City Council - Regular Meeting

Please All right, please silence your devices and cell phones. We're about to get started. All right. I've got 6:00. At 6:00, I call this meeting of Sacramento City Council to order. Please rise for the pledges.

I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Honor flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible.

Thank you folks. Please be seated. Uh I do not see a reverend here. I don't see anybody. Is there anyone that feeling so moved to do the invocation? It could be some of the audience, staff member, council member. Anybody feeling uh so moved? Don't all come at once. Go for it. Let's pray. Dear heavenly father, we thank you so much for today. We thank you for the beautiful weather and the the life that you've given us. Lord, I pray that you would u watch over us, that you would keep us safe, that you would uh protect our city, that you would protect our uh the people who serve our city. Um pray that you would give us wisdom to make decisions that are uh right for the city and that are pleasing to you. And ask all these things in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you, Brack. Appreciate it. Audience participation. If you wish to speak on any item on the agenda, there's a list over there by the police chief. You can uh turn in form and you're allowed to speak on any item that is on our agenda. Moving forward, we're at the consent agenda. I have been asked to pull 2 C. We will discuss 2 C. No, I'm sorry. 2 D. We'll discuss 2D individually. So, A 2A is action regarding minutes from February 3rd. B is action regarding aquatic center repairs improvements and C is action regarding resolution declaring intent to reimburse the amount of not exceed 4.2 million for certain capital expenditures. Questions, comments on A, B, and C. If not, I'll entertain a motion.

Mayor, I make a motion we approve consent agenda A, B, and C as presented. Thank you, Valerie. Do I have a second? Brack second. Please cast your vote. Motion pass. Let the record reflect we have a quorum the full house tonight. Thanks for coming folks. All right. 2D is action regarding purchase of rightaway easement and real property located at the intersection of Mroy Boulevard and Sagono Boulevard from seller Dick Elkins. Bren Meredith, city attorney. Bren, I I don't have a presentation about the logistics of this. I just wanted to let you I'm not going to make you get up there and talk. You can do it from your seat.

You you'll have to ask uh Trent about the logistics of the right of way and when that happens. But uh about two hours ago, I received a phone call from Mr. Elkins attorney asking for two nonsubstantive changes to the agreement. So if with your permission, I'd like to have a motion to approve if you're so inclined and just subject to city attorney final approval. And then also add from what and and Gabe can comment on this if necessary. The purchase price uh I understand it's going to go from 650,000 to 700,000. So that should be included as well if if you support that and that's that would be a gate well any questions for Brent about the substitute changes the legal issues question other than why they're going from 650 to 700

that's a gay question I don't know I don't have that yeah I can address that so when we met with Mr. Elkins, he reminded me that we had talked about um 650,000 plus an allowance for the what'll be vacated the existing building. That's what we spoke about. It's within our project budget is just my error including that in the packet. So again, we have it. It would be it would be a not to exceed, right? Because correct. He would and they would send us the the receipt and we would reimburse, right? That's how it would work, right? So we'd pay the actual cost, not an estimated cost. It would be the actual money spent to demolish the building, right? And we would only pay to acquire the um the the strip upon um once the building is no longer there.

Okay. So, it's uh we're doing that to include a dedicated turn lane at that intersection, which I think everybody, you know, when we leave here would probably recognize the need there. It's it's neat because it backs up. So, so when we buy the land, Correct. Now we're getting uh is it a 12T strip?

13 Oh, unlucky. I'm glad uh Ry's not here tonight, but no. Uh it's about a 13ft strip, but the reality is, you may recall when we talked about this in the past, that if you cut 13t off, that negates the utility of that building, which Mr. Elkins, I think, has had plans in the future to redesign. uh we'll also give him time to um honor the commitments of the current folks that are there. We wouldn't start that project until we wouldn't bid that project until like uh fall of 27. So our next or I guess the most immediate phase of East um sorry not East Mroy Mroy will be kind of right in front of us, right? So that's a later phase.

Any other questions on this on 2D? Is there any time frame put in there to when he has to have it tore down and us to take possession of? Yeah, I've I've indicated to him that we need it before we bid, which would be September of 27. We need the transaction completed by any other questions for B legal questions or for Gabe money questions. And could I just have please in case I'm sorry Gabe and I are sort of visiting about this uh during the meeting, so I'm sorry. Um, so the additional 50,000 that's on a reimbursement basis with documented receipts or is the purchase price just increased by 50,000?

Yeah, I think it it' just be the purchase price, but it's only payable once the site's clean. Yeah, right. That was our decision. But but no receipts, no, you know, that's not a So when we talked about this before, we talked about up to $50,000 reimbursement, but we would pay the cost for the demolition up to that amount. That was for a different That's That's up to you all. Yeah, that was for a different building. That was the building off the Mr. Elkins owns adjacent to this the uh next to the post office. Well, cuz we we talked about it and we talked about both honestly. Yeah. Yeah. And we thought that was kind of high for the demolition costs.

Yeah. I think the reality is the there's likely abatement that has to take place. You mean asbestous is what you mean, right? Yes. based on the age the city does not want to be involved in that. It's easier and more efficient to have the property owner do the cost. I mean Paul for your question we can add that if we want to it's up to us. We can add I mean with the if we don't have to worry about the asbesus and stuff then I'm I'm all for just doing the 50,000 and being done with it. Yeah. And that's a great point. That was kind of our thought that we don't want to get in the the abatement business. So other questions council? If not, I'll entertain a motion on 2D. Mayor, I make a motion we approve consent agenda item 2D.

A second. Do we need to add the Yes. Number one, with the increase uh price to increase purchase price of to 700,000 and subject to the city attorney final approval of the the language in the agreement. Okay. You want you don't make Why don't you make it again? Okay. I make a motion we approve item 2D with the new p purchase price of 700,000 and subject to uh city council or city attorney council approval. Have a second. Valerie second. Okay. Please cast your votes.

Motion passes. Thank you Brand. Thank you Gabe. 24th we are at three. So we've got uh 3A recognitions presentations. What do we have? Uh, I don't think we have any recognitions or presentations of staff tonight. No. Um, so moving on. No, no. I' I've got one thing if we don't have. Okay. The Justice of the Peace is here. Hey, Chris. Welcome. You don't come very often. Glad to have you. Chris Gregory, Justice of Peace Precinct 4. So, thanks for coming, sir. All right. Go ahead, Gabe.

Yeah. Next item, uh, I'd like to introduce our presenter. Now, this will be a um team effort with a number of staff. So, Dikshia is going to talk to us about how professional services are are procured. There's a lot of misconceptions out there. You probably have heard many of them. We're also going to phone a friend and ask the city attorney, uh Mr. Kery, and um our staff from from Kimly Horn to discuss this. So, a little bit about Dika. she is finishing up uh her master's degree at the University of North Texas. I talked to one of her professors. His name is Dr. Skip Krueger. And um he was once upon a time a budget manager in Fort Worth. And Dr. Krueger um he told me like this is the smartest student I've ever had. Dixia has a uh a bachelor's degree in physics, right? Yeah. So, if you've forgotten Newton's laws of thermodynamics, maybe we could cover that at the end in the question. No, I'm just kidding. No, we're really proud of her. We're happy she's with us. She's done great work. I shared a project and Lee has shared a project that she worked on with some uh sales tax analysis, which is was pretty incredible. So with that, if you want to get going like say when there are stopping points whether it's related to legal services or engineering, we'll we'll jump in.

So she can be one that can answer the question if a plane leaves and a train leaves. Welcome, Disha. Good evening, mayor and council. I'll be presenting on how professional services are legally procured. Can you pull the microphone down so we can hear you? So folks at home can hear you well. Thank you.

