City Council - Regular Meeting

Yeah, true. We'll officially recognize the quorum here today and hand it over to our city attorney.

Thank you, Mayor. Pursuant to the Texas Open Meetings Act to close session, the Amarillo City Council was announced on July the 28th, 2026 at 1.04 p.m. under the following authority, Section 551.071, Consult with an attorney about pending or contemplated litigation or settlement of the same. Consult with an attorney on a matter in which the attorney's duty to the governmental body under the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct conflicts with this chapter.

Thank you, sir.

Ready? Council has completed executive session. The time is 2.30.

All right, Mr. City Manager, you got everything you need for today. Perfect. Ms. City Secretary, you good? Okay. Great. We'd like to welcome everybody here. July 28th, 3 p.m., we're going to call ourselves back into session, recognize a quorum out here to run the rest of our meeting. Had a successful executive session. So we'll bring ourselves back in here for our ceremonial items. And so the first thing we're going to do is start with prayer. Our invocation, the Right Reverend William Thrasher, if you'll come up and bless us here today, and if you guys would stand, remain standing for the pledges, please.

Shall we bow our heads? Eternal Father of our souls, grant to the members and the officers of this body a sacred moment of quiet before they take up the duties of the day. Turn their thoughts to thee and open their hearts to thy spirit, that they may have wish in their decisions, understanding in their thinking, love in their attitudes, and mercy in their judgment. Let them not think when this prayer is said that their dependence upon thee is over and forget thy counsels for the rest of the day. Rather from these moments of heart searching may they May there come such a sweetness of disposition that all may know that thou art in this place. From this holy interlude, may there flow light and joy and power that will remain with them until night shall bring thy whispered benediction. Well done, good and faithful servant. So help us all this day through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Amen.

Please be seated. That will move us into our first proclamation. I think I've handed that over to Councilman Tips. We're going to join everybody downstairs for the 75th anniversary of Wonderland Park. Steve, if we can get you to come up.

Okay. Whereas Wonderland Park has been a cherished destination in Amarillo, Texas for 75 years, providing generations of families with recreation, entertainment, and lasting memories, and whereas Wonderland Park has played a vital role in enhancing the quality of life in the Amarillo community and has become a landmark attraction contributing to local tourism, family entertainment, and economic vitality, and whereas the continued success and growth of Wonderland Park, including increased visitation and new improvements, reflect its enduring importance as a community institution and regional destination. And whereas during its 75th anniversary year, Wonderland Park stands as a symbol of tradition, enjoyment, and community pride for both residents of Amarillo and visitors from across the region, and whereas the City of Amarillo proudly recognizes Wonderland Park for its long-standing contributions to the City of Amarillo and for the joy it has brought to countless families over the years, Now, therefore, we, Mayor and City Council members of the City of Amarillo, Texas, do hereby recognize the weekend of July 31st through August 2nd as the 75th anniversary of Wonderland Park in Amarillo, Texas, and encourage all citizens in joining the celebration of Wonderland Park and its 75th anniversary and to recognize its lasting place in history and spirit of the Amarillo community.

Appreciate you guys.

Thank you very much. I appreciate it, Mayor, Council. Thank you very much for that recognition. As a new Amarillian, I think that's how you say it, I've been here six months now, this park is something very, very special. I've been in the amusement park industry for over 20 years, started out at SeaWorld San Diego, worked a lot of parks. This park is very, very special. As I walk around the park at night and talk to people, everyone has a story. Everyone has a memory. It may be their first job. It may have been their first kiss on the fantastic journey. A lot of great memories, and I'm just very, very proud to be a part of it, and thank you very much for this recognition. Thank you. One, two, three.

Thank you.

we have two recognitions today that we want to bring to you guys first notice if i could have the team from the osage plant come up here we want to recognize them for a moment So this is a lot of our Osage water treatment plant team that's making their way up here right now. There's probably a few of them that are missing today. So we call this team, we've recently, and they probably don't know this, I'm gonna date myself by bringing up the TV show, MacGyver. So if you remember the TV show, MacGyver, you're probably up there in age. But this is our MacGyver team because they can take something and repair it with not much there to get the repairs done. Back on June the 27th, around two o'clock, it was about 2.20, our utility team and the Amarillo Fire Department responded out to the Osage plant on a chlorine incident. serious incident. This is a quick act. Thanks to their quick action, we actually avoided what could have been a very challenging situation for both our staff and for our community. So our water treatment staff detected a low level chlorine leak through the alarm system in the chlorine room and immediately initiated a response and the response protocols associated with that. The Amarillo Fire Department's HAZMAT team also responded to the event as well. They arrived very quickly. They located the source in a large chlorine tank and safely secured that and isolated the leak. It took some time to get that done, but we're very thankful for the Amarillo Fire Department's expertise and their HAZMAT team showing up there. After the leak was addressed, our staff faced a second, equally serious challenge, maintaining adequate chlorine disinfectant in the water system. Mechanical problems with the chlorine feed system meant it was uncertain how quickly we would be able to get the repairs done and resume our normal disinfection operations. We knew from our continuous monitoring that we were in good shape, but only in good shape for several hours. So the clock was ticking for them to go to work and try to find solutions to the problems that we had. If we could not restore the injection in time of the chlorine, we were really on the path to doing something that we don't like to do in any city, especially if you're in the water business, and that is to issue a boil water notice for our citizens, our businesses, and the community. The challenge was made more difficult by the age of the chlorine system that we have. Council has already authorized its replacement. We'll be doing that in the fall, so thank you City Council for that. But we have to wait until the fall because of the high usage that's underway during the summertime. Parts are difficult to obtain for the system that we have, and the repairs are not very straightforward at all. And even so, this team did not back away from the problem at all. In fact, I remember making a couple of phone calls saying, do we need to bring some resources in? Do we need to have... someone from another city coming in to help us. And they said, no, we've got this. We're going to get this fixed. Under the leadership of Sean Beach, Sean, raise your hand if you would. And William Johnson, it's over here as well. Utility staff pulled together a cross-functional group from the wastewater treatment plants and the Osage plant. All across the city, they gathered parts and equipment from multiple facilities. They brought in subject matter experts from across the department, worked side by side with those at the plant. Over roughly seven hours, they systematically troubleshooted the issue, made the necessary repairs, and were able to resume injecting chlorine into the system. They accomplished all this while they were keeping chlorine residuals in the distribution system above the regulatory requirements, avoiding the need for a boil water notice. So today, I want to recognize and thank the utilities team for their outstanding response, their commitment to protect the health and safety of the citizens of Amarillo. Sincerely, thank you for what you did that day. I got to see firsthand, so did Mr. Path, the amount of work that it took to get this done. I have to tell you, at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon that day, I thought, man, I don't know that we're going to get this accomplished. But you did it, and you did it well. And to those that are not here, congratulations and thank you to them. If you all wouldn't mind giving them a big round of applause. One, two, three. One more time.

One, two, three. Thank y'all. Thank y'all.

We'll get the water distribution team to come up as well. So this is a very fractured group of our water distribution team, and I'll tell you why in just a moment. So unfortunately, around noon today, we had a water leak. And a lot of the crew, there's nine members that were going to be here today for this that are out on a water leak right now, doing exactly what we're going to recognize this group for here for something that they did that I wanted to call attention to. So this would have been on a Friday evening. Y'all have got to stop having these things on the weekend. Agreed, right? Friday evening, around 6 or 7 o'clock, the water distribution team responded to a significant 8-inch water main break that was caused by a boring contractor where they struck one of our lines. Now this occurred after hours, quickly became a high-stakes situation because of the facilities that it impacted. As crews work to isolate the leak, they encounter difficulties requiring shutting off the water service to several critical facilities, including the Randall County Jail and the detention center that Randall County operates as well. This is a serious concern because by law those facilities can only be without water for a limited period of time or they'll have to start relocating inmates to a different facility. In this case, the contingency plan would require transporting them to Lubbock. Understanding the urgency of the implications for public safety and the justice system, our water distribution team stayed on this job throughout the night all into much of the afternoon on Saturday where there was 100 degree heat out there. It was extremely hot. There was barely any wind out there at all, too. And they installed what we call an instavalve so they could isolate the damaged section of Maine, restore water service to the jail, detention center, and nearby businesses as quickly as possible. Some of those employees on that site remained out there for more than 18 hours nonstop because they knew how critical it was to avoid the forced transfer of inmates and to restore service to the affected businesses. I visited the site myself. I know that Grayson Path visited the site on Friday night as well. And it was remarkable to watch the skill, the professionalism, determination of the staff that was in the field. They completed that work and restored service just moments really literally just moments before they were going to have to bring buses in and start moving inmates down south to Lubbock. I know that Judge Dyer told me to tell each of you, thank you, thank you, thank you. On her behalf, she was very pleased at the work that was done and not having to go through the process that they would have to go through. So this recognition is to publicly thank our water distribution team for their dedication, their expertise under pressure, and their commitment to serving and protecting citizens and institutions of Amarillo. So if you wouldn't mind, join me in a round of applause for these people.

One more time.

One, two, three. Thank you.

Yeah.

Hey, thank you guys, ladies and gentlemen, for allowing us to do that. And thank you, hats off truly to everybody that serves this community. You know, sometimes when it's a fire and you can run into the fire and put it out, we see that. We don't always see the guy down at the bottom of a 10-foot hole working all night through sometimes 20-degree temperatures, 110. ALL AFTERNOON TO MAKE SURE THAT SERVICE IS ON SO REALLY TRULY A HEARTFELT GRATITUDE FROM US AS CITIZENS CUSTOMERS TO YOU GUYS THANK YOU ALL FOR KEEPING THE CITY RUNNING THANK YOU MR. HOOPER FOR DOING THAT FOR YOUR TEAM OKAY SO WE HAVE ANNOUNCEMENTS I BELIEVE ITEM NUMBER THREE ANY ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM THE CITY SECRETARY No, okay. All right, we'll move into our discussion items. Item 4.1, Mr. Anthony Spinell, if you want to come up here and give us a little bit of an update to an ordinance that you are implementing.

Well, good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Today I would like to present the benefits of becoming an authorized agent with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for the regulation of on-site sewage facilities within the Emerald City limits. I'm going to go over just the history of on-site sewage facilities, a little bit about the Public Health District, what we've done up until this point today, and then the proposed ordinance. So the city of Amarillo has been regulating on-site sewage facilities since 1976 through a county order. So the Potter County and Randall County are the authorized agents with TCQ, and they have designated the city of Amarillo as their designated representative, meaning we have been regulating septic systems or on-site sewage facilities since 1976 throughout Potter, Randall County, and every jurisdiction in between. That agreement has been updated a number of times since 1976, as you can see in the amendment history there. Since 1976, we've overseen the installation of about 30,000 septic systems in Potter and Randall County, city limits of Amarillo, Canyon, and so on. There's about 192 that have been installed directly within the city limits of Amarillo. And then in 1984, we actually formed a public health district. You know a little bit about that. It was originally called the Bi-City County Health District. It had the city of Amarillo, Canyon, Potter, and Randall County. In 2019, it was changed to the Amarillo Area Public Health District and included all the other entities, Bishop Hills, Tanglewood, Palisades, Timber Creek. This project that we're presenting here today started in 2024, where we conducted, my staff and myself, conducted a review of all 355 orders, ordinances, and resolutions throughout the state of Texas. We found that 65% of them have local amendments, 35% don't, and we conducted several different types of outreach, which I'll explain here. We engaged the city of Canyon about becoming their own authorized agent We engaged Potter County about splitting Amarillo out into their own authorized agent, and we engaged Randall County about splitting Canyon and Amarillo out as their own authorized agents. We also engaged the Realtor Association, Texas Onsite Wastewater Association, and presented a public survey. In 2024, there was a local amendment piece that was proposed that would require an inspection of an onsite sewage facility at time of real estate transaction. The Realtor Association, TAWA, and the survey came back and said we didn't really like that idea. So since we have pulled out the real estate transaction inspection piece and there has been no additional concerns from the realtor association they presented, they shared that they have no additional concerns with us. The TAWA, Texas Onsite Wastewater Association, has no additional concerns. So we feel like we've addressed that appropriately. We are proposing five local amendments, and I want to say that the ordinance that you're seeing that you will see later in this agenda is about 90% template language required by TCEQ. So we don't have a lot of options on what we can change there. What we can change is the local amendments piece. So we're proposing five local amendments, and I'll kind of go through these, but the first one is permitting every system regardless of acreage. That is the most common local amendment throughout the state of Texas, and that has been within our county orders probably since the 70s. We're proposing to limit authorizations to construct more commonly referred to as ATCs to 90 days when they're associated with a sanitary nuisance and I'll speak a little bit more about that in later slides. We're proposing a potable water distribution line variance, which essentially gives another option to compliance with state law. This has been within our both county orders since 2020 and is widely accepted and appreciated. So A and C are currently within our orders. We want to clarify that BOD and TSS grab samples for food establishments that are served by on-site sewage facilities are required annually. This is a current requirement of state law, but it's left up to the local entity to put it on each individual permit. So every permit can have varying requirements. It could say quarterly, monthly, every six months, twice. What we're trying to do is set a very easily understood standard just once annually. And then additionally, we want to require an audible and visible high water alarm when it's required by state law inside of an establishment in addition to outside of the establishment. This will only impact very few systems, systems with pump tanks, as an example, low pressure dose systems, systems that have spray irrigation, equalization tanks and holding tanks. That will only be triggered on new construction. So that's not gonna be triggered in the rears to any existing facility. And then D is only going to affect about 5% of our permanent facilities, which is about 71 places out of about 1,500. So expanding a little bit more on B, limiting authorization to construct when associated with a sanitary nuisance. Septic systems or onsite sewage facilities, they don't last forever and they can fail. So when they fail, sewage typically is just spilling out onto the ground, okay? What we typically see is it takes 20, 30 days for a homeowner to get a permit. They'll hire a contractor. The contractor will submit a permit to the city. We'll review it, and by law, we issue what's called an ATC. Those ATCs are valid for a year. So we've seen on several occasions when the contractor will take the ATC and they'll put it at the back of their schedule. So most contractors in our area are multiple months behind. So we've seen situations like what we're presenting here today, sewage on the ground, be like that for eight, nine months, impacting residents and the environment. In this example, animals using it as a water source, tracking through it, tracking in and out of homes as an example. Another one, failed system in between two homes impacting neighbors. Here's an example of a failed septic system. We had mosquitoes growing in it. A tank is exposed. There's several examples nationwide of kids falling in the tanks, adults falling in the tanks, animals falling in the tanks. So these are the things that we're trying to target to get fixed in a more timely manner as an example. And I added this footage to show it can get kind of unique out there when we're dealing with onsite sewage facilities. So we see some crazy stuff from time to time. So there are several benefits from the City of Amarillo becoming their own authorized agent. It will allow Amarillo to control the installation of on-site sewage facilities in Amarillo with or without the Public Health District. It aligns our internal operations with Environmental Health and the Director of Utilities Office. By ordinance, it requires a two-prong approval to approve a septic system within the limits of Amarillo. This would align those operations. It would separate our audits by TCQ. We're audited annually for all the permits that we issue. This would allow us to separate Amarillo out and Canyon out. My intention is to have Canyon be their own authorized agent as well. So we'll have four clean audits every year. And this will also allow us to run enforcement, which is required by state law through Amarillo Municipal Court, which would better allow us to control the outcome of enforcement. So as an example, if somebody came into compliance, we could lower or waive any kind of penalties associated with being out of compliance versus if they're in district courts, we don't have any control over that. And then this is really just best practice. I wanna provide a screen grab here from TCEQ. This is just a shot of Texas where all the blue is all the local entities that regulate onsite sewage facilities. White is gonna be your TCEQ agents. And then additionally, I went through several different counties and looked to see, just to try to give you some examples of areas where The city is an authorized agent, a county is an authorized agent, maybe a water district, and it's just all over. It's very, very common. As an example, Denton County alone has 18 cities and towns as authorized agents. Lubbock has Lubbock County and the city of Lubbock. Tarrant County has six cities and towns, water districts, and the county. Taylor County has a city in the county. Travis County, five cities plus the county plus water districts in Wichita County, six cities, towns and county as well. It's very common what we're asking to do here and it is truly best practice. I'm prepared to take any questions if you have them.

Questions Council. the alarm audible visual alarm system what's the expected cost increase for an owner who needs to put one of those in and give me an example of where that would be retroactively when would that come into your purview on an inspection

Sure so we only required on new construction and I envision this would be very low cost couple $100 are already required outside in view of the second system typically what they do is they put on right against the building by the back door so we're talking about running a couple wires and another alarm inside. I don't think it will be very costly for a facility. And it won't impact a lot of facilities. Nothing retroactively. We're talking just new construction. I'll give you an example of a few.

I apologize.

I went back way far in your presentation there. As an example, a place would be... There's a truck stop in between here and Amarillo and Canyon. It's a 5,000 gallon a day system. They have surface application. That would be a facility that would... have to comply with the requirement if built today or built after if this is passed. The TA truck stop is another one in between here and Bushland. There's a few examples. And keep in mind, it's very limited to the amount of systems that it applies to. Just your standard disposal, it doesn't apply to. We're talking about systems that have surface application or pump takes, things like that. Very limited.

