 720,000 square feet. We've added 21 buildings or we've added on square footage to buildings. In the last 10 years, 161,000 square feet, but we haven't added any building maintenance techs. It's a pretty common benchmark standard that you have one building maintenance tech for every 50,000 square feet. We need, with that, over 14 techs, we have three. We're requesting to build that staff as quickly as we can, at least to seven, adding four to the staff. Our goal as we start building the staffing level, we want to start achieving a higher level of preventative maintenance. It's just not on those HVAC units. Roofs, we get roof leaks because the roofs don't get cleaned, where there are building envelope issues and so forth. We don't have ownership of a building maintenance tax on buildings. Several weeks ago, I just took a comment. I had a few minutes and I walked through this building. I went back to the office. Here's 10 work orders. Because we just don't have the staffing and the ownership of these buildings like we really need to in order to maintain them. The other thing we did, we invested as an organization in some professionally developed building assessments in 2023 and 2024. There's a ton of work orders that we could create and add them to the work order system. We just don't have the staffing to do them. Strategically, in the long run, I also see an opportunity as we get to a point where we can build up our staff, and I don't know that it means taking from other departments, but I'd highly recommend that we centralize building maintenance. The airport currently has maintenance personnel. Their maintenance personnel, though, are really focused on maintaining the airport, the outdoor areas, not on the buildings. Water treatment plant, water treatment plant. They have their own maintenance techs. Their maintenance techs though, their number one priority is to keep the water running. Just the significant work that they're doing with the high quality standards as we saw last night and how they've been rewarded in that regard. The PD has one maintenance tech, but we're getting called over there a lot anyway. He's supposed to be, but we're doing an HVAC upgrade, but still, it really, it really needs to be under one centralized department. Parks, and when I say parks, I'm talking about anything where basically it is a bathroom in a park or something. Right now they have their own maintenance staff, but I could see benefit in centralizing that. Along with the parking garages they're under currently district services transform temple and I really think with the elevators in those and the fire suppression systems and you name it, those should really be under a department that has that focus on those items. Our next priority is to add a third accounts payable technician. So we currently have two. In 2022, we had 11,700 transactions, invoices we processed. In 2025, last year, we processed 15,005. That's a 33% increase. So it's reality that it's changing. Again, looking at just national standards, a benchmark would be one full-time equivalent to process 3,000 to 5,000 invoices per year. So that would say that we're behind. We need basically at least one more. with regards to that standard. Another way that we looked at this, there's another benchmark, and we're very manual currently. That hopefully will change when we change our get out of Navline and so forth and onto another system, but that's gonna be, as Kelly pointed out, we're not looking for that either because our department and purchasing will be very heavily involved in that. Basically, in a manual process, it takes 12.5 minutes to touch each invoice. We have to touch the invoice twice. We have to get it in, log it in, and then when the receiving report comes in, that's another touch. So with that, basically it says that would be 25 minutes per invoice. We need 6,458 hours per year on invoice. That would come out to 3.1. So bottom line, looking at both standards, we're short really one full-time equivalent in our accounts payable technician area. The shortfalls as a result of not having enough is we're non-compliant and a lot of times we're tracking that with regards to the Prompt Payment Act. We have done a concerted effort over the last several years to try to encourage all vendors to make sure they're submitting their invoices to invoice at templetx.gov, but that doesn't always get to the vendor like it should or get communicated. We try to follow up on all invoices that we know about, but all the same, we can't make payments happen unless the department pays it also. So the Prop Payment Act says that we shall pay our invoices within 30 days of receipt. Because of it, we're also rushing to get things done at times, so that can lead to higher air rates just due to workload pressure and inadequate time to validate annual contract pricing. So we have over 100 annual contracts. They can be from electrical work, plumbing work, and so forth, Invoices will come in, but the staff really, they should be going back to the annual contract to make sure that the department checked that. We don't have the resources to do that right now. So that's a risk. We know that we're encountering as a result of that. The value gain from adding another tech insurer, not necessarily insurer, but we'll be able to do a better job in timely and accurately vendor payments. And just adding that risk mitigation by making sure that a vendor's being held accountable to the annual contract terms. And the other thing we'd like to do is just like we've done with, we've got three buyers and like people operations has done, each department is assigned a buyer. We'd like to do that same approach with accounts payable tech too. So they know who their person is. Another item, as I brought this one up already, is adding energy and efficiency managers. We have 54 buildings, again, totaling 720,000 square feet, but we have no dedicated resource to manage utilities. We, I know there's some attention on it in finance, but not really from the standpoint of policies and so forth. There are definitely no oversight on managing the building automation systems that we have. Austin spends a lot of time on that. He understands it. He can look at a system, and right in the middle of the screen, that's an example, a very simple look of what we see in our building automation system that we use as to, those little dots are showing where all those thermostats are at, and that's actually a building A at the service center, but it's showing where the thermostat's at, and if someone calls us and says, hey, I'm a little warm, and same thing happens when we're over in the forum room, like yesterday when the mayor said I'm hot, and so Austin was right in front of his computer, he's like, mayor says he's hot. He says, well, he texted back. It's like, it's 69 degrees in there. And it's like, OK. Because I'm that precious. We know we have opportunities in that building, but we have a plan to make that better and more equalized once we get more departments in there and we're gonna add some variable air frequency valves and so forth in that building once we get working on more renovations over there. But all the same, we have currently 14 buildings on a building automation system. There is alarms, but if we had them go to a text message or whatever, some of them are not important at all, but others are very important. But there's no way, at least at this point, and we don't have a staff person to really filter through those, there's no way that Austin could do that. Austin is like a superman in what he's doing right now, so there's just no way. We need a focused attention on this.

