City Council - Regular Meeting

. Thank you.

I now declare that the Plano City Council is convened into open session, that all council members are present. The council will now recess into executive session in Training Room A to hold a closed executive meeting pursuant to the provisions of Vernon's Texas Code's Annotated Government Code, Chapter 551, the Open Meetings Act in accordance with the authority contained in Section 551-071 to consult with the attorney to receive legal advice and discuss litigation, Section 551.087 to discuss economic development matters, and Section 551.074 to discuss personnel matters. Thank you.

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I now declare that the Plano City Council preliminary open meeting is reconvened into open session, that all council members are present. Our first item on the preliminary agenda is consideration and action resulting from the executive session.

Mr. Mayor, I move to proceed on Ridgeview Ranch in accordance with the legal advice discussion and executive session.

All right. Thank you.

Slow at the trigger a little bit.

We'll do a hand vote. I have a motion and a second on that executive session discussion. All in favor, raise your hand. Motion passes eight to zero. Thank you. Our next item is personnel reappointments on planning and zoning commission. Go ahead.

We're planning and zoning with discussion with Councilwoman Downs. We'd like to re-nominate Ben Ali, Doug Bender, and Sean Leidenfelter for a second term serving on PNZ, and we will have one vacancy.

Mayor, I'll second.

Okay, so I have a motion and a second regarding reappointments of Planning and Zoning Commission. All in favor, raise your hand.

Motion passes 8-0. Thank you.

Our next item is the Municipal Court Youth Diversion Program presentation.

Welcome, Judge. Thank you. Thank you all for the invitation to come here. I've brought with me the brains behind the program, Ana Martinez. She's the Juvenile Case Manager. She runs all the day-to-day operations of the Juvenile Case Manager and of the Youth Diversion Program. I think that I probably talk about this ad nauseum every quarter in my report to you guys, so you probably are more aware of what goes on in this program than I am. I'm going to give you kind of a brief overview. It's going to be redundant. You're probably tired of it. Raise your hand if you don't want to hear it anymore. I'll gladly pass it on to Anna. I'm going to let her carry the load here tonight because she carries the load every day with the Youth Diversion Program. As you know, it was passed in the 88th legislature in 2023 as the Youth Diversion and Early Intervention Act, and the purpose of it was to afford children, and they are juveniles heretofore known as children under the new legislation, age 10 to 17, and it affords them an opportunity to avoid exposure to the legal system, the juvenile legal system. It keeps them off their criminal record if they successfully complete their diversion program, so they're not carrying any kind of convictions of any kind with them as they age. Even though they are sealed, there are ways to get access to them. those records. So it went into effect January 1st, 2025 and there was a two-year basically delay in implementing it because it was such a dramatic change in the juvenile justice system. No one had a clue how it's working and about half the courts in the state are trying to get a grasp on it. We got a good jump thanks to Anna and her staff. I think we are probably, we have one of the preeminent juvenile diversion programs certainly in this region, if not the state. She's been solicited by other cities because of this program and with good reason. She does a great job with this. I could go through all the elements of the program, how you can qualify for it, Basically, they're Class C misdemeanors, penal code violations, alcohol and beverage violations, tobacco violations, health and safety violations, Plano City ordinances. No transportation code violations are eligible for this. That's basically because they will, if they do get convicted of a transportation code violation, that will come off their record in three years from the DPS if they do get a violation conviction. They have to be approved by the parent. Parents got to sign off on it. And the legislature intended for this to be a kind of a family affair. They want the kids, the children, to have a better home environment. A lot of these kids do not. And I've given you a book. I want to go off topic for just a second. large. I apologize for that. There's a lot of information in there and it's a lot of information that I could never provide to you in a quarterly report, but I think it's very important and I've It will give you an idea of the kind of work that we've been doing there on those type of forms that we have to comply with with the state, and they're changing constantly. They changed the last legislative session dramatically, and we anticipate that they're going to change again in the next legislative session. Aside from the parents having to sign off on it or a legal guardian, the state's attorney's office has to also do that. If they object to a diversion, then it stops right there. It's referred to the court, and then they proceed into the regular juvenile justice. I think it's a good time I can pass this for Anna because, like I said, she gets deep in the weeds on this. She knows all the intricacies. She knows the numbers.

Yes. First of all, thank you so much for having us here. Mayor, Councilor, members and city staff, thank you. We're just gonna go ahead and it's a very brief overview of the program. Basically, we're gonna go ahead and provide you with, share some outcomes, highlight the benefits of youth in our community and how they benefit from this. The Youth Diversion Coordinator, that will be me. I handle all the cases. First, they come in and then our prosecution office reviews the cases and then, like Judge McNulty said, if they get approved, they come to me. We set them up for a meeting with the parents. I implement the diversion program that they're gonna be completing within 60, 90 days, depending on the offense. And then my duties is developing the diversion plan, monitor compliance, maintain confidentiality of the cases, promoting accountability and support, closing the cases once they are completed, and then expunge all you diversion documents upon completion once the defendant or the juvenile gets to turn 18 years old. All those documents are expunged without any motion submitted to the court. So that is some of the duties that I perform within that program. And then we have two different diversion programs. With the municipal court, we do the intermediate diversion, which the juveniles don't see the judge at all. They see the juvenile case manager, and we set them up to complete the program if they agree to participate in. We don't do any judicial, but that is one other option that the courts may have if they want to go judicial as well.

Just not to interrupt, the judicial diversion program basically eliminates the need and the involvement of the city attorney's office, the prosecutor's office, and that's one of the reasons why we elected not to proceed with the judicial diversion because it's important to get their input on all these cases. Okay. Okay. It's important to get their input in all these cases. That's why we didn't go with the judicial diversion. We went with the intermediate diversion. So we have a lot of eyes and ears on these kids and all these charges so that we do it right for them and their families.

Yes, so once we get the juvenile to participate, they can only participate once every 12 months. If they get another citation or offense within that period of time, they're not able to participate in that one. So that is... they fail to comply then we set him for a hearing with the judge and myself and Then we go over and determine if they need more time if they just didn't want to complete it if they have no Desire to complete this program then the judge then decides what to do if they he refers them to the prosecution office and then that charges enter into the system and it is significant to note that this is the one of

The one instance when municipal courts are given jurisdiction in a case up to 12 months. Normally it's 180 days, but for local youth diversion, we have jurisdiction over these kids for 12 months.

And then, of course, we have that when they succeed and they complete everything, they submit all the documentation. Then the case is closed, they receive a completion letter from us, from myself, and then... once the child turns 18 the system automatically lets me know that the child is going to be turning 18 within 30 days and i submit all those documentation i submit a order to the judge to sign off so we can go ahead and get all those documents together so they can be expunged on their 18th birthday uh samples of diversion programs we can do uh what we can do and Let's say if they decide that they want to participate, we can do state-approved drug education courses, court-approved alcohol, court-approved theft. It just depends. We also use our teen court program. If they want to do any community service, they have to attend the teen court program so they can get assigned community service hours. Those are some of the resources that we have, well, programs. We wanted to show you some outcomes that we have From January to first that's when we started 2025 to March 30th of this year We had you diversion cases file 186 We had completed at that point nine you diversion cases pending review 30 you diversion cases denied and So on we have that so at that point we had you diversion cases set for meetings Impending you diversion pending means they came in they sign up for the program and they're pending documentation requirements We did a little bit of charts so you can guys can see some other charts that we have with the percentage and some outcomes right there. And then we follow this you diversion process, which was developed and made by one of our amazing, Yes, it's a clerk supervisor, and her name is Carrie, and she's amazing. She developed this whole process, and so we cannot go wrong with following every step according to if they get approved, if they don't want to participate, or if they're going to be entering into the court system.

And just FYI, this chart, if you want to go back to it, This chart has changed at least three times since the implementation of the program. Every time something new pops up, some other new contingency, something happens that we were not aware of, no one else was aware of, we changed this process to make sure we're compliant with all the rules and regulations and the legislation.

at this point I just want to thank you everyone for having us here our main goal for this program for us is to provide young people with the opportunities of accountability growth and positive change in order for them, you know, while helping them, we're helping them not to reduce future involvement with the juvenile justice system. So we try to help them. We try to encourage them to participate in this program. So far, we have been very successful with them, and we are so very happy that we are able to do that. So thank you so much for everyone's support.

Thank you. Probably a lot more information than you wanted. We did attach a lot of the exhibits of the forms that we do use with the children and their parents. And I don't think we attached any of the MOUs that we have with our diversion programs. But if you ever want to see them, we've got copies of those as well and a copy of the legislation. It's confusing enough as it is. Thank you, Judge. Thank you, Ana.

Thank you.

Maria?

Yes. So thank you, Judge. I appreciate the complete package that you put together. And I actually went through them. And they're very thorough. And I appreciate that. And I know that Plano Municipal Court has been doing a lot with young teenagers. Through Team Court, even before you guys officially adopted this diversion program, the court has been doing a lot of different things to try to make sure the young kids don't get a criminal record. And I really appreciate that because we want our kids to prosper and grow. We don't want them to become criminals, right?

Absolutely.

Yeah. And once they get labeled, it's labeled for life. So I just want to go through a little bit of process. And you correct me if I'm wrong. So let's say a kid gets in a fight in school. And the police then pick up the child and then bring them to, I guess, will they bring them to you? Or they just get a citation, then they come to the court, right?

They don't get a citation anymore. They get what's called a charge.

Okay.

It's called a notice of charge. And it's on the same citation form that we've always used. But we've broken down three distinct paragraphs at the end. And the first, I can't remember if it's the first or second paragraph, deals with the children.

So let's say they get in a fight in the school and then the police will write them up, basically.

They will give them a charge.

And hand them a charge and say you need to show up in court on such and such a day?

No, you are instructed to contact the juvenile case manager. Her contact information is on that charge. Contact her within a certain period of time, and then she will set up a meeting with the child and their parent or legal guardian, and that's where she will develop whatever she believes is in their best interest, what kind of diversion program.

