City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay, good afternoon, Council.

I will call our budget work session to order. I believe that Councilmember Jamieson is also online. And I'll turn it immediately over to City Manager Chapa.

Good afternoon. Thank you for being here at our first work session for the budget after the delivery of the proposed budget last week. We sent We worked hard over the last week or so to put together the budget responses from questions that came from the city council. Those were sent out yesterday. I don't know if you'd like to treat them like we do in formal reports and go through them and have council ask questions. We could do that. And so I'll go ahead and start with the first one, which is the vacancy eliminations and freezes of positions that are being recommended. And Christiane Simmons is here to answer most of the questions. When we get to the details, we can have others come forward.

Questions from Council Member Beck? Sure, so I appreciate this list. I am incredibly concerned about our Parks and Recreation Department because it does seem like the lion's share of these positions are coming from them. I appreciate the final piece of this IR, our budget response, that talked about what these service levels impacts are. And so I'd be interested to know in what we're looking at for facility hour reductions from both our parks and rec and our library departments.

Yeah, so I know we have staff here that can probably help with that. I'll say, as Dave maybe makes his way up to the microphone, sorry, Dave, that the department's got these lists, you know, a week or two ago, too, with the recommended budget. And I know in Parks in particular, he asked, can we go ahead and share, you know, this list so that we can begin to look at the cumulative impacts of all these positions? So I know they maybe have just begun that work, but may have some preliminary thoughts to share.

Good afternoon. I'll do the best to answer that question. As she referenced, we have seen the list for a couple of weeks where we started to put together the impacts, but really didn't know the cumulative impacts, so we're still working to figure out. I think we have almost 20 community center employees, but really thinking big picture system-wide what that might be. We don't have answers yet, but we certainly will bring that back. I will also remind you or and let you know that we have a informal report coming up in the next few weeks to talk a little bit more about the Community Center master plan study that we're implementing that will also have recommendations on some of that so. we're we're we don't know the direct impacts, yet we know they there will be some our closures and obviously do our best to look at the data to figure out participation rates. and make, you know, wise decisions on that. But at this point, we don't have specific impacts.

Okay. What I would like to see is as you go through that process, if you could give us a, you know, right now, I think it was like 30. Was it how many employees from Parks?

45.

45. At what point do we not experience a reduction in hours, right? So of those 45 employees, what's the break point if we keep, seven of the community center aides or, you know, at what point do we not have to cut services?

How many could we absorb and not have that direct impact? Correct. We can put that together.

Yes. Yeah, that would be helpful.

Thank you.

And the same for library as well, because it talks about a reduction in library staff. And then I just also want to point out that code compliance and TPW are two departments that deal with safety. And so Code was something on our survey that we saw people say that was important to them over and over again. And so I want to make sure that the level of service at Code is not being impacted. And then I recently had in District 9 two different instances where because we were short staffed in TPW inspectors, particularly for those third party services, permits for people working in our right-of-way. They're able to issue the permits, but not necessarily able to make sure that those contractors are doing their jobs. And it's created a lot of issues, specifically in District 9. And so those are my concerns with those particular positions.

We're impacting significantly a level of service that deals with safety. Dave, you just disappeared. Will you come back? I'm sorry. I looked up and he was gone. I'm curious, I know that you're working through impact to services at community centers and parks. When do you think you'll have that back? I'm just curious about timing and when we vote on the final budget.

We could probably put it together in about a week, figure that out.

Okay.

Because it will require some shifting and really trying to figure out what could be absorbed. And it's important for us to do a deep data dive and make sure we're not open just to be open. That if we've tried to get people into various places and You know, Saturdays, for instance, you know, we're particularly low on Saturdays. And so we need to look at the data and see if it makes sense to be open or reduce hours. When are people coming in? Both combination of our registration system and place where AI gives us a pretty good picture of when they're when they're most used.

That makes sense. I'm curious, how many gardeners do you currently have in Parks and Recreation Department?

I don't know that off the top of my head, but I can come back with that.

Okay, okay. And then related to, there's one question I had for city secretary's office. There's a public information coordinator that's being eliminated, but all those positions are going into comms, correct?

Right, that was actually, so not, part of the work that public information coordinators did in the city secretary's office also did city secretary work. So when the positions moved over, That was, I believe, Ron's position. Ron's position got reclassified to something else, and there was a vacant public information position that somebody had left in that was actually doing CSO work. That's the one being eliminated. All the rest of them had moved over to comms.

Okay.

Thank you.

That's for people.

So, and Dave, you can sit down, I'm not gonna do this, but my question was, my two questions were about the library and parks and recreation because whether people realize it or not, those are two of our resident facing departments. The library and where we have branches all over the city, that's where most people come to and our parks. And so just as I walk down here seriously, I got a complaint from veterans about Eugene McRae Park not being taken care of. And I want to be sure that whatever cuts, when you come back to us, that we're doing that it doesn't impact park maintenance because those are what I consider city-facing departments and facilities that residents, that's the first view of the city that many of them get. So as soon as you can get that back to us, I'd be appreciative.

Yeah, you will see on that list there are park maintenance workers, both in the athletic side and the normal park operations that do Trash and mowing and all those functions.

And for me, that's a very serious issue because many of our residents don't go to a, they don't come to City Hall. They go to either our parks or our libraries and their view of the city is based on how well we maintain those and the services we provide through them. So thank you.

And I did just get, we have nine gardeners.

Nine gardeners total, okay, thank you. Council Member Flores.

Dave, along those same lines, and this is just maybe it's more of a Christiane question. I know that the number of positions that are affected here for whatever period of time, whether it be six months, 12 months, or altogether eliminated are listed here. But it would be helpful for me to know in those categories, what is the remaining number of employees in those positions? Because that would give me the context to say, well, is this cut too deep? or is it absorbable?

We can provide that information. The redundancy, that's a bad word, but you know, the staffing of the team was looked at as part of this exercise and we tried not to take away like if it's one of two rather than one of 10. That was one of the considerations. We also looked at position, I mean, we were only looking at vacancies, so not filled positions. So I know some of these vacancies like aren't ideal to cut, but we also didn't want to cut filled positions So I can provide the kind of like more expanded version that shows the team strength or redundancy, if you will, if that's helpful.

And if I could ask David a question. So currently we are operating, we haven't changed any hours with these vacancies. So the bulk of these listed, except for 35, are to continue the vacancies for a further period of time. From my perspective, my expectation is we would continue to operate the way we have been operating to get that savings. The bulk of them are six months. I know folks are probably having to cover more, gonna work more. That's the negative part of it. But from the city manager's office and our perspective was we're currently operating with these freezes. We would just continue the freeze. The bulk of them are six months to get the savings.

But Jay, do we know the impact? I know you said we're operating without them. I just got a complaint that services aren't being maintained at one of our parks, so have we considered the impact?

Right, so the impact, we are, and I know there are impacts, and so we can talk about the impacts that you're currently seeing, because the intent was not necessarily to change the hours or do those kind of things.

I have a question for you, Jay. in the budget analysis, or maybe Christiane, in the budget analysis that we did in the cost savings for each person, have we factored in at all the potential overtime cost for those employees that remain?

General employees do not get overtime. They have, they would earn comp time if they had to be working beyond the hours of normal hours. So there's no direct dollars.

Okay.

Council Member Hill.

I have a question for Brian or Chris McAllister, if you're here, whoever wants to answer it. It's about the veterinarian. I don't know if that makes a difference on who answers. Okay, I see one veterinarian for deletion and then one position frozen. How many do we have currently?

One, I believe.

We have one. And is it a high-volume spay and neuter vet? Can you give me some context?

Yes. I believe it's Dr. Swales. Chris, I need to chime in here. We did lose one about six months ago, but we do have one on staff, and yet they can do high-volume spay and neuter. That's a position that even if we didn't have the hiring freeze going on, it is almost impossible to fill. And so we do go to contract vets periodically to fill in that void.

I know we have a national veterinarian shortage, especially with the high-volume spay and neuters. That's a very specialized field. So can you talk to us a little bit about how we would fill this, whether it's a, you know, continue our partnership with Spay and Neuter Network, or how do you envision that moving forward?

That's exactly right. We would continue our partnerships with Operation Kindness, Spay and Neuter, TCAP. We work with them a lot. And we also use contract veterinarians. Dr. Swills is currently our FTE veterinarian, and she covers care for both shelters. Again, we do have contract vets and OPK and a lot of partnership come in as well. So we are getting by at this point, even with our CHIP and SNIP program. All right, thank you.

Council Member Nettles.

Yes, I had a question or maybe a comment for Dave. I was listening, you mentioned possibly cutting hours or cutting the day on Saturday. and I think we talked about that last time about Holland Hills saying that Saturday was going away for them. Had we thought our budget out, if it's not completely eliminated, but requiring them to book enough in advance to make sure staff can be there, because to completely take away a Saturday from some of these community centers that have events for their community, particularly Highland Hills, Glen Crest, who probably can't travel anywhere else to community centers.

Yeah, rentals are one of the things that we look at with the data collection. That's one of the things we did look at at Highland Hills that I can tell you. We've had nine rentals on Saturdays since January at Highland Hills. So that is something, if we did experience a closure, we could possibly bring staff in for a special event or for that rental. Obviously, you would need to cost recover that you know cover the cost of the rentals. One of the things that we would look at doing, which is why we were able to remain open and highland hills is be more creative with staff that if there's not enough staff at highland hills that we could. bring them from another Community Center some people want more hours, so they could get more hours to fill and that's the work really that we need to do to to shuffle things around and. When you thin out the whole thing there's a lot less people that can fill in and available for it so that's. The risk of operating at that deficit and then, when you have sicknesses and leaves and things, then you really get thin but that's the creative work we need to do to make sure we can stay open as much as possible on the days when the Community needs us, thank you for that.

question for sunny I think. I'm curious, these are just frozen positions. There's several public safety communication positions, and then an assistant public safety support manager, and I realize we're not, I'm deleting these, we're just freezing them, but I'm curious how you're covering on the comm side right now.