Do you have an idea how much, hopefully that pays for itself plus?

That's what I'm saying is at the bottom of the slide I say, Austin and I truly believe that this position will pay for itself. The return on investment, if indeed we get EXO executive management and department head support on this, we truly believe that this position can pay for itself through the savings that it can generate. Because we can go into that BAS system too, like we've got a holiday on Monday. I sure hope that we've got, I mean, as a side job, I've tasked someone to do that, but if I come in Monday and our building is cool, it's like, oh crap, it didn't happen. But there's also 13 other buildings that can have that issue too. So there's just, we don't have enough resources to do it. And we've invested a lot in these building automation systems. The other thing from the standpoint of utility account management, currently if there is a new service request or a delete or whatever, they are coming through me. And so I am the main person for the standpoint of that. I am training our executive support coordinator to do that. But someone probably, someone does need to understand it like I understand it before I retire in a few years. And this could be that person. That could be that point person. Uh, it, this goes for outages too. Um, we also, we do not currently have a citywide, um, just sustainability policy with regards to what should thermostats be set at. It's really depending on what the preferences of each. If you go into a fire station, um, it can be really cold. So, um, but again, we have no policy to, to. To set that on but it can it take support to do that and buy in from management to basically adopt something but time to create something to that's reasonable for our organization. Our next priority is to add a third project manager and that's what this started at and then it really became apparent to me the value that Austin would provide our organization by being promoted. So I say now because that was all that was presented to the leadership team was a third project manager, but I really feel strongly that we need to fill that construction services division director role too. So our current construction services workload is we have 26 active projects. We've got nine projects in construction, totaling 24.5 million. The biggest one right now, of course, is the public safety training. buildings for the police department that's in the biggest picture there that's the current status of that with the training building going up and then we've got five projects that are ready for construction and we've got 12 projects in design so that all adds up to 72 million again going back to just looking at benchmarks in in order to prove how we're feeling in our department from the standpoint of just we don't have enough help, the standards prove that or support us in this. You need one project manager on vertical construction. It's totally different when you go to civil construction We are working along with the design team all the way from the design of it, getting the right departments involved in it, our end users and so forth, including IT, through the design, through bidding, through construction, and through wrap up and the one year walk through. It's so much different than civil. There's so many elements to it with regards to our involvement in these projects. So they're not apples and apples. I just want to point that out. So according to the national standard, I'm using the high end, we would need 3.6 project managers. So as a result, I understand why our two project managers are very stressed because they are operating at 180% of the high end of the national kind of standard or capacity. The third, the addition of a third project manager is essential to meeting growing internal demand, reduce risk of just staff burnout. We're not sustainable where we're at and Austin can, Point to that. We want to definitely, I think we do a great job of quality control, but there's only so much we can do with the bandwidth that we have. And just improve overall project oversight. Again, comparing civil projects to ours. On civil, we typically hire the engineering firm to be the on-site rep. Architects don't do that. I mean, it's just not typical. So we're the on-site rep. it we the architect will come on field if they're local maybe more than once a month but otherwise like at that that project right there Austin is out there how many times a week the the police buildings multiple times a week just looking at it raising questions valid questions so we get a good project in that in the end So again, just improve just overall project oversight. It's important that we have the staffing to do that. This does not have, this isn't a top priority as defined by the leadership team, but is at a second purchasing