Okay. So first thing is professional services are different than procurement services and according to Texas government code these professional services include city attorney, city engineer, auditing and architect services. Also according to state code the selection of those professional services should be based on qualifications fee are negotiated after the most qualified firm is identified and next are the steps for how city selects the professional firms. Uh all this procedure is a qualificationbased process. First city issues the request for qualifications. After that staff submits the firms submit the asset credentials. After that staff evaluates the proposals and then highest ranking firms are identified and for the selection of the professional service city council approval is required. So some of the points that city evaluates while scoring those professional services are do that professional firm has any experience with municipality? Is their staff qualified enough to do the job? Do what are the past municipal projects that they have worked on? Do they have knowledge of local, state and federal laws? What are the references or their performance history? Do they have any familiarity with local conditions? And there are many more parameters that staff looks into and then they evaluate their scores and that is um presented to the council. Now there are some misconception among people and this pres uh this presentation will answer them. First

question is is Kimle Horn a sole engineering firm that city uses? First, there is a clear distinction between an engineering firm contracted out on the basis of bids and uh professional firm selected on the basis of qualifications. Also, city uses different engineering services providers. For example, for new library senior center, city has used PJAL, campus engineering and CML engineering. Rest of them are the sub consultants that those engineering firms or architects firm has suggested to the city. And the another example is new fire station. City has used VRW architects and steel freeman. And for the remodeling of Joan at Kirro Library, city is contracting out with PJ and MSF hospitality. Next question is does the city give blank checks to engineering and legal services? The answer to that is there is no blank check. Every individual project order has their own defined scope, negotiated fee and council approval is required for that. Also there are development plans and litigations which are which cannot be predicted in advance and all spending is controlled and approved by the council. Um

I might stop you there. Da. So the things that uh I want to reiterate this and this is a misconception that's out there that this uh city engineer specifically designs or overdesigns a project to get the cost really high because they're taking some contingency fee or some percentage fee. This is woefully false. Um the way the council controls costs is through finding the correct scope. So I'll give the example of the council member and I won't um reveal his name. You can draw your own conclusion. We had a a bridge in Highland Station Park. Um it's not a bridge.

We're never calling a bridge. It's a it's a nice walkway crossing. Initially, there was some thought to have um a more elaborate project than what we ended up with. Through definition of that scope, we ended up with what I would call a culvert crossing that is functional, met our needs, and uh met the desires of the council. That's how the council uh controls cost. So, this is really hard and I've experienced this my entire career. People want to know, well, how much do they bill? Well, the answer is truly it depends. Depends on the project. You'll recall several times where our city engineer or we have architecture projects where we bring a project work order, a design contract specific to that project that outlines the scope. Sometimes, most of the time, we don't make changes, but sometimes we do based on the needs and desires of the council. So, um we don't get into is this principle, you know, billing at X rate or Y rate. That's not the law doesn't allow that. The other point I want to make uh related to engineering as well as our legal services is we don't necessarily control all of our costs that we incur related to these professional services. So legal services um a significant part of uh billable time is related to public information requests. As you're well aware, there are some folks who are quite active users of this. When we receive a request, it requires review by attorneys in Brin's office who specialize in this and they redact and uh release what the law requires. We can't tell people no, we don't have the money. We're not going to provide your information. That's not legal. But we also need our attorneys to advise us on how to proceed. um similar dynamic as it relates to new projects in the city for engineering

review. When somebody has a brand new project, they generally uh establish a meeting, a development review meeting. They sit down with public works, engineering, all our departments, and we figure out how we can get their project um to a place where it can be approved. We explain all our requirements. Again, this is kind of market based. We don't know when those projects are going to come in yet. We have a duty and an obligation to review them and make sure. So, um, the people that you don't see in Kimley Horn, we see Trent, uh, we see Mason on occasion. So, he's here for moral support. There's a whole lot of people within Kimley Horn, as there are with friends and toast that are working behind the scenes uh, for us all the time. It's a it's a whole team. Um and next slide is for the bidding process for the construction projects. So first is the design phase. After design phase, construction contracts are advertised for bids in the open market and then construction manager or firms are selected for a reasonable price. Also the price is market controlled and those construction managers they suggest subconsultant engineers engineers or architects and this is value engineering and it does the cost saving to the city also for all this council approval is required again. Uh, next is would an in-house city engineer or attorney eliminate the need for outside consultants or would in-house professional services save money? So the answer is for most of the cities their in-house city engineer is project manager. It requires separate department staff tools and technology. Examples are Flower Mount and Denton. Another example is Rick Tric. He used to work for city of Sagina. He had an engineering degree but he worked as project manager for the

city. And also with the limited resources city has our current employees work beyond their job roles. Examples are Bill Hurst. He does inspections and quality assurance for new buildings. Lee Hall, he did project management for new library senior center. Doug Spears, he's been project manager for the new fire station. And next is in-house engineer reality. It is difficult to cover all the specialtities for one single city engineer. Consultancy is still required if some expertise knowledge is needed on some specific topic like traffic or drainage. Also city is getting built out. So hiring in-house city engineer a fixed fixed salary or benefit cost may remain regardless of workload. Also most of the cities they retain outside engineers outside engineers even with the staff. So our current uh city engineering firm Kim Horn they provide specialization for landscape and parks and they have a person assigned for those services too. Next is planning, utilities and GIS, project management, environmental, traffic, drainage, survey, construction management. Uh these are the pictures of Kim Lelay Horn where they are working for some community events in Sagena for senior center and other two are the pictures where they are working on a project for bridge in-house city attorney reality. Again it is difficult for a single attorney to cover all the areas of municipal law. Council is still required for litigation or specialized matter. And the another thing is outside legal services cost double if they are used when only as needed.

Our current city attorney to they provide specialization for litigation and appeals, nuisance abatement, economic development, oil and gas, real estate, elections, personnel and employment, contract, school and public law and there are some references from municipal associations and I will read one of them. The Texas City Attorney Association notes that an in-house city attorney MA model is ideal for larger cities that can afford full staff whereas specialist law firm offer great value to small and medium city by providing a wealth of experience without the city having to bear full-time costs.

Can you can you can you tell me what the acronym D O S E stands for? Those are the uh those are the names of the founding partners of the law firm. Okay. I didn't know. Yeah. Taylor, Olsson, Atkins, Sarella, and Meredith. No, I mean Elum. Is that a Freudian slip there, Brand? That's right. We won't tell them you forgot. The guys that signed Brin's check. I actually thought when I first planted it, I thought it was some government entity that we could.

All right. Questions for Disha. So, I had a question and maybe Dave, you can answer this. Um, on the Freedom of Information Act request, I know that it that we can't control the cost of that. Um, but that some of that cost does get forwarded to the person who requested if it's over a certain amount. Correct. That's right. Uh, so I believe I defer to Bren, but if um if requests are going to be pretty elaborate, we can give a estimate to the requester of what our costs of preparing that information could be.

Yeah, that that's right. So, it's the the public information act has a a chart that lists all the various costs that you're allowed to charge. And if if the request is over a certain number of pages, you can also charge for labor. The problem is you can't charge that person's salary. You can only charge the hourly labor rate that the legislation has dictated in the public information act. So it it does defay the cost somewhat, but it it's not going to cover. Okay.

I'm glad I asked that. And then um as far as the scope, uh I see that that council controls the cost as far as approving that, but who who controls the scope? Do we control the scope? Is it a partnership with city? Yeah. So if it's if it's for engineering services, I put this in an email to y'all. So the city council chooses a city engineer. The reality is they function as employees of Randy Newsome and Jared Kery. They're directly accountable to them on a day-to-day basis. So that's a conversation that Randy Jared have. Um and it may be helpful to hear from Jared.

Yeah. to talk about the day-to-day, you know, interaction because like I said, um, here at the meetings, we see Trent, we see Mason on a quarterly basis. He gets lonely. No, I'm just kidding. We see Mason a lot. Good guy. Uh, but the reality is there's a lot of staff interaction all the time and throughout the week. So, if you want to address some of that.

Yeah, sure. So, um, they're involved on many day-to-day operations with us. that be water wastewater system operations. Um our plan reviews, development re review committee, uh we get together u on that. They help uh represent the city in certain areas um in and uh talking with developers and such. Um also our drainage system areas and things. So, uh, we are in constant contact with Kimley Horn daily and u, uh, they're very reliable, very available to us at a at a moment's notice. So,

so, so then to what I'm hearing basically is that the city in partnership with city engineer kind of confirms the scope together. Is that correct? Yeah. Okay. I mean, really, we're responsible for the scope. We being you and Randy, that's you drive the scope, not the engineering. Yeah. The city drives the scope. Absolutely. Via Jared and and Randy. Yeah. So, in order for us as council to help control cost, we can't really we can suggest or or say, you know, that we would like to see the scope changed and then that's how that process would go.