So your aerobic system, you don't apply that?

Not necessarily, only if it has a pump tank.

And then how can you implement this in the rollout? So permits that have already been authorized, but inspections haven't been performed yet. So, you know, kind of the customer service pillar here of not ending up on a job site after it's been constructed. They didn't know. Now they've got to go back and implement an alarm system that wasn't part of their costs, so on and so forth.

My intention is to be very customer-friendly in everything that we do. So anything that has been reviewed and approved already would not apply to. Anything moving forward, what we would do, my suggestion to my staff and I, we would probably engage the Texas Onsite Wastewater Association again, and we'd set a date, maybe like a six-month time period, and say, six months from now, we're going to implement this requirement again. because that allows and we've seen this in the past that allows our contractors have already bid jobs that may not necessarily have submitted a permit but the job has been bid it's in design phase we won't we won't pick any of those up we want to do things that are not yet in development okay so six months 12 months i think we're very open to whatever that looks like very customer friendly thank you sir any other questions council

Mr. Spinell, thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you. Have a great day. All right. That's item 4.1. We'll move into discussion item 4.2. Ms. Coggins, can you run us through this update?

Yes, I can. Thank you, Mayor. So we are going to talk today a little bit, Council, about a proposed update to your board and commission appointment process, both in how often we appoint during the year and how we make those appointments in the meetings. So just a little bit on why making a change is being discussed. And we've worked with Council Member Reid on this. Current appointments are concentrated at one time a year. And as you know, that's a large process. You get a binder with a lot of applicants, a lot of boards. A triennial schedule would break that up a little more to give you an opportunity to look at a third of those boards at a time, maybe give you a little better focused to be able to look at those applications. And so we just working through this with council member Reed can see some benefits to where splitting it up into three sections across the year might give you a little more efficient of a process. As a reminder, we did have some recent code updates to chapter 2.6, which is your board and commission code in the municipal code. We updated qualifications, attendance, membership, and some codification changes to include boards that were not currently in the code or boards that were sunset that needed to come out. Attendance and board governance expectations were also clarified. We added the, if you miss three meetings in a row, council may replace you on a board. Additional code updates, if we look at moving forward with what we discussed today, would be to change that code to allow appointments multiple times during the year, right now it says annual, and then to add some transition language. And so if we were to move to a new schedule, we would need to work with those board members that are up for appointment in the upcoming December timeframe and see if they would be willing to stay over on a board for an extra four or eight months to roll this transition into place. So our transition approach, if we were to go to three times a year, in December we would have no term extension for those board members. We would simply take that third of the boards, appoint them in December, they'd start in January just like they do now. For any of those boards that we would look to appoint in April moving forward, we would ask for a four month term extension during the transition. Any members not able to or not willing to serve that extra time, we would go ahead and appoint those with that transition built into their new term. And for August boards, we would have an eight-month term extension. And so the goal is to get that onto that repeating recurring schedule three times a year, still doing about one-third of the board every year so that we can get your boards with some good longevity and not turn over a whole board in one year. Our proposed appointment groups that we've shared with each of you individually would have us with 12 boards appointed in December, nine boards in April and 14 boards in August. One thing to note on here in August, we've done our PIDs, we've done our civil service commission, some of the boards that are more recommendation based and council ratifies those recommendations. And so we've tried to keep that a little lighter because we know in that timeframe, you're gonna be working on budget each year too. This just gives you an idea looking over the next three years what the appointment volume would be. So even though we may have nine boards, we may have more than one person on some of those. And so you're looking at anywhere from 11 up to 33 appointments in a given triennial period. And this gives you an example timeline. So if we were to move to this for the 12 boards that we'd be looking at in December, we would open, excuse me, we would discuss those with council on the August 11th meeting, let you know what boards will be up. We would open applications at that time, close them in October. And this would be a change from current policy. Right now, we keep applications open year round. That is a change we made this last year. We would ask to open just the boards that are up for appointment if we go to a three time a year process. In October 31st, we'd close applications. That first second week of November, we would provide packets to council. And then in your December meeting, we would make appointments. And those individuals selected would start serving in January. So again, just a next ordinance update would authorize multiple year appointments, talk about transition authority and review any board specific provisions to ensure that they're consistent with the new structure. The other piece we wanted to talk about today is the appointment process. The current appointment process is kind of what we would call a quickest to the draw process. It's typically whoever makes the first motion gets a name out there and it doesn't always allow for the broadest input of council as a whole. And we've heard from a couple of you that would like to look at something different. We've looked at what other cities have done. And what we would like to put out there and propose today is a process where you would get your applicant packets in advance, just like you currently do, but then we would give you a worksheet. And there's an example on the screen, and there's one printed in your folders too, just so you can see it a little easier. But you would take for each board that we are appointing, we would ask you to just rank those applicants on a scale from one to five, for example, where number one is your most preferred. You would provide those, compile them, provide them back to staff, and then we would have probably around two to three staff members help calculate those and compile those into a worksheet that we can give back to council when you come back together to make those appointments. And so you would start with the candidate showing the strongest combined support of council. And then this would still allow for all of your deliberation and your appointments to occur in open session using that worksheet as a starting point on maybe a common candidate. And with that, I will entertain any questions or any feedback you have on changing this process.

Questions, counsel? I don't have any questions, but Stephanie, I appreciate all the work that you did on this. I know it was with all your other stuff going on. This wasn't an easy task. And I think you hit all of the points that I was trying to make last year when we went through trying to decide boards. I think this is a. A more effective way of appointing our members to boards and committees so that we have the time to make sure that we have the right people going to each of those. And so I just hope that you all agree with this and that we can we can move this into the process. Anything further, counsel.

I would just ask, how do we take into account recommendations from the boards themselves on the individuals? How do we leverage that? That's a good question.

And that's not something we've done before seeking board recommendations. We have staff recommendations before. One thing we could potentially do is we typically give these applications to your board liaison at the same time that we give them to council so they can work on recommendations and we might ask them to take them back to their boards or back to their board chair. Some boards will not meet before council appoints, but we could have them maybe send that information out and get some feedback from their board and then provide that in our transmittal memo when we bring it back to council. AND OR GIVEN IF WE MAKE THE CHANGE IN PROCESS ON USING A WORKSHEET TO RANK THEM AHEAD OF TIME AS WELL, WE'D PROBABLY WANT TO WORK THROUGH THAT PROCESS AND I THINK WE COULD DEFINITELY FIGURE OUT A WAY TO GET THAT INFORMATION BACK TO COUNCIL SO THAT CAN BE PART OF YOUR CONSIDERATION WHEN YOU'RE FILLING OUT YOUR WORKSHEET.

I think it's very important that the boards, the working boards, they know what they need. They know what individuals and what skill sets that they're looking for. So I think it's important that we have some piece of that in the process.

So in opening and closing, the board, I guess applicants, Leaving it open 12 months right now allows for us to direct people in general that want to serve. They get to go through and they could see. My concern would be that they wanted to serve Parks and Rec. It's not open. They have to remember, oh, that one doesn't open for six months. So it'll be closed by the time they contact one of us and we say, hey, get your application in. They missed it. So you kind of lose the ability to plug and play some sometimes closer to the nomination. So do you have the ability to notice the people that maybe have already applied or would counsel consider not closing those? That way it can remain open. or maybe council just directs staff to receipt those so you can apply prior to it opening, it'll automatically go into the queue.

I think just from a staff perspective, I don't think it would be hard for us to manage the process of leaving them open all of the time. And as we're getting those applications, we can hand touch those in our responses. They'll get a response from, from us anytime they apply, but we can reach out further to say, Hey, we saw you applied for the parks and rec board. We want to let you know that might not be coming back for six months, but your application stays on file for a year. And, and we will bring your name forward when the time comes.

Well, I would say, I mean, I think I like the idea of having a certain time of the year where we really promote all the people applying. I think we used to do it like this before, I guess, several years ago. And then I guess it got combined to one. And I don't know whether we got more or less applicants out of that. But I kind of agree with the mayor. I think the more time we give people, if there's a time right before the end of the year, you can apply for all of them. And then even up into the point, if we're about to appoint a board in April, reminding people that, hey, you can still apply for that, so that we're communicating that. I do think having all the applications, I think people have gotten in the habit of knowing that November or whatever the time frame is is when we promoted that you could feel that we still have that but I think leaving the Applications open as we approach the dates for the other ones would be a good idea as well.

Thank you That's a great idea and we will work with our partners in the office of engagement and innovation They help get this out onto social media for us And if there are other ideas that council has on how to better get this word out We will use any avenues we can because we definitely want our citizens to be involved in and participating in these boards

So I'm thinking we may have a proposal to you that's a little bit better. So boards are open for a set time, officially open. This is when we're promoting advertising these boards that are open for consideration. So people will hear that. But then the policy would be anytime you want to serve, we could direct you. You can go on, you can fill out your application, put it in for what board you'd like to serve on or multiple, and it will automatically be queued in that. They wouldn't have to remember to come back and reapply or wait until it was open. correct so i think i'm great on that if you guys are good that's still in line with where you were i think that works great okay only other thing i don't know that the ranking uh as an as an option i think it's great uh the worksheet i think is good i think filling out the worksheet handing it back to staff for it to be somewhat totaled tallied and then brought back in a in a commission or a council meeting wouldn't be my preference What I would like is I'd love to see that worksheet filled out by the boards with their recommendations staff. We appreciate y'all's way in. Sometimes you guys have working relationships with different citizens that you think would be good. But then from the council level, I would like to propose 2 different things. Councilman read. 1. MAYBE JUST AN AGREEMENT OF DISCUSSION. SO NOMINATIONS DON'T HAVE TO BE QUICKEST DRAW. YOU KNOW, SO YOU MAKE A NOMINATION, I SECOND. NOW WE HAVE TO TAKE ACTION ON THAT. COUNCILMAN TIFFS DIDN'T GET AN OPPORTUNITY. SO THE WAY THAT WOULD WORK IS, DO WE HAVE ANY NOMINATIONS? YOU'D MAKE A NOMINATION. WE WOULD HOLD THE SECOND UNTIL WE'VE VETTED THAT WE DON'T HAVE ANY FURTHER NOMINATIONS. BUT AT THE POINT WHERE YOU MAKE ONE, DON MAKES ONE, I MAKE ONE, then we're at a position where we can have discussion and then we would allow for a second once all nominations were made. Does that line up with what you were thinking or did I misunderstand the way you wanted to have that roll out?

I think the purpose behind doing the ranking and another method that we looked at that I'll share as well is to, in essence, give counsel a little ballot during the meeting with all the candidates and you circle your favorite and we pass those down. Those are tallied and then we present that first person. So I think the worksheet just you get the whole voice of counsel. in that to give you a starting point to be a little more efficient. If you were to discuss and go down the row and everybody says, this is my person, then you would be doing that maybe live in the meeting and that may accomplish the same goal.

I think it could be just as beneficial utilizing the worksheet without it needing to be filled out beyond your capability. So if you have seven applicants, there's a good chance I don't know five of them. And so how I am to rank those last five, and if I have a preference of this is the one lady that I know would be fantastic, I want to push for her on animal management, then I've done my homework and I kind of have what I need going into the meeting. So what I would do is just pull back a little from the need to have ranked all of them to see where they fall. So I may rank somebody as a five and y'all rank them as a one. Well, it's pretty arbitrary as to why I ranked them a five. and now in a public discussion this person who just wants to serve their community is being discussed on kind of a caliper of you know what did we see what did we not see so to avoid that the worksheet if we implement that council doesn't need to rank them you guys can be aware of them but then the boards we would love recommendations and the staff And Council, I'm good if you guys want to push back on that. I just think it's an additional homework assignment that is going to require you maybe to defend something that you weren't necessarily trying to say. Councilman?

Well, I think one of the things, and Councilmember Ree can correct me if I'm wrong on this, but one of the things he wanted to be, and I think one of the changes was, you know, if we're going to consider somebody, he wanted to have had the opportunity to talk with them Before we come up here, so I'm just kind of considered that's still something that he wants to accomplish. How does that how does that work out of being able to identify? Because I think. What this this did accomplish was identifying where was there some consensus on the council? of who may be the stronger candidates to put on there. And if we get this list before the meeting, that if Council Member Reid or myself says, well, I wasn't really thinking about that one, but a couple of others, and I want to have a chance to talk with that person before we go to the appointment, which would expedite this, but if it comes in just like we've had before, if there's someone that comes up but we have no advance notice, then it could delay the appointment if one of us wants to talk to them. Not the worst thing in the world. The other thing is, you know, if we don't want council necessarily to you know, to say we've got to have them, you know, we're going to list them one to 28 if there's 80 seaboard members, you know, would it be beneficial to say, well, hey, maybe there's ranking the top five or 10 or half, if there's four people apply, you're ranked two or something like that. I mean, I understand of saying, okay, we're just going to, you know, uh you know rank everybody from one but to see where there's some consensus of people saying this might be something that would be interested in would that be a value to council to determine hey where do i spend my time before we have that meeting understood councilman

My objective was, being that that was our first, for Councilman Prescott and myself, that was our first one to work through, and I just thought that that was bizarre trying to point that number of positions and not knowing who the people were who were having the chance. It's not that you would call them or speak to them in any sense, but you had the opportunity to do it. The way it was set up, you really didn't have the opportunity to do that. I KNOW IN THIS LAST ONE THAT WE HELD OUT LAST MEETING, I CALLED EACH ONE OF THEM AND HAD A GOOD CONVERSATION WITH THEM AND I FELT GOOD ABOUT IT AS WE WENT THROUGH THAT PROCESS. AND FOR ME, IT SOLIDIFIED THAT THAT WAS THE RIGHT WAY TO DO IT. AS COUNCILMAN, THAT'S YOUR DECISION WHETHER OR NOT YOU WANT TO TALK TO PEOPLE BEFOREHAND OR NOT. BUT I THINK THAT ON MY END, THAT'S AN IMPORTANT THING.

Only goal in that, just to bring a point to it, would be not to have an engagement where I may say, Councilman Reed, how did you rank? Mrs. Smith? Well, I ranked her a seven. Oh, okay, so she's the bottom of your list. I got you. Why do you not like her? Well, that's not what I'm saying, sir. I don't know her. Well, so you unfairly ranked her. So let's keep in mind that this is a political venue, and it does allow for politics that are not in the decorum that we're seeking, right? So in putting that tool in people's hands in the future, we're setting somewhat of a precedent. If we don't rank individuals negatively where it's perceived that way, I think it's one less thing that could be misheard the wrong way. So in already having to vote against an individual, because there are times that we say, no, I'm not voting for that person. That comes at a cost and a consequence. Sometimes you find yourself on the other end of the phone having to say, here's why I couldn't support you. All I want to avoid is I love everything that you guys are doing. I appreciate the progress, the tri-annual, bringing it about, breaking it out, bite-sizing it, the recommendations, the board involvement, fantastic policies. The only thing I would try to avoid would just be the numeric values that are going to be placed on people that are just trying to serve. But I do like discussion, and I think we ought to be able to see all the lists and take recommendations. But just on a compare and contrast at the council level, I would hold off on that one implementation. So you guys can do with that what you would like. That's just kind of my piece on it. When would we expect this back? We may chew this up for a minute.

We would start bringing an ordinance back probably in August, September timeframe to update to the triennial. And if council wanted to think on the actual appointment process, that would be procedural. So that wouldn't go into the ordinance and we could iron that out a little more later.

I THINK YOU WOULD HAVE THE DIRECTION YOU WOULD NEED TO GO AHEAD AND MOVE FORWARD WITH THE UPDATE ON THE ORDINANCE. GIVES COUNCIL A MINUTE TO THINK ABOUT MAYBE THE RANKING SYSTEM. AND THEN MY RECOMMENDATION WOULD BE LET'S DO ONE WITH JUST THE WORKSHEET IMPLEMENTED WITHOUT IT BEING KIND OF OBLIGATORY FOR COUNCIL TO NUMERICALLY RANK EACH POTENTIAL SERVANT. AND THEN LET'S SEE HOW WELL THAT FUNCTIONS. AND THEN IF WE WANT TO ADD THAT IN LATER, THAT COULD BE THE NEXT STEP. Council, you guys good with that?

So let me just on the logistics of the ranking. So we're saying the staff and the board would participate in a? Recommendation. Recommendation. And how would that work?

I think that what we're thinking is the same worksheet would be provided in advance to, let's say, the Parks and Rec Board. And so they're going to have an open discussion. And they could choose to say, this is our top recommendation and the only. Or this is our top recommendation, but then we also have two and three we think they would be good to. It would be up to them. We wouldn't be implementing on that board a requirement that we're not wanting. So I'm not wanting to rank all 17 people because of the deliberation that could take place. So I wouldn't ask that board to have them ranked and voted on. So I would just ask for recommendations. Same way with staff. If staff has good working relationship on a board, existing board member, we recommend that you re-up this individual one more term.