Got it. The parents are also notified of that?

Absolutely.

They get the notice, contact the court clerk, and set up a meeting, the entire family, or at least one of the parents.

We're lucky if we get a parent or a legal guardian, to be honest.

Then a meeting is set. That is where it's laid out that this is what you need to do to ensure that this doesn't show up on your criminal record. Is that how it works? That's correct. And then they would have to complete, like, community service or certain extent of... Go ahead.

Yes, so I would go through the charge. I talk to the child, I talk to the mother, and we go, sometimes the parents, they let me know, I think he should do community service. What do you think? What do you think? And if the parents are asking, then we're going to go ahead and put that on the program as one of the requirements. So yes, community service, we design the plan, let's say this is disorderly conduct, what happened? We ask. That's something that you cannot really do in court. Like, what happened? What did you get in a fight? So they'll ask, well, I just got upset. I just got mad. So we kind of go deep into, okay, so he has a little bit of anger issues, you know, so we're going to go ahead and give him an anger management class for him to take.

That was my next question. Yes. So do you offer, like, family counselings? Yes. resources for them to attend and are these subsidized or these have to be paid by the family?

They're free. They're free? We're trying to strive, we strive to get as many free programs as we possibly can.

Okay and then once they're done then my understanding is then the case is closed until six months before their 18th birthday, then it pops up on your computer screen and then you submit that to the court. This is an expunction, this is not a ceiling.

This is not a ceiling.

No. It's an expunction.

It's an order that I will send an order around to the PD and whoever else might have. Just like a regular expunction, I will send the order around and then all those documents are sent to Anna and then she maintains that they're... And then that's all erased from the court record. They have to be physically destroyed and... We made arrangements with Tyler to create kind of a secret, we call it the secret side, where the charges are. And only a few of us have access to it. And it's separate from the public record. citations that kids might get or adults might get, but it's completely separate. There's a dividing wall that no one else can access it.

Judge, put that mic. I'm sorry. Whoever's talking, if you don't mind. I'm sorry.

What if the child's like 12? It's like six years before they turn 18. During that period of time, is there any way to protect the records like they come in and do a sealing of the records or do they Make sure that no one have access to the juvenile records.

No one has access to them Ana has possession of everything at all times. She's got it under lock and key and Comes up on a computer when and of course, we haven't been in this that long for six years but she's got a Under lock and key so that it will be physically destroyed. It can't be taken and no one else has access to it I see.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate you answering my question And we try also We kind of touched on it a little earlier, but I think your your question also begged an answer for it When a parent shows up we have the authority to to mandate a parent participate in some of these programs with the kids because we have very exhaustive questionnaires for the parents and the kids. So when they fill those out, it's pretty apparent that sometimes a parent doesn't know the kid that well, doesn't realize what their real problems are when they're abundantly obvious to everyone else, and that parent needs to be involved with their kid. So we can mandate that.

Thank you. Council Member Levine.

Thank you, Mayor. I'm curious. One of the categories in your chart is charges denied. Does that mean that they are pleading innocent or they didn't do it? Or what else does that mean?

So when a charge is denied, the prosecution will review it. They go more into details. They can see the report, what happened at school, or wherever this charge happened. So they go into details, they review it, and that's how the charge gets denied. So when it gets denied for our program, then it gets entered into the court system, which when they come in and they speak to the judges and the prosecution again, then most likely they're going to have options.

Right. That is... the juvenile justice system as we all know it, without the diversion program. And the denied function is that of the prosecutor.

So essentially they're going to trial.

They will go to court. And whether or not they plead guilty or not guilty or no contest, it's up to them. But then they'll be subject to the regular requirements of a deferred disposition or hopefully not a judgment. We try to do as many things as we can for these kids to try to keep it off their records.

If in your judgment they go to court and they're found, you find that they They did do it. Can they then go through the deferment?

Under the first iteration of this legislation, they had the opportunity to do that. If they chose not to go with diversion, then we had to offer them diversion. If they entered a plea of not guilty or found guilty at trial, we had to offer them diversion. okay and then the legislature in the latest legislative session removed that and said that if they don't want it then they've got to go through the regular system we can offer them community service that way in if they want to take a judgment or a deferred disposition, we can offer them a community service option as well. We'll keep it off their record. And again, that's the goal on both sides of this, the diversion program as well as the regular court session. There's too many kids out there doing bad things, and we're trying to correct that.

Thank you. Appreciate that.

Mayor Proton. Thank you, Judge. It looks like the Youth Diversion Program is a pretty successful program. I want to talk briefly about recidivism. Do you see any records? Do we have any data of a child that goes through the program, is dismissed, gone through everything, but a year down the line, they have to reappear? Do we have any data on that?

I think we're really, really early in the process right now to be able to make a decision on that, any kind of conclusions.

So we're six years into this program? Oh, no, no, no.

January 1st of 2025. Oh, got it.

Okay. So we still don't have the data yet on that.

No, there is nothing. And we anticipate that the legislature is going to change this again in the next legislative session.

Okay. Well, again, thank you.

It looks like the program is successful.

All right. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it.

Thank you all for your time. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Okay.

Okay, the next item is consideration of the 2027 council meeting dates.

Mayor and council, in your packet you have a proposal to adjust three council meeting dates for 2027. The first would be Monday, July 12th. Because of the council's summer break, we would like to adjust that to Wednesday, July 28th. The second one is Monday, October 11th, due to Yom Kippur, Columbus Day, Indigenous Peoples Day. We'd like to move that to Tuesday, October 12th. And then last is Monday, December 27th. We have a winter holiday break, and we'd like to move that up to Tuesday, December 7th. With that, we believe we have avoided any other conflicts. And if council would accept that, we will move forward with scheduling council meetings for 2027. No, just a head nod is fine.

All right. Next item is the designation of official or employee to calculate the no new revenue tax rate and voter approval tax rate.

So Mayor and Council, Austin enacted a statute that requires the council to designate an official or an employee to calculate the no new revenue rate and the voter approval rate. And with that, since Karen is our tax expert, we would like to designate Karen Rhodes-Whitley as the City of Plano's official designee for those tax calculations.

Congratulations, Karen. First time? But we do need a motion and a second, and we'll do a hand vote.

But you can go ahead and finish your motion, Council Member Horne, and then I'll second it.

Okay, I move that we approve Karen Whitley-Rhodes as our designated official to calculate the no new revenue rate or the voter-approved tax rate.

Second.

Okay, so I have a motion and a second to approve this item. All in favor, raise your hand. Thank you, congratulations Karen. Okay, next item is the consent and regular agendas. Any item a member would like to remove. We do have speakers for item Z. Any other item? All right. Next item is items for discussion, action, or future agendas.

Mayor and Council, I just wanted to provide you notice that we will be starting a regular cadence of providing updates on the Willow Bend District project. So we intend to come back and do a pretty thorough review on at least an every other month basis to keep both you informed and the public informed as far as the developments that are going on there. So I just wanted to make you aware that that is something that we will have on our agenda from staff is to make sure that every other month we're bringing back information to share publicly.

Okay. All right, we will take a recess and return at seven o'clock.

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I now declare that the Plano City Council is reconvened and open session, that all council members are present. We will begin tonight's regular meeting with the invocation led by Dr. Gilberto Cordera from Prestonwood Baptist Church and the Pledge of Allegiance. Would you please rise?

Please join me in prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, we are grateful to be here today. We are grateful for another day of life and we are grateful for the city of Plano and grateful for the leadership. We pray tonight that you bring guidance, protection, and clarity for every aspect and topic that we want to discuss to make this city better Thank you, Lord, for the opportunity to have a city and a council who believe that only with your help we can be better. We put our life on this time in your hands. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.

indivisible with liberty and justice for all. On the Texas flag, I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible.

Thank you. Be seated. Okay, let's begin with the consent agenda.

The consent agenda. The consent agenda will be acted upon in one motion and contains items which are routine and typically non-controversial. Items may be removed from this agenda for individual discussion by a council member, the city manager, or any citizen. The presiding officer will establish time limits based upon the number of speaker requests.

Mr. Mayor, I move that we approve the consent agenda as presented with the exception of item Z, which to be moved into comments of public interest.

Mr. Mayor, I'll second that motion.

Thank you. I have a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda with the exception of item Z. Please vote. Motion passes eight to zero. Item Z.

Item Z, to approve an expenditure for engineering professional services for Willow Bend traffic analysis in the amount of $320,000 from fair and peers for the engineering department in authorizing the city manager to execute all necessary documents.

All right, good evening. My name is Caleb Thornhill, Director of Engineering, and I'll give you a brief update on this item. So this is a preliminary traffic analysis on the Willow Bend area. This is for the, to consider the potential redevelopment, obviously including a NHL arena and the entertainment district. As just was mentioned, the two fair and piers and the amount of $320,000. This is a planning level only analysis. This does not improve anything related to development. What the study will include is it'll look beyond just this existing site. It'll go to a regional or a larger transportation network. You can see 28 intersections will be included, also multiple locations along D and T. It will include some planning level assumptions, the size of the arena, What we anticipate will overlap the evening commute and it'll develop mitigation measures based on these numbers and then allow us to test different potential strategies based on these numbers to mitigate those concerns. So what the preliminary study is going to focus on, I mentioned the regional network, it will look at some of the neighborhood concerns that we've already had brought to us and some other things, the cut-throughs. It will develop a preliminary mitigation network or a framework, but it will not list the final improvements until we proceed forward with the design and development of the project. The neighborhood protection measures, this will look at some of the entrances and and whether there needs to be different measures in place, closing roads, different gate systems and whatnot. But again, it will not look at anything final or propose anything final until the development moves forward. Later phase analysis will look at those project or location-specific solutions. Obviously, they'll include a final transportation impact analysis or TIA and also include an event operations plan. This is just a high-level overlook at the schedule. Assuming this item is approved, we will begin. Traffic counts will start as soon as school goes back. We'll start building the different models and the scenarios, and we'll share as we get information available. We expect that there will be additional public meetings with this process, and this initial or preliminary phase will go through basically November of this year. With that, I'll answer any questions you may have.