coordinator. We currently have one, and that person is responsible for processing P-card transactions. We process, as of late, 22,000 of those a year. We have over 400 cards throughout the city. We use GovDeals to liquidate our P-card transactions items that we no longer need, vehicles, furniture, you name it. There has to be somebody to manage that program, and that falls under this person. We've recently implemented a city swap shop. Kind of a neat idea, doesn't take a lot of time, but as people leave the city, there are logoed shirts, typically just never come back to us. But at least this way, if they're still got some life to them, we've got a swap shop now. We also put furniture and so forth on there. So if a department is looking for a piece of furniture before we just put it on GovDeals, they have the opportunity to get it off the swap shop. And the other thing that this position does is the new licenses for new vehicles. So really focusing on where we really see the stress on this position is the P cards and why we really feel like a second purchasing coordinator is needed. Our P card transactions have grown just like the accounts payable through purchase orders, but has increased 24% in the last three years. And really what happens on PCARs, at least the way the current program works, is we download a batch on Monday morning. It's typically around 400 transactions or more, and we distribute that to a PCAR liaison in each department. They then collect all those receipts for every single transaction, and it's then this coordinator's responsibility to audit and make sure it complies that they bought the item from the right place, that sales tax isn't on it, that it's charged to the right account. So they're auditing basically 400 transactions per week. The problem, and as you can imagine, we require that all P-card logs be turned in by 10 o'clock on Friday morning. So if you have until 10 o'clock Friday morning, That's when, yeah, we typically get a lot of them. So Bryn suggested and we're already going to implement kind of a sooner deadline, but all the same, we understand all departments have priorities. So there's definitely a need and we can definitely use this coordinator doing other things besides P cards on the front end of the week, but on the back end, we really need some help in that regard. Again, it just goes to the risk of not enough staff to implement controls. So all those things that the P-card or the purchasing coordinator should be doing, they're not necessarily have the time to do. The last priority is to add a downtown custodial crew. We currently have three crews of four that clean 30 buildings throughout the city, totaling about 300,000 square feet. We'll be adding 44,500 square feet in the next 12 months. So again, we've kind of adjusted. What we've done recently is been more strategic about it rather than asking more help We've made some adjustments to doing, doing full cleanings every day when we go through buildings, but adjusting and doing things more strategically, not taking trash from underneath everybody's desk every day. So basically all offices that are deemed just really office buildings are getting just one full clean a week, but then they're getting like break room and restrooms and that thing every day type of thing. So we're being more strategic that way, which has helped us out. But once we bring on that additional 44,000 square feet, that scares me a little bit. The industry standard is one custodian can clean 18,000 to 30,000 square feet. So when we add that 44,000, we will be at 28,700, and we're currently at 25,000, I should say. So we're okay, really. We're okay now. The challenge with it, though, is we're so spread out. We're not like a huge... tower office building, we're having to travel to get to, um, the buildings that we clean. And then the other thing is just span of control. So as we move forward is getting the custodians, all 12, including the team leader, report and are supervised by a facility services manager, Gary Zaruba. That's 12 reports. Really, it makes more sense for that crew leader to be kind of their supervisor. So we wanna make that adjustment as we move forward in the years. So our request is to reclass custodial crew leaders to supervisors and to add a fourth custodial crew that would be focused in the downtown area. So we've got two different crews really focused on these six buildings right here. So what we would do is create a crew that would just really stay down here. and basically rotate and also take on, we currently don't clean the library. They have their own two custodians, so we would take on the library, add another custodian, then add a crew leader also. But really stay in this downtown area to basically keep the downtown areas clean. So that is our request and happy to answer any questions.