And then council's free to either take their suggestions or not.

I don't know. Do we have the ability to make nominations still of people that did not apply? Or did we remove that opportunity?

We removed that. So your new ordinance says they have to have an application on file. Now, that being said, if you were to get a recommendation from staff or from an advisory board, you don't have to take that recommendation.

I guess what I was talking about is, like, if 15 people apply for the Parks and Rec Board and they give us the names are two or three, were, I mean, it's still up to us to determine out of that 15 who would be on there. So there's a little bit of political at that, too, if you have a board that is recommending someone as a group, and then it comes to the council, and we're rejecting the board recommendation for some reason. There's a little bit of...

Same with staff. I think it's safer for staff not to make recommendations, but I think that the good outweighs the bad. We'd like to hear what you have to say, and we understand you may not agree with it, but we still want to hear it. I don't like, I think there for a little while we were discouraging that, and we felt that somewhat of a loss to see maybe what does staff think, you know, who's worked with these individuals, but The board recommendation would be the add to. We haven't seen that. Council, do you like both of those, or would you rather limit it to just board, not ask the staff? What are your thoughts?

And can I add something really quick? Because I see a lot of value in what Councilmember Prescott brought up about looking to the Board. Just keep in mind, due to time constraints on when we're receiving applications, when we're bringing them back for appointment, there may not exist an ability to get a full Board recommendation due to the Texas Open Meetings Act if we can't get them together to discuss that and bring a recommendation forward. So it may be that liaison working with some of them individually to review and maybe give some recommendation. Councilman.

I think to answer your question, Mayor, the more folks that we can have looking at this and know the applicants, the better. So staff and board members.

Okay. Councilman, did you have something? No, I was just thinking, I mean, I guess because you're saying the limitations on when the board meets, is that why you'd say that? Yeah. Is there any way that we can, if we know that those nominations are coming up or the vacancies are coming up, can we not make sure we get that to them prior and say council needs a recommendation?

We can try to. We may have to get it to them individually and receive feedback from them individually. It just depends on when people apply. Because if they apply towards the end of the process, it may be after a meeting, for example. So, yeah.

Kind of cumbersome.

It is, but it's because I think this council places a high value on the boards. And I think we're wanting to be able to hear from those boards more, rely on them, refer things back to them. So I think it's transitioned from maybe just a, I think this person's a good person. They may do a good job. I'm going to nominate them haphazardly. I think we're wanting to see those working boards get utilized. So I know it's additional work, but I think it is a good outcome overall with the size of our city and the growth. I like the staff having to say like, we recommend this or that, and we can still do it professionally.

So two questions. So the logistics of the parks on the board, not just parks and rec, would be they're going to get together in a meeting and do this, or would they do individually and then it be brought up?

I think they would do individually more than likely, unless they have a meeting in that time frame where they might want to discuss it.

Okay. And then I guess the only other logistical question that I would just want to know is, when will that information get to the council so that we know, you know, who we're going to be considering for that?

We would have to work out the logistics on that, Councilmember Simpson, but when we give you your packet of applicants, we would provide that to the liaison to that board as well so that they can get that out to their members and start getting that feedback back.

I just think whatever we come up on our appointment date, the sooner that council can get that, I think the better. Just so that, you know, if there's eight or ten people on there that we want to talk to or we haven't talked to or I don't know or another council member knows that wants to talk to that, we don't. come up all the way till December, whatever we're doing the appointment, and then half of us say, well, I haven't talked to, you know, so I think the sooner we can get that, the better off we'd be before that meeting.

I think we give you about a month to review everything. And so if we were to get that to the liaison, I think a reasonable time may be to have them get us something back in two weeks and give you two weeks to then review through their recommendations. Thank you.

Anything further? OK, would ask you to just take the direction you can there. Maybe work on that ordinance with what you've got and then we'll take it from there.

OK, thank you.

Thank you, Miss City Secretary. Item 4.3 Mr. Path to propose a few changes to our organizational chart.

Yes, mayor members of Council. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today, but I want to walk you through is an update to the executive leadership structure of the organization that lead on your behalf. Today, I'm presenting proposed revisions to the city's executive organizational structure, and I'll outline the timeline for how this will move forward. This is an informational item. I want you all to have the full picture and the full reasoning before it takes effect. Before I get into the structure itself, I want to acknowledge Rich Guyon. Rich has served our entity faithfully for over 10 years with much skill and talent, and his absence is going to be missed. With that, his departure is the reason I began this exercise. Losing an assistant city manager gave me the opportunity to step back and ask the bigger question, is our current structure the right one for the work ahead, or is it time to make some changes? That question led to a broader look at how our executive team is organized and not just how to backfill one seat. So as I went through the process, I thought hard about where is my time as city manager best spent. I came to three ultimate directions. First off, upwards towards you as a governing body. A lot of my time is spent on regular council meetings, individual meetings with you all individually each month. ongoing communications that we have, whether it be email, phone calls, in-person meetings, so forth. Again, a lot of my time is tied towards city council. Secondly, as a city manager, a lot of my time is best spent towards outward, looking at our regional partners, community activities, EDC, the MPO, CREMWA, and the many other boards and programs that I'm taking part in and I want to take more part in going forward. And thirdly, a lot of my time is best spent citywide on policy direction or strategy or budget or risk analysis or legal and high stakes matters that only I can carry. Between these three things, there is very little margin left for me to handle the day-to-day operations of departments directly. It's not a complaint. that it's the reality of a job at this size of a city, and it's exactly why the structure of my executive team matters so much. This is also a good moment to explain the philosophy behind how I built this team over the last two years. When I arrived, executive portfolios were built for around breadth. Mixing unrelated departments together under one executive, the idea being it would create more of a well-rounded leader, In practice, it creates some operational challenges. Departments that worked with each other daily had different executives or different bosses and that created friction or delay or sometimes some unclear accountability. So starting last year and even a little bit before that, I began moving departments together based on shared mission or I use the word affinity. and shared operational direction. I introduced, I brought back the concept of managing director. We have that. I added another one. And then, again, I grouped some departments together based off their shared missions. What I'm presenting today is a continuation of that philosophy, not a new one. What you have here, and you have both these, this one and the next in front of you at the dais, and these will also be on the website. I know I have to fly through this. This is our current structure today as we see it today. And this is where I'm taking it next. And so, again, you have this in front of you, and it will also be on the website going forward. And I'm going to walk through this here over the next few slides. Chief Operating Officer. So the most significant change here is a formal recognition of Andrew Freeman as not just the deputy city manager but also our chief operating officer of the COO. When an issue falls squarely within an ACM or Assistant City Manager's portfolio, that ACM will handle it from start to finish. But more times than not, most of our important issues cross layers or cross silos or cross portfolios or cross lanes. So when that happens, someone needs to step in across those lines on my behalf and bring the right people together and drive the issue to a resolution. That is the COO function. It is designed to extend my capacity as a chief administrative officer not to place a new layer of supervision of the ACMs. So Andrew's portfolio reflects a city-wide orientation, parts of our organization. Information technology touches every department and most resident interactions. Human resources support every employee in this organization. Finance touches every department, every expenditure, and every grant that we manage. And engagement innovation, OEI, houses our unified public communication efforts across all entities. None of these belong to one department. They belong to all of them across the entity, which is exactly why I want them to sit under this new coordinating executive designation, the COO. Alongside those functions, Andrew's portfolio will also include our grant-intensive departments, which is community development, it's public health, it's WIC, it's transit, led by managing director Jason Riddlesberger. He will also have airport, which is also very heavily federal-funded and regulated, and rounding that out, we have planning, library, and civic center. Shifting over to Donnie's area, the municipal infrastructure director. His portfolio is unchanged. If you look at the two charts side by side, his did not change. So he has public works, parks and recreation, water utilities, facilities, CP&D, building safety. These departments interact with each other daily. And having one executive over that portfolio who understands the full scope of our physical infrastructure allows faster decisions and better coordination among those departments. This matters even more right now as we prepare ourselves for our large wastewater treatment plant project, one of the largest capital projects that we have taken on in many, many decades. Regarding our public safety portfolio, I'm shifting the public safety director designation from Andrews where it currently sits as a DCM, I'm shifting it to the ACM role that Rich is vacating. Police, fire, emergency management, our intelligence liaison function, city marshal, municipal court, and animal management and welfare share a public protection mission that sets them apart from the rest of city government. Police and fire by far the large departments in this portfolio operating under unique legal frameworks including chapter 143 and are engaged in ongoing labor and association negotiations. But every department in this portfolio, large and small, shares the rest of what makes this grouping unique from the other groupings that I've created. They're the most visible functions of city government, and in today's environment, as a nation, they carry a lot of public scrutiny and complexity that simply cannot be managed as a secondary assignment by an executive. This portfolio needs a dedicated executive. To that end, we are actively recruiting for this assistant city manager and public safety director position. Both internal and external candidates are sought for this. We've engaged strategic government resources, or SGR, to lead this search, and we expect the process to take roughly four to six months to fill that position. In the meantime, I will serve as the interim manager over public safety departments with andrew assisting me when it comes to the ongoing association negotiations he's as as the current club safety director he is a strong a leg up on me on a few things so i want continuity to be maintained on those critical discussions so he will assist me with those efforts I want to address directly why we are filling this position rather than simply redistributing the work among Donnie and Andrew. The budget savings from leaving it vacant are real but modest in comparison to what's actually lost. What we would lose in exchange is far more significant, slower response times, reduced oversight for departments, less time availability between departments and managers, and overall more things getting up to my level than necessary need to get to my level. This position isn't overhead. It is organizational capacity. And the return on that investment shows up every day in how well we manage our city. I also want to address something directly because it's a natural instinct when people look at org charts, departments, budgets, and so forth. When people look at a structure like this, they often reach for budget figures or employee counts to judge whether the workload is fairly distributed. Those numbers tell part of the story, but not the whole story. Remember, as a city, we are a very dynamic entity. We are not all building widgets. It's a very dynamic entity all across our organization. A department's demand on executive leadership is shaped just as much by its regulatory environment, its public visibility, and the frequency of crisis it manages as much as it is by size. Some of our small departments require more sustained executive attention than some of our larger ones. I also want to note three positions that are not changing. The city attorney continues to directly respond to me. Legal counsel needs to remain independent and directly accessible to myself and to counsel. Internal audit will also continue to answer directly to me, again, preserving the independence that this function has. And the city secretary remains under my direct supervision given how closely that office works as tied to the governing body. A few additional adjustments to round this out. A vital statistics is moving to the city secretary's office. It's currently housed under utility billing, but given the city secretary under legal and functional responsibility under state law, I'm looking at moving it from billing to Stephanie's office. UTILITY BILLING IS MOVING DIRECTLY UNDER OUR CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, TIGHTENING THE CONNECTION BETWEEN BILLING AND FINANCIAL REPORTING, AND OUR 311 CALL CENTER IS MOVING TO OEI, ALIGNING IT WITH OUR BROADER COMMUNICATION EXPERTISE IN OEI. CURRENTLY IT'S UNDER THE UTILITY BILLING DEPARTMENT. couple more slides. As for timing, this governing body was briefed individually regarding these proposed changes. I've also introduced it to department heads prior to today's meeting. Our current organization remains unchanged as of this moment. So unless City Council requests this opportunity to be revisited at a future time, my plan is for this change to take effect starting tomorrow. Lastly, I want to close by again thanking Rich Guyon for his many years of wonderful service to the City of Amarillo. And I'd like to thank each of you for your time and attention today. I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have about this. And I'll go back to the chart. Questions, Council?

Councilman Simpson?

One thing I noticed, and I appreciate the thoughtfulness that goes into this, and I think this is a good plan. A couple questions. One is, currently you have HR falling directly under you.

Correct.

And I know when you changed that, you felt like there were some beneficial reasons on that. Why now you're, I guess, putting it back under Andrew. Tell me a little bit about that change, I guess, or moving HR from directly to you to...

Yes. Again, part of this is, back to what I said before, where is my time best spent? A lot of HR is very policy driven and very day to day. I will continue to get certain matters to my level. Even before I changed it a year ago, it was under an ACM position, I still was involved in certain matters. That will not change because I'm the city manager. There's certain things that do get to me, but there's a lot of things in HR that Andrew can front for me that will free up my time when it comes to certain reviews of matters. And so, again, given HR is city-wide focused, I really would like for the HR, the communications, the IT, and finance to be coordinating together as how do we as city-wide focus entities think that way. And that's best under Andrew.

And then the public safety director, I guess with that, we're looking for someone, I mean, I haven't seen the job description, but someone that has perhaps led police, fire, something, I mean, that has direct experience in public safety.

Ideally, yes. And so, yes, we've not finished up the final job description, but I would say probably a preferred direction would be someone who has indeed been in that line of work or has overseen that line of work before.

Yes. Yeah. And I like that thought of being able to do that. The only one other thing that I would say, and I mean you and I have kind of talked about this, but when you look at the changes that we're making here, of course the city secretary, the internal auditor, city attorney, and then you have the three others are pointing to you. You're actually going from, I guess, eight direct reports to six for you, which I have no problem with. But I just think the thing that I would want to keep in mind is, and I really look at communication. When you've got such a large organization as the city, communication is the most key thing and it's the hardest thing to do. Especially if things are not rising to your level, for whatever reason that may be. And really, you're taking two people now that may have talked to you more regularly. Sometimes you learn things formally. Sometimes it's just informally or those types of things. The only thing that I would just encourage is an emphasis on making sure that the entire organization is communicating up so when issues don't get caught somewhere that they don't make it to either the assistant city manager's desk or the COO's desk or your desk because that's when we really find ourselves in problems when there's a problem that exists within the organization but it doesn't make it up to a level where we can say hey we've got a problem here and being able to direct it so I have no problems with the reorganization but I do think it takes a couple of eyes and ears on the ground or people that are working that may have been interacting with you a good bit that I think is all the more important than the people that are working for you in the organization or making sure you do an absolute great job of communicating with us and the same information, anything that you know, you tell us about and keep the council aware of it. I also think the same thing with the organization, making sure that you're keeping aware. Neither you nor your key staff or the council gets blindsided by a problem or something, and that communication works itself up.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Grayson, under Jason Riddlesberger, he's in two spots. Is there going to be a...

So as a managing director, again, the distinction that I've been making between ACM and managing director is managing director has a day-to-day department they oversee. He is a day-to-day director for community development. And so that's his primary responsibility. But he also, given the affinity of the departments he oversees, public health, environmental health, WIC, and transit as well. So again, I try to balance, I try to be very careful about overload ability capacity and so forth and so again i'm very picky about who i select as managing directors jason and jerry have done an outstanding job of the last year of balancing that workload and i know looking at jason i've actually added i'm actually adding transit to his current load is right now if you look at it you cut transit off that's his load but after watching what he's done his capabilities i'm very impressed with what jason can do and i know he can he's got he's got an excellent staff beneath him in community development

he has the ability to take on transit as well thank you anything from this side council no okay um mr path thank you for the presentation um looking at this in the flow right uh i i can definitely support a public safety director. I also know what you lost in Rich and hiring that specialized individual with all things IT and all the programs that he was working on that have to do with automation and the way we were gonna streamline our customers, our constituents and taxpayers. You know, we still have a lot of work left to do over there. So I think in you trying to work within the chart the way you've got it, It's a much easier position to hire for the public safety director, and it goes to a lot of our strategic pillars and in prioritizing, you know, the continued improvements for all things public safety. Correct. In our previous meeting, when we had a workshop, we talked about operational capacity, executive capacity. governance capacity right and so in in the one thing we identified in that was that your mayor and council are in operations too much right they are there to go between the conduit between the taxpayer or the paying customer and that need that they're trying to get met within the organization so I'm curious if if this COO position which so Mr. Freeman is is now in command of operations right he's overseeing these operations that you have underneath him but is is he your right hand guy for all operations and can we spin that up when we're talking about operational capacity does your budget allow for an additional role to be handled there where that is a special operations response member that can tackle whatever's not getting done. Because I think what's happening is if you look organizationally, we have employees that work their way up. So it doesn't always come straight to the mayor's email of, hey, I've got a problem, you know, in my department. They've gone through HR, they've gone through ACMs, you know, before it gets to you or to me, that is the way it should function. It's not functioning that way for Joe Public. Joe Public looks at this chart and they go, okay, I'm the boss, I'm the Emerald of Citizen, that makes sense, we love that. I'm paying your bills. My direct contact is mayor and council. So they reach out to mayor and council. So if you can connect a special operations, you know, not department, but a special operations command, I think that's what we were trying to do with Rich. My hope when I first heard a 311, oh, you mean you can take a photo of the tree branch laying in the middle of the road? and it'll immediately upload to that department and you'll see a work order and they're gonna text you back like tree limb has been removed from a potential hazard in the street. None of that ever happened. And so because the citizen doesn't get that, they do get on the phone and they call or they email Mayor and Council, we're now in your operations. So I email you directly, you give it over, and within that same afternoon, the staff performs in an excellent way. Unfortunately, I get the credit and I become that individual's go-to guy, and we're not getting the credit to that team member that should get it. And that citizen is now being taught and conditioned a bad pathway of how to work through our organization. And I don't ever want to be their go-to. Unfortunately, I think that's somewhat of the way we're functioning. And so if we can improve on the operational response, then your staff member, that guy, sorry to say a name, but like Justin Opal is a fantastic example of a specialized individual in a hard to navigate department where anytime you've gotten hung up in, why am I being classified in this for my business? Why can I not get through my plans? How come my architect didn't submit all of the stuff over there in CPD&E? he does a great job of navigating that. And so can we look at something like that with this structure and potentially work on that? Or is that what this COO position is going to help to attack?