Thank you for that, Sonny Saxton, Emergency Management and Communications. Yes, those are frozen positions, but I want to caveat that we've actually had an open recruitment going, so we are trying to fill some because we still have a couple more vacancies. So a little of these are turnovers that we've had for a couple of years. Now overall, won't get into details now, but we've seen a decrease in that amount of turnover, so we're riding the ship, if you will, So the impacts are there, and we see that in overtime, but overall it's minimal at this point.

That's helpful. Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions on this item, council? If not, we can keep going.

The next one is recommended fee adjustments for 2027. Any other questions on this one?

Councilor Hill?

I don't even know where to start. Can you just kind of walk us through the adjustment thought process on this?

Can I ask a question to clarify if I understand your question? So when I, I think this was initially your request, correct? I thought that she was asking for the fees that we're passing on to residents per se, so that we can kind of get the totality of like, you know, like there was going to be increased fees in the water department. There's going to be, you know, fees for roads. There were going to be like just a total of those fees.

Residential fees, really fees?

As opposed to this 176 pages of fees.

Okay.

I think we misunderstood. So, we went through the summer, we went through the process of showing all those fees, and I think last week we showed what the impact was to the average homeowner on those fees, which is the total increase of $7. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Total increase on about $7 to the average homeowner. Yeah. for all the fees completed. Every year, the council adopts the full fee schedule for everything, and I think that's what we thought you were looking for.

Yeah, we produced that without a request, I think. So if you're looking for something that's between the resident fees that are in the presentation and then this very lengthy BR, then we may have missed the middle.

Yes, that would be helpful.

Yes, so will you restate exactly what you're looking for between what we're showing to the resident?

We can have it to you on Friday.

Yeah, and then we'll bring it...

I don't even know actually anymore. I think looking at, okay, I think the last slide that got provided to us last Tuesday had the fee increases. I'm gonna use stormwater for an example, stormwater environmental. So we went through that and then the tax increase on average homeowner. So I think that was what I was looking for. But if there's anything else like development services, I'd see the 5% across the board in the packet. But I think anything that was gonna directly impact, whether it was development, Anything that was going to be passed on, not as an across-the-board increase, but is there anything specific, whether it's by department or by activity, that people will feel the burn on?

Okay. I'm going to look at Brady and Pierce in case they want to address any of that now. Sorry. Hi.

I can put together an email to send to you before our budget meeting. That's okay.

Let me let Brady take a stab. Okay.

Good afternoon, I'm Brady Kirk, Assistant Director in the Fort Worth Lab. So that slide that we showed last Tuesday, those are really the fees that an average person is gonna feel. So this enormous, I know it's 150 pages, this budget response here, this is everything. And like Christiane told you, we show this every year. So this isn't specifically a follow-up to that, but anybody who's a partner of the city and a customer, even beyond just a residential customer, this is the fullest of things they're gonna be paying. But nothing beyond for a typical household what you saw last week.

So it sounds like maybe it would be helpful for council, it exists it sounds like already in the presentation last week, it was just really difficult to pull it out and to be transparent with the public. Brady, you're great at this. One slide that essentially describes what we think the average homeowner would probably experience. And you may even pick and choose some of the fee increases that you think could be most applicable. So you're building a new home, for instance, or there's a development services fee that maybe makes the most sense. And we're not gonna hold you to exact amounts, but I think maybe that helps in a conversation with constituents.

I think we can do that. We could have a slide each for each of the regular resident fee increases and then one for the overall development fees, which is... It went through the process of our partners to review and they all approved it as we went forward.

Makes sense. Thank you. I'm gonna move to overview of code compliance budget reductions impacts. Yes. Council Member Beck and then Council Member Hill.

Go for it. Brian and Chris, y'all may just go ahead and come up here. Can you just provide us a general overview if we discontinued the partnership at Alliance PetSmart, what that would do? One, with the live release rate. All those puppies, I want you to walk through that, what that looks like for the shelter animals, our live release rate in general. And we know that that will increase our budget or the expenses that we're going to incur along the line. So you've got to walk through the entire gamut of the impact to the city.

Yes, yes, yes. And I forgot to introduce myself before. My apologies. Brian Dougherty, Co-Compliance Director. Yes, there is a lot of, for lack of a better term, tentacles that sort of go with the PetSmart Alliance pairing. There's a lot of grant money tied to it, as well as a lengthy partnership that we've had. In addition to the fact that they supply us other grants, whether it's for microchipping or vaccinations, there's a lot of other grants that's tied to that. So we'd rather not sour the relationship. But no, the live release rate would drop anywhere from 6% to 8% is what we estimate. And you can't definitively say that that would immediately equate to having to euthanize the animals. We're at capacity now, and you're talking around 1,000 to 1,200 additional animals that we're not exactly going to have space for. We would do all we could, but no, it would be a significant step back for animal care and control. Then that also goes into housing them, feeding them, our staffing resources as is, where The cut would be substantial for any progress moving forward, especially given that we've hit some milestones with our live release rate.

Sorry. Can you talk about the milestones in our live release rate and the progress we've made? Yes, yes, yes.

We got it over 90% for the fiscal year, which was the first time. And I think I've been saying five years, or six years, but I believe it's five. 5 years which it just for a little bit of background in the animal care world 90% is the standard for a no kill shelter we're never going to advertise that we're no kill shelter. Not because we don't want to brag in that scenario, but from a municipal perspective animal care and control is significantly different than a nonprofit because we still serve the public. If a dog is chasing you down the street, a nonprofit more than likely not going to do something about that. We do. We still are picking up stray animals. We still work cruelty cases. We still work aggressive and dangerous dog cases. And so that's where it really shifts kind of how we process things. And oh my gosh, I just lost my train of thought. Start back over.

No, you answered it. Okay, okay.

I landed it, that's why I was confused.

I might make an observation here. I've had several of council members, including Council Member Beck and Council Member Hill and a few others have expressed this being kind of a non-starter for a cut and setting us backwards after all of the hard work of your department. So, and everybody can jump in. That's my opinion. I don't think this is some release we can cut. I think it's something we need to put back in the budget because it's insurmountable to try to come back from that years later. It will cost us millions. That's my perspective. If council can jump in and maybe give Jason direction. Yeah, I would second that.

I remember when our live release rate was not great a couple of years ago and that, yeah, the community, outrage in that and I don't want to live through that again and I don't want those sweet and even the unsweet dogs to have to live through that so.

To put it back on the budget on the rate side it would be four one hundredths of a penny. So if you added this back in at the current tax rate which is at 70.2 it would be 70.24. And there's no way to make that up.

I might say let's not do that yet. Let's just get through. I'm just trying to express the non-starters I know we need to put back in the budget and then we're gonna have more sausage making today and then Friday. But that's helpful context, the amount of money.

About $110,000 is equal to one one-hundredth of a penny.

Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. You just went like the price is right there, Brian. You got your money back.

Or see.

Yeah, exactly. Okay.

Any others on code compliance? Questions? Okay. Proposed schedule for mowing cycles.

Can we have an overview of that? Because that's a big issue in my district.

Dave.

Okay, so the budget response that was provided is only specifically to the alleyway mowing. We really have three sections of mowing and debris removal. Parks, corner clips, traffic dividers, right-of-ways, medians, all kind of the public spaces, and then the alleyways. This just covers the alleyway mowing. Prior to 2025, we maintained half of the city's unimproved alleyways four times a year. Last year, Council, allocated additional money to do all the unapproved alleyways in the city four times a year. This reduction would be all the alleyways in the city twice a year. Each most cycle is a little over $300,000, so the reduction of two cycles is 600 and something thousand dollars.

So I guess I'm going to be very clear. Because I represent a district where many of them are inner city locations that have alleys, I get more complaints from residents. So for me, I'm just telling you, this would be a non-starter. Many of our alleys say that they're not safe to walk in at night if they're not mowed and cleared. And I guess I'm just concerned because I think this impacts a lot of our inner city areas and It's a crime deterrent too to keep them mold and clean. So I would be concerned about this reduction.

I'd like to second that. We do have some mowing issues and alleyways in the Como community that have been a topic of discussion since joining the team. And to Councilwoman Peoples' point, I do think it poses a safety concern. So I don't know if it's an all or nothing proposition, as she suggested, or if it's something to be consideration, because I think it's going to adversely impact some of us more than others.

So I will tell you, I really fought hard for the expansion of the alleyway program back in 2025 because we do get an inordinate amount of complaints about the alleys in District 9. Again, an older district has a lot of alleyways in it. And so in a perfect world, we wouldn't cut anything. I think the pragmatic approach here is maybe looking at reducing by one mowing cycle year and the reason I say that is we've only been doing this expanded alleyway mowing for a year. So it's not a service that necessarily everyone has become accustomed to that we're taking away. It's in fact, it's a relatively new service. And so I'd like to see maybe a compromise there where we, you know, maybe don't mow in the winter Right, but you know, get creative so that we have three mowing cycles instead of four so that way it splits the baby in that particular budget cost.

Councilor Nettles.

Yeah, alleyways is huge in District 8, Morningside and Rolling Hills and other areas. And I think I mentioned this about four years ago. Have the city, particularly the alleyways that are grass and dirt, have the city considered getting rid of the alleyways and adding those to residents' property. Because certain residents say, hey, if it's part of my property, I'll cut it, whatever. If it's costing the city so much money, particularly the ones that are grass and dirt, not the ones that have cement.

I think the reason some of that has not happened is because of the utility lines running through the back.

I'm sorry?

Utility lines, water, sewer, electric, all those kind of things. And so you can't enclose, most people then end up enclosing them. I know years ago when I was in the water department, they were replacing sewer lines in Mistletoe Heights and people had built their fences over them and they had to tear down all the fences and those kinds of things.

And that makes sense and that's a good explanation that we can tell the community why we can't do it. And so I think... I can support what Council Member Beck and peoples are saying we need to figure out.

Well, let's run it both ways. We're talking about 648,000. And so if we reduce it once, that's 324,000. So let's just see, it may be worth it. And I agree, I like to look at compromises, but for that amount of money, it may be worth it to keep our form. So if we can just factor that in both ways.

Two things to add to that. Number one, it's been maybe a year since we did an IR that shows a number of unimproved alleyways by district. That may be helpful to resubmit again. And then also there is a little bit of money left in the budget to do what we call hot shot. So when we do get a complaint, even if it's out of cycle, we can send a crew out there to do it. So we have some, not all the vendors do it on time. So we do have a little bit of money for that, so.