All right. Thank you, Caleb. Council Member Levine.

Caleb, thank you. You know, in the past, the Mavericks and the Stars haven't played on the same day because they weren't sharing the arena, but that could and probably would happen after 2031. Assuming that the Mavericks do move to North Dallas, or even if they don't, that's going to be a unique traffic situation with both teams playing on the same evening along the Dallas North Tollway. Will that be taken into account in the study?

So I think it's something we'll consider. We've got our consultant here tonight. That's getting into their realm and their expertise, whether or not those would have a direct impact to each other. I don't know the exact mileage, but there's significant mileage between what I've heard is the proposed location for the Mavericks and where this would be at. I don't know, Josh, where is he at? Yep. Did you hear the question? Yeah. Okay.

Evening. So the question was whether we'd be analyzing Stars and Mavericks games at the same time. And we're really focused on the area within the city of Plano and specific to the project area. So that tends to be outside the area and is a little bit probably speculative for what our study is going to cover. We're trying to cover what we know.

Okay. Thank you. Council Member Thomas.

Thank you all for being here today. My thought goes back to the citizens. As time goes on, especially after today, after your presentation, will there be opportunity for citizens to give a little bit more input as it relates to traffic as time goes on? If so, how can they do that?

Yeah, so this is just a preliminary phase. We expect for this process, again, I mentioned the later phases, as we move forward, we're going to develop different mitigation framework, but we will not have the final solutions. So there will be additional opportunities. We do have additional public meetings built into this. They're not scheduled to this date, but we would more than welcome, as we get further along in the process, we'll offer those opportunities for the citizens.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, gentlemen. Appreciate it. Okay, I think we have some speakers.

We do. We have four speakers. The first one is Jack Lagos.

Good evening. My name is Jack Lagos. I live in Plano. I'm here to make some comments on the item Z, which I refer to as Zulu, and give you two comments that I picked up from your agenda item. Item one, we shouldn't be spending $320,000 for this study. Why? Who's going to get the benefit of that? It's going to be the developer, which is Centennial. The other party that's going to get the benefit of that is the Stars. So my comment is, why aren't they paying for it, not us? Now, as you well remember, on June 8th, you voted $700 million to the Stars. You don't think they have money, or they don't think they can get that $700 million? $700,000 and used it for this study, it benefits them. It only benefits us as a sideline. Second point I'm making, this study should have been done three to six months ago. The reason is you should do the study first before you vote the money. Does that make sense? Now, you're all looking at me and you can't say anything to me, but you're all intelligent people. You do the study first, then you decide from that study what you do next. You went with the money, now you're doing the study. I'll add another point to this. You're doing this study now, it's projected to be finished in maybe October, November, however, Come late August, September, you've got to make a decision on an ordinance to put on the ballot for the citizens to vote on that tax that you're looking for. Now, what I'd like to summarize with, and I'd be happy to say some more, is you did everything backwards. You should have been asking the citizens first, not taxpayers. on whether they wanted this, instead of running off and voting $700 million to this project. Now, when you had two meetings, which was on July the 8th and July 14th, nobody was prepared, as far as I could tell, to talk to the citizens that showed up there, many of them from Willow Bend and Old Shepherd. about anything to do with the traffic. That's what their main question was. What is gonna happen to us who live there? Okay? So I think you need to start focusing on the citizens before you start doing all these other things. And they're the ones that are the most important thing in what you're doing. Keep in mind, they're the ones that put you in office. The stars didn't put you in office. nor did the developer put you in office. And you do not want to upset citizens, particularly citizens that live in Willow Bend. They're well to do, and they're going to come back and make their minds known to you. Thank you very much, Mayor. Thank you.

The next speaker is Diane Williams.

Good evening. I'm going to have to break rule number one just a little bit. Thank you. I live at 5704 Roswell in Plano in the Willow Bend area. I've lived in both Willow Bend Plano and the Willow Bend Meadows and I'm coming before you tonight to share a few thoughts. The city has committed to Plano citizens to have a clear understanding of the impact of the increased traffic in the Willow Bend district, which surrounds the entertainment district, which you all took a vote on in June. And you're doing so before you allow the redevelopment to occur. To that end, the city plans to engage the engineering firm to perform a traffic study to project the impact on operations, traffic operations, parking demand, transit opportunities, and neighborhood access. Members of the community have extensive, have had extensive dialogue with Josh Peterman, the traffic study lead, as well as Mark Israelson, and have learned that the traffic study design will exclude not only the streets and neighborhoods east of the Dallas North Tollway, those are the established neighborhoods of the Willow Bend District, but also the already approved development projects that will be completed by the time the Entertainment District development concludes. Those projects include AT&T, six to 10,000 additional people, the plaza at Spring Creek, that's at Spring Creek and the Dallas North Tollway, 300,000 square feet of retail. On the east side, Haggard Farm Development, that's east Spring Creek and Dallas North Tollway. That will add a list too long to include, so I don't run over time. The city has also approved parks at Legacy, JCPenney Headquarters redevelopment, and the city of Carrollton has approved Billingsley's Morgan Hill development at George Bush and Midway, which will include 375 units. An additional point that raises concerns of residents is a safety concern with the construction of an additional eight-story medical building at Texas Health Hospital, that campus. And the ER department of that hospital will continue to face- 20 seconds. Will continue to face Communications Parkway. And all of that is within the entertainment district boundary. So the incremental and collective impact of each of these developments on traffic in Plano has not been studied, let alone the additional impact on traffic, parking, transportation, and on the established surrounding neighborhoods. So, in conclusion, I'll hurry up since I'm out of time. Out of time. Yeah, I'm out of time.

Go ahead, wrap it up.

Okay, thank you, I'll wrap it up. Okay, the results will not only show the, will only show the entertainment district traffic volumes overlaid onto a five-year-old traffic pattern, not a new pattern that includes all this other development. So we would ask you tonight to redesign the traffic study so that all of the development can be taken into account that will be in place when the entertainment district goes in and include the streets and established neighborhoods to the east of the Dallas North Tollway. Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Lita Barrow.

Good evening, Mayor Muntz and the honorable members of the City Council. My name is Lita Barrow. I have lived in Plano since 1989, and I have seen many changes during that time. I happen to have been involved with the Citizens Task Force that worked very well with the city of Plano, with the merchants, with her surrounding neighborhoods regarding the Preston Corridor study for the overpasses at that time. We were looking at a $26.5 million investment from taxpayers, state and city. And then it was shown that it really didn't have the benefit to justify that. So that other alternatives were done to address that. What we have now is a very grave concern from the homeowners because this traffic study, the initial one, does not include the neighborhoods to the east of the Dallas North Tollway. And that's concerning to us because when you look at the George Bush and the tollway and the ways that people are gonna come in, when they see that there is an absolute gridlock at George Bush and the tollway, people are going to start getting off earlier and earlier, which means that we have Coit, we have Preston Road, and then traffic going down Plano Parkway to cut up right through the heart of our neighborhood where we have two schools, we have parks, and that is a very big concern for the safety of our area. The citizens in this area would like to work like we did in the past with other neighborhoods. And it wasn't a mean thing. It wasn't political. We were working together with the city of excellence, with our leaders, with our elected people to know that we came together and we looked at every possible thing. We're not against it. We appreciate, Mayor, your statement that you would like to welcome class partners to community focused investment. That's what we want to do. We want that. We want to see and we want to feel comfortable about it. I ask you to please respectfully, Mayor Mons and city council members to consider placing the creation of a citizens task force on a future city council agenda or immediately direct city staff to evaluate the formation This it is a win-win situation. It'll address the concerns. It'll address the lack of trust It'll show you it will show us all the good things that you all are planning that we're confident in Thank you, and it was very nice talking to you.

Thank you.

I hope you'll give this real real serious consideration.

Thank you Robert Barrow

good evening mayor muntz city council members I'm going to be very brief because basically what I'm what I'm wanting to bring up is basically a lot of the same facts that we're talking about and what mainly the citizens of Plain are concerned about which is the traffic and if we look at what we're looking what we' re projected to have here is a 20,000 seat arena and what I' m afraid of is that maybe some of these numbers and stats that I' m going to present that maybe are not being taken into consideration. What we're talking about is, say, for instance, the existing American Airlines Center is 18,500 seats for the Dallas Stars. And it takes a massive behind-the-scenes operation to keep everything running. On any given game night, 1,000 to 1,500-plus support workers are on site. That means food and beverage concessions, then there's 500 to 700. services, ushers and ticket takers, 250 to 400. Security and safety personnel, 150 to 250. Janitorial sanitation facilities, 100 to 150. Operations and ice crew, 30 to 50. Production, AV and entertainment, 40 to 70. Parking and traffic control, 50 to 80. And we're not thinking If we look at the time frame when all this happens, it's an all-day affair. It doesn't just happen from 7 to 12 or 7 to 10 whenever the game is going on. Deliveries and heavy vendors and operations start at 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. That's loading dock and suppliers, heavy freight beverage of deliveries, specialty equipment and retail merchandise, broadcast media trucks and techs. outside broadcast trucks, TV crew technicians arrive early in the morning, often 8 to 10 hours before the game time. Two premium hospitality and culinary staff, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., that's when they arrive. The restaurant staff, which official arena food, street catering, and concession prep teams show up four to six hours before puck drop. Preparation chicken kitchen teams began prepping sweet orders and arena concessions and the game night support staff and security as they get there at 3 30 to 4 30 p.m. The arena staff security teams and guest services ushering personnel ticket takers and retail team store clicks and report about two to two and a half to three and a half hours before the game and pregame briefing security sweeps bag check station set up 20 seconds all these happen external vendors and entertainment start from 4.30 p.m. to 5.00 p.m. all these are things that I hope that you take or that are traffic and the studies that we' re going to be doing encompass and include this because this is an all day affair this is not just a game time. Thank you very much.