Yeah. The way the council controls costs is uh through the approval of the individual project orders. So uh one of the council members, we had an estimate. It was just an estimate of a parks project was at William Houston. It was several million dollars. Pretty elaborate. The big numbers get people's attention. The scope in that project included substantial amount of drainage work and and subgrade work. This just an estimate. That doesn't mean we have to do it, but that would be how the council says, "Okay, this much is right for us on a project by project basis." Another I want to address a misinformation that's out there that I think there was some quote in social media land that we've spent like $18 million in the past four years. Uh I I can't seem to get to those numbers. Neither can Kim. uh we have spent as opposed to the recent past more because we have bond projects that city engineer especially our roadway projects are designing that's not going to be forever so I think after we get through bond projects you'll see our engineering total costs decline substantially u that's a natural

progress I think that that came from when you look through like the the ledger and you see where the the money is spent it's not broken out you know so It just says, you know, engineer Kimley Horn and then a dollar amount. And sometimes it's it's like 900,000 800,000 a month. But those are for projects. Correct.

Sure. The big amounts are always going to be for projects. The dayto-day happens uh when it happens related to the water wastewater system, drainage. Uh development review is market based. So when the economyy's hot, we get a lot of projects in. Um, we have a project y'all are well aware of uh that has submitted I think we're up to lucky 16 times of plans. Uh, this is a big parcel by um, Sag High School. We have to review that um, when it comes in. We can't say no. Sure. Not this time.

Yeah. Uh that is another another cost that over time in the near future we're just running out of raw developed land that's going to decline. So our future engineering projects are going to be more redevelopment focused and they're going to be smaller in nature simply because there's fewer big parcels left to review. Right. So, is it fair to say that the dollar amount when it comes out on the ledger and it says, you know, a checks written to Kimley Horn for $9 million that that could be a total for project, but the project that money is probably getting paid to subcontractors for that are that are actually doing the work. Is that correct? No.

No. Kim can address that. If the check is written to Kimley Horn, it's for services provided by Kimley Horn. Um I'm not sure exactly the there's many many general ledger accounts, right?

And so there's been recent public information requests. All of the checks written to Kimley Horn are by account. So there's an account for um NLES phase two and three. There is an account for Old Decater Road North. There's an account for Moroy phase 3. There's an account for Mlory phase 2A. You know, so all of those are the amounts that we've paid to Kimley Horn for those projects. And then there's also something separate that we paid to Kimley Horn, which are general services, which are the kind of things that Gabe was just referring to as far as development review.

Okay. I I would add too I think this is timely because we're planning on a bond election to address the misinformation because if people see especially the large dollar amounts they go crazy. Sure. So yeah, this is good time to discuss this. Any other questions for Disha? Thank you ma'am. Who's next? Oh, I want to point out the the the graphic there is a a roundabout our early showing what a round out be and how safe it is. So, that's exciting now that we have them. All right. Who is uh who's up next?

Mayor and council, good evening. Um so, I'm I'm presenting tonight uh for your consideration and action regarding the award of M municipal engineering services. Um during our request for qualifications process we received proposals from four engineering um firms. It was Kimley Horn, Westwood, Tiggonal Perkins and James Deach Engineering. Uh these four proposals were reviewed by a scoring committee comprised of city staff and were evaluated for their services. After staff's evaluation of services, staff's recommendation to council for engineering services is to recommend Kimley Horn um engineering for your consideration and action tonight. Um I would like to give you some background as to why staff came to this recommendation. Um while all the proposals were professionally made and received great feedback from their references, uh city staff feels confident in this selection and recommendation of Kimley Horn. Um, this confidence is based on a 46-year working relationship between the city of Sageno and Kimley Horn. Kimley Horn's institutional knowledge of our community infrastructure and future needs and wants are entrenched in our day-to-day operations. Uh, Kimley Horn currently helps with maintenance and operation of our water and wastewater system development review and street and drainage system designs. They also design u and help oversee with our capital projects and other various projects in the city. Uh Randy could not make it tonight, but know this that I speak for him and myself when I say that our entrusted reliance is in Kimley Horn's services and is not taken lightly by our staff. As we as we know that this community we serve receives very high quality services from Kimley Horn because of their expertise and resources they have available. uh consistent workflow is paramount for our operations and Kimley Horn helps us achieve that

with their reliability, availability and institutional knowledge. Um it is also worth noting um during our development reviews, we plan we review plan sets from developers who use different engineering firms. um even some of the firms who send in proposals for this RF RFQ process and because of our firsthand experience reviewing other plans from other firms staff feels highly confident in retaining Kimley Horn services for our needs. Um, lastly, I just want to highlight a couple of more items of how Kimley Horn has produced and provided excellent service to our community. In 2021, during the winter weather event that shut down Texas for a few days, while surrounding municipalities were experiencing underground water main breaks in their system, Sagenol had zero. This is a direct result of Kimley Horn's direction and planning with our staff to upgrade and maintain our water system. This saved the city thousands of dollars during that weather weather event. And recently, Sagenol was uh awarded a grant that Kimley Horn applied us uh for to receive $1,275,000 to add new sidewalks and signal lights in the Basswood Boulevard area and Jarvis Road. So, that's just to name a few of the things that they they do for us. That's really scratching the surface. But um um once I said ear like I said earlier, we'd like to uh present them tonight for your consideration and award. I'll take any questions you may have.

Questions for Jared?

I don't have any questions other than um the sidewalk thing that we talked about. I know it's kind of outside of this, but I just want to say I I appreciate that Kimley Horn was willing to meet with us so quickly um and address the the crosswalk issue there with the roundabout. Um and I really really appreciate having Kimley Horn on our side when it comes to that project with all the lights and dealing with Encore. Um because that that was the one that I saw that really brought the the light to my eyes that was like, okay, this they're putting in a lot of work that we don't see. So, you're here. Other questions? Council?

Um, I spoke to Jarrett earlier today and I just on um possibly using a landscaping engineering firm for uh parks. How would we handle that after our discussion to where we could source some of that work out? Because I I feel like, as I mentioned to you, they've come in with really big numbers. The the water crossing was one of them. Um, I've worked with Randy on getting some possible monument signs for Willow Creek Park and it came in at this astronomical number. Plus, there's grant money out there. There's firms out there that advertise that they got like a 90% success rate. And I don't think we're capitalizing on that. And I would like to see us outsource at least the park stuff to another company. um after talking with with Gabe today and everything, we we can definitely look to outsource those types of projects and start going after bids. We can definitely look into that.

And the other question I have on the score sheets, it says experience of five years or more and it's 30 points. Two of the score sheets gave it 30 and one of them or gave um one of the other biders 30 and one of them says 29. If they've got more than five years of experience, that's 30 points.

Yes. I believe I believe the sheet you're referring to is the one that Randy and I did. And so, just to explain how we ranked that, how we interpreted that system, we ranked um each one who had the most years of experience and we gave them the highest ranking and went down from there. That's how that's how we interpreted that that question. So, are you saying each person who who filled this out interpreted differently? I I can't speak for probably. Yeah. Humans are like that. It's subjective, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Mayor Council,

go ahead.

I can address the park design um issue. I think that's probably the easiest service and it doesn't affect day-to-day operation to split out. Uh I looked at the firm U Mayor Prom mentioned they they advertise um success rate with um procuring grants which is good. Um they don't do all their in-house civil so they're farbing that out. So probably some way if we were to proceed that route but I think that's really easy thing to split out. If you'll recall, uh, Willow Creek Station in 2019, we finished a design contract that Project Dreamplay had started with Lata Studio. They're out of Dallas, just like this firm. I think they did a good job. There's some drainage issues we had to come back and fix, but, you know, it's uh, it's something really easy to do.