Is that in that hot shot money, would that be in this proposed budget as well?

No, so it's only this past. That would be remain.

Okay, it's just, y'all use it as just, it's whatever's left over kind of thing?

Yeah, there's a little bit of budget to do parks. Again, all the alleyways are contract mowing. All of the corner clips, right-of-ways, traffic dividers are contract mowing. Parks are about half contract and half staff. Anytime a vendor can't perform on schedule, when we get a complaint, we'll send a crew in to make sure that we take care of it. So there's money in there for that.

That wasn't eliminated.

That shot was not eliminated.

Okay. I'm going to go out on a limb here and challenge you to do something a little interesting. maintain these alleys, right? But like Chris said, that there are folks that sometimes people wanna maintain their own alleys. And so there's a lot of cities that work with their residents to provide rebates or even pay them to do sometimes some of the city work. So is there interest in a pilot program where neighborhoods or residents adopt an alleyway in lieu of a credit on their environmental services bill or their water bill?

We can look at it. I don't know that we could get anything up and going. One of the concerns I would have, because we've tried other programs like that, areas of medians and that kind of thing, is not everybody participating. So then you have to send crews out to do the three or four homes that don't do it anyway. And so it ends up actually costing more in the long run. As we go forward, we can look at trying to see if we can come up with that type of program that we can institute going forward.

So it's a little unclear to me in this IR, I apologize. You're proposing to go below the prior to FY2026. So FY2026, it was just over $800,000 four times a year. We added 1.2 million in last year. So what are you proposing frequency right now in the current budget?

The proposal for fiscal year 27 is all 2,300 alleyways twice a year. In fiscal year 26, it's all 2,300 four times a year. Times a year, yeah, okay.

Council Member, yeah.

Sorry, Dave. How sophisticated are our contracts? I mean, do they work around rain cycles and temperatures? They do? Okay.

Yeah. Yeah, they do. And we, as you know, we change cycles based on a lot of different factors, and our staff communicates with the vendors when we have it. Currently, four times a year is usually right coming out of winter, two times, and then once more before we go into winter. Right now, our plan was whenever it's two times, probably do one. complete mow in like February, March, and then circle back in September before we go back in wintertime.

And District 7 has a lot of older neighborhoods that do have the alleyways, so I understand what we're talking about, but I have a little heartburn of four times a year when this is a new program, if we could cut down to at least three, I think it would go to the taxpayers to try to find any penny we can. And I do like Councilman Beck's idea of doing adopt an alley if we could explore that.

We absolutely can.

So maybe as a follow-up, it sounds like what's currently in the proposed budget is twice a year. Maybe bring us the numbers for three times a year and let the council consider that as a compromise. Okay.

Mayor, I have a budget question. Yes, Council Member Martinez. Dave, so just realistically, are we going to be able to mow all those unimproved alleys that were added to the city's reach? at the end of this budget year, or is there gonna be leftover funding?

Yeah, no leftover funding. It actually was completed much quicker than we thought, because the first time you've mowed it ever takes a little bit longer, and it's not just mowing, it's trash removal, old tires, some of those have never been mowed in decades. Yeah. So the contractors are actually able to move through that first mow pretty quickly, and we are on schedule to have all those cycles completed this year.

Okay, I'd like to see that list because there are some alleys in District 11 that haven't been touched yet, and so I was wondering if you would be able to complete that list, and if you weren't, then there would be leftover funding if it could be reallocated.

Yeah, I'd love to see any that haven't been mowed because we have a map of 2,300 alleyways, and every single unimproved alleyway should be on that list.

Okay, thank you. Well, as a mother of a 10-year-old who went door-to-door recently telling people he would mow their lawns, he does not own a lawnmower. I am interested in the pilot program. I think it's a great idea. Well, I don't know what his plan was, but he really wanted to make some money.

He might be looking for investors for a lawnmower.

Yeah, he did. He wanted us to write a check for a lawnmower, yes.

Where you can get one rented for free. Yes, exactly.

Also the goats. What about the goats? I know. I mean, we're using the goats for other, like, is...

I'm not sure it's less expensive.

That's what I was going to ask. Are the goats cost savings, or are they just a little more environmentally friendly? Yeah.

I'd have to get back to you on that.

Or we could adopt a goat, and maybe that helps with animal control, right? We just put the goats out. Those little goats run away, okay?

I hear about disappearing goats all the time.

I think you'd get complaints from pedestrians in the alleyways after the goats. That's right.

I know it was revealing in the audience behind you, a few staff members immediately started shaking their heads yes to the goats. So someone out there owns some livestock. Yeah. I saw you.

Okay, thank you, Dave. DJ, goats are not part of your economic development plan. Give it time.

Thank you, Dave.

The next one's from the Fire Hope team and their scope of work and the budget impacts.

Get an overview, please. Specifically about the duplication issue that's listed in the IR.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. James Horton, Fort Worth Fire Department. So you've got the information there in front of you. As you all are well aware, we merged with MedStar last year, brought them in. As we were going through the budget, doing some of our budget reductions, we're of course looking at any kind of overlap, any duplication in services between the two agencies, bringing them together. We did bring in the mobile integrated health team. We knew we had a little bit of duplication and overlap there. We had already started a plan to move the mobile integrated health group more into the Lancaster corridor area. We were going to continue to use our Fire Hope team to supplement that group and work together. The Fire Hope team previously had the same MIH certification, the community paramedicine. certification, so they had already worked together. We were gonna bring them in to support it, but as we were tasked with coming up with some budget reductions, we did see that there was some overlap and duplication in that area, and that quite honestly, we felt that that is an area that if we had a reduction with the Fire Hope team, we would not have a reduction in services, because we have the MIH group to fill that gap.

Council Member Hill.

So I'm clear, there's a $632,000 in savings on overtime if we utilize this method?

That is correct. Yes, their budget and salary, we're not decreasing, as I understand it. We're not decreasing authorized strength any. We're just simply moving the dual role members back to fire operations, and we'll replace four vacancies. We have three shifts, so about one each day for overtime savings.

I think my only concern is, My only concern is this, is the institutional knowledge, and so my ask would be, at a minimum, we keep the fire lieutenant that's in charge, and as we move forward, because what I would hate to see is just a complete turnover of that entire team, because there is so much knowledge that they carry with them.

Yeah, I don't disagree. And publicly, I want to commend Lieutenant Sam Reif. He's worked in that space for a very long time. We really feel like we're building on that work. It's just that now that we have these two organizations together, we do have some overlap. We'll find a way to keep him involved. We continue to have meetings with JPS, with Presbyterian Night Shelter, working in those spaces. We'll keep him involved wherever he is, or there may be another meeting Just because the HOPE team is coming back doesn't mean there's not another administrative position somewhere else that he can fill and still be involved in that space or something along those lines if he chooses.

Council Member Crane, Council Member Pupils.

Jimmy, I can call you Jimmy since we went to high school together, how are you? Good to see you. Good to see you too. How does that cut the 50% reduction effect in real time, the calls on homeless in the area? What do you expect to see? the reduction of sorts? If they're not deployed in that certain sense, will there be a negative effect on it?

Well, right now with the Fire Hope team, they're working in that space. The MIH group is not really working in that space. So we're just kind of swapping the two groups out. I will let you know we brought some information to the city manager's office that specifically looking at the Lancaster corridor from about I-35 over to 287, that .21 square miles, we have approximately 700 EMS calls there per month, 23 ambulance calls per day. Just in transports alone, for all calls, some of them are true emergencies, adds up to be about $2.7 million. And like I said, it pulls off 23 resources every single day down there. So if we can have a group that works in that space that can provide community medicine, partner with the hospitals, partner with the shelters, we feel like we can have some real cost savings and free up some resources for the 911 side of the system. We did previously use the Fire Hope team down there. We're now just kind of swapping them out and using more of the MIH group because it aligns with their mission for EMS and community health and those kind of things. Starting this Saturday, we're gonna have a full-time team down there seven days a week from 6A to 6B, which is the highest part of the call volume. So we do see some calls. We do expect some reductions coming off of the 911 system. We've worked with the medical director as far as protocols and what kind of calls that they can go to for low acuity, treat those patients, so that we can free up some resources on the 911 side. Thanks.

Council Member Peebles.

Yes, ma'am.

Microphone, Deborah.

I'm sorry, that we're staying on top of it because the last thing we need is once we get behind, we can't catch up and we're seeing that and we have done so much with allocating things to eradicate and help mitigate some of the causes around homelessness. I would hate to do away with the whole team and then find ourselves six months down the road trying to look for ways to staff it because we've seen this So I'm going to have to trust you because you're an expert on this, but just know I want to follow it because we need to see improvement and not an increase.

Yes, ma'am. You know, since the HOPE team came about, there's been, I would say, different iterations, different strategies that have been followed in that space. Like I said, Lieutenant Greif and his team have done a lot of work in there. They have, the MIH group has been partnered along with that with the community paramedicine efforts. So we intend to follow that. We are working with JPS Hospital. We're working with Presbyterian Night Shelter. We're gonna have resources down there. We want it to make a difference too because it is taxing the system. We know that it is a problem not just in Fort Worth but everywhere. A little bit of the model that they're following now or where we are today is modeled after what the city of Dallas and the city of San Antonio are doing. I think there was a group that might have even involved a couple Council members, it was gonna go down and meet with San Antonio to talk about some of their programs and how they're working with the homeless population. So we are definitely, that's front of mind for us and one of the areas that we're paying special attention to.

How many team members are in MIH?

There's 11 full-time equivalents in MIH.

Okay, thank you. Any other questions on this one? Thank you. Thank you.

Next one is a PAYGO matrix, and it covers the areas with the recommended reduction in the PAYGO from keeping the rate stagnant. It outlines where the reductions would be to the different programs.

Council Member Hall.

I think we spoke about this last week, but could you tell me again what the neighborhood improvement strategy consists of?

The neighborhood improvement program. So yeah, if it's, I don't have it in front of me, sorry, I can pull it up. But if it's going from like 4 million to 1 million, then that's the reduction in the neighborhood improvement program to better align the funding with low spend in the first year during all the planning activities for the new neighborhood. And then we'd bump it up in the second year to actually implement the capital pieces of that program. So rather than eliminating a neighborhood for a year, we would reduce the funding to better sort of right size the year one spend.