Item Z is for us to approve the contract for the traffic study. I'm just kind of reminding you that's what we're doing here.

Go ahead. Thank you. So I think some of the speakers did bring up a point that is there any way for the traffic study to be expanded to the east side? I mean, I guess I didn't realize that it was just on the west side of Plano or west side of the tollway. Is that something that's in the works or is that something that could be expanded into the study itself?

Yeah, I was going to have Josh with Ferran Pierce come talk about a little bit of the scope and the area that's being analyzed in this phase.

Hello again. We had talked about, so it does, the study that we've currently scoped does go just east of the tollway. It goes to Parkwood. We had talked about going beyond that at one point, but we're going to focus this study on the immediate project area around the development location.

Why is that? Why is that?

For specificity, and it's just the scope of work that we negotiated with the city that we can do in a certain time period. We discussed sort of two... Two phases of work. An initial phase that can happen in these first few months.

So the initial phase is currently focused on just around the tollway, but are we talking about another phase in which we're going to expand it so that it would cover the east side?

Right.

It will?

What we talked about was going potentially all the way to Preston, but that's a conversation that we tabled. Right now it goes to Parkwood.

Okay, so in other words, we're not just talking about one phase of the traffic study, but we are eventually going to be talking about traffic study that's going to potentially expand, whether with you or not, but potentially expand to a further east of the tollway. Is that right?

Sorry. For tonight, we're just talking about this phase one with us. What happens beyond that is... You don't know. Exactly.

Okay. That would be something for the city to determine. Is that right? Correct. Okay. Thanks.

Just real quick, for clarification, that is not included in this current contract, correct? It would be a contract modification or a future contract to expand going further east, correct?

Correct. It would be a contract modification with us or a separate contract with somebody else. Understood. Thank you.

Yes. For clarification, we had a figure, a map here where you were looking at and you outlined where all the... I just want to present this for clarification again. What we're seeing here is all those yellow dots are really where you're going to start doing the sampling. Is that correct?

Yeah.

Sorry.

Yeah, that's the preliminary phase. This is a preliminary phase. And once we get this data, we'll be coming back with a contract modification to expand further out.

Right. And right now we do not have a site plan for the development. We don't have a circulation plan, you know, so there's a whole lot of assumptions that we're working behind. So going beyond this area for a detailed analysis without having those details, um, board it just it doesn't seem like it's going to be beneficial at this point as we get further along if this process continues to move forward then we'll expand that analysis there mr. mayor I move that we approve agenda item Z as presented

Mayor, I second that motion.

Okay, so I have a motion and a second to approve item Z, which would be the traffic study contract. Please vote. Motion passes eight to zero. All right, items for individual consideration.

Items for individual consideration, public hearing items. Applicants are limited to 15 minutes presentation time with a five minute rebuttal if needed. Remaining speakers are limited to 30 total minutes of testimony time with three minutes assigned per speaker. The presiding officer may amend these times as deemed necessary. Non-public hearing items. The presiding officer will permit comment for items on the agenda not posted for a public hearing. The presiding officer will establish time limits based upon the number of speaker requests, length of the agenda, and to ensure meeting efficiency, and may include a cumulative time limit. Speakers will be called on the order the requests are received until the cumulative time is exhausted. Item number one, public hearing and consideration of a resolution to authorize substantial amendment to the 2025 through 2029 consolidated plan and the 2025 to 2026 action plan for the use of U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Community Development Block Grant funds and providing an effective date.

Good evening mayor council Curtis Howard assistant city manager, and I have two items here I'm going to talk to you about two public hearings The first one that we have is going to basically be a substantial amendment to to the current action plan and consolidated plan that we have. We have a project in mind that we're going to ask for authorization for, and in order to do that, we've got to make sure that we put that into our action plan and consolidated plan. The second public hearing is going to have to do with the action plan for 26-27. Moving forward on this, what we are proposing is a public infrastructure improvement project in the Douglas community. What we are looking at, and this is a pilot program for us. We as a city haven't done anything like this using federal funds. What we normally do is we use federal funds to help individual homeowners do rehab, that sort of thing. This is gonna be more of a public project that's gonna affect an area. So we've got a small area of Douglas that we are looking at putting in approximately $50,000 to try and clean it up a little bit. So this is going to be to remove some of those lines that are hanging overhead, those cable lines by spectrum and frontier. Cable lines that are inactive, they will be removed. Cable lines that are still active will be buried and connected to the houses to try and start cleaning this up a little bit. And the reason we're doing this as a pilot program is because there are other requirements that we've got to do with HUD to make sure that we as a department, we as a city, can make sure that we meet the requirements and kind of see if this is going to be a feasible way of using our HUD funding in the future. Let's see. So as I said, this was originally – you originally – approved our consolidated plan, our action plan, and so what we're doing now is basically we're trying to amend that to include the ability for us to have this public infrastructure project. And as I said, the scope is going to clean up those lines. And Council Member Horne, I think last time I was here, one of the things that you asked is, one of the questions was, is what about the electrical lines that are on there? And in order to kind of answer that question, you know, right now one of the problems we have is we do have some limited funding. And burying those electrical lines, the amount of work it's going to cost, the amount, we've got some easement issues. With regards to that, the conduits and transformers would have to be modified. And again, that funding limitation would cause some issues. So again, with the funding that we have, that $50,000, we're proposing to use that on this pilot program. And the language that we have changed, basically the consolidated plan, in order to help people who are in low to moderate income areas, and this is the language that we are changing. And so with that, I will answer any questions, and we can open it up for a public hearing.

Any questions for Curtis? Council Member Kerr?

Hi, Curtis. I have a quick question. I'm trying to, if we're not, able to remove the electric lines. The poles still have to remain when we pull down the telco lines? Yes, sir. Help me understand the benefit of doing this if the polls and some lines are still going to be there?

If you go through that Douglas community, it's going to be about three blocks between 11th and 12th, kind of where the Boys and Girls Club is and then going west. If you just look at some of that stuff, there are just lines hanging out all over the place. And so, again, it is a, you know, we've got $50,000 and so it is a pilot program to try and start cleaning up that area. So that's what we're looking at. We've got Frontier and Spectrum that we've had conversations with to try and help us out. So it is a beginning in many ways on using this federal funding to help an area.

Okay, it's helping us to understand more than just clean up of the lines. The lines need to be cleaned up, but we're also going to gain information and gain some, I guess, experience in using these funds in ways to help the neighborhoods.

And that's the pilot aspect of this program is, you know, whether, you know, one of the things we've got to look at is making sure engineering has the capacity to do it and all the other things that go along. And I am not an engineer and I'm not an expert in burying power lines, but I understand it is quite involved and quite expensive. And so those are some of the hurdles that we have in burying those lines down in the Douglas community.

And the lines that you will be able to bury, these lines need to be addressed anyway, and it does help significantly with, I guess, cleaning up that area in terms of visual sight lines and, I guess, risk and things like that.

Yeah, just going through that, and as you're driving in that area, you just see a lot of... say noise as you're going through that, going into those lines. So try and do something at least for that neighborhood. Very good, thank you. Yes, sir.

Council Member Thomas.

Thank you for being here today. I heard you say that the 50,000 would be used to start cleaning up the area as it relates to the cable lines. Yes, ma'am. Is there talk or are there plans to discuss how there could be support and resources to further help with the progression of that neighborhood because the Douglas is the oldest or if one of the oldest neighborhoods in Plano. And in my opinion, it needs some more work and some more support and resources. So are there talks of going past this initiative to help with that?

This initiative is in conjunction with some infrastructure changes and sidewalk work that we are doing. So this is in addition to that. So specific conversations, not yet. But what we want to do is, because this is something new for us, what we want to do is look and see how this works If we're able to effectively use these funds and have the capacity to deal with this project, then that is certainly something we can look at addressing in the future.

Thank you for your time.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay. I'll open the public hearing.

We have a speaker on this item.

Okay.

David Evans.

Good evening. My name is David Evans. I'm the president for the Douglas Community Neighborhood Association. What Curtis just presented has been like a 15-year conversation, at least a 15-year conversation that we've had with the city. This was first brought up at least 20 years ago, but we finally got it to the table 15 years ago when Mayor Harry included the Douglas community under the greater downtown Plano umbrella. So one of the questions that we had then was, what is the benefit of that? Why are we now going to be under the greater downtown Plano umbrella? And it was for projects like this. In conversations throughout the years, we have asked about bearing these power lines, getting street lanterns because our lighting is inadequate at night, and also getting sidewalks, right? So sidewalks are coming. They're coming. So one of the things that we were told was there was a million dollars a mile to bury these power lines and to get street lanterns. And so my question then was, OK, well, what's the problem with that? We have it. Well, we were told that there was no funds for it. But it's disappointing for us as the very first community in Plano. and the lowest income community and the highest underserved community in Plano to look the way that it looks. And we're under the greater downtown Plano umbrella, right? But we found $700 million to give to the stars, but we can't find a million dollars a mile for the Douglas community, which is the first community in Plano. So my question to you all, and what I'm asking you to do is reconsider, because first of all, we appreciate neighborhood services for finding this money, right? To even start this initial work, right? But what we're asking is for the city to find the rest of the money to do all of it at the same time, because it's way past time for this to have happened. We really haven't had any infrastructure reinvestment into the Douglas community in I know at least 40 years. So that's what we're asking.

Do y'all have any questions of me?

No questions? Okay, thank you. Thank you, David.

No other speakers.

Okay. I'll close the public hearing, confine the comments of the council members on item number one. Council Member Levine, I think you're up.

Thank you, Curtis. Is the million dollars a mile, is that accurate for burying the power lines and how many miles are we talking about?

Uh, councilman, I do not have that information on costs and amount of, uh, of, uh, of the length that it would be to, to bury that stuff. So we can try and find that out for you.