question for you. First of all, thank you all for all you do with what you have. We appreciate that. Visiting the public works with you, there was a lot of, like the custodial area, people were either stacked together or they shared desks. I know they're out working, but still is there a space for all these new people that you're going to require? Where are they going? Um, and then even the signs, um, area that was an outdoor space that really had no air, um, that kind of thing. I don't know if that's capital project or not, but, um, some of those things need to be. Um, improved even before you bring in more people. And then again, where are you going to put these people? Yep.

So we do have a plan. We have funding designated to do a master plan study of our service centers. We understand, especially the purchasing and facilities, that service center out there really, we're in the midst, our building is, that could really probably be better utilized by more of the public works. part of our organization. With regards to the staffing that we're recommending here is the idea would be at least in immediately, we would probably move out construction services to another building, possibly to the city manager suites. if they still have space when we get to that point. And then that would free up some additional space there. With regards to custodial staff and facility staff, really we want, they're in the field. Especially custodial staff, there is no need for workspace for them at all. They don't log on to computers or do anything. With regards to the building maintenance workers, they currently each have a, a workspace, but really the standard, that's really not appropriate or needed. Where we need them to be is probably with an iPad where they can document their work orders in the field and not at a desk. So that's a change we wanna make and our vision to change into the future, but ultimately Brent keeps bugging me about the need of, Belinda, where are you gonna put general services? So there's an opportunity, I think, as we look at this master plan for service centers, but what I am proposed right now is for that general services would move to back behind Gober Party House and renovate that existing facility that actually has a clear well under it. We've had a structural assessment done of that building and we can actually use that clear well as a basement. so we could build a structure on top of it with it done properly. So that is kind of where I would see, depending on what the master plan study says for service centers and so forth, but that's where I could envision kind of the department moving, and that would be a great place to be more centralized for facility services for responding to our internal customers.

Okay, and you currently have a position open now, right, for purchasing coordinator or?

We do not have any positions open right now, but we will very shortly due to one of our staff members transferring to another department and purchasing.

So the one you had is filled? Because there was one recently.

They're trying to think so. Um, yes, there was one field and I think, um, based on kind of our career ladder or path, uh, it's not really a ladder, it's a path, uh, for our, um, purchasing personnel is that that beginning position is it we're hoping that's going to open up again based on the transfer of this one staff person. Okay. So thank you. Good questions. Thank you. Thank you.

I do have a comment. As we've gone through this process, I have appreciated the departments. I know everybody wants to give the best services we can to our citizens and at the at the best value, I guess you could say. But I really appreciate what Austin said a while ago when you were talking about looking at stuff and trying to find issues before there's change orders and it saves money and we still get the same or better product. I really, really appreciate that attitude. That's not prevalent through a lot of governmental organizations, I know, and I think we do a good job of trying to focus on Um, getting the best product we can for the value.