So in the past, in the past, the Neighborhood Improvement Program was, let's say it's $4.2 million. The full 4.2 was budgeted. And then when the year starts, that gets moved into a fund for that neighborhood. And because we have the deficit in an effort to try to create some savings for next year's deficit, The way that program starts, we typically never spend over a million dollars in the first year going through the planning process, getting feedback from the citizens. They tell us how they want us to spend the money and we start spending that money. We never go over a million dollars. So the idea was we'll put a million dollars, reduce that, that way we get a reduction for next year's budget. And then next year, The second phase, which is a bigger phase, would be you'd add $2 million for this neighborhood improvement program and then another million for the one for the coming year. But instead of having all 4.2 going into a fund on an annual basis to try to get us through this tight budget years, we would do it on an incremental basis. But the actual program doesn't go away and it stays funded at the same level overall.

That makes sense, I understand it, but I guess my question is, so next year in this budget cycle, well, next year on this item, it will go to three million. It'll be three million. The one million for the new neighborhood, and then two million for the neighborhood from last year. The one from this year.

Because there will be an implementation phase.

Exactly, we'd be further along in the implementation period. So basically, the process will be now a three-year funding cycle for every NIP.

Ultimately, we get back where we're spending the full. This year, we get a $3 million savings, but next year, it'll be just a million savings. Right. We'll have to go back up.

Next year, we get an appraised year from appraisal districts. Hopefully, we'll have the dollars to do that. It was a way to reduce the budget without really impacting any service. I get it.

My other question was going to be about the PARD maintenance and replacement, going from $3 million to $765,000, just what that actually is an application.

Yeah, with the line below, so maintenance and replacement and then new enhancements, those two sort of net together. So PARD's PAYCO budget is actually very flat, and it's up to the department sort of where they prioritize those funds. but I'll turn around and look at the department in case they have any pay go detail. Am I saying that right? Yeah, he's nodding his head. Let's see.

Yeah, it's essentially just the way the money is spent and categorized. We have a lot more new enhancements and last year was more about replacement and maintenance. And there's a big chunk, I think it's $1.3 million for a dam repair. that is categorized in the new enhancements. I guess they see it as an enhancement to the dam. So it's just shifting the money to different places.

Thank you.

I just wanna compliment staff. I'm sure pay-as-you-go is not an easy section of our budget to start trying to cut. I think you were very thoughtful in attempting to do so in a way that didn't impact services, especially when it comes to streets, sidewalks, street lights, all the things that each of us hear about. So not a fun exercise, I'm sure, but it's a good proposal.

Next is the historical use, policy and historical use of the interest earnings.

I just thank you for putting this together. I appreciate the time you spent yesterday kind of walking me through all of this to help me better understand how we've used it historically. The one thing that I see just from a policy perspective that gives me pause is every year we're having I would prefer that we budget our risk better because it looks like we've just become accustomed to shoring up our risk funds with what's left over in this. And I really think that should be part of an overall budgeting process, not just a hope and a wish at the end of the year we have enough in this interest earning to put into our funds.

Understood.

Is that a common practice, Jay, for municipalities to not do? Yes, so. Why is that?

Well, because as I was mentioning to, in our one-on-one yesterday to Council Member Beck, the interest earnings fluctuate, as you see in here, by so potential for the fluctuation rate. One year it's three million, two years later it's 30 million. And it's all tied to the short-term interest rates. It's our cash that's out there in the city's pool of money that you used on an ongoing basis. And so that can fluctuate also a bit depending on how much you're spending. So just a combination of things, it makes it hard to, you don't want to have recurring costs become an interest earnings piece because cities or governments will get used to having that. And then all of a sudden you have a bad year and then you're in the hole. And so prior to the change that outlined here, Because we were behind on maintenance, the policy said to take all those interest earnings and put it into debt service so that we would have more dollars for capital. And so what's typically, because we are a growing city and because our fund balance continues to grow, that's where the policy had kind of shifted a little bit to ensure that we keep our fund balance tied to our general fund, size of our general fund so we can maintain that for or the rating agencies in our rating on our bonds. In fact, I mentioned to Councilman Beck yesterday that we just got upgraded by S&P and we got a favorable outlook from Moody's and in our conversations with both of them, this policy that we have where we don't budget and we're not using it for specific items and then we wait to see where we need it through the year is one of the reasons that they actually outlined of why we do that. That and PAYGO. PAYGO is the other item because if you had a catastrophic economic shift, you could stop all PAYGO and you would have that cash to be able to shore up your abilities to pay employees and the ongoing costs that you have. Because when you think about it, the policy, most policies for government is having two months of fund balance. Well, two months is nothing when you think about it. And so our ability to have that kind of liquidity in our budgets really helps us when we.

I think my point is, and I get that we want to use. I understand what you're saying. We're using it annually for that. So I think the way that we look at risk in our budget needs to be different.

Right, and I understand what you're saying, yes.

And then we've discussed this last week also. It seemed to be an interest, and this has come up before over the last several years, just additional transparency about how we're going to utilize those funds when they become available, whether you're putting them over in risk, you're putting them back in the general fund, you're using them for special projects, and just maybe be mindful of that.

So we have an IR that will be coming to the city council. We do it every year around this time. You'll have an IR coming to city council. that outlines the recommendations for all those uses. And then you actually have an MNC that follows up to actually adopt that. And so that's how we do it on an annual basis. So it is out there, it's just not part of the budget process.

Sounds good. Any other questions on this one?

Okay.

Okay, the next is peer city tax rates and appraisal benchmarking.

Any questions or comments from council here? No, keep going.

I'll just have everybody look at that last table on the appraisal benchmarking. And then the next one would be the updated long-term forecast. We just had Brady go through and update the seven-year forecast using what we're using now as the assumptions from the appraisal district.

No questions?

And last is the Water Cast Iron Replacement Program and Lead Service Line Program, or LEED.

Nope.

Nope, you're good. Okay. Okay, Council, we are now to the request for future agenda items or any additional questions. Council Member Hill?

I have a request by council members. I think last Tuesday I mentioned we have $140,000 that we spend on conferences between the 10 of our offices. I'd like to challenge us to think about that for the next fiscal year. We're asking for budget cuts just across the board. And I think we should lead by example. I either like to see us reduce that or look at sister cities. They've reduced it from $100,000 to $50,000. I think we should give that up this year. We're asking a lot, like I mentioned, and I think we need to do the right thing, in my opinion, to show that we have some skin in the game as well. I'd like to give up my $14,000 budget back to the CMO's office and reallocate that as you see fit.

Any questions or comments?

Council?

Yes, Councillor Martinez. I have a question for Jay.

Do we still plan, does the federal government still give us opioid funding? Where does that fall on the general fund revenue?

What kind of funding?

Opioid.

Opioid funding? It would be a grant fund.

It's through neighborhood services. Okay. Okay. But also, I have an idea. I don't know if you'll like it. But so, you know, the Neighborhood Improvement Program, that money gets moved to a fund, right? And so would it be possible to reallocate a million to this next upcoming budget? And then that would make it $4 million in 2028. But that would cover almost the entirety of the PetSmart Alliance and Alley Mowing.

Thank you. take funds from the previous neighborhood improvement program?

Yeah, I mean, they haven't spent hardly anything of what was already awarded in previous years.

Which neighborhood?

Fairhaven and Worth Heights. I mean, it's just a suggestion.

Yeah, a savings from this fiscal year to apply to help the PetSmart.

I mean, we'll put it back, of course, in the next budget year, but that would move it up to 4.4. I don't know, just a suggestion.

Yeah, I'm just more concerned about the citizens in those neighborhoods being upset because we can't go forward with their program because we don't have the funding.

Yeah, but they've hardly expended any of the four point. I mean, we're not taking it away from them. Yeah. It's just being pushed out to.

You can look at it. We'd have to come back to the city council with an MNC to move it and those kind of things. And then make sure we have a plan to increase next year's budget to replace it.

Council Member Peebles, did you have one? So I just wanna say, and this is my second year going through budgeting on the council, and so I know that this council has prided itself on reducing the tax rate. but also we are facing unprecedented times where we're talking about cutting vital city services. And I think our residents, and I am a citizen of this city, I think our residents want us to deliver, continue to deliver quality services to them. So, I hear you, Councilwoman Hill. I think if there are personal things that we can do to cut back on that, we should, but I also want to tell you, Jay, and encourage the rest of the council, we need to look at what it actually costs to provide the services that our citizens expect and then be willing and unafraid to have honest conversations with them about what it costs. And we don't need to nickel and dime citizens. I think many of our citizens want these services and we need to give them an honest assessment of where we are and why we are here. And I think many of our residents will understand. Councilor Nettles.

Yeah. I'll just add to that. I've been singing that song for the last three years about us lowering our tax rate. So I think we should be able to see exactly where we are. And I asked a question last week about what we feel like we're going to be projecting next year so we have a true outlook. I do have a question, and I don't know if this is related to the budget or not, but this whole new system of looking at the IRs, we changed the system from, you know what I'm talking about?

That was not a budget issue, no.

Okay, we need to change it back. I don't know if anybody's able to maneuver through it, but it has.

Someone agreed.

Somebody's clapping. Staff members are clapping back there.

So I need to bring a future, can I have future agenda item for work session? Sure. About why we changed that and if we can go back to the, I'm serious. No, I understand. Yeah, okay. We'll put it down.

Council Member Flores.

I was trying to find it here in the budget binder, but if staff could give us a little clarity on the gas royalties. I know they're unpredictable and non-reoccurring, but I think it goes into some kind of trust fund, right, that's managed by the CFO?

I think it's all... based on the type of gas well, the property that's tied to, so if it's water department, it goes to water parks, it goes to parks, and some of it goes into, a portion goes into the trust that builds a corpus, then you have interest off of that, and you have specific guidelines for what you can use it for.

All right, I guess I'd like to know what staff is using it for this budgetary cycle.

Sure, we can have that by Friday, unless we can answer it now.

I can have it on Friday.

Okay.

Speaking of Friday, we do have a budget work session scheduled. Are there other future items related to that discussion on Friday that you would like to see, Council? It's not here already. Yes, Carlos?