Councilman. It is just over a million dollars a mile is what recent estimates have had for, for that way. I don't know the number of miles that we have actually in the Douglas community. but it's also finding the space to put that in, because again, whether it's easements or the streets, taking those down, as Curtis well knows now, when you're talking about that, you have to have the space to put the utilities as well, and the electric utility requires more space because of the nature of that. But it is just over a million dollars a mile was a not too recent estimate that we had from Encore, but that's an accurate number.

Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, this is a start. And I empathize with Mr. Evans and what he's saying. And I recognize where you're coming from. I think the engineering logistics in itself You could probably look at have some type of duct system to where we could bury electrical and communications. But again, that's very disruptive because you got to place it somewhere. And so I'm hoping that with the passage of this, that we can take a step forward and start improving those areas that you're looking for, such as the sidewalks and more, or get rid of the upper or suspended electrical lines and start getting lights, better lights for you. With that being said, this is a good start. So I move that we approve agenda item one as presented.

Mayor Munz, I second the motion.

Thank you. So I have a motion and a second to approve item number one. Please vote. Motion passes eight to zero. Item number two.

Item number two, public hearing and consideration of a resolution to adopt the 2026-2027 action plan, including the summary of community development block grant and home investment partnership program activities and the proposed use of funds for the program year 2026-2027 and providing an effective date.

All right, moving on to our Our next issue here, one of the things that I've been up here before and I talked to you a little bit about are two major grants that we have from HUD, CDBG grants and home funding. Again, CDBG is the more flexible of the two, allows us to use some of that funding for social service. Some of the funding is going to be required for more of those hammer and nail type projects. And then home funding, and home funding is going to be more restrictive And the use of that is going to be either for housing people or those hammer and nail type projects. And so there are income limits on that. One of the things that it breaks down, 65% can be used for eligible activities. And those are the rehab programs. Public facility corporations, site improvements, infrastructure improvements, kind of like we just talked about. 15% of that bucket can be used for social services, and that's really what gets used up pretty quickly, just because we don't have enough capacity or enough space to do a lot of those hammer and nail type projects. And then 20% for administrative fees. Again, now the home funding, 15% of that will go to a community housing development organization, and then for those eligible activities, hammer and nail type projects, or housing people, putting people into houses. And then, as I've discussed, each one has some administrative fees, and we use that here at the City of Plato to offset some of the costs that we have in administering these programs. And so the allocation process that we have is last year, the consolidated plan, the five-year consolidated plan was approved by council. We are just finishing up our year one action plan, and this is gonna be for year two, the year two action plan. And our CRC, Community Relations Commission, has met in April and come up with recommendations on how to use the CDBG funding, the home funding, and then also the Buffington Grant funding, which will be a decision that you will have for later. And about the money that we received here, again, we got a little bit more money from the federal government this time around in both CDBG and home funding. And so the CRC was able to come up with a way of allocating that. And here are their current recommendations on using the CDBG funding and the home funding. And this is what we're going to ask you to approve for our action plan this year. And then, for your consideration, the Buffington grant program, which will be through the normal budget process, and you will have the opportunity to approve this next month. So, with that, I will take any questions, and we can open it up for a public hearing.

Councilmember Kerr.

Hey, Curtis, I have a question about the CHOTO. Yes, sir. Can you say more about what that is and where the money goes and how it's allocated and used in the community?

Yeah, so CHODOs, Community Housing Development Organizations, they use that and there are some tax incentives and some other ways that they're able to build houses. We have some in the Douglas community that were just built. And so they apply for that money and they can utilize that money. to build something like you've seen in the Douglas community. We don't have a whole lot of activity with Chotos just because we don't have a whole lot of land to build on and land is so expensive here. So that's one of the limitations, one of the headwinds that we have in building affordable housing.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Yes, Curtis, real quick, springboarding on Councilmember Kerr's question regarding the chodo. I know early on in my term there was discussions about trying to find a local chodo because some were out of city. Have we had any, I mean, outside we're having land issues trying to find, but have we had any luck finding a local chodo that will help us with this construction?

Not really. I mean, we have a couple churros that we work with from the area, but that is it. Okay, thank you.

All right, thanks, Curtis. Thank you. I'll open the public hearing.

There are no speakers on this item.

I'll close the public hearing and confine the comments to the council. Council Member Downs.

Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to approve this agenda item.

Okay, I got Vidal. Sorry, you guys are fast. So I have a motion to second. Thank you. So I have a motion to second to approve item number two. Please vote. Motion passes eight to zero. Thank you. Thank you, Curtis. Item three.

Item number three. Public hearing and consideration of a request to waive the 50-foot maximum height requirement for the construction of a flagpole as required by the Code of Ordinances, Chapter 6, Article 12, Division 6, Section 6-501A to allow two flagpoles to exceed the 50-foot height requirement by 100 feet for an overall height of 150 feet to be located at 3401 North Central Expressway.

Good evening. I'm Gina Scott with the Building Inspections Department. I'm the Building Inspections Manager. As you know, we're here to consider a FIPO hot request for clay cooling located at 3401 North Central Expressway. Your first slide here is just a visual of their location along 75. This is a site plan showing the proposed locations of the flight poles. On the Riozo side, it's a 93-foot setback there. For your north side, which is exactly on your right side if you're looking at the site plan, it's 121-foot setbacks, distance to the property line, and 75 feet to the property line in front of the building. Here's just a visual, so you could just see the Google Earth with it imposed, and that's where the proposed location will be on the property. These are just drawings of what will be submitted for the building permit, just engineered plans for the poll. And here are four other instances where there's been a flagpole height waiver. First, 2007, that's when the Board of Adjustments would approved that variance and then it started going to council and councils have approved two locations within 2018 and one in 2019. And this is the city of Richardson. This is a Clay Cooley dealership that exists there and this is just a visual so you can see these flag poles are 150 foot in height here. And then there is a dealership, and actually Clay Cooley has a dealership on both sides of the road here. And you can see that they also have flags that seem to be approximately 150 feet in height. So staff analysis is the setbacks to reduce detrimental impacts to surrounding properties, we'd like to meet that. Improving the visual quality and aesthetic of US 75 corridor, P&Z evaluating, prohibiting new poll signs to treat US 75 the same as other expressways. US 75 corridor is the only expressway corridor without an overlay district for enhanced and specialty design standards and signage regulations, setting a precedent on US 75 corridor for other properties. Last point would be the code of ordinance permits displaying an emblem or logo of the business as part of a single corporate flag. Applicant proposes two 40 by 80 foot flags, which is 3,200 square feet, while a general business monument sign is limited to 100 to 150 foot, and a general business sign is 100 foot. And I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Any questions? Council Member Thomas, sorry.

So I see in the report here that I have that the flagpoles could pose a potential hazard to the US Highway 75 service road. How likely is that?

I don't know that I can answer that. I know that there is no regulation by TxDOT for them to have any kind of fall protection. Okay, thank you.

Council Member Levine. Thank you. Could you go back to the slide that showed the representation of the size of the flag and the pole? If you could go back another, there you go.

Is that it? Yeah, that one.

So they're saying the max would be a 40 by 80 flagpole, or flag, which looks to be about, I don't know, one, oops, sorry, one, two, three, it's like four, I don't know, 40 feet out of 150 feet. What my concern is that when that goes down to half mast, that could be a visual obstruction. Wind could also cause some issues. And so I'm concerned about both the size of the flag and its imposition against other businesses along the highway. So I'm concerned about that.

I understand. Are there any other questions?

Yes, thank you. I have a question. Yes, ma'am. Council Member Two. So I saw in your slide that you showed a few of the photos where there are approved flags along the highway. Are they all from the same petitioner?

I mean, the people who- Yes, it's Clay Cooley.

So this is becoming like their symbol- Branding, yes, ma'am. Their branding.

Mm-hmm.

Have you seen any other, I guess, petitions in areas around Texas or DFW area that have requested similar type of, well, similar requests?

I do not. All I know is of these two locations here. I'm sorry.

Yeah, and they're all from the same person or same company. I'm sorry.

Yes, this is Clay Cooley Dealerships. Thank you so much.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I'll open the public hearing.

There are no speakers on this item.

I'll close the public hearing, confine the comments to the council. Council Member Kerr.

Mayor, this past weekend I went and checked out the location as well as the flags that the other have the ordinance that were waived. And I struggle a lot with the size of the flagpole, the size of the flag, the impact on the area. The flags that we saw from Clay Cooley and Irving as well as in Richardson, They were, even with the highway or perhaps below, Clay Cooley here is well above US 75 before you even add on the flagpoles. And I find that that's going to be a potential distraction. And I also noticed that the flagpoles would be taller than the lights on US 75. And it just seems to be too much. And I'm really concerned about, I guess, safety and about the impact on their neighbors' businesses as well as residents. And so having said all that, I'd like to move to deny.

Okay. Maria, were you up?

Yes.

Okay, go ahead.

I also want to, I kind of concur with what Councilman Kerr says. To add my own point, that's the reason why I was asking this question about the branding and logo of putting these flags up. I mean, if we start to do this, then we are setting precedence for other individuals who want to also have their own brand and logo. that may be some type of request for some type of post going up. And I really am opposed to supporting any one company since we have wonderful companies all along Plano. So I'm going to second what Councilman Kerr just motioned.

Mayor Pro Tem. Yes, Mr. Mayor, I do appreciate Mr. Cooley's patriotism. I mean, he clearly demonstrated that along 183 and also in Richardson. But I don't see any reason why we should deviate from any of our other expressway corridor overlays with regards to the limitations that we have on our flagpoles there, which being 50 feet. I think... 50 feet will be more than sufficient to be able to display that patriotism along 75. So with that being said, I would agree with both Councilman Kerr and Councilwoman Maria, too.

All right. So I have a motion and a second to deny the request to waive the 50-foot maximum height requirement for construction of a flagpole. Please vote. Yes. Yes. His motion was to deny. Sorry, didn't mean to get everybody confused. Motion is denied eight to zero. Okay, item four.