And what I asked had to say, I just can't say enough about the construction services team, Austin and the two project managers. They just, they all three of them have just this heart for service. Um, and they want the good things and, um, it's just so, I don't know, just so grateful that to have that team and who's on it.

So we have, I think our organization has that, that thought throughout our whole organization. I appreciate it on the specific thing Austin was talking about. I can tell you contractors appreciate that. because we want to get a set of plans and go build it, and if there's a problem, get it fixed and move on forward. We don't want to keep backing up and working on change orders, too. So on that specific thing, I appreciate that as well from my paying job perspective.

And I know there's some, I mean, the market is kind of soft right now that we've got a lot of bidders, but I also was actually on vacation and I went and led the pre-submittal conference at Fire Station Two. I had never seen so many contractors at, I'm so glad it was outside like in the apparatus bay because they wouldn't all fit in here. Everybody's hungry. Yeah, they were hungry, but I think also a little bit, just part of me, but believes that the word is getting around. We've got a good leadership of that department and people like working with us, so.

My business likes working with the people around here. It's always worked very well.

Thank you, ma'am.

by first thanking you for the work that you do the investment that you put in of time energy and effort into the city the decisions that you make we talked about a little bit about technology throughout this entire conversation today beginning with an AED that's supplied that saved the life of an individual the training of individuals the DFR program and they really screamed by a lot of the highlights of even just that program it's The investment in that technology is going to reduce response times for patrol officers and has already created the effect where the drone can go there and realize there's not an issue here and can clear officers, making them available for the next call for service. So your investment in technology thus far is going to, and I'm going to relate it to this. Rocky and I were talking before this presentation. If you look at the side of a fire engine or a ladder truck, you see probably 40 gauges, PSI, flow, all those different types of things. So the technology is not just integrated, and it doesn't have to be just big technology, but that investment in the AED made a difference to somebody on the day that it needed to make a difference to somebody. The investment with your heavy duty technicians, these EVT techs, and we have one, Kayla Heath, who is absolutely extraordinary. And I think it's remarkable that we have just really, really good staff throughout the city, and I mean at every level. You know, folks that have a heart for service, a desire to serve others, and that really live that in their lives. We're asking, this is our only request, it's one slide. I'm asking you to add an additional emergency vehicle technician. And the return on that investment has shown itself already. It reduces our reliance on external vendors, which we pay a significant quantity of money to external vendors. $70,000 cost avoidance over the first 60 days of this program. Um, and that's based on the labor rate that we pay when we outsource it of $167 and 50 cents per hour, high quality, timely repairs while lowering outsourced labor expenses generates approximately $35,000 in monthly savings, projected annual cost avoidance of $420,000. If performance is sustained, if you continue that on to two years, you can see that add up. Adding a second EVT expands in-house repair capacity, further reduces vendor utilization, increasing total cost savings, and it enhances our operational efficiency and control over critical emergency vehicle repairs. So fairly significant savings, fairly significant investment, but the return on that investment is of high quality work. was reading an email of just the correspondence of our EVT tech this morning back to the fire department and in that correspondence she lays out every repair that she made to that vehicle and then they've test driven it they've taken it out that everything's ready to go it's back in service please come pick up your truck I'm happy to entertain any questions Martin is that is that the

Is that the company that's over in Killeen maybe that works on emergency vehicles?

Yes, sir. Okay.

I don't know if you maybe said it in a different way that I understood it, but I'm sure that the in-house EVT tech also cuts down on the amount of time that a truck's out of service, meaning that if it goes over to Siddons Martin, it sits for however long. That's correct.

A day or 10 days. It goes into their, you know, natural prioritization of what they do. Um, here we have the opportunity to prioritize those vehicles as they come in. That's a big deal. It's a big deal.

What's the, um, just sort of in a nutshell, what's the difference in an EVT tech versus a tech there? Are they simply able to work on, uh, a water variety, like pumps and things like that, that may sit on a fire truck?