Well, a few things, might I submit that I think while it may seem like you are getting lots of communications, might I offer that on the scale of what the city itself gets, I think yours are more the exception versus the rule. So most communications are going to relay through channels, whether it's directly to public works or planning or police. So we are getting lots of those. But for the ones you do receive, it is still appropriate to continue to get those to me. And so continue to do that. I would offer that if you're looking to extend the credit to staff, the citizen may look to you to do that for us. And so please, yes, if you, if Justin Opal or Anthony Smale, whatever, was the hero of the day, I would request you please, yes, praise that employee for that role. That way the citizen knows Justin's the hero I can go to, or Anthony's the hero I can go to, or Amanda's the hero I can go to, so there's that. For this organization chart, operationally, again, Andrew will not be the supervisor of Donnie or the other ACM. That would tend to be myself. So when an item, when an issue comes to you or comes to me that involves strictly parks and recreation, Andrew will be a part of that. It would be Donnie and Michael Kashuba. Now, if an item comes across that involves its planning, you've got a park involved, and you've got public safety, That's when Andrew steps in, because I now have three chiefs, exec managers, who are all on one project, and I need an executive to kind of help cord them together. So that's when Andrew will be more involved. And again, if it's an item that's strictly in library, that's Andrew's again. So that will get taken care of that way. I'll continue to redirect traffic along those lines. And again, if an item does cross lines, portfolios, Andrew will be the one to help kind of drive that to completion. Again, not to do the work for them, But just to make sure that the city is being taken care of, time doesn't get dropped, that the councilor is getting communicated back to and those things. And there are still things, as a city manager, I can talk to anyone I want to. So if I need to go talk to Mitch, I'll go find Mitch. And if I need to talk to Kashuba, I'll go find Michael Kashuba kind of thing. But again, I do tend to stay through the chain. But once in a while, it's just good for them to see me once in a while. So that happens too.

Okay, so I follow the thinking. Let me ask an important question that I think most of us are wondering. You know, Rich was intricate in building out systems that were going to be automated. They were going to be digitized. They were going to be customer oriented. relations through a system where they could get navigation simply who who is stepping up to take care of those and complete those so 311 is a great example you know who's going to take that over and take that charge on so we can see that system can we get another microphone that one's dead okay

There we go. So that'll end up falling under me as well in coordination with OEI Kristen that'll have 311, but also with Missy and IT as Chief Information Officer. She took a lot of that role on once Rich kind of elevated to Chief Technology Officer, but we were also going to be continuing to work with Rich over this next six months to try and close out some of the work we were doing with him. That includes looking at the technology side of things, how we communicate amongst staff, how we track our performance, our metrics. So none of that's stopping. We're going to continue to work through those leadership programs and technology improvements. Okay. All right. Thank you.

Any other questions, council? Okay. Mr. Path, thank you for the presentation. I don't think we've got anything further. Thank you. All right, let's do one more and then we'll take a quick recess. So right now we're gonna invite up Mr. Kashuba. Red, white, and boom event. You're a little... prettier than Mr. Koshuba. Sorry, wasn't looking.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. I'm not Michael Koshuba. My name is Becky Dreyer. I'm Assistant Director for Amarillo Parks and Recreation, and I'm going to do the red, white, and boom recap. um so as many of you know this was an important year for our nation it is the 250th anniversary of the signing of the declaration of independence and we were very excited to be able to celebrate in our own special way here in amarillo with this event the celebration actually started on july 3rd we have to close the park anyway to do some setup prep for the day after we decided to take advantage of that and we did a glow run that night. It was the first time we've done this event. It was a come and go at your own pace, untimed. It was a lot of fun. We had a lot of attendees come and they walked, they ran, they biked, they walked their little fur babies, and they were all decked out in their neon and glow gear. So it was a great event, especially for a first time, and we had 900 people attend that night. The next day was the main event, July 4th. As you remember, it was on July 5th last year, and we decided to move it to the 4th. Our attendance for the event was 21,400 people. We had an average dwell time of 129 minutes, and the budget that we had to work with, thank you to council, was $130,000. An event of this size and magnitude takes a lot of partners, sponsors, donors, and volunteers, and I'd like to take a minute just to recognize those who helped with the event. First, our partner, Outdoor Amarillo. They're a nonprofit that helps support parks, and they were responsible for hiring the bands, organizing with them, the stage, the AV. They helped with the VIP area, and then also the beer garden. They solicit sponsors to help pay for their portion of the event, so all of the sponsorship money goes to Outdoor Amarillo. We want to thank their sponsors, Amarillo National Bank, Toot & Totem, Xcel Energy, and Tyson. Also, they had some donors that helped to offset the cost of what they had to pay for, so we want to thank Reed Beverage, Panhandle Pier, A Team Rentals, A1 Rocket, and Display Concepts. Connoisseur Media was also a partner of ours. They gave us some advertisement, radio advertisement, and they also helped play the soundtrack for the firework and drone show that night. I also want to thank our city departments. You know, I appreciate all the help that they give. It really, you know, the biggest is that they have to sacrifice their holiday to work to help put on this community event. And I really appreciate all of them doing that. Everybody from public safety, transit, traffic, environmental health, solid waste, animal management, fleet, and Amarillo Library. I appreciate the emergency management, Office of Emergency Management. They helped put the emergency action plan together. That's all those what-if scenarios that nobody likes to talk about, but at this day and age, we have to talk about. And it's nice to know and give us all peace of mind knowing that we have that plan ready to go. I also want to thank the volunteers. CERT helps us staff the first aid stations. Amazing Grace Church provided us volunteers to set up and take down in the kid zone. AES helped with traffic management. London Lechner was the 10-year-old powerhouse who sang the national anthem that night. And then Don Johnson and his pilots did an amazing flyover. Also listed out our vendors that helped provide a lot of services that evening. Just to let you know how we marketed the event, as I mentioned, Connoisseur Radio, they did 200 radio spots to help advertise. We did 17 Facebook posts, which led to 687,000 impressions and 877 new followers. We did some media as well as outdoor advertising. We did two billboards, and we did yard signs at our parks, facilities, and splash pads. I want to say thank you to City Transit. They provided free shuttles that evening to get people to the park. They transported 1,300 people, which was 200 more than last year. They had three pickup locations, Randall High School, Amarillo High School, and then new this year was the North Civic Center lot. So they had almost 200 people there that they transported at the Civic Center. The event itself, we started off, we had a DJ to open the night, and then we had two concerts. Stealing Handshakes was the opener, and the Drop Tines were the headlining band. We had 34 food trucks. We reached out to all of them for feedback. Seven came back to us, and five of those seven had said that they sold out that night. Some of the comments were it was the biggest event of the year. We had to take a break just to catch up on orders. Very busy, increased sales, and they ran out of cups to sell. I also want to thank the Recreation Department for the KidZone. They really do a great job to create a fun environment for families and all of the kiddos there to come and play. We had a lot of partners that are listed out there. I want to thank all of them for coming and helping out and being a partner and vendor with us in that area. We also did a sand volleyball tournament. We had 64 participants and then we did an Independence Day themed community paint project as well. We ended the night with a drone show in the fireworks. Unfortunately, just as the drone show was about to start, the rain started falling. And then right after the rain, there were giant wind gusts. The gusts were so high at one point that it actually blew the windshield off my golf cart. But luckily, they did die down after a while. We did have a delay. One thing that we need to do better next year, which we've made note of, is how we communicate that delay. But I am happy that we were able to do it that night. And both vendors, the Western Enterprises and Skyworks did an amazing show for everybody. Some ideas that we have for next year. You know, we had carnival rides next year. That was something that had to be taken out. When we moved the event from the 5th to the 4th, the price of the drone show and firework shows went up because it's a very high demand day. So I had to make some cuts. So it would be great to be able to bring the carnival ride back. There is a supplemental request coming at budget for that if you would like to bring those back. We'd also love to do more in the kid zone by adding a stage. We talked about car show, bike parade, kickball, cornhole, and wiffle ball tournament. So I want to just finish up by thanking everybody who was involved with this event. I'd be remiss not to thank the parks department, you know, everybody from park maintenance who got the park ready to all of the staff from our executive team all the way down to our 15-year-old lifeguards and program attendants who worked the event that day, helped with the planning, all the loading, the setup. I'd like to thank Michael and James. It's really nice to have directors that I work with who aren't afraid to take out the trash DIRECT TRAFFIC AND PITCH IN. I REALLY APPRECIATE THEM. ALSO, I WANT TO THANK CITY MANAGEMENT AND COUNCIL. YOU KNOW, I APPRECIATE ALL THE HELP AND SUPPORT YOU GIVE US, NOT ONLY FROM THE DIAS, BUT FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO ATTENDED. YOU KNOW, IT MEANS A LOT TO STAFF FOR YOU TO COME OUT AND ACTUALLY SUPPORT OUR EVENTS, SO I WANT TO THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR DOING THAT. I'D BE HAPPY TO GET ANY, IF YOU HAVE ANY FEEDBACK OR HAVE ANY RECOMMENDATIONS FOR NEXT YEAR, I'D LOVE TO HEAR IT, OR IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT THE EVENT.

QUESTIONS OR REMARKS, COUNCIL?

No, just great job. You could tell it was all hands on deck as it was the first year, but this year as well. Everybody did a fantastic job, especially the growth that y'all have seen just in one year's time was incredible. So just really just great job. I know we enjoyed it. I don't think these two went, but the others did. But it was a really good job.

Thank you. Be sure to point out the two.

Oh, I did. Any other remarks guys? Fantastic job. Michael, James, your team, your entire team, you guys pull off a huge event. Most of us just get to show up and enjoy it. We think it's, you know, just a few easy phone calls and everything just comes together. That's not how it works. You guys are already planning for the next one. You transitioned over to the fourth, you know, this year, no flaws. Every year it gets better and better. We love it. It allows you a platform to build on all the other events you guys are doing. We love what we're seeing, movie night in the park, all the other things you're doing. And so we're just grateful to see you guys own it and engage and enjoy it. And we can tell that you're enjoying that part of your job. And so thank you for a job well done. We appreciate it. Bring us back the budget request. I think we want to continue to support you guys more and more.

Thank you.

Thank you. All right, hey, let's take a quick recess. It's 4.35. We'll take 15 minutes. We'll be right back and finish up. We're gonna go ahead and call ourselves back into session. Appreciate everybody for coming back. We have successfully completed 4.4, a recap from our Parks and Rec Department. We're gonna move into item 4.5, budget status update, Mr. Path.

Yes. Mayor, members of council, I thank you for the opportunity to provide a status update for your fiscal year 2026-2027 budget work and the upcoming budget workshops, which are now planned for August 11th, 13th, and the 14th. And with this, I want to acknowledge that we did move the workshops. They were originally scheduled to be yesterday, today, or tomorrow, but we'll talk about that in a moment here. So this budget is our number one focus staff right now. The team has been working extensively over the past several weeks, but as we evaluated our progress, where we were, it became clear that some additional time was necessary to ensure that the level of preparation and clarity that you and the public expect is there. Rather than bring you a budget that was still incomplete and place it in front of you the morning of the workshop, we felt it was more responsible to adjust the schedule and push it back a couple weeks. So to support this effort, we have assembled a strong cross-departmental group here, a team here is working on this. The core team members include Deputy City Manager Andrew Freeman, City Secretary Stephanie Coggan, Chief Financial Officer Lola Ogun-Remy, FINANCE DIRECTOR KATRINA OWENS, TREASURER JUSTIN BLACKSTOCK, ASSISTANT CITY MANAGER DONNY HOOPER, MANAGING DIRECTOR JERRY DANFORTH, DIRECTOR OF INTERNAL AUDIT NEIL GERBER, AS WELL AS FINANCE STAFF, INTERNAL AUDIT STAFF, AND MANY OTHER DEPARTMENT STAFF ARE WORKING ON THIS. EACH OF THESE INDIVIDUALS BRING IMPORTANT EXPERTISE FROM FINANCIAL ANALYSIS TO AUDIT CONTROLS TO CAPITAL PLANNING AND OPERATIONAL IMPACTS, AND THEY ARE FULLY ENGAGED ON THIS WORK TO GET THIS DONE BY THE MIDDLE OF AUGUST. As you know, when former Chief Financial Officer Laura Storrs retired, she took with her many years of institutional knowledge and budget experience that naturally takes time to rebuild. In light of that, I brought Laura back in a professional service agreement to advise and counsel us. Her role is focused on helping the team understand the history and context of prior budgets and decisions so that we can more accurately reflect long-term commitments, trends, and expectations that then we will present to you as counsel. This is a targeted use of our experience and it is already proving extremely helpful to the team. We are also working through the follow-up items that your pre-budget planning workshop earlier this year brought to us and making sure that questions and direction from that session are being addressed within the draft budget. That includes service levels, capital needs, cost recovery opportunities, and other policy priorities that you gave to us here a few months ago. On the revenue side of things, we have now received our certified values from the county, from the appraisal district, which allows us to move from estimates to more actual numbers for property tax calculations. So with those certified values in hand, the team is finalizing tax rate scenarios and their related impacts on the general fund and other affected funds. With this more accurate information, we are now better able to identify opportunities for funding, for supplementals, and for capital improvements needs throughout the budget. Our goal is to provide you with a draft budget here as many days prior to the August 11th workshop starting. rather than placing it in front of you the day of. That lead time is important so you can review the materials, identify questions, and come to the workshop ready for a deeper discussion and direction to staff. So with this, we understand the importance of this budget to the city council and the public. And we are committed to bring you a product that is both fiscally responsible and aligned with policy direction. So I appreciate the Mayor and Council's willingness and support to give us some additional time to work on this. And I'm happy for myself or my team to give you any general updates we can on the workshop. Questions, Council?

So, Mr. City Manager, Tell me with Mrs. Storrs, you're engaging with her, your discretion to do that. Correct. And so you reached out to her several weeks ago, I'm guessing, or last week?

About two of the weeks ago, yes.

So what I want to make sure we discuss and that we're understanding here in like the simple question of, like what problem are you solving there? I guess that's where, you know, my discussion would be with you is you said institutional knowledge, historical knowledge.

Yes.

Can you give me a specific or a problem that you're working through in the budget? So for me, budgets are real black and white. You know, we're carrying forward. We kind of know we're not necessarily a zero-based budget. So we are already bringing all of that knowledge in departmentally. I struggle to see where, you know, a former CFO needs to come back in and assist you. So could you help us understand that?

Unfortunately, budgets are not black and white. Budgets are much more historical documents than anything. A lot of history has gone into budget formations over years and years and years of time. So things about trend lines and contracts and things. And the CFO position, this is what Dr. Okunrimi is saying for herself, The CFO is the focal point for so much in the entity. As I said earlier, all departments are impacted by the CFO role. So whether it's contracts, projects, policies, agreements, the CFO has a role in most all of these functions here. So again, when Laura left, she took all that knowledge with her. And again, we've had other turnover and other positions throughout the city. We've had changing of positions throughout other positions here. She was the focal point for a lot of that. So bringing her back here was a common sense thing to do. Again, whenever you lose an employee, you will oftentimes bring them back for advice, for counsel, for guidance. She's not doing the work for us. Lola and Katrina and Justin and the team are doing the work. But again, having that extra set of eyes and historical context is critical for an entity of this size and complexity to give you guys a budget here sooner than later.

So the need to push the budget back a couple of weeks for the workshop in it not being ready. And I heard everything you said, and I appreciate you recapping that again. What I'm looking for is specifics. So specifically, like what wasn't ready in the budget? Are you waiting on departments to bring you items or what? Why did we need to push it two weeks? And then I'm compounding that with, okay, we need additional eyes, as you say, to engage. So specifically, like, what problem are you solving? What's not ready in the budget? Where are you not comfortable?

Well, there's, I mean, budget size is complex. I don't know if we had the time to go through the entire budget. No, no, no, just an example. But, Andrew, you want to give a few things? I know I've asked Andrew to kind of coordinate these efforts here for our workshop.