Item four, consideration to approve the purchase of the drone as first responder program for a five year contract for the police department in the estimated amount of $1,439,864 from Motorola Solutions Incorporated through an existing contract and authorizing the city manager to execute all necessary documents.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. This program is called the Drone as a First Responder, and we have a number of drones that we've had, maybe approximately 30, and we've had them five or six years. We fly those, though, out of the back of our Tahoe's for the patrol officers. Our traffic unit uses those and our SWAT team. What's different about these drones, though, is they would be launched from atop city facilities based off of our computer-aided dispatch. So when we get a call for service in, that's appropriate for the drone, that drone would be launched from atop that facility. The other difference is the other drones are operated by our sworn police officers. This would be our civilian professional staff would be driving those drones, and that's one difference. And what's important about these drones is they're going to improve our capabilities in a number of areas. The inputs from these drones are going to be going into what's called a real-time information center, and that is information where we have our civilian professional staff or getting information in to provide situational awareness for our patrol officers. That's what's key. We've got very aggressive response time, five minutes for emergency calls, eight minutes for all other calls for service. These drones can get there in about two to three minutes, so that's going to give us several minutes of additional time to get to those calls for service. It's also going to improve officer safety aspect. These drones have heat-seeking capability, so if before an officer gets there, if someone is hiding, and we've never had a situation where an officer was attacked by someone hiding, but that certainly can happen. But it is not unusual for us to get to a scene, people have run off and they're hiding in the bushes or whatever or dumpsters. Getting the drone there two to three minutes earlier can help us locate those folks and find them through our heat-seeking capability if the drone didn't see them move. It will also reduce the likelihoods of pursuits for us as well. Sometimes the vehicle will leave, we'll have a general description, white male in a black pickup truck. If we get there quickly, that's useful, but if we get there and they're long gone, that's not very good for us. However, if we can get that picture's face, if we can get that person's face and a tag, their license tag, then there's a good possibility we would be able to apprehend that person. DFW flight operations, as I said, these will be operated by our civilian professional staff out of our real-time information center. The requirements for that, they have to get a 107 certification that they can do online. The real training, though, will come from the software that we get with the drone from the vendor once we get that, and then they'll train with our current drone operators as well. So our initial dock installations, basically what we need is 220 power and Wi-Fi capability. So these are the locations that we're looking at right now to get us almost 100% coverage for our city. But these are tentative locations. We're working with Caleb's facilities team right now. I understand the Plano Aquatic Center may be going back to PISD, but... But we're confident we'll be able to find locations to meet our needs. This is the particular drone that we would be using. This is a foreign-made drone. This drone is a stopgap measure for us that Motorola has right now. Because it is a foreign-made drone, we do want to move to US drones, but we don't have any that will meet our capabilities right now. So our plan is, in about 24 to 30 months, we'll be transitioning to another drone that I will show you here in a minute. Even though this is a foreign-made drone, And there are some concerns about information getting back to the Chinese or whatever. The drone is just the hardware. What's really important about it is the software, the Cape software, and that's a Motorola product. So the software for this drone is made in the U.S. And this is the coverage we would get from those four locations that I showed you. So it wouldn't cover all of the city, but we would get most of the important areas. And then this is what the drones would look like mounted up on top of the buildings, about 125-pound dock station. And that's just an example of what they might look like. And then this is the drone that we want to move to. Like I said, in about two years, about 18 months to two years, this company Brink is in Seattle. It's a U.S. company. We've looked at this drone. It can stay up twice as long. It's much bigger. It's got payload capability. Very, very impressive drone. And this is the one that we want to move to. And what's also key about this drone is because it can stay up for so long, it's faster, we would not need four docks. We would only need two docks to run this one. It also has the ability to carry different payloads. We can put medicine. We can put telephones and drop those off. Maybe we wouldn't need that much on the law enforcement side like the military, but when you need it, you need it. And then this is the coverage those two drones would give us. One of those locations is the new police headquarters. That may not be built, obviously, by the time this comes in. If the fire station is not a viable option, we'll have to find another place. But with two drones, though, using that Park and Alma location and the Carpenter Rec Center, we can pretty much cover the city with this more advanced drone that we will get later on as a part of this contract. Any questions that you may have?

Thank you, Chief. Council Member Levine.

Thank you, Mayor. Chief, I'm really excited about this and I know that when I ran for council, one of the key things that I ran on was the idea of using technology to police smarter and that was a cost-effective way versus blanketing the city with more officers, although more officers are always helpful. So I'm excited about this. But I want to clarify something. You would only launch these drones when needed for emergencies, police requirements. There would not be an ongoing neighborhood surveillance program or any other intrusive program in use of these drones.

Is that correct? Absolutely not. We would not be using them for that. State law already prohibits us from using drones in that surveillance a manner like that. In fact, as these drones are launched, they're going to be just driving straight to whatever the scene is we're going to. That's when the cameras will come on. There would be no surveillance of anybody And the drones for these, if it is connected to a criminal case, sometimes we may save it for training or maybe for marketing purposes on our website. But other than that, we don't save drone footage if there's no reason to save it.

And also, I'm I'm happy to see that you're considering the move away from the DJI technology. They do seem to have some of the best drones at this time, but as you are aware, the government seems to be moving in the direction of restricting some of their new products and activities. So there's always the possibility that support could become an issue.

Well, and that's one of the reasons we have to move to an American drone. The FAA has put restrictions on them being able to develop further, but right now they are still the best drones out there still, and I think they will be for the next two years. So we don't have any concerns with that, but what we realize, though, unless there's a change at the FAA on those restrictions, yeah, we're going to have to move to an American drone. And I think this one that Motorola has partnered with is the best solution. We've went out to Seattle, we've looked at it, and, yeah, we're satisfied and confident. that it'll meet our needs.

Chief, thank you.

And we also work with this company already for our SWAT drones are made by this company, and we're very satisfied with those.

Thank you very much. Appreciate the presentation.

Deputy Mayor Protone.

Thank you, Mayor. Chief, I have a few questions. You mentioned that they detect heat, these drones, but are they capable of detecting gas leaks or gas imaging on these drones?

Gas leaks? Yeah. As far as I know, they don't have any kind of sniffing capability at all.

Okay. I was just checking online because apparently there's availability in those type of drones, so I wasn't sure if we're approaching those type of drones or not, but... conversation for later on. Maybe that can save some lives in the event that there's a gas leak in that area. The other one was, during bad weather days, you showed that these drones would be on the rooftop. Are they going to be removed in the event that there's a hailstorm, or are they going to be prevented from damage happening to them?

No, they're going to be in docks that are weatherproof.

Okay, wonderful. And then the other one is, are they going to be locked and secure so nobody jumps into a rooftop and vandalizes the drones?

I'm sorry.

Will they be locked and secured so that way nobody can go to a rooftop and vandalize the drones?

Yeah, the drones would be locked down on top, but the drones are going to be on top of city facilities, so I'm not concerned about anybody climbing up on top of the police headquarters. Just bring it out there. I just don't want there to be a report. You never know. I mean, you never know.

People are daring. There's just other questions. Other than that, thank you so much. Thank you.

Anyone else? Council Member Kerr.

Thank you, Mayor. Chief. We're not the first ones to explore this. These have been around for quite some time. Can you tell me about the successes and what the other cities have experienced by having this DFR program?

You know, we had a suspect that my surveillance team was following for a homicide, quite frankly, and followed him into another city who had this. And then this person stopped and got out of their car to shoot at our officers. Our officers had to return fire back. Their drone was out there so fast and caught everything, you know, and without that drone then. These officers had on-body cameras and all of that, but having that drone get out there that quickly, that's really what... Convinced me that yeah, we need to start moving in this direction And you see some of the things the scenario that happened in Seattle one of those suspects got away If you had a drone there overhead while you're waiting for those other officers to respond They probably could maybe could have followed that suspect to know where he went. Those are the kind of scenarios I think that this can help you with Very good.

It seems very clear to me This is very beneficial to the city in terms of being able to do proper policing and also really important to protecting our police as they're out there and going to a scene or that sort of thing.

All right. Thank you, Chief. Appreciate it. I think we have some speakers on this.

We do. The first one is Patrick Pilot.

Hi, my name is Patrick Pilot. I've lived in Plano my whole life. I'm 15 years of age. What I'm really talking about isn't really on the agenda about the police drones. There are these cameras called Flock security cameras that have AI technology in them.

Well, we got to talk about what's specific on the agenda item.

Because when I signed up, I didn't know. And then I got a call from...

You're signed up for public comments, too.

I am? You can speak in public comments. Not right now. Since I heard his conversation about the drones, I was wondering how would we know that y'all own them?

Well, you can't. We're not. Just a comment from you. I mean, if you want to ask the chief a question after the meeting, that's fine. I can't do that? It's up to the chief. All right.

So, I just sit back in my seat, wait for the public concern?

Yes. All right. All right. And you're signed up for that, correct? Yeah.

Yes.

So you can bring that up then, okay?

Kyle McGeehan.