Yeah, that's correct. So they're specifically trained and certified to work on emergency vehicles. Okay.

All aspects, not just drive training.

Yes. Most of the aspects, there's still some work that's going to have to go out to a vendor. Um, but similar to a CNG vehicle, you cannot work on that vehicle under Texas law, unless you are certified in CNG. That's the same principle that applies here. And those are vehicles from a technological standpoint, um, they are incredibly intricate. Remember the picture of the 30 gauges on the side, they're more of a cockpit designed from the outside so that our firefighters can read flows and pressures and all those types of things to make sure the system is operational. So you have to have that expertise in order to work on those vehicles and she is absolutely phenomenal.

What is the dollar amount asked on this? What will this take off?

I don't have that right in front of me. It's pretty cheap, just to prove it.

Less than $400,000, it sounds like a cost savings.

I think salary would be about $85,000. $85,000, of course, plus benefits, tooling, training.

So it should pay for itself several times over, it looks like.

And cost avoidance, for sure. There'll be a standard markup whether we buy it from them in-house or we buy it and bring it to our house.

If you win, you brought us one item and it'll save us $300,000. I felt like that's it.

Very good.

Thank you all very much. Thanks.

So Kaylee, the person they were just talking about, she is a rock star. She's actually a rehire. She came back to us, so that should say a lot that she wants to work for the City of Temple. And if you were able to get another one and have, that would be just so much. Because when she's not busy with fire trucks, if that's possible, she can also work on those heavy duty trucks. So it's not just a single source, just as a little side note. I just love Kaylee, she's so self-driven. She's one of my favorite people.

Hi, I'm Tammy Fennell.