Yeah, so the draft budget from a department standpoint isn't really what we're focused on. So we met with department heads. We know what their requests are. We know where they're wanting to put line items. Where the CFO role and where Dr. Ogunremi is learning from Laura's expertise is the cash flows. It's tracking of how the capital plays out with what your available fund balance is for covering reserves, covering CIP projects, and then determining how much excess there is for those supplemental requests by departments. So that's what we've really spent the last week and a half is really scrubbing through the data and figuring out historically where we plan to fund things here, also where we've had to plug in also the recently approved audit. We've had to plug in those numbers and make sure everything is tracking correctly. That was part of the delay because we just now finished the audit. So until you had that audit, that's where you kind of knew where your. Your snapshot was there, and then you carry it forward with your proposed budget. So really, it's just been speed with the horse. Her historical knowledge has allowed us to speed through that process without knowing. what's in her mind like she can just spout out account codes and knows historically where we plug things it could take lola and our budget team weeks to do the same amount of work so it's really just the speed of being able to comb through some of those things but she doesn't have access to enter anything it's really just hey check here i think that's where we did it last year yep there it is and we can we can adjust and make changes

So, if she wasn't willing to come back, I mean, would we be compromised in a certain way? Like, do we have almost a single point of failure where it's like, okay, we don't have a tracking system. We have something that's unclear. we need an individual to come in and tell us this is where the money is, or this is where we allocated those remaining budgets.

Like I'm hearing, it's not a single point of failure. You know, again, again, she had 20 years of experience in the job, about five or six years of CFO. Again, as a CFO role, there is just so much that runs through that position naturally by job description. And so that again, like I said before, it's common practice to bring back employees, particularly at that level and that skill and quality to come back and advise and help us through process. And so this is a very normal thing.

Okay, so you had said you'd like to present the budget to council early as possible. What's your goal in getting that in our hands so we can review it and digest it? so right now since the we'll be meeting the morning of the 11th our goal is middle of next week to try and get it finalized as far as a budget book so you think we'd get the budget book end of next week you're saying yes sir so we'd have plenty of time to digest it because a lot of times we are sitting down trying to read through it while you guys are starting kind of giving us the overview correct great and then uh mr freeman i appreciate all your help and and You definitely proved to be good on spreadsheets and organizing summary, having a high level overview, total revenues by the revenue fund, let's call it. And then a breakdown of expenditures, just high level total expenditures. Not the not the in depth of this is how many positions this is what we're adding. We'll get all that later. But I think for myself and counsel, we would, we would be a week ahead of schedule. If we could just get a summary of total revenues by fund. Over total expenditures, and we could swallow that before we get into. Cip and how much carried forward what's reserve balance all of that. So is that something you could.

Yes, I'm working with Lola and the budget team on that request. It shouldn't be an issue to pull that out to make it easier to digest on the front end.

Okay. Yes, sir. And then just for previous conversations, in having conversations that are brutally honest and just transparent and truth, we, several of us on council, have said, you know, I think a forensic audit, a third party coming back in, helping us to you know, finalize these numbers, go back through CIP. What I heard you guys say, you didn't say rebalance, but what I've heard the other term is a lot of what you guys are saying in budgeting, you're trying to rebalance and appropriate some things with recommendations. it's critical that we get that forensic audit done in a timely manner. So one more reason I think with you guys needing to reach outside of the organization, pulling somebody back in with that type of specific institutional knowledge, we can do a much better job of compartmentalizing all that, putting it on paper, moving forward with our zero balance as close as possible. So, greatly appreciate the discussion. I think it speaks to what we've spoken to here in the past. So, Council, you got anything? Yes, sir.

Yeah, I've just got a question. Maybe this is, so when we hit budget workshop, we're just going to go through, just like previously, it's THIS IS MORE GETTING INPUT FROM COUNCIL, RIGHT, AND DIRECTIONS, LOOKING AT BUDGET REQUESTS, THOSE KINDS OF THINGS TO REALLY HASH IT OUT BEFORE THE BUDGET COMES TO US, CORRECT?

Correct.

Okay. And we talked about this in our one-on-one meetings, but with the closed projects, the CFP projects, those dollar amounts will not be considered in there.

That's all factored into it. Some of it was from current year savings, some of it from close out of last year, factored into this year's budget, but it's all reflected in the cash flows.

Okay, it'll be reflected in the cash flows, but at that point, I guess what I'm asking is, will those dollars be absorbed into what's going to be presented to us? Will those dollars be absorbed into?

NOT INTO THE OPERATIONAL, BUT THEY WOULD SHOW UP IN POTENTIAL CIP DOLLARS FOR YOU ALL TO ALLOCATE.

OKAY. SO IT IS GOING TO BE HELD OUT, LIKE WE'VE DONE THE PREVIOUS TWO YEARS, THAT WE'VE HAD THAT TO SAY, OKAY, WHAT'S PRIORITY, WHERE CAN IT GO?

AND WE'LL HAVE RECOMMENDATIONS OF CITY PRIORITY CIP PROJECTS, BUT THEN YOU ALL CAN MOVE THEM AROUND, ADD SOMETHING DIFFERENT, SWAP THEM OUT. OKAY. PERFECT.

OKAY. THANK YOU.

YES. GO AHEAD, COUNCILMAN. SORRY. You and I discussed this. You're the city manager and you have the right and the ability to put a team together that you feel is going to help you out to do your job. And I understand that. We also understand the negative connotations with hiring Laura as a consultant here in this. How long is her contract for as a consultant?

I don't understand the negative connotations of that. I think she's a stellar employee and we've had plenty of clean audits to prove that. With this, she's temporary just as long as we need her to. It's not a set term.

It's an hourly rate, but we can't exceed $50,000 without it coming back to Council.

Probably in the next few weeks, I'd say. We can bring the budget to the workshop. The work should be basically done.

So in the next couple weeks, there's not going to be a need for Ms. Storrs?

No.

Okay. Okay. Thank you.

Well, I would say, you know, we discussed this in our meetings as well. You know, Rich, you know, he was another person that left with a tremendous amount of institutional knowledge. Really grateful that he's willing to, you know, come back as he's, you know, offered to come back basically in this same setting precedent to bring them back in – you know in a read-only capacity i think that that's the the terminology that andrew used which i think that provides some safety for people that didn't have any reservations it's a read-only capacity but the ones with those that institutional knowledge i'm really grateful that they're willing to come back and again uh you're the you're the ceo of this organization if that's what you feel is best uh that's to me that's your call so

Councilman? I would support any time anyone with 20 years of institutional knowledge comes back to help us in a limited capacity and to level up our existing CFO. I think that's a blessing. I don't understand the negative connotation.

And I'm not saying for me. I'm just saying that City manager and I had the discussion of some of the negative that would come from that. That's all I'm not saying from for me.

Can you explain?

Just so what the public is gonna have to say some of the public is gonna have to say about it Whether it's on social media or anything else that that negativity will be out there. Oh That's all.

Okay.

Thank you Council any further questions on this one? Okay. Thank you, Mr. Path. Appreciate you. All right. We have successfully made our way all the way to the last item, request for future agenda items. Do I have anybody who has a request here today on council? Okay. We'll move forward. Thank you to all of our constituents that have waited for public comment. We'd like to hear from you guys. We're going to ask our city secretary to set that one up.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for participating in today's City Council meeting. We value your input and appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts today. Each speaker will have three minutes to address the council during public comment or any public hearing held today. At two and a half minutes, a single beep will signal 30 seconds remaining. When your time is up, the timer will beep continuously. Please stay within your allotted time. we do have multiple public hearings today if you wish to speak on an item with a hearing please speak on that item either during public comment or during the public hearing but not both in order to ensure accurate minutes we will be using both podiums today when your name is called please make your way to the open podium when it's your turn state your name and whether or not you live within amarillo city limits before beginning your comments For topics not on today's agenda, the Texas Open Meetings Act limits how council may respond. Council may provide factual statements, ask for an issue to be added to a future agenda, or refer you to the city manager so staff can visit with you about your concern. If you would like to speak today but have not yet signed up, please come see me at the front now to fill out a form so we can get you on our list. At this time, I'd like to invite up Lisa Zaragoza. And after Lisa, Dolce Laredo will be on deck. So Dolce, you may approach the empty podium. And Lisa, you may begin when you're ready.

Afternoon, ma'am.

Good afternoon. Lisa Zaragoza. I am a city member. So good afternoon, Mayor and members of the council. My name is Lisa Zaragoza. I manage a housing portfolio of 100 properties around there here in Amarillo. Thank you for allowing me to speak today about my experience with the city's We Lean process and offer recommendations that I believe could benefit both property owners and the city. Over the past several months, I've worked through the weed lien process involving multiple properties. During that time, I discovered several areas where the current system makes it unnecessarily difficult for property owners to receive notice, understand what is owed, and resolve violations before liens and interest begin to accumulate. ONE CONCERN BEGINS WITH THE NOTICE PROCESS. THE CITY RELIES ON MAILING ADDRESSES MAINTAINED BY PRAD THROUGH MY RESEARCH. I LEARNED THAT MAILING ADDRESSES CAN BE CHANGED WITHOUT NOTIFYING THE PROPERTY OWNER. I'M SORRY, I'M NERVOUS. IF NOTICES ARE MAILED TO AN INCORRECT OR OUTDATED ADDRESS, A PROPERTY OWNER MAY NEVER KNOW A VIOLATION EXISTS UNTIL AFTER A LEAN HAS ACTUALLY ALREADY BEEN FILED. I ALSO FOUND THAT AFTER AN INITIAL NOTICE IS SENT, THERE IS CURRENTLY NO WAY FOR A PROPERTY OWNER TO NOTIFY THE CITY of a weedling violation prior to correcting a weedling violation or to request a re-inspection. If there is a delay before the next inspection, the grass or weeds can grow back making it appear that no action was ever taken. The City may then perform mowing without any additional notice because owners are not notified when the city performs the abatement. Many owners or tenants may simply assume someone else mowed the property and remain unaware that a lien has been placed against the property until much later. When I attempted to resolve these matters, I was often referred between multiple departments to obtain records, determine balances, request consideration of interest, or simply identify which office handled a particular part of the process. I was also instructed to limit communication to one property request per day by email rather than by phone. During that time, interest continues to accrue while I was trying to obtain information necessary to resolve the liens. If the council would like to review them, I can provide partial recordings documenting that communication. I have provided each of you with a packet, which I have here. I understand you can't look at it today, but I would implore you to please look at it. I put a lot of work into it. It takes you through all the steps. Everything I've discussed today is documented in that packet. It includes examples of billing statements that are difficult for the average property owner to understand. It can be challenging to determine which property is being charged, what charges are for, whether interest has been added, what amount is actually due, and how to resolve the account. As a result, property owners often have to contact the city simply to understand their bill before they can determine whether the charges are accurate or make payment. The packet also includes an exhibit showing incorrect information that an attorney confirmed originated from Pratt. My recommendations are not about reducing enforcement. They are about making enforcement more efficient, improving customer service, and encouraging voluntary compliance. While the city has explained that it is meeting the legal requirements, the minimum legal requirements, I believe there is an opportunity to go beyond the legal minimum by improving communication with property owners. Better notification methods. Expanded self-service through MGO Connect. A simple way for owners to report that violation has been corrected. Clear billing statements and better coordination.

Let me interrupt you there real quick just because we're running over time. Here's what I'd like to do. Let us work together with you on this. So, Mr. City Manager, can you get Lisa with... um staff to look at the notice policy and how we're putting out those notices see what improvements might could be made internally to communicate better i know she's not the first individual that that has petitioned this if you would if you'll hand those documents to city secretary right there she'll hand them out so we can review them But let's see, Mr. Path, if there is something that we can do without making it more cumbersome on staff, but at the same time helping our customers understand, especially when it's not a property in their control. And I think that's the thing that I've seen in the past is it's property management or it's properties that are owned, and they don't know that the grass isn't being mowed.

May I add that I have spoken with Mr. Path and Mr. Freeman, and they were very gracious to give me their time to speak with them, but we're at a standstill. And the MGO Connect is there and ready to make everything happen that would work. It's just not functional.

Go through the system one more time, and if we can't get satisfaction on it, then council's here for that.

Okay, perfect.

Thank you, ma'am.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Our next speaker is Holden Day. And on deck after Holden, if Jonathan Sommer would like to come up to the empty podium.

Afternoon, Holden.

Good afternoon.

I'm Holden Day. I reside within Amarillo City limits, and I will be speaking on a non-agenda item today. The two AI data centers that we have approved to be sending water to from the state, and also a lot of my concerns will extend to the five that have been approved throughout the Panhandle. So, my major problem with AI data centers is the massive water consumption, which happens to be the major part of the agreement that was signed by everyone here aside from Mr. Mayor Cole Stanley. We are already using significant amounts of water for the massive amounts of agriculture that go on within the Panhandle. It is estimated that about 92% to 93% of all water being used in the Texas panhandle goes to agriculture as a whole. And we will be using exponentially more water from the already depleting Ogallala Aquifer for these AI data centers. With all five AI data centers, we'll probably only have the Ogallala Aquifer for about 15 more years. before it completely is depleted and we just don't have water. We just don't really have any reliable sources of good clean water aside from like maybe rain. It has also been shown that there are massive changes to climate and weather patterns as a result of the massive water uses, more torrential downpours, less rain even, longer dry seasons, more heat as a result to the massive amounts of carbon dioxide that is released. from each data center. ChatGPT alone, not even counting Gemini or Copio or other AI models, generates about 43 metric tons of carbon dioxide across the nation a day. And with five of those just pumping carbon dioxide every single day, the air is going to get to a point where it's almost unbreathable. And I am extremely worried about the ecosystem with the noise pollution, the constant humming that comes from AI data centers. People from cities where AI data centers have been constructed have reported severe headaches, severe nausea. The animals like the... breeding seasons for animals have been completely disrupted, animals are dying because of this. And with already a fragile ecosystem, I would urge that there is some kind of reconsideration with the council regarding the AI Dino Centers. Thank you.

Mr. Holden, thank you for speaking here today.

We would invite Alan Feingold up to the empty podium. And Jonathan, you may begin.

Hello. My name is Jonathan Sumner. I'm an American citizen. I'm an Amarillo citizen. Also, this is a non-agenda item. Anyways, Mayor, members of council, first, I'd like to acknowledge that this item is not part of today's agenda. I don't expect a response today and would like to express appreciation for hearing me on this issue. My name is Jonathan Sumner. I live at 6100 Southwest 45th Avenue in Newport Apartments. I'm here about noise and about the fact that Amaral has no ordinance addressing it. I moved into my apartment in November 2022. The bar across the street from me was permanently closed, according to Google at the time. It reopened mid-late 2023, and for more than two years, they were pretty much closed. tolerable. In November 2025, they substantially increased the low frequency output of their sound system. Since then, seven nights a week, intermittently, from about seven in the evening until about two in the morning, the bass from that building has intermittently made the guitars on my apartment wall visibly sway. The pictures frames from my small cracking, make small cracking sounds as the pressure moves through the walls. That has been most nights for nine months. And I don't know if I said this before, but I live and work in this apartment as a self-employed person. I've called the Amarillo Police Department repeatedly. I've been told each time that the city has no noise ordinance and nothing can be done. I want to be clear that I'm not here to criticize any officer. I'm here because they're right about the ordinance. Amarillo is one of the few Texas cities this size without one Local government code chapter 217 gives the council the authority to define and abate nuisances. I'm asking you to use this. I'd also ask each of you to consider a second thing. Alcohol beverage code section 61314 gives the mayor and each council member independent standing to protest a TABC license. I'm requesting that you do so for this establishment. That's Cassidy's Polo Club on the 45th. I'm sending each of you a letter with the details, and I'm collecting statements from neighbors describing the same conditions. I welcome the chance to speak with any of you. Thank you.

Jonathan, thank you for speaking here today. Can we connect you with staff so they can look into that as far as like our city marshal's office and their ability? So our city manager here, Mr. Path, can try to help you.

Yes, sir. I will say I've spoke. I attempted to speak with your city marshal office. I did file a complaint, but I'm happy to try it again.

Yes, sir, if you would.

Yeah, if I can get your kind information to Stephanie Coggins, our city secretary, we'll reach out to you. I put it in here. No, no, to Stephanie on the side over there.

Thank you, sir. Afternoon, Mr. Feingold, you're up.

Thank you very much.

I would like to address you concerning wastewater processing, but before I do that, I'd just like to make a comment on your budget processes and the apparent consultation between the city's current administration and its former CFO. Whatever the connotations may be, this could be a valuable consultation because, indeed, budgets are not just black and white, but they involve a certain amount of historical continuity. And it may be the case that your former CFO could give us some insight into how it is over the past six years that the city's bonded indebtedness has gone from $270 million to $550 million. I'm sure there are many members of the public who would appreciate knowing how that happened. Now, let's go to wastewater processing. There is a question as to whether the city has the capacity to process wastewater into the future, and there was a dispute about whether or not the capacity of the city was being properly used. One of your citizens challenged the idea that the city was bumping up against 75% of its capacity. It was alleged, of course, by several city officials that the city had gotten to that limit and that TCEQ would require very soon that the city build out some greater capacity. I do not have time enough to go through all the figures, but I will tell you this much. Hollywood Road is operating at about 75% capacity. River Road is operating at about 52% capacity. If you wanted to solve the problem fairly quickly, you could take wastewater, that is, say, 20% of the load from the Hollywood Road treatment plant, and bring it over to the River Road treatment plant. I'll grant you it would take a pipeline or something similar, but if you did that, both plants would be operating at 63% capacity. Now, the implications of this are following. There is about a 1% increase per year in wastewater processed by both plants. So if you were having the plants operate at 63% capacity, it would take about 10 years for them to get to the point where they were operating at 75% capacity. This is an alternative to building out a billion dollars worth of new wastewater treatment.