Other questions, council, for Jared or Gabe? I go ahead, Sean. No, I was just going to say, so how would we move forward with this if we were to break that out or is it something that we can do later? Yeah, I I think on a project by project basis, we would just bring park design projects to the council or do a RFQ. Um really I can probably only we'd probably only engage a a design firm if we did a new park because like our current scope of park projects is is basically renovations. We're just replacing playgrounds which has minimal design cost. Is that fair? Yeah. We have the parks plan, right? Yeah.

And then, you know, let's say if voters were to approve our our money that is going in May, you know, that may that may be part of it. We could hire one firm to do park related projects and it's pretty simple. Either the same process RFQ review the council. So why can't we just I mean I understand we've got we've got this we've got this analysis that that we've done take take that there's a lot of questions a lot of things that different people is asking about specifically when you say public services it's more towards our engineering services not not legal Why couldn't we? Is there any reason why council couldn't ask for the top two or top three to come in and present to council? Is there any any legal reason why we couldn't?

No, you certainly are authorized to do that if that's what council's wish is. So, keep in mind, and we're happy to do whatever, but the negotiation is related to qualifications, not price. And the people that can advise you the best on qualifications are the people that work every day with engineering services. Yeah. Yeah. My Oh, go ahead, Nikki. I'm sorry.

I just I just know I'm here and I know that there may be not at large, but there's a consistent group that that has concerns and I I talked about this over a year ago here, probably before the council talked about it. So, I'm just trying to make sure that from a council standpoint, we have all the information we need to to make a design decision. Here's where I look. I try to, okay, if I split out the parks and stuff like that because not doing a good job, then why aren't I looking at the other department? You see what I'm saying? I mean, I don't see anything in here in this paper here. In this paper here, I don't see any data that tells me that I I should be should not be going in that direction and I am an engineer and when I start making decisions with nonound data I start getting nervous and that's what I'm afraid of here that's why I know bring them up here let them do their song and dance it's just a proposition I'm only one of seven but

Jared addressed that

I do think that we opportunity here to really do a if the council the rest of the council wants to to do a deep dive and say okay what are we looking for to you know put this to bed once and for all I definitely know that there's more than me I might be the one speaking I definitely know that there's more than me that is uncomfortable about this and so to be comfortable I mean Jared I'll talk to you today I would like to see And I want to give the rest of my fellow council members chance to do that. That's right. You know, listen to each one of them, give their pitch, ask questions, tear this apart, and then see

that's sort of what we asked staff to do. So if you were going to disregard staff's recommendation, that's fine, but that's what you would be doing because we asked staff to dig into this and that's what they did. That's when they voted had put it and as much quant quantitatively as they could. Uh we can discuss the quantitative data there or not but that's where we ask staff what do you think why can you give us some and of course they ask for the proposals which is very fair. Uh I I'm inclined to go with what our staff recommends because they certainly work with on the day-to-day basis. They're the ones that have to do this not us. Um I've had a good working relationship with with Kimley Horn for many years because they've been our our engineering ser for many years. I like the history. Uh when we were, for example, when we were working on finishing up the bridge, we had some questions as to how this started. And so they were able to pull up data and emails and uh plans from way back in the early 2000s when this first the bridge was first even a concept to sort of walk us through how we got to where we were. Um, and I had a long conversation with our former city manager Nan about uh them years ago uh about her thoughts and she was very positive because she had worked with them for the whole time that she'd been here uh at the city. So that's part of the reason, but then we wanted to take a look and get some hard data and that's what the staff gave us. Uh so I'm definitely inclined to agree with the staff and move forward that way. I I don't know if bringing in uh as you said dog and pony would do us any good and because staff's already really done that work for us. And if you're saying that, you know, we don't trust staff, that's fine, but um just keep in mind that's what you are saying. So, and other questions, like I said, I'm one of one of seven as well.

Sorry. Go ahead.

Yes. Um those of us up here on city council don't have the expertise that our staff has to make these kinds of decisions. And yes, we do have an engineer on the city council and I'm sure he's very knowledgeable about many different engineering subjects, but he's just one of seven. And you know, that's why we have a staff. They are qualified. They are the experts. So, I think we aren't qualified. If if several firms came up here and made a presentation, say three firms came up here and one firm had an excellent presentation and they sounded so good, but really doing the work, we don't know how to judge that. And so I feel like we should go with our staff and and do what they recommend. I would just like to add again um how invaluable institutional knowledge is. You know, even any career you're in, you want to retain that knowledge in your organization. Um whether that be an employee or whatnot. Um and and to have to go out and and basically start all over with another firm would be devastating to our operations. that would take uh time away from our other responsibilities to have to start all over in essence. So, I really want to bring that point up. And then also um you know, we had touched on in-house engineering. Um about a year ago, I sent an email out to 28 different municipalities to different city managers, public works directors. Um only received 11 responses back, but all 11 use an outside source. Um, the city of Hasslet, they did have an in-house engineer, but they ended up doing away

with that position. Even going they had to go outside because of their growth got so big. And they've actually done away with an in-house engineer position because it's it's the same amount of money either way. So, um, it it's what's best for it's staff recommen recommendation of what's best for for our city. At the end of the day, we have to do what's best for the operations of our community. So, thank you, Jared. Other questions for Jared or for uh any staff?

Just a comment. I have no problem, Kimley Horn, for the road stuff, but the park stuff is is where we had the meeting at the fire station and went over the numbers. Decisions were made by the parks board based on numbers, and those numbers to me just they just didn't line up. And then I'd like to get another one or two firms to actually go through our parts plan and look at those numbers and see if in fact they're realistic or or not. Um going forward that's yeah again that's an easy scoping exercise. It's just a matter of what the correct scope is. We could when you're talking about the core functions of the city engineer, we're talking the water and wastewater system staying with the firm that designed and have maintained a good good shape as well as roadway design. Kimley Horn is currently doing the most I believe roadway projects in Tarant County. So, uh, Tarant County Bond, Medford, they're big enough they can handle us. The parks are like small potatoes compared to the bread. Well, you look at we asked for a design for the fishing pond over at Highland Station just putting some basic walking trails and they came back with $16 million. We asked for a water crossing. We told them we wanted basic. They told us we couldn't do a box cover culvert. Then lo and behold, we came back and we did a box culvert and they came back with numbers like $1.5 million. We're not, you know, we need to look at this stuff.

Oh, absolutely. And if the if it's the council's pleasure pulling parks design out, that's the easiest thing to do because it's not every day. So, well, let's talk we're talking about drainage. Same thing when we talked about the Golden Gate Bridge over there, right? We don't have a bridge. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that.

The uh that they brought up the creek over there that's got erosion and when they came to us, they said, "Well, you can design it with one wall or two walls and so me as an engine I come back said well which do we need and watch the you know what's the ramifications if I go with one wall versus two walls and never did get a straight answer and for us setting up here again we're not experts okay and when we when I asked an engineer if I go with this option A versus option They dang well better be able to tell me what the consequences is. Is if I go with the back wall is big rain comes is that going to push the water out into my uh park and and flood it.

That's not something that that's something that they should be able to answer like that if they're doing a design for us. Those are the the things that heed me.

Yeah, I I get it. And in that situation, I think we ended up where we needed to be. We have not designed the channel for the future improvements although we have discussed it. U so that's a future scope and discussion issue. If the question is is Kimley Horn or specifically the staff person Misty she handles all of our drainage projects. Is she qualified to do it? She absolutely is. I mean anybody in DRC that sit down with the project knows. Um I think uh engineers generally tend to be quite cautious and risk averse and maybe you know assume the ultimate state. When we talked about that project we talked about phasing it. The reality is we don't we're not going to have uh cash on hand to do that all at once.

Am I off base there? I mean and that's something we'll have. We can understand but these are things they came and presented to us. Mhm. We asked what I consider is basic fundamental questions, engineering questions on the design that they could match. Yeah. So, and then they said it's up to you. It's up to us. You're the architect. You tell us. Yeah. Can you address that Trent with some Yeah.