Good evening. My name is Kyle McGeehan. I'm a member of DSA North Texas and Revolutionary Front DFW. Council members, I think we can all agree that RoboCop was a terrific film. It's vision. of a near future Detroit ruined by technological hubris and corporatized law enforcement remains undeniably compelling. But the thing is that movie was a satire, a warning even. So why does Plano PD want us to treat it like an instruction manual? It can't be because of the crime stats. Our major crime rate sits at 16.10 per 1,000 residents, one of the lowest in the nation. In fact, according to a 2023 report from Smart Asset, Plano ranks as the fifth safest city in the U.S. So why do we need to spend over a million dollars on yet another threat to our privacy? Are all the flock cameras scanning everybody's license plates not enough? How large does Plano's surveillance state need to get before we start prioritizing the Fourth Amendment? Of course, Plano PD claims that this program won't harm our rights. They say there will be restrictions limiting the scope of drone deployments and rules preventing these devices from monitoring citizens without reasonable suspicion. Well, jeez, when you put it that way, I almost want to love Big Brother myself. But I received a nickel for every time police departments in this country exploited loopholes to evade accountability, then I'd actually have enough money to influence policy around here. Ask yourselves, council members, do you know exactly how the footage captured by these machines will be used? Are there sufficient oversight mechanisms to safeguard against warrantless spying? Also, have you assessed the risk of data hacks from ill-intentioned third parties? And finally, once you give the cops the tools and permission to fly drones outside of the pilot's line of sight, how long until mission creep sets in? Today's first response robots could soon be converted into everlasting eyes in the sky. Unless this council has thorough, persuasive answers to these questions, it should refuse to authorize this program. Otherwise, it'll be jeopardizing our basic freedoms at a time when they could not be more vital. In an America where mere dissent is increasingly branded as terrorism, the rights of citizens have never been more precious. Serve your constituents with this one, council members. Vote no.

The next speaker is Shirley Lawson.

Hi, my name is Shirley Lawson.

I was here before to talk about something else.

Part of my concern was with flock cameras, and you all said we can't talk about flock right now, but the flock cameras are the ones that you use, and the AI in the flock cameras to tell you where the drones are supposed to go, are they not? You use the information from the cameras, the license plate readers. You use that information. Do you not? Am I wrong about that? Apparently nobody can answer that question. Okay. Well, in any event, that's the way I read it. is that the information from the cameras, from the flat cameras, is used for the drones, to where they send the drones. So it's not really irrelevant, the idea of the cameras. But we'll talk about that again later. In the meantime, my concern, much like kyle's is the violation that this is is potentially violating our rights our first fourth fifth and fourteenth amendment rights drones have been used to spy on protests perfectly legal protests. And then afterwards, people are coming home and finding that law enforcement is showing up at their doors. The FBI in Washington showing up at people's doors asking them what they were doing at that protest earlier. I don't know about you, but that sounds an awful lot to me, like a violation of my First Amendment rights or those people's First Amendment rights. When we talked about the AI data centers and we talked about flat cameras before, I really get the sense that a lot of your learning came after the approval of these projects. At least I know that's the case with the AI. That's what we were told. A lot of the learning about the problems with these surveillance systems. Am I boring you, hun? I'm sorry. That was a nice sigh, I saw that. And I also noticed in somebody when they heard DSA.

I don't know who you're talking to, but this is our meeting. So if you have something to say, please.

Yeah, I would rather not be sighed at while I'm talking, if that's all right. It's kind of rude. I wouldn't do it to you.

Keep going.

Okay. These cameras and potentially the drones that go with them, it's enough that you can track people with the flock cameras, but now you can send a drone to observe them, to watch them coming in and out of their homes or at the protests or whatever. And I just wanted to make sure that you guys are thinking clearly about people's rights before you make this decision this time instead of afterwards. Thank you.

Chief Drain, can you describe the computer aided dispatch system and how that actually works?

Yes, sir. When someone calls in a 911 call, it goes into our dispatch center. They've got basically two groups of employees in there. Some are call takers. They take the call and then they transfer it over to a dispatcher who is the one that's communicating with the officers on the ground. We at the PD, not counting the ones that we generate ourselves, we do about 120 or so calls for service a year.

And for clarity, that's the process that would actually be used for the drone as first responders?

Primarily, yes, sir.

Okay, no more speakers? All right, thanks, Chief. This isn't a public hearing, so I... Oh, excuse me. Council Member Tu?

Are we close? Yeah. Okay, well, I just want to make some comments before I move to approve this motion. I want to make the motion anyway. This is close to home because I am a criminal defense lawyer. Now, before when we were in court defending our clients without body cam, it was very difficult because we're basically at the reliance of what's remembered by the police officer or eyewitnesses. with the increase in technology and the ability to see almost during the time of whatever is occurring that our group of colleagues in defense world are able to, a lot of times, be able to either negotiate dismissal, negotiate a reduction to the offense that's allegedly charged by the police officer, or to come to some sort of resolution to a plea because it's so obvious that it has happened. And I think those are important because it helps the city save money in trying every case in court, in trial, because some things could be so vague and some things are so ambiguous that everything has to go to a jury trial. And I don't know if most people know, but jury trials do cost a lot of money for the county as well as for the city. Our officers will have to attend They have to sit there and we have to pay for it. So with clarity, it really does help in resolving some of the issues with cost as well as some of the truth that needs to come out. In a city of excellence, we need to keep up with the technology that's out there. Chief Drang said that some other city actually have this technology before we do. I'm actually a little bit shocked because I always thought that city of Plano has the most advanced technology. We have the best resources and we have the best police officers and first responders. And so I'm really shocked that we're actually behind in technology with regard to keeping up with the Joneses. With regard to whether or not this is going to invade in our privacy, actually everything is invading our privacy nowadays. But I would rather have crime prevention helping at first responding than having a hacker going into my privacy and not be able to assist those people who may be, because of that first, second response, be able to get the truth of the matter in a incident in which the police is investigating. With that said, I do understand that it is important to protect our Fourth Amendment right, which is the search and seizure. I understand that. and also our due process right, which is under the 14th Amendment. And that is up to us in making sure that we have the best trained police officer to ensure that that is protected. It is not to prevent technology from coming into the city of Plano because everybody else has got it. And if we don't keep up, our police and our prevention of crime will deteriorate. And we can't have that in the city of Plano because we believe that family members are first, our residents are first, our neighbors are first, safety is first. And without having the best resources for our first responder, we can't stay the city of excellent. So with that said, I'd like to move to approve.

Council Member Levine, did you have it? Yes.

Thank you, Mayor. I mentioned that technology allows us to enhance our police force by being smarter and the money we spend on a program like this not only becomes an element of prevention but it's a deterrent because once Criminals know, as has often been said, if you're going to commit a crime, don't do it in Plano, because this is a place where you will get caught. So I think this is a great enhancement. I think that this is an important step, as Councilwoman Tu said. It is a way for us to keep up with the technologies, and I think that that is very, very important. Also, I asked about surveillance. I think it's very key that these would be launched only in the case of need. Time in flight for these drones, anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour, depending on the model and the battery, prevents it from being a true neighborhood surveillance-type program. So I don't have that fear of being surveilled from the sky. So I... I support this program and I second the motion to approve.

Mayor Pro Tem, you have.

Yes, just a comment here. This is a first responder program. I think in my three years on council now, the toughest day I have is when we go and go to the fallen policeman's memorial. We go there and we see and honor those that gave the ultimate sacrifice to protect us. And that's always been a very hard ceremony for us to attend. And I'm willing to spend almost anything to keep our first responders safe. They've thrown themselves in harm's way to protect us. And we are the safest city in Texas, and we want to stay that way. And this program for five years for this 1.4 million is pittance compared to the loss of a police officer. And so with that being said, I understand your concerns about surveillance. I am hoping under Chief Drain that we won't have that. But I can guarantee that we will keep our eyes on that to make sure that that is not violated. I too worry about surveillance in my backyard. And I understand your concerns about the FBI. Those are issues that we're seeing coming out of DC. But we're Plano, the city of excellence, and we'd like to take care of our citizens. And so with that being said, I'm in sync with Councilwoman Tu and also Councilman Levine on that and will wholeheartedly approve this if it's a way that I could protect our police officers.

So I have a motion and a second to approve. Item number four, please vote. Motion passes eight to zero. Thank you. Comments of public interest.

Comments of public interest. This portion of the meeting is to allow up to three minutes per speaker with 30 total minutes on items of interest or concern and not on items that are on the current agenda. The council may not discuss these items but may respond with factual or policy information. The council may choose to place the item on a future agenda. and we do have a few speakers this evening. The first one is Patrick Pilot.

My name is Patrick Pilot. I already said this, what those two fine American citizens said about this Flock company. There are over 50 of these Flock cameras in Plano as we speak right now. There are nearly 4,000 in the DFW area. Flock is a privately owned company. They are using AI technology to basically mass surveillance us. This is unconstitutional against our Fourth Amendment right. How do you all feel about just being watched everywhere we go? I know that there's cameras everywhere, like the phones are watching us. But Flock is privately owned, and I'm not going to say any names because I don't want to get any controversy of me. A dozen police officers have been arrested for using Flock for unwarranted purposes. like stalking romantic partners, ex-wives, ex-girlfriends. A woman had an abortion in another country and the police used 83,000 of these cameras to stalk her down across the whole country. She went to a whole other country to do something with her own body and our country is trying to control what we do in surveillance. We got told it was for license plate surveillance to read and catch crimes. There is gunshot detection noises in these cameras. They are now learning for human voices. How does that even help? If a citizen is just walking, innocent citizen walking down the street is under surveillance and getting their face scanned by these cameras. I would be lying if I wasn't absolutely terrified of how I'm gonna raise my kids in a country that is watching us. This is a mass surveillance operation and I just, If I can't change anything now, I hope to define young people of my friends and family that are watching on this live stream. Y'all can spark a change and do what I am doing. Use your voice. Young people are not talked about enough. I'm probably the only young speaker in this building right now. And clearly I didn't get the dress code, but it's just crazy how we are getting mass surveillanced How do you all feel that cops, like he said, the chief, how do we know that he's not going to use, or like other police officers that are specifically trained for this, not going to use this for unwarranted purposes? And since this is a private-owned company, we don't know where this data is going. And especially with a bunch of young, bright minds that are coming now, days of age, it is really, really easy. 20 seconds. to hack into these cameras and see what they are. Around three, four years ago, I was sexually assaulted by an adult. There was around four months of evidence that was into the FBI, and they dropped the case because they said there was no evidence, yet there was four months. How would we know that these cameras are going to help? I am only 15. I was 13 and 12 at this time. I was sexually assaulted by a grown-ass man And there was so much evidence. This happened for four months, four months, and the FBI and Plano police did nothing.