Thank you, Mr. Feingold.

Next to speak will be Mike Fisher, and we would invite Kim Benson up to the empty podium to be on deck.

Afternoon, Mr. Fisher.

Good afternoon. All right. I'D LIKE FOR ITEM 6.12 AND 6.13 TO BE TAKEN OFF THE CONSENT AGENDA. IN LIGHT OF THE CIP STUFF THAT'S BEEN GOING ON, WE'VE GOT $20 MILLION ON THE CONSENT AGENDA. AND THIS IS TO, FOR WHAT WE'RE CALLING PRE-DESIGNS AND CONCEPTUAL STUFF. I MEAN, THIS IS AI STUFF THAT'S SUPER CHEAP. mean this stuff is getting cheap to do uh virtual anything anymore but we're going to spend 20 million bucks cole you're a construction guy this is pre-designed this isn't blueprints in the packet it doesn't say what that what the deliver deliverables are 20 million bucks i couldn't even this whole time i've been looking i couldn't find a single sewer project that was anywhere near this it was in the six figure range for design stuff and that was to design the whole thing not pre so here we are talking about cip stuff this guy over here is still doing a 20 million dollar project how much is this overbuilt because we're already we found 40 million bucks so how much of this is that padded pricing that we've been talking about with cip stuff The next item I'd like to be taking off the agenda is 6.11. And it's $271,000 for the street day center, or the transformation park deal. Now you guys, I started digging into that again. And it's a 21,000 square foot building that you guys approved in May of 25. Cole, your construction, again, I'm not trying to pick on you here, but at AI told me it was on the cheap side, $190 a square foot to build office. On the high end, it's $340. Did you guys know that the very next month that the city staff changed the 21,000 square foot to 25,000 square foot? Statement of fact, does anybody know that? They did that? So on the low end, so somewhere, if we did the low end and high end on the 21 or 25,000 square foot, We're still missing somewhere between $1.5 million and $6 million if you go from the low end to the high end, considering the high end on the square foot and the low end and the high end on the pricing and the low end on the pricing. So put that in perspective. We're still spending money on this homeless stuff. And our city is responsible for making 50 families homeless, but we're not spending anything on them, nothing. And we're gonna spend 200 more thousand dollars on IT crap and some security stuff on a building that's already paid for in HVAC. Why would the HVAC be in this 10 million?

I mean, this is crazy. Mr. Fisher, glad to dig into those items. Thanks for bringing them forward. All right. Thank you, sir.

Can I yield him some of my time if he needs more time?

I don't believe we have a practice of yielding time. If we started that, I think we would have to go to our six-minute lengths because we no longer meet once a week, Ms. Benson. But thank you for the offer.

Well, he's passionate about it, and so am I about the fire victims. I mean, come on, guys.

We'll get the discussion back for you.

Okay. All right, Kim Benson, city of Amarillo, city limits. I'm here today to talk, I'm glad y'all brought about the budget process that tells me that you care. I mean your, I mean the budget, not budget, sorry, I'm out of it. The board, the boards, that's where I wanted to go. The budget too, but the board's very important to me, so I'm glad to see that y'all put that on the agenda, you're looking at it, you're wanting to make improvements. when i listen to that conversation the one thing that i'm proud of mr reed you took the time to go over every applicant for that parks board i wonder if you other guys can say that It takes time to do y'all's job, and I get that. But you signed on for this, and your boards are important. If it takes the time, then do it. You know, I'm very upset because of what I saw last meeting with the parks nomination. Apparently you had a good applicant with Sharon Delgada, I believe was her name. But Eddie Sauer turned his application in that day and you picked him? You're not picking the people that want to serve that haven't served. You talk about social media. Social media is beating up on you guys, and that's one area that they beat up on you about is that they've applied for these boards they never get looked at because the same people get picked over and over. It's time to look at new people. New people bring new ideas. Mr. Sauer's done his time. He served on that council. He served on Parks and Rec. What did he do for Parks and Rec? He cut their funding at that time when he was on the council. And then you've picked him to serve on the board when you had a good applicant that Mr. Reid nominated. I'm very disappointed. So be careful when you're picking these people. I mean, I'm serving on two boards, so I feel like I can say these things to you guys. But I was disappointed last week in you guys. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Benson.

Our next speaker is John Adair.

Afternoon, Mr. Adair.

Good afternoon. First of all, I would like to bring up 6.8 and ask that you all remove that. And I think with everything that's happened this year, we don't need to spend $99 million to figure out that we need more than one pool in Amarillo, or 99,000. So if we can pull that and discuss that. The other thing I just wanted to say is about the last discussion item and Grayson Path talking about bringing Laura Storrs back and I think this is going to be a historically bad idea because Anything financially that's been questionable with the city has happened under Laura stores watch we had the range fiasco when $750,000 that wasn't approved to be transferred got wire transferred to them and at that time she was the help me out. The over at the She was the treasurer. So it's almost like she basically wired money from herself to herself, from the city to the AEDC. And a lot of the public, a lot of the citizens, did we ever get that money back? Has anything ever come up with that? So they just got away with it. On top of that, in the last couple years we had, what was it, three or four people get convicted for making off with HUD funds, all under Laura Storrs' watch. And now he wants to bring her back to do a budget. You have other people in finance that work here, and you basically just threw all of them under the bus saying they don't know what to do, we need to bring Laura back. I think it's a bad idea. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Adair. Ms. City Secretary, who else you got?

That is all we have signed up. We have two individuals that signed up, but they are holding to speak during the public hearing.

Okay, public hearing. Yes, sir, I see a hand back here if you come forward. If you don't mind giving us your name once again, sir, we know you, but get you on the record.

Chuck Little. I live in the city limits of Amarillo. I'm here again on the You know why I'm here, the water. A young man commented and I think that's pretty much the feelings around the whole state. These AI data centers are coming in to places where there's extreme drought, the aquifers are low. Carson County on a study of the state of Texas is in the severest drought county in Texas. And it's not just based on rainfall, but it's on the Ogallala aquifers in those counties. The top five are in the Texas Panhandle. Last meeting on the 14th, I had a council member tell me that that 2.5 million gallons was being for a private grid being built to help Keep the electric bills down of the people. But. On the meeting on October 28th, 2005. And I will give you it was. 10 be consideration of resolution 10 dash 14 dash 25 dash 2 that was authorizing the water for Fermi America. One of the council members made the statement that we needed to sell this water to Fermi America so that we could get AI data, so that we could figure out how to go to Mars, harvest rare earth minerals, and bring them back. That's why I kept a hold of this, because that is so far-fetched, we probably wouldn't see it in our lifetimes. We don't need AI centers to get to the moon. The first moon shot, the figures were calculated by a black woman on a slide ruler. Now, I took math in school, everybody in here did, and once you have the formulas, you just plug in the appropriate numbers for what you want to do, and you will get the calculations. So I think we need to cancel all these agreements with Fermi America. There's hearings going on in Austin this week on all these data centers coming into one of the driest states in the nation and wanting to use up our groundwater. Once our groundwater's done, we're done. So I appreciate your time, and I'll probably see you again.

We appreciate you, Mr. Cho. Do I have anyone else here who'd like to give public comment today? Yes, sir. If you come forward, if you don't mind giving us your name.

My name is Arthur Dyke. Thank you all for listening.

Okay. Mr. Dyke.

Yes. I am here in protest of the asphalt batching company that they're trying to put in right next door to my property. And it's going to be, like, really close to my back door. And I've lived there since 2003. I have property at 8800, 8700, and 8600 Triangle Drive, and it's going to affect all that property too. If I was ever to want to put an RV park or an Airbnb out there, and they're running this asphalt batching company, there is no way I could run it, no way I could set it up. Asphalt fumes are very toxic. They cause lung cancer, they cause eye irritation, skin rash, and they're very, it's not good for human health. I have 30 signatures that they do not want this batching company put in, and that's within probably a mile radius of my property. We're talking not just houses, we're talking ABF, we're talking Maximum Tank, we're talking Mueller Steel. They don't want it in there either because their property value and they don't want to be smelling asphalt fumes every day from 6 o'clock in the morning till 5 o'clock or whatever and then on Saturday. I won't even be able to have some of my family to my house because they have lung problems. And if they're running this batching company, they won't be able to come to my house anymore. My property next door and everything, the value is going to go down. And why should we allow this company to come in here and wreck my stuff that I've had for over 23 years and let them come in and just put it up and put toxic fumes in the air? I'm asking you would you want this setting in your backyard pumping fumes into your house and ruining the property value of your I mean why doesn't the city allow this sounds crazy but hogs in city limits because they smell and this is the same thing but this is toxic we don't need that there there It's all the pollutants that it's going to be putting in the air, and it's going to ruin the property value. I'd like to thank you all very much. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dyke. Do I have anyone else who'd like to offer public comment? Yes, sir, if you'll come forward. Give us your name, please.

Hello, Mayor, Council. My name is Justin Dyke. I live within the city limits of Amarillo. I am speaking about agenda 7.1, same as my father, Arthur Dyke. I was a previous resident at 8616 Triangle Drive, which is adjacent to the new asphalt and batching plant, proposed to go in, and I am opposing not only the rezoning of this, but the special issue permit 210 for this asphalt batching plant. I provided you with the map or a site plan of the proposed batching plant to go in. I've also provided a few laws and requirements from TCEQ, as well as the state enabling law, as well as the own Amarillo City Code. And one of those is that the asphalt plant shall be located a minimum of 440 feet from any structure used as a resident school or place of worship. And the one in consideration is the property at 8616 Triangle Drive. And it's unclear whether it is within that distance or not, which TCEQ form PI1S, it states that you must provide the distance from the proposed equipment to the nearest off-property receptor, which should be attached to the site plan, showing the location of all equipment and the distance to the nearest receptor, which in this case is the property at 8616 Triangle Drive. Now, there are dimensions of the office and the shop leading up to the asphalt plant, but there are actually no dimensions leading back to the asphalt plant. There's actually no distance stated whether drawn or labeled on the site plan, leading to the nearest residence, which is aforementioned house at 8616. So what I propose to you is to either deny this rezoning and special issue permit, or I would like to request an agenda continuance for the next 30 days. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, sir. Do I have anyone else who'd like to give public comment here today? Okay, thank you all for speaking, and thank you, Council, for listening. We'll move forward with our consent agenda. We've got a few here that You know, one, I need to remove, which is item 6.8. It's not ready to take action on, and it's not even ready, the contract isn't ready. So that will be back in August, and what we can do for that one, rather than trying to pull it off, discuss it here, knowing we're going to push it to August, we could just list it as a separate item, you know, non-consent. since it's something you guys would like to hear more on. We have item 6.11, 6.12, 6.13 that you guys have heard addressed by some of your public. So I will leave it with council and see if there's anything that council would like removed from the consent agenda. So I'm hearing nothing from anybody here on the council side. Oh, I see one green light. Councilman Simpson.

Anybody? I move to approve the consent agenda as presented minus number eight.

Okay. So we have a motion. I'm going to hold off for item 6.11. And the reason being is it is the street day center. and that $271,000 is due and payable by the contractor. I believe Mr. Danforth could probably speak to that quickly, and I think we could leave it on the consent agenda since we got a motion, but I need you guys to hear this is not our expense. We're not paying for this. The reason that we've required it to run through our vendor is because we have certain proprietary, let's call them access controls, security controls, And so we're able to monitor a few things for our staff members. So Mr. Path, you okay if I have Mr. Danforth speak to this real quick? Jerry, would you mind just stating why you're comfortable letting this go through the system and how you'll require reimbursement from the GC?

Absolutely where Council I'm happy to give you an update on this. This was this funding amount was actually built into the construction contract, but as you mentioned, there's proprietary components that are part of the entire city system that a private contractor cannot purchase separate apart from us. They're required to buy those from us. So in essence, in order for us to purchase that we have to purchase it and then be reimbursed for those components. back from the contractor. The contractor did build it into their construction project, and they have made the commitment to totally refund the city for those expenses.

When do you think, Mr. Danforth, you'll get the reimbursement?

The reimbursement, according to our agreement with the contractors, the minute those components are installed and we provide the invoices, we get a check the next day. Real good.

And your new system, eBuilders, is that what you like working on?

We work on e-builders as far as capital projects tracking. This is a construction contract that is not part of e-builders because it is a private contract with the Street Day Center for that construction project.

So you will track this within your oversight? Absolutely.

All invoices

are required for the reimbursement and we'll track all invoices okay project really good thank you sir i hope that helps our public here not our expenditure we do understand the the caution in putting money out there that we already know the community is providing those services for those homeless individuals and trying to help those they can Council, before you as a motion, I would ask that be considered to include item 6.11 because I feel confident that we've addressed that. I know there were two other items that we had given to you, but I have a motion to be considered. Second. Motion and a second on the consent agenda. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Moving forward, we'll move into non-consent. So Section 7, our public hearing. So Mr. Kendrick, if you don't mind walking us into this one.

YES, GOOD EVENING, MAYOR AND COUNCIL. THIS IS ITEM 7.1, PUBLIC HEARING AND CONSIDERATION OF ORDINANCE 8252. THIS IS A PUBLIC HEARING AND FIRST READING TO CONSIDER THE REZONING OF LOT 2, BLOCK 1, 66 VILLAGE UNIT NUMBER 2. This is within the city limits of Amarillo in the vicinity of Triangle Drive and Lakeside Drive, also known as Loop 335. The applicant is OJD Engineering LLC for Red Line Cattle LLC, and they are proposing the rezone from light industrial district to light industrial district with a specific use permit for an asphalt or concrete batching plant. And as just mentioned, light industrial does not allow an asphalt plant by right, and it is required to be considered with a specific use permit. What that typically means is that it shares many of the characteristics of the uses that are allowed in light industrial district, but it requires some additional consideration on a case-by-case basis. And as you can see on the map, the subject property is the red rectangle on the screen there, and then the purple shading is that light industrial zoning for the area. And as you can see, it is zoned light industrial in all directions. Adjacent land uses consist of a vacant property and trucking company to the north, property associated with another asphalt batching plant to the south, vacant property to the east, and a manufactured home to the west. Regarding City Plan 2045, the place type identified for this property is manufacturing and logistics, which would typically support a request like this. And another thing that kind of why this area was assigned that category as well, given the close proximity to Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport, which is just to the south, all the properties there along Triangle Drive lie within the airport's zoning overlay for noise. So essentially what that means, why that manufacturing and logistics category was assigned. One of the big reasons would be is that that airport noise boundary does not allow for additional homes. and certain noise sensitive land uses to be constructed in that area. So that area would ultimately be more suited for commercial and industrial development over time. The applicant did submit a site plan for review that was reviewed by city staff and the Planning and Zoning Commission, and the site plan was found to be satisfactory and typical of industrial development in the city, with the addition of landscaping and a fence proposed for portions of the site, which is typically not required of industrial development. I will also note that the applicant will also have to conform with separate TCEQ regulations and permitting with the state of Texas for asphalt and batching plants that go beyond what the city regulates before they are able to operate. Prior to a building permit being allowed to be issued, the applicant will still also need to address a drainage report as noted within the documents notes section. The drainage report will have to be reviewed and approved by the city engineer prior to a full building permit being issued for the site. Then we'll go back to this map. You'll notice there are two red circles on the map just as some factual information. The one on the right side is the existing asphalt batching plant I previously referenced. And the one on the left on the west side of the loop is a concrete plant that also requested a specific use permit a few years ago and was approved by PNZ and council at that time. So that falls in that same use category as was being requested today. is approximately 0.35 miles to the west there. THE APPLICANTS ALSO REQUIRED TO OBTAIN AN APPRAISAL FROM A LICENSED REAL ESTATE APPRAISER THAT ASSESSES THE IMPACT OF THE PROPOSED USE ON NEIGHBORING PROPERTIES. AND I'LL QUOTE DIRECTLY FROM THAT REPORT THAT THE CONCLUSION OF THE APPRAISER, THE LICENSED REAL ESTATE APPRAISER THAT PREPARED THAT REPORT WAS THAT THE REZONING THE SITE TO ALLOW FOR A HOT MIX ASPHALT PLANT WILL NOT ADVERSELY AFFECT THE PROPERTY VALUES OF ADJOINING PROPERTIES OR OTHER PROPERTIES IN THE AREA. And I'll mention that a report was included in your packet as well. Regarding the requested action, or excuse me, the public comments, we received two commenters at the P&Z meeting who were representatives for the project that spoke in favor. And then there were three comments received at the meeting that were against. And the summary of those comments include the following. They are worried about lower property values. If the plant was approved concerns about health impacts from exposure to emissions from the plants. Being able to utilize their property for outdoor activity may be negatively impacted and the addition of another batch plant in the area would be negative to the area. I will add that one of the commenters did submit a letter of opposition to the request signed by 24 people who represent renters, property owners, and people who are employed in the area. And that was attached in your packet today. Based on staff's analysis, two of those individuals who signed the letter are property owners within the 200-foot notice area. And with those two, that does trigger the supermajority requirement for this item by council, meaning If you all want to vote to approve this, it would have to pass up a super majority versus a simple majority like would be typical. So we did find that that requirement is triggered by that protest that was submitted to staff. And I will note, I believe you all received another packet today that staff had not had a chance to review since it was provided just prior to this meeting. With that, the Planning and Zoning Commission did recommend approval of this request to you all with a 6-0 vote at the July 6th meeting of the Planning and Zoning Commission. And with that, I'll take any questions you all may have on this.