I recall this discussion slightly different, but I I mean, we were conceptually planning out how to handle the erosion in that creek. Um, we took a lot of direction from Randy and their firsthand experience on maintaining that creek. So if I mean if the question is ever to determine the water surface elevation I mean that's something we do all the time but that's not something I can you know determine on the spot but that type of modeling is our breadandut services

and and we can determine the other part of it is too is there's lots of projects but difficult position for y'all is determine the priority. So the current uh big picture drainage project priority is on second boulevard. We'll come back and get to that. That's where most of our attention and our design dollars. What is it? Phase one. And this isn't your question that we're already in it. Again, it was something that was presented to council. You present it to us. We're going to ask questions usually. And if these were pretty basic questions. Sure. So, so, so we can get you the number. What is it specifically you want the phases and the probable cost analy? No. What we were getting at is it's planting that seed of doubt. Yeah.

Is what's happened. Yeah. I mean, we asked them, they presented some, oh, okay. And they said option A or option B, right? Okay. They said you could have two walls and have it or you could have one wall and then the other one would just drain out into the park. Sure. Okay. Well, I asked which should we go with? What are the advantages and disadvantages? Of course, the two wall one's going to be more expensive. Okay. But I may want to go with the more expensive one if every time now this is causing a flooding thing and it's going to flood out my park. Right. And and you know those are the questions that the engineers have to answer to us. Sure. You know so that we can make an informed decision.

Sure. So you're asking for this is what's giving some of us hard here. Just basic simple stuff like that. Yeah. We don't feel like we always are getting the question that we asked doesn't get answered. Well, hey, I'll accept blame because when that uh when the crossing was finished through the CIP, we determined that we weren't going to do at least in this year another drainage project there. We've identified on the out years, but I think to Trent's point, that's an easy discussion. You know, whether it's all channelized both side, we can get that to

and just that type of question has so much more additional context. So, I mean, if we're trying to limit erosion control, there's eight different ways to handle that erosion control, but there's so much else that goes into it upfront costs, maintenance costs, maintenance access, impacts adjacent to the homes or to the park. So, I think I'm starting to recall the discussion you're referring to and I I mean, there are still several viable options to help that erosion control in that park. I mean, one of them that we're even looking at is just extending that box cover under the road all the way through the park and filling it in if we can get it permitted. So, I don't know. That's that's a tough one just because there are multiple viable options that just have adjacent um context to the answer, right? It's not just a straightforward which one works or which one doesn't. There's several that work.

It I'm just like I'm speaking from citizens that I've talked to and things like that. It also seems like a lot of times when we ask for something and everybody wants the absolute best, right? The the Rolls-Royce of everything. It seems like a lot of things we ask for. We need like like the walkway across the the creek over there in Highland Station. We need that. We don't need Golden Gate Bridge. And a lot of times it seems like that's what we we get and we're, you know, we're well this is it. And it's it it took Nick and I out there measuring everything and coming up with another plan be for it to get where we got today which suits its purpose for a lot less money that was originally proposed.

I think that's valid feedback. And whenever there was a transition from Rick Trice to Randy, there were a lot of times where there were requests here at council that I would wait and see is this something that I need Randy to confirm and there were requests that I do feel like got dropped or um took a little while to actually respond to. But I mean I'm I would look for feedback, but you know, I think in the last couple of years as we've kind of hit our groove, I I mean we're we're serving y'all as quick as quickly as we can. We worked with Sean to find um cost-effective options to improve those um pedestrian crossings. And so yeah, willing to accept all the feedback and I and I do acknowledge that th those did happen um in years past, but I I I feel like we've hit our groove in the last few years working with Randy and Jared.

Well, and and one thing to keep in mind, a lot of times we'll get, as you said, options and they could be very expensive options down to cheap options. It that's our job to pick.

We we handle the money. So, if you ask an engineer, what how can I fix this? They're going to give you you can fix it. You can spend $10 million or you can spend a million. And that that's what we do. That's we filter it down. That's our role. We're not the nuts and bolts design, but we're like, okay, we don't need, as you said, a Rolls-Royce, we need a Chevy or whatever we need. And and that's that's the council. That's how we control costs. You mentioned how we control cost. That is how we control costs with the scope with recommendations from Jared and Randy. So, it's I think it's a little unfair to to say Kimley Horton didn't give us what they need. They may have given us too much or yes, they give us, you know, and they're going to want to build something good that they're proud of. Sure, maybe we don't need that. That's up to us to decide. And you said, as you mentioned, ask questions, say, "Hey, why do we need this? Do we need this one? Option A, option B, what's the difference?" That's what they give. But ultimately, it's us. And the money is is is that's we control the pocketbook. So, we can't really push it back on the engineer say you're spending too much, you're spending too much. We're the ones that ultimately responsible for that. And and we comes through everything comes through us. So we have an opportunity to say yes or no or as you said cut it down the project is too the scope whatever that's that's totally the council

here's another is this Saturday in the morning you come over to little park and me and my grandson will be fishing for trout we're going to be doing Saturday morning okay three years ago in this exact same we asked for two things we asked the mayor was to see what it would cost to put a tank, a pond in over Willow Creek. And an estimate to at least put we said it didn't even have to be concrete. It could just be gravel around the already tank we had over here on the other side of town so that we could at least begin utilize that. And what would it just cost to put the barrel in some more people could start utilize it and maybe we could have that added in and start getting more and I'll mention they came back with a some million dollar tank and nothing's been done. So we we got we got a nice tank over there which people could be using and if we did just a little bit every couple years could it could be something really nice that a lot of people could use be a water you know who knows we could get with the Texas fish and they could come trout loose and instead of me going all the way to Calar I could be going on

Nik day. I'm sorry. Is your microphone on? I can't hardly hear you. Now it is. Okay. But anyways, and I didn't mean for this to be a get out the stick and beat up on Kimley Horn, but you know, I kind of look at this every year. I give people in my group who report to me a review and I guess this is kind of a a review. I guess so. Other questions. are the parks the parks board is making decisions off of the numbers that were provided and they see $16 million for that. They're going to put it on the back burner. But if it's $2 million or a million half dollars, then it's going to get looked at. And right now it's on the back burner.

And I do agree that eventually maybe we want to get to that $16 million, but we can't eat that whole pie. Senol is not that big. We can't eat that whole pie at once. And I remember when that was, we actually said, "Boy, can this be paired down to where, you know, it's it's a small slice of of the apple pie?" And and we never got that answer. No, we did we did that exercise and we paired it down to it was either one or two million and we worked with Randy to talk about can we work with the Tarant County to get those parking lots paid by the county rather than brand new conquer and we we ended up with options where we phased it fairly simple. Well, that that but all cards on the table.

Yeah. I also really struggle with the costs that are in our parks master plan and I've had multiple discussions with our team about these cannot be realistic numbers. Um I had them do a cost exercise where they showed me every bid item and all the bid tabs that they had from their other projects. And so I compared all of their bid items versus actual projects that were bid for other municipalities. So that's where we are comparing our data is from other projects that are actually bid with the dozens of cities that we serve.

I still really struggle to understand how a restroom can be that expensive. Um so I I understand where y'all are coming from. The one time we actually did try to build out a restroom with Randy. Um we came to find out that the cost they had in there was accurate. We could not find someone to build a restroom for less than it was like $300,000. It was outrageous. and that's where we ended up going with the portable restroom. So, I'll just put all the cards on the table. I I do struggle with the costs that some of these parks estimates come up with and I've challenged them to dial those in. Um, and they have the best they can, but um if that's just something we can't get past. I mean, we we've done our best. I I totally understand the frustration from that end.

Well, and if we can't do it all or Thanks. So, this is first I heard that y'all paired it down from 16 I think it's 16.8 or something like that. down to 1 million. Okay, that's great. I maybe it came back before council, but I I don't remember if it did. Yeah, I think it went to the parks board as well because it was clear that that was your priority. We had the refer to Jared. It did go to the

Yeah. So, the other issue and again the numbers are big and scary. The other issue is there's other requirements that are triggered by the city as a governmental entity related to drainage and waters of the US. So, I know and you and I have had this conversation. If it was us back home, you'd get a backhoe and you dig a pond. Sadly, the city cannot operate in that function because, you know, the watershed and the flood plane and all these type things. Gabe, it's it's what I'm hearing in sort of several conversations. A lot of this seems like a communication issue.