I think most of y'all know me, People Operations. I'm going to present to you today. So I need this little fun thing. So fiscal year 27, these are just a program overview for us. Um, I'm going to focus on three items for you today. These are things that I think are most important for my organization to be my group, to be successful. and I'll talk to you more about the why. So stats, I use SHRM, Society for Human Resources Management, as a benchmark and a place where those in my profession learn. So you'll see at the top, I pulled their 2022 benchmark and their 2025, and the top line shows where the benchmark is, a number of human resources professionals too, employees so we have always been a lean group and doing a lot of great things but there is more demand and more things for us to do so I'm asking for additional resources not to be right at the two but just to kind of keep us competitive and keep my team from burnout so the first request is for people operation generalist and this i think will make a giant impact right now i have three of those and i want to go over the transactions that they do because right now they basically are transactional and can't move to that higher level stuff that is moved to um a single director or another manager. So having another person will aid that. So onboarding and offboarding, highlighting that, 655 new hires. The offboarding is the 486. FMLA, 12-week programs, just 79 of those cases. But work comp is one of the ones that I want to highlight. Both FMLA and work comp, even in the SHRM numbers, you'll see that that's typically outsourced. We're a full-service organization, so we have those additional components. And so those have some additional complexities of working with doctors and such. Specifically work comp, when you look at the number of cases we have, those are people that come back, but 51 of those last year required additional follow-up that can take, well, the average was another 12 weeks. and so every 10 days we're doing a follow-up with the doctor to see what we can do to get get them back to work is there something that we can do light duty for them and just going through that so that requires the generals to have that follow-up and follow through and then build that knowledge base and then that that relationship with the department to help them think through that So that's important and I think is a good way to get back someone on a limited capacity so the department isn't feeling a full capacity of someone just being out 100%. Okay, civil service. This is another area of risk for us. So right now I have a single person that manages that is the primary knowledge tank holder. and that's for police and fire. This other generalist, I'm going to then divide it out so then I can build that because where that risk is is we have eight entrance exams. Those are done on Saturdays. So every one of my generalists participate in that, but I have the single person that has to do all that legwork, that compliance legwork ahead of time, making sure it gets posted, reading material, working with the test writers. all of that stuff, and then administers the test. So you'll see for police, we had 408 applicants, 149 exam takers. They're grading on site at the time of the test. So we're grading right there, giving results. And 59 of those pass. In fire, 785 applicants, 362 exam takers. So we grade at 362. and 256 passed. So promotionals is another process that is done usually during the week and FIRE just added their promotional process to us. So as you can see that level of complexity adding on to one person is stressful and causes some additional burnout, but it also spreads us so thin. And so adding another generalist will help in that capacity, because then I could make sure that we don't have a risk of losing information. And when I say a risk in that sense, that individual happens to be part of that sandwich generation. We've got parents that we care for, and we have children that we care for. That doesn't leave a lot of Saturdays. That doesn't leave a lot of extra overtime. So I want to be mindful of that person, but that person gives so much of themselves, just like Kaylee Heath. you know, a love for service, a love for being here, a love for what you want to do, but I want to be mindful and give them a boundary. So policy guidance, you know, they do that first point of contact, but having another generalist allows us to enhance that, because we have a lot of young managers out there, and those young managers need help with policy guidance, doing basic attendance, reprimands, and things like that. My generalists have not had an opportunity to do that, and all disciplinary things and coaching and guidance sit with one person, and that's me. And so that is not a service to my generalist. It's not a service to those that need the assistance. And so I want to make sure that we spread that out so then we can repeat and be faster and get that service out. so when i look at the next item that i'm asking for it's a reclass of a people operation generalist because part of what i think would then also help out is then if i could then have that one primary person that makes sure that the training and all the things and then when it starts to get a little more complex then that team lead can then work through those things. That could be a complexity in the FMLA work comp things. That's those ADA. So we do ADA type evaluations for those that have different types of accommodation requests. And then the total rewards analyst, what I'll point out to you, this is kind of where our automation comes from, because we're looking, just like everybody, to utilize our technology, making sure that we're using day force and other types of systems the best we can. So you'll see in the investment, our current analyst, through not having to use an outside third party, that's what she saved us, that 159. so having another analyst then also gets that information to another person so then i can have a repeatable process because if i lose this person and i know all the finance would agree if i lost annalise y'all would just be like because she just can it's like it's just awesome She's awesome. So that's why I'm requesting for another one because I need her brain. She's highly coveted. I think she could ask anybody and they would go, yes, please. So anyways, she's a lovely individual and I need her to transfer her knowledge base and also groom that next person. And then we can add additional enhancements that I can share with you as you're interested. So just to recap, oh, see, I'm terrible about that. Thank you. I'm watching my screen and I'm not paying attention. Kelly's been a great son. So the return, I believe improved performance, program enhancements, workload balance, civil service testing back up. We've got all these civil service employees that I know that y'all are going to approve and want to bring in. We're going to have to get them tested, evaluated, and get all those processes. And then staff development, making sure that we're making our pipeline so when we have a director leave or when we have another person leave, that we have that pipeline that can feed through and you don't see us skip a beat. So the impact, I guarantee you my team is working at least 40 hours overtime a week. I guarantee you. lack of time for training and skill enhancement, my burnout risk, and task overload. With that, I wanted to show you how our organization, the different services, I'm not gonna go over these. These are just for you to reference. So the different programs that we have, the different things that are under each of those programs are here for you to review as needed. And then I will entertain any questions.

Tammy, I've done your job at a much smaller level and I'm always amazed at how much y'all do with such a small group of folks.

Thank you.

So I think your request is very valid in asking for more help, most definitely, but we appreciate all that you do.

Thank you so much. Sure. I've got a passion behind it.

That's great. Thank you.

Okay.

Appreciate it.

Thank y'all. Is it good to be last? That's it for the day.

Okay, council or staff, anything else? Very good. It is five minutes until 11, and we are adjourned. Thank you all for attending, and staff, thank you for your time in prepping for us. Very much appreciated.