Well, other than what I mentioned earlier, Mayor.

Thank you. Anyone else need anything else? No? Do we need the budget work session on Friday? Okay.

We have one next Tuesday.

We have one next Tuesday as well.

We do have a CCPD meeting on Friday as well. Well, you know, I was hoping I'd get a little direction on, I hear what items you want to put back in. We can come back on Friday with what the cost would be and what that would translate from a tax rate if you wanted to look at it that way, or we could bring back Other areas where we would reduce, if you wanted us to reduce on that side.

I am interested on the programs that we want put back in the budget and what it does to the tax rate. Because that is what everybody, what we're going to be voting on and what I think we need to know. I mean, what are the costs? What's the additional cost of the programs that we have said we can't live without?

And we do have a budget work session also scheduled on Tuesday, August 25th also, just making sure council knows that too. So we'll maybe get through Friday and see where we are.

Yeah, we could cancel that one if we don't need it. Okay. Also listening to the first part of the conversation about the positions that are eliminated. We'll work with parks and library to determine... what positions in order to ensure that we don't have service reductions and maybe TPW on the inspectors and get an idea of what the cost associated with that and we could translate that also into what the tax rate impact would be that if those type of positions were put back or were brought back overall, just so you all will understand what that number is.

Hey, could you walk us through the timeline again? So we have budget meeting Friday, then on Tuesday and then

budget meeting on Friday, Tuesday, and then on September 1st. So we outlined them these, you know, to make sure we had time, but we don't have to hold them all. September 15th is when, on the 1st, you actually have a budget hearing. So we, on your regular council meeting, we'll have a budget hearing where you take input from the public. And then on the 15th is when we're scheduled to approve the budget.

Yeah, and just to be clear, on the 25th, the item is a budget item in the regular work session. That's in the regular. So it's not a separate work session.

Thank you.

Tuesday, would all of the city council members have had their budget meetings in the community?

No, I think they go till the end of the month.

Mm-hmm.

Second of September, yeah. I think that's the last. One is the second of September, I believe.

Anyone else? Okay, this meeting is adjourned and we'll move into CCPD.

Thank you.

Bye.

I'm paying my dues just for you. I talked about y'all bad last night. I said, y'all better get them canes and get them knocking on some doors.

on this health fund that the working capital.

All right, everybody, let's get settled in so we can get started.

I think we're about ready to get started.

All right, everybody, let's get settled in so we can get started with our CCPD meeting. I'm just gonna gavel, all right? It's 2.15. On Tuesday, August 18th, and I call to order the Fort Worth Crime Control and Prevention District Board of Directors meeting. And the first item of business is the approval of the meeting minutes for May 19th, 2026. Do I need a motion? Okay, a first and a second. Any discussion, corrections? Seeing none, all in favor indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye. Motion passes. Okay, we have two written reports. The first one, FY 26, second quarter performance report. On activities and finances, Erica Green or Juanita Jimenez are available to present if we have any questions. Any questions by board members? All right. Going to the second written report, partners with a shared mission quarterly update. J.C. Shane is available if we have any questions. Any questions from the board? Seeing none, we will continue to move on to discussion and action items. The first one, consideration of emerging partners program funding requests in the amount of $200,000. J.C.?

afternoon president and members of the board it is my privilege to present to you the quarter four emerging partners grant recommendations we have two grant recommendations today one is on behalf of maroon nine in the amount of fifty thousand dollars their primary office location is district nine and it is a development grant as a reminder development grants are intended to build internal capacity and strengthen the agency. Opening Doors for Women in Need is requesting $150,000. Their district in District 6, and that's where their service is also provided, and it is a program grant, which, again, a reminder is that it is intended to support direct programming. So Maroon 9 is requesting $50,000 to help strengthen the organizational and fundraising infrastructure. needed to expand their arts-based youth violence prevention program for teens in Fort Worth. Through a campaign readiness engagement with the support of their consultant, the organization will develop a clear case for support, assess leadership and donor capacity, and create a strategic roadmap for a future capital campaign. We have Ms. Siobhan Davis, the executive director, with us today if you have any questions for Maroon 9.

Elizabeth, looks like you might have a question.

Have we ever funded something like this in the past where it's more of a developmental exploratory type as opposed to actual programming?

Yeah, so our development grants are intended for the support to strengthen the agencies. So we typically have some development grants and some programming grants.

Thank you.

So can Ms. Davis talk to us a little bit?

Yeah, that's what Michael was just about to request. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon. I'm Siobhan Davis, Executive Director of Maroon 9 Community Enrichment Organization.

Tell us a little bit about your program. I think there may be some questions coming from our board members.

Yeah, absolutely. So Maroon 9 is a youth development organization powered by the arts. We use theater arts as a tool to introduce you to creative workforce pathways, creative expression, and transferable life skills that they can use beyond the stage. Our last development grant was used to develop and implement a three year strategic plan. We are in year two of that. Our next phase, which is this grant opportunity, is for our facility based initiative of our Maroon 9 Youth Arts and Creative Workforce Hub. a space that will house our creative workforce opportunities, our programs and productions, and our violence prevention programming. And so we had great success with the support that the city provided us in our last development grant that gave us the opportunity to really think bigger as to what we can have here in our city for our youth, and also to think deeper with the ways that we can use creative expression to really impact our youth.

All right, Deborah, did you have a question? All right, Michael, are you good? Everyone else, any questions?

No, I have been to some of Siobhan's events with the youth and participated through her summer program. And so I want to say thank you for all the work that you're doing with our young people, which we know they are the future of tomorrow. Thank you.

Thank you all.

Thank you, Ms. Davis.

All right.

J.C.?

Our next grant recommendation is on behalf of Opening Doors for Women in Need. It's for their Change of Life Nehemiah Project, and this is intended for direct service. They are requesting $150,000 that will serve previously adjudicated adults age 18 and older facing employment barriers. So through their workforce development, computer literacy, phlebotomy, training and entrepreneurship educational programming the project will increase employment reduce survival based crime and future criminal justice involvement and so from that agency we have both their executive director Lakeisha and Joyce Pearson any questions yeah I would love to have an opportunity to get to hear an overview if that's okay

Thank you so much for having us. I'm LaKeisha Crear. I'm the Executive Director for Opening Doors for Women in Need. Dr. Sandra Stanley is the founder and CEO of our organization. Opening Doors has been in existence for 23 years where we've been providing reentry services first to women through transitional housing and also job readiness and workforce development. We've expanded that to include also men through the Nehemiah project because what we found is the way to reduce recidivism is through employment and pathways to careers. And so we are offering all of these things because we know that this particular population, in addition to just the access to workforce skills, they also need training in terms of how to address their criminal records, how to address gaps in employment history, how to build on their strengths and move forward instead of harping on the past. And so we integrate that into this program.

Thank you, Ms. Creer. I just wanted to have an opportunity for my colleagues to hear the work that you're doing. I first met Dr. Stanley many, many years ago with her work through this organization with the Junior League of Fort Worth. And so I just wanted to have an opportunity to hear how the program has grown to expand and to include impact with men as well. So thank you so much for the work that you're doing. And Dr. Stanley, if you could wave. Yeah. Thank you so much for all your work and investment in our community. We appreciate it. Thank you, ladies.

Thank you both.

So where our funding stands currently for our partners with the shared mission fund is around 4.5 million. Today's recommendations are in the amount of 200,000, leaving a remaining of around 4.3 million. Applications in process, we have 10, so they amount to approximately 3.9 million. So our total remaining is 415,363 as of July. Our current awards by funding priority, again, we have those seven funding priority areas. With the approval of the two grants today, we would have 49 contracts amounting to roughly 17.1 million. So at this time, staff recommends to take appropriate action on the recommendation.

Great. Questions from the board? Okay, we got a motion and a second. Chris, you okay up there? Just wanted to be sure that you didn't have any questions. Okay. All right. First and a second.

To make sure that I'm clear, is this to approve the two recommendations? Yes.

Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Details matter. All right. All in favor, indicate by saying aye. Aye.

Aye.

All right. Motion passes. Thank you, JC. All right, next up, Keith Morris, and you're going to give us a rundown on the fiscal year 26 budget amendments.

Yes, sir. President, Board of Directors, thank you for your time today. Keith Morris, Assistant Director with Police. We have a couple of amendments to bring before you this afternoon for FY26. As a reminder, there are three methods to revise the budget, amendments, adjustments, and shifts between initiatives. Those are there for your reference. The first amendment today is in our patrol support program. This is 2.643 million for general fund overtime. This is to provide some adjustments with the general fund. We are experiencing larger vacancy rates in CCPD and more of our patrol positions are filled. And so in order to provide some of that balance with the general fund, 2.6 million is requested as an amendment based on savings within the current budget in a number of different programs to cover that overage for overtime. Please.

Get your mic on, Deborah, if you could, please. Thank you.

I'm sorry. I keep thinking my voice carries. Go back to neighborhood crime prevention. It says various programs were taken. We're taking a lot from that. So can you tell me, are we not funding programs? What's happening there?

So we're experiencing vacancy savings more in CCPD. One of the things that we've been focused on is making sure that we're filling our patrol positions. So some of our other positions in general fund as well, but also in CCPD are seeing higher vacancy savings. And so in order to shift some of that and make sure that there wasn't as much vacancy savings in general fund, this helps accommodate that. The second amendment we have here is special events overtime detail. This does provide relief to the general fund as it relates to our FIFA overtime. And so this, we are expected some reimbursements. I checked with finance. Those reimbursements are still in process. I believe they're due at the end of the month to the COG. And so this helps provide that relief. Again, we're running hot in our overtime in the general fund. And so this provides relief to general fund as we wait for those reimbursements to come in. And then we also have special events in NCCPD already. And so there's some compliment there. With that, we recommend appropriate action.

Okay, any questions before we take action? Board, we all good? Okay. All right, we have a first and a second. Any questions? Doesn't look like it. All in favor indicate by saying aye. Motion passes. Any nays? Didn't see any, so we're good there. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chief.

Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to present the CSBD budget for 2027. I'll start us off and then Keith will... There we go. All right, so we'll start off with the State of the Department. We're gonna talk about accomplishments, our prior key year key results, strategic priorities, our action items, and then Keith will clean up with budget overview and with the CCPD. SO WHEN WE TALK ABOUT STRATEGIC PRIORITIES, OBVIOUSLY, AND YOU'VE SEEN THESE BEFORE, ORGANIZATION, WE WANT TO OPTIMIZE STAFFING AND TRAINING, OUR CULTURE TO BE SAFE, HEALTHY, AND RESILIENT. COMMUNICATION, WE WANT TO MODEL THE BEST COMMUNICATION WE CAN. REDUCE CRIME THROUGH PROVEN STRATEGIES. COMMUNITY POLICING, IMPLEMENT THE BEST PRACTICES OF COMMUNITY POLICING. AND INVEST IN A STRONG OPERATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE. Our key accomplishments so far has been our constitutional policing unit that's been doing tremendous work for us, reduction of violent crime, improved response times, reduction in the vacancy rate, our illegal gunfire campaign, the implementation of our UTSA crime plan, improved jail population, and what that means really is just our collaboration with the sheriff, a tremendous collaboration we have with the sheriff with regards to our jail population as they transfer over to the main jail, and centralized equipment replacement. Getting into our second quarter crime comparisons. This is just second quarter only compared to the second quarter of 2025. You see, obviously, crimes against person down. Crimes against property has been down. And crimes against society is up 19%. Some of you might ask, why does crimes against society go up? Great question. Why do crimes against society go up?

Chief, what is crimes against society? What falls in that bucket?

That's a great question, Councilmember. And crimes against society is something that it seems counterintuitive, but if we see that number going down, I get worried and I'm not happy about it. Because what that is, those are narcotics offenses, those are gun crimes, those are prostitution cases, those are cases that are proactively driven by officers doing work and going out. So crimes against society is not like assault where there's an individual person that's the victim to crime against society of the ills of society that officers are going out and doing proactive work. So when that number goes up, to me, it's a matter of morale in the department that the officers are working and they're out there in a lot of what the needs are in a lot of our communities that you mentioned that our officers are responding to. So that's really the rate that we'd like to see it. We'd like to see persons go down, property go down, and crimes against society be at where it's at. Look at this slide here. We look at population and crime rate through the years. Obviously, as you see, population increasing, and that line is not going to stop there, as we all know. But you also see some reduction in crime and in property crime. It remained a little steady, 2023, 2024. It started to go down in 2025. This year is where we're at between quarters, and I'll draw your attention to quarter two compared to quarter two of last year. And those are our numbers with regards to the quarter two comparisons from this year to last year, where all violent crime has gone down in quarter two comparison by significant amounts. And then if you draw your attention to the left side of the screen, which shows where we're at year-to-date. When we talk about year-to-date, we're talking about January to the end of July. As you look, the one specific one from the murder perspective, as we sit here today, we're actually down almost 40% as of today. We had 32. One life is too many. but we had 32 murders this year compared to 53 last year. One life is too many. We want to get those numbers down, but as you continue to see the trend, more lives are being saved today than they were before. One thing that I'd like to point out is our detectives are doing an outstanding job. As I've mentioned many, many times, let's take robbery as an example. Our homicide and our sexual assaults and our Major crimes units are doing a tremendous job. But if I'll just point out robbery, for example. I know a lot of you have heard me at community meetings say that 100 robberies aren't committed by 100 different people. 100 robberies are not. They're committed by very few individuals that commit more crime. And by our robbery detectives clearing these cases, they're actually helping bring that rate down. And I cannot commend the work they're doing anymore. And that's just the work that the men and women are doing and also how CCPD is assisting us. We look at property crimes. Again, if I draw your attention to the right side, that's quarter two versus quarter two last year. And again, those numbers speak for themselves. And then also from the start of this year to the end of July on the left side of the screen. Again, just tremendous work that the officers are doing. I have an opportunity to sit Mondays and Fridays in our CompStat meetings where we talk about crime in the city. On Mondays, every lieutenant and above in the department's in the meeting, and on Fridays, every lieutenant and above in the meetings. We talk about these numbers constantly. One division will know exactly what's going on in the other division, and seeing the work that they've been doing throughout the year has been tremendous. I'll say this and I'll say it again. I don't do touchdown dances in the middle of the year. We have a long way to go. But again, if we're going to draw this equation, we'd rather be where we're at here as we close out the summer than the other way.

Chief, one question on the category theft from building. Does that presuppose the building is vacant?

Tell me a little bit about that. What does that category consist of?

Theft of building could be that, Councilmember. I have to get specific on the definition of it. I don't know if it has to do with it being, if it's occupied, it would not be burglary necessarily. So it could be that. We talk about response times, and this is interesting here. Our goal for response times is, as you can see, at eight minutes, 54 seconds. That's improved, and now, obviously from April to June, we're close to what that goal is. Obviously our response times need to get better. There's no question about it. But the interesting part about it is I showed you on that previous slide that showed our population. If you can see the key fact there is that in 2013 was when the goal of our response times was set. When the city obviously was a lot smaller than it is today. We are currently working with criminologists to really give us the equation and tell us realistically what our response time should be. Because it could be the same, it could be less, but I would venture to guess that with the size that the city's grown, that that number may not be accurate. But what I will say, particularly with priority one response times, even with that goal that was set, In 2013, the department is doing the best it can to meet that priority one goal. Obviously, we need to continue to get better at the other priorities, but certainly it's something that we're moving the needle on. Debra, did you have a question?

Um, no, I was just so chief. I don't even know how I'm going to phrase this. I hear from so many people that I call the police and they never showed up. Okay. And I'm sure you hear that too. Where do we put those calls and how do we go back and verify whether that's true or not? I mean, when you all get that, how do you go back and look at it?

Honestly, council member, and I get those, obviously, I get those all the time as well. And the first thing I ask if they give me specifics, because oftentimes what one person says, the cops never showed up. No one may actually know that, but they'll repeat that. So I ask specifically what it is. And you know what? There have been some times, obviously, working with Sonny, getting back with our communications to figure out and really doing a deep dive on this call. We are an imperfect profession, and there are times where Nights are busy, and it may have taken us a while to get there, but at least there's an explanation that we can get back to our residents to let them know why it is. But oftentimes, I don't get the specific call. But when we do, we absolutely look into it to see how we can get better and or what was slipped. what was missed do we document those somewhere so we would have a number of them like you know we got 50 complaints last year that no response or do we have that somewhere um i don't think i don't know if we have that somewhere council member it's something we can definitely start tracking when we get those calls because obviously i think when we get those calls i mean we'll head we'll get some specifics that will go along with the complaint i was asking you there but again We look into that every time because, again, the main priority of the police department, the main priority of the police department is to answer the 911 call for service. So it's something that we take very seriously.

Okay. Well, if you start tracking that, I'd like to be kept appraised of that because I get a lot of things that I call the police and nobody showed up or we waited, I waited for an hour before they finally showed up, anything that would help tell the story of what's really happening.

Yes, Council Member. Moving on. This is just another chart that shows priority one response times and calls for service. All right, looking ahead. Looking at our trends and emerging issues. Obviously, we want to maintain current operational levels, particularly in this budget year. Fill vacancies by projecting attrition more effectively. Maintain violent crime response and other service levels. Update policies to reflect innovative best practices and reducing risk. exploring technology as a force multiplier, and expand the use of data. And this is important, expand the use of data in decision making. When we look at our action items, when we look at an organization, I know we discussed this in these last couple of weeks, but obviously what we want to do is convert 30 patrol positions to corporals. I know it was explained beautifully, I think, last week or a couple weeks ago with regards that we want to build a career path and a promotional path for our patrol officers. Our patrol officers are very, very important. However, they're always the ones that need whatever we can do to assist their day-to-day life conditions we need to do. And I think that's going to certainly help not only to get those positions there and to have them give them a pathway. When we look at the swarm positions in patrol, the 76 in patrol that's been talked about that may be coming from CCPD. One of the things that we're looking at right now, our projections are projections are exactly that. And right now, When we look at academy sizes, we project certain numbers, but sometimes individuals don't pass, and so our projections get pushed out. Right now, we're looking at that these positions, we need to put placeholders in place. These positions at the current rate we're going may not hit this budget cycle, this next budget cycle, but we've already had conversations with HR that we need to start looking at the rest of the market. And we need to start seeing how often we're giving civil service testing. We need to see how often we're putting academies in place because we have to meet the market. And so discussions are being had with regards to that. And we're going to be very, very proactive to really try to increase those numbers. So that's still going to be very, very important. Obviously, we want to track and adjust for sworn attrition. Always look at culture. We want to improve the experience for our injured officers. Obviously doing a lot of work with our wellness unit and working with HR and obviously to get our officers back as quickly as we can physically, but also make sure that they're strong mentally. We all maximize frontline physicals for incumbent officers, bring communications, you know, obviously we know there are issues we're dealing with, but hopefully we're trying to, we'd like to hire communications AD to improve crisis communications and the interactions we have with you all and the mayor in different instances that occur throughout the city. From a crime reduction perspective, we want to expand our crime plan with focused deterrence. I'll get back to that in a second within our CCPD partners. And I was very pleased to hear the presentations that were just given. We want to expand our intelligence-led policing, particularly with the Real-Time Crime Center, which will be a state-of-the-art facility. When we look at community policing, we want to assess CCPD programming models and results. And what that means is we're going to be looking at our CCPD programs, particularly new ones that come up through a criminological lens. What programs are nice to have versus what programs have actually shown evidence of them working for the goals of what CCPD was to reduce violent crime, prevent crime, and to increase public safety. And we're going to be looking at that through that lens and how the system works. Obviously our constitutional policing unit looking at certain things that they have a, you know, they have a work plan that they're working on, but there's things that happen throughout the country that we need to get our headlights on. And they were working on those things and I couldn't be proud of the work they're doing. When we look at infrastructure, obviously we want to ensure our officers' equipment is in optimal condition. We want to assess our operational fleet needs and assignments. And we want to implement facilities master plan and have those recommendations. And I think with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Keith to walk us through all the fun stuff.

Thank you, Chief. Thank you, Chief. Keith Morris, Assistant Director. Before we get started, Keith, Dennis, note that Councilmember Jameson has just left the meeting.