Yeah, that's shock. How How can we Well, not sticker shock even, but how can we get better communication? I I think that seems to be some of the root cause of this if if I'm hearing it correctly via going from Kimley Horn to Randy and Jar's group to us to you. How can we do that better? I I think that might be a little of this or maybe a good part of this is the communication with council is not as clear as we would like or it's not as timely maybe. Sure.

I think the best way is to probably workshop it in a public setting and talk about all these and again it all comes down to scope. No one's really debating, I don't think, whether Kim Horn is qualified. We're talking about the scope or how elyrate or minimal we want to be. So that's an easy fix. I would like us to really seriously going forward, you know, figure out how we can do a better job the communication angle on this. Sure. I think that seems to be

turn a contributing factor to some of this and that would be something that we can handle. We can fix that. I don't have an answer tonight, but Randy and Jared can fix that and make that a better, smoother, more frequent operation. I don't know. Maybe I'm I'm thinking of a monthly engineering report or we I don't know. I'm just thinking how do we or a monthly even quarterly they come before us and do a recap of a project, something like that. That's communication. So, just think about that, please. Brett, go ahead. And I would also say it might be good to run an exercise of something that is almost ridiculously cheap. Um, just to show us, okay, you can do this, but here's the disadvantages to that. And so that we we have a point of reference on the low end. Uh, because we only have the point of reference on the high end. It seems like a lot of times it's like you're going to spend $15 million or you're just not going to do the project. Well, no, give me something that we can look at and go, well, I'm willing to take those tradeoffs. Um, knowing what those trade-offs are. Um, that would be helpful as well.

Something else that might be helpful is not to Could you turn your microphone? Sorry. Not to compare us with the bigger cities. We can't keep up with the big cities, boys. It just don't work like that. We're a small city. We can't compete with Dallas and Fort Worth and all them. We don't have extra money to spend on roundabouts with the art things in there. You know, they cost too much. So, we need to remember we're a smaller city. Please.

So, I would like to circle back too about this um the summary for the the qualifications. I feel like I kind of want to know more about this with the experience, especially, you know, since you you can speak to it since it's on your name. Um, the five years experience or more. I'm not quite understanding because I almost feel like that's the only category on your report that has anything lower than a perfect score. Um, so I'm just trying to figure out it would almost be better for me to make my decision if they were all perfect and you just said they're all perfect, but we have this long-standing relationship. I want to go with them. So, I'm just trying to figure out like why specifically those got lowered.

So, I think in that situation, Mr. Kurszy would have the details. We had a firm that submitted that actually did work for the city on a separate project. They proposed an engineering solution that staff protested with the help of Kimley Horn. Uh the ultimate determination was related to drainage and Misti saved the city several hundred thousand going with the current design which happens to be across the street. Lee was intimately aware that's factored in. Um Jared mentioned this earlier but staff sees plants that are submitted by some of these other firms and that factors in that makes sense.

Okay. I was just curious because it doesn't say that here. It says experience working with m municipalities and experience of five years or more. Right. So, is it experience with our municipality or just That's correct. And that Okay. Yeah. I don't I mean, we're not going to call the firm out, but Sure. No. Yeah. Yeah. You know, one person we haven't heard of who also did a grading on this is our assistant city manager. I'd love to hear his thoughts on on the grading and just the process and what your your thoughts were, Lee, because you've got the experience.

Yeah. Again, as we've said many times that we graded four firms on qualifications to be our city engineer. Um, I downgraded Kimley Horn because frankly they left something out of the uh the RFP that was one of the categories that where they were supposed to put in there. and um but and and it came down in in my opinion it came down to them and one other firm that were very close in the ratings but I don't think you can I don't think you can use uh well it's difficult to use historical data which we have here within our experience to to qualify other firms that aren't involved in that. So we do know we are familiar with with Kimley Horn. Um they have done an excellent job as Gabe said u uh one of the competing firms had a design that was going to of the building across the street that more than likely was going to cause us a huge problem in the near in the future had it been built that way. and Kimley Horn uh they they addressed it and presented a a different design. Uh so that was fresh in my mind when I was grading some of the things that I could grade in terms of qualifications. So, um, again, it if we if it were not an assessment of qualifications to be our city engineer, it might turn out differently.

Thank you, Lee. Appreciate that. Any other questions? We're still on 3B. I want to sort of wrap this up. Any other questions on this topic and this uh for the folks we have here? I thought we were on 4A.

I don't know if we ever officially fixed the 4A, but we can now. So, um 4A is consideration and action regarding award of bid. So, we were talking about professional services and the whole review, but I would say we're on 4A now. Any question other questions or we ready to make a motion? Our 4A, considering action regarding award of bid for municipal engineering services. Jared, anything you want to add to that that you haven't already said? I will entertain a motion. Mayor, I move that we table this for how long? Or do we need to say how long? I I How long would it take to get a re get a presentation from the other companies?

That's probably hard to determine tonight. This can we leave it if we table? Can we leave it open-ended? friend, you you can table it and and provide Gabe the discretion to bring it back when he's ready with the various candidates for presentation. Is that fair? That worked for you? Yep. I'll second it.

All right. Paul second. Please cast your votes. Motion passes. It is tabled. uh TBD. So we will come back to this at some point in the future. 4B considering tax regarding amendment number one annual project order with Kimley Horn Associates for final design of Macroy Boulevard phase 3. Trent Tidwell Kim Horn.

So since Ry's not here, I'll present this. Um we've been working with Randy and Jared on Macro phase 3 for several years now. We originally set the alignment um in the cross-section of the project to um be tailored towards um some grants that we were applying for the TA transportation alternative set aside grants. Part of those grants um were to have shared use path on both side of the roads. Unfortunately, the two years uh we applied, we received feedback that we were very close, but we did not receive the grant awards. Um so now we have changed our cross-section to where we have um a eight foot sidewalk on the north side and a five foot sidewalk on the south. Why that's important is because when there were uh the 10-ft shared use pass on both sides we were not able to um keep the cemetery parking that was adjacent to there. Um we had a lot of coordination with staff on that. Although it was a difficult decision, um we it it was going to uh they were going to use the library of parking for parking and we also coordinated with um Robert Ellis from the cemetery board for with that decision. Um but recently there um has been more discussions with Randy and he's asked us to look and do everything we can to get that parking back in. So in the current plan there are only two or three parking spots that we were able to squeeze in. Um, obviously we cannot buy right away from the cemetery. Um, so that was all we were able to get. But with this proposed change, we would actually completely redesign about a quarter of this project, shift the alignment down um to be further in the rideway to where we could accommodate all three travel lanes and the fourth uh parking lane that would be adjacent to the cemetery.

Council questions. If not, I'll entertain a motion. Mayor, I'll make a motion we approve item 4B. I'll second. Please cast your votes. Motion passes. Thank you folks. 4C consideration action regarding res 2026-2 2026 work plan. Gabe

Mayor and council just following up I think uh quick presentation follow up from our last discussion on this item the request is to have some milestones based on uh quarters and I've also identified the leaders for each project not just me this is citywide so I don't intend to go through this in too much detail the reality is we'll as we've agreed in the past we'll discuss this each month do a status update Um, you know, I can blow through them pretty quickly. Uh, personnel Gab, why don't you just hit the high points to council can interrupt with questions as they see fit.

Sure. Personnel manual update. Um, Melanie and Lee have got a some stock um, uh, documents, policy documents uh, that staff will begin reviewing. Um, sounds like an easy project. Lots of these projects sound really easy, but there's a lot more to it. So we take the the canned the the template project, we review that internally that goes out to department heads for further review. Uh we pick and choose what we like. Uh that goes to the city attorney for review and then ultimately we come back uh and bring that to the city council for adoption or review. So are we on track to have that done the first part done by Q1 into Q1?

Uh so we've got we've already got the best practice policy, right? just able to ones that we have the Yeah. Yeah. So quarter one we would procure the template documents and then we would begin the review process. So yeah, definitely because Q1's done the end of March, right? Correct. Yeah.