Questions, Council.

So Brady, the asphalt plant to the east, that is operational?

Yes, that's the J.E. Mulligan facility. That's their, I believe, their primary asphalt plant in this area. And that one is operational. Okay. And I believe has been there since the 70s or 80s, I want to say.

Okay. And these green areas, are those zoned R1? What are those?

Yeah, the green on your map there, those are agricultural zoning. Oh, okay. Is what those are.

So this, the purple is light industrial? That is correct. Okay, but it requires a special use for the asphalt batching plant.

Yes, asphalt batching plants, while they are pretty similar with a lot of things, light industrial, they are a little bit unique enough that they probably should be considered case-by-case. And that's the case, actually, for many cities in Texas. They typically consider these on a case-by-case basis.

Okay. And then you did mention that this was due to the proximity to the airport, the overlay, the noise overlay, I don't know what it's called, but there are no more. Housing cannot be put in here. Is this correct?

Right. If somebody wanted to come in for those areas in the overlay and do a new subdivision, that essentially wouldn't be allowed. Neither would manufactured home parks, things of that nature. RV parks are technically allowed, but there are some complications even with those, trying to get those in that noise zone boundary.

So could an individual...

i mean build a structure there a residence and live there uh not per the city's uh airport zoning overlay they would not be able to okay so really no living i mean like you said without special circumstance i mean there's no yeah you would not be able to construct additional single-family homes within that boundary okay okay thank you no problem councilman

You mentioned that there's going to be several additional steps if it was approved. Would the TCEQ allow this being next to a residential structure?

TCEQ, I know, does have some distance requirements, I believe, that are beyond what the city typically requires. I'll go back to the site plan for a second. So the batching facility itself is that wreck that square cut down towards the bottom of the property that's located approximately 209 feet. East of the property line with the neighbor to the West. And I believe that house is located 200 feet West of that property line so there. I haven't reviewed those TCEQ requirements myself since those aren't the city's responsibility to ultimately review or approve but. If it is around that 400-foot mark, that would put that pretty close to that.

So you said, one more time, would you give me the numbers?

Yeah, so the batching plant is located 209 feet approximately within the site, and the home to the west is approximately 200 feet west of that property line.

So 409 feet.

Approximately, based on the measuring we did.

Any other issues? I mean, why did they select this piece of land? Do we know?

It's an industrial zone within the city, essentially. And if I had to guess, probably the presence of the other plants that are already within the area that exist. Thank you.

So what does our ordinance say on the distance that this type of property has to have from residential or homes or schools or that type of thing?

The city's ordinance does not have a distance requirement within our ordinance. It simply requires that they obtain a specific use permit, but we do not have specific regulations that regulate batching plans in terms of distance from property lines or residential homes.

So really, this could go in anywhere, and there could be no distance from homes required if, I mean, not just here, but if it was put somewhere else, as long as it met that, or does it, does something like this have to come back to council every time for special use?

Anytime they want to establish a new one, it has to, if it's in anything besides heavy industrial, it has to come before you all. In addition to, if they do get this approval, then they have to satisfy the state as well.

And do we know how many residents, I mean, how many homes are out in this area approximately?

So I believe there are two homes located on that lot immediately to the west and then across Triangle Drive and a little bit back to the east and northeast, I believe there are a handful of manufactured homes that exist out there today.

And so those have been there for, I guess, quite a long time before this noise overlay was?

We didn't research those exactly, since those are not the subject of this request. But a good number of those probably have been there for a number of years. So we don't know their exact status, if they're legal, legal nonconforming, nonconforming. We would have to dive into that in a little more detail. But a lot of those homes out there, though, have probably been there for several decades, from what we can see from aerial imagery.

And is there been any, I mean, so we have plants out there that are doing similar type manufacturing. Do they create a lot of noise in what's going on already, or do we know what that environment is like out there now?

We, planning has not received any complaints about the existing operations that are out there. So beyond that, though, we haven't heard of many complaints that have come through our office or the city marshal that we're aware of.

Thank you. Councilman Reed? You got them? Brady, thank you for the presentation. I want to establish a few distances. So you're saying that's Jay Lee Milligan's plant there that's circled to my far right?

Yes, the one that's closest to the runway at the airport.

That's correct. Do we know what the other structure is there to the left? Is that a Jay Lee Milligan office?

That one was not immediately adjacent, so I did not analyze what that specific business was in that white roof building there. You believe the only housing is to the west of the proposed site? It's to the west and also on the north side of Triangle Drive and a little bit to the east there. Let me see if it's on this map a little better. Oh, there we go. So the top right of that image, there is essentially a manufactured home park there with probably five to ten units that are out there as well.

So the distance you gave us was 209 feet to the batching plant from the west boundary line, and then you're saying it's 200 feet to the house from that same boundary, but then you also have an increased distance as the crow flies because it sits further up, right?

Yes, yep, that's a good point. Yeah, because I was strictly speaking the lateral distance from the property line by your right. If you were to draw that diagonal, it would probably... BE A BIT FURTHER THAN THAT.

DO YOU MIND GOING BACK TO THE PROPOSED SITE PLAN? SURE, THERE WE GO. DO YOU HAVE DISTANCES? WE CAN'T READ THEM, BUT WHAT DO YOU THINK THE DISTANCE IS FROM, SAY, THE OFFICES TO THE BATCH PLANT? OFFICE TO THE BATCH PLANT, How far back on the property does the batch plant sit in your estimation?

Yes, I actually wrote that down. That sits 650 feet off of the north property line. So from the north side of the batch plant to the north property line, that's 650 feet.

Is there anything that would keep this individual from moving the batch plant further south at the request?

I'm sure we do have a representative in the audience today. I'm sure that could be considered. I would say the only thing would be just the additional material to extend that drive further South, so that'd be about the only consideration I believe.

OK. OK, Council further. Questions for Brady. Only other one I wanted to make sure we heard existing zoning has been in place for how many years?

At least since the 70s or 80s, I would say. I believe that it was designated as industrial upon its annexation.

And it's light industrial currently or heavy?

Light industrial.

Okay. And so it is not a heavy industrial area, thus creating the need for an SUP.

Yes. A batching plant kind of florts that boundary between probably being light and heavy, so that's why it would require it. Okay.

So special use permit is all we're being asked to vote on. We're not voting on rezoning. You're not rezoning the property to heavy industrial.

So it is not rezoning the heavy industrial. It is a rezoning in the matter, though, that you are essentially adding the ability to do the additional use of a batch plant in addition to all the others in light industrial.

Not to get hung up in the terminology, that's achieved through the special use permit. So if we approve the special use permit, essentially it allows for it conforming within light industrial.

Yes, it makes the operation of a batch plan a conforming use in light industrial.

Which is the existing zoning for, say, 50 years. That's correct. Okay. All right.

Any other questions for Brady, gentlemen? Yeah. Brady, J.E. Milligan, did they go through the same process? on that other asphalt plant? Or how old is that asphalt plant?

We didn't look at them specifically, to be honest with you. I know they don't have a SCP that's on file. What I suspect is that this area, relatively speaking, was annexed in the 60s or 70s, I believe. So that might be a case where that potentially existed prior to it being in the city. But staff would have to look into that specifically to nail down when this was annexed versus when they opened at that location.

OK. Thank you. Thank you, Brady. Mr. Dyke, I believe you're still in our audience there. Is it Arthur? Is that correct? Would you be willing to come up and speak with us? Sure. Thank you. I know you already gave your comment during public comment, but since it's a public hearing here, what I'm going to do is I'm going to open a public hearing in order to engage with you and address this. But what I wanted to just ask was, you're here, right, to speak on your behalf. And then we have a representative who is here either from the engineer or from the other property owner. Perfect. So I'm going to acknowledge the only two that I'm inviting to engage in a dialogue because I think it's very specific to your property and what we want to do is do our best here within the boundaries we have. At this time, I'm going to open a public hearing and I'm going to ask if I have anybody else in the audience who would like to speak for or against this item. seeing no one. I'm going to remain in the public hearing, but I'm only going to invite the two parties concerned here. So please hear the respect in that we're just not opening this up for discussion for us to ping pong their issue back and forth. Councilman, I saw your light up and before I move forward, just making sure you're good. Okay. A couple direct questions if you don't mind. Sure. How long have you owned your property? 23 years. Okay. And it is a residence that you currently live in?

Yes, it's a double wide and then I have one right next to it. And then I own the property on 8600, which has a full 3000 square foot house and there's nine other seven other houses on it.

Okay.

And then to the east, there is almost eight single-wide trailers. There's Studio One there. There is another person that lives in a double-wide right next to Milligan. Besides that there's just Maximum tank right across the road Mueller steel kitty corner. Okay, you have Sonia lives down on the end right on the access road These fumes will affect all of it and there is a Plenty of land on Parsley Road, 10-acre sections, and over on St. Francis that's for sale that this could go into instead of causing all this trouble with all these people.

Well, and I appreciate that. And I want to do the best we can with what we have to work with. Unfortunately, what we don't have to work with is other locations that are being presented. So for us in this discussion, I think it's very important that we hear your concern and that you understand we want to do the best within the boundaries we have. So what's before this council, I guess, is to make sure we understand when you bought your property, it was zoned. light industrial correct okay and and when you bought your property the Milligan plant was already there and some other things were probably yes I think they got a permit in 2009 okay so I'm not saying we can create good neighbors, but we want to put forward that effort. Would it be beneficial to you if your new neighbor here was to try to move their batching plant as far south as they could and still appropriate traffic around it with...

I really don't think there's any place for another batching plant in that area because I'm just saying when the wind blows or whatever is going to blow right in the back of my house and i have to wake up to that every day

And I appreciate that. I'm asking direct questions because it's important to see if we make an effort. Is it beneficial? Because we're not trying to put window dressing on it. So I think I understand your position is you're fully against this plant no matter where it goes on that property, right? Yes. Wouldn't be helpful to try to relocate it further south. No. Okay. All right. Council, do you guys have any questions for Mr. Dyke while we got him up here?

I heard a comment. The Milligan plant started six years after you had been on site?

No, I think they got a batching permit in 2009. They've been there since I've been there. Okay.

And you got there in 2003? Yes. Okay.

Yeah. There's also another batching plant, AP, down the road about a mile or so. And then Fuller and Sons have a batching plant over there, too. But I don't think we really need another one in there. I mean, it's toxic, like I said. It causes cancer. It's going to blow into the back of my property and my house. It'll blow into the company next door. It's going to affect a lot of businesses. And as far as I know from the city, I can put as many mobile homes on that property as I want. I can't build a house on there, but I can put mobile homes or I could put RVs on there. And if that batching plan is there, there's no way I could, it wouldn't work.

Well, not to bring awareness to your potential future plans, but I'm not addressing that right now. I don't believe that would be allowed and that we really wouldn't have that potential because of the noise overlay of the airport zone. So because of that, I'm going to tell you that my understanding of the code and the restrictions wouldn't allow for additional homes to be there and a residence. It's already been approved. Well, okay. So let me try to move the conversation forward with you, sir, on... I know it's a light industrial zone and that the special use permit comes about just because of the type of batching plant, right? Did you not have an issue with the concrete batching plant? Did I understand that correctly in your?

No. If they were going to put a concrete, I would have no problem with that. That's not toxic.

It's just the fumes from the asphalt. Yes. Okay. All right. Thank you for speaking here today. This has been helpful. We've got a representative in the back, and I'm only going to ask if you have something to lend to it. If you don't mind, for the record, will you give us your name and who you're with?

Yes. My name is David Reif. I'm here representing the property owner. I think Mr. Kendrick did a great job of presenting this, but I would like to bring some clarity or I would like to hope that I would bring clarity to a couple of things. I think you hit on the fact that the residence property is on the north end of the adjacent property and we're putting the batching plant towards the south. We may even move it further south voluntarily. than this plant, but based on what I've been able to do on Google Earth, we're a good 750 to 800 feet from the front door of his residence to the front of the plant. So we would have to naturally comply with all TCEQ regulations and distance regulations and everything else. And so that's really not a, we're not saying it's not a concern. He's got his concerns. But that is not something that we can violate. We're just going through the process of being able to put a plan in that facility. in that location which is the Location of three other plants are all in that same area and in the same same zoning the non-conforming Use land use is mr. Dykes home And the other structures that somebody drew attention to, the ones that are just outside of Milligan's Round Circle, one of them is a metal, looks like more of a storage building, that's somewhat blocking what used to be an adult entertainment facility. It's now an adult bookstore. The triple X sign is still there. So what we're... doing in our proposal here is we're putting up an eight foot solid metal fence on the west boundary to try to give it a little bit of a break so that it doesn't it's not required usually but we're doing that as a good faith that's for to to do that he is on the west the prevailing wind would not be blowing back into his home, as he would like to indicate. We want to be a good neighbor. I don't think that there's a possibility that we're going to be on a Christmas card list sticking with each other, but we're going to try to be a good neighbor.

David, thank you for speaking. Do I have any questions for Mr. Reif?

David, you said that you're going to put up an 8-foot solid fence. For what purpose? Is it noise? Is it just aesthetics?

When we were visiting with the planning and zoning, that was a request that they made to try to give it a visual break because at one point, the deal was he could look out and see a birthday party for his grandkids, that he could see that. And also, just anything we could do to try to appease the break, whether that be smell or wind.

And that fence would be how many feet is that fence long? I mean, like, how long is that fence say foot tall?

How long roughly the entire length of the West side?

Oh, gosh.

Okay. We probably will eventually enclose the whole structure, but we're committing day 1. To have a solid West side down the West. Between us and Mr.

Okay. And then just to clarify, y'all are on the. east side of the property with the prevailing wind from the southwest. Correct. Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions, council? Yes, sir.

Why this spot right here?

We had a realtor looking for a spot. They found this, that it met the appropriate zoning, and we selected that because of the availability and the proximity to the other plants, which we anticipated would be a plus, not a negative, in terms of approval process.

And you own the property now?

No, we do not. Shane Redline, Redline Cattle owns the property now.

Okay.

anything further for either of these two gentlemen before we let them sit back down thank you to you both appreciate you speaking um at this time i'm going to close the public hearing and would ask if i have any further discussion from council on this item or further questions for mr kendrick item 7.1 is before you for your consideration gentlemen

I move to adopt ordinance number 8252 as presented. I'll second.

I have a motion. Place four. I have a second from place two. Do I have any further discussion on item 7.1? We'll call the vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Nay.

I'm going to double check and see. Mr. Kendrick needs to pass with a four to one vote or...

Yeah, the supermajority of those present.

Okay. Motion passes on item 7.1. Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen, for being here. We will now take up item 7.2. Mr. Rittlesberger, if you'll bring that one forward, another public hearing for you.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Thank you for having me. This is a consideration for recommendations for the budget and allocations of funding that was approved by the Community Development Advisory Committee regarding the CDBG and HOME grants that we receive. These two grants are entitlement grants that we receive every year. This will be the second year of our five-year consolidated plan. Basically, it's going to be a carbon copy of what we did last year. Some of the highlights to this plan, to the annual plan, we have a total of CDBG funding of $1,648,797 that was allocated. Some of the programs that we're going to be having continued out of that is our demolition and clearance to the tune of about $200,000. We also have our care program, which you'll remember is our emergency repair type program that we have for low-income homeowners. And we also have, let's see, our allocations that we give for our neighborhood improvement plans. So that's some of the funding we use for our amazing playground that we put out there at Thompson Park. And so we're gonna continue to do that with our parks department, those types of projects. Also our Community Development Advisory Committee, or CDAC that we like to call them. They got to hear all and score all of our nonprofits that put in for the public services. Those that they awarded were Panhandle Community Services to the tune of about 15,000, Martha's Home, 25,000, Maverick Club, 17,342, another Chance House, 10,000, Salvation Army $24,000 and Transformation Park $32,316 and Coming Home $123,659. So those are all the community development block grants funding that was recommended and then we also have our home grant that was $674,523.19. Of that, we can allocate 10% to what's called a CHODO, Community Housing Development Organization. Our one and only CHODO in Amarillo is Habitat for Humanity. So they're going to be receiving the entire allocation, which is $201,178.48. And then the remaining funding will go towards our tenant-based rental assistance, or TBRA, that we use for rental assistance for our low-income households. So again, that was... the CHOTA, I'm sorry, for the CDBG and home grants. And then this is our second public hearing. We actually had our first at our CDAC meeting, which was on June 11th, 2026. And so this is what we, we want this to be our second and final reading of that, I'm sorry, of that public hearing.