I'm trying to be sensitive, but your time's up.

Okay.

Kyle McGeehan.

Hello again. In 2023, Fort Worth debuted a brand new official slogan, the Unexpected City. A little over three years later, they would live up to that moniker when the majority of their city council members came out this month in favor of a data center moratorium. Meanwhile, in the city of excellence, our leader's attitude towards data centers has proven thus far less unexpected. In fact, it's been painfully predictable. Let's go down the list, shall we? Despite receiving dozens of letters calling for a moratorium, not a single member of this body has come out yet against big tech. Despite receiving a petition that's garnered almost 200 signatures so far and counting, nobody on this council has stood up for their constituents' concerns. And despite the threat posed to Hudson Heights by the hyperscale data center being constructed near their neighborhood, None of you have proposed regulations to mitigate that facility's inevitable impact on residential life. Do you know how worried the denizens of that community are about what awaits them come October when that 72 megawatt behemoth is set to go live? Our coalition is well aware since we've started knocking on doors and having conversations. Maybe you should join us on our next canvassing date. Anyway, council members, I hope you can tell that our campaign is just getting started and that it won't go away anytime soon, no matter how much we hear about land scarcity. Everybody knows that Plano is largely developed and built out, but that has been the case for at least 15 years. Yet roughly a dozen data centers, co-location, enterprise, and hyperscale have emerged in the city since then. I recommend coming up with a better talking point, maybe by asking one of the chatbots. These facilities are powering. But you might want to get to that soon, though, while our grid is still up and running. Just last week, a 10-minute outage struck the eastern half of the United States due to electrical fluctuations that experts attributed to Virginia's data center alley. The alarm bells are ringing, council members. Will you heed their warning? You should start listening now before the noise pollution from the Hudson Heights facility drowns them out. Also, council member two, if you want to keep up with the Joneses and stay ahead of the curve, then let's go ahead and follow Fort Worth's example and move forward with the data center moratorium. Thank you.

The next speaker is Jason Payne. Jason Payne. Crystal Curry. Crystal Curry.

Good evening, counsel. Get a good education because no one can take that from you. That's what my parents and my educators used to tell me. Well, that is no longer the case with artificial intelligence. And a lot of my colleagues in the technology industry We all have different opinions on the various use cases of what artificial intelligence does and how does it benefit us as citizens and as a society. We know that there are use cases where it is good. and there are use cases where it's not. And in my particular instance, it's not. And what I've been trying to do is to speak to that when I show up here at council. And hopefully someone in these seats will hear about my story and help me. I know several people have spoken about the AI data centers and all of the big behemoths that are going to come. I talked about this actually on my podcast like two years ago before they even started building these data centers. AI is, it just needs legislation. And my goal is ultimately to be able to impact legislation. One of the things I do want to say though before is I feel like we're kind of normalizing this. We're going forward with these big data centers and moving forward with this stuff like this is normal. What's impact of my life I've shared with you guys in my citizen impact overview document is factual. Different developers and members of the professional and technology community have verified, validated, and corroborated that story. The LLM models, large language models, are available. They're public. and people can get them and use them. My data has become public, so it's a difficult thing. I would just say the last thing that's been impacting me lately is I went to log on to my laptop, and this isn't even related to the other issues that I've already put in the document, but I went to log on to my laptop, and it's completely different. taken over by a different server. It's not even, they're not even connecting to my laptop by internet connection. It's completely taken over by a different database. So all of my data, it's like they just log in with these tools that are much more significantly advanced than I have access to that I can't even have rights to my laptop anymore. So it's completely unnerving and it's... It's not funny, but that's my life. So I'm continually sharing these issues that occur to let you guys know what's going on and to hopefully get someone to help me with my situation. And hopefully you'll see with the combination of not just my situation, but the sentiments that the rest of the audience is talking about with regards to artificial intelligence will help. Thank you. Sorry.

Thanks. Shirley Lawson.

Hello again. I just want to follow up on, what was your name? Patrick. Patrick, on what Patrick, this young man, was saying. He mentioned that there have been 12 arrests across the country of police officers using this to find their ex-wives or their ex-girlfriends or stalk people around there. Two of those were here in Texas, in case you were wondering. One of them was in, just recently,

Chris Lawson, would you put your mic closer to you?

Sure. As I was saying, two of those police officers were right here in Texas. One in Baytown, one in Pasadena, Texas. The problem is not just about finding your ex-girlfriends either, though. Because also here in Texas, which he mentioned, Johnson County, Texas Sheriff queried the flock systems across the country. queried 83,000 different plates across six different states in order to track a woman that they thought had had an abortion. She had left the state afterwards. They went to these states, at least two of these states, abortion is legal. And in most of these states, there are cities that have ordinances that say you can't use our flock, any of our technology to find otherwise law-abiding immigrants. but they use it for that anyway. And the woman who supposedly had an illegal abortion, turned out the evidence they had was a menstrual blood clot. So I don't know how many thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars were wasted by the Johnson County, Texas Sheriff's Office, but this stuff cannot happen. And I know you don't think it can happen in Plano because Plano's the city of excellence and you can absolutely trust all your police officers, but I'll bet money the people in Johnson County thought the same thing. Thank you very much.

The next speaker is Prop D Srivastava.

Good evening, Honorable Mayor and the Plano City Council. I'm Propti Srivastava and I'm part of Hindu Swam Savak Sangh and one of the volunteers of Plano branch of HSS. It is an honor to be here as we celebrate an extraordinary milestone, America's 250th anniversary. As Hindu Americans who proudly call Plano home, this celebration holds a special place in our hearts. Plano is known for a strong sense of community, outstanding schools, beautiful neighborhoods, and a culture of service and volunteerism. People from diverse backgrounds have come together to make this city one of the best places to live. And the Hindu American community is grateful to contribute through civic engagement charitable service, cultural programs, and support for our neighbors. Our heritage teaches us the timeless principle of Vasudeva Kutumbakam, the world is one family. When our families came to America, we brought with us values of respect, service, family, and harmony. America, in turn, gave us the freedom to practice our faith, preserve our traditions, and fully participate in the life of this great nation. That opportunity is something we deeply cherish. This 250th anniversary has inspired an unprecedented celebration across the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. More than 35 Hindu temples came together to proudly commemorate America's 250 years of independence by displaying special anniversary banners at their temples. It was a powerful expression of unity and gratitude, a way for our community to honor this historic milestone while reaffirming our shared commitment to the ideals of liberty, democracy, and civic responsibility that define America. The sight of these banners across dozens of temples was more than a celebration. It reflected the deep appreciation of Hindu Americans for the freedoms this country provides and our desire to stand together with fellow Americans in marking this historic occasion. As we celebrate 250 years of independence, let us continue strengthening the bonds that unite us. Our diversity is not a challenge to overcome. It is one of America's greatest strengths. By embracing both our cultural heritage and our shared American identity, we help build an even stronger, more welcoming, and more vibrant Plano. Thank you for the opportunity to share these thoughts. On behalf of the Hindu American community, congratulations to our nation on this historic milestone, and happy 250th anniversary of American independence. God bless Plano, and God bless the United States of America. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

The last speaker is Jeremy Matthews.

Good evening. My name is Jeremy Matthews and I've lived in Plano for the last 18 years. I'm here tonight. In the past, I've emailed you all about, I guess, my opposition to the agreements that the city's made with the Dallas stars. And I just wanted to follow that up because I attended the open house that you guys had, uh, you know, a few weeks ago and I appreciate you guys having that. And I was able to speak with, um, not Congress, but councilman care horn, uh, Levine and deputy city manager, uh, Doug McDonald. And, uh, it was all very informative, well intended, well attended. Um, but I wanted to follow up. I did follow up something that, councilman horn referenced was the city of Arlington and how it's worked out pretty well for Arlington and how they've, uh, you know, paid off their debts, uh, at least for like the Cowboys stadium. Um, but they, then they had a little different funding mechanism mechanism. They use the sales tax increase to fund their, uh, you know, contributions to the stadiums. But some interesting things that I found just some figures is that, The city of Arlington, for like the Cowboy Stadium, they contributed 27% of the construction costs for that stadium. And for the Globe Life Field, the recent covered baseball stadium, the city contributed about 44% of that construction cost. Contrast that with what we agreed to, which is 70%, quite a bit higher. So I think that's not a good thing. And I don't know why it's so high. Some other figures. So the Cowboy Stadium was built for $1.9 billion. Baseball Park was like 1.6 or something like that, 1.4. But they are also much bigger stadiums. They seat 80,000 and 40,000 seats, you know, respectively. Whereas the Stars Arena is costing a billion dollars and it only seats 18,000. So I was like, so it leaves me in my next thing. And both of those, that was all voter approved. And that's something else I have some qualms about with this because we're going to be voting on the venue taxes, but they may only be a minority. of the funding for these arenas. The majority is probably going to be the TERS. So to me, in a way, this process is going to be kind of a backdoor way of approving this because you're going to be approving hundreds of millions of dollars in bonds and borrowing. And normally, voters vote to vote on that. We get a chance to say because that's a ton of money.

20 seconds.

Okay. And so the last thing I want to say is, yeah, so why is this arena so expensive? A billion dollars. And it's because that's what the stars want. They want something where they can sell, you know, for premium seats. It's catering to the wealthy. It's going to price out a lot of people who can't afford those tickets. And I think what we're contributing to is some welfare for the wealthy because this is – you know, higher price tickets. A lot of people can't make those games. And I think a city taxpayer shouldn't be funding that sort of stuff. We have to be funding police departments, fire departments, roads, city, you know. Thank you.

Thank you. One thing on the feedback on the data centers. In Plano, the city's development... Regulations require adequate utility infrastructure. Professional engineers and city planners review development applications for compliance with city standards. The city council appointed a citizen committee to assist with the review and update of development regulations including standards related to data centers. So I just wanted to let you know we are in a review of those. With that being said, There being no further business, we are adjourned.