Yeah. The template that's sort of a back of house function staff review before and then like I said, each department weighs in. Uh policies vary by department. There's different procedures, different hiring standards, requirements, that sort of thing. communicationformational awareness. The council took action to call a bond for May. Um we have begun um ourformational uh preparing the information that will go out to all of our residents. So we had a uh one-page flyer that went out today. It will go out in utility bills that shows the propositions A, B, and C. Real brief description of them. Uh we are in the process of building a website that references design documents and sort of the backstory of why we selected those projects. The intent is to have uh and I may preface this by saying that all of these documents will be reviewed by bond council bond attorneys to make sure that they'reformational only in nature and not advocating. We're not telling people you know you have to vote for this because that is not legal. So, um, the next part of that outside of our printed material would be related toformational videos. Y'all have probably seen the real positive reaction related to videos. There's lots of people that'll watch a video, but they won't read a little short blur. So, we feel like that's a way where we can inform uh, and probably address a lot of questions that are out there related to the projects. Have we started reaching out to the HOAs and stuff uh identifying I mean areas that we can have also along with this town halls and garage gaps.

Yeah. So uh don't think we've reached out to HOAs yet. We have a tenative list for town halls that are based on project. It'll be uh a town hall related to roadway projects uh town hall related park improvements and then one for the animal shelter. And then we'll probably have a fourth one to summarize. So that's the plan. Um, we've encouraged people uh on the social media for the animal shelter to visit as they have time or interest and see the existing facility. So, does the city have a list of the chairmans of each HOA?

We have some contacts for HOAs. I would have to check with I'd have to check with Pedro. you do have a pretty good contact of. So I I want to challenge each of my council members and my mayor that each one of us ought to seek to have a pick an area of the city and have a garage cabin and we should drive it. I'm willing to do that. Okay, that's fair.

Uh, one thing I want to note in addition to ourformational videos, we intend to record all of the town hall meetings based on project and then have that on our project website. So if people miss it, they can see maybe answer some of the questions. I spoke with Alina before the meeting and there was already sort of some misinformation, misconceptions floating out there. That's good. Let's fix it now so people have the correct information to make whatever decision they're going to make. And to the extent that the themes are common, we know what what those pinch points are, what the you know what people want to know about. So

yeah, I saw one of them today. They saw $6 million for a park and they took it as a park and not multiple projects. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. And that's that's something we need to address. Just got to stay on top of it. And one of the reasons I'm mentioning HOAs is because if we do it like say over in my area, Highland Station, if we do it in fire station 2, not even council can be uh positive or pro about it. But if we have it say there at colleague at your at your house

at my house absolutely good for that make some burgers uh we can we can be talk about it as and positively as much as we want. And is it possible too to as part of this kind of also be informational about the boundaries where sagenol lies? Um because I think it'd be good to group that in because a lot of people are saying, you know, well, they're doing all these projects and then they find out that it's they're outside the city. Yeah, they're outside the city. They're very very nearby and I understand it affects the community, but yeah, I get it. Yeah.

I Yeah, happy to show city limits map. In fact, I think uh last week when there was a post about the old Decar reconstruction, some people were complaining about Bailey Boswell, but like west outside the city limits. So, yeah, it's because they live in 76179. That's what it is. Yeah, that could be. It's a zip code. They think that's Sag the water bell. I guess I will tell you there's a couple out there that say it's one street over and if you tell them they live in Fort Worth and not Sagenov, they get a little they get a little upset. I've had people argue with me about I know what the border are. It's not up for debate. It's a concrete. I know where it is, too, you know. So, yeah.

So, I think u I think long term what hopefully we can help with that, but we're it'll take a few years, but we're replacing our street signs with the nice new template the council approved. So, that's sort of clear. Although we are on some streets, one side is Fort Worth and one side Sagonal. So yeah.

Uh next project uh project leaders Maria um this has been broached once with the parks board. They'll pick that discussion up again. Uh first action item is to draft some bylaws and a structure. Uh next action would be to get the park board's feedback. My understanding is the park board just generally wanted more information on how it would function. Um, now this is something that could occur independent independently of the council because this is not a city entity. So, and the city council wouldn't have direct control. Uh, but it's a discussion that began with y'all to consider. So, we'll just keep

it nice keep us up to date to let us know that it's

Yeah. Uh this is kind of two priorities in one project. One is to have a tree assessment to show us how and where we could include more trees in the future um through a nonprofit, the Texas Trees Foundation. They're out of Dallas, I believe, and they do like some recommendations and surveys for cities. Um and we would talk to other cities who have these projects in place. The other part of the project would be to determine a um likely an incentive for folks to uh replace or replant trees in other locations where they're not damaging pavement. So that's a benefit to the homeowner and of course the city the less damage we take.

We've changed that ordinance. So if they cut the tree down, they can't put it back, right? So, we just need to Yeah, I think we Yeah, get the word out. Well, it's I call, you know, the carrot and stick, right? Yeah. Is we've got some neighborhoods, some HOAs that planted a ton of trees and they planted unfortunately planted trees that really really like to push up our sidewalks, right? And so then they file things for us to come fix them, right? You know, so if we sweeten the pot a bit and say, "Hey, we got this. You do it." We're not going to we're not going to replace the sidewalks if you all don't fix the root cause. So it's Yeah, I think that's fair. Trees between the sidewalk and the street belong to the city. No.

From the development that put them in there. Um it's not part of their property. Like along Woodrest, you know, where all the trees are in the fences and then there's a sidewalk and then there's a street and they're between the street and sidewalk. If it's in city right away, the city would have control of the ultimate. I think it depends on where it is. Yeah, it probably would. That's not their property, is it? The easement in front of my house is my property. It's just an easement. So, there's restrictions on how I come back on the back side. On the back side, I guess if it's inside your fence, it belongs to you. If it's outside that fence, that's what I was thinking. So, those trees would belong to the city. I got whack them down.

The city or Encore, whoever owns that back there. Well, people would love it if we start cutting down the trees, would they? I'll grab about them because they leave a bunch of junk on the ground and everything. So, there's no sense in leaving them. I mean, obviously, it's a bigger project than at first. Yeah, there there's a lot of discussions. Yeah, I think even the city paid to have them trimmed. Remember when the fire truck came through and they had all those trees trimmed right there? I think the city had to pay for that, too. Yeah, we we do trimming on a somewhat regular basis just to make sure the rightway is clear. So, we got to cut that one big limb down. one that's on the ground. It goes up anyway.

Now, when they when they did the detour on Woodrest, that's because I had discussions with Randy cuz trucks were hitting it and branches were getting busted and everything. So, they they went through and trimmed them and trimmed them all up and everything. I thought the city had to pay for that. So, they did. I think so. Well, just save some money. Quit trimming them. Just knock them down.

Uh, next project is related to signage. um which would include gateway, welcome monument signs as well as wayf finding. So once you're here getting navigating your way around um I think Susie Sus is the project leader. She's already worked on some of this uh to identify the uh priority locations. This would probably be something we roll through our annual budget uh process and then like with a lot of these other things, we'll make a recommendation and and uh move forward. There was a economic development plan that the city council before I came had um contracted with a a third party to do. Uh it's been some time since that's received some attention. We've made a lot of progress based on that plan. So, I think the first step was to do a workshop, maybe go over what exactly is in there. Uh, we could either, you know, review that plan uh inhouse kind of piece by piece or get a third party like the council did in the in the past. Um, and then do some updates and bring some action items. I think some of the things that uh probably need council consideration would be broadly incentives, how they're used. We're entering a phase where we're pretty well built out and we probably should consider incentivizing redevelopment, which city council has in the recent past with the old fire station project and other things. We might want to talk about some target industries um to go after and recruit.

Hotel.