So as we move forward, I'm going to go into some of the budget details. There's potentially a lot of questions as we go along, so let me know. There's a lot of details that is in this presentation. I do want to thank my team, budget team for police. The work that they've done over the past 10 months is exceptional. The place that we've come to to be able to present this to you is a whole lot of work, and so I want to recognize them at this time. So the recommended CCPD budget overall is 146.7 million. That breaks down into five initiatives. And we'll go into some additional details. The additional adjustments that you see there is part of our risk administrative allocations. But over the next several slides, we'll get into details and kind of dig further and further. And as you have questions, just jump in. So this shows overall our CCPD by account category, just to kind of give you an idea. of what's included in there. The biggest part of the increase for fiscal year 27 is obviously in salary and benefits. That's roughly about 75% of the increases. There are some positions in that. We'll talk a little bit more about what those are and how they came on. There's also some increases for allocations in this. That's about another 14.2% of the change, and that leaves about 868,000 for the remaining O&M areas. I wanted to start here so you kind of see what the changes are overall in those individual areas, because we went through a process to start the year as we were looking at what we expected, what we knew going into the fiscal year in terms of changes. We didn't get the final numbers for sales tax from Fort Worth Lab until July, but there's a lot of things that we were tracking moving into the budget year. And so I put this slide together to kind of give you an idea of the significant cost increases. Now, this isn't comprehensive. kind of help you understand where we started and where we ended up as we go through this presentation. So you kind of see where the additional revenue that we found out would come, that we were projecting to come in and how that kind of fits into the overall budget at a high level. Obviously it affects individual programs and I've got plenty of slides on the individual programs. I wanted to pause here and just kind of go through, kind of help you understand that. So the additional sales tax increase year over year is right around six million. With the additional salary increases and benefit increases, including the positions that we'll talk about, that kind of eats up a lot of that. And so the other things that we expected to come in, or we were finding out as the budget was coming in, was we anticipated some significant cost increases. We did some things to work with departments to adjust for that, but we'll talk about that in a little bit more detail. We did check with finance on the interest that we usually include in the budget. So there's a reduction there that we anticipate year over year in terms of interest. So I wanted that to be clear because that's usually part of our revenue. We plan for that in the budget and we use that. And so that was going down as well. We had some allocation increases, including some positions that were transferred in from general fund. That's part of that. We had some expiring grant positions. Our community alliance command, we'll talk a little bit about this, but we got seven positions from a COPS hiring grant that was expiring. And so it was a big boost, a shot in the arm to our community alliance program working in the community. But now we gotta assume those positions. And they were previously in the general fund with the way that the grant was structured, but they are stationed in community alliance, which is in CCPD. constitutional policing, some radio replacements, the general fund reductions, whatever support that we could provide with regard to the 3% general fund reductions is in there as well. I'll go into kind of what that is. And then CCPD partners, and we'll talk about that as well. But you see a kind of a 12.6 million running total going into the year with some of the things that we were tracking.

So Keith, before you go on, go back to expiring grant positions. You just said these seven positions were a big boost to what you're trying to do. Where are we absorbing those or are we just gonna stop that going forward? And then I do want you to get in to the reduction of CCPD partners.

Let me just jump in real quick. Because we had the glitch with the posting of this agenda, Mayor Mrakas, factual questions can be discussed the recommendation is not to discuss moving around things within the budget and to defer that conversation until Friday, so the factual questions about the grant or fine, but the recommendation is that we not get into the meat of swaps or.

Mayor Mrakas, Discussion of the only action we're going to have on this item is what they were saying will be to continue until Friday the 21st.

So I do have that information as we go along, and I'll jump into the next slide, because I think I've explained some of this. And we'll also get into those alliance positions. So this kind of shows you the steps that we took starting early in the year with the overall general fund approach that police took. We did reductions across the board because we were, excuse me, We took our reductions that we were anticipating and each area of the department reviewed for itemized reductions is based on a proportion of what we were expected to meet. And so with that, we identified some itemized reductions across the different programs just in PD that provide about 1.3 million savings. We also have in here to reduce the vehicle replacement program. That's split a couple different ways. As Chief mentioned, that we're going through a process to look at our vehicle assignments, and we're anticipating some longer-term savings on there that we could apply to some of the challenges that we were just talking about. So about $4 million of that we're able to put back in operating, and then there's another $4 million that's going to address the radio replacements that was on the previous slide. So to get to partners, you see the partners freeze. That's frozen at the previous year's budget. And we'll show you what that looks like in the partner slide as we get to that initiative. But that's instead of the increase that we would expect with the 10%, it's a neutral and remains flat. We estimated the savings down there so you can kind of see how that compares. We also worked with parks for their community policing overtime, and we asked, because we were working on reductions in ours, we asked other departments to look and see if they could hold neutral or freeze certain areas where there was additional, where there was discretionary spending that could be looked at, and so we worked with parks on that. And then we still had a use of fund balance that I think is a little bit lower than this, but that number, I think is that two million, in the version that I sent through, and then also, so that gets us to about 13 million with the West Seventh Ambassadors listed there as well. Moving forward, this is the revenue that we discussed before, about six million, a 4.82% increase over last year. We talked about the interest, that's there as well. The school resource officer reimbursement, That's actually about $400,000 more, which reduced our use of fund balance there. So I didn't get the chance to get that slide in here. And so the same 146.7 million overall, but the use of fund balance a little bit lower because recalculated the school resource officer reimbursement. This kind of outlines our staffing units across all programs within CCPD. I know that chart is really, really small. We're gonna work on fixing that, but this shows you the eight new positions that were brought in and then 10 that were transferred. Some of those are additional costs to the fund. Most of them are just swapping out with general fund. So when we increased the Stockyards Bike Team, There's four additional positions. I think three of those were from general fund, ended up being a swap with general fund. And then school resource officers, we have two additional positions that are coming online. And I have the schools for that. I have it later here in the presentation. I'll provide the schools here in a moment. And then special events overtime detail, we have a corporal. that we're expecting to put in there. The other one that I'll mention here is in patrol support for traffic control technicians. That's gonna provide, I think, some savings to General Fund. We have Scorpion trucks that are deployed, dispatched out onto the highways to provide blocking during an accident. This provides some coordination with FD and how we dispatch those and reduce what we were using for overtime and actually put those positions into CCPD in that area. And then there was a transfer within here, and we'll talk about it later, swapping positions between programs to make sure that they're where they're supposed to be. Working our way down in additional detail brings us to the next question.

Keith, I have one question on the Constitutional Policing Unit. The one position, is that a sergeant position, or what is that?

Constitutional Policing Unit, that is our manager that we added. Within that, it's not sworn. Got it, sir. Taking this to enhanced response, the bike patrol program is the increase in the stockyards. I'll come down to the community policing program, which is parks and crossing guards program, which is you're aware of with TPW. We worked with them on these amounts. I just confirmed with them in the past week that these amounts were what they should be. We have some additional meetings to look at our parks programs that I'm involved in that will continue to ask the question, make sure that these are properly funded. When you see that amount, those are amounts put in by those departments. as we continue to work with them in those areas. That does bring us to school resource. Officer, the two additional positions there. And I'm still looking for, here we are. Those two additional positions are in East Hanley and Western Hills elementaries, according to Fort Worth ISD. Moving forward, we talked a lot about a lot of these special events was increased by corporal, SROs, reduced special operations fund by 112,000. Those are our overtime details. We tried to make sure the reductions that we were going, that we were putting into the fund We're itemized across the board and working with the chain of command in those areas to make sure we identified things that we could sustain. So obviously 1.3 million across the department is a significant number, but as you break that down into all the different programs, it gets smaller and smaller. And so we worked with the chain of command on a significant undertaking to find those reductions and make sure that they would not affect services. Bring us to neighborhood crime prevention. I split this out because this one's starting to get really small as we go along. And so this one has a number of different programs in it. So this is where we have also seen, we're talking about some of the savings that we've had in the current fiscal year. And so that's where some of those savings reside in this area. The Code Blue program you see there, it's not as a big increase as in past years. We had some civil service Over time, we pulled out of that because we work a little smarter, not harder kind of thing, and so we're able to reduce that out of there. Constitutional policing, we talked about that. That covers a lot of what's here. Moving forward, that takes us down to, so HOPE and neighborhood patrol officers, those are staying right where they're at. There's some minor reductions in there, all those increases are in there. You see those as larger than the other areas. Those are contractual increases, and so that's why those are a little bit, why they look that way.

Council Member Flores, quick question for Keith. On the Code Blue program.

Yep.

Back one slide, thank you. I'm just curious, you may not know this off the top of your head, has that number stayed largely the same over the last few fiscal years?

It grows incrementally. There's some things that move in and out in terms of personnel as they change the way that the programming looks. But the amount that you see there has the contractual increases, and then we have some civil service overtime, and I think training pulled out of that. That's why it's a little bit lower than it normally would be.

Okay. And we don't have to do it during the budget process, but maybe at a future CCPD meeting, I'd be interested to just get an update on the Code Blue program overall, where we are in numbers, and anything that council can do to help you shore up the efficacy of it. It's been historically incredibly impactful, but we understand that maybe a new generation needs to take the reins and help support the Code Blue leadership that's been in place for a really long time. And that's really on the volunteer side, of course, and to support the paid staff that support the program. Thank you.

Are we able to talk details of some of the, I'm just curious on the NPO, what's the 1.4 million, what does that get us, the increase? Are we able to talk that?

So that's contractual, the contractual increases for the NPO program. And so those would normally be built in year to year because we're required to pay those out. And so that's one of our larger programs. So on a proportion basis, because the program's 19.5 million.

Define contractual.

in that, break that down. Meet and confer agreement.

So pay raises? Yes, pay raises. Not additional NPOs? Not additional NPOs. Okay, pay raises, things like that. Yes, sir. Okay, got it, thank you.