Any questions for Mr. Rittlesberger? Okay, thank you, sir. Appreciate all your hard work over there. At this time, we're going to open a public hearing. Do I have anyone who would like to speak for or against this item? We'll go ahead and close the public hearing. Gentlemen, item 7.2 is in front of you.

I move to adopt Resolution 0728261 as presented. Second. Second.

Motion and a second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes with a 5-0 vote. Item 7.3 is another public hearing. We got Mr. Freeman here to bring this one up.

Yes, sir. So I'm covering this one today. I do want to introduce, though, Kimberly Dillard directly behind me. She's our new PID coordinator. She's about, I think, 48 days into our new positions. We've been with the city about five years. BEEN HEAVILY FOCUSED ON OUR 11 EXISTING PIDS, SO I DECIDED TO HELP HER OUT WITH THIS ONE. WE'VE ALSO GOT JOSH LANGHAM ON THE SAME ROW THAT'S REPRESENTING THE APPLICANTS TODAY IN CASE YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS FOR HIM. BUT OUR PURPOSE TODAY, THIS IS TO CONSIDER ACCEPTANCE OF A PETITION TO MOVE FORWARD WITH OUR 12th PID HERE IN THE CITY OF AMARILLO. PART OF THIS PROCESS IS OUTLINED IN CHAPTER 372 OF THE TEXAS LOCAL GOVERNMENT CODE. THE PETITION LAYS OUT THE ADVISABILITY, ESTIMATE COSTS, THE BOUNDARIES OF THE PID, AND THEN ALSO THE ASSESSMENT METHOD THAT'S PROPOSED. AGAIN, WITH PUBLIC IMPROVEMENT DISTRICTS, THESE ARE ASSESSMENTS, NOT TAXES, SO IT'S SOMEONE THAT CHOOSES TO LIVE IN THAT NEIGHBORHOOD WOULD KNOW UP FRONT THAT Based on the amenities or the improvements made there's an additional assessment on top of their property taxes that would contribute toward That property in that development And in order to petition you have to have over 50% of the property owners to petition Of course, this is a new development. So it's really just a couple of people to petition for this development.

I

As far as the location, it is located at Northwestern Street and Hester Road. It's approximately 254 acres. They are proposing a little over 1,100 dwelling units of various sizes, and the estimated total cost for the PID over time is a little over 11.7 million. The applicants are Northwestern Development Company and RRDC Amarillo LP. This is just an aerial photo where you can see you got Western to the east and Hester to the south and the west side of the tract. This is a layout, it is proposed in eight phases. You'll recognize this tract because this council also helped approve the annexation for it, as well as approval of a water line that we are bringing over from Hastings down to Western to serve water for this tract. Improved pressure in the system as well as the other sections of land to the east that are now going to be served by water. And that project is actually moving forward in this upcoming week to put that water line in. Here's another look at it that just covers the common space areas, the park land, the green space and one of the parkways that feeds through the entire subdivision that will have a street lined trees and median with trees in the middle of it as well. On the red side, that's where you'll see the monument signs, fencing, aesthetic features. It's got retention ponds and little parks as well throughout the neighborhood as far as amenities. Again, the total estimated cost, a little over $11.7 million in assessments that would be collected over time. The developer can advance those eligible costs for future reimbursements. And once improvements are made and assessments start coming in, once there's capacity, it also qualifies to go ahead and debt fund either reimbursement or future projects versus waiting for collections to come in. CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS ARE DEFINED AS THOSE THAT CONFER SPECIAL BENEFITS TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD. THESE ARE OVER AND ABOVE YOUR NORMAL OR TYPICAL STANDARDS, AND THERE'S QUALIFYING SECTIONS THAT I'LL TOUCH ON HERE IN A SECOND THAT ARE FOUND IN 372.003 OF THE ACT. THEY ARE PRIMARILY AESTHETIC IN NATURE. THEY EITHER HANDS THE LIFESTYLE, PERSONAL PRIDE OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD, ENJOYMENT OF THE RESIDENTS, AND PROPERTY VALUES, BUT THERE'S A VERY LONG LIST OF QUALIFIERS THAT ARE ALLOWED IN THE PIT ITSELF. Very difficult to read assessment sheet, but this kind of lays out the projected cash flow and the various expenses that they're proposing for the PID. There's off-site improvements related to wastewater that has to run south and actually bores underneath the railroad tracks, so that's a major infrastructure improvement that would serve this neighborhood. Common area improvements around 9.4 million. These are, again, the retention ponds, so the drainage, parks, lighting, signage, monument signs, and higher standards that you typically find in a standard neighborhood that does not have a PID. And then there are also soft costs as well included in that number. This is a summary of the improvements allowed in Chapter 372. I have bolded the ones that are being considered for this PID, but it includes many different things that are allowed by code as far as off-street parking, transportation facilities, libraries, and there's even catch-all language that projects similar to those listed above on that first bullet point are allowed. In addition, it does allow for property acquisition. SUPPLEMENTAL SERVICES PROMOTE THE DISTRICT, AND THEN THE ADMINISTRATION AND OPERATION OF THE DISTRICT, WHICH WE HAVE WITH A COUPLE OF OUR EXISTING WHERE THEY HAVE A PROPERTY MANAGEMENT COMPANY THAT HELPS WITH THE COSTS AND THE EXPENSES OF MANAGING A DISTRICT. As far as the assessment which is laid out in the petition, lots will be assessed at .22% of the net appraised value. Pit assessments will begin on January 1 of the year following a phase plat when it's recorded and started to be developed. It would require an advisory board be established. That board helps prepare the annual budget and the ongoing service plan that is presented to council on an annual basis. This is also where council retains that future oversight, service plan approval, assessment actions, and contract approvals. And then lastly, there is a property owners association required as far as owning the common areas. In case the PID were to dissolve, it would not be the city that would have the long-term cost implications. The property owners association would take that on and have to cover the cost moving forward. WITH THAT, I'M HAPPY TO ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS THAT YOU MAY HAVE OR WE'VE ALSO GOT MR. LANGHAM HERE FOR ANY APPLICANT QUESTIONS.

GENTLEMEN, QUESTIONS? SO THIS IS SIMILAR TO NOTHING UNIQUE COMPARED TO ALL THE OTHER BIDS WE'VE DONE IN TOWN? NO, SIR. OKAY.

NO FURTHER QUESTIONS FOR MR. FREEMAN? Okay. At this time, we will open a public hearing on item 7.3. Do I have anyone who'd like to speak for or against this item? Seeing no one, we will close the public hearing and request a motion.

Move to accept resolution 072826-2 as presented.

Second.

Motion and a second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Thank you, Mr. Langham, for being here, sir. All right, before you right now is item 7.4. Mr. Spinell, you gave a good overview of this earlier. I know we already had an opportunity to give you questions. Won't ask you to give anything further unless council would like anything. So gentlemen, do you have any questions on item 7.4 that was presented earlier during discussion?

No?

Would entertain a motion. I move to adopt ordinance number 8253. Second.

Motion and a second from place one. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Thank you, Mr. Spinelli. Thank you. Item 7.5, Christopher Post. You're up, sir. Got some things working over at the Civic Center he can talk to us about and stretching those dollars as far as you can get them, sir.

Yes, sir. Mayor and Council, thank you for your time and consideration today. The Civic Center has two agenda items before you today, all of them regarding capital budget transfer requests. All four of these requests have been through committee and city manager approval and are before you today for the final step of that. On the first agenda item, we have two transfers that we are requesting. The first is for $145,497 of unspent funds from Project 127 to cover an emergent need to replace the grease traps and plumbing drain lines in the north expansion prep kitchens. This is a need that was identified first back in December, and then it got critical around March. Currently these areas are not operating, so we are looking to Reallocate those funds for that need. Second would be a transfer of $44,128.69 of unspent funds from Project 128 to cover another emergent need, the replacement of the west overhead door of our south exhibit hall loading dock. Also around April, this past spring, this overhead door suffered a massive failure. It is currently operational, but barely, and we are only using it when the need absolutely requires it. So for our busy season coming up, this is the main loading dock door for the South Exhibit Hall, so we are hoping to transfer these funds to get this door replaced. On the next item, we have a transfer of $16,688.71 of unspent funds from project 440755. This is the boiler expansion project that we have completed. And this will be to cover the shortfall in project 440299, which was the purchase of a new basketball floor for the Civic Center. And then the last is a transfer of $525,000 of unspent funds from the same project, the boiler expansion project, to project 130. And this is due to an unexpected rise in costs associated with the project scope of work, which is a full replacement of the IT infrastructure for our internet services for the Civic Center that is for our clients and our patrons. So those are the four items I have before you today, if y'all have any questions.

We may. Thank you for presenting. You've presented 7.5 and 7.6, right, Chris? Yes, sir. Okay. Gentlemen, let's take up 7.5 here for questions. Do you have any questions on that item?

Have we been losing business because of this, or anybody not using the facility because of the problems with the plumbing and the grease trap?

Not yet. Fortunately, it really just got bad towards the end of April and May. We realized we lost the traps. March and but it got to the point in May I would say is where we were having to start literally manually pumping out the pumps during use of the sinks in these areas and so at this time they're not operational they have not been in use since fortunately so we have time to get them repaired

Councilman Reed, do you have something, sir? No, sir. Okay. I appreciate the process and bringing it back through. Love the savings you've identified. Question on the grease traps. How many are you replacing? Do you know? Two. Two? And they're probably pretty large.

They're not like industrial side grease traps. We have three smaller grease traps for our prep kitchens. And then we have the one large main grease trap. So these are much smaller.

Okay. And that's removal, replacement, re-pour, whatever's there, I'm sure.

Yes, it is for the full replacement of the grease traps themselves. And once we get, right now we're not really sure of the condition of the lines until we get the grease traps removed fully. Once the grease traps are removed and we can blow out those lines, we'll know if we have to change out the lines. Hopefully we won't. And we'll be able to capitalize some of these funds right now.

We're wanting to move the entirety of those available funds to ensure that we have The amounts that we need in case we need to take that extra step so you've got some concealed conditions there and your estimate reflects You know doing some additional things that you're hoping to capitalize on if the conditions are good, correct the overhead door Is that a real heavy duty industrial overhead door?

Is it super large? It is one of our larger ones. It's actually, I would say, probably our largest overhead door, yes. Okay. With the exception of the one in the basement.

Okay. Thank you for answering those. Gentlemen, item 7.5 is before you. I move to approve item 7.5 as presented. Second. motion in a second all in favor please say aye aye any opposed motion passes let's take up item 7.6 525 000 to do i.t updates improvements is that audio video as well anything in there is it only and that is that is only switches aps fiber infrastructure um

so that we can provide the services. Currently, the Civic Center provides both hardline internet services and Wi-Fi internet services to patrons and clients. That system is antiquated. It reached end of life last year. We were notified of it two years ago, and we started the funding process for the CIP. We funded it originally at $165,000. Last year we added an additional $35,000 to that project by recommendations. And then when we got to the finish line this year to actually do the project, those costs went up dramatically. I don't think anyone anticipated those costs to raise quite as dramatically as they did. Unfortunately, we IT WOULD BE DIFFICULT TO WAIT TO FURTHER FUND BECAUSE THE PRICES ARE GOING TO CONTINUE TO RISE. AND ALSO THE CURRENT SYSTEM IS NOW NO LONGER PCI COMPLIANT BECAUSE WE CAN NO LONGER DO THE FIRMWARE UPDATES. AND ALSO THE ORIGINAL SWITCH INFRASTRUCTURE THAT IS IN PLACE IS THE ORIGINAL FROM BACK IN 2003 WHEN THE NORTH END EXPANSION WAS DONE. SO SOME OF THOSE SWITCHES ARE OVER 25 YEARS. SOME OF THEM ARE 25 YEARS OLD. SOME OF THEM ARE OVER 20 YEARS OLD. And the fact that they're still there is just by the blessings. They haven't failed yet. So we are in desperate need of upgrading these systems and putting in something new. One thing that we struggle with right now with the current switches is they're capped at 100 megabytes. which is very antiquated for today's needs and requests. The new switches would open that gateway up along with the replacement of the fiber so we could offer much better services to our clients and our patrons alike.

And so you've identified $525,000 worth of savings from the previous project? That is correct. Okay. And you need all of that allocated to the IT project? Yes, sir. So you're anticipating the IT project to be $700,000? Okay.

Currently, the last bidded price that I received from IT three months ago was $678,000. So in anticipation that these could go up again, I am requesting the $525,000 just to make sure because we have had to wait to get through the committee process. So at this time, those prices could have increased. Of course, if they have not, we would have funds to capitalize after.

And Chris, I appreciate you knowing what you're talking about out there and knowing the details. So appreciate that. Thank you.

Just a quick question. How many bids did you get? I mean, on the bidding process, can you explain that a little bit to me?

IT handled that, so I'm not really sure what the bidding process was that they went through to identify the current vendor that is being proposed. Unfortunately, I can't speak to that because that was done through IT, so I'm not really sure.

Is that internal?

I don't know if we have a procurement question here or not. So, like, we may want to know if this is being sourced.

We would still have to follow procurement once it's approved. That's still the next step. They just got closed. No, this isn't the contractor approval. This is just getting the funding.

This is an appropriation of the monies for this cause and keeping them within the Civic Center. Then we'll go through procurement. We'll award the contract later. Yes.

Thank you. Hey, Chris, I've just got a question. I mean, maybe it's ridiculous, but you feel like this is that, I mean, because you've got $525,000, you know, to use for this whole thing or more than that. Is this the best use of those funds for the Civic Center right now? I mean, I know you've identified several.

issues do you feel like that this would be one of the priority issues to put those funds towards i strongly believe this is a priority issue sir we have many clients who rely on these services our public has gotten used to having that that wi-fi available but clients such as the wrca and the farm and ranch show rely heavily on these services to operate their events so i do believe this is A high priority.

Okay, I trust you. So I just want to ask that question. Thank you. Yes, sir.

Any further questions? Mr. Post, I would congratulate you on your new position and your team over there and just tell you we look forward to working alongside you. Appreciate the leadership and you tackling some of these big projects. Thank you.

I'm looking forward to it as well.

Yeah, thank you for the presentations. Gentlemen, 7.6 is before you. I move to approve 7.6. Second. Motion and second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Thank you, sir. Thank you. All right. We've got two gentlemen in the back that are ready to come forward. It's not even 9 o'clock yet. I know you guys didn't realize you're getting out this early.

Even the news is...

There you go. All right, Mr. Nelson, welcome back. Appreciate all the hard work you've been putting in over there. We look forward to seeing you here today and then also in the next several months, hopefully coming back a few more times. Thank you, Mayor, council members.

Good evening. This item is Basically an amendment to the location incentives agreement between Amarillo, EDC and Sharpened Iron Studios. That LIA was dated June 23, 2020. This amendment actually converts the existing Sharpened Iron Studios obligation to a note and extends the deadline and performance periods in the agreement. So that agreement is in your packet. SIS requested this amendment to allow additional time to perform under our original agreement. The highlights of the agreement, basically the performance periods are extended from starting in 2024 to 2028. SIS will provide and engage in semiannual progress meetings with AEDC staff. There is a removal of any additional incentives that were contemplated under the original agreement. There was an additional $500,000 that they had the possibility of accessing through the original agreement, and that's now been stricken from the agreement. And this creates a promissory note with a five-year term and an interest rate of 8%. So basically we're asking you all to approve this Amendment No. 1 to their LIA. Okay. Our board looked at this on June 9th and approved it 4-0. And I'd be happy to answer any questions y'all might have about the amendment.

Gentlemen, questions for Mr. Nelson? I don't see any, Doug. Item 7.7 is before you. I move to approve item 7.7 as presented.

Second.

Motion and a second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Mr. Nelson, one more time.

Yes, sir. Our second agenda item here is also an amendment to a location and incentives agreement between AEDC and AAA Cooper Transportation, Inc. That LIA was dated January 14, 2025. This amendment is actually very simple. It is extending the deadlines and the performance periods in the agreement. AAA Cooper Transportation did initiate this request to extend the agreement to move these dates in order to meet some of their corporate timelines for other construction projects that they have going on in the state of Texas. So highlights of this amendment basically extending the performance period from 2025 to 2030 starting in 2030. It also extends the deadline to create jobs under the agreement from 2030 to 2035. And AAA Cooper has agreed to provide us semiannual progress updates on this construction project as well as the other two construction projects they have going in Texas. So our board looked at this amendment on July 9th and approved it 4-0. And I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have about this amendment. Any questions?

Mr. Nelson, we appreciate you being here. Thank you. 7-8, gentlemen.

I move to approve item 7.8. Second.

Motion and a second from place two. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Thank you to everyone for attending. Thank you guys for staying late and working. We appreciate everybody. Move to adjourn? Move to adjourn. So moved. All right. Y'all are out of here. Thank you.