Yeah, hotel. That's a Yeah, that's another project. But yeah, I think all good discussions and again 2016 things have changed. It's time to revisit. Yeah. Pedro's on there. Pedro is going to be and Pedro is actually at a recruitment event in San Antonio this week working on retail recruitment uh along with retail coach and lots of lots of other folks. Uh next project is to review a street maintenance fee. Uh staff leader be Jared Kerzy. Um, our next door neighbor in Fort Worth recently went through a process to I believe they effective this budget year they're going to establish a a fee um fixed fee for dedicated funds for street maintenance. There was a consultant hired in Fort Worth that did that work effort. If we proceeded down this route, I think we should should do the same. Pick a consultant. they figure out the formula and the decision matrix. Probably not terribly different than when we uh engaged a financial consultant to do our rate study. It'd be a similar type firm or or an engineering firm. I think FE Nichols might have done Fort Worth. Uh the reality is with our limitations uh three and a half percent related to our tax rate, I don't see a way uh we would substantially increase our streets maintenance absence some other funding source because as you're aware yeartoear, you know, it's all we can do to do the same uh service level with cost increases and inflation and that sort of thing. So I think it's timely and and something we should consider. Uh this is something we uh talked about in the past to update facility deposit fees, rental fees, and program offerings. I think it's been a fair amount of time since some of these

things have received attention. It's just time. Um I know that uh Vicki is uh Oh, that's impressive. She she waited till the bitter end here. Yeah. to get up.

She's She's not eating dinner yet. Anyway, this will be probably a quarter one, quarter two thing. And I think famous last words, relatively simple and straightforward. So, they're working on since uh at the recreation center, bringing in new programs since they have the full space with our new facility across the street. Um yeah, the mayor mentioned the hotel recruitment. Uh the piece of that before we go and try to attract a a hotel operator is they want a market feasibility study. So they're not going to come to a market that's not proven or is uh risky. So that would be the first step. That would be a third party that would look at the trade area and identify sites uh that sort of thing. So third party that was specific to that of which there are many we'd bring that present the options the council um and then probably would be a budget item we would run that through the budget if it's the council's pleasure to move forward we would uh go ahead and and budget for that gave just a general question is this on our website or will it be on our website?

Yeah we have a dedicated and we'll update it with uh so we don't have to take pictures on everything. Yeah we'll update it. We've got a I knew it was somewhere. Okay.

Yeah, we've got a work plan uh tab or we did. It probably needs to be updated. So, we'll just add our new projects. I think last year we added uh links to the council meetings where various projects were discussed. So, I think going forward we'll talk about these projects monthly just kind of quickly, not you know each project, the cyber security audit and risk assessment. Uh Greg it would be the uh staff leader. He has had um preliminary discussions with some of our contracted vendors on getting a scope of work for that effort like pretty soon probably within the next month or two. Uh that's IWork and Dark Trace. Is that correct? Yeah. So, we'll get some deliverables for you to review uh with a a vendor we already are working with and then um

so we think we're having a a basically a a outline of what we're going to do by already traces. Yeah,

they were a little bit harder to get to who I needed to talk to me, but I kind of thought I would already have Yeah, it's in the works. Uh, minimum property standards compliance specifically rated related to hotels. This is a project we've done in the past. It's probably been three years since we've done it. Makes sense to uh follow up on it. So the um staff leader

on this one the last time we had minimum property complaint. Is this where we're doing extra audits and stuff against them or what? Yeah. You're talking about the register at each facility. Yeah. It says hotel motel ordinance hand delivered to occupants. Yeah. Anything to deal with the hotel motel staff went by there and dropped off the ordinance to make sure they know what they're going to be gauged against. That was that's already been done. and once a month un unscheduled time staff were going to go by there and check the register to actual occupants do do room inspections if necessary. Uh that's part of that.

We may um you may recall last time we spoke about this we didn't meet the threshold to pursue the nuisance abatement procedure through the state attorney general's office. I don't think that the um arrests have there's certain hotels that have generated two arrests, but I don't think it meets the requirement for that process. But if it did, we would u the chief, you know, we would have some conversations to look at nuisance payment function if it merited. And and I'm going to keep pushing this because I'm I'm sort of sick and tired of some of this and I'd really really take the gloves off. I know there's legal issues, but if somebody asked me where the crime is in Saigon and I can point to it, that's a problem.

I can tell you today where most of it is. 90% I don't know. Chief would know, but and it's I'm throwing out numbers. Sorry. Sorry. A lot. Is it just a couple different places? And how can we fix that? I'm just so tired of that. Yeah. And it's we we there's going to be something the city can do to make it safer for the citizens. So, yeah. And this is a recurring issue before my time. the um building staff had some pretty elaborate interventions with one operator. Um I think it was pretty close to the point of where the facility was going to be closed or shut down. The the owner got it up to code and then you know that was an apartment complex. Yeah.

It wasn't a hotel. That was an apartment complex. Yeah. initially it uh it's time and we've we've done this before. Minimum property standards focused on it. It seems like this is just it's just an ongoing issue that we're just going to have to keep on top of. Yeah. What what are options?

And then uh last would be to review the strategic plan. What I would recommend is as we do this monthly, we just kind of go through some of the elements in the plan, a little piece at a time, once a month. Uh the strategic plan, I can send you all out a a copy of it. We've made good progress uh since 201 18 when it was drafted. Uh I don't think we would change much substantially. It was a 15-year planning document, but it's good to kind of see where we are, where we want to be. And I think looking at that monthly monthly reviewed last uh I don't think we've done a formal review of the strategic plan in a few years.

What in like 2019 when you and I that's when we yeah that's about the I know my first summer here which was 2018 we did a citizen summit and that was kind of that created the initial projects the initial priorities. So um so it's about a third of the way through so it's a good time to take a look at it. It's overdue. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Yeah. Yeah, if you can send it to us on

Yeah, I can do that. And the way I mean the way we make progress on the plan is through the work plan. It's like a subset. So, you know, all these things are related to the goals. Um, trying to think off the top of my head. Safe community was a broad goal. Uh, beautiful at that time. There was a desire for, you know, new and varied restaurant options. So, all all goals that probably haven't changed substantially since that time. So with that, there's an ordinance with the project list of outline the project leaders and happy to answer any questions you might have. Question for Gabe. I appreciate it, Gabe. I have one. Sure. Go ahead.

So you think this is all feasible to get completed this year? Uh, I would, council member, I'd put it back on you and I wish I had a mirror and I'd say, do you think this is No, I think I think we've got a list that's healthy, but I think we've got a list that we can show meaningful progress. And so, yeah, by December 31, I think we can I want to, you know, promise my firstborn on it, but um

Sure. No, I just I I want to be fair and I want to make sure that it's an achievable goal, even if we come close, you Sure. No, I think it is. I think the the magic number for work plan projects is somewhere 10 to 12. I think we're right at 12. That's realistic. And I mean, some of some of these are are going to be tough. Yeah. And that you want some tough goals. Uh usually when you build goals like this, something like this, you want about an 80% confidence. That means you got a 20% chance of not. But if we do it like we did this time, we look at it and we got they got some quarters and then we say, "Okay, are we on plan?" You know, is it gonna have to push? I think I'd be good.

Yeah. It doesn't hurt my feelings if we miss one or two because that means we shot high and we didn't quite hit them. That's okay. I want us We're asking a lot from st because this is on top of the regular day job. That's right. That's we got to remember that. So, and it's not just Gabe, it's the whole the whole staff. So, that's why it's important to remember these are some big asks. Some of these That's a good point, Mayor. So, these projects are not my projects. They're your projects. They came from discussions from all of you or your priorities. So, uh, we're here to get through it. They're your projects now. Yeah, I'll wait for the vote. We'll we'll see. I'm waiting with baited breath, but any other questions for Gabe? No. Um, I just And then we talked about um having monthly checks, right?

So, I think maybe the second meeting of the month, we just have a standing item project update ask is on the agenda. Yeah. Yeah. And the benefit of that is we have a video record so we can all refer to many times. We That's been helpful to go back and say, "Okay, this when we talked about it, we can take pictures of the Yeah, there you go. Yeah. Awesome. All right. Any other questions for Gabe? If not, I'll entertain a motion. Mayor, I'll make a motion that we approve for C as presented."

Valerie second. Motion passes. We have a work plan for 2026. Congratulations, folks. Thanks for the effort. Look forward to it. Executive session is thankly not required. So, I will entertain a motion. Mayor, I make a motion that we adjourn. Please second.

Motion passes at 7:36. We're journed. Thank y'all.