So just the highlights here, and we talked about a lot of these, again, community alliances. So the positions that we got in the COPS hiring grant were in the general fund, the seven positions that increased staffing in programs like Explorers, in our clergy programs, in our community engagement. A number of those programs, we were able to increase staffing when we got that grant three years ago. That grant's expiring because of the way that we had to do the grant. It was in general fund with the way that the grant was structured, but all of those programs are in CCPD. That ended up being an increase to CCPD, but we had anticipated that going into this year with the grant expiring. So we just got three years partial having to pay for only part of those positions. Moving forward into partners of the shared mission, this kind of gives you an idea of what that freeze looks like. And so because our mission partners are in the last year contracts right now that have 4% increases in those, We observe those and increase those areas and mission partners. So where you see after school gang intervention, victim services, those go up. We have contractual increases in those for 4%. And so our competitive grants, which have not been given out yet, are in that emerging partners program. And so we reduced that out of there, but the overall initiative stays what it was year over year. And so those are the primary changes. As Chief was talking about, We're evaluating a number of things through a criminological lens right now, working with our criminologists to look at not just partners of the shared mission, but certainly partners of the shared mission to make sure that the programs that we're funding are going to be effective in what it is that we're doing. And so looking at that, we're also working with our new strategist, CCPD partner strategist, to look at evaluation and how we're telling the story about what CCPD partners is doing. Those two things working in tandem is taking a little bit of time to get, we're working through to get that together. And so those are two things. And then there's also a focused deterrence program that Chief has talked about. And we are looking to see how we can do that in partners without there being a net increase to CCPD and how we roll out services that involve prolific offenders so that we're getting at violent crime in a different way. Before the recruitment and training, only minor changes here. You're going to look at that big number next to new officer training program. That's the change that we made for our radios. So we're not issuing new radios to recruits anymore. We moved that into our radio replacement. And so that's roughly about 900,000. The overall new officer training program isn't changing. We're doing the same number of classes. That's what's planned for 27. So we're keeping our same plan as chief works with HR to see, can we increase the number of civil service tests that we're doing? And then if there's an additional budget that's needed, we would come back to the board to discuss that. The reason for the way that we're budgeting that program is that we've seen past savings. And so in order to make sure that we don't have past savings that we can't use elsewhere, we changed the way that we budgeted. So that just, it looks a little different there. I think that unpacks everything that I had already discussed, so I can keep going. I will say the wellness unit was moved back into the expanded training program in this initiative. It was something, actually the wellness unit does training with our officers, so it's not neighborhood crime prevention, but they're in a team that's in neighborhood crime prevention, so we're just making that correction. So that brings us to our last initiative, equipment, technology, and infrastructure. And so this is where we have those fleet adjustments that I talked about in the beginning. So you'll see that $8 million reduction in high mileage vehicle replacement program is not 8 million. That's a reduction that we took off the top, and then with the new positions that are coming on, the 76 patrol officers and 80 overall, So there's there's vehicles in there for that so that we can get those vehicles purchased before those people come on board. And so that takes care of that. And so it's eight million overall reduction increase of about three million for those vehicles. The four million of the reduction there goes to our our radio replacement. So talking with IT services about the condition of our infrastructure relative to radios, the radios that are the lifeline when officers are out in the field, we have about $4 million in radios that are 10 years or more in age that we need to take care of. And so we made the decision to move some of those funds into that from our own program, our own vehicle replacement program, to jumpstart the replacement radios. And so that's where that comes from. Taking us to just the remaining highlights here for this specific one. We did centralized equipment replacement under the officer safety equipment program. And then there's also a facility requirement, excuse me, facility requirement program that we have some, a little bit more to finish off that real-time crime center renovation, state-of-the-art facility that we're getting ready to launch. And so we need a little bit more to complete that program. We're expecting additional projected capital savings from other projects, so this just gets us over the hump. This is our capital improvement plan and kind of where our capital works its way down into where our vehicle program is, police facilities, and our IT programs. It shows you where the individual investments go for our capital side. Just a quick facilities update. Our training classrooms did get done. That's a picture of the increased capacity that we added to the academy. So now we can do much bigger classes. And so that's one of the things as we Do additional service civil service testing the possibility that we can do bigger classes in those classrooms Expands the capacity and what we can do throughput in the academy year-to-year Northwest patrol division coming online in fall 2026 facilities master plan is a study that we're doing to look at all of our facilities at a 10 20 your Outlook to kind of give us an idea of where we need to go with our facilities So we're looking forward to that coming to us in the fall, and then, obviously, 200 Texas Street and Real Time Crime Center. This shows you our long-term projection. This is a high-level, excuse me, estimate. With the changes that we made, especially with our high-mileage vehicle program, it kind of stabilized the revenue and expenditures that we're having. because we had some volatility there and we were concerned that long-term that our fund balance was gonna continue to drift away and we weren't gonna be able to maintain our two-month reserve. And so with the adjustments that we made gets those lines closer together, although our expenditures are still a little bit higher. And so that's where you see that light blue box of our excess restricted reserve continuing to go down. That's something that we wanna continue to look at. With that, this is my last slide. Excuse me. We always bring a slide with the future things that we are anticipating coming through. This is a list of things that we are still, challenges that we're still working through. And so there's been some discussion about drone first responder, what we call DFR. We already talked about focused deterrence program. Our facility needs, including our jail holding capacity, is something that we're looking at, trying to find creative ways to address the capacity in our jail. And then we also are looking at the questions with regard to public patrolling parks. With that,

All right, any questions over what Keith got? All right, we're going to save our powder for Friday. And we, as I said earlier, our only action on this one is a motion to continue the public hearing.

Yes, sir, but we do have two speakers first.

Okay, you want to hear those first? Yes, sir.

So our first speaker is Ryan Amusawi. And the board uses, follows the same rules as council, is three minutes, so I'll be keeping that time.

Good afternoon. My name is Ryan Omasawi and I'm a District 7 resident. I want to start with a little context. This is no longer a niche conversation. Communities across the country are taking another look at flock. Right here in North Texas, Hood County commissioners voted 4-0 in April to discontinue the county's flock contract. And just this weekend, a Hood County constable publicly unplugged and covered three county flock cameras. And just last week, League City voted to put the continued use of automated license plate readers before its voters. That doesn't mean Fort Worth has to reach the same conclusion, but I do think it means we should be having the same conversation. I'm here today because I believe Fort Worth's continued spending on flock safety deserves more public scrutiny before we commit additional taxpayer dollars to it. I understand why law enforcement values technology that can help solve crimes. My concern isn't with that goal. My concern is whether council and the public have been given enough information to determine whether this particular system is worth its cost and the broader implications that come with it. Before we continue funding FLOC, residents deserve clear answers. How much are we spending? What measurable results are we getting in return? How frequently is it used? And are those results significant enough to justify continuing or expanding the program? From what I've seen, FLOC related discussions have largely moved through the city without the kind of dedicated public discussion that technology with this level of capability deserves. So I'm asking this board to do something fairly simple. Please request a future agenda item for a dedicated public discussion of Fort Worth's use of flock safety and automated license plate readers before this city moves forward with another renewal. I'm not asking you to decide the entire issue today. I'm asking you to make sure we actually examine it before we decide to keep paying for it. Thank you so much.

Is there a second speaker, Dennis?

Yes, our second speaker is Nancy Cosio.

Good afternoon. My name is Nancy Cosio, and I'm a District 7 resident. I'm here because I believe technology as powerful as automated license plate readers requires strong oversight before problems occur, not after. That concern isn't hypothetical. Just this summer, law enforcement agencies here in Texas have investigated or disciplined officers over the use of FOX systems, including improper or potentially improper searches. I want to be very clear. I'm not suggesting that Fort Worth officers have misused the system, but those incidents demonstrate why safeguards matter. Fault cameras can create searchable records showing when and where vehicles have been observed. When government has access to that kind of information, residents should know exactly what the rules are governing its use. A public review should clearly explain who can access Fort Worth systems, when searches are permitted, which outside agencies can access our data, how searches are audited, and what happens when those rules are violated. Public safety matters to me. This isn't about denying law enforcement useful tools. It's about recognizing that powerful tools require equally strong accountability. And residents shouldn't have to wait for misuse to occur before asking whether these protections are adequate. So I'm asking this board to do something fairly simple. Please request a future agenda item for a dedicated public discussion of Fort Worth's use of fog safety and automated license plate readers before the city moves forward with another renewal. We're not asking you to decide the entire issue today. We're asking you to make sure Fort Worth examines it publicly before deciding to continue it. Thank you.

That's the last of your speakers. All right, very good. I'm assuming that staff notated what the two respective requests were for future addendum items. We have notes of them. Okay, good. Yes. All right. Okay, going back to our item. Consideration of a motion to continue the public hearing to the August 21st meeting.

So just before we do that, let me go back to the fly cameras. We will have an IR on that. Do we need to request it?

We'll go to future agenda items after this at that point.

Okay. Very good. All right.

You're the second, Deborah?

I'll second.

Okay. All right. You were the first, Michael. All right. All in favor indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

All right.

Discussion on that? No nays. All right. Move on. Now, request for future agenda items.

Okay. Yeah. In keeping with the speakers who spoke so eloquently, I would like to discuss that we have a dedicated discussion and an hour on flock cameras and license plates.

Yeah, I want to add to that because that was actually on my feature agenda item for the work session. And so I would like a presentation brought to CCPD, but I also want one brought to the work session as a... as a presentation, because I think we deserve, the community does deserve to hear from us, I mean, my tongue tied, talk about this discussion about flock cameras, because there have been some issues across the nation regarding the flock cameras and the contracts.

All right.

Staff, is that clear how we're going to do this presentation on that, both at CCPD level and at the work session level? Is that correct? Did I capture all that? Yes, sir. Okay. All right, very good. Any other future agenda items? I'm sorry, I did have another one. Go ahead, Chris.

And I know we talked a little bit about the budget, but I want a more in-depth piece about the budget because there's a lot of movement of money around when it comes to CCPD with the $2 million, I think, that we're moving on the recommendation. And I also want to know if there's any savings that we're able to save through the CCPD funding.

Okay. So you want details on any savings of any programs or initiatives in the CCPD, right? And then I guess a clarification on allocations?

Yeah, just savings to the general fund through CCPD or? Are you referring to savings to the general fund through CCPD?

Yeah, well, I'm referring to if there's savings in the CCPD fund, and if there is savings, then there may be broader conversations of how we can bring over general fund needs that's represented through the police department to the CCPD. So a longer conversation. Okay.

All right, any others? All right, seeing none.

Our business is concluded and we're adjourned at 13 after three.